Spring Will Be Ours (84 page)

‘As the first independent self-governing trades union in our postwar history, we are profoundly aware of the community of our fates. We assure you that, contrary to the lies spread in your countries, we are an authentic, ten-million-strong organization of workers, created as a result of workers' strikes. Our goal is to improve the condition of all working people. We support those among you who have decided on the difficult road of struggle for free trades unions …'

The delegates to the congress also approved another message, a Letter to Poles in the whole world. It began: ‘Here, on the Vistula, a new Poland is being born …'

These messages were reported in the London papers. The headlines, the comment, were shocked, appalled. For Solidarity to speak so daringly, so brazenly, of the ‘nations of the Soviet Union'! To declare that a new Poland was being born! Danuta scanned the papers on the bookstall in the foyer of her new hotel. The bookstall carried foreign papers, too: understanding Solidarność in English, French, German, Italian, seeing the exclamation marks, understanding the headlines in the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, she swallowed, and felt afraid. The whole of the West was waiting – one more foot wrong, one more strike, march, outrageous and audacious statement, and – and what? Was the press really on the side of Solidarity? Hadn't there, always, been the suggestion that the union was asking for too much, too soon? It had never felt like that when she was there – perhaps, now, all these Western papers were exaggerating, and the danger was not so great. Looking at the stall again, she had a sudden unpleasant image: lips being licked. She moved quickly across the foyer, and out into the street. It had rained last night, and the sunny air smelt damp. She would ring Mama tonight – no, tomorrow, tonight she was working.

Danuta had changed both her hotel and her evening job, the hotel to get away from the Home Office, and the eating house to get away from the Manager. Her visa had expired, her passport was in the Home Office: she had sent it in with a letter, asking for another extension. She was hoping to re-train, perhaps in computers, her English was improving fast, she had saved sixty-seven pounds in tips, opening her first bank account. But if the Home Office demanded to know how, all this time, she had been living, or how she intended to live now, with no work permit … Sixty-seven pounds wouldn't impress them. They must, in any case, already have notes on her from the raid. Walking fast along Oxford Street, moving through the shoppers, Danuta went through the vocabulary for this afternoon's test, and tried not to think about any of it. She was hoping to sit the Cambridge Proficiency next spring: it was, as Basia had told her, a very stiff paper, but her tutor seemed to think she'd be all right. She reached the doors of the school, and climbed the narrow stairs. If she saved enough from the new evening job, she might take an afternoon off from here each week and learn to type. There were typing schools advertised everywhere.

After the class, she went to her café near Chinatown. She sat over her coffee, and wrote to her mother – silly to phone, much too expensive, especially now, when she was saving every penny.

‘The papers here are sounding alarms over the Solidarity Congress. Every now and then I do feel afraid –'

She stopped, and crossed the second sentence out, heavily.

‘However, all is well with me! I'm working as a waitress in a new hotel, and I have a new evening job, much better than the last, it's in a restaurant in Covent Garden, a very pretty, touristy part of the West End, still very busy, but the tips are good, I was lucky to get it. There are two other Polish girls there, they seem all right, one is from Warsaw. My friend Basia, from Kraków, who was in the last hotel, has dropped out of circulation, I think she is going to marry her rich Frenchman. I'm glad you liked the last parcel, I'm hoping to send another next week, and please
tell me
if there are things you particularly want! I had a treat last week – a visit to the dentist – they have injections here, automatically, even for fillings.' Not like at home: a visit to the dentist in Poland could be terrifying.

She finished the letter and got up, paying for the coffee. No need to buy a roll these days – they gave her a good meal at the restaurant, down in the kitchen with the other evening staff. She walked back through the little street on to the Charing Cross Road, where she used to work, passing the eating house near the tube, and crossed into the network of streets leading to Covent Garden, full of tourists window-shopping, drinking at the tables in the piazza, listening to the evening street musicians, wandering arm in arm, well dressed, secure.

The manager of Danuta's new restaurant was English, the chef was Spanish. Many of the staff, working on morning, afternoon and evening shifts, were Australian or New Zealanders, passing through, nearing the end of the summer vacation and talking about the journey home through Europe. There were also the Poles, a Czech woman who had lived here since 1968, a sprinkling of French students, Scandinavian students. When Danuta arrived, it was still early and quiet, a lull before the evening rush began. She hung up her jacket, and went to eat with the other girls. ‘Did you see the papers?' she asked Maria, as they sat down.

Maria was the girl from Warsaw. She was large and fair, and had been studying history. ‘Oh, yes.' She reached for the mayonnaise, and piled spoonfuls on to a mountain of tuna fish salad.

‘And do you think they're right? Do you think there's going to be an invasion?'

‘It's possible, isn't it? We've always known it was.'

‘But I mean now, soon.'

‘I'm trying not to think about it,' said Maria. ‘I work, I send my parcels home, I write to my family and tell them not to worry.'

Danuta laughed. ‘So do I.'

‘Of course, we all do. Can you pass the bread?'

They finished their meal. The restaurant upstairs began to fill. Danuta and Maria and the rest of the evening shift gulped down cups of coffee, and hurried up there. It began, very soon, to get busy; Danuta grew hot and tired, moving between the tables in the smoke, carrying trays from the hatch which led down to the kitchen, going through the menu with the customers in English. A couple in the corner beckoned her over. The woman was fair, wearing a bleached cotton shirt; the man was tall, with flopping brown hair; he had a camera on the table beside him. He smiled at Danuta, almost with diffidence. ‘We should like to order …'

‘Of course.' She pulled out her notebook and pen, smiling back at him. ‘What would you like?'

‘Trout and green beans.' He nodded towards the fair-haired woman. ‘That's right?'

‘Yes. Fine.'

‘And I'll have the kidneys.'

Danuta looked quickly over his shoulder at the menu. He had an old one, last week's. ‘I'm not sure if we have kidneys now … Can you wait a moment, please?' She turned away, saw Maria going past with a trayful of starters, and asked quickly in Polish: ‘Maria? Are we serving kidneys this week?'

Maria nodded. ‘Yes. I've just taken an order.'

‘This customer has last week's menu …'

‘Give him this week's then. But the kidneys are on anyway. Revolting, how can anyone eat such things?'

Danuta turned back to her table, and saw that the man was laughing.

‘You're Polish. And your colleague.' He nodded towards Maria.

Danuta flushed. ‘I'm sorry – you speak Polish? She didn't mean to be rude.'

‘It's all right, it's quite funny. May I ask how long you've been over here?'

‘Just a few months, I came at the end of April. And – and you?'

‘Oh, I was born here. Well … I'll have the revolting kidneys, if your friend doesn't mind too much. And we'd like to order wine.'

‘Of course.'

‘We're celebrating,' said his girlfriend, smiling – or was she his wife? – and spread her hands as if in deprecation.

‘Oh.' Danuta didn't know quite what to say. ‘Very nice.'

She took the order for wine, and went to send the food order down the hatch. She could hear the chef shouting, he reminded her of poor Enrico. Was he back in Colombia now? She went into the little lobby at the far end of the restaurant, where the wine racks were, found the Médoc, very expensive, and thought: they must be celebrating. But they seem rather nice, those two.

During the evening, when she had time, she watched them. They talked a lot, at one point it seemed almost as if they might quarrel, but next time she looked they were holding hands. When she went to give them their bill, she said in Polish: ‘I hope you have enjoyed your celebration.'

‘We have,' said the man, in Polish, and then translated for his companion, who smiled again.

‘May we ask your name?'

‘Danuta,' she said. ‘I'm from Warsaw.'

‘Really? We visited Poland in 1979, we spent some time in Warsaw.' He pulled out a wallet, and put notes under the bill, on the saucer. ‘My name is Jerzy Prawicki,' he said. ‘This is Elizabeth – today is the anniversary of our meeting. Hence the celebration.'

‘Oh. Congratulations.'

‘Thank you. We wondered – would you like to come and have supper with us one evening?'

Danuta was astonished. ‘Yes. Yes – I would. Thank you.'

‘Where are you living?' asked Elizabeth.

‘Oh – in a hotel in Bayswater. I work there.'

‘As well as working here?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘You must get very tired.'

She shrugged.

‘Well …' Jerzy had written down their address on the back of the bill, and their phone number. ‘Do phone us.'

‘Yes, I will.'

They got up, and she went with them to the door. Some of the lights in the shop windows had been switched off now, but there were still plenty of people about. It felt cold, after the warmth of the restaurant; she saw Elizabeth shiver, and Jerzy put his arm round her.

‘Come on.' He smiled briefly at Danuta. ‘Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye, and thank you.' She hurried back inside.

Londyn
28 September, 1981

‘Kochana Krysia,
‘Forgive me for not writing for so long. I have something to
tell you, and I don't know how to tell you.'

No. He couldn't do it straight away, just like that at the beginning of the letter. He lit a cigarette, and crossed out the last sentence, going over each word so that there was only a thick black line. He drew on his cigarette, and sat staring out of the café window. He was in a little sandwich bar, not far from the Embassy, not far from the BBC; there were a few tables, with sauce bottles and metal ashtrays. Outside, people in suits, in their lunch hour, walked quickly past, hailing taxis. The light was autumnal, golden, it reminded him of this time last year in Warsaw, when Krysia had been full of the news about Miłosz, and the Nobel Prize. He remembered seeing a

bus driver in a Solidarność armband being hustled and pushed

by the police as he climbed up into the driver's seat. He

remembered a lot of things, and none of them had anything

to do with Ewa, or what he was trying to say now.

Forgive me for not writing for so long. Forgive me for what I am about to tell you.
No.

‘Since I last wrote, the papers have been full of horror stories
about Solidarność, the Congress, the reaction of our neighbours
on the border. There is an organization here, a campaign supporting
Solidarność, they have a magazine.'
And through it I met
… No.
‘I haven't joined it yet – it is all run in English, and anyway,

I'm afraid that if anything should happen, it wouldn't be a

very good idea for me to have my name linked with it.'

Were they censoring letters, yet? Would this reach Krysia

unopened? If it was opened, would she think all the lines

crossed out were crossed out by the censor?
‘Anyway, I hope nothing is going to happen, and that I'll

soon be home. My passport is in the Home Office, I am waiting

for an extension. I think of you and Olek, and wonder how

you are, and I miss you both very much.'
He did, he did miss them, though he couldn't tell Ewa that.

And there were, still, times when he forgot them utterly, and

he couldn't tell Krysia that.
‘I have been working pretty hard. The house is almost

finished, and we expect to be paid a bonus. Did you get the

parcel? Since I last wrote, I have moved. I'm not in the hostel

any more, it was rather unpleasant there, I'm staying with

friends.'
I am staying with a woman called Ewa. In a way she reminds

me a little of you: she is dark, like you, and beautiful, like

you, though I know you never believed I really think that

about you, Krysia. She is very emotional, and lonely, not like

you, and I think I love her.
No. No, no, no.
‘If you want to write to me, I think it's best if you go on

writing to the
poste restante
in William IV Street. There are

a lot of people in this new place, it's almost as bad as the hostel, and letters go missing.'

Liar. Shit.

But perhaps he was giving her the chance to read behind that lie, if she thought about it, and realize for herself, without him having to tell her.

Coward. It wasn't just cowardice – absurd, he wanted to be with her, when she read it.

‘I'll write again soon. My love to the parents, both sets. And I hold you and Olek, and kiss you both with all my heart.

Stefan'

He stubbed out the cigarette, sealed the envelope, got up quickly and paid at the counter, and walked back to work, fast, dropping the letter in the pillarbox on the way, and trying, after that, not to think about it.

A few weeks later, Danuta went to supper with Jerzy and Elizabeth. She sat on the edge of their sofa, feeling shy, and looking through Jerzy's photographs, while Elizabeth was in the kitchen. Over supper, they asked her questions. She told them, mostly in hesitant English, occasionally appealing to Jerzy and speaking Polish, for him to translate, about what it had been like in Poland, before she left. She told them about the first hotel, and the Home Office raid; about Enrico being arrested and Franco jumping out of the window. She told them about the eating house and the persistent manager; about her new hotel, where she served breakfast and lunch; she told them about the restaurant, and Maria, and all the Polish girls she'd met since she came here – Basia, who she'd seen again last week, and who was going to marry her Frenchman, though she didn't think she loved him, and the girl from Wrocław, who had also been questioned in the raid. She didn't say anything about the possibility of finding an English sponsor. She found that once she'd started to talk, she couldn't stop: no one else had listened to her since she came – she had abandoned Halina and her cat Henryk, named after her dead husband: Halina didn't want to know about her difficulties. She told them about the visit to the Polish refugee place, and the posters on the wall, Christ walking through the ruins of wartime Warsaw, and she realized they hadn't spoken for a long time, and fell silent, embarrassed at talking so much, realizing she knew nothing about them, at all.