22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

as he put the key in the lock.
    Silvana hesitated. He looked so handsome, his blue eyes shining at her. Nobody had ever looked at her the way he did. It was as if he saw something different in her, a truth that he had long been searching for. Of course he wanted to carry her into her new home. That’s what a husband had to do.
    ‘I’m not sure, Jan,’ she said. ‘Is it safe? For the baby, I mean. Look, why don’t I give you my gloves and hat. You could carry them inside for me instead.’
    She saw the sadness in his face, and her optimism gave way to doubt. Perhaps he thought they had got things wrong, the baby coming along so quickly. Had he married her out of duty? By rights Janusz should be at university now, not offering to carry a pregnant peasant girl over the threshold of an attic apartment. Perhaps he was disappointed by the turn of events. Certainly his parents had been against the marriage.
    But if Janusz was frustrated by his new life, he showed no sign of it.
    ‘Come here,’ he said laughing, and picked her up, making a big show of groaning and puffing out his cheeks, as if she were a huge burden to lift. He walked one step and then stood her down inside the door.
    Silvana looked around the tiny flat. She finally had her own home.
    Janusz jumped onto the kitchen table. ‘Can you climb up here? I want to show you the view. I’ll hold you tight, I promise.’
    Through the skylight window it was possible to see the tops of the trees in the park.
    ‘It’s wonderful,’ she breathed, the table rocking slightly under their weight. ‘The city is wonderful.’
    ‘We have a fine view. The best in Warsaw, I’d say.’
    He helped her down and handed her a present wrapped in gold paper.
    ‘Here. My wedding present to you.’
    It was a necklace. A silver chain with a disc of coloured glass hanging from it, a small circle of blue no bigger than a one-grosz piece. Within the blue was a tree made of tiny circles of green and gold glass.
    ‘It comes from Jaraslaw, where the best glass and crystal comes from. It’s a tree. To remind us of our … of the first time we … That day in the woods …’
    ‘I remember,’ said Silvana. She held the little pendant up to the light, and the tree sparkled. She had a new life now with a man she loved. And she was free from her parents and her ghostly brothers at last.
    Silvana loved the city from the moment she arrived. It felt alive and vibrant. The city women had short hair and wore tiny veiled hats, velvet cloches or berets perched on the back of their heads. They even walked differently. They took up more space on the pavements and led with their chins. Silvana, dressed in a straw hat and country clothes, led with her belly.
    Janusz bought her a book, An Album of Film Land: A Pictorial Survey of Today’s Movie Stars . In the Café Blikle, where she ate Viennese pastries every morning at eleven, Silvana pored over the sepia images of actresses and actors, her fingers tracing high cheekbones and smooth skin, arched brows and Cupid’s-bow lips. Finally, she walked into a glass-fronted hairdresser’s shop and held out her book.
    Her long chestnut hair was cut off, curls corkscrewing on the wooden floor. Silvana looked at recurring images of herself in thebevelled mirrors. She copied the other women in the salon, turning her head this way and that, nodding her approval while the hairdresser swept the piles of hair on the floor into a dustpan.
    At home, undressing in the cramped bedroom of their flat, in front of an oval mirror, a pink satin slip straining over her stomach, Silvana looked at herself. She tossed her head back, her short bob shining. She was nineteen years old and thought she knew all there was to know about the world.
    Janusz
    The cottage was made of split logs, unpainted except for the tiny windows, whose frames were white. A rat-ruined thatch roof, like a hat pulled down at the brim, gave the building a dark, squat look. It was a simple peasant home,