One Crow Alone (11 page)

The raucous shouting of the excited men rose up.

“One down!” the ringmaster shouted. “Haul him out.”

“What is it?” Magda whispered.

The crowd parted and made way as something was dragged between them.

A wet, naked man. His body shaking like a landed fish. The youths from the fire double-timed it over with the barrow and bundled the frozen body into blankets; wheeled him with bare feet dangling and bouncing over to the warmth of the fire.

And Magda saw then—behind the parted legs—that a hole had been cut in the ice. The water a dark stain on the white. And in the water. Other men. Grease-smeared heads bowed in painful concentration. Holding themselves with elbows back against the jagged edge, clutching at a rope they could no longer feel in their frozen-numb fingers.

The shouting rose again.

“Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven—”

“The Scot's out! Just Ferguson and the Chinaman left!”

The crowd roared in laughter.

There was a splash. Another body, thin and brown, dragged out of the water and wheeled away to the fireside.

The ringmaster urging on the crowd of onlookers. “Odds on. Twelve minutes on Ferguson. Hold in there, lad. Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine. Thirteen minutes! Get him out!”

There was a huge cheer. Men crowded around waving bits of paper.

“I think they are betting on how long the men can stay in the water,” whispered Ivan.

The ringmaster's voice boomed again. “Last round. Which one of you lads is gonna try their toes! Fifty quid a drop and another hundred if you win.”

A Jeep crawled under the trees with headlights off. Two men got out. Swaggered to the group on the ice. The ringmaster stepped away from the crowd and handed over the takings.

*   *   *

“See over there. We can double back on ourselves without anyone noticing.” Ivan pointed to the far side of the lake.

They slunk back under the trees, and the voices of the men on the ice faded behind them. Clambering up a bank, they arrived at a pathway.

“We'll freeze out here,” Magda said. “Where are we going to—”

But Ivan was staring down at the edge of the track. The wind rattled the spidery branches above them.

“What?”

He gestured down underneath the trees. There was a dark patch on the snow. “There's been a fire here.” His voice was low. “And not long ago. We're not alone.”

Magda glanced about nervously. Saw a wooden board on posts. “Look. There's a sign.” She found the box of matches. Pulling off her gloves, she struck one, shielded the flame with her hand, and held it up. It was a map of the park. Still readable.

“We're here.” She pointed to the weather-faded picture. They studied it together. The match burnt to her fingers. She shook it and threw it to the ground. Pulled out another. “There. The path goes that way toward the road. But there are houses. In the park. Look. To the east of us.
Vale of Health
,” she said, reading the words.

She looked at the side of Ivan's face in the flickering light. “Shall we go there?”

“Yes. We might find somewhere out of the snow. It will be better.”

*   *   *

A gap in the thicket led down a narrow path between the bushes. A swathe of snow carpeted a treeless clearing, and down in the hollow a low stand of bare hawthorn fringed a small body of frozen water. At the end of the clearing a small deer bounded with three leaps into the undergrowth.

They trod silently along a narrow path. And then, almost in an instant, they stepped out onto a crescent of snow at the water's edge. At their feet, a small abandoned dinghy attached to a taut, frost-rimed rope was entombed in the frozen water.

The night clouds thinned; the moon glowing behind them cast a dull gleam on the iced pond. It was longer than it was wide—oval almost—surrounded on all sides by trees and bushes.

Way back from the water's edge the slab of a building rose up above bare hazel brushwood. Dark windows glowered from its tall, pale facade.

“What's that?”

“Where?”

Magda looked up at the building.

“I'm sure I saw a light.”

Ivan beckoned with his hand. “Just keep your eyes open.”

They skirted along the wall of the building and came out onto a road. It was strange. A single street of houses in the middle of the park. Drifts of snow were piled against doorways. Nothing moved. There was not a light to be seen. Nor a sound to be heard.

The single roadway disappeared under the trees. Ivan turned and looked back the way they had come. “This place is deserted. Why?”

Magda sat down in the snow. “We need to find somewhere to sleep. I'm tired.”

“We can sleep here. Break into a house.”

“What about going back to the train station?”

“No. This is better.” He put out his hand to pull her up.

Perhaps it was then. A rope thrown down into the well. She looked up at him. How would she know what awaited her if she climbed to the top of it? But his hand felt strong and sure and she let it pull her up. In any case, she was too tired to argue.

And at the end of the row of abandoned houses was one low cottage on its own. Its windows were boarded up. And to the side of it was a wooden gate set in a high brick wall. They squeezed through into a courtyard at the back of the house. A lean-to shed abutted the back wall. Above it was a shuttered window under the eaves of the house.

“Maybe there is someone here,” Magda whispered.

“I don't think so.” Ivan handed her his pack and pulled himself up on a water butt under the eaves. He climbed onto the roof and inched his way across the deep snow that quilted the tiles, edging carefully on all fours toward the window.

Grabbing the window frame with one hand for balance, he gave a hard pull and with a loud clatter the shutters came open.

“Be careful,” she whispered up at him.

He turned his face away and elbowed the windowpane. The glass shattered loudly. He balanced there. Listening. Then reached a hand in and opened the latch.

Magda watched as he slithered headfirst through the opening, his boots disappearing into the darkness. She heard the thump as he landed on the floor inside.

“Ivan—” she called up nervously.

His head appeared. “The matches.”

She fumbled in her pocket. Found the box of matches. Threw them up. She heard a strike. The sound of his feet.

“Ivan—”

Nothing.

“Ivan—”

“Wait, I'll open the door.” A brief glow from a lit match.

She leaned against the wall of the shed. Closed her eyes. Hunger gnawed and rumbled in her guts. She felt a tiredness that was almost painful, blotting out the panic.

How will you ever get back to what was before?

That small glimmer of hope was fading so fast that she felt she would fall over right there.

You are like an animal—hiding in the dark of this strange place.

There was the sound of unlatching. The turning of locks in the door at the back of the house.

And there Ivan stood. Match in hand.

Maybe it had begun in the forest. Stirring his porridge. But then she had thought him so arrogant and rude. And he had stolen her food. Half her food. Laughed at her.

An ache was growing like a painful tooth.

She had never felt such a thing before.

Ivan stepped out of the doorway, smiling.

“Come on. It's empty.”

 

15

It was dark and silent in the house. On the dusty windowsill were two half-burnt candles. He lit one. It spat and guttered alight, and he cracked it off the windowsill and held it up. There were cupboards along the wall. A table and two chairs. A pan left lying on the stove.

In a small room at the front, a heavy curtain hung at the boarded front door. Ivan lifted it. The door was bolted from the inside and locked tight. He let the curtain fall.

They climbed a narrow stair, hands against the walls, the candle casting shadows beneath their feet.

“What's up here?” Magda whispered.

“Just empty rooms.”

Magda peered around the door of a bathroom and Ivan pulled the shutter closed, his feet crunching on the broken glass that had fallen onto the tiles.

Under the sloping eaves at the front of the cottage was a room with a bed. Magda sat on the bare mattress with a heavy sigh. “Do you think we're safe here?”

“Yes. I will light a fire,” Ivan said. “See if there's food.” He gave her the candle—dripping wax and sticking it on the small table beside the bed.

“I won't be far. Give me your pack.” She pulled it off her shoulder and her head sank onto the mattress. She heard his feet padding downstairs. His hand tapping the wall in the darkness. The candle fluttered. She breathed heavily in the cold, still air.

And closed her eyes.

But there was a picture inside her head and Ivan filled it.

All the ways he moved. The stride of his legs as he walked into the light of the fire in the forest. His angular hands tearing at the bread outside the church in Krakow. His cheek turning as he laughed at her.

*   *   *

Downstairs, Ivan lit the other candle from the windowsill.

He would need to find sticks to light a fire. Maybe in the shed outside.

He turned the handle on the back door. The latch clicked open and the snowy courtyard gleamed in the moonlight. He breathed in the freshness of the cold air. It had stopped snowing.

Far off in the woods came a screeching, barking sound.

It wasn't human.

An animal? The small deer they had seen maybe.

The shed smelled of oil. He made out a pile of sticks and branches on the floor. The glint of a small axe hanging on the wall. He lifted the axe, bundled some sticks under his arm, and made his way back to the house.

He took the pan from the kitchen and filled it with snow from the back step. He locked the door. Tugged at the handle to be sure.

Crouching over the hearth, he scrunched some paper in the grate, laid the twigs, and struck a match to the wigwam of twigs. Wisping smoke trails disappeared up the chimney. Gently he added the broken branches. The fire grew stronger. He split a log on the floor of the room. Stared at the flames. Fanned the embers every now and then. Felt the warmth in his hands.

In the kitchen he found a couple of rusting tins of tomatoes at the back of a cupboard.

Clutching a can, he came back and sat cross-legged by the fire, laid more logs on the flames, balanced the pan of snow among them, and prized open the tin with his knife.

This was a good place to stay. If they could get more food. He stabbed his knife into a whole plum tomato and stuffed it dripping into his mouth.

A deer maybe. Set a trap.

He ate slowly. Enjoying the growing warmth. And he thought about old friends.

Anna.

He stabbed another tomato.

He remembered the first time he had seen her. Standing in line for the sinks with the other children. Her thin face, bold under dark hair, hair cropped short against lice. Anna. The only one to help him. Holding his small hand, wiping his tears away. “Forget yesterday. You've only got yourself here,” she had said.

Even then, when they were both children, she had been arrogant with knowing things and smarter than a rat. Anna showed him how to get a bit more food, a better blanket. Who to avoid, when to be counted. You had few friends in Children's Home Number Thirty-Nine. She helped him learn. Fast.

At breakfast they would drink the watered milk. “Don't eat. We're going to run away today,” she'd say. And they'd hide the bread in their pockets. Slip out of a bathroom window. It was high and their thin knees scraped on the concrete wall.

But then they were free. And they would laugh together and stake out in a forgotten-looking place. By the railway lines perhaps. Away from where the drunks loitered.

And Anna showed Ivan the way to tie a snare with old wire—because she had come from the countryside—that's all she said about it. Never more. And they would place the scrap of food they had saved from breakfast, and lay it out to catch a bird.

It was good when you never ate anything better than chicken-feet and hard bread. They would roast it over their fire, laughing, talking, falling asleep with greasy hands and bony ribs.

But they were always caught. Always sent back.

One time Anna said: “Let's not go back, Ivan. Ever.”

And they didn't.

They grew up quickly on the streets, learned how to avoid the police, to scavenge for food, to stamp on the drunkards' toes and huddle together in out-of-the-way places. Ivan grew tall and strong. Anna's hair grew long at last. Their first kiss by the train station. Ivan had felt his strength when he pulled her toward him that first time. Anna laughed and kissed him ten times on his face afterward.

“We will go to England. It is better there. That is what they say. We just need money. Maybe America one day,” she said, smiling her thin-lipped smile inside the photo booth.

Kaflash!

“Two for you, two for me,” she said, tearing the sheet in half. “I've got bad teeth, haven't I?” She laughed again. Anna always laughed.

“Why do I need two pictures?” he had asked her.

“For the passport, stupid. You need a passport to go to America.”

“But we can't both be in it.”

“We'll do it again. That one's just so you don't ever forget me!”

They learned to slip and slide. To dream.

They always needed more money. But in the winter they always spent all they had saved on food and keeping warm.

And Anna learned to dream with a bottle of vodka. More than she liked to dream with Ivan. Her dreams slipped away under the bridge. Men came. She went with them.

And that was that.

Ivan found other ways to get by.

*   *   *