Spring Will Be Ours (76 page)

Danuta and Basia stood reading the paper until they were knocked into twice, and moved out of the crush, standing against a shop window.

‘A
Turk?
Why should a Turk want to kill John Paul?'

Danuta bit her lip. ‘He was paid to do it, he must have been.'

‘By whom?'

‘Who do you think?'

Basia looked at her.

‘He's our most powerful ally in the West, isn't he?' said Danuta, and realized she was shaking all over.

They walked on arm in arm to the school, where few people seemed to have noticed, and not particularly to care, that the Pope was in a Roman hospital, fighting for his life. Within a week or so, when it was clear he was recovering, Danuta had almost forgotten the shocking, dizzying impact of that afternoon. It was only months later that she remembered how she had felt, and realized that perhaps it really had been the beginning of the end.

The translation agency where Ewa worked was in a second-floor office in a small street behind Oxford Circus. It was an old building, with a creaking lift; once you were above the carpeted ground floor, the corridors were covered in linoleum and rambled through the building past endless brown doors with nameplates. There were solicitors, travel agents, insurance brokers and accountants, a theatrical agent. Some of the doors opened on to offices where walls had been knocked down and low partitions put up: there were carpets, potted palms and yucca plants, word processors, coffee machines and canvas chairs, gleaming photocopiers, posters and prints from Athena. In others, little had been touched; ancient, even wartime filing cabinets were heaped with battered cardboard ring-binders, and dusty files; there were kettles and trays of cups in corners. Ewa's agency belonged more to the second category, and she liked it: The only thing she didn't like was the journey from Blackheath, but it was manageable, and she had been working here for years and wanted to change neither her job nor her home. Was the Blackheath flat home? It was where she lived, she didn't want to live anywhere else, and she had made it hers. On Sundays, often, she went to have lunch with her family. That was home. So, in a way, was her desk in the agency.

Ewa sat in a corner by the window, a privilege she had earned through being here for so long. When she first came, she was by the door. There were four desks, and many translators had sat at them over the years. The unchanging element was the woman who ran it, a tall, spare, unmarried Englishwoman in her sixties. She was called Patricia, and Ewa had never met anyone quite like her. Patricia had worked in the War Office, then the Foreign Office. She had travelled. She had come home – no question where that was. She was very, very English, but she was also fluent in three languages and understood more. She had inherited the agency in the late fifties when the Hungarian founder died, and she had left it much as he had liked it. There were word processors; there were also box files dating back to the fifties, theatre posters curling at the edges, a library of dictionaries and old reference books, constantly updated. The agency's clients ranged from publishers to export companies; there were plenty of opportunities for freelance work, and Ewa often had a book or a series of articles in her briefcase.

It was June, a warm summery morning with a breeze. In spring and summer Ewa often walked to work from Charing Cross, across the Strand, and up St Martin's Lane and Charing Cross Road. She did it partly for the exercise, partly so that she could look in the bookshops. Sometimes she scanned the windows, sometimes, if she had time, she went in and browsed. This morning, she had woken early, was out of the house by eight and had time to spare. She wandered into one of the shops, just opened, a smell of dust as if the floorboards had just been swept, and a smell of coffee from the back. She browsed for a while among the new novels, then in the East European section. She wandered across to the magazines on the rack in front of the counter. A red and white title caught her eye: she pulled out something called
PSC News.
The Polish Solidarity Campaign newsletter: at the bottom, the scarlet Solidarity logo was printed on either side of a slogan: Solidarity with Polish Workers. The front page was headlined ‘The Bydgoszcz Crisis and After.' Ewa looked at it, frowning. The issue was No. 2 – how had she missed No. 1? She had been following events in Poland ever since last August – no, devouring them. Was she really so out of touch with her own community here that she didn't know about a whole campaign?

The newsletter cost twenty pence. She bought it, tucked it into her bag to read properly in the lunch hour, and hurried off to work.

‘Morning, Ewa.' From her desk beneath the bookshelves, Patricia looked at her over her glasses.

‘Good morning.' Ewa smiled at her, and hung up her jacket. Her Solidarność badge was pinned on the lapel – Wiktoria had sent that at Christmas, one each for all of them. ‘Would you like a coffee?'

‘I have one, thank you. Help yourself.'

There was no one else in yet; Ewa helped herself and carried the mug over to her desk. The window was open at the top and she could hear the buses and taxis from Oxford Circus; on the sill, a window box of lobelia and petunias stirred in the breeze. Patricia had already watered them. Ewa sat down, and pulled her papers towards her.

In the lunch hour she went, as she often did, to Regent's Park. Sometimes she had lunch with one of the other people in the agency – she was fond of Marika, the Dutch girl who had come a couple of years ago, and was married to an English doctor. Occasionally she had lunch with Patricia, occasionally with François, who made her blush. Today, everyone had their own arrangements, and she went to the park by herself, buying fruit from a stall on the way. The park smelt of cut grass, drying. Everywhere, office workers in deck chairs had lifted their faces to the sun and fallen asleep. On the boating lake children were laughing and shouting, and the summer wind rippled the water, beneath a cloudless sky.

Ewa found a deck chair and sat down. She hung her jacket on the back, pulled an apple from the paper bag and the
PSC
News from her jacket pocket, and began to read, munching. The paper had been launched, it appeared, by English people. A brief statement of aims announced that
PSC News
was ‘issued in order to acquaint trade unionists and other sympathizers of the Solidarity movement in Poland … We hope the newsletters will also serve to coordinate activity and information about contacts and support for Solidarity within the British Labour movement.' The story of the militia's brutality in Bydgoszcz, and its aftermath, took up three pages. There was a long list of other, violent acts against Solidarity members: assaults, the windows of offices broken, the barn belonging to the son of the old peasant beaten up in Bydgoszcz burned to the ground while he visited his father in hospital. Inside, there was an eye-witness account of the four-hour strike in the Ursus factory in Warsaw, and an exchange of open letters between Wałęsa and Gwiazda, his deputy, clearly revealing the growing rift between them over the decision to call off the general strike. And there was the text of a moving appeal made on Polish television by Jan Kulaj, a leader of the newly registered Rural Solidarity.

‘Dear Countrymen, Brother Peasants
,

‘A great thing has happened to Polish agriculture … we have signed an agreement at Bydgoszcz that says that by 10 May we will have a peasants'trade union in Poland.

‘Our country is in a critical situation. It is important to know who was responsible for it, but it is also even more important to be aware who will lift us out of this grave situation. It will be the peasants, of course. Until recently they were the most neglected of all. In our fatherland, we peasants in company with the combined might of the workers and of the whole nation must play the key role … We … have the bread in our hands, and must feed the nation
…

‘The union must organize the grass roots, take control of everything that is happening in the villages, the parish authorities, rural cooperatives, banks, local councils, agricultural circles, dairies. We cannot allow the countryside to witness any more falsehood, cheating, lying or denunciations.

‘
We must concern ourselves above all with village children; next winter they should not stand waiting at the bus stop in the frost and cold, like the condemned awaiting their sentence
…'

‘
Proszę Pani
… Excuse me?'

Ewa jumped, and put down the magazine. A young fellow in overalls was standing in front of her, blocking the sun. His hair was grey with dust, but he had a nice face, a kind and intelligent face. Also, a heavy Polish accent.

‘Excuse me,' he said again, and nodded towards the magazine, and the Solidarność logo on the front page. ‘You read about Poland?'

‘Yes,' said Ewa. She looked up at him, feeling rather awkward down here in the deck chair, but not feeling able to get up, and stand beside him. The sun was very bright, and when he moved she had to screw up her eyes. ‘Are you from Poland?'

He nodded. ‘From Warszawa – from Warsaw.' He squatted down beside her. ‘Forgive me – you speak Polish?'

‘Yes,' said Ewa. ‘I am Polish.'

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Your voice …' He meant her accent.

‘I was born in this country.'

‘Ah.'

There was a pause. He pulled out a packet of Marlborough cigarettes from the top pocket of his overalls and held it out.

‘You smoke?' he asked in Polish.

‘Too much,' said Ewa, in Polish, and took one. He leaned towards her, and lit it with a lighter which flickered a little, and smelt of butane. Ewa coughed. He lit one for himself, and closed the packet, tapping the lid. ‘American cigarettes, Polish lighter,' he said, and grinned, wryly.

Ewa smiled back. ‘How long have you been over here?'

‘A few weeks, only.' He looked down at his overalls, and grinned again. ‘I am helping to rebuild this magnificent country.'

‘Legally?' asked Ewa before she could stop herself, and he frowned.

‘It's all right,' she said quickly. ‘I was joking. You can trust me.' And felt the hated blush creep into her face again.

He drew on his cigarette. ‘I think it's the oldest trick in the world, isn't it, to be trapped by a pretty girl?'

Ewa shrugged, and studied the magazine, her cheeks burning. Was this fellow trying to pick her up? She supposed he was. And was she just going to sit here blushing? She should get rid of him, or hold a proper conversation. Surely, at thirty years old, she was capable of that?

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘I am disturbing you.'

He made to get up, and she said, ‘No. No, it's all right.' She raised her head and he looked at her quizzically, then at the magazine.

‘It's about Solidarity, about Bydgoszcz? What is this paper, exactly?'

Ewa read him the brief editorial, translating as she went. He nodded. ‘It's good. I didn't know there was such a paper.'

‘No,' said Ewa, ‘neither did I. I bought it just this morning.'

‘Did you?' He smiled at her. ‘How strange. May I?' He took it from her, leafed through the pages. He pointed to the photographs of Wałęsa and Gwiazda. ‘Last time I saw these guys was on television, telling us the general strike was off. You heard about that?'

‘Of course. Everyone here was on tenterhooks. You would have been on strike?'

‘Of course. Of course.'

‘Weren't you all afraid of what might happen?'

He spread his hands, still squatting, then sat down on the grass. ‘We were too angry to be afraid. There's an expression, rather melodramatic – you know it? “Better to die on our feet than live on our knees.” That's rather how we felt.'

‘I know it,' said Ewa. ‘It was used in the war, wasn't it? My mother told me.'

‘She was in Poland during the war?'

‘In Warsaw, yes.'

‘And your father? Were they in the Uprising?'

‘Yes. I don't think my father's ever got over it.' She told him that lightly, as if, she realized, she didn't have to worry about whether he'd understand.

He nodded slowly. ‘My parents, too. But they went back, of course. I was born there.'

The sun was high in the sky, and it was very hot. On the path between the stretches of dry grass people were strolling slowly towards the lake. At the same moment, Stefan said: ‘May I ask your name?' and Ewa looked at her watch, and said: ‘I must be getting back to work.' They smiled at each other.

‘Ewa,' she said. ‘And … yours?'

He stubbed out his cigarette on the grass and got up. ‘Stefan.' He hesitated. ‘You work near here?'

‘Not far.' Ewa bent down and put out her own cigarette. She put the magazine in her bag, and got up, taking her jacket off the back of the deck chair. He saw the Solidarność badge, and shook his head, laughing.

‘What?' asked Ewa, then saw what he was looking, at.

‘It just makes me feel good,' he said simply, and made, as if automatically, to help her on with the jacket, then hesitated again.

‘Thank you,' said Ewa, ‘but it's too hot, don't you think?'

‘Of course.'

They began to walk down the long path towards the gates. ‘What about you?' she asked. ‘Where are you working?'

‘In a little road off Baker Street. We are renovating a house, four of us. There is another Pole there now. The guy who employs us is English, he's okay. Not like the Pole I met on my first day.'

‘Oh?'

He told her about Kubiak, the pound an hour and the children of communists. Ewa shook her head. ‘I wonder how many of my parents'generation think like that.'

They had reached the gates, and came out on to the Edgware Road. ‘I came here after that interview,' said Stefan. ‘But I didn't have such pleasant company, then.' He stopped, and looked at her. Ewa blushed, and looked away.