Spring Will Be Ours (80 page)

She tipped the bottle of shampoo into her hand, and the bathroom began to smell pleasantly of jojoba oil, whatever that was; she turned on the shower and began to rinse; shampooed again, rinsed again, and ran her hair between her fingers until it squeaked. She turned off the taps, reached for her towel and wound it round her head. She had forgotten about the English voice; she washed, got out, dried herself, put on her pyjamas, cleaned the bath. Then she opened the door and went out, carrying her spongebag. There were doors open all along the corridor, and no radios on now. She knew at once that something was wrong, but couldn't work it out – was her door open, too? Then two men appeared suddenly from the room where the girl from Wroclaw slept, and Danuta jumped as they came towards her. They were both in suits, one had a gingery moustache: he flicked open a little plastic wallet and waved it towards her.

‘Home Office. May I see your passport, please?'

Danuta's stomach lurched, and turned over.

‘You speak English?' the man asked brusquely. ‘You understand?'

‘I – yes.'

At the far end of the corridor, behind the two men, a door was opened quietly, and Danuta saw Enrico, the little washer-up who swore, creep out. He looked up towards them, and immediately backed into his room.

‘Your passport, please,' the man with the ginger moustache repeated. ‘Which is your room?'

‘I – this one.' Danuta moved on bare feet towards it, so frightened she thought her knees were going to give way. She tugged open the zip on her spongebag, feeling for her key, then fumbled trying to get it into the lock. The men stood watching, impassive. She got the key in, turned it and pushed the door open. It was a heavy door, and swung to unless you held it open. The ginger moustache followed her inside; his colleague, who was younger, and very thin inside his suit, waited, one foot against it, watching.

Danuta bent down and opened the bedside cabinet. What were they going to do to her? Would she be deported? Sent to prison? There was a silence, as they watched her, naked under thin summer pyjamas, feeling for her passport. She stood up, and handed it over without looking at them. The man with the moustache flicked through it, quickly, turned and nodded towards his colleague to come and look too. As the younger man moved a little towards him, Danuta heard a click, at the far end of the corridor, and knew, straight away, that Enrico was making for the stairs. He could have got out of his window, but the wall and the railings were probably too high, and anyway, Enrico wasn't very bright. The stairs began halfway along, he might just have time.

The moustached man held open her passport.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Excuse me?' Danuta looked at him, not knowing how to answer.

‘I said what are you doing here? In this hotel.'

‘I – I am staying here.' Trickles of water from her wet hair were escaping beneath the towel on to her neck.

The man shook his head. ‘Don't try and be clever.'

‘Hey!' His colleague darted suddenly out of the room, and ran down the corridor. ‘Just a minute, you!'

Danuta put her hand to her mouth. Moustache moved swiftly towards the door. ‘Stay here, please.' The door swung to, and she heard scuffles, Enrico swearing and shouting in Spanish. He had been here illegally for over a year, he was supposed to be supporting two families: his sister's, at home in Colombia, and his own here. What was going to happen to him now? She crept to the door and pulled it open a crack. She could see the two men hustling him up the stairs; they must have a car outside. Moustache still had her passport. She ran to Basia's room and knocked on the door. No answer – of course, she was in the restaurant, she'd escaped. Would they come back to check her room later? Were they going to bring back her passport? They must, surely they must.

She turned away, hearing a voice behind her on the stairs say suddenly: ‘Where do you think you're going?' and she jumped and screamed. Moustache ran down the stairs, and came up behind her. ‘I asked you to stay in your room. Go in, please.'

He pushed open the door, and she went in, shaking.

‘There's no need to scream like that,' he said coldly. ‘You understand what is going on?'

She nodded, feeling the little room horribly airless and crowded with them both in there. He was a big man, and she thought suddenly: My God, he could rape me and I wouldn't stand a chance.

The man leafed through her passport again, and looked her up and down, at the outline of her breasts beneath the cotton pyjamas.

‘Your visa has not expired,' he said.

‘No.'

‘But you are specifically forbidden to work. Aren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘So I will ask you again: what are you doing here?'

What could she say? She said nothing, looking down at the worn carpet beneath her feet, thinking only: Let me be safe, and I don't care about anything else. Let me be safe. Please.

He tapped the passport. ‘What were you doing in Poland?'

‘I – I finish my studies in March. I have a degree in economics and statistics.'

‘Do you really? And now you're working here as a skivvy. Is that right?'

She didn't answer or look up.

‘No jobs in Poland? Nothing you could do there?' He held out the passport. ‘If I were you, I'd go back to Poland the minute that visa runs out,' he said. ‘You understand?'

‘Yes.' She took the passport and watched him go to the door. He didn't turn round or look at her again, simply opened it and walked out, closing it behind him. Danuta sank on to the bed, and burst into tears. She felt her damp towel begin to slip until it fell on to her shoulders, and she picked it up and hurled it across the narrow, shabby room. It hit the wardrobe door and fell to the floor. She ran her hands through her wet hair, still crying. What was she going to do? She'd have to leave the hotel, and look for somewhere else. Was she really going to have to go back to Poland? She thought of her parents, of being safely with them at home, of her mother bringing her tea in bed, hearing her father calling goodbye as he left for work, and she couldn't even remember why she'd left. Then she thought of cold dark winter mornings, of she or her mother getting up at six to go and queue, for bread, for flour, for meat, for everything.

If I go back, she thought, there will be a job perhaps as a filing clerk, with nothing to hope for. If I stay here, I have the thin hope that perhaps, once my English is fluent, I can get a work permit, a good job, a proper job, with proper money to send home, I can visit Mama and Tata, even bring them over here to visit me. God, I never imagined all this! I thought it would be so easy – a fortune saved in a few months, and then I'd go home, I suppose, and try again. I'm
not
going back with nothing! But supposing I don't get a proper job here? Well, then I'll
have
to go home.

She reached for the tissues on the bedside locker, and blew her nose. Then she got up, picked up the towel and shook it, and began angrily to rub her hair. She thought: I am twenty-three years old, I am educated, with a good degree, I should be at the start of my career. Instead, I have the choice between certain poverty and possible poverty, while my parents, who have worked every day of their lives, live on rationed food in a cramped apartment and look forward to a retirement spent in queues, counting every złoty.

She finished rubbing her hair, and looked round for her spongebag, with her washed hairbrush in it. It was on the bed, where she had dropped it when she came in with the men from the Home Office, and beside it was her passport. I was lucky, she thought, running the brush through her hair, or he was kind. Then she remembered Enrico, struggling and shouting as they hauled him up the stairs, who by now must be sitting in a police cell, waiting to be deported. Enrico didn't have a degree, he could barely write. She drew a deep breath, and finished brushing her hair. There was an urgent knocking on her door.

‘Yes?' She hurried across and opened it. The girl from Wroclaw stood outside, and clearly had been crying, too.

‘Are you all right?'

‘Yes,' said Danuta. ‘I was lucky. Are you?'

‘Yes. It was the Colombians they were looking for. Did you hear Enrico?'

‘Yes. I was just thinking about him.'

‘I've been up to the kitchens, they're making tea. Apparently one of the cooks, Franco, you know that one? He jumped out of the window when they went in. He's sprained his ankle, but he's okay.' She put her arm round Danuta. ‘Do you want to come up and have some tea? We're all right – not our turn yet.' She grinned wryly. ‘Come on.'

Danuta went upstairs with her. She stayed up late, drinking tea in the neon-lit kitchen and talking. She wanted to wait up for Basia, but by half-past eleven she couldn't stay awake any longer. She crawled into bed and switched off the light. Out in the street, a group of boys went by, laughing and shouting. She could hear guests coming up the steps to the hotel front door, back from the West End. There was a coachload of Scandinavians arriving tomorrow, she remembered Lisa telling them. Twenty rooms, not fifteen, to do in the morning. She turned over, and fell asleep.

In the morning, over breakfast, she told Basia about the raid.

Basia shook her head. ‘I'm leaving.'

‘Where will you go?'

She hesitated. ‘I've been going out with one of my customers from the restaurant. A French guy – he's very sweet. He's offered to let me stay with him, he has a lovely apartment near Sloane Square, I think he's extremely rich.'

‘Oh.' Danuta looked at her. Basia was so pale and thin these days that in another age you might have thought she had consumption. ‘But – what about your boyfriend?'

Basia pushed back her soft blonde hair. ‘I don't know – I haven't written to him for a few weeks. Perhaps he's forgotten me.' She looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Come on, we'd better go up.'

It felt strange to collect their plates and not see Enrico, cursing at the sink as they passed them to him. They climbed the stairs, and prepared for the Scandinavians.

As she finished the last room, Danuta thought: But there must be someone here who can help us, some organization for Polish people. After lunch, before leaving for school, she went into the foyer of the hotel where, next to the glass case of plastic dolls holding union jacks, and plastic models of Big Ben, there were two phone booths, and directories. Even now, it felt strange to be up here, among all the tourists, looking, once she had changed out of her overalls, like a tourist herself, but feeling so different. The coachload had arrived: the foyer was filled with enormous blonde people heaving suitcases. She pushed her way through to the phone booths, and pulled out the L-R directory. She rifled the pages until she came to P and Polish, and ran her finger down the column. Polish Air Force, Polish Airlines, Bookshop, Catholic Centre … There was a committee for refugees. She wasn't a refugee, at least, thank God, so far she wasn't that, but the address was in the West End, she could go there after school, perhaps, and they might be able to advise her about how best to stay here, her chances of getting a work permit. She wrote down the number and address, and put back the directory. Then she looked at her watch and thought: I'll try them now. But when she dialled the number, it was engaged. She waited a few minutes, dialled again. Still engaged. Behind her, a Scandinavian was waiting.

‘You have finished, miss?'

She put down the receiver. ‘Yes.' She hurried across the foyer and down the steps. Basia wasn't coming to the school, perhaps she wasn't going to come again at all, now she had her Frenchman.

Danuta walked along the street towards the Bayswater Road, and crossed over so that she could walk alongside the park, beneath the trees. The sky was overcast, it was humid, debilitating; she felt suddenly so tired that the thought of going to sit in a class for two hours was almost unendurable. Also, she had a sudden vision of going back to the hotel tonight to find that there had been another raid. She had been given a chance, last night – next time, if it came, might be very different. I'll go to this refugee place now, she thought, and stopped and pulled out her A-Z.

The office was in a long street running parallel to Oxford Street. In the oppressive closeness of the afternoon, it took her about half a hour to walk there, and find the brass plate outside the door. There was a Polish clinic here, too – that might be useful.

The clinic was on the first floor. Through an open door, she had a glimpse of a very old, beautifully dressed woman talking softly in Polish to a girl in dark blue behind a typewriter. Then an old man in a tweed jacket and glasses came out of a door further along the landing; he closed it quietly behind him, and came past her.

‘
Proszę
…' He said it to the air, rather than to her, and went in to the office. He was one of the doctors? Danuta tapped on the open door.

‘Tak?'

‘Excuse me,' she said in Polish, and explained who she was looking for.

‘On the top floor.' The woman smiled at her, vaguely.

‘Thank you. And – may I use the bathroom?'

‘Well … yes. It is through here.'

‘Thank you.'

She walked through the little office, up a couple of steps and pushed open a door with a brass handle. The bathroom which lay beyond it was cool and spacious; set among the plain white tiles were some which were hand-painted, oriental-looking, figures in crimson and prussian-blue robes. The bath and basin were enormous, with brass taps; soft net curtains hung at the open window. Danuta went to the lavatory, and washed her hands, and thought: I wouldn't mind living in here for a few days. Then she went out, and up the stairs, which as they approached the top floor became narrow and were no longer carpeted. There was a closed door on the top landing. She knocked, and waited. There was no answer. She knocked again. When there was still no answer, she tried the handle. The door was not locked; it opened, and she walked into a square room with a window at the far end. There were three desks, an unlit gas fire beneath a mantelpiece, and large, very old-looking filing cabinets. On the walls were two large posters: Danuta stepped a little further into the room, and stood looking at them.