Free Spring Will Be Ours by Sue Gee Page B

had gnawed at her all summer stirred in her stomach like a dark snake uncurling from sleep. Did you think I had gone away? I am always here. She shivered.
    â€˜Jerzy?’
    â€˜Mmm?’
    â€˜Is Tata all right?’
    â€˜I think so.’
    She turned over, and heard the faraway hoot of an owl. It spoke of hollowness, of being alone and afraid. What was Tata thinking about, out there? There was another noise, a sudden tearing cry, and they both sat up; Anna grabbed Jerzy’s arm.
    â€˜What was that?’
    Twigs broke outside the tent. ‘A fox,’ said Tata, appearing through the entrance. He winked at them. ‘My poor city dwellers, how well you would do if you had to live like this always.’
    They laughed. ‘Phew,’ said Jerzy, and they lay watching him undress, bumping comfortingly against the sides. The cry came again, but from further away.
    â€˜It’s horrible – it sounds like something from hell,’ said Jerzy.
    â€˜Well it isn’t,’ said Tata, and blew out the lamp. ‘Goodnight, you two.’
    â€˜Goodnight.’
    â€˜Goodnight.’
    Anna lay in the darkness, listening. The fox did not cry out again, but the owl called several times, lonely, unanswered.
    She sat on the river bank, sketching. It was mid-afternoon, hazy and warm; birds sang in the birch trees behind her. Her eyes flicked up and down, up and down, from sketchpad to glinting water; on the far side of the river a pair of moorhens swam jerkily in and out of the reeds. There was a faint splash as a fish broke the surface, then silence. Watching the ripples, Anna was conscious again of the feeling she couldn’t put properly into words, or explain, even to Tata. She was isolated, perhaps even unreal – as if she were dreaming her own life. Sometimes she wasn’t properly inside herself at all, but a cold observer – like now: a girl of thirteen in old cotton shorts and shirt, her hair in plaits, sitting by the river and trying to draw the sunlight on the water. If that was her, who was watching? Perhaps someone else was dreaming her life, and when they woke up, that would be the end.
    Tata and Jerzy had gone for a walk to the village, to stock up again. This morning had been lazy, getting up well after nine, swimming, taking photographs of each other, splashing about and laughing. Last night’s unease, about Tata, about herself, had been forgotten: she was carefree and untroubled. Why, now, should she begin again to question, to ask things which seemed unanswerable: who was she? Why was she who she was?
    She got up and began to walk restlessly along the bank. The leaves on the birch trees rustled. Then she heard footsteps coming quickly through the woods, twigs snapping underfoot, but no voices, and turned back to see Jerzy, carrying the rucksack, with a strange sort of look about him, a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Tata was beside him, tapping a newspaper against his leg as he walked, doing it automatically, as if he had some kind of tic. He, too, looked different. He looked grey.
    Anna felt her legs go suddenly weak as she ran towards them, calling: ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Even as she asked, she knew what it was, heard Jerzy asking a week ago: ‘Is there going to be a war?’ and Tata’s slow reply: ‘It is possible.’
    The railway station at Wilno was in chaos, the platforms crowded with people clutching suitcases and hastily tied bundles of clothes – holiday makers, like them, frantic to get home to Warsaw and find out what was happening. There was no timetable, and the station master and porters had no idea when the next train to Warsaw, or anywhere else, might be running. Jerzy and Anna were exhausted: by paddling non-stop, they had made the three-day journey to Wilno in just under two; they’d come into a marina just outside the city, and then had to spend precious hours dismantling the heavy, cumbersome