e.Krystyna was twenty-seven. She had come to Edinburgh to earn money, to improve her English, and to be with her friend Eva who was working as a dental technician. They lived in a two-bedroom flat on a main road above a Thai restaurant.
When she had earned enough money Krystyna planned to go back to university, to do an MA or an MPhil. She wanted to study what it had been like to leave her country in the past. She would research the experience of Polish émigrés who had come to live in Scotland during the Second World War; Jews leaving the ghettos, the airmen of 309 Squadron, the students at the Polish Medical School; all those who had been forced to reinvent themselves while still retaining a sense of their original nationality. It was a story of blood and belonging.
Perhaps this was the reason she had been so willing to see Jack. Because he worked at the university she hoped that he might help her.
She earned most of her money as a contract cleaner, driving round Edinburgh with her friend Myra, letting herself in to houses in Merchiston and Morningside, taking it in turns to do the wet work and the dry work, sometimes annoyed at the washing up left in the kitchen, the piles of ironing and the extensive bottles left over from parties: all the careless remains of wealth. So much money seemed to have been spent on so much stuff.
Sometimes she and Myra would laugh at the possessions that littered houses which were already too full; at model railways, doll’s houses, and dying bonsai trees; at plasma television screens and gym equipment that showed no sign of ever being used.
Each time they drove out on their cleaning run Krystyna thought of Sandy. She looked at the cars and tried to think how he had decided to step out into traffic. Jack said that he had appeared calm, determined. Krystyna could not remember Sandy ever being like that.
At night she dreamed of standing in the road instead of him, the car coming towards her. She shuddered at the impact, the falling away. She could almost feel herself losing consciousness. At other times she would be driving the car itself, heading towards Sandy, deliberately killing him, unable to do anything to stop it.
They had been with each other for just over a year. Krystyna had been attracted to Sandy’s curiosity, his enthusiasm for all that was new. He wasn’t going to be tied down to a single job or career path. He would earn money as a sous-chef or he would work for a polling company, saving enough for the next round of travel to a place where he could live cheaply, Sri Lanka or Taiwan, spending six months working and then giving it all up to see what happened.
He would work and talk through the night, hardly sleeping until the inevitable collapse would come and he would take to his bed for days, even weeks, lying in the darkness, hardly eating, preparing himself for the next manic assault on life.
He kept saying that he only wanted to be with Krystyna, and after a while neither of them appeared to be spending any time with anyone else.
‘Where are you going?’ he would say. ‘Why do you need to see Fergus? Why are you having a drink with Magda? Why can’t we just have a night in?’
‘We always have nights in,’ Krystyna said. ‘It is all we do.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
When she questioned him his tone became threatening. Didn’t she understand that they had something more valuable than friendship? It was absurd to spend time with other people when they could be with each other.
He phoned her every day and then all the time. Krystyna began to dread seeing him. She tried to be as gentle as she could but the kinder she was the greater advantage he took.
Krystyna suggested he should see a doctor.
‘I’m fine. I’m in love. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘But, Sandy…’
‘What’s wrong? Isn’t this perfect?’
‘No, Sandy, it is not…’
‘Don’t you like it? What more can I do? I love you. I want to be with you. What’s wrong with that?’
‘It is too much.’
‘How can love be too much?’
‘I do not know.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘Sometimes I do not know if I can breathe. Sometimes I think I have to get away from this. You cannot see that?’
Sandy was pouring sugar into his coffee. He held the spoon in midair, letting the white grains fall. The rest of the room was still. Nothing seemed to be moving except for the falling sugar. He kept putting more and more into his cup.
‘Stop it,’ Krystyna said. ‘Enough. You do not need to do this.’
‘I can do what I want.’
The coffee and the sugar began to spill into the saucer.
‘I think we should stop,’ Krystyna said.
‘You don’t mean it,’ Sandy replied.
‘I do. I am sorry.’
‘My life is nothing without you.’
‘That is not true.’
‘How do you know what I feel? You don’t know the effect you have on people.’
‘You exaggerate.’
‘All I want is you.’
Krystyna had taken such care to avoid a confrontation.
‘It isn’t right,’ she said. ‘I can’t be everything you need all of the time. In the end you’ll be disappointed. I won’t be able to live up to what you want. I am not right.’
‘But what if I think you are?’
‘I can see you think that,’ Krystyna said, ‘but you have to believe me. This is not good for either of us.’
‘I think you’re wrong,’ Sandy said.
‘I am sure you do. But what you think does not make it right.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No, it does not.’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying this.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘You’ll miss me,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘And you’ll regret it.’
‘Yes, Sandy, I know I will.’
He picked up a knife from the block by the sink and stabbed it into the breadboard.
‘And if you don’t I’ll make you regret it.’
‘Don’t…’
He walked out, down the stairs and into the street. Krystyna thought about opening the window and calling down, already worried, telling him to come back, but she could not stand it any more.
That had been three weeks ago.
Now, after his death, his suicide, Krystyna was determined not to take all the blame. His death even made her angry and she took out her frustration on all the objects that confronted her: kitchen sinks, taps, strainers and stainless-steel drainers. She wiped down hobs and oven doors, marble worktops and kitchen tables. She concentrated her aggression on white surfaces and dark floors, on stairs and banisters, rubbing away the detritus of privileged lives until her hands hurt.
Sometimes she even said his name as she polished, Alexander Jamie Crawford, whispering the words, ‘I hate you, I hate you.’
‘Slow down,’ Myra said. ‘You’ll exhaust yourself.’
‘It is all right.’
‘There’ll be nothing left to clean.’
The suicide was melodramatic selfishness, Krystyna decided; ingratitude for all the time they had been together. She had shown such patience and had been rewarded with death and guilt.
She had to find more work. In fact she wanted to do nothing but work. She would work so hard that perhaps she never needed to think again.
She became depressed and feverish. She was sick. Then she missed her period.
She began to panic. Cholera jasna.
She couldn’t be pregnant. She just couldn’t.
She decided to say nothing even though she kept vomiting in the mornings and taking to her bed as soon as she came home from work. Eva asked if she was all right and suggested that they went away together to forget about all that had happened. They could even go back to Poland.
Krystyna thought of her friends and the abortions they had had. It was why she had always been so careful. She couldn’t ever see herself going through with such a thing and she was angry with herself and with Sandy all over again. It must have been the last time they had slept together, when she had just stopped taking the pill and had only agreed out of tiredness and nostalgia. How stupid could she have been? Why couldn’t it have happened when they were happy and free, when they had experienced all the early stages of discovering each other, when trust was absolute and everything had been an adventure?
She checked for the symptoms of pregnancy on the Internet, knowing that she had virtually all of them, and picked up a test in the chemist. She looked at the instructions on the back of the packet and saw that she wouldn’t have to wait more than a minute for an accurate result. Anyway she already knew. She bloody knew.
How could Sandy have done this to her? How could she have let it happen?
She drank down a full glass of water. Then she looked in the kitchen for a container. There was a measuring jug, the glass bowl they used for beating eggs and the china basin for the apple cakes they cooked to remind them of home.
Krystyna wished her mother was still alive. She wouldn’t tell her father or her brothers. O mój Boe.
None of the containers were appropriate or hygienic. For a moment she wanted to smash them on the floor. Skurczybyk.
She opted for the transparency of the glass. She carried the bowl into the bathroom and set it down at the foot of the chair. Then she went into the bedroom and took off her trainers, her socks, her jeans and her pants.
She returned to the bathroom and sat down on the chair. She read the instructions again:
1. Remove the test from the airtight package.
2. Holding the strip vertically, carefully dip it into the specimen. Do not immerse the strip past the max line.
3. Remove the strip after four to five seconds and lay the strip flat on a clean, dry, non-absorbent surface.
She had forgotten to prepare the surface. She thought of kitchen towelling but realised that would confuse the test paper. She brought a white side plate back from the kitchen and sat down once more.
Gówno.
She picked up the bowl and peed into it. Her urine was the colour of straw. She did not know if that was good or bad or whether it mattered.
She pulled out the test strip from the packet and lowered it into the bowl. She wondered if her thoughts could have any effect on the outcome. Could she will the colour bands not to appear?
And if they did not appear would she be relieved or disappointed?
The test result took as long as Sandy must have taken to die. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now. Not that she would have let him.
She put the strip on the plate, poured the bowl into the toilet, and rinsed it in the sink. Then she dressed and washed her hands, drying them on a towel that was still damp from Eva’s morning bath. It never did dry properly. That was another thing that annoyed her.
What am I doing here? Krystyna thought. Why?
She stood looking at the piece of paper. The control and the test lines had both begun to colour the pale pink of baby clothes. ‘Cholera jasna,’ she said.
She walked back into her bedroom and lay down on the bed.
It was a hot afternoon and she wanted it to be dark but she was too pre occupied to get up and close the curtains. She would just look at the sky and the tenement block opposite.
The test was positive.
Gówno, gówno, gówno.
Perhaps it was all some sick test of fate to find out how strong she was. She decided not to see a doctor. What would be the point? She knew.
Out in the streets of Edinburgh the only people Krystyna noticed were mothers with children. They were lifting prams and buggies on to buses, squeezing into the lift of the St James’s Centre, strapping their babies into backs of cars whose stickers warned other drivers to take care: Princess on Board, Proud Mum, Dad’s Princess. She couldn’t move without noticing that a lot of people had had a lot of sex: Baby Under Construction, It Started With a Kiss, I Love My Bump.
‘Fuck off,’ Krystyna wanted to say. ‘Spierdalajcie.’
The kids themselves were dropping their dummies and small toys all over Edinburgh, crying out for food, wriggling to escape their confined spaces. Elder children threw tantrums on the floors of bookshops, or raced ahead towards traffic, or stood in the middle of a shopping centre refusing to go home. In the supermarkets mothers loaded their trolleys with nappies, toilet paper, kitchen rolls, baby powder, bottles and sterilising equipment. Krystyna did not think she had ever seen so many children. Did the world need another child? Would she really have to go through all this?
She took long baths at night. She kept topping up the hot water, letting it spread across her belly.
How soon would she start to show and what should she expect? A swollen stomach, tender breasts, discomfort, backache. She thought of the clothes she would have to wear, smocks and skirts with elasticised waists and accommodating tops. There would be so much to buy: cribs and mobiles and nappies and food, and she would have to work even more hours to support the two of them. At least as a cleaner she could take the baby with her.
She realised that she was imagining she had a child already. It was easier than the alternative.
She stepped out of the bath and began to towel herself dry, more aggressively than she had intended.
She tried to picture the future, alternating the days on which she imagined she had a son, Adam, or a daughter, Carolina, and the days on which she had no child at all. But on those days she missed her previous conceptions, her Adam, or her Carolina. It was as if they had already been born, had lived and were lost to her.
The days on which she imagined having a child became more common, easier to live with, although she worried how much it would inherit from Sandy, especially if the child was a boy.
How much would he look like him? Would he be a permanent reminder of all that had happened, or would he be an act of grace, a kind of redemption?
She saw Jack again. He had sought her out of guilt. She worried that at some point she would have to make it clear that it was only ever going to be a friendship. She didn’t want any misunderstanding. But neither did she want to make any assumptions or be rude.
They climbed Calton Hill. It was Krystyna’s nearest walk and she had been up most weekends when she was with Sandy. Going on her own, and now with Jack, was a means of reclaiming it for herself.
It was a hot, dry day, which made the climb seem steeper. Already Krystyna thought how much more difficult it was going to be if she maintained her pregnancy.
After they had reached the top they looked down towards Princes Street and out to the silhouette of the Old Town. It was a view that made the city seem more European than it did on the ground. The Castle reminded Krystyna of Prague, even of Kraków. They sat on the steps of the National Monument.
‘It’s a long time since I’ve been here,’ said Jack. ‘It must be ten years…’
‘And who were you with when you came?’
‘I think I was on my own.’
Krystyna looked at him.
‘You know I don’t know anything about you. Where do you live? What do you do? What about your family?’
‘Nothing very interesting. I’m a senior lecturer in Classics. I tend to work most of the time: teaching, translating. I don’t seem to do much else.’
‘Have you always lived here?’
‘More or less.’
‘You were born here?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it is your home? You belong?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
Krystyna noticed that Jack had not talked about his family.
‘What is it like to be Scottish? Tell me.’
‘It’s probably just as hard to explain what it’s like to be Polish. I don’t know.’
‘What about your childhood?’
‘It seems so long ago now.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Of course.’
Jack began to tell her about the parental home in East Lothian, the countryside that surrounded it; memories of his brothers.
‘How many do you have?’
‘Two. I’m the middle child.’
‘The peacemaker.’
‘That’s what they say – neither the responsible eldest nor the favourite youngest. What about you?’
‘The second,’ said Krystyna. ‘I have an elder brother.’
‘Ah … so you are your father’s favourite?’
‘Not since I left. I would not be his servant. He thought I was ungrateful. We do not get on well.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Did you have a happy childhood?’
‘Sometimes I think it was too happy,’ said Jack.
‘Is there such a thing?’
‘Now I am the one being ungrateful.’
‘It is unbelievable,’ said Krystyna. ‘Being too happy…’
‘It was quite idyllic, I suppose – a house in the country; a mother and father who loved each other. It meant there was nothing to rebel against. You spend your life trying to live up to the standards and expectations your parents have given you.’
‘I’m not complaining.’
‘It sounds very, I am not sure of the word, is it “privileged”?’
‘It’s traditional. I’m sure you’ve seen a traditional Scottish country home.’
‘Only the ones I clean.’
‘This is different.’
‘A country house. I cannot imagine it…’
‘Come and see it, if you like.’
‘No. It would not be right.’
‘Why not? I’ve got to go there in a couple of weeks. My father does these amateur theatricals.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘It started off as something for the grandchildren to make them appreciate Shakespeare; you know, get them when they’re young, like the Church, but mostly it succeeded in putting them off. But we do it because my father takes it so seriously and we don’t want to disappoint him.’
‘It is always Shakespeare?’
‘Every summer.’
‘It must take a lot of time.’
‘My father is retired. Why don’t you come?’
‘I cannot do that. What would everyone say? What about your wife? Or your children?’
He looked surprised, as if he had already told her about them.
‘Oh they don’t come, I’m afraid. I don’t have a wife any more.’
‘I am sorry. I did not know.’
‘No, that’s all right.’
‘She died?’
‘No. She left. The girls are away. University, travelling, you know the kind of thing. Come to the play. Be my guest…’
‘I do not think so, Jack.’
It was the first time she had said his name. It sounded strange, more familiar than she had intended. It surprised her. Perhaps she had said it out of pity after he had mentioned his wife.
‘You should come. Honestly,’ Jack continued, ‘there’s something charming about it. I think that’s why we still do it. You could even be in it, if you like. We’re always stuck for numbers.’
‘It’s just the family. When you’re not in a scene you just sit down and watch. It’s very informal.’
‘Do you have costumes?’
‘Of course. And then there’s a bit of a dinner party. It’s like a shooting party, except with Shakespeare instead of guns. Why don’t you come?’
‘I have not been invited.’
‘I’m inviting you.’
‘I would not know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. The lines are all written down for you.’
‘It would be crazy.’
‘Yes. But that’s the point. You could return to Edinburgh and tell your friends how mad it is.’
Krystyna was surprised by his enthusiasm. Talking about the eccentricity of his family had given Jack a confidence she had not seen before. It made it harder for her to say no; and besides, the event sounded so odd, so British, that she thought she might even enjoy it. It was like a secret piece of tourism, revealed only to the few.
‘What is the house like?’ she asked.
‘It’s very beautiful,’ Jack said. ‘It explains everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Well, almost everything,’ Jack replied, and then appeared to stop himself. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever said that before.’
Krystyna tried to think what it could be like: a country house, a dacha, a home; perhaps it would be a place where no one could reach her, a retreat from all that had happened and all that was about to happen; a kind of sanctuary.
And what else would she do? She could not think of any alternative other than remaining in her room and staring, without thinking, at the walls.
‘What do you say?’ Jack asked.
‘All right,’ Krystyna replied. ‘Why not?’
She began to walk ahead of him, down the hill and back into the city. She would be nervous on the day, she knew, but at that moment she had a feeling of recklessness, of light.