Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

You see in clearness where others do not.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I think so.’
    They lapsed into silence, Jan resuming his prostration at her feet. He took up another blade of grass.
    ‘This is nice, Jan. To sit quietly and not have to talk.’
    The sun was beginning to sink, casting a golden glow over the Long Acre, over Dorothy’s garden, over Jan as he lay now on his stomach, examining the earth beneath him. He looks like a child, she thought.
    ‘I dislike too much talk,’ said Jan. ‘Too much of talk is nonsense. With you there is exception. But almost always I prefer my own company.’
    ‘Yes. I understand. Where did you grow up?’
    ‘In a small village. Near Krakow.’
    ‘Yes, of course. You told me on the day we met. I’d not heard of it before.’
    ‘As I had not heard of Lincoln before arriving here.’
    ‘You lived with your parents?’
    ‘I lived with my mother. The woman I called mother. I had no father. He was never known to me.’
    ‘Ah, you said. Forgive me. But what do you mean, you
called
her your mother?’
    ‘And so we get to it.’ Jan shook his head. ‘She took me as her own child. My true mother was young when she became pregnant. Young and not married. I don’t know too much about what happened. I was lucky, I have been told, to have been born. If you understand. I was brought up by my aunt, my mother’s elder sister, a widow. My mother left the village, she never returned. I have not heard from her.’
    ‘My goodness. But your aunt? Was she good to you?’
    ‘Of course. Yes. She loved me. I called her
matka
. Mother. I was safe, I was fed and clothed and educated. I was bright. She had more children, after me. Two girls. But I do not regard them as my sisters.’
    ‘Why ever not?’
    ‘Because they were not the children of my mother. You understand? She left me, my mother, it doesn’t matter who with. She did not want me. I was a shame. I am a person with no roots.’ He sat up, stretched and stood.
    She looked up at him. ‘But she was your real mother’s sister, you said, the woman who brought you up? Not so far removed from your roots.’
    ‘But still removed. That is enough. I wanted to be with my mother. Ever since I can remember, since I could understand. If I was naughty, I would hear, “You are like your mother!” It was not said in cruelty, you understand. But it was said. My mother was not loved, you see, she was not respected for having a baby outside of marriage. I think she had to leave. But she should have taken me with her. She chose not to.’ He sat in the wooden chair opposite Dorothy, sighed and looked deeply into her eyes.
    ‘Thank you for sharing these things with me, Jan,’ she said.
    ‘We all need a friend, no?’
    It felt as though the night would never fall, and Dorothy didn’t want it to, but the sun finally dropped all the way below the horizon, and stars and planets announced themselves one by one, prompting her to rummage around in her kitchen for a candle. She brought it outside in tremulous hands. As soon as Jan had lit it with his cigarette lighter, moths and indeterminate insects busied themselves flying into the flame, their tiny bodies fizzling and dropping beside the candle. Dorothy and Jan looked on in speechless fascination, powerless to prevent the deaths. They heard owls in the distant woods, small scurryings in the hedges, and the eerie night-time rustle of the birch trees.
    Jan rose to leave at thirty-two minutes past ten, and she rose with him, mirroring his movement. He did not say when he would return, but he held Dorothy’s hands in his and kissed them, first one, then the other. She stared at him. His kiss on her mouth, when it came, was the most alive thing she had ever known. His lips moved soft and hard on hers and she felt a rush of white heat, like nothing she had ever imagined. His teeth were like tight, hard pearls. She found herself, against all her sense of propriety, running the tip of her tongue over them. And as if