by Emma Fraser
‘What?’
‘I’m not coming to Geneva and I’m not marrying you. I’m sorry, I have should have told you sooner.’ She gripped the phone tighter. ‘I’m so sorry, Matthew. I just don’t love you the way I should.’ Very gently she placed the phone back down in the receiver.
Breathing rapidly, she rested her forehead on the cool metal of the call box. How had it taken so long for her to realise that Matthew wasn’t for her? Or she for him.
The door of the booth swung open.
‘Hey, what’s up?’
Feeling a little dazed, Sarah looked at him. ‘I think I’ve just broken up with my boyfriend. I should probably have done it years ago.’
Neil studied her through half-closed eyes.
‘Looks to me as if you need a drink – and I don’t mean tea.’ He jerked his head in the direction of his grandmother’s house. ‘Come on, I’ve a bottle of whisky that’s just waiting to be cracked.’
Katherine’s kitchen was warm. Every so often the rain would spatter against the window, and there was a slight fug of condensation obscuring the view to the road.
‘Where is your gran?’
‘She does a couple of hours’ voluntary work at the old folks’ home most afternoons. She won’t be long.’
Voluntary work at an old folks’ home as if she were a spring chicken herself! Katherine was exactly the kind of old woman she’d like to be.
Neil placed a bottle of whisky on the table along with a tumbler. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Aren’t you having any?’
‘I’ve work to do.’ He nodded behind him. ‘I have to finish the copy that goes with the photos I developed this morning. I need a clear head.’
‘Can I see them?’ Although she was genuinely inerested, she also wanted to think about something other than what she’d just said to Matthew.
‘I’m not sure you’d want to.’
‘No, really, I’d like to.’
‘They’re not pleasant.’
‘For heaven’s sake, let me see.’
He studied her thoughtfully for a long moment. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
He returned a few minutes later with a sheaf of photos in his hand. Silently he passed them to her. She turned over the first photograph. It was A4 size, a black-and-white glossy. There were four men kneeling in a row with their hands tied behind their back. The next one showed the same four men, but this time there were two other men in the photograph, both in paramilitary uniform. One held a gun against the temple of the first of the kneeling men. She felt sick. Although she knew what was coming next she couldn’t stop herself from looking. Sure enough the next photograph was of the man lying on the ground, a dark stain beginning to form around his head. Disgusted she threw the pictures on the table.
‘I did warn you,’ Neil said, gathering them together.
She was shaking. ‘How could you have stood there and done nothing? It was obvious what those men were going to do. Didn’t you care?’
‘What do you think I should have done? We’re there to report not intervene. If we did, we’d probably be shot too. The important thing is to tell the story and make people sit up and take notice. If we try to stop the stuff we see do you think it would stop the wars? Or the deaths? It won’t. But what might stop them are photos like these plastered across major papers and on the television.’
‘But is it enough?’
They glared at each other.
The sound of crunching gravel as a car pulled up outside broke the silence.
Neil sucked in a breath. ‘I bear witness, Sarah. That’s what I do.’ He gave her one last look and taking his photos, turned and left the room.
She was still trembling. Listen to me. Scared of my own bloody shadow. Yet I’ve practically accused a man who probably has more courage in his little pinkie than I have in my whole body of being a coward. Way to go, Sarah. Way to go.
Chapter 45
Poland, 1944
The instant Irena felt her feet touch the ground, she bent her knees and rolled onto the wet grass, her parachute collapsing around her. She had only enough time to fold it before silent shapes were upon her, tearing it from her hands. They hustled her across the field and through some bushes towards a truck with its motor running and its headlights dimmed, and she and ‘Rafal’, the other man who’d been dropped with her, were unceremoniously shoved into the back of the vehicle. Irena leaned back against the canvas canopy and breathed deeply, trying to slow her rapid heartbeat. Finally, she was here. Back where she belonged. She’d been warned that on no account was she to try to get in touch with her father, or anyone she might have known before the war. However, as soon as it was all over, nothing would stop her from going to Tata.
Only when the truck rolled away into the darkness did the man sitting next to her speak. ‘We’re taking you to a safe house for tonight. From now on use only your cover name and story. No matter who you speak to. Is that understood?’
She nodded.
‘Tomorrow you will be given the details of your contact. He will be the one to tell you where to go to deliver and collect messages. It will be in different places each time. You can reach me through the Brożeks – the people you’ll be staying with – but only if you think that your contact, or the person you are delivering messages to, has been compromised. Are we clear?’
Once again she nodded. He turned away from her and spoke to Rafal, no doubt giving him a similar set of instructions. When the man had finished he sat back and closed his eyes and the rest of the journey passed in silence.
After forty minutes or so, the truck pulled off the road and Irena was instructed to climb out.
‘You must go the rest of the way on foot,’ the man who’d done all the talking so far said. ‘Antoni will take you to the safe house.’ He gripped her shoulder. ‘Good luck.’
As the truck pulled away, for a moment, in the sudden silence, she felt terribly alone.
Antoni was wearing a woollen hat pulled low on his forehead, and, in the moonlight, she had the briefest impression of a man of average height with a prominent chin before he turned away, beckoning her to follow him.
She kept close to his back as they crossed more fields and climbed over fences until they came to a suburb on the outskirts of the city. He motioned to her to keep behind him as he hurried along the streets, stopping every so often to listen for the sound of approaching vehicles or footsteps. Once, he yanked her into the shadows until a motorcycle with two German soldiers had passed by.
Eventually they arrived at a three-storey apartment block. Her guide let them in through a door that had clearly been left unlocked for them.
A tousle-haired woman wearing a silk dressing-gown met them in the hallway. ‘This is your guest,’ Antoni said. ‘Her name is Magdalena. She starts work tomorrow.’ And with that he slipped back into the night.
‘I’m Mrs Brożek,’ the woman introduced herself. ‘You are my niece from the country. Is that understood?’
‘Perfectly.’ Irena answered. ‘I’ve memorised the details of my identity. You don’t have to worry.’
‘All we do is worry,’ the woman said. Then she smiled briefly. ‘Welcome back to Poland.’
The next day Irena strapped her nurse’s bag to the carrier of her bicycle. It was filled with bandages, anaesthetic and a few medicines – everything a nurse would be expected to have when visiting patients in a time when medical supplies were in short supply.
The bicycle was more rickety than the one she had ridden in Skye, but after a wobbly start, she found her balance and could take her attention off the road.
As she cycled along the street she forced herself not to pay attention to the German soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The Varsovians didn’t give them a second glance – no doubt after more than four years of being occupied they’d become used to them.
She tried to picture where she was going but some of the landmarks she’d known before were missing – either statues torn down by the occu
piers or buildings destroyed during the first month of the German invasion. She smiled when she saw the number of anchors – the symbol of the Polish resistance – painted onto walls and statues. They made her feel less alone.
She found the right place without difficulty: the hours spent memorising the maps had been useful. She leaned her bicycle against the wall, lifted her bag from the carrier, and knocked on the door. It was answered by an elderly lady with glasses.
‘Ah yes, the nurse,’ she said. ‘Come in. My sister is expecting you.’
Unsurprisingly it wasn’t another old woman who was waiting for Irena but a man in his forties with muddy brown hair and dark, inscrutable eyes.
‘Nurse Drobnik,’ he said, ‘I am Bronisław. Unless there is an emergency, this is the last time we shall meet. Dr Jawarski will supply you with the names and addresses of the patients to see. Sometimes he will provide you with a message and the address of the person to whom you are to deliver it.’ Having genuine patients to visit would help her cover. ‘You must burn it or flush it away as soon as you have memorised it. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Nazis are having more and more sweeps,’ Bronisław continued. ‘It is possible you will be caught up in one, in which case there is nothing – nothing – we can do for you. You will have to take your chances.’
‘I understand,’ Irena said.
‘Good. Now go to our doctor friend and he will tell you where to go next. Sometimes, instead of taking a message to an address, you will be asked to leave it in a safe place to be collected or to pass it to a courier. If it appears that either the drop off or the courier has been compromised, go away, see another patient perhaps and come back later and try to make the drop. Our doctor friend will know how to contact me in case of emergency.’
For the next few weeks Irena carried messages across Warsaw. She was stopped once, but the soldier barely looked at her papers before waving her on. Fear was a constant presence, waking her during the night and causing her to shake when she least expected it. But her work brought her a measure of peace too, easing some of the guilt she’d lived with over the last years. At night, she indulged herself, thinking about Richard and imagining the life they would share once the war was over. If they survived. And if he forgave her. He would know by now that she’d lied to him. Would he understand why she had? And why she’d had to leave him?
One day, having just deposited her latest messages, she was waved down by a middle-aged woman in the street.
‘You are a nurse?’ she asked.
‘Yes. What’s the matter?’
The woman chewed on her lip, her eyes darting past Irena.
‘You can trust me,’ Irena said. ‘I promise.’
‘I have no choice but to trust you! Will you come with me to my house? Someone needs your help.’
Irena didn’t ask why she hadn’t taken whoever it was to the regular doctor or to the hospital. She had her suspicions.
Pushing her bicycle, she followed the woman down a narrow street.
‘Leave that here,’ the woman hissed, coming to an abrupt stop in front of a small lane. ‘Put it out of sight. But bring your bag. Hurry!’
She was clearly frightened out of her wits. Irena felt a stirring of unease. Was this a trap? It was difficult to know who to trust and so much easier not to trust anyone. At least she was no longer carrying anything that might incriminate her or her fellow resistors. To all intents and purposes she was simply the local nurse.
She followed the woman up a flight of stairs and into her home. Inside the woman took off her headscarf and gestured to Sarah to sit. In a chair beside the lace-curtained window was a man in a grubby vest and trousers whom Sarah could only assume was her husband. He didn’t murmur a word of welcome. Just stared at her fixedly.
‘Let me look in your bag,’ the woman said to Irena.
Irena opened it for her.
She rummaged around before nodding to her husband who eased himself out of his chair. He beckoned for Irena to follow him into the bedroom. It was small with only room for a double bed, a dressing table and a wardrobe. He dragged the bed away from the wall, exposing a cupboard door. He opened it, revealing a woman and two small children inside in a space no bigger than a large wardrobe. Three pairs of frightened eyes stared out at her.
‘We have been hiding them here for the last four years,’ Irena hadn’t heard the woman join them, ‘but the boy is sick. We’re frightened he will die.’
They’d been hiding there for four years! It was almost impossible to believe.
‘Come on out,’ Irena said, crouching down. ‘I won’t hurt you. I can’t examine the boy if you stay in there.’
The mother eased herself out of her hiding space and, taking the children by the hand, pulled them out behind her. ‘Don’t be frightened, little ones,’ she said.
Her daughter was around three or four with wide brown eyes and thick dark brown hair. She gave Irena a shy smile before popping her thumb in her mouth. She was painfully thin, but otherwise appeared healthy enough. The boy, who was a little older, perhaps as much as seven, was a different matter. Bright spots of fever coloured his too thin cheeks. The sour smell of suppurating flesh made her want to gag.
‘Jacob went out a few days ago,’ his mother explained, ‘even though he knows he must never ever do it. He wanted to help get us some food. The Nawarskis had to go away for a couple of days, so, for once, they didn’t seal us up. I was sleeping, I didn’t know he’d gone. He was foraging in some ruins when rubble fell on him.’
The boy looked at Irena through thick, dark lashes. ‘I knew I couldn’t ask anyone to help me so I waited until dark. Then I crawled back here.’
‘I cleaned and splinted his leg as best I could but I can see it’s infected. He needs medicine,’ his mother continued, looking at Irena with imploring eyes.
‘I’ll do what I can. Will you tell me your name?’
‘Hinda.’
‘Hinda, I need Jacob on the bed so I can look at his leg. Can you help him or shall I?’
‘I can do it myself,’ Jacob answered, gritting his teeth as he hobbled to the bed and hauled himself onto it. Gently Irena felt along the bones of his legs. It wasn’t broken as far as she could tell, but judging by the smell and the dark brown fluid seeping through the bandage, he had a nasty wound that had, as Hinda suspected, become infected. The boy should be in hospital. But that was impossible. Had he been fairer they might have tried to pass him off as the child of an Aryan Pole but with his colouring there was no chance.
‘I’ll clean the wound,’ Irena said. ‘I’ll try to come back tomorrow with something to stop the infection spreading. For now could I have some boiled water please?’
As she waited for the water to cool, Irena eased off the dressing, stopping when she couldn’t remove more without hurting the boy. He stayed still, his pale lips pressed tightly together, the only indication she was hurting him. The girl watched from the corner of the room with sombre brown eyes, sucking contentedly on her thumb.
‘How old is your daughter?’ Irena asked.
‘Leah is almost four. She was born here. Poor thing has never been out of this house. If I hadn’t been heavily pregnant with her we might have taken our chance to flee while we could. But we left it too late. Once war broke out, I couldn’t leave.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Their father was killed early on in the war. He was with the Polish cavalry.’
‘So was my fiancé,’ Irena said. ‘I lost him too.’
‘Dear Mrs Nawarski was our housekeeper,’ Hinda said, smiling up at the older woman. ‘She had her chance to go but wouldn’t take it. I don’t know what would have happened to us if she and Tanek hadn’t taken us in.’
‘As if I would abandon you,’ Mrs Nawarski mumbled softly, ‘when you and the children are as precious as my own.’ Her voice hardened. ‘It does my heart good to know that we’re getting one over on those heartless bastards.’
‘You have no other family?�
� Irena asked Hinda.
‘No. My mother and father, brothers and sisters were put in the ghetto. We weren’t at home when they were taken. I wanted to join them but I was persuaded not to by Mrs Nawarski. She said I must think of the children and should stay with her. I don’t know where the rest of my family are now. They were taken away before the ghetto was destroyed, and I’ve had no news of them.’ She glanced at her children before turning back to Irena. ‘I told the children that they have gone to the countryside for a holiday.’
It was clear that the woman had a good idea of what had probably happened to her family. Irena straightened and tested the water temperature with her finger. ‘I will soak the rest of bandages off,’ she told Jacob. ‘I’ll be as gentle as I can but it will still hurt a little. You are going to have to be very brave and try not to cry out. Do you understand?’
