by Emma Fraser
‘You could have left then.’
‘I couldn’t. No one was allowed to leave. Besides, Poland needed me more than ever. More than half of the doctors in Poland had been killed. There were so many in need of medical attention, so many children sick and dying. How could I leave them? Or my father?’
‘How did Richard find you?’
‘As soon as I could I wrote to him. I asked him how our girl – Leah – was doing and signed it in my new name. I didn’t know whether he still loved me – or forgave me for the way I left him. I didn’t even know whether he was still alive.’ Her voice splintered. ‘All through the months when I was in prison, when I was in Bergen-Belsen, I kept his memory close to me. When I was freezing I imagined his arms around me; when I was hungry, I imagined him kissing me. I held the memories of our days in Skye and returned there in my head whenever I could. It’s what kept me alive. Over the months after I was released from hospital I didn’t know if I could go on if he was dead.’
‘But you decided in the end to find out.’
‘I had to. I also needed to know that Leah – your mother – was well and happy. Apart from knowing Richard was alive, it was that that kept me going during those long months.’
They had stopped by the side of the road.
Leaving Sarah’s mother sleeping, they tramped their way along the path leading to the Commando Monument, which rose from the mist.
‘I found a small apartment in Warsaw,’ Irena continued. ‘One that had been rebuilt but whose owners had long disappeared – probably to one of the death camps. It was small but enough for my needs. The Communists allocated homes and people took what they could get. But in the fifties, they gave me permission to attend a medical conference in East Berlin. I had just returned from a lecture and there was a knock on the door.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Even years later a knock on the door could still make me sweat.’ Her face lit up with a joy Sarah had rarely seen. ‘I opened the door and there he was: Richard.’
He was older and there was grey in his hair but it was him. Her knees buckled and he reached out for her, catching her in his arms, swinging her up and holding her close. He carried her over to the bed and laid her down.
‘It’s you,’ she breathed, touching his face with her fingertips. ‘It’s really you.’
His eyes were filled with pain as he looked down at her. ‘My darling, what did they do to you?’
She raised her hand in a futile attempt to smooth her hair. She was aware she had changed. She was thinner than she’d ever been and after her hair had grown back, she’d kept it in a short, easy-to-manage style. But she knew he wasn’t talking about her hair.
She smiled. ‘Is that the way to greet a woman you once loved?’
He lay down beside her and wrapped her in his arms. ‘Once loved? My God.’ He buried his face in her neck. ‘Loved, still love, will always love…’
They held each other for a long time before either of them spoke. ‘Did Leah make it to you?’ she asked eventually, terrified of the answer. The journey from Poland to Britain had to have been full of dangers. The Poles would never have betrayed those who had helped so many to flee, but she knew that not everyone had made it safely out of the country.
Richard sat up and his eyes clouded. ‘She did. She’s called Lily now.’
‘She’s with you?’
‘Darling, I couldn’t keep her.’
Irena sat up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was shot down over Italy in the last months of the war. I was in hospital there for a very long time. By the time I returned home, Leah had been adopted.’
‘Why didn’t your mother keep her? I would have bet my life she would never turn away a child in need of love and a home.’
‘Mother wasn’t there. My mother left my father after the war.’ His voice cooled.
‘Isabel left your father?’
‘It’s a long story. Apparently she was in love with someone else – Katherine’s uncle – during the last first war. She thought he’d died, but towards the end of the last war, she discovered he hadn’t. As soon as she knew he was still alive she had to go to him. Before she left, she told me that I was his child, not my father’s. My father – because that’s what he was to me – had always known, apparently, and yet I can’t remember him ever treating me as anything but his only son. Perhaps my mother would have stayed if she’d known that a child needed her, who knows?’ He traced her face with his fingertip. ‘Do you remember Lady Fellows? Eleanor?’
‘The beautiful wife of the pilot who’d died? Of course. I remember everything about that time, Richard.’
‘She had a friend who couldn’t have children. I’d met her before. She and her husband were decent people. Kind. And desperate to adopt. But one of the conditions they insisted on was that Leah should be allowed to forget her past life. They thought it was better if they adopted her and all ties with her previous life – including me – were severed. When I got out of hospital, I made them promise to send me letters about her once a year. She seems happy with them. They say she doesn’t talk about Poland. They hope she’s forgotten.’
‘I think that’s unlikely, Richard. I’ve been specialising in paediatrics these last two years and I’ve come to understand that children, even very small children, are more aware of what’s going on around them than we can imagine. I think Leah will remember her family, she adored her brother, and I also think she’ll remember what happened to them.’
He pulled a hand through his hair. ‘She has good parents, Irena. I promise.’
He cupped her face with his hands. ‘Are you ready to come back with me? That’s why I’m here. It took me this long to find you; I’m not going to let you go now.’
‘Don’t,’ she said, reaching up and winding her hands around his neck. ‘I can’t go back with you. You know they won’t let me. Besides, I have my work at the hospital and Tata. He’s too old to leave and I can’t go without him.’
‘Then later, when he’s gone, I’ll use every connection I have to put pressure on the Polish government to let you go.’
‘If you do that, you’ll draw attention to me. It’s too risky. No, my love, let’s just enjoy whatever time we have together.’
Once a year until 1981 they’d met up in East Germany and had one glorious week together. Then the Communist government had imposed marshal law on its citizens and their meetings had stopped. She’d never given up hope that one day they would be together again for good, but when her last letters to Richard had gone unanswered, she’d known.
‘That’s so sad,’ Sarah said when Irena finished speaking.
‘Better a little of a great love than no love.’ Irena smiled at her, a glint in her luminous eyes. ‘I couldn’t help but notice the way you and Katherine’s grandson have been looking at each other.’
Sarah felt a blush creep up her neck. ‘How can you know someone for such little time yet know that you will spend the rest of your lives together?’ At last she was beginning to realise she could make a life for herself, one where there were risks and heartache and sorrow, but soaring heights of joy too. And if that meant loving a man who risked his life on a daily basis, so be it.
‘We just know sometimes. Trust your feelings, Sarah. He’s a good man.’
‘I know, but I think I have to learn to be on my own first.’
They walked around the monument of the three men in commando uniform. ‘United We Conquer. In memory of the officers and men of the Commandos who died in the Second World War 1939–1945. This country was their training ground,’ Sarah murmured, reading the inscription. ‘You should be up there with them! Sometimes you’d think it was only men who fought.’
‘None of us thought about how we’d be remembered – or cared,’ Irena said. ‘We were all in it together. Men, women, boys, girls, Poles, the French…’
‘You haven’t told me what happened after the soldiers arrested you.’
Irena looked into the distance. ‘There are things I st
ill find too painful to speak about but are still part of your story. One day I will tell you the rest.’
‘You’d think we’d have learned that war only brings pain.’
‘Sometimes wars have to be fought,’ Irena said softly. ‘No one has the right to decide who should live and who should die. No one has the right to make people into serfs. If your country and mine – and the rest of the world – hadn’t fought the Nazis, we would be living in a different world. The Jews would have been completely wiped from the face of the earth and the Poles would be slaves. Sometimes the only thing we can do is fight.’
‘I don’t mean you shouldn’t have fought. I can see you had no choice. I can’t imagine the bravery it must have taken for you to do what you did. I couldn’t have done it.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Irena slid her a look. ‘I was an ordinary woman in an extraordinary situation. It is only when we find ourselves faced with exceptional circumstances that we can be sure of what we’ll do. We all find courage deep within us when we need it most. And I didn’t always do what I should have. When the Jews were being victimised in Warsaw before the war, a group of students protested. I wasn’t among them. I thought it might reflect badly on my ambition to become a doctor. If we hadn’t stood back then – if we had raised our voices in protest – perhaps what happened would never have happened.
‘All I know now is that we must stand against oppression wherever we find it. We must raise our voices and shout whenever we see injustice. We must never think that just because it is not us who are being persecuted that we can turn our heads and avert our eyes. It’s why we have to remember the past. Not to carry on hating, but to prevent the same thing happening again.’
Her words made Sarah think. If Neil stopped doing what he was doing, who would speak out for the unseen and the unheard?
Suddenly excited she turned to Irena. ‘Did you ever think of writing your story?’
Irena smiled wryly. ‘I swore that when the war was over I would tell the world what I had seen. So I wrote it down in a notebook. That’s where I wrote everything I found too difficult to speak of, including my arrest and my time in the camp.’
‘I’d like to read it. If you’d let me?’
‘Yes, of course. When the time is right. But you’ll see, I’m no writer.’
‘But I could be. What if I wrote your story?’
‘It’s not my story. It’s your mother’s story, your story, Poland’s story.’
‘Then that’s the one I will write.’
Chapter 53
Irena suppressed a groan as her stiff legs complained. She might feel twenty inside but her body knew better.
But she was here at last. Back at Borreraig house. An image of Richard standing next to the loch in light trousers and a thick fisherman’s sweater came to her with such vividness she gasped.
Sarah was unpacking the car, while Lily waited next to it, giving Irena, she suspected, a few moments alone.
The house hadn’t changed. Inside it was almost exactly the same as it had been when she and Richard had spent their ten days together. The same old sooty stove in the kitchen, the same table and chairs where they’d sat and drunk wine. Someone had placed a vase of wild flowers on the table and a plate of scones. There was a note, too – from Katherine. She welcomed Irena to Skye and said that she knew she’d be tired after her long journey so had lit the stove and left them something for dinner in the warming oven. She finished by saying that she was looking forward to seeing her again.
Irena moved through to the sitting room. Little here had been changed either. It had the same carpet on which they’d made love in front of the fire, the same drinks cabinet, even the same wind-up gramophone they’d used to play the records they’d danced to. She smiled. It had been a long time since she’d seen one of those.
She closed her eyes almost able to feel him, smell his particular scent, feel the hardness of his chest under her fingertips. She could hear his laugh, see his quirky grin, the way his eyes glittered when he looked at her. Her dear, precious love.
Irena left the house to walk around to the little boat house. It was musty and damp smelling but a fire would soon sort that out. A small boat was moored in the little bay, but Irena doubted that she’d be going out in it this time.
She thought about what Sarah had said about writing her story. It was right that Leah’s daughter would be the one to tell it – supposing people wanted to read it. The war wasn’t taught in school in Poland and most of the younger generation had little idea what had happened to their country during those dreadful years. Perhaps, if Sarah wrote it, it would be translated into Polish and that way people would learn what had happened to their grandparents?
Sarah and her mother were in the kitchen when she went back inside, fiddling with the old fashioned stove. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs for a rest before we eat,’ Irena said.
‘It’ll be another hour,’ Sarah replied. ‘Supposing we get this stove going.’ She grinned. ‘I might have to go and fetch Neil to come and help.’
‘If you don’t manage, a sandwich will do me fine. I’m not really hungry.’
Irena left them to it and climbed the stairs to the bedroom she and Richard had shared. The bed was made and the house had clearly been aired in the years it had been empty. She crossed over to the window and looked outside. The loch glittered in the evening sunshine as it had done for centuries and as it would continue to do for centuries to come. Likewise Dunvegan Castle stood, a testament to life continuing. It had survived the Jacobite war and all the wars since and no doubt would survive more. With a sigh, she turned away and lay down on the bed.
As she closed her eyes a shadow moved in the room and she felt the bed sag.
She could smell pipe smoke and peat and feel the heat as he lay down next to her. Her love.
Chapter 54
December 1996
It was a journey Sarah had been meaning to take for a long time, but with her book accepted for publication, she knew she had to make it now. Since Irena’s death, she hadn’t been able to face coming back.
Over the years she’d visited Poland and in return Irena had come to stay with them in Edinburgh. The children had loved her. She’d never spoken much about the time after she’d been captured by the Germans, only given Sarah the barest details, but she’d entrusted her with her notebook. To be read only on her death.
Reading it had been the hardest thing Sarah had ever done. When she’d finished she’d immediately started writing. The title of her book was The Silent and the Unseen, the English translation of Cichociemni, the name given to the Polish SOE agents. It was Irena’s story, but as Sarah had promised her, it was much more than one woman’s story – it was the story of Poland, of those who could no longer speak for themselves, the story of every brave woman and man who had risked their lives for others. It was also Sarah’s story.
She shivered, huddling deeper into her coat as the taxi swung into the hotel parking bay. Neil had offered to come with her but she’d said no. This was a journey she had to make alone. Besides, she didn’t want to leave the children with anyone except their father and their grandmother. It was the first time she’d been away from them for more than a few nights and she forced away the images of all the disasters that could befall a four- and five-year-old. But what harm could possibly come to her children under the eagle eyes of their grandmother? Mum had almost completely regained her speech and was even painting a little again. Most of the time she lived alone, often coming to the house Sarah and Neil had bought to visit. Sarah’s youngest daughter was the same age Lily had been when she’d been taken from her mother. As a mother herself she couldn’t begin to imagine what courage it had taken for her grandmother to have let her child go.
She was here for six days and had it all planned: Warsaw for three days, a train to Krakow for the final three days and then flying home from there.
There wasn’t much of the day left by the time she checked in and unpacked, but
just enough to visit Pawiak prison.
She took a tram from outside the hotel to the nearest stop and walked the remainder of the way. It took her a while to find it, but there it was – an innocuous-looking building, more like the shell of a factory than a prison. She knew from her research that over a hundred thousand Poles had been brought here, most of them tortured before being taken away and shot. Irena had been taken to a similar prison in Germany.
Sarah paid for her ticket. The museum was empty, apart from the ticket collector and young couple with small rucksacks.
‘Not many come here,’ the ticket collector said.
She wandered amongst the exhibits, the whips the guards had used, the inscriptions on the wall, the old service revolvers.
