by Mary Nichols
At any other time his words would have pleased her, but now it only made matters worse. ‘Jan, you cannot live in both worlds, you must know that. Please don’t make it harder than it is already.’
They clung to each other, sitting on the bed in their room at the Pheasant, both of them weeping. Only when there were no more tears to shed and they felt stronger, did they go downstairs so that he could say goodbye to Angela, who didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He found a pair of scissors and took a snippet of the child’s fine blonde hair, wrapped it in his handkerchief and put it in his top pocket. Then he took his leave of Stan and Jenny, who shook his hand and wished him good luck. When Bill Young arrived with his taxi to take him to Swaffham station, Louise went out to see him off. One last embrace and he was gone.
She turned to go back indoors, fighting back tears. She was not only weepy, she was angry. Why did it have to be like this? Why? Why? Love was not always easy or joyful; it could tear you apart. Angela ran towards her and was lifted up and hugged so tightly she cried to be put down.
Louise let her go and went into the kitchen, where Jenny was preparing vegetables for lunch. Silently, she gave Louise a knife and a cabbage. They worked side by side in silence for some time, until Louise, with a monumental effort, pulled herself together. ‘It’s just me and Angela now and I’ve got to get on with it.’
‘No, you’re wrong. You have us and your work and friends all round you. You are not alone.’
‘I know. I appreciate that, I really do.’
‘He needn’t have gone.’
‘He had to. His wife takes precedence over a wartime love affair.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ Jenny said indignantly. ‘I thought it was a lot more than that.’
‘Let’s not talk about it.’
‘OK. Fine by me. Are you going up to London for the Victory Parade?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t feel much like celebrating.’
‘No, there doesn’t seem to be much good news, does there? But things can only get better. And we did win the war, after all.’
‘Jan said we won it, but the Poles lost it.’
‘Yes, I can understand he would be bitter. But that’s no reason for us to be miserable. Stan and I are going up on the train. Come with us. It will take you out of yourself.’
So she went and stood in the crowd, lifting Angela so that she could see the long columns march past. Every service was represented, people from every remote corner of the British Empire, every ally except Poland, the oldest ally of all. The interim Polish government, behind its iron curtain, declined to attend and efforts to get those who had served with the British forces to take part were met with refusal. The Poles remained proud and stubborn to the last. After it was over, Louise took the opportunity while she was in London to visit her mother.
Faith had been listening to the commentary on the wireless in Henry’s room, but switched it off when her daughter arrived and they went into the kitchen to drink tea and talk. ‘Well, it’s all over now,’ Faith said. ‘The Victory Parade put the finishing touch to it. Now we can get on with our lives in peace.’ She made it sound simple. ‘Are you coming back to Edgware?’
‘No, Mum. I’ve taken on the headship of Cottlesham School, starting in September. It means I’ll be able to live in the schoolhouse.’
‘I’m very proud of you for that, Louise, but what about that Polish airman? Do you still see him?’
‘He’s going back to Poland, back to his wife.’
‘Oh. I could have told you that would happen. Wives always win in those situations.’
‘It is only right and so I told him. Now I must live the life I’ve been given. I shall enjoy my new job and I’ll have Angela …’
Faith looked at the child, who was sitting at the table eating a biscuit, taking tiny little bites all round it, making it last. ‘Growing up with the stigma of illegitimacy,’ she said flatly.
‘I’ll make sure she never suffers because of it. It’s one reason why I want to stay in Cottlesham. I have good friends there and Angela is accepted for what she is, a lovely little girl.’ Tired of explaining herself, Louise changed tack. ‘How is Father? Is he any better?’
‘Slightly, I think. He seems a little more mobile. Nurse Thomson is talking of getting him on his feet again. She thinks the doctor and hospital gave up too soon and she’s looking for a specialist physiotherapist.’
‘Oh.’ Louise was not sure that would be a good thing. While he was helpless her mother could walk away from him when he became angry. If he could get out of bed and move around, there was no telling what he might do. ‘Do you think it will work?’
Faith shrugged. ‘We shall have to wait and see.’
There was no more to be said on the subject. Faith’s prickly defensiveness and her own only half-concealed misery which her mother could not share seemed to be keeping them apart. The loving mother of her childhood had disappeared. Louise supposed it was her own fault; she had fallen far short of being the perfect daughter. What hurt her most was that her mother did not even try to understand about Jan.
In spite of telling him not to write to her, she had hoped, deep down, that he would let her know if he had arrived and found his wife, but there was nothing. It was unsettling. Did it mean he had never arrived back in Poland? Had he found his wife or hadn’t he? He had been worried about being arrested, but she found it hard to believe that would really happen. She ought to stop worrying about him and concentrate on her move into the schoolhouse and her new job.
She moved in during the second week of August. It was a substantial Victorian building meant to accommodate the schoolmaster’s family. It had a kitchen, living room and dining room downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. John had had a bathroom extension put on the back of the kitchen. He had taken some of his furniture with him but Louise had bought the rest from him and added a few pieces of her own. Good furniture was very hard to come by; people who had been bombed out and newly-weds had precedence for what there was, and most of it was utility. She managed to find a second-hand dining room suite and a couple of beds which would do until she could replace them. She and Jenny had been busy making curtains and acquiring linen. Everyone in the village had been kind and generous, giving her bits and pieces, but at last she had a home of her own, even if there was no husband to share it.
The challenge of a new job fulfilled her to a certain extent and stopped her dwelling on what might have happened to Jan. The Education Act passed in 1944 had to be implemented and that meant that now the school only catered for five-to-eleven-year-olds. The eleven plus had replaced the old scholarship and after that the children went on to grammar school or secondary modern, according to their capabilities. There was talk of doing away with grammar schools altogether, but she couldn’t see that happening, and going to Hamond’s Grammar in Swaffham was still the goal of the majority of her pupils and she was determined to do her best for them.
They were a happy household of two, supported as ever by Stan and Jenny, who would always look after Angela if she had to go to a meeting or visit her mother. The term rolled by and she found herself preparing for Christmas again, which meant a carol service, a nativity play and a school party, catered for by the parents. Christmas Day was spent at the Pheasant and Boxing Day visiting her mother.
The physiotherapist Nurse Thomson had found to help her father was confident he could improve the patient’s mobility, given time, Faith told Louise. ‘He massages and exercises his legs twice a week. He lifts him into a wheelchair to do arm exercises and other movements to strengthen his core muscles. In the days he doesn’t come, Nurse Thomson does it.’
‘And is it working?’
‘I think so. I’ll be glad when they start this National Health Service and we don’t have to pay for it any more.’
‘Are you finding it difficult to make ends meet? If, so I’ll try and help.’
‘I can manage. After all, I’ve got nothing else to spe
nd our money on. I don’t go anywhere, except to the Townswomen’s Guild and the church. As long as I’ve got enough to pay the rent, keep us warm and fed, I must give thanks. There are plenty of people worse off than me.’
Louise went to speak to him and take him the book she had bought him for Christmas because he still liked to read, and then set off home.
January brought arctic conditions with snowdrifts fourteen feet deep; there were icebergs reported off the Norfolk coast and in some places the sea froze. Children floundered on their way to school and it was a problem for Louise to keep the stove going in the classroom. ‘Bring a change of shoes and socks,’ she told them. ‘And wear your warmest clothes.’ She kept a supply of garments begged from the WVS for those who forgot or who were too poor to have many changes of clothes. Some, who came from outlying farms, stayed away altogether.
There was unrest in the newly nationalised coal and power industries: the railways, only barely maintained during the war years, could not deliver stocks of coal quickly enough and power stations started to run out. The housewives in the village resorted to the old custom of digging peat from the common to stoke their fires and the old oil lamps and candles were brought back into use, but even the oil and candles had to be queued for. Some of the outlying village homes still did not have electricity, and though it had been promised, it had yet to materialise. Everyone was grumbling. ‘I don’t know what we won the war for’ was a common complaint. The brave new world was as much a dream as ever.
Louise’s life was full to the brim, trying to teach her pupils and overcome the difficulties they all faced with as much cheerfulness as she could muster. It didn’t stop her following the news and picking up on what was happening in Poland. There had been elections there. Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the only one of the old government to return to Poland and serve in the new one as head of the Polish Peasant Party, protested that the elections had neither been fair nor unfettered, the ballot had not been secret, there had been intimidation and arrests and he was going to demand that they be declared null and void. Slandered as a foreign spy, he had fled back to London. The West might protest and condemn, but it did not bode well for an independent Poland. Sometimes she imagined Jan coming back to her, saying his return to Poland had been a mistake, but she knew she ought not to allow herself such fancies and did her best to banish them. And when Angela sometimes asked her where her tata was, she fobbed her off with half-truths until the child stopped asking. Jan was as lost to her as Tony had been, but, oh, how she missed him. She missed his broad grin, his teasing voice, his laughter; his arms about her, his kisses and murmured endearments. Sometimes she lay in her lonely bed, aching for him. And then the tears would flow afresh.
Unlike buildings on the other side of the river, the house in Zabowski Street was still standing, although there were a few slates off the roof and some of its windows had been blown out. Jan did not need to use a key, the door had been forced at some time and stood drunkenly on one hinge. He stepped into the vestibule and knocked on the door of the apartment he had shared with Rulka. It was opened by a stranger who stared at him in hostility. ‘What do you want?’ He was middle-aged, dressed in a shabby pre-war suit that hung on him loosely.
‘I’m looking for someone who used to live here before the war. Her name is …’ He stopped. According to Boris, Rulka Grabowska was dead. ‘Krystyna Nowak.’
‘There must be hundreds of women by that name, it’s common enough, but I never met any of them.’ He peered at Jan suspiciously. ‘Where have you come from? Police, are you?’
‘No, I’m from Lublin. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
‘If she should come,’ the man called after him as he turned away, ‘who shall I say was looking for her?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Jan told him. ‘She wouldn’t remember me anyway.’
He hurried out into the street, glad of his thick air force overcoat, for the January cold was penetrating. Snow lay where it had fallen, made filthy by the passing of feet and vehicles. It clothed the ruins in a white blanket, but did nothing to disguise the devastation. He stood looking about him. Now where?
It had taken him months to return to Warsaw, even after his demob came through, long enough to make him wonder exactly what he was coming back to and whether he might be on a wild goose chase. He had crossed the Channel into France and then taken trains and buses and begged lifts all the way to the Italian border, stopping at cheap hotels and estaminets. France, he had noted, was slowly coming to life again, but travelling was chaotic, not made any easier by heavy snow. It was December by the time he crossed into Italy at Modane. No one questioned him or asked him who he was or where he was going. From Modane he had taken a train to Milan, where he had an emotional reunion with Jozef, who had postponed his move to South Africa to meet him.
His brother was battle-scarred and seemed to have aged prematurely, but he was robust and cheerful. ‘You are a fool to go back,’ he had told him as they sat in the hotel room Jan had taken in the suburbs. They had exhausted the tales they had to tell of their exploits during the war. Jozef told Jan about fighting in the desert, where the heat was almost unbearable and sandstorms blew grit into their food and into every crevice of clothing and body. He spoke of Italy and the hell that was the Battle for Monte Cassino, which had been taken by the Poles after several failed attempts by the British and Americans. Jan had told him about the Battle of Britain and escorting bombers to Germany and what had happened to some of his comrades in the squadron whom Jozef had known. He said nothing of Louise and Angela. It didn’t seem relevant when he was on his way to be reunited with his wife. Both had agreed they had been lucky to come out of it in one piece. But Jozef was gloomy about Jan’s decision to return to Poland. ‘You won’t last five minutes.’
‘I promised Rulka I would go back. According to what I have been told, she survived and is waiting for me.’
‘How can you be sure of that? She is dreaming and so are you. Poland does not exist as we knew it. Those so-called free elections were a sham. The new government is under the thumb of the Soviets and as far as they are concerned anyone who fought with Britain is a fascist and therefore an enemy. Instead of being reunited with your wife, you will find yourself in Siberia, or at the very least, a Polish prison. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I have to try. I’ll invent a new identity and enter the country incognito. I’ve been given the name of a contact in Budapest who used to arrange for undercover agents to travel back and forth during the war. He is apparently still doing it.’
‘Who gave you his name?’
‘Boris Martel, the man who told me about Rulka being alive and working in the resistance.’
‘Can you trust him?’
‘Yes, I’m sure I can. He was a Polish-born English agent who worked with Rulka. He said she had been rounded up as a prisoner of war after the Rising, but escaped and returned to Warsaw. He saw her there, a year ago, alive and well.’
‘How are you going to get to Budapest?’
‘By train. I won’t be in any danger before I cross into Poland, will I?’
‘If you have made up your mind, then I won’t try and change it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘I won’t.’
They had stayed in Milan that night and spent the next day sightseeing and visiting the cathedral, and the subject was not returned to until they were standing together at the railway station, about to part. ‘Good luck,’ Jozef said as they embraced. ‘Let me know how you get on. And if you can’t find Rulka or it doesn’t work out, get yourself out and join me. I’m not at all sure I shouldn’t try and persuade you to come with me now.’
‘You would not succeed.’
‘Then goodbye, brother. Maybe one day we’ll meet again.’
A last hug and Jan had boarded his train, leaving Jozef to find his way back to his regiment and from there to embark for Cape Town.
From Budapest Jan made his way northwards to a village on the
Hungarian side of the Tatra mountains. The area was well known for its skiing. He hired skis and pretended to be enjoying a Christmas vacation while he tried to find a guide to take him over the mountains into Poland. He knew it would be hazardous, not only because of the depth of snow, but because the border was patrolled and anyone caught trying to cross was liable to be imprisoned and interrogated. The Communist rulers were paranoid about spies and he wasn’t sure whom to trust. He had eventually found an exiled Pole who was making a living as a ski instructor, who agreed to take him across. It had taken several days of floundering in blizzard conditions and he had begun to wonder if his guide really knew where he was going, but apparently he did because he suddenly announced, ‘We are in Poland. I will leave you here.’ And with that he had shaken Jan’s hand and turned back the way he had come.
Jan had found his own way to Zakopane, a ski resort he had often visited in his youth, and from there boarded a train for Warsaw. His papers had been examined but no comment had been made as they were returned to him.
Looking about him now at the devastation that had been Warsaw, he was beginning to realise his brother had probably been right. The population of the once beautiful city was sadly depleted but even so, searching for someone among the thin, pinched people whose main occupation seemed to be finding enough to eat, was like looking for a needle in a haystack. He smiled wryly to himself; his use of English idiom had not left him, though England was now only a pleasant memory, and Louise and Angela a happy dream from which he had awakened to this awful reality.
He crossed the pontoon over the river which had been hastily erected after the Germans blew up the bridges. A way had been cleared for traffic through the rubble of Karowa Street, but scattered bricks, blocks of stone and broken glass were still piled either side and the smell of death still hung in the atmosphere in spite of the cold. He almost lost his way as he negotiated more rubble-strewn streets looking for the hospital where Rulka had worked. She might have taken up her old job again or, if not, there might be someone who could tell him what had happened to her.
