The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  Maybe his grandmother…? But Helen had never liked Daniel’s parents. Faith could remember her talking about it. ‘Maybe it’s just a daughter-in-law thing,’ she’d said. ‘But since I had the kids…Dinah drives me up the wall. Finn’s got to be a proper boy, a miniature Daniel, and Hannah’s got to be a proper girl. She buys Hannah those frilly dresses that make her look like a big doll. Which Hannah loves, of course. And she got her that foul pink pony she’s so keen on. And its all guns and footballs for Finn.’ It hadn’t sounded so very dreadful to Faith–but it had mattered a lot to Helen.

  Maybe if she turned up at the house early–she could go across in the morning, say she had to go into work and was calling in on her way…Daniel would accept that. He was used to Helen’s working pattern which extended into evenings and weekends. But would that give her any more of a chance to talk to Finn? Most people would advise her to leave it, wait for the dust to settle, then try again.

  She kept telling herself that the important thing was to step carefully, to keep Daniel sweet, to safeguard her contact with the children. A few days wouldn’t hurt. She could ruin everything by rushing it.

  She was seeing him on Sunday. The children wouldn’t be there, but it might give her a chance to talk to him, to get him to see that she posed no threat to him or to his relationship with his children–she just wanted, for their sake as much as hers, to be allowed to be part of their lives.

  12

  Faith dressed carefully for her meeting with Jake Denbigh. She wore a black skirt, well-tailored but close fitting, and a white silk jersey. She put her hair up and was pleased with the image she presented.

  The night was cold, so she wrapped herself in a wool coat she’d picked up in Paris three years before, and drove into central Manchester. As soon as she stepped out of the car, the icy cold hit her. She huddled into her coat, watching a group of young women flocking arm in arm in happy anticipation of the night ahead, their exuberance already fuelled by ‘happy hour’ cocktails. They were dressed in skimpy tops and tiny low-slung skirts with expanses of flesh exposed to the winter night. She wondered if the cheap cocktails also provided a form of insulation.

  As she turned off Deansgate, the street was suddenly empty. The buildings rose up around her, the anonymous concrete of multi-storeys and warehouses that were in darkness now. The streetlights cast a cold white light. Something more than the cold made her shiver as she hurried to the next street where the arcade was.

  The club was discreet and subdued, a small sign outside the door announcing its presence. It was a members-only venue. She gave her name to the doorman, and went down the stairs to the bar. Jake Denbigh was waiting at a table in a small booth. He stood up to greet her, ‘Faith. Good to see you.’ His eyes were approving as he looked at her. He took her coat and asked her what she wanted to drink.

  She asked for a spritzer, and he went to the bar while she took stock of her surroundings. It was quiet with people scattered in the various booths around the room. The bar glowed in a warm light that reflected off an impressive array of bottles and glasses. Subdued music blurred the background noise. ‘This is a nice place,’ she said as he put her drink in front of her.

  ‘That’s why I joined,’ he said. ‘Most evenings, you can get a quiet drink here. It’ll be heaving later on, but we’ll be fine for a couple of hours.’

  She tasted her spritzer, taking the opportunity to study him. He looked much the same as she remembered him from Grandpapa’s: short, curly hair, observant eyes and an attractive smile. He obviously favoured the studied casual dress she’d seen before, open collar, soft jacket. The wine tasted strong. She’d have to be careful.

  ‘How are you?’ he said, lifting his glass.

  It wasn’t a question she could answer honestly to someone she barely knew. ‘I’m fine. Did you get your article finished?’

  He nodded. ‘It comes out next week, and there’s a potted version of the whole series in NS in a fortnight. I’m preaching to the converted–the idea is that immigration is a good thing, if you handle it right. I should have tried selling it to the Sun.’

  She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘That sounds like a strategy for success.’

  He grinned. ‘So far, my ambition has always outstripped my achievement, but I’m working on it.’

  He seemed to have done well enough to her. ‘What’s your next project?’

  ‘Belarus. I’m flying out early on Monday.’

  She remembered their brief talk as he was leaving Grandpapa’s, when he’d talked about writing a book. ‘Of course. The Treaty of Brest.’

  ‘Right.’ He smiled at her.

  He used that smile. Journalists had to be good actors–they had to present a convincing and sympathetic public face so that people would talk to them, and she had the feeling that all she was seeing–all she had seen so far–was Jake Denbigh’s public face. ‘I thought you were leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m driving up to London tomorrow. I’ve got to fly from Heathrow–there were no flights to Minsk from Manchester until later in the week. It’s not exactly Benidorm.’

  ‘But why Belarus?’ It seemed an odd and obscure location. She wondered where she would go if she was researching the recent history of Eastern Europe. Russia certainly. The Ukraine? Georgia? There were a lot of places that were vital and influential. Belarus was a relic.

  ‘I’ve got a commission for a travel article,’ he said. ‘Package tours à la Lukashenko, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I didn’t know you wrote travel articles–I thought you wrote about politics.’

  ‘Travel in Belarus is politics,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a tourist destination.’

  He clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and she wondered why. ‘Okay, but you still haven’t told me: why Belarus. What?’ she added, to his amused glance.

  ‘I think I’ve already said it. You’re a lot like your grandfather. How is he, by the way?’

  It was a deft change of subject. She hesitated, remembering the cut-down roses. ‘He’s okay, thanks. He’s fine.’

  He studied her face, as if he’d picked something up from her tone. ‘That’s good. I’d like to talk to him again when I get back.’

  Faith stirred the ice in her glass to disguise her hesitation. She wasn’t sure she trusted Jake Denbigh’s interest in Grandpapa. ‘It might be better if you call me first,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll remember,’ he said, a careful non-promise. His next question surprised her. ‘You’re very close to your grandfather, aren’t you?’

  ‘He brought me up. He’s more like my father, really. So, yes, we’re close.’

  He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, and got out a small envelope. He passed it to her. ‘Here.’

  The photographs. She looked at him, then opened the envelope. There were two photos. She took them out and studied them. The first showed a family standing outside a timber house, a woman, a small child and a boy. The boy was Grandpapa–she recognized him at once. He was smiling at the little girl who was gazing at the camera with wide-eyed solemnity. She must be Eva. The woman would be her great-grandmother…and a man called Stanislau built a house in the clearing, a house of timber. And Stanislau and his wife Kristina lived in the house, where their first child, Marek…And then, five years later, in the depths of winter, Eva was born. The last child…

  The house in the forest.

  ‘My grandfather used to tell me about this,’ she said. ‘He used to tell me stories about his childhood. I grew up with it–and with his family, what they were like, how they used to live, what they used to do. Look. That must be his mother, my great-grandmother. She was called Kristina. And that must be his sister, Eva. She was five years younger than he was. He used to look after her.’ She thought about the stories he used to tell of the two children in the forest, the crackle of the fire in his study and the smell of leather and pipe smoke.

  ‘You’ve never seen them before?’

  She blinked as Jake’s voice
interrupted her thoughts. For a moment, she had forgotten where she was. ‘No. He didn’t bring anything out of there with him.’ She looked at the photos. ‘Or almost nothing.’ She remembered the way he’d searched through the box after Denbigh had left, and she remembered the pile of ashes in the bonfire. He hadn’t been burning pictures of his working days. These were what he’d tried to burn. She was certain of it. He hadn’t been able to find them, so he’d destroyed everything.

  ‘They didn’t make it?’ Jake said.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I thought your grandfather came from around Minsk. Or spent some time there.’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘Something he said just before you arrived. It makes a kind of sense if his family lived in east Poland. That’s the bit that was taken from Byelorussia under the treaty, and reclaimed by Stalin after the outbreak of war. I wondered if he was Belarusian, or if his family were.’

  ‘No, he’s Polish,’ Faith said automatically. But her mind was turning the problem over. Grandpapa always said that he had been born in Poland, but he’d never said anything about his family, or their affiliations. And he had never had much to do with the Polish community in the UK. ‘He’s never really talked about it,’ she said. She could see he was going to ask something else, so she said quickly, ‘I liked the article you wrote.’

  He looked at her in query.

  ‘The one about war crimes, about vigilante justice.’ She’d hoped he might be taken by surprise and let slip something more about his interest in Grandpapa, but he didn’t say anything, just waited for her to go on. ‘My grandfather had a copy,’ she explained.

  ‘Right. I sent it to him. I usually send something to people I’m going to interview.’

  ‘Why that one?’ She felt relieved in a way she couldn’t quite explain that Grandpapa had not sought out the article for himself.

  He shrugged. ‘Refugees’ stories–he needed an idea of the kind of thing I was doing.’

  ‘What happened to him? The man you were writing about? Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s dead.’ Just for a moment, his face was bleak, then he shrugged. ‘Juris Ziverts was an old man.’

  That generation, the people who had experienced and survived the war, were disappearing. Men like Grandpapa. ‘Is that why you’re going to Belarus?’ He still hadn’t answered her question.

  ‘No. Not entirely. I’m not quite sure myself yet…’ His eyes moved round the room, and he nodded to someone by the bar. The club was getting busier, and the music was louder. She had to lean towards him to hear properly. ‘I’m following up a bit of research I did for something else–there’s a lot of stuff come out about the USSR in the past ten years or so. Belarus is one of those places no one knows much about. I got interested. It’s no big secret, but it’s all a bit unformed in here–’ He touched his head. ‘I don’t like to talk about things until they’re clear.’

  After that, the conversation drifted on to other things. She told him about the different universities where she had worked. ‘You have to follow the grants,’ she explained when he asked her why she’d moved around so much. She told him about her research into the statistics of human behaviour. ‘So much history depends on the memories of the people who were there. But if you ask three different people, they’ll all tell you the truth as they know it, and they’ll all tell you something different. That’s why I prefer working with numbers. You know what you’re dealing with.’

  He was interested but sceptical. ‘You mean people do things because the statistics are right?’

  ‘In a way. It’s more complicated than that–people are made by the times they live in, of course.’

  He thought about this for a while. ‘So, in theory, you could predict what’s going to happen…’

  ‘If you can get the numbers right. Yes.’

  He wanted to know more, but he was steering the topic back towards the war. She didn’t want to discuss Grandpapa with him, so she switched the conversation round to him, and after a couple of attempts to turn it back, he gave a resigned smile and started answering her questions. He told her about his various career paths before he settled into journalism. ‘Journalism suits me,’ he said. ‘Writing is what I do best, and I like to be in charge of my time.’

  He’d done a lot of interesting things–he’d gone backpacking in Europe when he left university and kept himself afloat with various jobs: teaching English, working in restaurants, even joining a travelling circus once. He came out of that with fluent Spanish and a nodding acquaintance with spoken Russian. After that, he’d travelled further afield–‘Travelling was the only thing I wanted to do’–and had funded himself by selling articles about anything he could to anyone who would pay him. ‘That’s me,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘What about you?’

  ‘We’ve already done me,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve done your past. Now we get to do the present.’ He looked at her with that querying tilt of his head that she’d noticed before. ‘You can tell me to mind my own business if you want, but you looked a bit down when you came in–is it your grandfather? Is there something wrong?’ He offered her a cigarette.

  She didn’t often smoke, but she felt like one this evening. She leaned forward as he lit it for her. ‘Thanks. No, truly, there’s nothing.’ And there wasn’t anything, other than her own sense of unease. ‘It’s…’ She probably wouldn’t have said anything, but the wine had relaxed her. ‘You know the woman in that house on the moors?’

  He was lighting his cigarette and she couldn’t see his face. ‘The murder?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I worked with her. She was a friend of mine.’

  ‘Christ. That’s…’ She couldn’t read his expression. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ve known Helen since I was at school. I just can’t accept what’s happened. I keep thinking things like Oh, I’m meeting Helen, or I must tell Helen about that. And then…’ She shook her head.

  ‘Of course you can’t accept it,’ he said quietly. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Because it’s happened,’ she said. It had happened. It was real. She suddenly knew that she would never see Helen again, and felt her throat start to thicken. For the first time, she knew she would be able to cry for her, but she couldn’t–not here, not now.

  ‘And there’s nothing you can do to change it,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. There was a moment’s silence, then he changed the subject. ‘I’ve just realized,’ he said. ‘You must work with Antoni Yevanov.’

  The paralysis that had gripped her throat loosened, and when she spoke, her voice was steady. ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

  ‘I know of him,’ he said. ‘Who doesn’t? What’s he like to work with?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been there a couple of weeks.’ She shrugged. ‘Demanding. He sets high standards. Which is what I wanted.’

  He’d read Yevanov’s last book and asked her about it, leading the conversation further away from the Centre, from Helen, looping round finally to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague.

  ‘You’re interested in war crimes. Why?’ She’d heard him on radio programmes, talking about the impetus behind the Rwandan massacres, about Srebrenica, about the torture of Iraqi prisoners. And the article he’d sent to Grandpapa–that was about war crimes.

  He was studying his glass, which was almost empty. ‘It’s the conundrum that interests me,’ he said slowly. ‘We condemn it, but we never recognize the capacity in ourselves–there’s never been a culture that won’t carry out atrocities, if the circumstances are right. We’ve done our share and we’ll do it again, if…’ He shrugged.

  ‘If the numbers fit,’ she said. ‘Is that why you’re so interested in my grandfather? Because he can tell you something about the Nazi occupation?’

  He gave her a quick glance, then went back to swirling the r
emains of his wine round his glass. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s more than enough known about that.’

  ‘So why?’ she persisted.

  His face was expressionless as he emptied his glass. ‘I thought he might know something about Minsk,’ he said. He gave her a quick smile. ‘He might be able to give me a postscript to my Lukashenko story.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘Then there goes my postscript.’ He checked his watch. ‘You know, I only remembered when I was on my way here that you live out at Glossop. Are you driving?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’ve been…’ She gestured towards the glass of wine she had been conserving all evening.

  ‘If I’d remembered, I’d have met you somewhere closer,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay. You’re the one who’s going away tomorrow.’ But he’d reminded her about the passing time. It was getting on for ten, and she wanted to avoid the chaos of closing time. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ she said reluctantly. She’d been enjoying the evening and could have sat there talking to him for longer.

  ‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ he said.

  They walked back along the canal. The moonlight glittered off the water. ‘It’s beautiful at night,’ he said, ‘when you can’t see the graffiti and the rubbish.’

  ‘Do you like living in Manchester?’ She’d never been drawn to the inner city. Her childhood had been in the suburbs.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s convenient, it’s central, there’s an airport on the doorstep.’ He shrugged. ‘You have to watch your back a bit. It’s worse than London from that point of view.’