Devastation Road

by Jason Hewitt

  ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘No. But you could stay,’ she said.

  He hauled himself off the bed and stumbled up. The floor didn’t feel as solid as it should.

  ‘I’m going,’ he said. He lurched for the door.

  But before he reached it she had his wrist, and what happened next he wasn’t quite sure, only that he pushed her hard against the wall, just like he had with Connie, and she gasped like Connie had too. He wanted to kiss her in the same way, to kiss her so damn hard and take her off her feet. Just like that night at the Stowe House Hotel when their faces were so close that he could feel her breath; when he could smell her skin against his.

  But it wasn’t her.

  He pushed himself away. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he was out the door and in the corridor, crashing against the wall and clattering down the steps. Outside he doubled up to catch his breath in the empty yard, then he threw his head back, his mouth open, gasping as if he were trying to drown himself in the cold night air.

  In the tearooms of the Connaught hotel, on the corner of Carlos Place, near Grosvenor Square – a place so out of his price range that he thought it most unlikely that anyone he knew would ever be there – he had sat in his RAF uniform and waited. He had listened to the polite clink of china, teas being stirred, spoons on saucers, and the endless murmuring chatter as he stared at the two teacups and felt himself slowly dissolving into the plush upholstery of the chair.

  I came last week, he said under his breath when she finally arrived and had been shown to her seat.

  Yes. I know, she said as quietly as him, her stare not lifting from the tablecloth either.

  I sat here for an hour.

  I know.

  I sat here for an hour, in this very seat, in fact, and I watched your tea go cold.

  Please. Owen. Don’t.

  He didn’t know why he was being like this; so angry with her and him and the mess of them that he could have thrown himself across the table and kissed it from her face.

  I checked my diary three times, he said. I thought we had agreed.

  Yes, we had, she said, and I’m sorry but . . .

  What?

  She paused. This has to stop, she whispered. Can’t you see?

  Why?

  For God’s sake, Owen. I’m getting married.

  Then don’t.

  What?

  Marry me.

  I love Max.

  And so do I, he retorted.

  I’m being serious, she said. This . . . She took a breath and tried again. This is just a phase we’re both going through. A silly infatuation.

  Then why the hell are you here?

  The hubbub of the room fell away. Heat prickled on his face. At the corner of his vision a gloved waiter edged nearer and then thought better of it.

  I’m getting married to your brother, she said under her breath. I’m truly sorry but . . . She pinched her lips together to stop herself from saying any more.

  And not another word was said. He stared at their empty teacups and the doily and the sharply starched creases in the perfect white tablecloth. And then, when he couldn’t bear it any longer, he abruptly pushed his chair back and, without allowing himself another glance, he walked out of the tearoom as fast as his legs could take him, through the reception and the revolving door and away from her down the crowded London street.

  IRENA

  Two gunshots and then a third, and he woke. Before that, just the sense of him being dragged through his sleep, hands at the back of his collar, someone hauling him through the dark.

  He lay for a while, smelling his hands and his fingers and the cup of his palm, and then pressing his wrist and then his arm to his nose, trying desperately to find some scent of her, a spot where he could still smell her on his skin.

  ‘Politically the war might be over but in here we’re still fighting it,’ Haynes was saying as he led Owen through the hospital ward, between the rows of army beds with straw mattresses, each occupied by a patient, many of whom were no more than collections of bone in thin sacks of skin. Owen had never seen anything like it.

  They passed through another room, twelve beds on either side. Each had a woman in it, most with shaven heads like Irena and flat-chested from malnourishment. Haynes pulled a spare pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and handed them over.

  ‘I’d put these on if you’re going to help,’ he said. ‘And don’t touch anything without them. We’ve dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis, the whole bloody Merck Manual.’

  As they passed the beds, those with enough energy tried to grab at Haynes, begging for his assistance in rasping voices, ‘Herr Doktor’. Their lips were thin and colourless, cheeks sunken, and all the architecture of the skull visible, just a thin leathery skin pulled over a framework of bone.

  ‘When they first arrived, do you know what our boys had in terms of medical supplies?’ Haynes said. ‘Aspirin and opium tablets. I mean, what good is aspirin going to do for them? I tell you, it’s like trying to put out a forest fire with a bloody mouthful of spit.

  ‘We’ve had ninety-six medical students volunteer from London,’ he carried on as he hauled a window open and coaxed the air in with his hand, ‘but they’re up to their necks in shit and fighting a losing battle trying to stop those still in the camps from starving to death. We’re taking in five hundred new patients here from the main camp – that’s the equivalent of three of these blocks – every bloody day, and we’re barely scratching the surface. Just a handful of half-trained volunteers, the Red Cross and whatnot. For the rest of the time we’ve to make do with internee doctors and nurses, but most of them are recovering from typhus themselves and those that aren’t have been out of service so ruddy long they don’t know a syringe from a fucking scalpel. It’s farcical. Absolutely . . . urgh.’ He threw his arms up in despair.

  They carried on up the stairwell to another floor and another makeshift ward where the line of beds was even more tightly packed.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Owen. ‘I’m sure Nurse Joubert has a list of things an arm long you can help her with. I hope you’re of a strong stomach, mind.’

  ‘How’s the baby, by the way?’ Owen asked as they went.

  ‘Oh, he’s going to be fine,’ said Haynes. ‘Perking up nicely, actually. We’ll keep him under observation for another day perhaps. Just in case.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news.’

  ‘Yes. Makes a change. And with his mother too. One of them is usually dead by now.’

  Nurse Joubert was French and perfectly charming, and not much more than a sprite of a girl; small-framed with a cut lip and short cropped hair. She had been born and raised in Marseille, she explained, and then detained on a false accusation of aiding British servicemen on the ‘home run’. It was God, she told Owen, who had saved her from the gas.

  It wasn’t long before she had Owen emptying bedpans and administering a liquid that smelt like Radio Malt. As he moved from bed to bed, he tried not to look at the faces cowered beneath the sheets, many of them asleep or barely conscious, others staring at him from dim and sunken eyes. His hand reached out to give them the liquid, while inside he could feel himself wanting to pull away. What had become of this world, he thought? Was it any wonder that lone soldiers walked out into fields and put bullets through their own heads?

  Midway through the morning another nurse appeared on the ward. She stood in the doorway with a small card in her hand, calling out a name. When no one answered, she disappeared again and minutes later she could be heard upstairs trying again.

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘They have opened an office in the hospital,’ Nurse Joubert said, ‘where they write the details of the deportees and all the people that are missing. They are swapping lists with the other camps. With the thousands here you could have a husband and wife in the same camp and they would never know.’

  ‘And that’s happened?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said,
‘but we live for miracles.’

  Exactly a week after their last meeting, the very same day and time, he had stood outside the Connaught hotel with a ridiculous notion that, despite there having been no communication, she might come again. And she did, faltering a little as she came down Carlos Place and saw that he was indeed standing there outside the stone railings. He fell in line as she walked past.

  I didn’t think you’d come.

  I didn’t think you’d be here.

  Well, it was never an arrangement.

  No.

  But there they were.

  They crossed the road and walked through the iron arch into Mount Street Gardens, the path swinging right and taking them past the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception. They turned left down Audley Street and left again, hearts pounding, until they found themselves in Shepherd Market, and there down one of the passages was a narrow slither of a hotel called The Swallow, so discreetly tucked between other buildings as to barely be there at all.

  They checked in, using a name that he had spotted on a painting in the foyer, and signed the date – 13 March 1943 – the boy at reception asking no questions and so getting no more lies; and then they went up the cramped staircase, four flights up to the room. She opened a window; he shut the door; and there beside the bed, with the breeze running its fingers through the thin pink curtains and the sounds of the market wafting in, he kissed her like he had kissed no other woman before.

  He sat outside on the kerb. He had spent over half an hour cleaning a floor only then to have a patient squat down and defecate on it, the diarrhoea pooling around the man’s feet. The stench had turned Owen’s stomach and after mopping it up he had then needed to step out for air. With the situation so bad in Camp 1, many had been reconditioned.

  ‘They can’t help themselves,’ Nurse Joubert had said. ‘We have to bring them back from feeling like they are nothing more than animals.’

  Now he was crouched over and spitting out the sourness, his eyes watery and the dreadful smell still seeping from his fingers. As he turned and wiped his mouth, he saw a group of boys all striding out from behind one of the blocks, and then turning towards the gates – twenty, maybe thirty of them, several with homemade Czech flags tied around their shoulders.

  He stood up and shouted, ‘Janek!’

  From within the group a head turned. The boy stopped and stared, the rest of the group feeding around him with bags slung over shoulders, holding sticks.

  ‘Janek,’ he called. ‘Where are you going?’

  But Janek just looked at him, then without any acknowledgement he turned and carried on. As the group marched away, a call and answer chant started, while in among them two or three were kicking an empty can around as they went, laughing. On the makeshift flags tied around their necks an all too familiar symbol had been daubed in tar.

  ‘Ah. I was going to have a word with you about him.’

  He turned around. Hamilton was behind him.

  ‘Seems your little friend has been rather busy since you got here.’

  ‘That’s his doing?’ said Owen.

  ‘The group? Well, we didn’t have this trouble before, let’s put it like that. Now look,’ said Hamilton, ‘I’m as anti-Nazi as the rest of you and we can’t stop people coming and going from the camps. They’ve been liberated; can’t go running this place like a prison. But we do have to have some rules. It seems your little friend and his comrades have been causing a spot of bother with the locals. Pillaging, arson, that sort of thing. Now, I know tensions are high but we’re trying to retain a peace here, get some sort of stability and order in place, and, well, this sort of nonsense really isn’t helping. I’d like you to have a word. You might get through to him.’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ said Owen. ‘But, well, I can try.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Hamilton. He smiled rather awkwardly. ‘Seems this boy of yours is quite the little tearaway.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen, although he was hardly listening. Across the yard he had spotted the same nurse who had appeared at the ward door calling out a name. She was directing two large men, who between them were carrying a stretcher with a thin figure lying on it.

  ‘Yes, well, anyway, he’ll be off tomorrow,’ said Hamilton. ‘You know we’re packing a whole load of his lot off, don’t you? Your boy too, which will probably do us all a favour. You know someone was asking specifically for him, wanted him on the release list?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen. ‘That was Martha.’

  ‘No, I mean at their end,’ said Hamilton. ‘Asked for him specifically, I believe.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know who. You’ll have to ask Martha. He’s coming in person though, God help us.’

  Owen watched the nurse and the two men with the stretcher as they squeezed it through the ground door into the hospital block, then turned to say something but Hamilton was already gone, heading towards the administration block, a hand slipping loosely into his pocket and the other clicking his pen.

  Owen wondered if he shouldn’t run after Janek now but Nurse Joubert’s head poked out of one of the windows and she waved furiously at him.

  ‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ she shouted, beaming. ‘Come. We have our miracle!’

  He walked hastily back across the yard, and then started to run. Krzysztof Krakowski, he thought. He now didn’t want Irena giving the child they had carried all this way to him – no matter what he was like. Perhaps somehow, with Martha’s help, he might persuade Irena to keep him. There must be some sort of assistance they could get for her in Poland. Martha or Hamilton or Haynes or someone must know the channels they’d need to go through. They couldn’t just hand Little Man over to a man who had raped her when between them they had cared for him for so long. Then Owen thought – or hoped – He’ll be too ill, because they were all ill. Perhaps he was dying or dead already.

  He ducked through the main door and ran up the stairs. In the ward they were already squeezing in another bed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Haynes. ‘Good stuff. Here – take this.’ He thrust a clipboard into Owen’s hand, a form attached to it, while he pulled on a pair of gloves and rummaged around in his pocket for a pen. ‘Got someone here that might be of interest to your little friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen. ‘I know.’

  ‘We’ve just fished her out of Camp 1.’

  ‘Her?’ said Owen.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Nurse Joubert was already at the bed and close to tears. She leant a little into Owen.

  ‘God,’ she said quietly to him, ‘is with us today. This is just the beginning. All our wounds will be mended.’

  Owen looked down at the two women, one he recognized from around on the ward. The other was much thinner, her cheeks drawn and hollow, and her skin grey around her eyes. Her head was bald but for the tiny wisps that lifted in the breeze coming in from a window. They lay side by side, not looking at each other but hands tightly clasped.

  ‘They are sisters,’ whispered Nurse Joubert.

  ‘Yes,’ said Haynes. He scanned through the notes. ‘Both brought here from Buchenwald by all accounts. Must have got separated.’

  ‘They’ll be all right though?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Haynes. ‘They’re together now. And that’s the main thing.’

  The two sisters lay quite still in their beds, their teary eyes staring up at the ceiling and the line of naked light bulbs that hung like translucent heads. It was hard to tell their age, but Owen thought they must have been much younger than they looked, with the beauty of their youth shaven from their heads and sculpted from their faces.

  ‘You said she might be of interest to someone?’ Owen said.

  Had Haynes meant Janek? He’d been half expecting to see a Krzysztof Krakowski.

  ‘Ah, speak of the devil,’ said Haynes.

  Martha bustled through the door, Irena behind her. She looked terrified as she entered the ward and Martha brisk
ly led her through the beds.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Owen, but Irena didn’t reply.

  Martha brought her to the bed where they had already gathered, the two sisters staring blankly up at them all, their hands still clasped across the narrow divide.

  Irena’s hand fumbled for his and he held it. It was as if she already knew what to expect. She glanced out of the corner of her eyes at the line of beds on either side and the disease-ridden faces.

  ‘I’m very pleased to see you together again,’ Martha said to the two sisters. The newest of the arrivals was staring wide-eyed at Irena and suddenly looked scared. She murmured something in Polish.

  ‘I don’t think this will take long, do you?’ Martha said, turning to Irena.

  Irena’s grip on his hand tightened. She stood quite solid, but Owen could hear her breath coming heavy through her nostrils. She was trying to hold herself together. Every reunion in times like this, he thought, must come as a shock.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s very sick,’ Martha told her. ‘But her sister has been good enough to give us all the details. I believe you know each other.’ She looked at Irena. ‘Is that right?’

  Irena nodded.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to confirm her name then. We just need confirmation that what her sister has said is true.’

  Irena stared at the sick woman, their eyes locked on each other.

  ‘Can you tell us what her name is?’ said Martha.

  Irena nodded, her gaze slipping to the floor, and took a breath. ‘Her name,’ Irena said hesitantly, ‘is Irena Borkowski.’

  There was so little time. For twelve-hour shifts Connie fitted sparking plugs while he was out in Hertfordshire. It was a hell of a journey to meet her, even when he managed a few hours’ leave. They would meet outside the Connaught, him falling in line as she passed, and only when they reached Grosvenor Square or the Brown Hart Gardens on Duke Street did they dare to speak. Mostly, though, they lived those hours in Shepherd Market; they walked its passages, ate pancakes in the café or made love in The Swallow hotel.