by Millie Gray
He chortled as he leaned in and elbowed her. ‘Come on, you’re just mad that I didn’t dance you around the ward. Admit it, you like me being a bit of a lad who doesn’t exactly follow the rules . . .’
‘Doesn’t exactly follow the rules . . . you don’t know what a rule is.’
‘Yes I do. And I am going to observe one right now and ask you to go out to the pictures with me and if you say yes I won’t make eyes at anyone else until they play “God Save the King”.’
Before Kitty could reply there was a loud rap on the window and they both looked up to see that Audrey Skillon – the shameless self-appointed forces sweetheart – was attempting to get Dougal’s attention.
The sight of Audrey sensuously winking at Dougal caused Kitty to flop against the bench back. This girl, she thought, was not the usual type to be training in Leith Hospital. Oh no, and according to Matron, nurses and probationer nurses were as close as you could get to being referred to as “ladies”. Kitty inwardly laughed as she remembered that she was told that Matron had said that as far as she was concerned Audrey Skillon was no Florence Nightingale. In fact, she thought that she was the nearest you could get to being a ‘Lili Marlene’ and therefore should never have been allowed to don a nurse’s uniform, especially a Leith Hospital one.
Kitty didn’t know why she instinctively put her arm through Dougal’s before whispering, ‘I’m free after early shift tomorrow and there’s a James Mason film showing at the Palace Picture House.’
Dougal beamed and kissed Kitty on the cheek before raising his hand to dismiss a piqued Audrey.
*
Kate sat twisting her gold wedding ring. The ring that up to a year ago she thought she would never wear, and then out of the blue, Hans, a Polish refugee, had come into her life. She hunched her shoulders and sucked in a long breath before she allowed her shoulders to relax and sink down. Continuing to breathe deeply she willingly allowed her mind to picture Hans’ long gifted fingers – the skilful fingers that had so lovingly repaired her father’s granddaughter clock.
Raising her head she now had a full view of the clock. Running her tongue over her lips she remembered that when the clock had crashed to the floor from the force of a nearby bomb blast, she had wept so sorely. Picking up the bits she had thought that it was beyond repair. But Hans, with his skilful, sensitive hands, had accomplished the impossible, and there the clock stood ticking away the seconds of their lives.
Sinking back into her chair Kate thought again about the power that Hans’ gentle hands had. She gave a delicious sigh as she remembered that not only had these hands brought back life to the clock but also to herself. Until then she, and everyone else, had considered herself, as a dried-up, emotionless old spinster. She smiled and softly exhaled as she revelled in her recollections. It was true that when she reached forty she still wore no wedding ring but she had known love. Young love – the rash desperate love of two young people who somehow know that because of a cruel and senseless war their one night of passion was all that they would ever have. When faced with remembering 1915 Kate always wrapped her arms tightly around herself as if somehow trying to keep the cruel world of war out and something precious inside herself safe. But what she tried to keep safe, a baby – her and Hugh’s unborn baby– was not to be. No, when she tumbled down the Leith Provident department store attic stairway her mother was saved the embarrassment of telling the world that her fifteen-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant. She sighed as she accepted that was good for her mother – her dear mother, who would not have deserved that humiliation. But the downside for herself was that her chance of being a mother, nursing her own child, had rolled away forever when she’d rolled down and down that rickety staircase.
Without thinking, she unwound her arms from around herself. She then began sucking on her thumb and acknowledged that she owed a debt of gratitude to her brother, who had fathered a large family which he had always shared with her. But that was not the same as having your own. Hans had had children but they had perished with his wife in the merciless Warsaw blitz. Why she wondered did Hans never talk of his children and why hadn’t she told him about Hugh and losing her baby? And she argued, with herself, that if they were as happy and secure in their love for each other, as they thought they were, why were they not completely honest with each other? Why, oh why, was she thinking about all this now?
To be honest, she had no need to think about why she was looking back. It was so obvious. Yes, she had lost count of the many times that Hans had mentioned in the last few months that he would like to find out if anyone he had known in Poland had miraculously survived the Holocaust – and yet he never ever suggested his wife or children. Perhaps the reason for that omission was that it would have been too painful for him to imagine that any of them had survived the Warsaw Blitz and then have to endure the barbaric treatment and conditions of the concentration camps.
What Kate did know was that the news of the plight of the orphaned Jewish children was deeply disturbing to Hans. Every night he would say, ‘Surely there are some families here in Scotland that could offer one or two of them a home.’ Hans being completely fixated on these children’s difficulties made Kate anxious and perplexed – after all, what did she know of Hans’ life in Poland? Giving the matter serious thought she concluded – nothing. Reluctantly she now wondered why he had never ever confided to her any of the details of his life before he had met her.
HANS’ STORY
The gold pocket watch that Hans was repairing wasn’t getting his full attention. To be truthful it required only a clean and service. He had told the lady so when she had brought it in. She had then gone on to explain that her husband had been reluctant to take the family heirloom to war and now that he would be coming home she just wanted to be sure that the timepiece was in full working order.
In a dreamlike trance Hans continued to buff the gold casement whilst he became engulfed in guilt. The newsreels showing the inhuman fate that had befallen his people, whose only sin in Hitler’s eyes was to be born Jewish, haunted his every living hour. Six million of his country people, three million of them Jews, had been slaughtered in the last five years. He tried to eat but the eyes of the starving Jewish children who had survived caused nausea to rise up in his throat and made swallowing just so difficult.
His thoughts then shifted to wondering why he was the only member of his immediate family to be spared. Had he, he continued to wonder, any right to forget his loving wife, children and friends and go on to be as blissfully happy as he was here in Leith?
Vividly he recalled how he and his cousin, Josef, had fled with four others in a dilapidated fishing boat. To their shame they had not even stayed long enough to dig in the rubble for their kinfolk’s remains – not one had they seen into their final resting place. Most people would forgive this selfishness because they had to leave immediately or risk being captured by the advancing German troops. Their fate then would have been execution or worse.
On landing on the south coast of England, Josef, a young nineteen-year-old bachelor, had decided to stay and enlist in the British Army and continue the fight against the Nazis from there. Hans was tempted to do the same but, to his shame, the will to go on living had been knocked out of him. He really just wanted to curl up and die. To be truthful it was Josef who had pulled him away from Warsaw. ‘Hans,’ he had said, ‘you are all that is left of my close and wider family. There is nothing and nobody left here. We cannot win by staying here but we can go to England and continue the fight from there.’ It had been as if in a trance that Hans had agreed. He did, at that time, wish to tear the hearts out of the invaders with his bare hands and trample them into the dust, but now . . . ?
He looked down at the gleaming watch again. He sighed. Yes, it was true that on arrival in Leith, and he would never know what made him decide to seek refuge in Leith, he had taken a job just cleaning and portering in the Leith Provident department store. At the time he started there that was all he
was capable of doing. It was there that the numbness of his inconsolable grief began to slowly thaw. Oh yes, ever so slowly he began to feel human again. He smiled as he recalled how it was Kate, his now beloved Kate, a mature woman who worked as a manager in the department store, who had awakened those feelings again. Gradually, steadily, they had fallen in love and being with her had helped to heal the terrible psychological wounds that he had imagined were incurable.
From the day he had escaped Poland until the day he took Kate as his lawful wife, he had always thought he would never know true happiness and contentment again. But on that wonderful wedding day he did. Oh yes, when he began his new life with his lovely Kate, he truly believed that Poland and its ghosts had been well and truly laid to rest forever. But as the war in Europe drew to its close and the horrific news filtered out about the inhuman treatment of the Jews by the Nazis – Poland, the land of his birth and his fellow countrymen seemed to be calling him – asking him, begging him – to help them. It was these perceived entreaties that had taken him every day, and sometimes twice a day, in the last three months into the Palace Picture House next door.
The head usherette would let him in the back door so he could watch just the newsreels. The grotesque, cruel photographic evidence, along with the oral commentary, held him rooted to the spot. He really didn’t wish to see what had happened to his people but there was some innate feeling that told him he had to be made aware of the fate of his countrymen. This vexed him as he had tried so hard to keep Poland and all his memories of it buried deeply within his subconscious. But, and again it was a very big but, he now knew Poland and his past life there would never ever allow him to forget. It was determined always to remain in his subconscious ready to jump into his mind’s eye to torment and accuse him. Always his thoughts of Poland made him feel guilty that he had escaped the worst of the atrocities and now lived a comfortable life – a life of milk and honey compared to those in the concentration camps. He unconsciously moaned. Unaware that he was buffing the watch case again he thought of how when he arrived home there would always be the smell of home cooking. Oh yes, the house in Parkvale Place was clean and bright, but never could you say that it was sanitized – it was a home. A home where he was welcome – a home where within its walls he became so comfortable that he never wished to leave – never wished to be anywhere but within its safety. It was a place where he could fool himself into thinking that this was how the world was for everybody now and not how it really was for . . .
Memories flooded in on him. Memories of the privileged life he had led in Warsaw. He ran the buffing cloth over his long, sensitive fingers. These fingers that from an early age he had been were gifted to him so that he could create beautiful things – lovingly restore artefacts back to their original splendour. It was these fingers that had opened Kate’s heart to him. Always he would remember the look on her face when she gazed upon her father’s granddaughter clock that he had restored to its original beauty.
The cloth slipped from his hand. He was in a world of his own wondering why he had never told Kate about his contented home life in Poland. Somehow he felt it was because he was afraid. Terrified he was to actually mouth the words of how happy he had been until that fateful day in 1939 when Hitler decided to invade his beloved country. How could he confide to Kate that his childhood had been idyllic? That he was just into adulthood when he met his wife and they had fallen deeply in love then had married and had three such beautiful and talented children. His eldest son took after himself, a gentle boy, who loved nature and his fellow man. Even now, Hans could close his eyes and the beautiful, melodic music that his son’s nimble fingers coaxed out of their piano washed over him and filled him with overwhelming nostalgia. These times of yearning always seemed to be in the early evening after supper when his new family were all at home safe and happy. There was a desire to confess all his past life in detail to Kate but he was afraid that if he did tell her, and she could hear from his voice how the love for his wife and his children was still so very real and important to him, that somehow she would see it as a threat to herself. The magic spell that was still cast around them would then be broken.
He stood up and stretched. Reluctantly he acknowledged that Kate and he had become selfish – and very much so at that. They had built a cocoon around themselves where there was just room for the two of them. Up until now they seemed not to notice the outside world and its problems. Hans shuddered. He accepted that now he must tell Kate in detail about his family and in doing so risk bringing their honeymoon period to an abrupt end. Indeed, he knew that knowing Kate as he did, she would wrongly feel that she was a poor substitute for all he had lost.
He also knew himself very well. All his life he restored things that had become broken. That was why he couldn’t comprehend why the Nazis had to destroy everything. But wasn’t it strange that they did not succeed and there were people, buildings, precious objects that had survived and required loving, patient restoration? He could do nothing else but answer their compelling call that he was now continually hearing with ever-rising urgency.
The tinkling of the shop doorbell brought his brooding to an end. And when the door opened he was just so pleased to see Kate standing there. In the short time that they had been married she just seemed to grow lovelier as each day passed. There was now a serenity and contentment about her and when she smiled at him he felt overcome by his love for her.
‘Bet you’re surprised to see me,’ she teased as her tantalising smile lit up her face.
‘I am.’ He chuckled. ‘And I am very pleased that you appear to have got over your bout of sickness.’
‘Yes, I am so much better that I intend to go back to work tomorrow.’
Kate was now in the back room of the shop and as she filled the whistling kettle she called back, ‘Hans, I . . . what I mean is . . . I just have to talk to you about . . . Oh, Hans it is so important that we . . .’ She hesitated and was just about to rejoin him in the front shop when the doorbell tinkled again. This time in bounced Mrs McArthur the Palace Picture House usherette.
‘Hans’, she shouted, ‘thought you’d like to know that we have a new, up-to-date, newsreel in and it will be showing in five minutes. So you go through and see it and I will watch the shop. Is that the kettle I hear singing?’
‘It is,’ replied Kate. ‘I was just going to make a pot of tea.’
‘Good, because this is my tea break. And I need a cuppa to wash down my stale sandwiches.’
Kate was now looking quizzically at Hans. ‘Eh . . .’ Hans stuttered. ‘Maryann here allows me to slip in to see the newsreels.’
‘Why are you stuttering, Hans? There is nobody I know who would expect you not to be interested in what has happened to Poland.’ Maryann now turned her attention to Kate. ‘Poor soul that he is,’ she began with a knowing nod of her head, ‘has been sneaking in to see the newsreels since January when that Auschwitz camp in Poland was liberated by the Russians. Bloody scandal that was. See myself, I just couldnae look at it, so I couldnae. I mean how could onybody dae that to wee defenceless bairns?’ Maryann paused before adding, ‘Ken what they should dae? Round up all they Nazi sympathisers and gie them a year-long holiday in one o’ those bloody awful concentration camps.’
Neither Kate nor Hans responded to Maryann so she just kept on holding court with herself. All Kate and Hans could do was gaze at each other and their stance spoke volumes. Kate was completely stunned. Why, she wondered did she not know that Hans was completely obsessed with the news that was coming out of Europe? Hans on the other hand felt like a naughty schoolboy who had just been discovered pinching some sweets.
‘Well,’ Maryann continued, ‘you’d better be off, Hans, or you will miss the Pathé News . . . remember it is only on for five minutes.’
This reminder from Maryann jolted Hans and without uttering a word he dashed from the shop.
‘Right,’ Maryann puffed, ‘I’ve been wasting time too. So.’ She now opened a brown
paper bag from which she took out a couple of sandwiches. Offering one to Kate she continued, ‘Just fish paste but it’s Shippams and you can’t get better than that.’
Kate shook her head. She always thought that the strong aroma from the jars of fish and meat pastes somehow seemed obnoxious. It was true that the war had made most people’s appetites adventurous and they would try anything, but as her mother made her own potted meat, she had never had to resort to swallowing the likes of Maryann’s delicacies.
The sickening smell from Maryann’s sandwiches, which was washing over Kate, caused her to look away, especially when Maryann began to over-pack her mouth. She was further nauseated when Maryann spluttered, ‘Here, Mrs Busek, see if you ever fancy a night at the flicks here wait until the big picture has started, rap on the back door, and I’ll slink you in.’ Kate shook her head. Undeterred, Maryann leaned in closely to Kate so she could hoarsely whisper, ‘Honestly it works. That’s how Hans gets in to see the newsreels. Doesnae cost him a penny so it doesnae.’
Kate had now managed to perch herself up on Hans’ stool. Troublesome emotions were swamping her. They were a mixture of anger and regret because her ‘perfect world’ where Hans and she hid nothing from each other was now proving to be nothing but a romantic myth. Sorrow began to engulf her when she accepted that Hans, her beloved Hans, had not felt secure enough in their relationship to confide in her – to trust her to understand. Begrudging gratitude to Maryann, a rough diamond if there ever was one, also flooded Kate. It was however galling to her that this woman had understood Hans’ instinctive need to find out exactly what had happened to Poland, the land of his birth. Devastated Poland, the land where he had spent his infancy and then his formative and early adult years. And it was Maryann that Hans had turned to and not herself when he required help and understanding about the suffering that had been inflicted on innocent Poland. It also disturbed her to acknowledge that Maryann had unselfishly met Hans’ desperate needs.
