A Different World (21 page)

Louise, worn out with the excitement of the day and her own brimming emotions, kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed with her hands idle in her lap. Jan went to the window and stood looking out on the garden, although there was nothing to see except a light on the corner of the building that illuminated the car park. The garden, bleak at that time of year, was in darkness. There was a constraint between them that had never been there before.

‘I’m whacked,’ Louise said, breaking a long silence. ‘But it was a good day, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He turned towards her. ‘Tommy was a little apprehensive when I talked to him. He was unsure about America and whether his mother would be happy in a foreign country.’

‘I think if you love someone, then you adapt, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

He came and sat beside her and took her hand. ‘I love you, sweetheart. You are precious to me and so is Angela, more precious than you’ll ever know.’

‘I love you too, I always will. But I also understand about Rulka.’

‘I know you do and I love you all the more for it.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ she murmured. ‘Anything could have happened.’

‘I know. Nothing can ever be the same as it was before the war. Poland has been swallowed up by the Red menace. I don’t want to live in a place like that. On the other hand …’ He stopped, his anguish visible on his face. ‘I don’t know what to do, really I don’t. I’m being pulled apart.’

‘Can’t you find out what has happened to Rulka before you make the journey? After all, if she – forgive me, Jan, for being blunt – if she is dead, it would change everything, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, but is she? When the Germans were in Poland, I couldn’t find out anything about her, and since the Russians took over it’s worse. There’s been a complete blackout on communication and no one can tell me anything. Supposing she is alive, supposing she is waiting for me to come back?’

If he was being pulled apart, then so was she, but it was up to her to be strong, for everyone’s sake. ‘In that case you must go to her.’

He looked surprised. ‘I didn’t expect you to say that. I thought you would beg me to stay.’

‘For what, Jan? You cannot marry me. Are we to live in sin while you mope about wondering if you have done the right thing? That is not a recipe for happiness.’

‘But I want to be with you.’

‘You are with me now.’ She paused. ‘Let’s not be miserable, let’s make the most of our time together. You never know what’s round the corner.’

Their lovemaking that night had an extra dimension. The emotion they both felt was heightened to such a pitch, they were
carried away to somewhere not of this earth. It left them drained. They slept, tangled in each other’s arms.

They woke next morning to reality with Angela scrambling over them to snuggle down between them. Jan put his arms about her while tears rained down his face. She put her finger up to touch his cheek. ‘
Tata
sad.’

‘No, sweetheart,
Tata
is not sad. He is happy he’s got you, his little Angel.’ He put her from him and gave her to Louise, then made a dash for the bathroom, where he locked himself in and gave way to the despair he felt. How could he leave them?

Louise did not see him again until breakfast time. He had dressed and gone out, she had no idea where. She was as emotional as he was and finding it difficult not to burst into tears herself. She had been right to tell him to go home, but it had taken every ounce of her strength. Would he go? How long before he left?

He came back as she was sitting down to breakfast with Angela and Jenny. Stan was in the cellar, taking stock. The wedding had almost drained the pub dry.

‘Enjoy your walk?’ Jenny asked as he sat down and helped himself to coffee.

‘Yes. I think I had rather too much to drink last night, I was decidedly hungover.’ He did not need to ask for translations of English sayings now and used them readily, rarely in the wrong context.

‘I doubt you’ll get much tonight, we’re almost out of beer.’

‘I must get back to Framlingham.’

‘Must you?’

‘Can’t overstay my leave. We haven’t been demobbed yet.’

‘When is that likely to be?’ Louise spoke for the first time.

‘I don’t know. I suppose people will start to leave when they
have places and jobs to go to. The trouble is that I don’t know about anything except flying. Some of the chaps are learning to be publicans, waiters, car mechanics or gardeners. I know one who has set up a scrap metal business, there’s plenty of that around, and another has rented a smallholding and is rearing chickens and pigs.’ All this, Louise guessed, was simply to make conversation; she did not think he was seriously considering any of it.

‘Being a publican is not a bad life,’ Jenny said, going to the oven to fetch the rasher of bacon and scrambled dried egg she had been keeping hot for him. ‘If you don’t mind the hours.’

‘It’s a thought,’ he said. ‘We will have to wait and see what turns up.’

‘I’ll give you a good reference. You’ve helped in the bar many a time when we’ve been busy.’

‘Thank you. I enjoyed it.’

He and Louise went to church, came back for lunch and then spent the afternoon wandering about the village with Angela in her pushchair, well wrapped up against the cold. They didn’t talk much, neither could think of anything to add to what had already been said. Everyone they met greeted them and said what a grand wedding it had been, and looked knowingly from Louise to Jan. If this embarrassed him, he did not show it. At teatime they returned to the Pheasant, and after picking at a meal neither had an appetite for, they put Angela to bed and Jan told her a story which had to include Cuddles. She was fast asleep with the teddy bear in her arms when they crept from the room.

He left in Bill Young’s taxi soon afterwards. Louise clung to him as they said goodbye. ‘Hey,’ he said, using his forefinger to tip her chin up. ‘Cheer up. It might never happen.’ Then he kissed her, settled his cap on his head and picked up his holdall. One more swift kiss and he was gone.

Louise watched the taxi out of sight and went back indoors. Goodbyes in wartime were taken on the chin as a necessary evil, but just lately they had become harder and harder to bear.

A week later Russ and Agnes came back from their honeymoon and took Tommy and Beattie away. Russ was going back to his camp to wait his turn to be sent home, but Agnes and the children were going to a camp at Tidworth in Hampshire. This was a holding camp for GI brides and their families where all the paperwork and checks would be made before they embarked on the
Queen Mary
for New York. Russ hoped to be back himself by then and would meet them there.

‘We’ll come back one day and visit,’ Agnes told Louise and Jenny. ‘And you must come and visit us. Isn’t that right, Russ?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anytime.’

‘I’m grateful to you for looking after my children so well,’ Agnes went on. As a parting present she gave Jenny and Louise a large dish each, painted with a picture of the King and Queen and inscribed ‘VE Day May 8th 1945.’

‘Can we go to the station in the pony and trap?’ Beattie asked.

‘Course you can,’ Stan said. ‘But I don’t know about all that luggage. Poor Beauty won’t be able to manage it and four passengers as well.’ There was a mountain of it, though Russ had said there was no need to take so much; they could buy what they needed when they found a home of their own. In the meantime they would be living with his parents. Louise wondered how that would work out but kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Tell you what,’ Russ said. ‘You children go in the trap and your mum and I will follow in Mr Young’s taxi with the luggage. How’s that?’

This suited everyone and Stan went out to hitch up the pony.

The pub seemed empty after they had gone. For over six years
it had echoed to the sound of children running up and down, shouting to each other, laughing, crying, making their presence felt, and now there was only Angela. Louise felt the time was fast approaching when she must do something about finding somewhere of her own. She had been putting it off, hoping that the situation with Jan might resolve itself, but she was slowly coming to the conclusion it wasn’t going to happen.

One by one Jan’s comrades were disappearing, finding jobs, going on training courses, taking the risk to go back to Poland or, like Jozef, emigrating to the Commonwealth or America where there was already a sizeable Polish population. It was about time he did something himself and he enrolled on a bricklaying and stone masonry course. Bombed houses needed rebuilding and new houses built, in Britain as well as Poland. This meant he was away from his base Monday to Friday but his weekends were often spent in Cottlesham.

On 22nd February, which was a Friday, he dashed straight from his training course to Cottlesham to be there for Angela’s fourth birthday, taking a small wooden rocking horse, which he had bought from another Polish airman who was learning to make toys. It was white with brown spots and had a mane of grey hair.

She had been allowed to wait up for him and ran to be hugged. ‘I’m four,’ she told him solemnly.

‘I know. And young ladies of four need a horse to ride, don’t you think?’ He undid the bulky package he had brought and stood the horse on the living room floor. He picked her up and sat her astride it.

‘You spoil her,’ Louise said, smiling at the child’s round-eyed delight, as he showed her how to make it rock.

‘She is worth spoiling, and so are you.’ He kissed her
hungrily. ‘What do you want to do this weekend?’

‘You could help me look for a house to rent.’

‘Why? You don’t have to leave here, do you? Jenny isn’t throwing you out?’

‘No, of course not. But the time has come to move on. Stan and Jenny have plans of their own.’

‘Where do you want to go? Back to London?’

‘No. John Langford is retiring at the end of the summer term and I’ve been offered the headship. Angela can start school then, so it fits in very nicely.’

‘You’ve got it all worked out, then?’

‘Sort of. I will be able to move into the schoolhouse when John leaves. He is going to live with his sister in Dereham, but until then I need a home of my own.’

‘Where do I fit in?’

‘Wherever you want to fit in, Jan. It’s up to you.’

She was throwing the ball back into his court. It made him feel uncomfortable, as if he were surplus to requirements. And yet he knew it was his own fault. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I get the picture.’

She laughed. ‘You use more slang than an Englishman.’

‘I’m not though, am I? I’m a Pole.’

‘I know. I wouldn’t have you any other way except for one thing and that is something we cannot help. Let’s not talk about it.’

The next day they left Angela with Jenny and went to Swaffham to call on an estate agent there. They might have saved themselves the bus fare. There was a housing shortage everywhere, even in places that had not suffered the Blitz, and they found nothing suitable. Either it was too big, too small, too derelict or too far from Cottlesham. They returned to the Pheasant with nothing accomplished.

‘I could have told you that,’ Jenny said. ‘You had better stay here.’

‘But I can’t get into the schoolhouse until August.’

‘So what? We are in no hurry to make the alterations. We can’t get the labour and materials to do them anyway. And the place is like a morgue without the children. If you and Angela go it will be worse. And you do help with the housework and in the bar. I can’t think why you took it into your head we wanted you to go.’

So she decided, unless something turned up that was ideal, she would stay where she was. The Pheasant had seen her happy, had seen her sad, had witnessed her growing love for Jan and the birth of her daughter, had been her liberation as a woman. She had so much to be thankful for.

‘Jan, there’s someone to see you,’ Tadek Sawicz, the Camp Administration Officer, said, catching Jan crossing the grass towards the Nissen hut he shared with several others. ‘He’s in my office.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He says his name is Boris Martel.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Nevertheless he must have heard of you.’

He made his way to the office and found a man he had never seen before sitting in a chair by the window. He was thin as a rake, his complexion pasty and his civilian clothes all seemed too big for him. He rose when Jan entered. ‘Flight Lieutenant Grabowski?’ he queried, holding out his hand. His fingers were long and bony, Jan noticed, as he nodded and they shook hands. ‘My name is Boris Martel.’

‘What can I do for you, Mr Martel?’

‘I have come from Warsaw.’

‘Warsaw?’ Jan sat down hurriedly on another chair. ‘You have news of my wife?’

‘Yes.’ He returned to his seat. ‘She asked me to try and find you.’

‘She is alive?’

‘She was when I left her, six months ago.’

‘Thank God. Tell me what happened? We get so little reliable information here. How is she? Is she well? How has she managed?’

‘Hold on!’ Boris smiled. ‘I can understand your anxiety, but let me tell it in my own time.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes and lighter and offered one to Boris.

‘No, thank you. I have a chest complaint and cigarettes make me cough. But don’t mind me, go ahead.’

Jan lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Go on, please.’

‘Your wife, Flight Lieutenant, was one of the heroines of the resistance. She was brave, selfless and resourceful. She deserves a medal, but she won’t get one, there is no one to give it to her.’

‘You were there?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are English.’

‘I was born in Poland, but my parents brought me to England when I was three years old. I have dual nationality. It was why I volunteered to be dropped into Poland to help the Home Army. I was one of the
cichociemni
, “the dark and silent” ones.’

‘Is that where you met Rulka?’

‘Yes’

‘Tell me what it was like.’

‘With the Germans in control you could not call your life your own. There were so many rules and regulations, you could not avoid breaking them at some time – and then, woe betide you.
Executions were commonplace.’ While Jan smoked his cigarette, Boris went on to describe in graphic detail what it had been like: the resistance in the early days, the reprisals, the Ghetto where thousands of Jews were crowded into one small area of the city and its complete destruction after their ill-fated uprising, and the Home Army Battle for Warsaw a year later in which he and Rulka had been involved. ‘There were shells and mortars landing everywhere,’ he said, ‘and tanks rumbling about shooting anything that moved and they didn’t stop if someone got in their way. They detonated mines and set fire to buildings, even churches. The church where Rulka was working with the wounded was torched with the patients inside. Rulka was lucky to escape. There were dead bodies all over the place. Without the help we had been promised, we were lost. Casualties were in their thousands and those of us that were left ran out of ammunition and starved. In the end, there wasn’t a horse, a dog, a cat or a pigeon alive in our sector of the city centre. We had to surrender. When I left in October, they were still finding bodies in the rubble.’