A Different World (26 page)

‘Friends of the groom,’ Louise said, as the smiling face of Jan came into her vision. She had forgotten he had been standing beside her when the picture was taken. It brought an enormous
lump to her throat. She looked up and saw Tommy looking at her with a questioning look in his eye and slowly shook her head.

‘That’s me,’ he said, pointing, ‘and that’s Beattie. She’s married now.’

‘Are you married?’ Angela demanded.

He didn’t seem to mind the question, though her grandmother tut-tutted. ‘No. I was engaged once, but that didn’t work out either, so here I am, thirty years old and fancy-free.’

‘Twelve years older than me,’ she said.

‘Yes. I remember when you were born. Everyone made a great fuss of you.’

‘Tell us your plans,’ Louise said quickly. The past, so long subdued, had suddenly come up from the depths and was threatening to spill over. ‘Are you here to stay?’

‘Yes. I must find a job. I’m an aeronautical engineer. And then I have to find somewhere to live. In the meantime I’m staying at the Pheasant.’

‘You’ve seen Stan and Jenny, then?’

‘Yes, they don’t change, do they? Stan’s hair is as thick and white as ever and Jenny doesn’t alter – a bit greyer, perhaps, and a bit rounder. You haven’t changed, though. I would know you anywhere. As for Angela, I wouldn’t have known her if I’d met her in the street. From being a plump little toddler, she has turned into a real beauty.’

Angela felt herself blushing. ‘Well, thank you for that, kind sir. I wouldn’t have known you either.’

‘I’m looking forward to exploring my old haunts and renewing old acquaintances.’

‘I’ll show you round tomorrow, if you like,’ Angela offered. ‘Then you can tell me all about what it was like in wartime.’

‘Fine, I’d like that. I’ll call for you, shall I?’

He left soon after that to go back to the Pheasant, accompanied to the door by Louise. ‘I hope I haven’t been an embarrassment to you,’ he said in a low voice.

‘No, of course not. I’ve loved seeing you again.’

‘But Angela doesn’t know about Jan?’

‘I never seemed to get around to telling her. My mother is a bit strait-laced. She has always insisted I had a husband who died in the war. It was easier to go along with that, especially given my role in the community. There are so many newcomers and they might not understand.’

‘I won’t say anything.’

‘Thank you.’

She watched him go down the garden path, then shut the door and returned to the sitting room. It was empty. She went to the kitchen to find her mother washing up the coffee cups.

She picked up a tea towel. ‘Where’s Angela?’

‘Gone up to her room. She said she had some revision to do.’ She paused. ‘That young man could spell trouble.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He could spill the beans about you-know-who.’

Louise hated the way her mother would never put a name to Jan. ‘Why should he? In any case, I think it’s about time I told Angela the truth.’

‘Then you’d make a liar out of me.’

‘You were the one who started the deception, Mum, telling the new parson I was a widow.’

‘How was I to know the flower ladies were in the church and listening in? Anyway, it was better for you. You have a position in the community to maintain. If the truth reached the ears of the local education authority, you could lose your job and your house.’

‘That’s nonsense, Mum. People aren’t so judgmental nowadays.’

‘They might have been back then.’

Her mother had been living with her, ever since her father’s death from a stroke in 1950. He had improved so much under the exercise regime, he had been able to haul himself out of bed and into the wheelchair. He would wheel himself about the flat and follow her mother into the kitchen which, until then, had been her sanctuary. ‘He sits there watching me,’ she once told Louise. ‘I’m sure he hates me.’

‘Why?’

‘I can walk and he can’t.’

He had fallen out of his wheelchair onto the kitchen floor. ‘We were having lunch and he tried to reach for a knife,’ her mother explained when she arrived after being telephoned. ‘I had it in my hand and he grabbed my wrist and made me drop it. I don’t know if he was bending to try and pick it up off the floor or whether it was the stroke that made him fall out of the chair. It was only a table knife, not sharp enough to harm him, but he didn’t move. I felt his pulse but I knew he’d gone. The doctor came as soon as I rang and signed the death certificate. They’ve taken him to the mortuary.’

Louise had taken over, arranged the funeral and afterwards persuaded her mother to come and live with her, which was when the deception over her supposed widowhood had begun. But oh, how she wished Mum wouldn’t interfere and find fault so much.

‘Where do you want to go first?’ Angela asked. It was a warm day and she had dressed in a printed cotton dress with a cinched-in waist, round neck and cap sleeves. She knew it showed off her figure and the blue of its background suited her fair complexion.

‘Wherever you like,’ he said. ‘I want to see it all and drink in the nostalgia.’

They strolled up the lane to the middle of the village. She was
acutely aware of his tall handsome presence at her side and hoped she would meet some of her friends so that she could show him off. ‘What was it like during the war? Mum hardly ever talks about it, and Granny only goes on about the Blitz.’

‘The Blitz was pretty awful, but we didn’t get any bombs in Cottlesham. A German fighter came over low once and machine-gunned the village. One of the shells went right through your pram. Thank goodness you weren’t in it at the time.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Did you know my father?’

‘Oh.’

‘You did know him, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Not much. Granny always says the past is gone and best forgotten, but I don’t think Mum has forgotten.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’

‘You know that wedding picture she showed us yesterday? There was an airman standing beside Mum. Was that my father?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Why are you so cagey? Is there some dreadful secret about him I’m not supposed to know?’

‘I don’t know. I was only a child at the time, but I don’t think so.’

‘Come on, Tommy, we all lived together at the Pheasant, you can’t not have known what was going on.’

‘Why don’t you ask your mother?’

‘Because I think it would hurt her to think I was dissatisfied with my life.’

‘Are you dissatisfied?’

‘Not at all. I’m just curious, that’s all. I’ve often wondered why Mum never speaks about my father. I know, or at least, I’m pretty sure, they never married, but what’s that matter these days? Was he shot down?’

‘I’ve no idea what happened to him. Can we change the subject?’

‘OK.’ She wasn’t going to get anything else out of him, which was frustrating. His arrival had renewed her curiosity about the man who had fathered her. ‘This is the village store, it’s run by the Co-op now. It has most things but for anything big you have to go to Swaffham.’

‘Do they sell postage stamps? I’ve a letter to post to my Mom.’

‘No, there’s a post office on the corner.’

He went in, bought stamps and posted his letter, and then they continued down the lane, past the gates of the Hall. ‘They’re going to knock that down.’ she told him. ‘It was costing too much to keep up. I think Sir Edward has gone to live in France. Shall we go back across the common?’

‘Yes, it was my favourite spot as a boy, all wild and overgrown. We used to play cowboys and Indians there and have fights between the evacuees and the village boys.’

‘I think the council would like to build houses on it, but it’s common land and there’s been a hue and cry over it. Mum is very active trying to save it.’

The common was rough, with hummocks and dips, the grass uncultivated and the brambles rampant. They walked in silence for a few minutes. She was still thinking of the conversation about her father and wished someone would be more forthcoming about him. Mysteries were all very well in novels, but she didn’t like them in real life.

‘What are you planning to do when you leave school?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a provisional place at Homerton, depending on my results.’

‘What do you want to study?’

‘European history.’ She paused, then went on, ‘Do you like dancing?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a hop on in Swaffham tonight. Would you like to take me?’

‘Haven’t you got a boyfriend to go with?’

‘No, I finished with him. He said derogatory things about Mum.’

‘Then you did right. I’d have punched his nose if I’d heard him.’

She laughed. ‘So, will you come?’

‘It’s a date.’

Angela found her mother in the sitting room with the inevitable pile of exercise books in front of her. ‘Where’s Granny?’

‘She’s gone into Swaffham with Mrs Sadler. They want to find some canvas to renew the hassocks.’

‘Good. I want to ask you something.’ She went to the drawer, brought out the photograph album and turned its pages to find the picture of the wedding. She laid it on top of the book her mother was marking and pointed. ‘Is that man my father?’

Louise looked up at her daughter. ‘What has Tommy been saying?’

‘Nothing. He was very cagey. You haven’t answered my question.’

‘Yes, sweetheart, that’s your father.’

‘Then he couldn’t have been killed in the war, could he? The war was over when this was taken. Why did you let me believe he had?’

‘It was easier than trying to explain.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘I don’t know.’ Louise sighed. ‘The last time I saw him was soon after that picture was taken.’

‘He abandoned us?’

‘No, Angela, abandoned is not the right word.’ She shut the album and turned towards her daughter, who had a mulish expression Louise knew only too well. It plainly said she was not going to let the matter drop. ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you about him. His name was Jan Grabowski …’

Angela sank into a chair beside her mother. ‘You mean he wasn’t English?’

‘He was Polish and I loved him very, very much and he loved me and he adored you. He was your beloved
tata
– that’s Polish for “daddy”.’

‘
Tata
,’ Angela murmured. ‘I remember that word now you say it. But you didn’t marry him, did you?’

‘No, I didn’t. He had a wife in Poland. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead until the end of the war, when he learnt she was alive. Of course, he had to go back to her.’

‘Of course,’ Angela repeated with heavy irony. ‘Never mind us.’

‘He minded very much, Angela. Leaving you broke his heart, but he had promised his wife he would go back, and besides, he was Catholic, he could not have divorced her.’

‘And you haven’t heard from him since?’

‘No.’

‘If you loved him, how could you let him go?’

‘I had no choice. I had to do what I thought was right.’

‘Do you still think you were right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I could not have done it. I’d have fought to keep him.’

‘Maybe. Times were different then.’

‘Do you think he ever thinks of us?’

‘If he is alive, I am sure he does.’

‘Tell me about him. Am I like him?’

‘Yes, you are, and since you have grown up, more so. I see him every day in you. You have inherited his fair hair and blue eyes, but it’s not only his looks – it’s the way you hold your head, the way you smile, your love of life and your stubbornness when things don’t go the way you want them to.’

‘Does that make you sad?’

‘Sometimes, when I think he hasn’t watched you grow up as I have. He would have been proud of you.’

‘Is he the reason you never married?’

‘No one could take his place, it wouldn’t be fair to the man I married.’

‘Have you ever thought about trying to trace him?’

‘I couldn’t come between him and his wife, it would not have been right. In any case, Poland is behind the Iron Curtain. It would have been next to impossible, especially in the early days after the war.’

‘But not so bad now, surely? Stalin is dead and the Russians are losing their grip on their satellite states.’

‘It’s too late now, Angela. There’s been too much water under the bridge. We’ve all changed. The world has changed.’ They heard the back door open and close. ‘Granny’s back.’

‘What does she think about all this? She does know, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, she knows.’ It was said with a sigh. ‘She has her own angle on it.’

Angela laughed. ‘Yes, I imagine she would have.’ She picked up the album and put it away in the drawer, just as Faith came into the room.

‘We bought yards and yards of canvas,’ she said, dumping a carrier bag on the table. ‘I’m going to design some cross stitch for the ladies to embroider.’

‘Good,’ Louise said. ‘I’ll get some tea, shall I?’

‘Tommy is taking me to the dance tonight,’ Angela said. ‘Uncle Stan’s going to lend him his car.’

‘He’s way too old for you,’ her grandmother said.

‘Granny, he is only going to take me to the hop, we aren’t planning a steamy love affair.’

‘And you are too cheeky for your own good.’

‘Mum explained to me about my dad,’ Angela told Tommy as they danced. He danced beautifully, not only the old-fashioned waltz, foxtrot and quickstep but swing, bop and rock and roll. When they turned up, Rosemary had stared with her mouth open. Angela had introduced them and, much to Toby’s annoyance, Rosemary tried to flirt with him. Tommy bore it with good humour, but otherwise stayed close by Angela’s side.

‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘He was a good man, one of the best, and a brave man too.’

‘He didn’t die. He went back to Poland, he’s probably still alive. I want to try and trace him.’

They couldn’t talk and dance at the same time. He stopped and took her hand to lead her to one side where there were some chairs. He sat down and pulled her down beside him. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

‘Yes, I do. I want to find out what happened to him.’

‘You might be an embarrassment if he’s got a wife and family.’