Homeland (6 page)

Annie gave him a tiny frown of rebuke, and for the second time that day Billy had the feeling he had revealed himself in a bad light.

She took her basket and made for the door. ‘Best be on my way.’ She paused, the silky head swung round. ‘I forgot – the shop has dropped off a bag of coal, just to keep
things going. It’s up by the gate.’

‘I’ll fetch it now.’ He sprang forward and they reached for the door handle at the same time. She withdrew her hand before it touched his. As he held the door for her, he
thought he saw her mouth tighten.

She walked quickly away up the yard and he had to stride out to catch up with her.

He said, ‘For what it’s worth I’ll have a go at Stan about the Polacks.’

‘Good idea. He’s more likely to listen to you.’

Billy scoffed, ‘He never did before.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’

‘I would. All he ever did was yell at me.’

‘He just got into the habit.’

‘Some habit.’

She had a bicycle by the gate. As she wheeled it out, he said, ‘I’d try to stay longer, you know. If it wasn’t for this job.’

‘Of course,’ she said with a bright unreadable smile.

He watched her cycle away up the track. As she turned into the lane, he thought he heard her call out to someone, but she was only singing. The tune wasn’t one he recognised.

A
S
B
ENNETT
turned in through the gates of the convalescent home he met a large military ambulance and had to pull over sharply
to let it past. Taking the winding drive between wide lawns and tall specimen trees at a more cautious pace, he spotted an elderly groundsman raking leaves into wind-blown piles, a bonfire venting
wisps of smoke, two nurses, but no inmates. Only as he approached the house did he see some pale faces staring gloomily out of the glass-fronted veranda that flanked the west wing.

The house was huge and hideous, the grandiose Gothic boast of an Edwardian sugar baron. Abandoned in the twenties, it had been requisitioned at the time of Dunkirk and adapted in haste, with
thin partition walls and copious use of cream paint. Now, more than a year after the end of the war, the paint was the colour of parchment and there was talk of winding the place down, though so
far there had been no obvious slowdown in the flow of new patients.

The half-panelled hall was dark and lofty, with high stained-glass windows on heraldic themes which threw a sinister purple and orange light over the notice boards and letter racks. The double
doors to the visitors’ room stood open, revealing knots of patients and visitors talking in church-like whispers. Bennett didn’t bother to check the room; the person he had come to see
never had visitors.

Reaching the east wing, he diligently announced himself to the nursing sister, who looked up from her paperwork and gave him a cheery wave. ‘What brings you in today, Doctor?’

‘Just a quick call,’ he said.

The day room was crowded. It had the atmosphere of a railway waiting room on a forgotten branch line. Some men were talking desultorily or reading newspapers; others stared despondently out of
the window with the air of people who know that their wait is far from over. As Bennett entered, several pairs of eyes swung his way, only to slide away again. Their awe of doctors was long gone.
They knew by heart all the medical pronouncements that dampened their hopes of an early ticket home. And when at long last there was talk of recovery and release dates, they laughed it off, for
though they longed for freedom, they feared it too: the shortage of jobs, the changes at home, the girlfriends who, during this endless drawn-out convalescence, must surely have been lured away by
healthier men with regular pay packets. While they didn’t blame the medical staff for the frustrations of convalescence, they didn’t like unnecessary reminders either, and doctors, even
part-timers like Bennett, entered the day room on sufferance.

Bennett made for a familiar face, a young gunner with a shrapnel-peppered lung who attended his weekly chest clinic, and asked him if he knew where Malinowski might be.

‘The Poles don’t hang out here, Doc,’ he said. ‘You’ll find ’em in the reading room.’

Looking around, Bennett realised it was true; there were no Poles in sight.

‘Get too fired up,’ the gunner remarked affably. ‘Drives us barmy. Always jabbering on in that lingo of theirs.’

‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ Bennett said. ‘Will I see you at clinic on Wednesday?’

‘Don’t have any better invitations, Doc, not at the moment.’

As Bennett stepped into the corridor, he saw the upright figure of Major Phipps, the military liaison officer, emerging from a door ahead. Bennett hesitated for an instant, assessing his chances
of escape. The reading room was on the far side of the major, while the one intervening door belonged to a broom cupboard. It was retreat or endure, and as the major glanced up and saw him, retreat
was no longer an option.

‘Ah, Dr Bennett. Afternoon. What bloody weather, eh?’ The major was thin and haggard and bitter because despite thirty years as a regular soldier he’d been passed over for
active service. ‘Autumn already, and we never had any damned summer.’

‘It’s stopped raining, anyway.’

‘I almost prefer the rain. At least you know where you are.’ The major squinted at him. ‘Not your usual day, is it, Doctor?’

‘No. I came to see one of the Poles.’

‘The Poles!’ the major declared with a jut of his neat little toothbrush moustache. ‘Lucky to find any still here. Matron was all for sending them packing this morning. A bunch
of them sneaked off after hours last night and kicked up the devil of a row trying to get back in. Blotto, of course.’

Bennett raised his eyebrows non-committally.

‘Matron’s not a pretty sight when she’s angry, I can tell you,’ Phipps remarked with a humourless chuckle. ‘We all took cover.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘But then the Poles aren’t making life easy for
any
of us at present.’

Preparing himself for one of the major’s litanies of complaint, begrudging the lost time, Bennett responded weakly, ‘Oh?’

‘The thing is, they’re absolutely incapable of making a decision. One of their officers came and explained this Resettlement Corps business to them weeks ago. Told ’em it was
that or repatriation. But will any of them sign up? No – they just fiddle-faddle about, blowing hot and cold. And at least five of them are flatly refusing to consider either option. Say
they’d rather die, or some such nonsense. Well, it won’t do, Bennett. It simply won’t do.’

‘It’s a hard decision for them.’

‘That’s the thing – it’s a decision. They’ve got to come down on one side or the other. Can’t sit on the fence.’

‘But they must be allowed time to think it over, surely.’

‘They’ve already had plenty of time. Can’t have more. The War Office is quite firm on that. Either they stay and prepare for civilian life, or they go home. Can’t carry
on as they are. The Polish army has absolutely no official standing, you know. We don’t recognise it any more. No one recognises it. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t even exist.’

‘It existed all right when we needed it.’

‘Good God, I’m not saying the Poles haven’t done their bit!’ the major fired back, looking offended. ‘No – brave men, the lot of them. But the war’s
over now, and it’s high time they accepted it. No good them hanging about hoping to get back into the fray, so they can go and settle a few old scores. Can’t have a mutinous
army.’

‘Mutinous?’ Bennett questioned mildly.

‘Don’t know what else you’d call it,’ the major retorted in a voice that seemed to ring down the corridors and into the stairwells. ‘Their government has told them
to stand down and go home, and they’re refusing. Can’t get much more mutinous than that. Nothing unreasonable about a government wanting its army back, you know – that’s
what governments do all the time. No’ – he glowered at a couple of patients who’d wandered out of the day room into the corridor – ‘the best thing the Poles could do
is to pack up and go home. Pronto.’

‘I’m sure they’d like nothing better, if they felt it was safe to do so.’

‘Safe?’ The major gave a dismissive sniff. ‘I wouldn’t believe everything the Poles tell you, Doctor. A great fondness for melodrama, our friends. Can’t resist
over-egging the pudding. All this talk of getting stick from their own people, of getting
shot
for their trouble . . .’ He gave a dismissive snort. ‘Stuff and
nonsense.’

‘Getting stick from those in power, I think they mean. From the new regime.’

‘But no regime’s going to go and
shoot
its own soldiers, is it?’ the major declared. ‘Not a whole damned army. No, no, the Poles are spinning you a line, I’m
afraid, Doctor. They’re devils for trying to tug the old heart strings.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the entire army would be shot.’

‘And what reason would they have anyway?’ the major bashed on. ‘Them, Poland, us . . . we all fought on the same side, for heaven’s sake.’

‘In the war.’

‘Of course in the war.’

‘I meant only that things have changed since then, that the new regime is an unknown quantity, that the Russians seem to be pulling all the strings.’

Mention of politics seemed to irritate the major. He said crossly, ‘Well, if the Poles don’t like the way their country’s being run, they should go back and sort it out for
themselves, shouldn’t they? Not our concern. Not our responsibility.’

With the sense of wasting his breath, Bennett argued in a tone of reason, ‘But we have a responsibility to make sure we’re not sending them back into danger, surely?’

‘You talk as though an army has the right to decide things for itself, Doctor. An army must always be the servant, not the master. Otherwise where would it ever end? Anarchy. Chaos. Civil
war.’ The major gave a satisfied nod, as if he’d scored a bulletproof point.

‘Yes, of course . . .’ Bennett conceded, because it was easier to do so.

The major ran a finger inside his collar and craned his neck fretfully. ‘If it was up to me, I’d have the lot of them packed and on their way by next week.’

It occurred to Bennett that there must be dozens of Phippses in the British army, men past retirement age who, lacking imagination or talent, had been cast into jobs to which they were totally
unsuited. Untroubled by doubt, they discharged their duties with a bleak efficiency.

‘The one thing they can’t do,’ the major added brusquely, his moustache shooting forward in agitation, ‘is go on as they are. Can’t have an army without official
standing. Makes a nonsense of the whole setup.’ He made to move away. ‘No avoiding a decision, Doctor. Go or stay. No sitting on the fence.’ The small defeated eyes refocused on
Bennett. ‘How’s the golf? Getting a couple of rounds in this weekend?’

‘I’m not sure I’ll have the time,’ said Bennett, who never played.

‘Well, I hope you don’t get caught by this damned weather. What a climate, eh? Never bloody stops.’

With a nod and a last jut of his moustache, the major marched off down the corridor, his heels beating impotently on the lino.

Bennett opened the door of the reading room to a low cloud of cigarette smoke and the babble of Polish voices. He found Wladyslaw Malinowski in a corner hunched over a table, a pen poised
motionless in his hand.

‘Hello, Wladyslaw. Not disturbing you, I hope?’

‘No . . . Please, Doctor.’ Wladyslaw sprang to his feet and shook Bennett’s hand as if they hadn’t met for some time, though it had been less than two days.

‘You feel better now, Doctor?’

Bennett smiled. ‘I’m meant to ask after you, Wladyslaw. Not the other way round.’

‘But you OK?’

‘Yes. It was just a spot of bronchitis.’

‘Plenty onion, raw – this is good for chest.’

‘If you say so.’

‘And for the voice too.’

‘Oh, it’s always a bit croaky,’ Bennett explained lightly.

Wladyslaw stood erect, almost to attention, until Bennett had sat down, when the Pole dropped back into his chair. He touched the sheaf of papers he had been working on. ‘My sister –
I write much to her.’

‘It’s absolutely wonderful that you’ve found her again. You must be overjoyed. Where’s she living?’

‘Lodz. This is in south-western Poland. She is married now. This is why I don’t find her before.’

‘You must have a great deal to catch up on.’

‘Sorry – catch up?’

‘A lot of news you want to exchange.’

‘Ah yes,’ Wladyslaw said with a sigh. ‘But I think perhaps I write too much.’

When language difficulties arose, Bennett often found it best to wait.

‘We have brother Aleks,’ Wladyslaw went on. ‘He is murdered with officers at Katyn – ten thousand, you know. But I think it is not good to say this.’

‘I’m so very sorry,’ Bennett murmured, thinking of the brother.

‘Sometimes letters that say too much do not arrive with families in Poland – we know this. And sometimes letters from families don’t arrive here with us.’ Shaking his
head, Wladyslaw leafed through the last few pages of his letter. ‘Yes . . . I think I write too many things. I think I make danger for Helenka.’