Homeland (7 page)

While Bennett liked and admired the Poles – it was almost impossible not to – and would always defend them against the Phippses of this world, there were moments when he
couldn’t decide how far their ardent and excitable natures coloured their view of events, particularly those affecting their homeland, for which they had a quite extraordinary passion. It
wasn’t a question of deliberate exaggeration, as Phipps liked to insist, but of being carried away by strong emotion and intense moral indignation.

‘When do you expect to get a reply?’

‘I think not before two, maybe three weeks.’

‘Well, when you do, I’m sure your sister will let you know if you’re speaking too openly.’

‘You are right. Of course!’

Wladyslaw gave a sudden smile, open and beguiling. He was slim and energetic, with clear grey eyes, high-boned cheeks and fine features. His moods were like a barometer that switches abruptly
from stormy to sunny without transition. He could laugh gaily, sink into gloom, argue forcefully, and pull one’s leg, all, it seemed, within a matter of seconds. Beneath these weather shifts,
however, a steady intelligence flowed. He looked on the world with an inquisitive gaze that missed little and tolerated much. The only thing he could not stomach was what he described as organised
evil. On this score Wladyslaw found little to choose between the Germans and the Russians, a view he was prepared to debate at length with anyone who cared to take him on. He had been at university
at the outbreak of war, studying literature, although he had an almost equal passion for philosophy and history. Only the finer points of the English language seemed to confound and frustrate his
agile mind.

Watching him fold the letter and slide it into the pocket of his tunic, it seemed to Bennett that, despite the quick smile, he wasn’t looking too fit today, that the pale skin was
unnaturally tight over the high cheekbones, and that beneath the clear grey eyes the shadows were more marked than usual.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. ‘How’s the chest? How’s the leg?’

‘All is good! I feel – how is it? Right as rain?’

Bennett smiled. ‘That’s it.’

‘I learn this from beautiful lady in pub. I learn “right as rain”, “tickety-boo” and . . .’ Wladyslaw searched his memory. ‘“In
pink”?’

‘In
the
pink.’

Wladyslaw grimaced gently. For him, as for most Poles, the devil was in the definite and indefinite articles. He repeated obediently, ‘In
the
pink.’

‘I suppose pubs are as good a place as any to learn English.’

‘But cider is not good, I tell you. Not good for stomach, not good for head.’

‘Ah yes. I heard there was some trouble with Matron.’

Wladyslaw glanced towards the far side of the room where four young Poles were talking volubly in their own language. ‘OK, some of our boys, they come back late. They make noise. Just
young, you know. Long time away from home. I go to Matron, I say sorry. I ask please’ – he pressed his palms together in an attitude of prayer – ‘that we are permitted to
stay here because in our heart we are all good boys.’ He laughed long and easily, before adding in a more reflective tone, ‘But perhaps not good for us when boys do this too much.
English – they think Poles always make noise, always drink too much.’

Bennett completed the litany to himself: And always charm the women off their feet.

‘They get bad idea about us. They think we are good for nothing.’

‘They could never think that, Wladyslaw. No, no.’ Bennett heard himself give a forced laugh. ‘The British are pretty good at letting off steam themselves, you know.’

‘Letting off steam?’

Bennett mimed a rush of air from the ears.

Wladyslaw absorbed this with a grin before looking away. When he spoke again, his tone was subdued. ‘We left pub quick last night.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Some English boys, they want to fight us.’

‘Something to do with the beautiful lady perhaps?’

Wladyslaw gave a small expressive shrug. ‘Maybe.’

They both knew the truth probably lay elsewhere. Following the lead of the trade unions, some of the more hysterical British newspapers had been whipping up fears over the unexpected influx of
Poles.

‘But you managed to avoid trouble, did you?’

Wladyslaw gave a silent laugh. ‘Good soldier – he knows when to run, when to fight.’

‘As a nation I’m afraid we have a great talent for xenophobia.’ Misinterpreting Wladyslaw’s silence, Bennett began to explain, ‘Xenophobia is the—’

‘I understand this word OK,’ Wladyslaw said, his face set at changeable. ‘But British government, trade union – we get same story both ways. Poles are bad people
now.’

‘Nonsense, Wladyslaw! Nobody could ever think such a thing after your fantastic war service. Not
bad
.’ Aware that he was protesting too much, Bennett paused abruptly.
‘This government’s still very new to the job. They’re still burning with socialist idealism. Give them a bit more time and they’ll see the injustice of it all.’

‘You think?’ Wladyslaw shifted forward in his chair and fixed Bennett with a hard stare. ‘Liaison officer – Major Phipps – you know this man?’

Bennett sighed, ‘Yes.’

‘OK, I tell you – yesterday he come and say to Poles from Second Corps, why you boys not want to go home? We tell him this is simple – we have no home. Our home is part of
Ukraine or Byelorusse now. And he look at us like we’re crazy people. Like he not know that eastern Poland is gone now, not part of Poland no more. And this is military man! This is liaison
officer!’ Wladyslaw spoke with a fervour that, not for the first time, caused Bennett to gaze at him in fascination. ‘Then Major Phipps, he says OK, if you not like government so much,
why you not go back and get another? And we say, good joke, and we laugh. And he is angry with us. He gets like this’ – in a vivid parody, Wladyslaw thrust his chin up, tightened his
lips and glared down his nose – ‘and he says not laughing matter. And we say, sure, is laughing matter when British understand nothing, when British talk like this to us. Sure –
this is funny!’

Bennett could imagine how well this had gone down with Major Phipps.

In a very Polish gesture, Wladyslaw pressed a fist hard against his chest and said passionately, ‘This is real deep hurt for us, Doctor. That British not hear what we say. We, who are your
real true friends.’ The hand swung forward, palm open. ‘That you not believe us when we tell you that in all of history Russia is never to be trusted. Not with us.
And
’
– he pointed a warning finger at Bennett – ‘not with Britain also, although you forget this, I think.’

The thick smoke had begun to irritate Bennett’s lungs and he coughed a little. ‘I couldn’t pretend that history’s our strong point, Wladyslaw. But for what it’s
worth, I think attitudes are beginning to change.’

‘But too late for us, I think. Britain, America – they will not fight for Poland second time.’

‘No.’ Bennett turned aside to cough again. ‘What about you, Wladyslaw? Have you had any more thoughts about going home?’

Wladyslaw’s passion had subsided as quickly as it had come. He leant back in his chair and said in a tone of gentle melancholy, ‘I wait for news from Helenka, but I think it is not
good for me to return.’

The coughing took a sudden grip on Bennett’s throat and he spluttered helplessly. Springing up, grabbing his bag for him, Wladyslaw ushered him solicitously towards the door. ‘Come,
Doctor. Come.’ He led the way out into the corridor. ‘These Polish boys – they smoke too much. They are no good for you.’

‘Thanks, Wladyslaw.’

As Bennett’s coughing subsided they began to stroll in the direction of the main hall.

‘What about your comrades here?’ Bennett asked at last. ‘Have they come to any decisions?’

‘One, two, want to go home. All others, they are too worried that Stalin shoot them damn quick.’

Even allowing for the colourful effect of Wladyslaw’s limited vocabulary, Bennett absorbed this with a recurrence of his old uncertainty. While he accepted that the Russians were as
capable of brutality as any other nation, he found himself in the somewhat unlikely position of sharing Phipps’s scepticism as to the nature of the retribution that awaited the exiled
army.

Sensing something of Bennett’s doubt, Wladyslaw argued sternly, ‘Some men who are gone to Poland already, no one get news from them again. Not ever. Before they go, they fix signal
with comrades. Like letter done in pen – is good to follow, letter done in . . .’ Losing the word, he resorted to French. ‘
Crayon?
’

‘Pencil.’

‘Letter in pencil is
not
good to follow. But after these men arrive home, comrades get no letter, not in pen, not in pencil, not in anything. These men who go home – some are
sent to labour camps and some are shot damn quick. Don’t make no difference. Result is same both ways.’

Reaching a window to the garden, they paused to stare out into the dusk.

‘Mightn’t there be safety in numbers?’ Bennett asked. ‘I heard that a ship with five thousand Poles was leaving for Poland next week. From Scotland, I think it
was.’

‘Where you read this?’

‘In
The Times
, so far as I remember.’

‘Russia is not only country good at propaganda, I think,’ said Wladyslaw gloomily.

From the end of the long echoing corridor a gong sounded. It was barely five. Bennett always forgot how early the patients were expected to eat in these places. There was the bang of a door,
then another, and men poured into the corridor.

‘You’re not suggesting the report’s untrue?’ Bennett asked.

‘OK, maybe it’s true,’ Wladyslaw conceded airily. ‘But I think it is not whole truth. I think these men come from west, middle Poland. I think they not live under
Russians before. I think they not educated people.’

‘Lack of education is no bar to judgement, surely.’

Wladyslaw stared at him blankly for a moment. ‘I mean, Doctor, it is bad thing to be from educated class in Poland now. Educated class are bourgeois. They are enemies of—’
Losing the word, Wladyslaw windmilled a hand in the air.

‘The new order?’

‘Of new socialism.’

Wladyslaw gave one of his sudden smiles, so warm, so vibrant that the conversation of the last few minutes might have belonged to another day. ‘My friend!’ he declared affectionately
for no apparent reason.

A little startled but far from displeased, Bennett gave a short laugh. ‘Now, Wladyslaw, I wanted to ask – are you still interested in taking some work?’

‘Ah yes. Good to work, I think. Good to stop being lazy no-good.’

The laziness had become something of a joke between them. Badly wounded at Monte Cassino, lucky not to have lost his right foot let alone the lower half of his leg, Wladyslaw had been patched
together in Italy, only for complications to set in. After two further operations, he’d been shipped to England to convalesce. Somewhere along the way he’d contracted pneumonia and
septicaemia, from which he’d only just recovered. One way and another, he’d been in and out of hospitals and sanatoria for more than two years.

‘That job on the dairy farm,’ Bennett said lightly, ‘I’m afraid they didn’t need anyone after all.’

‘No problem.’

Bennett was a poor liar, he could never manage to look the other person straight in the eye, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Wladyslaw the truth, that the farmer had flatly refused
to consider a Pole. If Wladyslaw saw through the deceit he gave no sign.

‘There’s another farmer I’m trying,’ Bennett went on. ‘An old chap with an invalid wife. But I haven’t got an answer yet.’

‘OK.’

‘The farm’s in the wetlands,’ Bennett added. ‘They grow withies there.’

‘Withies?’

‘Willow shoots, used to make baskets and hurdles and charcoal.’

‘Willow – OK. I know about this. Plenty willow in Poland.’

‘I’ll try to get a definite answer for you over the weekend. But what about the long term, Wladyslaw? Farm labouring isn’t going to get you very far.’

Wladyslaw gazed out through the window. The dying light made his face appear unmarked; but for his wise old eyes, he might have been eighteen and fresh out of school.

‘You haven’t given any more thought to university?’

‘Polish literature not so big in universities here.’

‘What about the Scottish universities, though? Apparently they’re taking a good number of Polish students. They might well have a literature course.’

‘No, Doctor. I am too old to start again.’

He was all of twenty-five. Bennett, at fifty-six, was painfully aware of how ancient he must seem to someone like Wladyslaw.

‘Perhaps I go to Australia, Canada . . . Or I stay here. Why not?’ But he spoke dreamily, without focus.

‘Well, if you do decide to go abroad, I recommend you apply for your visa without delay. I believe there’s a considerable backlog.’

Wladyslaw smiled good-naturedly but without interest. Recognising a lost cause, Bennett bent down and took from his Gladstone bag the slim volume he had selected from his shelves that
morning.

‘I thought you might like to test your English on this.’

Wladyslaw took the book with a small exclamation of pleasure and began to leaf through it.

‘I thought you might like to learn about the Somerset Levels.’

Wladyslaw rolled the word around his tongue. ‘
Levels.
’

‘It’s the name for the wetlands.’

‘I hear this word. And I have seen this place. When I arrive in train, we pass through water. Water everywhere, very wide, both sides. And very close under train. So close that I think
train is like a
ship
.’

‘That was the Levels all right.’

‘And this is where you live, Doctor?’ he asked with mock astonishment. ‘In water?’

‘Not actually on the bit that floods. Our house is on raised ground.’

‘Good thing, perhaps.’

‘Yes, we rather think so.’ Bennett stood up. ‘But I mustn’t keep you from your meal.’

‘This is no big problem. I think I give up on this food soon.
Tapioca
. . . What is this thing, Doctor? For farm animals, I think, not men.
And
. . .’ He made an
operatic gesture, pressing a palm to his heart with a look of great suffering, and winced expressively. ‘This beans in sugar!’