Magda's Daughter (14 page)

Ned looked at the rows of closed doors and whispered, ‘What number are we?'

‘Eight-one-two.' Helena halted in front of the door to their room and slid the key into the lock. The door swung open before she turned it.

‘So much for security.' Ned walked in ahead of her, flicking on the light switch. The floor was covered with the same brown plastic tiles as the reception area. The walls may once have been cream. The bed was covered with a garish, brown, red and purple nylon spread. Ned flung back the cover, single blanket and top sheet, and looked at the bottom sheet. He pressed his hand down on the mattress.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Checking for bed bugs; they gravitate towards heat. But bugs or not, we're sleeping on top of this bed, not in it.'

‘Why?'

‘It's damp. We'll spread our plastic macs out and lie on them.'

Helena opened the door to the corridor and Ned followed, he watched as she opened the door to the bathroom. She stepped smartly back into their room.

‘Close the door – I can smell it from here. But, as you said, it's only for one night.'

‘Rub it in, why don't you?' Exhaustion had made her irritable.

‘Sunshine, we're in this together. And one night isn't so long. You washed your face and cleaned your teeth on the train, didn't you?'

‘You know I did.'

‘Then come here, lie down next to me and cuddle up. Given the state of this place I don't think we should undress. If the water comes on in the morning, we can wash and change then.'

‘Change perhaps. I'm not washing in that bathroom. If it's like this in the capital, what is it going to be like in Mama's home village?'

‘We'll find out tomorrow.' Ned yawned.

He shook their macs out on to the bed, and they lay down. He wrapped his arm around Helena's shoulders, pulled her head down on to his chest and, within minutes, his breathing slowed to the regular rhythm of sleep. But Helena was too tired to rest. Wide awake, staring into the gloom, she tried not to disturb Ned while stretching her cramped and aching muscles. The rank smell in the room seemed to have intensified with the darkness, and strange noises echoed from the corridor.

Ned had jammed both their cases against the door, but she tensed every time she heard a door slam, or footsteps echo in the distance. With that faulty lock, anything could happen. She imagined armed men breaking in and beating them up for their travellers' cheques and money. Given the thieving attitude of the customs officials, any Westerner foolish enough to venture into the Eastern bloc was obviously regarded as fair game.

Long before light percolated through the thin nylon curtains, traffic noise started in the street below. She thought of Ned's father's reservations and her mother's fears about Poland. She reached down to the duffle bag she had placed beside the bed and felt the solid square shape of the airtight box Andrew John had given her. Only then did sleep finally overtake her.

Helena opened her eyes to see light straining through the nylon curtains and Ned watching her.

‘It's six o'clock. Did you sleep well?' He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her even closer to him.

‘No.'

‘Neither did I after five o'clock.'

‘What happened then?' She looked at the door. Their suitcases were still in front of it, exactly as Ned had left them.

‘The local army decided to march up and down the corridor in hobnailed boots.'

‘I didn't hear a thing.'

‘You were out for the count. Cold bath, here I come.' Ned rolled to the side of the bed and reached into his duffle for his toilet bag. ‘Unless you want to use the bathroom first.'

She lay back and rested her head on her arm. ‘No. you go.'

‘You just want me to throw out the dead bodies and clean it before you use it?'

‘Yes.'

Ned smiled. It was the sort of banter they'd exchanged before Magda had died. He went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet without lifting the lid in the hope that the smell would dissipate. It didn't. He turned on the tap in the sink. A trickle of cold water dripped into the basin. It was just as well he'd packed his electric razor. Ignoring the brown stains in the bath, he put in the plug and, despite the warning about hot water, turned on both taps. The hot tap coughed and wheezed but added no water to the thin, brownish stream that came from the cold. The only towel was thin, coarse and grey, and the soap was as hard as a rock. It refused to lather even when he left it lying in the water.

After washing as best he could and changing into fresh clothes, he returned to the bedroom to see Helena lying just as he'd left her.

‘If we take the cases down to the dining room, we won't have to come back up again.'

‘I wouldn't be happy leaving them here anyway.' She left the bed and scratched her arms. ‘I wish you hadn't mentioned fleas last night. I've been itching ever since.'

Ned looked around. ‘I wouldn't worry, sunshine. I've a feeling this is too down-market for creepy-crawlies.'

The clerk at reception had been replaced by a thick-set, stocky man, who looked like a caricature of an Eastern European secret policeman.

Helena asked for their passports. The man moved his finger slowly down the list of half a dozen names on the register before opening a drawer and removing the forms they had filled out the night before. He took a sheet of paper and laboriously added up a list of figures, totalled the amount and handed it to her.

‘Passports after you've paid,' he said in Polish.

Ned checked the amount. ‘It's much more than the suggested amount for a night in a hotel room.'

‘This is too high,' Helena complained.

‘Not for a first-class hotel,' the man growled in English, parrying Ned's stare. ‘Top class.'

‘No lift, no hot water, damp sheets,' Ned countered.

‘Top-class hotel,' the man repeated, holding out his hand for payment.

‘Top-class hotels have working lifts and running hot and cold water twenty-four hours a day,' Ned insisted.

Anxious to put an end to the staring match, Helena spoke to the clerk in Polish. ‘The lift isn't working. We had to carry our cases to the top floor and back down again. There was no hot water in the bathroom and the bed was damp.'

The man checked her passport. ‘You are English?'

‘I was born in Poland.'

‘I'll take ten per cent from the bill,' he offered.

‘Fifty,' Helena demanded, prepared to settle for twenty.

‘You are a good Pole.' The man laughed. ‘Half it is.' He took the bill, crossed out the amount and halved it.

‘Thank you. We'll need a taxi to take us to the station after breakfast.'

‘What time do you need to be there?'

‘Nine o'clock.' Helena ventured a smile, and the man smiled back.

‘It will be here at half past eight.'

Ned paid the bill. They retrieved the passports and headed for the dining room.

‘Congratulations on saving us some money and me from getting punched by that heavy.'

‘He wouldn't have hurt you.' Helena held the door open for Ned.

‘I'm not so sure.'

‘As for the bill,' she closed the door behind them, ‘Mama brought me up to ask for a discount if I received bad service.'

‘In that case, I suggest you go back to the desk and demand another twenty per cent. I hadn't expected much of breakfast, but this is worse than I imagined.' Ned surveyed the baskets of shrivelled bread rolls, oily blobs of margarine, dishes of dried-up jam, and plates of curled-up meat and cheese. ‘Let's hope the coffee is drinkable.'

Ned shook Helena gently. ‘The train is slowing from tortoise to snail pace. I think we're almost at Zamosc.'

Helena opened her eyes to find that she was lying on Ned's shoulder. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘I didn't mean to sleep. But it feels as though we've been travelling for months, not days.'

‘Given the night's rest we had, you're forgiven. Besides, having the carriage to ourselves meant you didn't disturb anyone other than me with your snoring.'

‘I don't snore.' Helena wrapped her arms around her duffle bag and rested her chin on it.

‘How can you possibly know?' Ned eyed her in concern. ‘You feeling OK?'

‘I've felt better,' Helena conceded.

‘It's probably that breakfast.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Midday. I'm ravenous. How about we find somewhere to eat at the station and then go on to the village?'

‘I'd rather eat in the village.' Helena left her seat and began to check her belongings.

‘You can't wait to get there, can you?'

‘No.' she replied honestly.

‘Then we'll compromise. We'll look for food and eat it on the way.'

‘What food?' she questioned. ‘You saw the queues outside that shop in Warsaw. The taxi driver warned us that sometimes people wait all day just for a loaf of bread and a bag of potatoes. We'll be better off in the village.'

‘What makes you think that?' Ned lifted down their suitcases from the rack.

‘Food is produced in the country.'

‘Nothing we had for breakfast ever saw anything as healthy as the country.'

‘Then where did it come from?'

‘I'd prefer not to think about it. But I'd stake my life on that butter never seeing a cow or a dairy. You have the name of the village?'

‘As if I could forget it.' She opened the door to the corridor as the train juddered to a halt.

‘I wish I spoke the language so I could help you, sunshine, but I can't, so it's over to you.' Ned picked up their cases and followed her.

‘Is it our clothes, or have the locals got a sixth sense when it comes to detecting Westerners?' Ned asked.

‘Both.' Helena looked around the small station. There was a queue outside the ticket office. A bored-looking police officer was leaning against the wall next to it, watching everyone who walked in or out of the main entrance.

The noise was deafening. Porters in blue overalls rattled trolleys loaded with mail sacks, parcels, and luggage over uneven stone flagstones. A woman with a high-pitched voice listed train arrivals and departures over a whistling tannoy system, which did nothing to help a young girl who was trying to soothe a fractious baby. Two drunks were singing a mournful duet in front of a one-legged man who was playing a piano accordion. And a pack of dogs was fighting in the street outside. Helena hitched her own and Ned's duffle bags higher on her shoulder and gripped the holdall. ‘We have to ask for directions to my mother's village, so we may as well go to the most obvious person.'

‘PC Plod?' Ned picked up their cases and followed her.

‘Ssh. More Polish people speak English than the other way around.'

‘If you're trying to adopt a low profile, you're too late.' He returned the police officer's hostile glare.

Helena walked up to the officer and greeted him in Polish. He straightened and moved away from the wall.

She explained that they wanted to travel on to her mother's home village and asked if it would be possible to continue their journey by train. He continued to look at her but said nothing. Assuming he'd had trouble understanding her Polish, she repeated her question slowly.

‘Never heard of anywhere by that name,' he finally answered.

The clerk in the ticket office took a break between customers, slid back the glass panel that fronted his counter and leaned forward. ‘No trains go there. There is a bus but it only runs once a week. On Thursday. It leaves here at seven in the morning and gets into the village at ten. It leaves the village at five in the afternoon and returns here at eight o'clock at night. Every Saturday the journey is reversed. The bus leaves the village at seven and gets in here at ten so the villagers can do their shopping. It leaves for the village at five.'

‘You sure?' the officer questioned. ‘I've never heard of the place.'

‘It's the back end of a cabbage patch,' the clerk sneered. ‘My mother-in-law's sister lives there.' He turned to Helena, and she sensed that he was eyeing her jeans and sweatshirt. She was beginning to wish she'd bought a pair of the polyester slacks the locals were wearing. ‘It's small, a hundred people at most live there, and that's if you include those who live on the farms within a day's walk of the main square. There's nothing there for tourists.'

‘We're not tourists,' Helena looked around for Ned. She was reassured to find him standing behind her.

‘Why are you going there?' the officer asked.

‘My mother was born there.'

The police officer looked from her to Ned. ‘You're visiting relatives?'

It was the one question Helena was beginning to dread, simply because every official she met asked it. Her passport bore her surname. If she had relatives in the village, would they suffer if she acknowledged them? Would they suffer more if she didn't and it was subsequently discovered they were related?

‘I have no relatives living there that I'm aware of.' She crossed her fingers under cover of her pocket. It was almost true. If she did have any relatives in the village, none of them had acknowledged her or replied to her letter. ‘But my father is buried there. I would like to see his grave.' That at least was the truth.

‘There's a hotel across the road.' The officer pointed towards the main entrance to the station. ‘You can stay there until the bus leaves on Thursday morning.'

Now that Helena was within reach of her mother's home village, she had no intention of breaking her journey to accommodate the vagaries of the local bus timetable.

‘There's a bus on Thursday,' she informed Ned.

Ned dropped the suitcases. ‘Thursday! How far is the village?'

‘It takes the bus three hours.'

‘We'll have to hire a taxi.'