Magda's Daughter (18 page)

Josef shrugged. ‘It may not suit the Pope or the Vatican to have an unqualified lay man giving the Holy Sacrament, but it suits us Poles. And it doesn't mean that we, as a nation, are any less devout than those who have the services of fully ordained priests.'

‘Then you are a Catholic?' Desperate to find someone who would understand her mission to bury her mother's ashes in her father's grave, Helena opted for a direct approach.

‘The villagers trust me to conduct the ceremonies that mark the important days of their lives. It is a sacred trust and I treat it as such. I conduct them the old way, but I am also careful to fill in the Party paperwork. That way, no one in authority can complain.'

‘Isn't that a little cynical, not to mention hypocritical?' Ned asked.

‘If you don't mind me saying so, Ned, it is obvious that you haven't been in Poland long.' Josef paused, as the street ended and the square opened out in front of them. ‘It won't take you long to see all that this village has to offer. Is there anywhere you would like to go first?'

‘The church,' Helena said decisively.

‘As I told you, it is closed and has been since 1945. Anyone caught tampering with the locks would be taken away.' He lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper and leaned close to Ned. ‘Locked in dark dungeons, tortured and never seen again.'

‘I don't mean inside the church.' Helena's mouth twitched at Ned's annoyed expression. ‘My mother corresponded with her family after the war. She told me that they had put up a headstone in the churchyard to mark my father's grave. I would like to see it. That's if we are allowed to go into the churchyard?'

‘We still use it to bury people because we have no other cemetery. Your father's name was Janek?'

‘Yes, Adam Janek. Have you heard of him?'

Josef glanced at her quickly, then turned aside. ‘Yes.'

‘What have you heard?' she asked, but Josef was already striding ahead into the dusty square. A dozen children were playing a game of catch there. They saw Josef and rushed over.

‘My pupils,' he explained. ‘Do you mind if I tell them that you are from Britain?'

Helena was irritated by Josef's refusal to answer her question, but it didn't stop her from smiling at the children. ‘Of course not,' she said.

After prompting from Josef, the children lined up in front of Helena and Ned, and said, ‘Welcome to Poland,' in English. Helena thanked them in Polish, and they ran off.

‘That makes me wish that I'd taken the trouble to learn a few words of the language before we came here.' Ned watched the children return to their game.

‘It's not too late. You're in the right place to learn.'

They walked to the church. The wrought-iron gate was thick with rust, and creaked loudly when Josef lifted the chain that held it in place and pushed it open.

Planks of pine had been nailed over the church windows, and metres of metal chains, held in place by enormous padlocks, stretched across the doors.

‘Are they expecting it to be stormed by troops?' Ned asked.

‘It's no more than they've done to other churches in the area. As you see, the local people have pasted posters on the door to commemorate their dead. It's customary to do so every year for the first three years and every seven after that. In the old days they would have been put up inside, with masses said and candles lit for the souls of the departed.'

The weather-stained posters bore the photographs, names and dates of the deceased. Some were so faded they were almost indecipherable. Others looked as though they had just left the printing press. But although the church was boarded up, the graveyard was immaculate. The grass verges neatly cut, the trees trimmed and fresh flowers on most of the graves.

‘This is a wonderful surprise.' Helena dropped her voice to a whisper without knowing why. ‘I expected to find the cemetery overgrown and the graves derelict and neglected.'

‘The people in this village honour their dead,' Josef said, ‘especially the martyrs who died during the war. That is Anna's sister's grave.' He pointed to a granite tombstone, decorated with a sculpted angel. A white rambling rose obscured the name and dates.

‘Beautiful flowers,' Helena commented.

‘Anna planted the rose. She says the blooms remind her of Matylda, and if she can't see the name and the dates she can pretend that she is still alive.'

They walked around the corner of the church. There were fewer flowers in front of the older graves, but the stones were still clean and the area around them tended.

‘Everyone in the village does what they can to keep this churchyard neat and tidy,' Josef said proudly. ‘After all, unless we leave the village to make a life elsewhere in the world – and not many of us are able to, or even want to – we will end up here.'

‘You have a rota?' Ned asked.

‘We don't need one. If someone visits a family grave and sees that someone else's headstone needs cleaning or that a plot needs weeding, they do it.'

‘But the grass is freshly cut.' Helena stared at a photograph of two young children set behind a glass plate sunk into one of the headstones. The grave was tiny, the image heartbreaking.

‘The retired farmers see that as their responsibility.'

‘Do you know where my father's grave is?' Helena asked, suddenly impatient.

‘Yes. The Janek tomb is one of the largest.'

‘Are other members of my father's family buried there?'

‘Adam Janek's grandparents, great-grandparents and generations before records began. Also his parents, brother and two sisters. They died during a diphtheria epidemic in 1934.'

‘You're very well-informed.' Ned kept his arm around Helena as they followed Josef around the back of the church.

‘This graveyard was my playground when I was a child. The old priest who brought me up used to spend what little free time he had keeping it tidy. I liked to think that I was helping him. Although I suspect now that I must have been more of a hindrance. Also the Janek family were important – in their day.' He frowned at Helena, as if something was bothering him, then pointed to a large area separated from the rest of the graveyard by a high stone kerb. ‘That is the Janek family plot.'

‘It's vast! There must be two dozen graves there.'

‘According to the records, sixty-nine Janeks are buried in the ground. The old priest took the registers from the church before the Communists sealed it up. I have kept them safe. They are in Anna's house if you want to look at them. The earliest recorded Janek burial was in 1598. The last in 1943.'

‘My father's,' Helena guessed.

‘Adam Janek's,' Josef confirmed.

‘I've seen a picture of the memorial. It's a stone cross.'

‘There it is.' Josef pointed to a grave on the edge of the plot. The inscription was simple. Helena translated it for Ned.

‘Adam Janek, born 21 January 1918, martyred for Poland 26 June 1943. A loving husband and father.'

Suddenly she gripped Ned's arm so hard he winced.

‘What is it?' he asked, alarmed by the wild look in her eyes.

It was Josef who translated the rest. ‘Also his daughter, Helena Weronika Janek. Born 5 June 1943, martyred 26 June 1943.'

Ned stared at the dates. ‘Magda never told you that you had a sister?'

‘It's not my sister.' Helena's voice was husky with shock. ‘That birth date. Don't you see?'

Ned stared at it, not wanting to believe what was etched into the stone. ‘It's the same as yours,' he said when he could bear the silence no longer.

Chapter Ten

Nauseous and light-headed, Helena sank to the ground. She could barely comprehend what she was seeing.

Also his daughter, Helena Weronika Janek. Born 5 June 1943, martyred 26 June 1943.

Ned crouched beside her and reached for her hand. It was icy. He looked up at Josef, who … was watching both of them with concern. ‘Could there be some mistake?'

‘What kind of mistake?' Josef asked.

‘I don't know,' Ned snapped. ‘Adam Janek was killed in a massacre. People died alongside him. Perhaps there was a mix-up with the bodies and the wrong baby was buried in this grave.'

‘A mix-up in this village?' Josef said sceptically. ‘Everyone knew everyone in 1943, just as they do now. And every one of the nineteen people who were murdered by the Nazis that day is listed on the memorial in the square. Adam Janek's daughter's name is chiselled below that of her father's.'

‘Helena told you that she was looking for her father's grave. She said his name was Adam Janek. You brought us here, yet you gave her no warning that he was buried with his daughter, who has the same name and birth date as Helena.' Ned knew he was being illogical. But he wanted to blame someone for Helena's pain. And, as he had taken an instant dislike to Josef, he was the obvious target.

Josef hesitated. ‘I knew Adam Janek was buried here with his daughter, yes. But I'm not an expert on the Janek family. I assumed Helena was another daughter.'

‘You said you knew this graveyard –'

‘But not the name of every single person buried here,' Josef interrupted. ‘Look around you.' Ned did. They were marooned in a vast sea of hundreds of memorial stones, crosses and iron grave-markers.

‘Did Magda ever mention that she'd had another child, Helena?'

Ned drew closer to her.

‘Not one with the same name and birth date as me,' she answered in a hollow voice.

‘Is it possible that your mother gave birth to you after she left here, and named you for the child she had lost?' Josef asked.

‘How?' Helena raised her eyes. ‘My father was killed in 1943 …' She faltered as she realised that Adam Janek almost certainly couldn't have been her father.

‘Your mother could have been raped,' Josef said gently. ‘It happened to many women during and after the war. Or she could have met another man who was also killed during the war. Did she marry again?'

‘Not to my knowledge. There was a man, a British soldier, but she already had me when she met him, and he married someone else shortly afterwards. I only found out about him after Mama died.' Helena wondered just how many secrets Magdalena Janek had carried to her grave. For the first time her mother's last words to Father O'Brien made sense: ‘Tell Helena I'm sorry …'

‘As she'd lost one child and her husband, you would have been the only person left in her life,' Josef extrapolated. ‘If she hadn't married again, and wanted to keep you, it would have made perfect sense for her to give you her husband's name and the name of the daughter she had lost. It would have meant that she could remain respectable. It might also explain why your mother didn't return to this village after the war. Catholic or communist, rightly or wrongly, women who bear illegitimate children are still regarded as a disgrace by some people in these rural areas. And, unfortunately, so are their children.'

‘You must have been born after Magda left the village, Helena.' Ned was clutching at straws but he desperately wanted to ease the pain etched on Helena's face.

‘Auntie Alma said I was four years old when she first met my mother.'

‘But you might have been younger. Magda could have told a white lie to cover up what she would have considered shameful.'

‘There is a world of difference between a one – and a two-year­ old child, and Bob Parsons said I was two when he first met my mother in 1945,' she reminded him.

‘There must be someone in this village who knew Magdalena Janek,' Ned said to Josef.

‘Plenty, I should think,' he replied. ‘But who knows what happened to Magdalena after the Germans took her? Very few people who were marched away by the Nazis returned. And of those who did, none wanted to talk about what the Germans had done to them.'

‘But some did come back,' Ned persisted.

‘A few.' Josef said. ‘But if you want to find out what life was like for your mother before the war, Helena, you should talk to the people who lived here then. They often talk about the Janeks, especially when they reminisce about the good old days.'

‘Why the Janeks more than anyone else?' Helena asked.

‘Because, before the war, the Janeks were the richest and most influential landowners in the area. Adam Janek was the last of them. After the massacre the only people who lived on Janek land were tenants, who would have paid rent if there had been anyone left to pay it to.'

‘Will the older people talk to me about my mother and my … Adam Janek?' Helena had a suspicion that Josef wasn't telling her everything he knew.

‘Possibly. But no one who survived the massacre talks about it willingly, even now,' Josef cautioned.

‘Can you remember it?' Helena asked.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Were you there?'

‘I was three years old. I think I remember a little, but it's likely that I imagined it, to fit in with what the priest and Anna told me when I asked them about it years later.'

‘Knowing something about what happened to my mother that day, even a second-hand account, would be better than nothing,' Helena pleaded.

 Josef frowned. ‘All I can recall is a series of images almost like … how do you say it? … like snapshots. I have a vision of standing in the square with everyone else from the village. I looked up at the adults, saw fear in their eyes and felt afraid because people I had always regarded as strong were terrified. I think I pulled on my mother's skirt because I remember blue cloth, and I raised my arms, but I can't remember if that was because everyone had their arms up or I was hoping that my mother would pick me up. I can't picture her face. The only likeness I carry of her now is the one I have seen in old photographs. A young man – I am sure that I remember him only because there were so few young men left in the village during the war – was arguing with a Nazi officer. The priest told me later he was Adam Janek. I will never forget the sound of the gunshots that ended the argument – and I am sure that is a real memory, because for years afterwards I couldn't stand any kind of loud noise. Even now, I only have to hear a bang to feel sick. The last image I have in my mind is one of bloody corpses piled in the square. Someone – not the priest because he was kneeling and giving the Last Rites – carried me away while I was crying for my mother. That is it.'

‘No one told you anything more about the massacre?' Josef's pain had been palpable when he had been talking about it, but all Ned could think of was Helena's burning need to know the truth.

‘The priest did, when he thought I was old enough to understand. He said that my mother had deliberately shielded my body with hers when she fell. He persuaded me that I owed it to her to work hard and live my life as honestly as I could to honour her memory. Her name is also on the monument. Anna's sister Matylda is there, too.'

‘I'd like to see the monument.' Helena rose to her knees. Ned helped her to her feet.

They retraced their steps back to the gate. The air in the churchyard was redolent with the scent of roses, and buzzing with the hum of bees and whirring of insect wings. Dandelion seeds floated among the stones, and gathered in diaphanous clouds on the paths. It was a quiet, peaceful place, and Helena realised she still wanted to leave her mother here. Despite the lies Magda had told her. She believed, really believed, that Adam Janek had been the one great love of her mother's life, and the village Magda's first and only true home.

‘I'm sorry.' Josef fastened the chain back on to the churchyard gate. ‘It must be a dreadful shock after travelling all the way from Britain to find out that the man you thought was your father couldn't have been.'

‘I came here to bury my mother's ashes in his grave. Nothing has changed my mind about that,' Helena said determinedly. ‘She loved Adam Janek to her dying day. Their wedding photograph hung in pride of place in our living room.'

‘Her ashes?' Josef looked surprised. ‘She has been cremated?'

Helena nodded. ‘The priest gave me a dispensation because he thought it would have been too difficult for me to arrange to ship her body here. Who do we have to ask for permission to open Adam Janek's grave?'

‘The people in the village look after the churchyard. The Niklas family put up the memorial to Adam Janek.'

‘With money my mother sent them,' Helena clarified.

‘Will there be a problem?' Ned asked, as they stopped in front of a square stone monument near the gate.

‘I can't answer that. The village and the family would have to decide. As you see,' Josef indicated the monument, ‘a list of everyone who died in the square that day.'

Posies of wild flowers lay on the plinth beneath the stone. They were limp, shrivelled by the summer sun. Helena moved one into the shade.

‘The children in the village put those there. Most have a relative on the list,' Josef explained.

Helena read the inscription above the list of names: ‘Martyred for Poland and freedom.' As they were in alphabetical order Adam and Helena Janek's were halfway down. Just their names and ages: Adam Janek aged twenty-four; Helena Janek three weeks. Of the nineteen who had been shot, fourteen were women, the youngest eleven, the oldest eighty. There had been two babies. She looked for and found a Dobrow: Ludwika aged twenty.

‘Ludwika was your mother?' she asked Josef.

‘Yes.'

Helena gazed at the monument. Heat rose from the sandy earth. The children had gone but she could hear their voices, faint and shrill, in the distance. Cooking smells emanated from the houses, carrying with them pungent traces of the peppery spices her mother had used: paprika, oregano, ginger, marjoram, cinnamon, mint … ‘We should be getting back if we are going to clean ourselves up before supper,' Ned said.

Helena realised that she had been standing in front of the monument for some time. She turned to the square and visualized the scenes her mother had painted so vividly on dark winter evenings in Pontypridd: the doors of the houses wide open; people wandering in and out with trays of glasses and plates of food; musicians playing …

The road that led out of the square was little more than a lane, and barely the width of two cars, but, just as Magda had said, fruit trees had been planted either side of it, stretching as far as she could see.

‘We used to walk and eat ourselves to school when the fruit ripened. And such fruit, Helena. Like you've never tasted. Apples, pears, plums …'

‘That road leads to the farmhouse where my mother's family lived. She said it was a mile or so outside the village. Does the Niklas family still live in that house?' Helena asked Josef.

‘A family by the name of Niklas lives in a house along that road, yes,' Josef answered cautiously.

‘I must see them.'

‘Not now, Helena,' Ned pleaded. ‘You're upset. Leave it until the morning.'

‘But –'

‘Your arrival will be a shock. Have you written to tell the family that your mother is dead?' Josef asked.

‘I couldn't find an address among my mother's things, so I wrote to them care of the post office or shop.'

‘A letter like that wouldn't have been forwarded by the authorities,' Josef said flatly.

‘Has anyone in the village mentioned the letter, Josef?' Ned asked.

‘I haven't heard anyone talk about it.'

‘Then my mother's family doesn't know that she is dead, or that I was coming here.' Helena clutched her duffle bag.

‘You said that your mother told you that she was marched out of here by the Germans the same day that your father was killed.'

‘Yes?' Helena picked up on the suspicious tone in Josef's voice.

‘She never returned?'

‘No.'

‘And she sent her family money to pay for the memorial stone on Adam Janek's grave?'

‘I told you she did,' Helena said impatiently, not understanding Josef's train of thought. ‘My mother wrote to her family at least once a week. She often read me extracts from the letters she received from my aunt, uncle and her mother in return.'

‘Did your mother tell the Niklas family about you?'

‘Of course,' Helena retorted indignantly. ‘When my mother read the letters she always gave me the good wishes they sent to both of us.'

‘In that case, they must have known that you weren't Adam Janek's child,' Josef pointed out.

Ned couldn't bear the thought of Helena turning up on her grandmother's doorstep, only to be hurt once more. ‘Did you ever read the letters yourself?' he asked her.

‘No,' Helena admitted. ‘My mother always said there were things in them about what had happened to her family during the war – horrible things that she didn't want me to know.'

‘So you never actually saw these letters?' Josef pressed.

‘I saw them in my mother's hand. I saw the Polish stamps and postmarks. And I saw the parcels my mother packed for her relatives and gave to Auntie Alma to pass on to the Polish sailors who docked in Cardiff. My mother paid them to post the parcels in this country for her, so they wouldn't have to go through customs' checks. And, after seeing your thieving officers, I can understand why. My mother also used to send photographs of me. She ordered extra copies of every school photograph I had taken …' Helena saw Josef and Ned looking oddly at her, and realised she was being too emphatic. As though she were trying to conceal her own doubts about the veracity of the letters.