Magda's Daughter (20 page)

‘Why did the Germans take babies and children?' Helena asked. Anna ignored the question. When she spoke again her voice was clotted with tears.

‘The ones the Germans had picked were marched out. My brother and the priest read the Last Rites over the corpses. We women who were left fetched sheets to cover the dead. We buried them. Later those strong enough went into the woods to join the partisans. I stayed to run the bar because everyone insisted that it was a necessary meeting place and post office for messages between the partisan groups. That's all I can tell you about the massacre.' Emotionally drained, Anna stared down into her empty glass.

‘The people who were marched away with my mother – Josef said some of them returned.'

‘Not many.' Anna stood.

‘Are they still in the village?' Helena persisted.

‘One or two of the men.' Anna placed her glass on the tray.

‘Are my mother's brother, sister and mother still here?'

‘Yes.'

‘They live in the house my mother grew up in?'

‘Yes.' Anna looked at Helena. ‘Think about what I have just told you before you rush to see them. Some things are best left.'

‘But they are my family –'

‘Like Adam Janek was your family?' Anna said cruelly. ‘I have to make supper now. You and your … husband will eat out here. I don't want you in the bar or in my house. Understand?'

Helena was too stunned to answer, but she knew from the way that Anna had said the word husband she didn't believe she and Ned were married.

‘Look after the bar for me, Josef,' Anna turned and walked into the house.

Chapter Eleven

Ned sat on the edge of the bed and watched Helena sit in front of the dressing table. ‘Helena, I know you feel –'

‘You can have absolutely no idea how I feel.' Helena tugged her hairbrush through her hair. It was tangled after the walk but she made no allowances for the knots. The brush dragged painfully against her scalp, and still she kept tugging and tearing.

‘I know you're angry with Magda –'

‘How would you feel if your mother suddenly told you that your father wasn't your father?'

‘Grateful because we have so little in common,' Ned shot back without thinking. ‘Sorry, that was an appalling thing to say. I have no idea how I'd react. But it's not as if you knew Adam Janek.'

‘Of course I knew him! Mama told me all about him. How wonderful he was, how handsome, how strong, how brave, how rich. How he stood up to the Germans when no one else would. How he did everything he could to stop them from taking people from the village, and how he was gunned down in cold blood for trying. But now I know he couldn't possibly have been my father. Do you realise what that makes Mama?'

‘Calling your mother names isn't going to help, Helena.' Ned spoke softly in an attempt to calm her.

‘My mother was a liar. There, I've said it. And it makes me feel as though I can never, ever trust a single thing she told me. My entire life is based on a lie. I'm not even Helena Janek. She is dead, buried in the village churchyard with her father. Somewhere out there is my real father. I don't know who he is, and I may never know. He could be a thief, a murderer, a rapist or worse. I'm not Helena Weronika Janek. I never was. I'm just another bastard without even a name to call my own.'

‘Steady on, Helena.' Ned left the bed, crouched beside her chair and took her hand. ‘You're still the girl I love. Soon you'll be Helena John. Nothing and no one can ever change that.'

‘You fell in love with Helena Janek.'

‘I fell in love with you. Not your name.'

Unable to meet his gaze, she looked at the floor. ‘I'm sorry. I know I'm shouting at you. You didn't have to come to Poland with me –'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘Because you loved me?'

Ned's blood ran cold to hear her use the past tense.

‘I know no one will love me more, but I now realise that you can never understand me. I am only just beginning to understand myself. Did I allow Mama to push me so hard to succeed because somehow I knew she wasn't telling me the truth about my father?'

‘There's no way you could have possibly known Adam Janek wasn't your father. Parents don't bring up their children to question what they tell them, and Magda was more autocratic than most.'

‘But that's the whole point. I allowed her to make all my decisions for me when I was growing up because it was easier than confronting her and risking an argument. I shouldn't have taken everything she told me at face value. I could have, should have, asked more questions about her family, and written to them myself. After all, they're my relatives as well as hers. And I should have made her talk about what happened to her during the war to make her so ambitious for me.'

‘She just wanted you to have what the war had denied her.'

‘The war!' she mocked. ‘Don't you see, that's not true? It was never true. Mama wanted me to be successful because I am a nameless bastard. Have you any idea what that means to a Catholic?'

‘Set aside your religion, Helena, please,' he begged. ‘And think about your mother. We don't know everything that happened to her – not yet. But what we do know is that she was marched out of here in 1943 and two years later she ended up in Germany. Somewhere along the line she had you. Whoever your father was, he wasn't able or willing to help Magda, so she took sole responsibility for you. And she loved you. Enough to give you the name and identity of her dead daughter – her much-loved daughter. And through it all she cared for you and protected you. That couldn't have been easy when she was at the mercy of the Germans.'

When Helena didn't answer him, he continued.

‘Think back to what Bob Parsons told you. He said that his mother objected to you, not Magda. If Magda had agreed to give you up, he would have married her and she could have lived with him and his mother in Pontypridd.'

‘Remember what Josef said,' she said coldly. ‘If Mama had re­ turned here after the war with a bastard we would both have been ostracized. Have you considered the possibility that she never had any intention of marrying Bob Parsons? She told Bob that she didn't receive his letter telling her not to come to Wales. But what if she had received his letter, and made the journey to Pontypridd anyway?'

‘I don't understand why you think she would do that,' Ned said.

‘Because it was the only way she could get us out of Germany and the Displaced Persons' camp. She didn't have any money, so she couldn't buy her own ticket to Britain or anywhere else. If she'd remained in the camp, the chances were, sooner or later, we'd both be repatriated to Poland. Then along came Bob Parsons. Given the conditions in the camp, she probably thought Pontypridd was as good a place as anywhere in the world. It was certainly far enough away from Poland. She probably paid Bob back the money he gave her out of guilt. She used him.'

‘You can't be sure, Helena. Don't keep thinking the worst of her, because if you do you'll drive yourself mad.'

Helena's only reply was to tug the brush through her hair again.

Disheartened by the argument, and bitterly upset by Helena's assertion that he could never understand her, the last thing Ned felt like doing was eating. But when he followed her down into the yard and smelled the food, he discovered he was hungry. However, even the tripe soup proved more enjoyable than the company. After her outburst, Helena withdrew into silence. Anna set the soup tureen and bread board in front of them on the table, ladled the soup into two bowls, and disappeared without a word. Josef joined them a few minutes later. He helped himself to soup, tore a hunk of bread into pieces, which he sprinkled on top of his soup, sat on one of the stools he'd carried out earlier, and started eating.

‘I have to relieve Anna in the bar in a few minutes so she can eat while the food's hot,' he explained in reply to Ned's quizzical look.

Ned nodded and glanced at Helena. She was stirring her soup, occasionally lifting a spoonful out of the bowl, only to pour it back in untasted.

‘Anna asked me to remind you that she doesn't allow young girls in the bar, but if you would like a drink after supper you could stay here, or take drinks up to your room. It's quite pleasant sitting there with the door open. I know because I lived there for a month last spring when I repaired the roof on the main part of the house.'

‘We'll do that. Thank you for the suggestion.' Ned found himself talking to the air, as Josef took his empty bowl and disappeared.

Anna walked through the yard shortly afterwards, went into the house and re-emerged with plates of carp, potatoes and spinach, which she set in front of them.

Ned heard her talking in the house a few minutes later, and realised that she and her brother were eating inside. He wondered if their landlady was hostile towards everyone who rented the room, or if she reserved her antagonism for Westerners.

He cleared his plate while Helena ate a morsel of fish, but any thoughts he'd had about scolding her faded when he saw the grief in her eyes. After the meal he went into the bar, asked for two bottles of beer and glasses, then carried them up to their room. Helena was already there, curled in one of the chairs, a magazine on her lap. But from the way she was flicking restlessly through the pages he knew she wasn't reading.

‘I brought you a beer.' He set the glasses and bottles on the table next to her.

‘Thank you.'

‘Helena …'

‘Please, Ned,' she said, looking up at him, ‘I don't want to talk, not now.'

‘I wasn't suggesting we discuss what happened today.'

‘Then what?' she challenged.

‘You can't go on like this.'

‘Like what?' she demanded.

‘You've just made a devastating discovery. Perhaps it would be better if we did talk about it.' He sat in the chair opposite hers and poured his beer.

‘There's nothing to say,' she said tonelessly.

‘After travelling the best part of three days and two nights to get here, we should at least make plans for tomorrow.'

‘No.' She dropped her magazine, left her chair and walked out on to the landing.

‘Helena –'

‘I don't want to talk. I don't want a beer. I just want to be left alone.' She returned to her chair and lifted her sweater from the back of it. ‘I'm going for a walk.'

‘I'll come with you.'

‘I'd rather go alone.'

‘Helena!' Ned leaned over the rail at the top of the staircase and shouted after her. But she didn't turn around, and disappeared through the archway. Ned ran down the stairs but when he reached the street there was no sign of her and, without knowing whether she had turned right or left, he decided there was little point in following her.

Instead he went into the bar. Anna was sitting on a stool behind the counter talking to two old men. Josef was crouched in front of the shelves behind Anna, stacking bottles into crates. He looked up when Ned entered.

‘You'd like more beers?'

‘No, thank you.' Ned hesitated for a moment before blurting, ‘Helena's gone for a walk.'

‘Alone?' Josef asked.

‘She wouldn't allow me to go with her.'

‘She'll be safe enough. There aren't many wild boars or wolves left in the woods.' Josef handed a full crate to Ned. ‘Could you put that by the door, please?'

‘It's not wild boars or wolves I'm thinking of. What if she gets lost?' Ned took the crate and dropped it by the door that led into the yard.

‘She seems a sensible girl to me. I think she'll look around and note the landmarks so she can find her way back.'

‘That's all you know,' Ned muttered.

‘You quarrelled?' Josef guessed.

‘Not really,' Ned said defensively. ‘But she's been strange ever since we returned from the churchyard this afternoon.'

‘What do you expect?' Josef asked. ‘Her whole world has changed.'

‘I wanted to talk to her about it, but she wouldn't even discuss it.' Ned leaned on the counter. ‘I'd go after her if I knew where to look.'

Josef straightened up. ‘The village isn't that big.'

‘I suppose I could start with the churchyard.'

‘In the dark?' Josef raised an eyebrow. ‘I wouldn't advise it. It's been used as a burial ground for hundreds of years. The older coffins have collapsed and the ground above them is pockmarked with holes. Some of the paths have sunk and are uneven. If you fall, you could hurt yourself, and crying out wouldn't help. It's rumoured the place is haunted – people would assume you were a ghost.'

‘It would be just as dark for Helena.'

‘I think she has more sense than to return there at this time of night.' Josef wiped his hands on a bar rag. ‘Anna's expecting a delivery tomorrow. They only give her full bottles to the number of empty she can supply, and even want to see evidence of any broken bottles. I promised I'd crate all the empty bottles, carry them through to the yard, and set aside the broken ones. But if you'll take over, I will look for Helena.'

‘Would you?' Ned asked in relief. ‘She wouldn't listen to me, but she's likely to be more polite to a stranger.'

Josef rolled down his sleeves, and spoke rapidly to Anna in Polish.

She nodded and carried on talking to her customers.

‘I told Anna you're taking over. I hope you finish the crating and stacking before I get back.' He smiled: ‘And thank you. A walk in the fresh air is a much better prospect than shifting heavy loads around the yard.'

Ned watched Josef leave. Although the bar was unpleasantly warm, he shivered. He couldn't help feeling that his initial impression of Josef had been right. The man couldn't be trusted, especially around Helena.

Helena walked quickly along the street. She neither knew nor cared where she was heading, although she had instinctively chosen the route that led to the square. Night had fallen, warm and close, cloaking the village in grey and purple shadows which softened the harsh lines of the houses, obscuring the signs of neglect that were so glaring in the daylight: peeling paint, weather-worn and splintering window frames and fascias, and patched roofs. Welcoming lights shone out from behind curtained windows, and she caught tantalizing scents of spicy cooking, accompanied by the soft hum of voices and the tinny musical tones of radios.

She tried to visualize the lives being played out within the houses, lives ruled by a rigid Communist regime that, by dint of rationing, even dictated what food people would eat on any particular day. But was the life of this generation so very different from that of her mother's family before the war?

Magda had always stressed how happy she and everyone in her village had been before the Russian and Nazi invasions. But she had also talked at length about the hard work that was involved in running the farm, how she and her brothers and sister had been given chores from an early age. If there hadn't been a war, her mother's life would undoubtedly have been a continuation of that lived by farming families in this corner of Poland for centuries: living off the land; rare trips to cities; ambitions curtailed by the needs of the family farm; adherence to social boundaries set in medieval times, when children had been expected to follow in their parents' footsteps, and replace them when age and infirmity took their inevitable toll.

If the tides of war hadn't carried Magda away, her life would have been quiet, uneventful, its highlights family weddings and baptisms. Her mother would have no more thought of travelling to Wales than going to the moon. Yet, almost half of her life had been lived in industrialised Pontypridd with its factories and coal mines, which must have seemed like another world after this rural backwater.