Magda's Daughter (30 page)

‘You are blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful. Kind, generous and loving – very, very loving,' he added softly, exercising every ounce of willpower he possessed to remain where he was. ‘You hate arguments, cruelty of any kind to humans and animals. You love children, liquorice, good literature, the theatre, and drinking pints of beer in the pub with your friends. And you're sentimental. Remember the blow-up chair?'

‘None of which is the slightest bit helpful.' She made an effort to subdue her irritation. ‘Ned, don't you see? I can't possibly consider marrying you when I don't even know who I am, or what secrets Magda might have hidden about my family. My real parents could have done horrible things. And if it became public, that knowledge could destroy your life and that of your parents. I could be the child of Nazis, murderers …'

‘I'm not interested in your parents, just you. And the only thing that would destroy my life is if you left me.'

‘Ned –'

‘You're under enormous stress,' he interrupted, not wanting to give her any more time to voice worse scenarios. ‘You have to come to terms with the fact that you're not your mother's biological daughter. That everything Magda told you about your family is a tissue of lies. You have to accept that much before you can go forward. Come back out here and sit in the fresh air,' he coaxed. ‘I'll get us a couple of drinks and we'll brainstorm together. One small beer isn't going to make any difference, even if you do have concussion. This local stuff is incredibly weak.'

‘It will still make me sleepy.'

‘Then I'll find Josef and ask him if there's any of Anna's lemonade left. But I warn you, if I see Anna I'll retreat back up here empty-handed.'

‘Coward.' Her face ached when she tried to smile, and she realised how long it had been since she had tried.

‘I'm happy to admit it.'

When Ned returned ten minutes later with two glasses of lemonade, Helena was sitting on the landing. ‘I talked to Josef.' he said, ʻhe offered to lend me his push-bike so I can ride to the post office in the next village. I'll book a telephone call and leave a message at the number Norbert gave us. He can pick us up. That way we won't have to wait for the bus.'

‘Will Anna allow us to stay until Norbert comes?'

‘She's asleep, or,' he lowered his voice, ‘more likely lying in a drunken stupor. Josef did say he won't ask her until she wakes. But he also said that although she's often threatened her paying guests in the past, she's never actually thrown anyone out of this room.'

‘There's always a first time.'

Ned handed her one of the glasses and set the second on the floor next to his chair. ‘Then let's hope she doesn't rouse herself from her torpor until the morning.' He looked around. ‘I need paper and pen. Like you I can't think without making notes.' He went into their room and emerged a few minutes later with a blank exercise book and biro. ‘Let's start with what we do know. Magda had you with her when the children's home was liberated in May 1945, and Weronika and Bobby Parsons said you were about two years old.'

‘Did Magda pick me up by chance, or did she deliberately choose a child the same age as the one the Nazis had murdered so she could use the baptism record of my namesake?'

‘That's the first question.' Ned made a note. ‘Weronika also said that the Americans brought you and Magda into the Displaced Persons' camp from a Lebensborn home near Munich.'

‘The first Lebensborn home was opened east of Munich.' Josef was struggling up the stairs with four enormous box files. ‘I've left Stefan in charge of the bar; he'll fetch me if someone comes in, but after the way our customers drank this morning it will take them hours to sleep off the after-effects. I predict the bar will remain deserted until this evening. So I thought I'd show you these so you could see what an impossible task you are facing.' He dropped the files next to Helena's chair.

‘These are the records of your search for your brother?' she asked.

‘And all the notes I made about the Lebensborn project.' He sat on the top stair, lifted a file on his lap and opened it.

‘If you and Magda were in a children's home in Munich in 1945, the chances are it was this one.' He removed a large envelope and extracted a photograph. ‘Steinhoring, the first Lebensborn home opened by Himmler in 1936. It offered Aryan women a place where they could deliver their illegitimate babies and keep the births secret from their families and the outside world to avoid social disgrace. It closed early in May 1945 when American troops moved in. According to eyewitnesses, the SS burned all the home's records before they fled. But others who were there insist that the Americans fought the Nazis, and tried to stop them escaping into the mountains. During the fighting, the files were dumped into the Isar river and washed away. Whichever story is right, you can be sure that the identities of the children who were left in the home, and some of those who had already been placed with German families, were permanently lost.'

‘Possibly including mine.' Helena took the photograph from him. She studied the image of the magnificent four-storey house with its typical Bavarian balconies decorated by window boxes. Leaving her chair, she went into their room and brought out the box of photographs she had brought from Pontypridd. Opening it, she removed her earliest baby picture. There was no mistake. The house in the background was the same. She passed both photographs to Josef.

‘This proves it,' he said. ‘You were definitely in Steinhoring.'

‘With Magda. You see the wedding ring on her hand. It is quite distinctive. I have it with me.'

Ned took the photographs. ‘Do you know of any other children in the home who had come from Poland?'

‘Two boys,' Josef said.

‘Do you know where they are now?'

‘Yes.' Josef opened another file and flicked through the envelopes. ‘Neither has found their parents, and both live in Warsaw.'

‘You have their addresses?'

‘Yes. I interviewed both of them a few years ago.'

‘So we could visit them?' Ned smile encouragingly at Helena. ‘There's no point. When I spoke to them they could recall very little about their time in the home.'

‘But they might remember something about Magda or Helena. Something that didn't seem important when you spoke to them.'

Ned knew the chance was slim, but it was the only lead they had. ‘Before going to the expense of travelling to Warsaw you could write to them and ask if they remember Helena's mother,' Josef replied. ‘But it's not likely. One was three years old at liberation, the other two.'

‘But it gives us somewhere to start and something to do,' Ned persisted.

Despite Ned's apparent enthusiasm, Helena suspected that he saw the quest as a way of keeping her occupied until lack of progress forced her to face the fact that she probably would never discover her origins. And then what? No doubt he hoped that she would forget all about it, return to Pontypridd, calmly marry him and carry on living the life they had planned. Only she knew that she never would be able to forget the mystery that surrounded her birth.

‘Your lemonade is getting warm.' Josef returned his photograph of Steinhoring to the envelope.

Helena looked at the mass of newspaper cuttings and envelopes in the file he had opened. ‘Can I borrow these files, please, Josef?'

‘Be my guest.' Josef set the one he was holding on top of the others. ‘As I said, they're mainly lists of names and addresses, and although it looks like a great deal of information, none of it is useful to anyone who isn't looking for a specific person. And even then the accounts are fragmentary. Take me, for example. After five years of continual searching I still don't have any idea where my brother is, or even if he's alive.'

‘What gives you the strength to keep looking for him?' Helena lifted one of the files on to her lap.

‘The knowledge that, if he is alive, I have one relative left in this world. A part of my parents and a part of me that makes him family. And that Leon might be as lonely without me as I am without him. If that sounds stupid –'

‘No, it doesn't,' Helena said eagerly. ‘Because that is exactly how I feel.'

‘Then you too –'

‘Feel incomplete, yes.'

Ned watched and listened to Helena and Josef with increasing despondency. Their respective searches were drawing them together. Already they understood one another well enough to finish the other's half-spoken sentences. And, in some ways, for all the deprivation and poverty here, Helena was more at home in this backward Polish village than he had ever seen her in Pontypridd. Or could it be that her fluency in the language and familiarity with the culture had highlighted another side of her that he had never seen before?

The thought made him even more jealous of Josef than he already was. He only wished he could talk to Helena as easily and understand exactly why she was so intent on embarking on a search that, in the unlikely event it might prove successful, could well destroy what little peace of mind she had left.

For the next hour Ned pretended to study the photographs in the files, looking for a similarity between a baby girl and Helena. In reality, the faces of the children he scanned barely registered. Engrossed in listening to Helena and Josef's conversation, he started guiltily when Helena turned to him.

‘Sorry, were you talking to me?' he asked.

‘Who did you think I was talking to?' She thrust a photograph at him. ‘Do you think that looks like me?'

He took the photograph and studied it. ‘The mouth is similar to yours but the ears don't match.' He looked up at hers to check. ‘The shape of the ears are one feature that never changes from birth unless they are doctored by plastic surgery, and yours, my love,' he inserted the two last words for Josef's benefit, ‘show no sign of being surgically altered. ‘

‘What about this one?' Josef handed him another baby photo­ graph.

‘The eyes slant down, not up as Helena's do.'

‘And this?' Helena handed him a photocopy of a passport-sized shot of a blonde baby.

‘Straight hair. Yours is naturally wavy, so it would have been curly when you were a child.' Eaten up by jealousy, unable to sit idly by and watch Josef and Helena a moment longer, he left his chair. ‘I think I'll cycle to the post office.'

‘When are you going to tell Norbert to pick us up?' Helena asked.

‘As soon as he can.'

‘But –'

‘I don't fancy trying to sleep rough in the square or the churchyard.' Ned checked his pockets for change.

‘Anna won't throw you out,' Josef said authoritatively.

‘How can you be so sure?' Ned asked.

‘I've been thinking about it. You're Westerners, and the government is anxious to bring foreign currency into the country. Anna won't risk you complaining to the authorities. If you do, they could take away her licence for this room, and she makes quite a few extra zlotys from Ministry of Agriculture officials.'

‘We can't think of leaving here yet, Ned,' Helena pleaded. ‘I want to talk to more people.'

‘You've done what you came here to do. It's time for us to go home.' Ned unconsciously reiterated what Anna had said to her earlier.

‘When I came here I thought Magda and Adam Janek were my parents. Now I know differently. Please, Ned. Stay and help me look through the photographs in these files. We might be lucky and find a match that's worth further investigation·.'

Ned gazed into Helena's eyes. He couldn't refuse her anything, especially when she was wearing a half-pleading, half-anguished expression. He sat down again. ‘All right, sunshine, hand me one of the files.'

There was still no sign of Anna that evening. Josef served Helena and Ned
Krupnik
, a thick barley soup with a lot of vegetables, plus a little smoked venison and a loaf of heavy, close-baked rye bread. They ate, as usual, at the table in the yard. Afterwards Helena returned to their room, piled the box files onto the table, pulled one of the chairs from the landing inside, switched on the lamp and continued to wade through the papers.

‘Would you like me to carry on looking at the photographs?' Ned said unenthusiastically when he walked into their room half an hour later with a couple of bottles of beer and two glasses.

‘You don't have to if you don't want to.'

He set the beers on the table and brought in the second chair, leaving the door open. It was a beautiful evening. The air was still, the sun had tinged the grey roof of the barn opposite with red and gold. If it hadn't been for the smell of the chickens and pigs below, he might have felt the scene was perfect. He poured his beer. ‘As I've looked through all of them once without coming up with anything, is there something else that I can do?'

‘Given that you can't read Polish, nothing I can think of,' Helena replied absently, engrossed in the report she was reading.

‘Any other suggestions?'

‘Read your James Bond.'

‘Helena –'

‘Sorry, I didn't mean that the way it sounded.' She shuffled a sheaf of papers. ‘It's just that these make depressing reading. Endless accounts of how children were taken, together with lists of their likes and dislikes, and anecdotes related by their relatives to illustrate behaviour in the hope that will enable a lost child to be returned to his or her birth family.'

‘Doesn't it make you feel very grateful that you had a mother who loved and cared for you?' Ned asked.

‘I can't think about Magda or who I might or might not be any more.' Helena gathered all the papers together and returned them to the files.

‘Beer?' He held up the bottle he'd bought for her and a glass.

‘No, you drink them. I'm going for a walk.'