Magda's Daughter (38 page)

‘It's not an ornament, it's something to remember her sister by,' Helena said. ‘I would like to give your mother Magda's wedding ring.' She held it out.

‘I remember this also. It's old. You can't get heavy embossed rings like this any more.' His eyes narrowed as he looked suspiciously at her. ‘Why don't you want to keep them?'

‘They were Magda's. They should go to her blood relatives.'

His voice was hoarse, cracked. ‘If you are giving these things away, what are you keeping?'

‘My memories of the woman I called Mama, and the photographs I have of her.'

‘And that is enough for you?'

‘She was my mother in every way that mattered. It's enough.' She held out the box of photographs. ‘I thought I'd ask Julianna and your mother if they'd like to choose a photograph each as well.'

‘You can go into the house and see them,' he conceded gruffly.

‘Thank you.' She followed Josef to the door.

‘Don't stay long,' Wiktor called after them.

‘We won't,' Josef replied.

‘Did she ever talk about me?' Wiktor shouted as they reached the door.

Helena turned back. Wiktor was standing at the entrance to the stall, watching her.

‘Magda,' Wiktor barked. ‘You said she talked to you about the farm and her family in Poland.'

‘She did.'

‘Did she mention my name?'

‘All the time,' Helena answered.

He nodded and disappeared back into the stall.

Julianna, Maria and Wiktor' s wife were sitting at the table in the farmhouse topping, tailing and slicing green beans as if their lives depended on the level of production. An enormous pot containing glass jars and rubber seals was boiling on the range. Around it were rows of gently steaming preserving jars that had already been sterilized. Those waiting to be boiled were stacked on a side table. All the windows and the door were open, but the atmosphere in the kitchen was steamy and sweltering, more Chinese laundry than Polish farmhouse.

Helena recalled Magda telling her about the mammoth baking and preserving sessions, presided over by her mother, and how all the women in the household had taken part.

The three women looked at her and Josef, but none spoke.

Helena risked a tentative smile. ‘Good morning. I see that harvest still starts early on the Niklas farm, just as Magda told me it did.'

The women continued to stare at her through round, frightened eyes.

‘It's all right,' Josef reassured them. ‘We have spoken to Wiktor. He gave us permission to come in here. Helena wants to give you something of Magda's to remember her by.'

A voice boomed out behind them. ‘Put that box you showed me on the table and let them see the photographs.' It was Wiktor.

There was a clear space at the end of the table. Helena set the box down, took out half a dozen of the most recent pictures of Magda, and laid them out. Then she removed Magda's locket and wedding ring. Julianna gasped when she saw them.

Helena reached for Julianna's free hand, opened it and pressed the locket into it, before taking Maria's hand and giving her Magda's wedding ring. She pointed to the snaps. ‘These are the last photographs that were taken of Magda. I think Magda would have liked you to have one each.'

Julianna still looked to Wiktor for permission. He nodded. She left her chair and went to the end of the table. Sensing her diffidence, Helena moved back to give her more room. Julianna studied the photographs for a full five minutes before picking up a snapshot of Magda that had been taken with Father O'Brien at the last Sunday school Christmas party. Magda was leaning over a group of smiling children, who were all looking up at her as she cut into an iced sponge cake.

‘Choose one for me, Julianna.' Maria brushed a tear from a cheek as wrinkled as a winter apple that had been too long in storage.

Julianna's second choice was a picture of Magda arranging Easter flowers in the church. She shuffled the remainder together and returned them to Helena, who replaced them in the box.

‘Thank you, Julianna.' Helena pushed the box into her duffle bag. She gazed at the old woman. ‘This farmhouse kitchen is exactly how Magda told me it would be. Thank you for allowing me to see it.'

‘Goodbye,' Wiktor barked. He held the door open. Josef walked through it and Helena followed.

‘You won't be back,' Wiktor snapped. It wasn't a question.

‘Not here, no.' Helena held out her hand to him but he ignored it.

‘I have to get back to my cow.' He stomped off to the cowshed. Josef walked Helena to the gate where he had hitched the horse and trap.

She touched his arm. ‘Thank you.'

‘You didn't receive the warmest of receptions, but at least Wiktor didn't hit you this time.' Josef untied the reins as the horse continued to crop the long grass at the base of the gatepost. Holding the reins, he climbed on to the trap and held out his hand to Helena. ‘Wait. Look behind you.'

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Julianna running out of the house with a parcel.

‘For you.' Julianna hurriedly pushed the parcel at Helena. ‘Be careful, there is glass inside. Don't open it here.'

‘Thank you for whatever it is.' On impulse Helena reached out and hugged her.

‘Thank you for this.' Julianna held up the locket. ‘Go, quickly, before Wiktor sees us.'

‘Goodbye, Julianna. Good health and happiness.' Helena passed the parcel up to Josef, before taking his hand and climbing up beside him on to the bench seat.

‘You can bet your last zloty that it's something she's smuggled out of the house without Wiktor knowing about it,' Josef said.

Helena lifted the parcel from the floor where Josef had stowed it. She held it to her nose. ‘It smells of cedar and camphor.'

‘Intriguing.' Josef persuaded the horse to turn around, and they started back down the lane. ‘Go on, open it.'

‘She told me not to.'

‘We're not on the farm, she's not here, and curiosity is killing me.'

Helena untied the string around the brown paper. The first thing she lifted out was a framed photograph of Magda. She was sitting on a chair in what looked like a very different yard from the one where she and Ned ate their meals, although the barn doors behind her were the same ones they saw from the landing outside their room.

Just as she'd imagined, there had been a wooden table and chairs on the veranda where Anna stored her crates of empty bottles. And, as Weronika had said, there were tubs of rose bushes around the table.

Magda looked radiant. She was showing off a baby to the camera. The child was wrapped in an intricately worked shawl. Helena lifted up the photograph. Underneath was a tissue-wrapped crocheted shawl, just like the one in the picture. It had obviously been carefully stored as it had only slightly yellowed with age.

‘If I had to make a guess, I would say that is Magda with Helena, and that is her baby shawl,' said Josef.

‘It looks like it. There's something else. Oh my God, I don't believe it.' Helena unfolded another layer of tissue paper to reveal yards and yards of once white, now cream silk.

‘A dress?'

‘Magda's wedding dress. Look at the stitching and the pin tucks. Julianna really shouldn't have.'

‘Yes, she should. Wiktor has boys. Julianna is of an age where she must have given up all hope of marrying, and not only because of Wiktor's attitude to the purity of women. Most of the men of Julianna's generation were slaughtered in the war. Those things belong with you, Helena. Just as you belong in this country. You will stay, won't you? I meant what I said earlier about Anna needing you. And you can't ignore the fact that, given the way Magda brought you up, you are more Polish than British. You have no idea how much Poland needs people like you. One-fifth of our population, including all our leaders, thinkers and intellectuals, were killed by the Germans during the war. The cream of our society was completely wiped out. No country can recover from a loss like that in less than twenty years. We need intelligent people to teach our young, to guide them and take us into the future and –'

‘Out of Communism?' she suggested.

He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘It's not done to say things like that in public.'

‘In public?' Helena laughed. ‘Josef, there isn't a soul for miles. I've never seen such flat countryside.'

‘There are trees. People could be hiding behind them.'

‘You are paranoid.'

‘This country would make the most trusting angel paranoid. But seriously, Helena, you can speak, read, and write English and Polish. You're a qualified teacher –'

‘Josef, I know what I am.'

‘What you don't know is how much better we could get to know one another if you stayed.'

‘Josef …'

‘Don't stop me when I am just getting started. I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, when you walked past all those grumpy, disapproving old men sitting in the bar. You looked so cool, so casual, yet I knew what it had cost you to walk in there and face a roomful of strangers. Every muscle in your hands and shoulders was tense. And all I could think of when I looked at you was how much you reminded me of a ray of sunshine pouring through a grimy window. You illuminated the entire room. You were like a shimmering gold icon …'

‘Josef …'

He stopped the horse. Gathering the reins into one hand, he laid his free hand over hers. ‘I beg you – stay, and not just for Anna's sake. For mine.'

She gazed into his eyes, darker and more enigmatic than Ned's. She always knew what Ned was thinking; she would only know Josef's thoughts if he voiced them. His looks were more striking than Ned's, and Ned was a handsome man. Black hair and deep blue eyes, as opposed to auburn hair and tawny-brown eyes. Josef was exceptionally attractive, and his white cotton shirt and polyester trousers, which would mark him as old-fashioned and ‘square' in the West, only added to his charm. His limited wardrobe had undoubtedly been dictated by what little was stocked in the communist shops, but it had the effect of making him appear more serious, as if he couldn't spare the time to think about trivia, only the larger questions of life, morality and politics.

He was a sincere and honest young man. He didn't talk, look or act like anyone she had ever met before. If ever there was a man determined to change the world he lived in, it was Josef Dobrow. She had no doubt that he would spend his entire life working for the betterment of Poland, and probably succeed. It was resolute men like Josef who revolutionised society. And she could be part of it …

‘Helena …'

She looked away.

‘You haven't heard a word I've said,' he reproached her.

‘I have, and I've thought about them. You, more than anyone else, has made me realise how Polish I am, and always will be.'

‘Then you'll stay?'

A bicycle hurtled towards them from the direction of the square. They sat and watched it draw towards them. Helena withdrew her hand from Josef's.

Ned skidded to a halt alongside the trap. ‘I saw you as I cycled into the village. You've been to the Niklas farm?'

‘Yes,' Helena said shortly.

‘Wasn't that rather foolhardy?'

‘Not with Josef to protect me. Wiktor allowed me to talk to Julianna and Maria, and Julianna gave me a present. Some things that had belonged to Magda. I'll show them to you when we get back to the house.'

‘I'll look forward to it.' Ned was straining to be his usual polite and charming self, but it was the politeness and charm he usually reserved for strangers, and both he and Helena knew it. ‘I left a message for Norbert saying that we wouldn't be far from Anna's whenever he came, and would be packed and ready to travel back to town. Tomorrow if possible; the day after if not.'

Helena touched Josef's arm. ‘Can you stop in the square, please? I want to go to the churchyard.'

‘I'll come with you,' Ned offered.

‘No, thank you,' she refused.

‘Then I'll –'

‘I want to be alone, Ned. But here.' She pushed the contents of the parcel Julianna had given her into her duffle bag and handed it to him. ‘Take this back to our room for me, please. But be careful of the photograph frame; it's old and fragile. I won't be long.'

The usual queue had formed outside the shop by the time Helena walked back to the bar and house. She looked at the counter as she passed by. It was heaped high with pale, greasy sausages that had been rolled into large wheels. People were handing over their ration cards. Women with several children clinging to their skirts were given two wheels, while the older people only warranted a half or a quarter of a wheel.

She smiled and said good day to the queue in general. A few of the women responded and wished her a good day in return. She quickened her step. Josef was right – in some ways she was more Polish than British. How long would it be before she was accepted into the village if she did decide to stay?

She walked through the archway into the yard.

‘You finally decided to return. Josef and Ned were wondering if you'd been stolen away by the angels who hover in the clouds above the churchyard.' Anna was sitting at the table under the outside staircase, a pot of coffee and a cup in front of her. She still looked fragile and pale, but slightly stronger.

‘I wanted to pay my respects at Magda and Adam's grave again.'

Helena pulled out a stool and sat opposite Anna.

‘Perhaps you should move into the churchyard,' Anna suggested.

‘I wanted to go there one more time so I would remember it.'

‘If you want Ned, he is in the bar with Josef. They are probably drowning their sorrows. Neither of them likes having a rival for your affections.'

‘How are you feeling now?' Helena deliberately ignored Anna's comment.