A Different World (13 page)

‘I must go back tomorrow.’

She looked at his face. He looked thin and gaunt and there were dark pads of fatigue below his eyes. Was it his work, the daily brush with death that caused it? After all, the Polish airmen had been enduring it longer than most. Or was it worry about what was happening in Poland? ‘Any news from home?’ she asked.

‘Of Rulka? No, none. We know the Polish people are resisting and we hear of dreadful atrocities, but neither your government nor ours seem able to do anything about it. I don’t think they believe it.’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Jan. I do understand.’

He took her hand and put it to his lips. ‘I know you do. You are still my anchor. When I am here I can relax. Let’s not talk about it anymore.’

‘Are you still on escort duty?’

‘Some of the time, but just lately we have been training American flyers in aerial combat.’ He paused to smile at her. ‘They are even more wet behind the ears than the Britishers were, but they are learning.’ He did not add that they had also been escorting American bombers in daylight raids over Germany. They called it ‘precision bombing’ and maintained that going in daylight gave
them a better chance of finding their target. Jan didn’t think they were any more accurate with their bombing than the RAF who went at night and their chances of being shot down were a great deal higher. The Spitfires of the Polish squadrons did not have enough fuel to take them all the way to distant targets and back, but even so, escorting the slower bombers as far as they could, they were vulnerable and their losses were high. The heroics of the Battle of Britain were behind them and the fickle public forgot them to embrace the new arrivals.

‘There are some stationed near here,’ Louise said. ‘They seem so well fed and even the privates dress like officers. And they are generous with their presents of chocolate and nylons, is it any wonder they are popular with the girls, if not the men?’

He laughed. ‘They have quite put our noses out of joint.’

The way he had picked up colloquial English amused Louise and his accent had improved considerably. She sometimes forgot he wasn’t British, then something he said or did would remind her of his roots and she found herself dwelling on her situation. It was not unique; there were other women who had children by Poles and some had been lucky enough to marry them. At times like that she would wonder if the fact that Jan had no news of his wife meant she was no longer alive. She told herself sternly that it was unchristian to wish anyone dead but, like Jan, she wished she knew for sure.

Occasionally, when something triggered off a memory, she thought of Tony. Their love for each other had been genuine, she did not question it, but he seemed to belong to a different world, and though he had died in action, it was a kind of peaceful, pre-war world which would never come again. This was borne out every day when the BBC, to which everyone listened for reliable information, spoke
of losses and bereavement. But then it came closer to home. Agnes Carter arrived one Sunday morning to break the news to her son and daughter that their father had been lost on an Arctic convoy taking supplies to Russia. The news of the loss of two-thirds of the convoy and thousands of lives had not been kept from the public and there were many who questioned whether the supplies were worth the loss of men and ships. Seeing the white-faced Mrs Carter, twisting the handle of her handbag while she waited for Jenny to fetch Tommy and Beattie, Louise wondered it too. ‘They don’t stand a chance once they’re in the water,’ Agnes said. ‘It’s the cold you see …’

Beattie had never seen much of her father even before the war. He was a shadowy figure her mother and brother talked about and she received the news with a kind of indifference which upset her mother. Tommy, on the other hand, had idolised his father. When he was at home between voyages, they had gone to football matches together, fishing and camping. It was for his father he worked hard at school, to make him proud. He had stared at his mother for fully a minute, then rushed out of the house. He was gone for hours.

‘If he’s not back by teatime, we’ll go looking for him,’ Louise said. ‘He won’t have gone far. It’s just his way of coping.’

‘I’ve got to get back tonight,’ Agnes said. ‘I’m on early shift tomorrow.’

‘Can’t you ask for some time off?’

‘What would I do with it if I had it? I’d only mope about the house. It’s better to keep busy. I’ve got mates at work. We keep each other going.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Tommy came back at four o’clock, dawdling up the lane, kicking viciously at stones as if every one of them was a Jerry. Ignoring
those who had been watching his progress, he went straight up to his room. His mother followed him. There was silence for a few minutes and then they heard the unmistakeable sound of sobbing. ‘He’ll be all right now he’s got it out of his system,’ Jenny said.

Louise knew it would not be as easy as that and she might very well be called upon to try and soften his anger in the days and nights to come. She went to telephone Bill Young to ask him if he would run Mrs Carter to Swaffham station in his car. Being a farmer, he had a petrol allowance. Mrs Carter was coming down the stairs as she rang off. ‘I’ve arranged a lift for you to the station,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Try not to worry. I’ll keep an eye on the children for you.’

‘I should think you have enough to worry about without concerning yourself with my children,’ she said, looking down at Angela who had crawled after her mother and was trying to hug her leg.

Whether it was a reference to her single state, Louise neither knew nor cared. She picked Angela up and opened the door just as Bill’s car drew up. Beattie ran out to kiss her mother goodbye, but Tommy stayed in his room. He came down the following morning, dry-eyed but subdued. Breakfast over, he took Beattie by the hand and set off for school. Louise saw to Angela’s breakfast, kissed her goodbye and followed. Like everyone else she was feeling the weight of her responsibilities.

It was obvious the men of 303 Squadron, especially those who had been with it since the beginning, could not go on much longer without casualties escalating, not only through enemy action but as a result of accidents through fatigue. They were taken off operations for rest and recuperation. Jan’s leave coincided with the school’s summer holiday, so he took his little family on holiday to the Lake District, hiring a
small cottage tucked away on the slopes above Lake Windermere.

It was a wonderful two weeks, the longest they had ever spent together. Jan put Angela in a sling on his back and they walked all over the hills, taking picnics, even swimming in the cold water of the lake, returning to the cottage to eat and go to bed to make love and go to sleep in each other’s arms. They didn’t talk about the war or the future, what might have been or what might yet be. The present was all that mattered and they made the most of it. They returned to Cottlesham, refreshed and ready to carry on with the work they had to do. Jan went back to Northolt and Louise set about preparing her lessons for the new term.

The first person Jan saw when he arrived back was Witold coming out of the mess.

‘I’m being posted,’ he said after they had greeted each other.

‘When? Where?’ Jan knew that Witold had asked to be assigned to a special RAF squadron that had begun smuggling supplies and men into occupied Europe, Poland included. ‘Special operations?’

‘No, more’s the pity. I’m going to America.’ It was said bitterly. Witold had been in at the start and worked his way up from pilot to command the first Polish fighter wing and the posting was not to his liking.

‘America? Why there?’

‘I am being attached to the Polish Embassy in Washington and I’m supposed to go round drumming up support for the war. Apart from the ones who have come over here, the Yanks have little idea what it’s all about.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

One by one Jan’s old comrades were disappearing, either killed, injured or moved on. A few new flyers had arrived in Scotland, freed from Soviet camps, and Witold and Jan had had the job
of training them in RAF ways, just as they themselves had been trained, but the old comradeship was slowly being eroded.

‘When do you go?’

‘Tomorrow. Jan Zumbach is taking over from me.’

‘So soon? We’d better have a celebration tonight, then.’

‘It’s all arranged at the Orchard. Oh, and I nearly forgot, there’s a letter for you. I put it on your locker.’

Jan was puzzled. He had just left Louise, so it couldn’t be from her. He hurried to his room. There on his locker was an envelope with several official-looking stamps; letters like that usually meant news from home, smuggled out by agents to the government-in-exile. He snatched it up and ripped it open. Inside was another envelope which had been opened and resealed. He recognised the handwriting of his brother. Jozef was alive! He sat down heavily on his bed to read it.

‘I do not know if you will ever get this,’ Jozef had written. ‘For all I know you never left Poland. You might have died there. You might have died anywhere, but I live in hope that you have survived. When I heard that the Ko
ś
ciuszko Squadron had distinguished itself in the Battle of Britain and that Witold Urbanowicz and Mika Feric were still with it, I thought maybe you were with them and if not they might know what happened to you.

‘I was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1939 and sent to Kolyma. It is the most desolate and coldest spot on earth. I cannot begin to describe the conditions there, for civilians as well as soldiers. Hard labour, starvation rations and a cold that freezes your blood. Many, many succumbed. How their families will ever find out what happened to them, I do not know. How I survived, I have no idea – stubbornness, I suppose, but survive I did and then we were suddenly set free, if you can call it freedom. We had been on the march for weeks and many died on the way,
before we learnt the reason for it. The Germans had turned on the Soviet Union and the Soviets needed more manpower to defend themselves. Manpower! We were living skeletons.

‘Some of us went into a Polish army in Russia, but others, me included, became part of General Anders’ army and spent last winter in a tented camp and more people died. When we had gained enough strength we were marched to Tashkent. We spent eight months there and then began another trek, this time to Iran and then Palestine. And here I am, back in the fight. There were very few officers among us; they were separated from the troops when we were captured. Heaven knows what their fate was, but it means I have been promoted to major.

‘Father and Mother died during the early fighting. I heard that the day before I was taken prisoner, but perhaps you know that already. In a way I am glad because they would never have survived Siberia. Is Rulka with you? I would like to think she is. Write to me.’

Jan lost no time in doing just that, and took it to the post before leaving the camp for the Orchard, where they had a noisy and drunken carouse to say goodbye to Witold.

By the end of that autumn term, Angela was able to pull herself to her feet, hanging onto whatever came handy: a chair, a table leg, the seat of the sofa and Tommy’s hands. He was very good with her and she adored him. It was Angela, with her sunny nature, who had eventually pulled him out of his gloom. She was trying to talk too, though whatever it was she was chatting about was unintelligible to the adults. Sometimes Beattie would report what she said, whether accurately or not no one knew.

By this time, too, the Battle of El Alamein had been won, Malta had been relieved and the Russians were fighting back
outside Stalingrad. The Allies had landed in force in North Africa, determined to flush the enemy out of that continent, which frightened the Germans into thinking an invasion of southern France might be on the cards and they swiftly occupied the whole of France. At home the population struggled with shortages and air raids – nothing like as bad as they had been during the Blitz, but frequent enough to cause deaths, injury and hardship. The fourth Christmas of the war was at hand and everyone hoped it would be the last. Already there was talk of a second front. Louise wanted the war to end as much as anyone but she knew it would mean parting from Jan. He would, she knew, not abandon his wife if he thought she was alive. And that was, so she told herself sternly, as it should be.

Jan had hoped to go down to Cottlesham for Angela’s first birthday, but it was not to be, and he spent her birthday in the air, sticking close to an American bomber on its way to Dusseldorf.

The tide of war was beginning to turn in the Allies’ favour. The Germans had given up their attempt to take Stalingrad, nine hundred miles inside Russia, when an apparently defensive action turned into a full-scale counter offensive. The German commander Marshal Paulus, his chief of staff and fifteen generals, surrendered. Hitler, like Napoleon, had been defeated by stubborn resistance and the Russian winter and now those troops who had not surrendered were retreating westwards. Jan rejoiced at the ignominy of the German army, but he wondered what would happen if and when the Russian army pursued them all the way back to Poland. He feared for Poland and he feared for Rulka – if she were still alive. Louise had told him that the English had a saying, no news is good news, and he hoped it was true. But at the end of the war, if he survived, he was going to have to make a choice.

In the air, droning on at the speed of the Liberator he was escorting, his mind had time to wander. He could think while he searched the sky for enemy aircraft but his thinking led him to no conclusion. He had loved Rulka from the first moment he set eyes on her. She shared his pride in his nationality, spoke the same language, liked the same food, enjoyed the culture of Warsaw, just as he did. But how much of the nationality, the language and the culture would survive the war? If Rulka were alive, had she changed? Had he? Would she even recognise the prematurely ageing man who had promised her he would be back? If conditions in Warsaw were as bad as they had been led to believe and she had lived with it for years, how would that affect her attitude towards him who had escaped from it?