A Different World (25 page)

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I should be the one who’s sorry. Shall we talk instead?’

‘Yes, tell me what your war was like.’

And so he talked about England and flying and being shot down and escaping, of meeting Jozef, and finding his way over the mountains and back to her. He did not mention Louise or Angela; they were locked away in his heart and in his memory, where they would have to stay. ‘Now tell me about what you were up to,’ he said. ‘Boris Martel told me you were a heroine.’

‘He found you, then?’

‘Yes. I had no way of knowing what had happened to you, but when he told me you were alive, I had to come back.’

‘Did you know what you might be coming back to?’

‘I had a rough idea. What about you? It must have been grim.’

‘It was. I don’t want to talk about it.’ She couldn’t put into words what it had been like, the danger and the exhilaration, the slaughter and the suffering, the comradeship and the determination not to be subdued. But it had been in vain. They had lost and yet the will to resist was still there, still strong. It was why she had
joined the Freedom and Independence Organisation to continue the fight, this time directed against the Soviets. Lucky for her, her accusers did not know that and her ‘crime’ had been that she belonged to the Home Army. How could she explain all that to Jan, a Jan who had never known real hunger and repression. His body was pink, well-nourished, muscular. He had all his teeth and his hair was as thick as ever. He had known comrades die, she did not doubt that, but he had never had to see women deliberately run over by tanks, never had to eat cats and dogs, or walk through sewerage up to his armpits.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, breaking into a long silence. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’

She rose from the bed and went to gather up her clothes. ‘Is there anything to eat?’

‘Some sausage and a cabbage, a little beetroot too.’

She finished dressing. ‘I’ll make
barszcz
and
bigos
, then. Can you get the fire going?’

He dressed and went off in search of firewood. Life would get better, he had to believe it. One day they would learn to live like human beings again. They would have a proper home and enough work to keep them out of penury and then, maybe, Poland would be free and independent again.

Jenny stared at the tall young man in casual slacks and a donkey jacket who stood on the back doorstep of the Pheasant. His smile was mischievous and vaguely familiar. ‘It isn’t … It can’t be … Not Tommy Carter.’

‘The very same,’ he said, laughing.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him over the threshold. ‘Come on in.’ Then, ‘Stan! Stan! Look who’s turned up like a bad penny.’

Stan appeared from the cellar where he had been tapping a new barrel. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Where have you sprung from?’

‘I’m back.’

‘So I see. Are your mother and Beattie with you?’

‘No, I left them in the States. Beattie got married last year. He’s a car salesman. Mum and Russ divorced. It didn’t work out. She’s got a new fellow now. I didn’t fancy playing gooseberry, so I decided to come home.’

‘Home? You still call this home?’

‘Definitely, have done ever since the war drove us out of London.’

‘Sit down. We were just about to have lunch. We have to wait until the bar closes, so it’s always the middle of the afternoon by the time we have it. My goodness, there’s so much catching up to do. I don’t know where to start. Where are you staying? How long are you here for?’

‘I’m here for good, I think. I didn’t take to life in the States and I was homesick, but I stuck it out until Beattie married and Ma took up with Randy; it was then I began to think of coming back.’

‘You’ll find a lot has changed.’

‘So I noticed. There are houses all over Mr Sadler’s meadow and there’s a bypass. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place when I got off the bus. And the Pheasant has changed, hasn’t it? It’s twice as big as it was.’

‘We’ve expanded into providing restaurant meals. And we’ve got more bedrooms. It was the only way to survive; the old idea of the village pub only serving alcohol wouldn’t provide a living nowadays, in spite of Macmillan telling us we never had it so good.’

‘What happened to everyone else, Miss Fairhurst and Angela?’

‘They live in the schoolhouse. Louise is headmistress. The school has been expanded too, though children are only there until they are eleven now. Then they go on to secondary school or Swaffham Grammar. Angela goes there. You must go and see them.’

‘I will. Do you think you can put me up for a bit, just until I find a job and somewhere to live?’

Stan laughed. ‘Oh, I think we can manage that.’

Jenny had been laying the table and dishing up while they talked. ‘Come to the table,’ she said. ‘You can tell us all about what you’ve been up to while we eat.’

‘Are you coming to the dance on Saturday?’ Rosemary Richards asked Angela, as they sat side by side on the bus on their way home from school. ‘Toby’s taking me.’

‘I dunno. I’ve got no one to go with since I ditched that creep, Nigel Barker.’

‘Why did you ditch him?’

‘He was spreading tales about me.’

‘What tales?’

‘Doesn’t matter. I told him if he repeated them again, I’d have the law on him.’

‘Good for you. I could ask Toby to get one of his mates to partner you, if you like.’

‘No thanks, I don’t fancy blind dates. Anyway, Mum likes to approve of my boyfriends, and as for Granny.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘She’s oh, so Victorian. She doesn’t think you should have boyfriends before you’re at least twenty and then only chaperoned.’

‘Did your mother approve of Nigel?’

‘She didn’t exactly disapprove. After all, she’s known Nigel’s mother for years and years …’

‘Did you tell her what Nigel said?’

‘No, course not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s all lies and it would hurt her.’

The bus drew up at the end of the road leading to the village and Angela left it to walk home. ‘Ring me if you change your mind,’ Rosemary called after her.

It was only half a mile to the schoolhouse, a walk Angela had made every day of every school term since she passed her eleven-plus and gone to the grammar school. She could have done it in her sleep. At the end of this term when all her exams were finished,
she would go out into a wider world. Living in a village was so restricting, nothing ever happened. Everyone knew everyone else’s business – or thought they did. And if they didn’t know it, they made it up. Nigel Barker had been all over her trying to get her to have sex with him, just because he had taken her out once or twice and she had allowed him to kiss her. ‘What are you holding back for?’ he had demanded. ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘No, it is not.’

‘Don’t believe you. Girls always say no to start with when they really mean yes.’

‘Not me.’

‘Can’t see why you’re so particular,’ he had grumbled. ‘Your mother never was.’

She couldn’t help herself; she had to ask. ‘What’s my mother got to do with it?’

‘You know.’

‘No, I do not.’

‘Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.’

She had been furious and when he tried to kiss her, had thumped him over the head with the tennis racket she was carrying. He had winced and put his hand to his head, so it must have hurt. Serve him right. But things like that were difficult to forget and his words festered. She might have confided in her mother, but when it came to it, she couldn’t, didn’t know how to begin.

She didn’t remember her father. According to Granny, he had been killed in the war, though that didn’t account for the fact that her surname was Fairhurst, the same as Granny’s. She had come to the inevitable conclusion her mother had never married. It didn’t bother her. Mum was still Mum, whom she loved. She was not only Mum, but her best friend. She would not allow anyone to say a word against her, especially creeps like Nigel Barker.

She went in at the back door of the schoolhouse to the kitchen where her grandmother was preparing their evening meal. Granny had come to live with them when Grandfather had died of a stroke. He had been an invalid; she had never known him when he was fit and healthy, but even bedridden he had frightened her on the few occasions she had seen him. Granny sometimes smiled, but she never laughed. And she was so strait-laced she found fault all the time. Her arrival in the household had not made for harmony, but Mum had told her to be tolerant, that her grandmother had had a hard life and needed understanding. It was difficult when Granny criticised her clothes, her love of rock and roll and dancing and nagged her to do more about the house. If there had been a man in the home, it might have been different.

Mr Young had been trying to court Mum for years, ever since his wife had died of cancer, but Mum would have none of it. ‘I’ve got enough to keep me busy without having to look after a husband,’ she had said, laughing.

‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked her grandmother.

‘In the front room marking books.’

Angela put her head round the door of the sitting room. ‘I’m home, Mum. Just going up to change.’

Louise looked up from the exercise book she was marking and smiled at her daughter. At eighteen she was growing into a lovely young woman. With her blonde hair and blue eyes and determined chin, she was the image of Jan. Every day she noticed it more and more, a constant reminder of the man she had loved and lost. He had taken her at her word and never tried to communicate with her, but she wondered if he ever thought of her and his daughter. Perhaps he had other children, half-brothers and -sisters to Angela, but they would never know.

The years had passed incredibly swiftly. The horrible post-war
years of austerity were over and life was easier. She had a good job, which had allowed her to give her daughter a happy childhood, a happier one than she had had. Angela repaid her by being loving and considerate. She worked hard at school and was expected to do well enough in her exams to get her to Cambridge. Jan would be proud of her if he could see her now. Sometimes she wondered if Angela remembered her
tata
, the man who had given her that rather battered teddy bear which still sat in pride of place on a chair in her bedroom.

One day she would have to tell her about Jan. She ought to have done it sooner, before her mother came to live with them and insisted on telling all and sundry that her daughter’s husband had been killed in the war. She ought to have said something to Angela then, but she had only been eight at the time and she wasn’t sure she could make her understand. The village had a new housing estate and a lot of incomers from bombed-out London who had settled in the village and had not known her during the war. A few people in the village knew the truth, but they were good friends and saw no reason to bring up the subject.

Angela would want to marry herself one day, though she hoped not too soon, and then it would all have to come out. ‘Don’t see why,’ her mother had said when she mentioned it. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ And so she prevaricated.

She piled the marked books up neatly and went into the kitchen to help her mother finish preparing the meal, just as Angela came down in jeans and a striped shirt.

‘How was it today?’ Louise asked her, as they sat down to eat.

‘Not bad. We had to write an essay comparing Tennyson with Browning. Thank goodness I’d swotted them up. Only two more to go. The history one is going to be the hardest.’ She had chosen to take history, English and mathematics at A level and had a
provisional place at Homerton to study modern history. ‘Then it’s no more school for me.’

‘University is still school,’ Faith said.

‘No, it isn’t. It’s nothing like school. It’s for grown-ups.’

Louise smiled at that, but didn’t comment. ‘Are you going to take that summer job Aunt Jenny offered you?’

‘Perhaps. I want to save up for when we go to Rome.’ The school had arranged a visit to Rome in August to see the sights and some of the Olympics. When they came back she and her mother were going on holiday together.

‘In my day,’ Faith said. ‘Young ladies did not go gallivanting about the world on their own.’

‘But this isn’t your day, Granny,’ Angela said. ‘We are more liberated. And we aren’t going to go alone, are we?’

‘What have you planned for the weekend?’ Louise asked, quickly changing the subject.

‘Nothing, really. Rosemary is going to the hop in Swaffham tomorrow night, but I don’t think I’ll go. I’ll only be playing gooseberry.’

‘Why? Can’t you go with Nigel?’

‘No. I’ve finished with him, he’s a creep.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Louise said. ‘You must have very exacting standards.’

‘Is that bad?’ she asked.

‘No, it isn’t. There’s plenty of time to find Mr Right. You must see a bit of life first.’

‘That’s why I want to travel.’

Louise laughed at her daughter’s persistence and began clearing the table, collecting everything on a tray. She was carrying it into the kitchen when they heard the front door knocker. ‘See who that is,’ she called over her shoulder.

Angela went to open the door and found herself staring at the
handsomest man she had ever seen. He had crinkly light-brown hair, hazel eyes and an infectious smile. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘You must be Angela.’ He had a slight American accent.

‘Yes, I am, but who are you?’

‘You don’t remember me? I’m not surprised, it was a long time ago. Is your mother in?’ He looked past her to Louise who was coming along the hall towards them. ‘Hallo, Miss,’ he said, grinning.

‘Good Heavens, Tommy Carter. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? Come in, come in.’

He followed her into the sitting room with Angela bringing up the rear. His name on her mother’s lips had stirred a vague memory, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Sometime in the past, this young man had been part of her life.

She sat and listened as Tommy and her mother talked. Her grandmother finished the washing-up and brought in a tray loaded with mugs of coffee and the conversation continued unabated. He told them all about his life in America and what had happened to his mother and Beattie, and his decision to come back to Cottlesham. ‘It’s changed a bit,’ he said. ‘But in some ways it’s still the same. The school looks exactly as I remember it.’

‘That’s only at the front,’ Louise said. ‘It’s been extended at the back to make two separate classrooms and we’ve got cloakrooms and indoor toilets now. Many of the children I teach with the help of Miss Finch are the children of those you went to school with.’

‘You’re one of Mum’s ex-pupils?’ Angela queried.

He turned to answer her. ‘Yes. I was an evacuee. She was my teacher in Edgware. We came to Cottlesham together at the beginning of the war. We lived at the Pheasant.’

‘Oh. You must tell me what it was like. Was Mum very strict?’

‘Not really. Soft as butter, though she tried to be stern. Mr
Langford, the headmaster, was the strict one. He had been wounded in the first war and had a peg leg but it didn’t stop him using the cane with gusto when he thought it was deserved.’ He turned back to Louise. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He lives with his sister in Dereham,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages.’

Angela had been studying him while he and her mother talked. Sitting in one of the armchairs with his long legs stretched out, he seemed totally at ease. He had a mobile kind of face, the sort that could change from a frown to a grin in a split second. ‘I ought to remember you,’ she said.

‘You were only four when we left,’ he said. ‘You were a bridesmaid at my mother’s wedding – second wedding, I hasten to add.’

‘I don’t remember that.’ Her very earliest memory was of the day the nine-inch black and white television arrived and was installed so that they could watch the Queen’s wedding to Prince Philip, only she wasn’t the queen then, but Princess Elizabeth.

‘I’ll show you,’ Louise said, going to a drawer in the alcove beside the fireplace and fetching out a photograph album. She turned the pages. ‘Look, here’s a picture of it.’

Angela must have seen the picture before but not taken much notice of it. The bride and groom were flanked by her two bridesmaids and a very young Tommy, trying to look important. Her mother was standing just behind them. ‘I seem to remember there was lots to eat and it was very cold,’ she said. ‘I recognise Mr and Mrs Wayne and Mr Young and Uncle Stan and Aunt Jenny, but who are all these other people?’