All the Days of Our Lives (54 page)

‘Oh yes, like everyone – dysentery. Some typhus. But I was strong. And by the time we were moving on to Iran, I was in a separate place – with the army. My baby sister, Dorota, she got a bad fever and she died on the way. Agnieska and Ewa, they sat and held her, their dead sister, while our mother went to try and find a way to bury her. But how could she? She had no tool, no . . .’

‘Shovel?’

‘Yes, shovel – she had nothing. So they had to put her in a grave with others – many others together.’ He continued quickly. ‘Somehow, along the way, Ewa became separated from the others. I think because she was so sick. Agnieska says she cannot remember the time – she had a fever also. So Agnieska is left with my mother, and they all cross the Caspian Sea to Iran, to be put in a camp on the beach. The journey is very difficult: the heat is terrible. When they reach the place – it is Pahlavi, the name, I think – my mother is so weak, so sick. Many are sick, and their bones sticking out. After three days she opened her eyes for the last time. I think her heart is broken as well as her strength.’

‘So poor Agnieska was left all on her own?’

‘Yes. No one else of my family. There was no sight of Ewa. But others looked after her. After some time everyone was sent out to other camps – she was first in India some years, then East Africa: Uganda. She speaks Swahili language, you know! Then from there they come here.’

‘And what about Ewa?’

‘We don’t know. Still we are trying to find out. But I do not have a big hope.’

Katie was struggling to take all this in. ‘And you: where were you, Marek?’

‘They took us first to Palestine for training. The Jewish boys thought their dreams had come true. They didn’t want to leave, and they stayed to fight there. Then we went to Italy, all the way up to Monte Cassino. We get our hands on the Germans! Along the way I met Piotr and together we go on. Then – here. Here I am.’

‘Oh, Marek . . .’ She looked into his face. She felt powerfully tender towards him, but what he had told her was so terrible, so immense. She didn’t know how he could bear the grief of it all. All she could do was hold him, kissing his face.

After a long silence she said, ‘All your family. You’ve lost so much.’

‘It was the same for everybody,’ he said. By his detached way of talking she understood that he could not go into the emotions – it would be too much. ‘Talk to any of the Poles – it is the same.’

‘Piotr?’

‘Yes. All dead. In Siberia.’

Katie made a sound of distress.

Marek gently took her hand. ‘We have to make a new life.’

‘Can you really not go back to Poland?’

‘We had one friend – he was determined to go back. He said he would write and tell us when it was safe. We never heard another word from him. The Russians own my country now.’ His voice was very bitter. ‘Soviets. Reds. They are in charge – no one says no to Papa Stalin, it seems. Not the British, the Americans: no one. Poland has been smashed apart. You know, they have moved the borders west – by about a hundred and fifty miles? So, my home is now in Ukraine – no home for us any more. We are all . . .’ He made a scattering motion with his free hand.

He looked into her eyes. She could just see the dying flames reflected in his.

‘You have to understand – my country has had many different borders before this war. Many wars before, fighting, people occupying this land and that. And so many hatreds: Ukrainians hate Poles as they were given their land; Lithuanians in the north hate us, as we took Wilno; some people hating Jews for reasons of wealth and religion, some Jews hating us . . . We are a quarrelsome country – but now, it has been a funeral pyre. And we are occupied by Russia . . .’

He stopped, gave a heavy sigh. ‘Some people here – Poles, I mean – can’t accept. One day they will go back, they say. Poland will be free. But I don’t know. Everything is broken. All I can do is go forward, not thinking of the past too much. We are here. We have to make a home somehow.

They were both silent. The fire shifted.

‘Katie?’ Gently he stroked back her hair, leaving his big, warm hand on her head. She heard anxiety in his voice and turned to him.

‘Thank you.’ She turned her head and kissed the delicate skin of his wrist. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘Dear Katinka . . .’ he lowered his hand and his eyes searched hers. ‘You are like home to me, and a new life. Will you stay with me and we make a life together? Will you be my wife?’

She moved nearer, until their faces were very close, in the darkness. Their noses were almost touching.

‘You are my home too,’ she said. There was nothing – no one – she wanted but this. ‘Yes, my darling Marek – I will.’

February 1949

‘There’s a letter for you, Miss Fox.’

As soon as Molly got through the front door, blowing on her frozen hands, her landlady Mrs Hodgkins came sliding out of her room on the ground floor. Her husband was a sick man and she always moved with an air of trying not to wake somebody. She was holding out a white postcard.

‘I thought I’d better take it in for safekeeping,’ she said.

‘Oh – thank you.’ Molly took it and went up the bare staircase to her room.

Safekeeping my eye, she thought. Does she really think someone’s going to come in and steal my post? She was just being nosy as usual, poor old thing. She’s not got much to liven her life up. But then – Molly laughed at herself – neither have I, come to think of it! Despite the perishing cold, she was feeling quite cheerful.

Her digs were on the first floor of a house in Camden Town. Above her lived a shy, mousy-haired, but sweet-natured typist called Sarah. Below were Mrs Hodgkins and the suffering Bert. Molly had heard him groaning once or twice. Mrs H was nosy and a bit miserable, but she wasn’t a bad cook, the rent was reasonable, at eighteen shillings, and the house bare, but clean.

The room was very cold and, without taking off her coat, Molly filled the kettle, set it on the single ring heater. She badly needed a cuppa and a smoke after that freezing wait for the bus and the miserable crawl home! She sat on the bed, lit a cigarette and looked at the card, across which, in blue-black ink, was strung Phoebe Morrison’s unmistakable bold, square hand.

‘Molly . . .’ it began. (It had taken the two of them a long time to get used to each other’s first names. Molly struggled with ‘Phoebe’, and she was sure her former Subaltern had to think twice to prevent herself barking ‘Fox!’ at her.)

Molly laid the card down with a sense of mild curiosity and went to make herself a much-needed cup of tea. Mug in both hands, sipping the hot liquid, she thought: Well, I wonder what the Gorg’s got to say?

The relationship of commander and subordinate had never vanished entirely from their friendship, but since Molly had been living in London more permanently she had seen Phoebe Morrison quite regularly and they had become more relaxed with one another. They almost never went to each other’s lodgings – Phoebe in any case lived some way away in Highbury. And she was rather awkward company. So they met to do something: usually to go to the pictures and for a drink afterwards to chat about the film, while Molly stuck to lemonade and Phoebe smoked like a chimneystack. That worked well. Though the two of them had never had a very close or confiding conversation, Molly really looked forward to their outings. It felt like something sure and stable in her life, and she could tell that Phoebe, in her stiff, repressed way, valued it too. She certainly went to pains to keep in touch.

After another summer of the holiday camps, Molly had decided to try and get a grip on things. She was getting sick of her life of shifting work and of brief, pointless affairs with men who just happened to be around.

‘I just don’t know what to do,’ she had confided to Ruth during their conversation on the beach when Ruth had encouraged her to make more of herself. ‘I don’t know how to go about things.’

‘Well,’ Ruth had said, considering the matter, ‘why don’t you move to somewhere where you can go to night school? If you’ve got a job – any job’ll do really – you can make a start like that. And it could lead to something better.’

‘But what?’ Molly had asked gloomily. She had truly felt in those days that nothing she did would ever lead to anything better.

‘Well . . .’ Ruth was beginning to sound just a bit exasperated. ‘The thing is, you can’t always tell where something might lead. But one thing’s for sure: if you
don’t
do anything, it can’t lead anywhere much, can it?’

Molly couldn’t argue with this logic.

‘What are the things you’re best at – I mean, when you were at school?’

‘I suppose . . . Sums. I always got along all right with those. And the Gorgon did tell me once that I’d come near the top in the tests we did when we joined up.’ Molly blushed with pleasure, recounting this.

‘
Did
you?’ Ruth turned to her in pleased surprise. ‘You’ve never told me that before!’

‘Yes – she said I’d not done much less well than you and Win.’ Molly was rather enjoying this.

‘Well, I’m blowed – that’s marvellous, Molly! All the more reason for you to
get on and do something
, instead of just drifting.’

When the last summer season ended Molly had returned to London, on a wave of confidence and determination. She found herself the digs with Mrs Hodgkins and a job in the Cottage Tea Rooms on the Strand. She swallowed her pride and went to see Phoebe Morrison, who helped her find a place where she could do evening classes, and she decided to sign up for shorthand and typing one evening, and a class to improve her arithmetic on another.

‘That’ll keep me busy Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ she said. ‘And I expect there’ll be homework.’ She found she was very nervous. Would she be able to keep up with it? Was she about to make a gigantic fool of herself? But she was also excited: this was a new beginning. Surely she could find some of her old army confidence and make it work? Having the support of some of her old friends helped, too. Ruth wrote and said she was delighted to hear what Molly was up to, and Phoebe Morrison, ever practical, was a great help. They also met up with Win, from time to time.

‘I’m so pleased!’ Win beamed, when Molly told of her plans. And Molly could see she meant it. In the old days she would have felt spoken down to, and foolish. Now she could just accept that Win was really glad for her.

To her surprise, the classes were more than just a means to an end. She loved them. Her mind, ravenously hungry for something to do after all the menial work she had taken on, soaked up lessons and information at high speed. She was very quick at Pitman. It took her time to get used to the typing – a mechanical matter, needing practice – and to get back into arithmetic. But she was so excited, so determined! She took her books home and pored over them. She drew herself a diagram of the typewriter keys and practised in her room at night. Her teachers were very pleased with her and she lapped up any crumb of praise or attention. Most of the others in the class were pleasant as well, though one or two seemed to resent her eagerness and muttered a bit behind her back. Molly didn’t give two hoots. She was taking off – she was going to fly! Who cared what that miserable lot thought – just because she was better at it than them! And the longer she stayed, growing more confident, the more her sense of humour came out and she was able to make the class laugh sometimes. She loved the classes more and more.

‘I suppose I’m getting too big for my boots,’ she wrote to Ruth. ‘But I’m enjoying it ever so much. Thanks for keeping on at me!’

Ruth, who was in the final year of her degree, was having to work very hard, and Molly did not see much of her, but she wrote a note now and then, always encouraging her.

‘Glad to hear it – keep it up!’ was her reply this time.

What with one thing and another, life was beginning to feel a good deal better. For the first time in months she wrote to Em and told her where she was and what she was doing, and had an enthusiastic reply almost by return of post. Having ATS friends she could hook up with in London felt very good. On one occasion when they met Win, Molly had also told them that she’d been out to visit Honor – one of the other girls in their basic training group.

‘Her husband’s a very nice fellow,’ Win said. ‘I suppose you’d call him a gentleman farmer. And now they’ve got their girls: twins! Not identical, Honor said, but very alike all the same – called Lucy and Miranda. They’re lovely. And you should see Honor – she’s looking rather plumper and sort of creamy! She seems very happy.’

‘She’s full of surprises, that one,’ Molly said. ‘I never thought she’d make it through basic training, did you?’

‘No,’ Win agreed. ‘But then we all thought the same about you – for completely different reasons!’

‘Ah well,’ Molly blushed. ‘Yes – let’s just forget about all that, shall we?’

The others laughed affectionately and Molly felt a glow of happiness.

The girl upstairs, Sarah, wasn’t bad company either, and sometimes they sat and had a chat together, usually up in Sarah’s attic, with the fire on, so that Mrs Hodgkins didn’t complain about the noise. And Molly didn’t mind her work. It was in a nice part of London and, so far as she was concerned, it was a means to an end. What end she didn’t know – she just hoped there would be one and, as time passed, she became more sure there would.