Bluebirds (45 page)

‘What are you thinking, Anne?'

She tapped her cigarette unnecessarily against the ashtray between them. ‘Oh, nothing special.'

‘I think you are very nervous of me. Please . . . there is no need. Believe me.'

Watching them from his place at the bar, the middle-aged civilian saw the way the pretty WAAF looked up and smiled at the Polish pilot. He sighed enviously.

Fallen leaves lay like russet carpeting beneath the beeches of the New Forest. Anne consulted the hand-drawn map on her knee.

‘Next left, I think.'

‘You only
think
? I never take you as navigator in my 'plane.'

‘Navigators have the equivalent of signposts. They've taken all those away now and I don't know this part of the country.'

‘Is very beautiful.'

‘Do you have forests in Poland?'

‘We have many forests, but not exactly like this. Different trees. Everything is different. Poland is much bigger than England. Not so . . . so cosy. In north is sea, in south is hills and mountains, and we have many lakes. But in middle is all lowlands. Poland is
Polska
in our language. That is from
pole
– is word for field. We have many flat fields, you see. Nature is not stopping other people to invade us, like your sea all around has stopped the Germans.'

‘What about the climate?'

‘In summer is hot. In winter very cold. Sometimes there is a lot of rain. Now, it will already be getting cold. Next month, perhaps, there will be snow.' He turned the car to the left. ‘I think you not know very much about my country.'

‘Before I met you I wasn't even sure where it was. I had to look you up in an atlas.'

He clicked his tongue and smiled. ‘That is very bad. I knew where
you
were.'

‘Just as well, or you might never have got here. But we're an island, so we're easier to find. You're all sort of mixed up with all those other countries – Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Bulgaria, and places like that.'

‘Bulgaria is nowhere near Poland. Is in south by the Black Sea.'

She sighed. ‘If you'd been our geography teacher instead of Miss Carpenter I'd've paid much more attention.'

‘What else do you not know? What is our capital city?'

‘That's easy. Warsaw. What's it like?'

‘Very beautiful – once. Many old buildings with very high roofs, painted in colours . . . yellow, pink, orange. Many balconies full of flowers in summer. Many churches. Old streets with . . . I don't know how you say this . . . small stones in the ground.'

‘Cobblestones.'

‘
Tak
. Cobblestones. And there are cafés and people who sell flowers on the corner of streets . . . And there is a river, like your London has the Thames.'

‘I'd like to see it one day.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘One day. But is not beautiful any more. All is in ruins.'

‘I'm sorry. That was stupid of me. I was forgetting . . .' She bent her head over the map again. ‘According to this, we take the next right by a pub called The Green Man.'

‘In England,' he said, ‘you do not need signposts. Instead you have pubs to tell the way.'

The cottage lay on the outskirts of the village, at the edge of the forest. A thatched roof curved low over the upstairs windows, like two beetling brows, and there was a wellhead, complete with bucket and chain, in the front garden. They walked up the brick path through a wilderness of long neglect. Late roses bloomed blowsily and crimson red on the walls and a thicket of honeysuckle smothered the door.

Inside it smelled musty and, in the dim light of the
fading day, pieces of furniture stood about as shadowy shapes – a table in the centre of the room, some chairs round it, a sagging sofa, a Welsh dresser against the wall, a tall cupboard in the corner . . . There was a copper jug on the windowsill and a row of pottery cows stalked, head to tail, along the shelf above the inglenook. A brass warming pan hung beside the fireplace.

Anne went through to the scullery at the back. She turned on the tap over the stone sink and a gurgling and spluttering heralded a gush of rusty cold water. The iron cooking range looked as though it should have been in a museum. She opened cupboards and drawers, disturbing cobwebs and frightening spiders and wrestled with stiff bolts on the back door which opened onto what once might have been a vegetable patch but was now another jungle of weeds and flourishing stinging nettles. She stared in disbelief at the brick privy and at the tin bath hanging from a nail outside the door.

Every tread of the staircase creaked. Upstairs she discovered two bedrooms – a little one at the back with a single camp bed and a larger one at the front, with a big brass bed that was propped up by bricks at the foot end and covered by a patchwork quilt. The floorboards sloped down towards the window like a pitching deck in a rough sea, and she had to kneel down to see out of the window and beneath the overhanging thatch. Michal was bringing in the luggage from the car – her kitbag and his suitcase. When she went downstairs he was setting the case down on the table.

‘I bring food for us.' He began to take out the contents. ‘Eggs, bacon, potatoes, a tin of ham, bread, butter, tea, chocolate . . . Tomorrow we get other things.'

‘How on earth did you manage to get all that?'

‘I beg. I exchange. I buy.' He delved into the case again and held up a bottle. ‘And, most important thing of all, real Polish vodka. Stefan finds this in London. He finds everything. We find glasses and then we drink. But first
we must find wood for a fire and fuel for the lamps, before is dark. I am told there is some in a small place outside. There is no electricity, you see.'

‘I had noticed.'

‘You do not mind? This is not like hotel, I know. Not very comfortable . . .'

She began to giggle. ‘I think it's much nicer than a hotel.'

They found logs and kindling and paraffin in a shed at the back, as well as a camping stove that looked encouraging in view of the iron range. Before long the lamps were lit and a fire was crackling in the inglenook grate. The sitting-room had come into soft focus with the warm colours of chintz, oak and brick, and the gleam of copper and brass. Michal found some glasses in the bottom cupboard of the Welsh dresser. He poured vodka into each one.

‘Now, you must drink this Polish fashion – very quick, one swallow.' He handed her a glass and raised his own to her.
‘Na Zdrowie!

‘
Na Zdrowie!
' she repeated carefully after him and tossed back her glass. She choked as the neat vodka hit the back of her throat and tears came into her eyes. ‘Gosh, it's a bit strong!'

He poured some more into her glass, smiling at her. ‘You are not used to it, that is all. This is
wyborowa
, a plain vodka, but we have others flavoured with different things – all kinds of berries. I think, perhaps, you like
wisńiówka
best – that has taste of cherries. When you come to Poland after the war you can try all kinds.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘After the war.'

His smile faded as he looked at her. ‘Oh, Anne . . .'

He put down his glass slowly and took hers from her hand. Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her passionately in the way she had dreamed about and imagined so many times. She put her arms around his neck, eyes closed. Against her cheek he said presently:

‘Is better now? Not so much nervous?'

‘Much better.'

They drank more vodka, sitting on the rug in front of the fire and talking while they watched the flames flicker and leap, the logs shift and settle as they burned. Later on they made thick sandwiches from the tinned ham and the loaf of bread and ate them beside the fire too, like a picnic. She thought that nothing had ever tasted so good. Nothing had ever been so wonderful.

‘You want music?' Michal asked suddenly. ‘I remember there was machine where I find glasses. And some records.'

He fetched the portable gramophone and wound it up while Anne went through a box of dusty records.

‘Old as the hills . . . Heavens, look at this lot!
Come into the Garden, Maud, I Hear You Calling Me, Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes.'

‘I do not know these.'

‘You haven't missed much.' She stopped on her way through the pile. ‘This one's all right, though. Cole Porter – I love him.'

He put it on for her and as the song began he took her in his arms. They danced very close for a while.

When the record had finished he reached out with one hand to lift the needle, still holding her close.

‘It is very nice song. I like very much. To dance with you is very nice also . . . but is not enough.' He searched her face. ‘Anne, I do not think you have ever been with a man . . .'

She said anxiously: ‘Is it so obvious?'

‘Is not difficult to tell this thing. But you are sure you want this with me?'

She nodded.

‘Very sure?'

‘Very,
very
sure.'

She undressed, shivering, in the scullery and washed and brushed her teeth in cold water at the sink. In the flyblown mirror hanging on the wall, her cheeks looked flushed and her eyes bright, as though she had a fever. She peered at herself and wondered if, after tonight, she would somehow look different; whether there would be some subtle womanly change in her appearance that others would notice. The vodka had made her woozy and she had some trouble getting her feet into her pyjama legs.

When she sidled hesitantly out into the sitting-room, he was standing by the fire, one arm raised to the chimney breast, staring at the dying flames. He looked lost in sad thoughts and her heart ached for him in his exile. She gave a small cough and he turned and saw her standing there, the lamp she had taken with her in one hand.

‘
Jezus Maria!
What are you wearing, Anne?'

‘Pyjamas, WAAF, for the use of. They're issue.' She flapped her free hand which was somewhere inside the too-long striped flannel sleeve. The trouser legs finished in concertina folds around her ankles. ‘They're the same as the RAF ones, actually. And much too big.'

He began to laugh. ‘Yes, I can see that . . . but I never see a woman wearing these things before.'

He came towards her, his face full of laughter and tenderness. He took the lamp from her and held out his other hand.

‘Come.'

She stumbled after him up the creaking staircase, her hand clasped tightly in his, her other holding her pyjama bottoms clear of her bare feet. Her heart was thudding furiously.

The lamplight cast their shadows on the wall – separate and then fused together as he kissed her. He lifted her in his arms. The mattress was lumpy, the sheets damp, but she noticed none of that. All she felt was his mouth on hers, his hands undoing the WAAF pyjama buttons, loosening the cord, the warmth of his skin on her skin, the hardness of his body against hers, the soft touch of his
fingers and of his lips . . . She tried not to feel embarrassed or shocked or ashamed, and then, after a while, she didn't care any more.

When she awoke the sun was coming through the little window beneath the thatch. She could see it touching the brass at the foot of the bed, making it glint brightly. Birds were fluttering and chirruping somewhere beneath the eaves, sounding so close they might have been in the room. She shut her eyes, confused for a moment and then opened them again.

He was still asleep, his head turned towards her on the pillow, one arm across her body. She watched him, remembering. Marvelling.

It's worth everything, Pearl. Everything.

Unable to help herself, she touched his hair, smoothing it back from his brow. He opened his eyes and smiled at her drowsily.

‘
Kochana
 . . . you are happy?'

‘Blissfully.'

‘I do not know what this means. Is bad? Is good?'

‘Good. Very good.'

‘Next time I bring big dictionary so I know how you feel.'

She giggled. ‘Into bed?'

‘
Nie
.' He raised himself on one arm and leaned over her. ‘In bed words are not necessary. So, I think we stay here a long time.'

She swept and dusted the cottage and polished the copper jug on the windowsill, filling it with roses from the garden.

‘You make home for me,' he said. ‘Is wonderful.'

They coaxed the old kitchen range into life and nurtured its sulky beginnings until it was going well enough to heat some water. He carried the tin bath indoors and set it before the fire for her, filling it with water from the big range kettle and from pots and pans. She undressed quickly, stepped somewhat self-consciously
into the bath and sat with her arms folded about her body. He teased her, laughing.

‘You are
still
shy of me, Anne? Even after everything? That is not sense.'

He soaped her back and then her breasts and began kissing her. She put wet arms around his neck. Afterwards he wrapped her tightly in the towel, like a child, and began to kiss her again. Before long the towel had loosened and fallen to the floor.

That evening he lay on the sofa with his head resting in her lap, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a thick cream-coloured sweater, like a fisherman's, and it was the first time she had seen him in anything not RAF uniform. She had put on her home jumper and skirt. Just for a while she could pretend they were an ordinary couple and that there was no war. She stroked his hair.

‘I wish we could stay here for ever.'

He turned his head to smile up at her. ‘Me, also, I wish this. I am thinking the same. It is better not to, because is not possible.'

‘All right. Let's talk about something else. You haven't told me where your home is in Poland – unless you'd sooner not . . .'

‘No, I tell you about it, if you like. It is near a place called Czersk – in south east of Warsaw. In middle of Poland. Once it was important town, but it has big river that change the way it goes . . . you understand? I don't know how to say this.'