Magda's Daughter (16 page)

‘How much longer before we get there?' Helena wrapped the food they hadn't eaten, and settled back in her seat.

‘An hour.' Norbert glanced back at her over his shoulder.

‘I have no idea why but the closer we get to the village the more nervous I feel,' she said to Ned.

Ned looked out of the window. ‘We've come a long way from Pontypridd. It's strange to think that your mother grew up here.'

‘She told me that she and all the other people from her village who were sent to Germany were marched out along the main road to the town. It took them two days to get there and when they reached the railway station they had to sleep on the platform because there wasn't anywhere else. The next morning they were loaded on to goods wagons.'

‘I suppose this must be the road.'

Helena looked through the window and tried to imagine her mother and all the other young people being forced to march along it at gunpoint by armed guards. She recalled one of the few conversations she'd had with her mother about the day her father had been murdered and Magda had been taken from her home.

‘They rounded us up and marched us out as we stood. None of us was allowed to say goodbye to our families or go to our homes to fetch so much as a comb or toothbrush or coat. And the sun hadn't risen. It was cold that morning … so cold …'

‘How long ago did your mother go to the West?' Norbert broke into her thoughts.

‘She went to Britain from Germany in 1947.'

‘She never returned to Poland after the war?' he guessed.

‘She didn't, but she told me about the village and her life there. She never mentioned a bar.'

‘That's because she wouldn't have been allowed in there. In Poland women stay home at night.' Norbert slowed the car and turned right at a crossroads.

‘You mean before the war,' Helena said.

‘And now. No self-respecting woman will go near a bar in any village or small town in Poland, although widows and respectable married women can go to the side doors to buy beer.'

‘Is there a priest in the village?' Ned asked quickly, afraid that Helena might start a lecture on women's liberation.

‘Priests are outlawed,' Norbert informed him curtly.

‘We know.' Knowing that Ned had only asked about priests to avoid an argument, Helena made a face at him. ‘But my priest at home said that many priests have stayed on in Poland and operate secretly.'

‘Ask questions about them and, English or not, people will think that you are working for the secret police. What was your mother's name?'

Helena hesitated, before deciding that as she had come to bury her mother's ashes and find out what she could about her mother's life here before the war, it was ridiculous to keep her name secret. ‘Magdalena Janek. Have you heard of her?'

‘No. But hundreds if not thousands of people left here during the war and never returned. Who could blame them? Not me. So many people were killed, entire families wiped out. There was nothing for some people to come back to. And I've heard that life is soft and easy in the West.' He slowed the car as they approached another crossroads. ‘All milk and honey with machines that do the work for you. Unlike that poor man over there.' He pointed to a field where an old man was ploughing a field with an ox.

‘I am a teacher and I have worked hard to get where I am,' Helena informed him, irritated by his assumption.

‘And you?' Norbert eyed Ned in the mirror. ‘Are you a teacher, too?'

Not wanting to broadcast the fact that he was a doctor, lest people begin regaling him with lists of their ailments, Ned said, ‘Yes, I teach science.'

‘Clever you. I have no time for science. It has no relationship to money, and that's the only thing I am interested in. But here we are. This is the village.'

Although Magda had been reluctant to talk about her husband's death, she had loved talking about her home village. Helena knew there was a large square in front of the church where people congregated on summer evenings. And when the musicians in the village brought out their piano accordions and violins, there had often been impromptu concerts and dances.

She'd imagined it as large, shaded by oaks and sycamores, and ringed by benches. The reality was very different.

The square was larger even than she had expected, or perhaps it seemed larger because it was barren. There were no trees, no lawns, no flowers and no benches. It was ringed by stone buildings, which were the same pale, sand-washed colour as the compacted dirt on the ground. There were no pavements.

Norbert drove straight across it and she caught a glimpse of the church, which was fronted by high gates. He then left the square and drove down a narrow lane scarcely wider than the car, stopping outside a square wooden building that sported a pair of half-doors. They reminded Helena of the saloon doors in Hollywood westerns.

‘This is the bar.' Norbert switched off the engine and climbed out of the car.

Helena wrapped her arms around her duffle bag. ‘I'll go in and ask if the room is free.'

Norbert moved the front seat forward and helped them out of the car. Ned glanced into the bar. The walls might once have been whitewashed, the floor was compacted dirt, covered with cigarette butts and spittle. Half a dozen unshaven, unsavoury characters were sitting around on cracked Formica stools.

The men, they were all men, just as Norbert had said they would be, were nursing glasses filled with beer, and small clay cups that might have contained coffee or tea, although, given the bleariness of their eyes, Ned doubted it.

‘We can't stay in this place,' he protested to Helena.

She pushed open the half-doors. ‘This is the bar, not the room for rent. Now we're here we may as well look at it. A young man sat next to a middle-aged man behind the counter. They both rose to their feet when Helena entered. The older man's body shook as he moved, and he gave Helena the vacant, childlike smile peculiar to the slow-witted. The younger man, who was tall and well-built, with black curly hair and deep blue eyes stared at her. It was a full minute before he shook the hand she offered him. ‘Josef Dobrow. Welcome to our village, but not, I'm afraid, to our bar. Young ladies are not allowed in here.'

‘I know, and I won't stay after we have discussed our business. Thank you for the welcome.' There was a clean-cut, open directness about Josef Dobrow that suggested friendly honesty. Helena liked him on sight.

‘You are English?'

‘Welsh.'

‘Welsh?' He looked at her quizzically. ‘What is Welsh?'

‘Wales is a part of Britain, like Ireland and Scotland,' Helena explained.

‘I'm sorry. I have never heard of it.' He switched to English. ‘I hope you won't mind me practising my English. I have so few opportunities to speak it in the village.' He shook hands with Ned. ‘How can I help you?'

‘A man in town told us that you have a room we might be able to rent,' Helena said.

‘Women can't come in here,' one of the customers barked.

‘I'm not here for the bar,' Helena explained in Polish. ‘There is only one room,' Josef warned.

‘My husband and I only want one.' Aside from the fact that there was only one room on offer, she had found Ned's presence in her bed comforting in this alien country. ‘Is it vacant?'

‘We should discuss this outside.' He led the way out on to the street. ‘I only work here in the summer. Anna, who owns the bar, rents the room. It is a simple attic, accessed by an outside staircase.'

‘Does it have a bathroom?' Helena was longing to soak in a full-length tub of hot water.

‘Lavatory in the back yard. Running cold water in the wash-house. You won't find any better in the village.'

Helena remembered the only alternative was three hours' drive away. ‘We'll take it.'

‘You haven't seen the room or asked how much it is.'

‘We were told how much our accommodation would cost when we applied for our visas.'

‘Anna usually throws in breakfast and supper for the fixed rate, although she's never rented to Westerners before. But if you're determined to take it, you'd better bring your things in.'

‘Thank you.' Helena walked over to Norbert, who was leaning against his car smoking a cigarette. ‘We can take our suitcases in.'

Ned followed her. ‘Is it wise to take it before we see it?' He had been uncharacteristically silent during the exchange.

‘I told you what the railway clerk said: it's here or nowhere.'

Helena lifted the holdall from the seat of the car. ‘And if the bed's full of bugs and lice?'

‘We'll itch. Norbert,' Helena shook the driver's hand after he'd unloaded their cases, ‘thank you for the sumptuous picnic and the ride.'

‘Good to do business with you.' Norbert produced a notepad, scribbled down a number, tore off a sheet and handed it to Ned. ‘For the return journey.'

‘Thank you.' Ned tucked the slip of paper into his top pocket.

‘If anyone here says they can take you cheaper,' Norbert waved the flat of his hand from side to side, ‘we can how do you say? negotiate.'

Ned drew him aside, as Helena followed Josef around the side of the building. ‘First negotiation begins right now. I'll buy you a beer, if you hang around until after we've checked out the room. I've a feeling that we may be going back sooner than Helena thinks.'

Norbert slapped Ned on the back. ‘A beer and sausage it is.'

‘I didn't say anything about sausage,' Ned remonstrated.

‘You ate all the chicken. A Polish family of four could have lived off that for a month.' He walked through the half-doors and shouted for service.

While Norbert tried to explain his order to the old man behind the bar, Ned went outside to stand guard over their suitcases, which they'd left on the pavement. Norbert joined him a few minutes later. ‘Do you want me to help you take these up to the room while the old man finds someone who will take my order?'

‘As Helena hasn't returned, it appears we're staying.'

Ned studied the stone house that adjoined the wooden bar. It was large enough to be called a mansion. Ornate, decorative stonework around the windows and doors suggested that no expense had been spared in its construction. But time and lack of maintenance had taken their toll, as they had on all the buildings in the street. Its stonework was in desperate need of cleaning and its window frames of painting. It looked cold, austere and unwelcoming.

Norbert picked up the lighter suitcase and walked around the side of the building, entering a narrow archway cut into the wall of the house. Ned followed and found himself in an enclosed yard the size of a tennis court. It was walled in on their left by the back of the bar. Ahead was a barn built from the same stone as the house, that loomed two-and-a-half storeys high. On their right was what appeared to be a stable block, although there was no sign of horses.

The roof of the barn had been built out to cover a wooden veranda. Crates of empty bottles were stacked ten high alongside rows of wine kegs and barrels. A wire chicken run, which contained about two dozen white-feathered hens, filled the far comer between the barn and the stable block. Adjoining it was a pig pen housing a sow and a litter of piglets. Everything looked clean and orderly, but the smell from the pig pen and chicken run hung heavy and acrid in the still, warm air, and Ned blanched.

‘Not used to farm smells?' He turned. Helena was sitting on a roughly made bench beneath an outside staircase, which led up to a wooden annex bolted on to the second floor of the house itself. The bench faced an even more primitive table.

‘Neither are you,' Ned retorted.

‘But I'm coping better than you. It must be something in the blood. My mother was a farmer's daughter, after all.'

Ned heard raised voices coming from within the house. He looked quizzically at Helena.

‘The landlady doesn't appear to be too keen to rent the room to foreigners,' she whispered.

‘It'll take me half an hour to eat. I'll be in the bar if you want to go back to town.' Norbert dropped the suitcase he'd carried into the yard, and returned to the street through the archway.

Josef appeared a few minutes later. ‘Anna doesn't think the room is suitable for Westerners.'

‘As it's the only one for miles around, can't we at least see it?' Helena pleaded.

‘She wants to know why you've come to this village.'

‘I was born here. My mother's family lived here for generations.'

‘Your mother didn't travel with you?'

Helena glanced self-consciously at her duffle bag. ‘She died last month.'

‘I am sorry,' Josef said sympathetically. ‘Do you have relatives in the village?'

‘I hope so, but I'm not sure. That's one of the reasons I'm here.

To find out if any of them still live nearby. My mother's name was Magdalena Janek; she left here during the war –'

‘Left?' Josef interrupted.

‘She was taken by the Germans, who used her as a slave labourer. Perhaps if I talked to the landlady …' Helena rose to her feet.

‘Leave it to me,' Josef cut in. He went back into the house. A few seconds later they heard a woman's voice raised in anger. A very long ten minutes after that Josef re-appeared. He held up a six-inch iron key. ‘Anna says you may look at the room, and if you think it's suitable you may stay for a day or two – but no longer. She doesn't want the authorities asking questions about her guests, which they will do once they find out she has rented to people from Britain.'

Ned picked up the suitcases.

‘Wait until you've seen the room. I'll help you to carry those up, if you decide to take it.' Josef walked to the foot of the staircase and opened a door in the back wall of the house. He showed them a concrete-floored cubicle that held a bench toilet seat. ‘Lavatory.'