Magda's Daughter (33 page)

‘One to cover a hundred square miles,' Josef informed him. ‘That's why we use carts and tractors to take people to the hospital.'

‘What happens if someone has a heart attack in one of these small scattered villages?'

‘They die.'

Josef left the room again and returned after a moment with four blankets, which Ned heaped over Anna. Then he opened a drawer in the dresser and took out a linen sheet. ‘Anna will expect you to strap up her ribs; it's what they did the last time she cracked them.'

 ‘When she's warmer, I suppose I could bandage her.' Too concerned about Anna to argue, Ned checked her pulse again.

‘She'll kill me for doing this. It's one of her last pre-war ones.'

Josef took a pair of nail scissors from a manicure set on the night-stand, and made a series of small cuts in the sheet a couple of inches apart. After replacing the scissors in the leather folder, he proceeded to tear the sheet into strips.

Ned took them from him and rolled them into bandages.

When Josef had torn the last strip he said, ‘I must go down and close the bar. I told Stefan to throw everyone out, but no one listens to him.'

Ned pulled the blankets to Anna's chin. ‘Go. I can manage here.'

Josef opened the door, then hesitated, looking back at the photographs. ‘Where's Helena?'

‘She went to the churchyard for a walk.'

‘You won't tell her, will you?'

‘About the photographs or Anna's drinking?'

‘Either,' Josef pleaded.

‘I will tell her about both, but not until I have spoken to Anna – if she comes round.'

‘I thought she'd be fine now?'

‘That depends entirely on how much alcohol is left in her system, and without a blood test it's impossible to gauge. She could still choke, stop breathing, or die of heart failure. But I promise you, I'll do all I can to keep her alive. I'd like to hear her explanation about these photographs.'

‘That will be difficult when she only speaks Polish and you don't. I doubt she'll let me translate.'

‘Then she can tell Helena to her face, and I want to be there so I can read Anna's expression.'

‘Anna's never been good at lying or keeping her emotions hidden. You can see that from the way she treated you and Helena when you arrived here.' Josef paused. ‘If I see Helena, I'll tell her that Anna has had an accident and you're examining her.'

‘You'll be back?'

‘After I've locked the bar. If you want me before, just open the window and shout down.' Josef turned and left the room.

Ned gazed at the human wreckage sprawled on the bed. ‘God only knows what has driven you to try to kill yourself with drink, Anna. I only hope it's not something that's going to affect Helena too badly.' He checked her temperature again before picking up the first bandage he had rolled.

Chapter Eighteen

When Helena left the churchyard she had to push past a tide of disgruntled men heading up the narrow street towards her. To her surprise, when she reached the bar it was in darkness. The shutters had been pulled down and locked over the half-doors. She walked around to the archway that cut through the house and found Stefan sitting by the table in the yard, his head buried in his hands, sobbing.

She sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

‘Whatever's wrong, Stefan?'

He lifted his tear-stained face. ‘Anna …'

‘What's happened to Anna?'

‘She fell. She's covered in blood … she …' Too upset to continue, he buried his head in her shoulder.

‘Anna had an accident.' Josef appeared at the back door of the bar. He locked it behind him.

‘What kind of an accident? Is she badly hurt?' Helena asked in alarm.

‘She fell over on a chair in her bedroom. According to Ned, she's cracked a few ribs. He's with her now. Given the primitive state of our local hospital we decided it wasn't worth the three-hour journey to take her there.'

‘Is there anything I can do?'

‘I don't mean to be unkind, but I don't think so.'

‘You said Ned's with her.'

‘He is.'

‘Then she's unconscious or …' Helena debated whether or not to say it, but honesty won. ‘Drunk?'

‘As I told Ned, you haven't seen her at her best. She hasn't always been the way she is now.' He went to the barn and checked the padlock.

‘She must be very unhappy.'

‘No more so than any other woman her age in Poland.' Anxious to change the subject, he said, ‘Can I get you something? Coffee, beer, vodka?'

‘Nothing, thank you.'

‘Did you enjoy your walk?'

‘Yes, I met Julianna Niklas in the churchyard.'

‘She spoke to you?'

‘We had quite a conversation. I invited her and her mother to visit me here, but I doubt they'll come.'

‘So do I. Her brother would never allow it.' Josef's features were thrown into sharp relief by the light of the unshaded bulb that hung from the rafters of the veranda, and Helena was shocked by how drawn and exhausted he appeared.

‘You look dreadful. Anna will be all right, won't she?'

‘I hope so. Ned's doing all he can.'

‘Ned is a good doctor.'

‘He seems to know what he is doing.' Josef sat at the table and patted Stefan's shoulder. ‘Go to bed, Stefan. You can't do anything right now.'

Anna's brother lifted his tear-stained face. ‘Can I take her breakfast in the morning? I'll make the coffee and butter the rolls.'

‘You can take Anna breakfast tomorrow. You can even look in on her now. But don't make a noise or disturb Doctor John while he's treating her.'

‘Goodnight, Helena.' Stefan touched her hand. ‘It's good that you have come here at last.'

‘Thank you, Stefan.' Helena watched him amble away like an obedient dog. She frowned. ‘That was an odd thing to say.'

‘He means well but he doesn't know what he is doing or saying half the time. He is a heavy burden on Anna. I've just checked the bar and he's washed the glasses in drain cleaner instead of liquid soap. I've left them soaking in cold water but I have a feeling Anna will have to find the money to replace her stock.'

‘I'm sorry. I could help out while I'm here …'

‘You're forgetting that ladies, especially young, pretty ones, are not allowed into the bar.' He went to the door of the house and listened for a moment, but all was quiet. ‘I think I'll make coffee anyway. I could do with a cup. Can I tempt you to change your mind, Helena, if I add the promise of a cinnamon biscuit?'

‘If you're making coffee, then yes please. But don't bring out the biscuits on my account.'

‘Who said anything about you? I could eat a plateful myself.'

After Josef had disappeared, Helena sat back on the bench, leaned against the wall and stared at the yard. She tried to envisage it as Weronika had described, with rose bushes planted in tubs on the veranda, and perhaps a wooden table and chairs. Had the Janeks also kept pigs and chickens in the yard? Josef and Anna had told them they were the biggest landowners for miles. So they wouldn't have had to do it from necessity. They could have easily afforded to keep this area as a private walled garden.

She imagined a round table covered by an embroidered cloth and set with the fine porcelain and silverware her mother had loved, including a silver rose bowl. In summer Magda, Weronika and Adam would have sat there, drinking coffee and eating their breakfast rolls.

What had they talked about? Improvements to the farms they owned and rented out? Possibly. The people they knew in the village, the births, deaths, marriages, all the minutiae of village life? Probably. Planned meals for the visits from Magda's family and friends? The coming baby that had meant so much to all of them. And, later, the German invasion and war. Definitely. Had they realised how catastrophic the war would be for them?

Josef returned, set a tray of coffee on the table, and sat on a stool. ‘Thank God the temperature's cooled. It was roasting in the bar at six o'clock.'

Helena took the cup he handed her. ‘What happened to Wiktor Niklas to make him the way he is?'

‘Life.'

‘Julianna said he was a different man before the war. That it changed him.'

‘The war changed everyone in the village and the country, but I suppose there's no harm in you knowing. He was engaged to a girl. The partisans caught her with a German soldier.'

‘The soldier raped her?'

‘Wiktor didn't believe it was rape.'

‘Why not?'

‘Not all Polish girls hated the Germans.' Josef took his cigarette from his shirt pocket and offered Helena the packet. She rarely smoked but took one. He pushed another between his lips, struck a match and lit them both.

‘Did the girl say she'd been raped?' Helena ventured.

‘She insisted that the man had attacked her.'

‘What happened?'

‘The partisans killed both of them, slowly and horribly.'

‘Poor girl if it was rape. And poor girl and soldier if it wasn't.'

‘Poor Poland. It was a war. The Germans imposed severe reprisals on the civilian population whenever one of their own was killed. The day before the girl was caught with the soldier, the Germans shot the entire family of the partisan leader, including his elderly parents and two-month-old nephew for aiding what they called “fugitivesË®. The partisan leader passed the death sentence on the soldier and the girl because he thought it fitting: the German to pay for what his comrades were doing to Poland; the girl for betraying her country.'

‘Did Wiktor see her die?'

‘The partisans gave him the knife to do it.'

Helena drew on her cigarette. ‘I don't want to hear any more.'

‘That was the incident that led to the massacre in the village. The partisans didn't bother to hide the soldier's body. The next morning the tank rolled into the square.'

‘So Wiktor was to blame for the massacre.'

‘Blame?' Josef blew a smoke-ring at the sky. ‘How can you blame young men who were whipped into an orgy of killing? As I've said, it was war. And those who haven't lived through it have very little idea what it was like. For every German soldier who was killed by the partisans, the Germans shot a hundred innocent civilians and turned a hundred more peace-loving Polish farmers into vicious partisans. And you have to ask yourself what the Nazis were doing in Poland in the first place. The Teutons and their Lebensraum.'

‘Living space. Mama … Magda told me the Nazis believed that they were entitled to all the land in Poland.'

‘Because it had been colonised by German tribes before records were made – or so they said. It's easy for us to sit here and blame the partisans for their excesses, but we never had to live through the war as adults. Who knows what we would have done in similar circumstances? Let's change the subject.'

‘Not before I thank you for explaining why Wiktor hates women.'

‘The problem is he thinks all women are loose by inclination. Except possibly his mother. His wife and Julianna have a dog's life, literally. They are allowed as far as the farmyard gate, and no further without him. If he ever finds out that Julianna went to the churchyard alone this evening, he'll whip her. The villagers pray he never has a daughter. If he did, he'd probably lock her in the attic and feed her through the keyhole lest she dare look at a man. Anna told me that was why he was so hard on Weronika when she returned. If it had been his decision he would have hung every girl who came back from Germany after the war simply because he was convinced that they had worked willingly in the brothels.'

‘If Magda knew her brother's views on women who had been forced to work for the Reich, it would have given her another reason not to return here. I hadn't realised how much the war still affects everyone's lives in Poland.'

‘It didn't happen that long ago. Only the children can't remember it. Unlike Britain, we were invaded and occupied. It shatters a people's pride when foreign soldiers tell them what they can and can't do in their own country. And the Russians and the Germans didn't just order us about; they were cruel bastards, if you'll pardon the expression. And here we are talking about the war again.'

‘It's hardly surprising. Since I discovered I'm a product of it, that's all I can think about.'

‘Poland may still be affected by the last war but we have a new one to fight. France, Britain and even West Germany have gained their freedom from the Fascists. We Poles fought and died in our millions only to be enslaved by the Soviets.'

‘I thought you were a free Communist state.'

‘If you think Poland is free, you are blind.'

‘But you are a communist.'

He lowered his voice. ‘Am I?'

She looked at him, and he laid his hand over hers.

Stefan knelt beside Anna's bed, holding her hand and stroking it. She hadn't moved in over half an hour. To Ned's relief, her temperature was almost normal, her breathing steady and her pulse strong, if too fast for his liking. He gathered the rubber tube he had used to pump her stomach, the beaker, tweezers and soiled towels, threw them all into the bucket, closed his medical bag and glanced around the room to check he hadn't forgotten anything.

Stefan gazed at him beseechingly.

‘I'm still worried about her, but not as worried as I have been.' Ned knew Stefan couldn't understand a word he was saying but he had spoken simply to reassure himself. He pointed to Anna, Stefan and the door, moving his fingers to indicate that Stefan should come and get him if there was any change. The old man nodded, and Ned hoped that he'd understood.

He picked up his bag and the bucket, and went to the door. There was a robe hanging on a hook on the back of it, and he caught sight of the label: Marks and Spencer. Yet another example of Magda's generosity.

He went down the stairs and through the passage to the kitchen. When he stood in the doorway he realised why Anna had refused to allow him and Helena inside the house. The room was large, furnished with enormous old-fashioned pieces. And stacked on the open shelves were British tins of food. Biscuit tins, toffee tins, even toothpowder and polish tins. The door to the walk-in pantry was open and he saw a neat stack of John West tins of ham and salmon.

He dropped the rubber tube and tweezers into the massive stone sink. There was a kettle on the range. He filled it from the cold water tap set above the sink, opened the ring, and put it on to boil before standing in the doorway that led into the dark yard.

‘Ned, is that you?' Helena called to him.

‘Yes.' He stepped out, and saw Helena and Josef holding hands at the table.

‘How long have you been there?' she asked.

‘Not long. You have a good conversation with Josef?'

Helena pulled her hand away from Josef's. ‘Do you remember what Magda used to say whenever you caught us speaking Polish? One of the problems of being bilingual is having to think about which language you are using.'

‘We were talking about what it was like here during the war.' Josef rose to his feet.

‘Really?' Ned raised an eyebrow.

‘I met Julianna Niklas in the churchyard,' Helena explained defensively. ‘She told me that Wiktor was aggressive because of what had happened to him during the war. I asked Josef if he knew anything about it.'

‘How is Anna?' Josef asked anxiously.

‘Out for the count. But I'll stay with her tonight in case she starts retching again and chokes. ‘

‘I'm a light sleeper. I could make myself a bed on her floor,' Josef volunteered.

‘And what would you do if she stopped breathing? You didn't even have the sense to put her in the recovery position.'

Josef knew how to lose an argument graciously. ‘You want me to make a bed up on the floor for you?'

‘I think it's best, don't you?'

‘I'll go and do it. Goodnight, Helena.'

‘Goodnight, Josef.'

Josef piled their coffee things back on to the tray and went into the house.

‘You look tired,' Ned said to Helena.

‘I am.'

‘Then go to bed.' He handed her the key to their room and their fingers touched. Hers were cold.

‘Ned?'

‘Yes?' His eyes gazed searchingly into hers.

‘Nothing.' She rose and went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Good­ night.'

He watched her climb up to their room, unlock the door and close it behind her. He saw her switch on the light and draw the curtains. Only then did he walk back into the house.

Ned found Josef carrying an armchair into Anna's room. He'd also taken up a kitchen chair and laid out a makeshift bed on the floor with sheets, pillows and blankets.