Spoils of War (32 page)

‘Yes, of course he asked me to persuade you to return. But what kind of Russian doesn’t want to live in his own country?’

‘And Pasha?’

‘Pasha is just a boy, Feo. He is not important like you but he is our son, so of course he will go back with us.’

‘Did the politruk tell you what I did in the war?’

‘He said you were a hero. That you fought with our British allies but you never forgot that you are a Russian.’

‘There isn’t a Russian born who can forget that. Masha, I love Russia, it’s my country, will always be my country but I am not going back.’

‘A Russian is nothing without his country.’

‘This Russian would be dead back in his country and without Pasha to look after you, so would you.’

‘You’re talking nonsense. They explained it all. The village had to go for the collective good. But it is done now. There are no more kulaks, no more individuals who think only of themselves and their families. Now everything is different and it will be different for us. As an important man you would be given your own house, Feo. Just think, your – our – old house. Remember the garden – the woods behind – the fields? Think of it, Feo, the three of us living together in your father’s house. The Raschenko house once again full of family. Peter will find himself a girl, bring her home just as you brought me and carried me over the threshold. His children will be born in the bedroom where we made him. We will have grandchildren …’

‘Whatever the politruk told you, whatever he promised, I – and you, Masha – would be sent to the camps.’ He knew it was far more likely that both of them, and Pasha, would have bullets pumped into the back of their skulls the moment they stepped across the Russian border, but he kept that thought to himself.

‘But I thought you knew. That you understood that was why I came here, to explain that you don’t have to stay away any longer. That you can go home.’ Weak, exhausted, both physically and emotionally, she began to cry.

Charlie took her in his arms again and pulled her back beneath the covers. ‘Hush, Masha, hush. We don’t have to talk about this now. Come now, it’s time to sleep. We’ll speak in the morning.’

As his soft words gradually took effect, her eyes closed, and her sobs subsided. He lay, cradling her, pacing his own breaths to her shallow ones – and thinking. He had been a fool to believe that the re-emergence of Masha into his life after so many years had been down to mere coincidence. That out of all the displaced millions of slave labourers from Hitler’s Reich – Jews, Russians, Poles, Eastern Europeans of every’ nationality and creed – someone had ‘by chance’ connected him with Masha.

Tomorrow he would make a telephone call, and arrange to talk to a senior officer in the section that had employed him during the war. If there were any decisions to be made, he would need help from them. But even more he needed all the assistance he could get to convince Masha that Russia was the last place either of them – or Pasha – should return to.

‘You don’t like the coffee, boy?’

Peter made a wry face. ‘It doesn’t taste the way I expected it to.’

‘It never does,’ Huw revealed. ‘Coffee always smells better than it tastes. Is this your first cup?’

‘I’ve had coffee plenty of times,’ Peter boasted unconvincingly.

‘So have I, but a wartime coffee isn’t as good as a peacetime and I have a longer memory than you to remember what peacetime coffee was like.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘So what do you think of Pontypridd?’

‘That is what Liza asked me. I haven’t been here long enough to find out.’

‘Tell you what, why don’t I walk you back to your father’s house and show you some of the sights along the way.’

‘You know where my father lives?’

‘Everyone in town knows Russian Charlie. Your father is a well-respected and important businessman.’

‘He works in a shop,’ Peter sneered.

‘He owns the shop.’

‘He has bought it, like the house?’

‘Come on, I’ll show you where it is.’ Leaving his chair he nodded to Tony, who was standing, scowling behind the till, and opened the door.

‘Can you smell it, boy?’ he asked as they stepped out into the cold.

‘What?’ Peter asked suspiciously, watching as Huw stood tall and straight, sniffing the air.

‘Spring. And after the long winter we’ve had, we need it.’

‘It’s not so cold today,’ Peter answered dismissively.

‘Cold enough for me, although you are probably used to colder.’

‘In Russia we have snow six feet deep and the temperature drops so low the rivers freeze over.’

‘After weather that cold, you’ll have no trouble adjusting to our winters. But still, it will be nicer for you to get to know the town in the warm weather. See that lane up there?’ He pointed out an opening between two shops. ‘That’s one of the entrances to the park. Everyone in town goes there in spring and summer. There’s tennis courts, swimming pools, football and cricket pitches. If you like sport, that’s the place to go. And if you just like sitting around taking in the sun and doing nothing in particular, it is still the place to go. You’ll come across all the young people in town there. And that is the New Inn.’ He indicated an imposing facade across the road. ‘It’s one of the oldest buildings in Pontypridd and most people think the best hotel in town. I’ll take you for a drink in there some time.’

‘Vodka?’ Peter asked.

Huw laughed.

‘That’s funny?’ Peter was instantly on the defensive.

‘No, I was just thinking you’re your father’s son all right. When he first came to Pontypridd that was all he used to drink and because you can’t smell it on a man’s breath, most people didn’t think he drank at all. But my sister – Charlie lodged with her at the time – soon cottoned on. She said she didn’t need to smell drink to know a man had been at the bottle, just look in his eyes.’

‘My father gets drunk?’

‘Never that I’ve seen,’ Huw lied stoutly. ‘Up there,’ he pointed left, ‘is Market Street. Markets are held there every Wednesday and Saturday and people come from miles around to shop there. I’m a policeman and I shouldn’t say it, but if you want clothes, food – anything off the ration book – that’s the place to get it.’

‘You buy there?’

‘Sometimes. Come on, we’ll walk up this way, then I’ll take you past your father’s shop and home.’

‘Your brothers never close the café at twelve sharp. They always wait until the last customers are ready to leave.’

‘And I’m telling you that you are ready to leave, Dai,’ Tony ushered the railway worker to the door.

‘But my shift doesn’t start for another half-hour. Where am I supposed to go until then?’

‘The waiting room.’

‘Real bloody joker, aren’t you?’

Closing the door behind Dai, Tony rammed the bolts home and turned down the lights. Running lightly up the stairs, he tapped at the bedroom door. He had to knock three times before Gabrielle answered and he could have sworn she sounded tearful more than sleepy.

‘It’s me, Tony.’

‘Go away, you can’t come into my bedroom before we are married.’

‘I have to talk to you – explain about tonight. The café …’

‘I’m tired.’

‘I’ll be back in the morning. You’ll be all right?’

‘As you can’t stay here before we are married, Tony, I will have to be.’

Tony ran back down the stairs, checked all the windows and doors on the ground floor, then double locked the front door and began the long walk up the Graig Hill.

Gabrielle turned her tear-soaked pillow over to the dry side and lay back staring at the pattern drawn by the streetlights on the ceiling. She had come to Britain prepared to help her husband. To work alongside him in a fine hotel or restaurant. She had imagined herself dressed in a white blouse and dark skirt behind a desk, greeting people as they came to stay. Ringing the bell to call the porter to carry their bags to their rooms, typing polite letters to suppliers as she’d typed letters for Tony’s commanding officer, arranging flowers on the reception desk and in the dining room. But never working in a dirty little café across the road from a railway station, with a flat above it that didn’t even have a bathroom or kitchen.

But what could she do? Write to her mother to beg her to borrow money for a ticket home – no, not home – the Russians had taken her home. So it would have to be that one horrible little room in Celle. And to do that she would have to admit that coming to Britain and getting engaged to Tony had been a terrible mistake. That her mother had been right and she had been wrong about Tony and she should never have agreed to marry a man who hadn’t made higher rank than sergeant.

She had her pride. She would die sooner than admit her mother had been right all along. But neither would she stay in these dreadful rooms over a nasty little café that catered for workmen of a type she would never have spoken to before the war. Tomorrow … she’d think of something tomorrow – when she wasn’t so exhausted and tired by the journey – and all the lies Tony had told her.

Unable to sleep, Charlie left Masha’s bed, pulled on his pyjama trousers and dressing gown and went downstairs. The kitchen was warm and cosy and he set the kettle on the stove to boil. He’d just wet the tea and reached for the vodka bottle he’d hidden behind the books Alma had found, when the key turned in the door.

‘Peter?’ he called.

‘And Huw,’ Huw answered. ‘Is that tea I smell?’

‘I’ve never known a man with a nose like yours.’ Charlie opened the door to the passage. ‘I’ve just made it. Would you like a cup, Peter?’

‘No.’

Charlie looked at the boy. He was quieter, more subdued than he’d expected him to be after his first foray into the outside world, and Huw was smiling. So, the outing hadn’t turned into the disaster Masha had been afraid of and he’d feared, for all the reassurance he’d given her.

‘I found some vodka to spice it up.’ He held up the bottle.

‘Make mine without your firewater. I’m on duty.’ Huw walked through to the kitchen. ‘Nice place you got here.’

‘Thank you.’ Charlie reached for two more cups and filled both to the brim with milk and tea before handing Peter the vodka bottle but Peter forestalled him by taking a great gulp of tea to make more room in the cup.

‘I found this one,’ Huw slapped Peter’s shoulders, ‘in Ronconi’s chatting up Liza Clark, much to Angelo’s disgust.’

‘I was just being friendly. Huw showed me your shop. You didn’t say you owned it.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Is my mother well?’

‘She’s sleeping.’

‘Peter was telling me that he is something of a mechanic.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Charlie looked at his son, not sure whether to believe his bragging to Huw, or not.

‘It was my job to make sure all the lorries in the cement factory worked. I stripped down and cleaned the engines when they wouldn’t and later on I showed other men how to do it.’

‘And repaired them?’ Huw asked.

‘When the Germans had parts to give us to replace the broken ones.’

‘Ronnie was only saying tonight in Megan’s that he and Will were thinking of looking round for another mechanic. If you want a job, Peter, you could do worse than work for them.’

‘They are more friends of yours?’ Peter glowered at Charlie.

‘You’ll soon find out that everyone knows everyone else in Pontypridd,’ Huw explained. ‘They’re either friends or not so friendly, but in this case, yes, William and Ronnie are friends of your father’s. Good ones. I’ll mention you to Ronnie if you like.’

‘Can I see him tomorrow?’

‘He’ll be in the garage on Broadway. That’s the street straight on from the café you were in tonight. It’s on the right-hand side of the road. You can’t miss it.’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Well, much as I hate working cold winter nights, this town won’t look after itself.’ Huw handed Charlie his cup and rose to his feet. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

‘And thank you for looking after him,’ Charlie whispered, as he walked Huw to the front door.

‘He’s not a bad boy, your Peter, but you need to work on his English. He asked Liza to sleep with him.’

‘He what?’

‘She said it was just a language problem, but I’m not so sure.’

‘Neither am I.’ Locking and bolting the door behind Huw, Charlie returned to the kitchen where Peter was uncorking the vodka. Taking the bottle from him, he put it on the sideboard, out of reach.

‘So, what do you think of Pontypridd?’

‘I think everyone in Pontypridd asks the same question.’

‘You think you’ll be able to live here?’ Charlie enquired cautiously.

‘You thinking of sending me somewhere else,’ Peter probed warily.

The boy’s answer told Charlie all he wanted to know. ‘You don’t want to go back to Russia.’

‘Would you want to go back to a camp?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you think I want to go back to one?’

‘Have you talked to your mother about where she wants to live?’

‘All she has ever talked about was being with you.’

‘She never said anything about wanting to go back to Russia?’

Peter pushed his teacup across the table and glared at his father. ‘If you want to go back there, you can go alone. And I’ll kill you before I’ll let you take my mother or me with you.’ Leaving his chair, he slammed the table with his fist. ‘I won’t let you! I won’t –’

‘Quiet! You’ll wake your mother. The last thing I want to do is go back to Russia.’

‘Then why are you talking about it?’

‘I’ll tell you in the morning.’

‘You’ll tell me now.’

‘Your mother said tonight that she wants us all to go back there.’

The coal settled in the stove, crackling like machinegun fire as the embers fell through the grating at the bottom of the oven. Peter jumped instinctively.

‘You didn’t understand her …’

‘I understood but I needed to know what you thought about going back. And now I know, it’s time for bed.’ Charlie pushed the chair he’d been sitting on under the table, gathered the cups on to a tray and took them into the wash house. On his return he picked up the vodka.

‘Afraid I’ll drink all of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I would too.’ For the first time the boy smiled.