While Still We Live (67 page)

“Dittmar met a raiding party and got killed...” Yes, that was the easiest solution. Strange how easy, how simple things seemed; once someone had thought of them, that was.

Kati said, “He got killed, all right.” She suddenly put out her strong, broad hand and gripped Sheila’s shoulder. “And you don’t look as if you could kill a mouse.”

Sheila laughed shortly. “I never have,” she said grimly.

Kati looked at her strangely. She slipped her arm round Sheila’s shoulders. “Come on,” she said with surprising gentleness. “You’ll need other clothes. You must brush your hair, and then we must prepare the food we have. We are giving the men a meal after the meeting is over. They are now making plans for the raid and for what the village is to do in the next few days. They’ll deserve the best meal we can cook for them. Come on.”

The little square was empty now. Four of the older men of the village were grouped outside the inn door. They stood motionless, in the timeless way that peasants have; their pipes were in their mouths, their thumbs were tucked into their
waistcoats’ high pockets. Far-seeing blue eyes, with the same distant look that you see in sailors’ eyes, were turned towards the main road. The brown, wrinkled faces were impassive. They were waiting for the first sign of warning from any of the boys down in the fields. From the open cottage windows, came the sound of pots and dishes; of women’s voices, sharpened by haste, telling children to keep out of their way. There was the smell of cooking food to remind Sheila that she was hungry. The white smoke of wood fires curled under the cold winter sky.

Kati looked at the blue-grey clouds overhead. “It will rain, but not before tonight, I hope,” she said. “Soon the snows will come.” She half-sighed, as if she asked how many winters of snow would there be before this war was over, before women could look after peaceful kitchens and men could come home to their families in the evenings.

The old men’s high boots shuffled aside to let the two women enter the inn. Through the closed door of the front room came the murmur of voices. And then Adam’s voice was speaking.

“Come on,” Kati said with a smile, and pulled at Sheila’s arm. “You’ll be hearing him plenty yet, if you ask me.”

The kitchen lay next door to the front room. It was square in shape like the bedroom. The difference in furniture was a larger table, a taller cupboard, an extra dresser with heavy dishes along its shelves, a bigger stove with an oven at the side of its wood fire.

Kati looked for a moment at the bed in the corner, at the bright-checked apron hanging on its hook, at the spinning wheel near the oven bench. Her emotions, which she had been able to hide under the stress of danger and worry and action, were now released. She looked at the baking bowl on the table
with its measure of rye flour. Jadwiga, Sheila guessed, must have been preparing to bake some bread this morning when Dittmar had interrupted it. Kati’s face twisted like a child’s and she burst into tears. She turned her back on Sheila.

“Next door,” she said at last. Her words were muffled by the apron which she held up to her face. “Next door, you will see a carved chest. The clothes are there.”

When Sheila came back to the kitchen, Kati was standing at the table. She was wearing the red-checked apron, and she was shaping the rough lumps of dough into smooth round loaves. Her face was white, blotched violently with red spots. But her voice was calm and practical once more. She nodded in approval as she looked at Sheila.

“It’s too pretty,” Sheila said awkwardly, smoothing the silk apron over the wide black skirt banded with velvet. She fingered the lace edge of the thin white blouse and looked at the roses on the gaily embroidered jacket. She knew that Kati had only two dresses: the one she wore, and this special one. This very special one, kept for feast days, for funerals and weddings. It would be Kati’s own wedding dress. “Let’s wash my clothes. We can scrub the blood and mud out of them. They’ll dry before I leave tonight.”

“No,” Kati said, determinedly.

“But—”

“No!” Kati placed the loaves in the oven, lifted the lid off the large soup-pot. She seemed pleased with the result. “In that cupboard over there, you’ll find shoes. Lowest shelf.”

Sheila searched unwillingly among old newspapers, stubs of candles, carefully rolled pieces of string. The shoes, wrapped in paper, lay beside a sewing basket. Kati’s best shoes. Perhaps her
only pair besides these long boots.

“I don’t need them, Kati.”

“You’ll walk barefoot?”

“Why not? You do.”

“And what would the Chief say to that?”

“Nothing,” Sheila lied.

“Well, I’d say plenty. The idea! You feet are too soft. They’re not like mine.” She held up a proud bare foot to prove it. “If I have my boots for the bad weather, I don’t need shoes. Put them on. Do they fit?”

“They are beautiful,” Sheila said, and a look of pleasure came into Kati’s eyes. “But really, Kati, I can wear the shoes I arrived in.”

“No. They’d spoil the look of the dress.”

“But, Kati—”

“No! Now put on that working apron and cover your dress well, and you can help me. This is all the meat we have. Slice it thin, and it will go further.” She handed Sheila a knife. “You are leaving tonight? Back to the forest?”

This time it was Sheila who said “No.”

“That’s what Tomasz said you said,” Kati answered. She pretended to be examining the contents of the cupboard. “Why?”

“Because,” Sheila began and then stopped. “Well, why did you try to get Zygmunt back to the camp, when you wanted him to stay here?”

Kati looked at her. “But the Chief’s the boss. What he says, goes.”

“Yes. And because he’s the boss, Kati, he has got to obey the rules of the camp even more closely than the men. Don’t you
see, Kati?”

“No, I don’t. Stuff and nonsense. If I were boss, I’d be boss.”

“Yes, but being in command means you must also be in command of yourself. There’s no one to give you orders, so you have to give them to yourself.”

Kati pulled down the few jars of pickled mushrooms and cucumbers from the cupboard shelf. “Open these,” she said. “If we don’t eat them, the Germans will. We’ll have one good last meal together.” She counted the jars with her fingers, nodded her head. “Enough,” she said in relief, before she suddenly remembered to rush over to the oven. She opened the square iron door carefully with an apron-covered hand. “All right, so far,” she said. The smell of warm bread filled the kitchen and added to Sheila’s hunger. “He’s got queer ideas about it, too. You know, he doesn’t like being called Chief. We’ve got to say just ‘Captain’ to his face. And yet he
is
the Chief, all right. Who else?” Kati took one of the loaves and broke it slightly to see if it were baked. “I don’t understand these things very well. I’ve never been a boss, so I don’t know. But if you speak the truth, then I don’t want to be one. Ever.”

“You are the boss of this inn, Kati. You and I are so hungry that we could sit down at this table and eat all this meat, right now. Why don’t you? You’re the boss. It is your meat. It is your kitchen. But you don’t even touch one slice of meat; you want to prepare as good a dinner as you can, and you think of those others next door, who are just as hungry as we are. Do you see what I mean?”

Kati stared at her. Then she gave one of her old smiles. “I wouldn’t make a very good boss,” she said. “I tasted a piece of cucumber when you weren’t looking.”

They were both laughing when the door opened and Tomasz appeared.

“We’re finished. Are you ready?”

“Almost. Tell the other women they can start bringing their food over here.”

Tomasz nodded, and turned to go. “Pretty,” he said, looking at Sheila.

“Yes,” Kati said proudly. “Isn’t it?” And Sheila laughed again. Kati was pulling off the working apron, preening the lace collar, pushing up the wide sleeves of the blouse so that it billowed out in all its starched whiteness. She stood back and surveyed her handiwork critically once more. “You’ll do,” she predicted.

“Agreed.” It was Adam, leaning against the door, smiling as he watched Sheila’s startled face. He stretched out a hand as he came forward to her. The meeting had been successful: the plan was well made. She knew that by his face. She took his hand with a smile.

“Too decorative,” she said. “The Russians won’t believe I can work for a living, I’m sure.”

Adam was laughing now. “Russians? What have they to do with this?” He was studying the dress approvingly.

“I thought the shortest way for me would be to try and reach the Russian occupation zone. They won’t arrest anyone British.”

He said slowly, “You mean that you were going to walk out in that dress and reach Russia?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to tell Kati that my old clothes would be better, bloodstains and all. They’d be a more successful entry permit, I think.”

“Sheila...” He seemed to forget about Kati, and Sheila forgot too.

“Sheila.” He was smiling again. He caught her suddenly round the waist. “Mad, quite mad. As crazy as they come,” he said, and kissed her unexpectedly on the nose. He began to laugh. “To Russia,” he said, “to Russia, by God. Just like that.” He laughed again and rumpled her hair. “Without papers, without a map, without anything except a pretty dress and a lovely face. Darling, at this moment I swear I shall love you forever and ever.”

“What’s so funny, Adam?” Sheila asked with stilted dignity. When he laughed, his head was thrown back and his teeth were white against the deeply tanned skin. The worried lines had vanished from his face. It was infectious. She stopped trying to draw herself away and look dignified. She began to laugh, too. Kati, the forgotten one, was smiling broadly in sympathy as she pulled the golden loaves out of the oven.

“Darling Sheila,” he said, “when a woman marries she is supposed to relax and let her man do the worrying.”

He pushed the hair back from her forehead and draped a curl over the edge of her brow. “Madame Recamier. Blonde, but still Madame Recamier,” he said. Then be was serious. “Let me do the worrying, darling. I’ll manage it, I think. It won’t be Olszak’s way, but even he will admit it is inevitable.”

A hot loaf dropped from Kati’s fingers. There was a half-stifled oath.

“Father Brys agrees. He’s waiting for us now,” Adam was saying. Then he turned to Kati. “You didn’t know the meal you were preparing was to be a wedding breakfast, did you, Kati?”

To Sheila he said, “You’ll obey me, my girl, when you’re
married. No more bright ideas. You’ll be safe, from now on.”

“You’re equally mad, Adam,” Sheila said. And then, with a catch in her voice, “I love you.”

Kati was staring openly now. There was no more pretence of ignoring them. The sad look had gone from her face, and for a moment it was blank of expression. Then excitement came to her eyes and approval softened her lips.

“Well, someone has got sense,” she said, and looked very pointedly at Sheila. “You and your slices of meat!” she added beneath her breath.

Tomasz looked round the half-open door. “We are all ready. We are waiting,” he said impatiently.

Kati said happily, “Tomasz, didn’t you know? Didn’t the Chief—the captain tell you? It’s a wedding.”

Tomasz said solemnly, “A wedding followed by a funeral is bad, but a funeral followed by a wedding is a good omen. We shall all be the happier of it.”

“And to hell with the long-nosed German swine,” Kati added emphatically. “This is one thing they don’t take away from us.” She was pulling off her working apron. “I must tell Zygmunt.”

“The food, woman, the food!” Tomasz called after her.

“There’s no hurry,” she answered from the other end of the corridor. “They’ve got to go to church first, haven’t they?”

“You see,” Adam teased, “they won’t let you eat until you’ve been to church with me. Either you marry or you starve, my girl.”

In the small village square, a sea of quiet friendly faces waited for them. Sheila halted at the inn door for a moment. She looked up at Adam, standing beside her. “This,” she said, “is the loveliest of weddings.”

Adam’s eyes held hers, as they had done when they had first met. He loves me, she thought, he loves me so very very much. And it almost frightened her that she should have roused so much feeling and emotion in any man. Then he smiled, and she smiled too. She was so happy that she wanted to weep.

TO THE MOUNTAINS

Kati had been right: the night wind had brought a threat of rain in its cold touch. Sheila pulled Zofia’s coat more closely round her neck, moved her feet inside their wide shoes to keep them from freezing, hugged her body with her arms. The man, sitting beside her under the bare branches of the small wood, was motionless. He hadn’t spoken since they had reached this place and he had pointed northwards into the darkness, and had said “Nowe Miasto.”

Sheila strained her eyes. In front of her she could, with some effort, make out the black stretch of slow-moving water. Through the wind’s sad song in the branches overhead came its steady, gentle rhythm. That was the river which flowed east towards the Vistula. Adam had insisted that she should wait for him on its south bank. On the north bank, towards the west, pinpricks of light showed that Nowe Miasto was still awake. Even as she waited, the lights were slowly dying out.
Soon the town would be asleep.

She whispered to the man, “Soon, now.”

He nodded. She felt he was angry with her because he had to sit and look after her, instead of taking part in the attack.

Sheila stared once more at the masses of dark shadows, at the patches and the blots of darkness which meant trees and houses and buildings. She was too far away to be able to see anything clearly. She could only guess. She wondered where Adam and his men were. Probably lying like this under some tree, waiting as tensely as she was. She thought of Dittmar’s dead body, now lying in a ditch to the north of the town, with that identification flask in its pocket and its Luger beside it, as if the attacking guerrillas had only had time to shoot but not to search the man who had tried to stop them. And, thinking of the Luger, she said suddenly:—