While Still We Live (69 page)

“My nephew, Adam Gunter, and his wife have come to see me,” Madame Olszak was saying. “From Cracow. They are tired and hungry. Give them some soup, Veronika, and bring that washbasin and some hot water in here. Yes, in front of the fire. The bedroom’s too cold to bathe in. Don’t you see how frozen she is? Make them comfortable. They came all this way to see me because they heard I was ill. Imagine that, Veronika! We must take good care of them.”

Veronika smiled at Adam, and nodded. “All the way from Cracow! Imagine that!” she echoed in her harsh voice. As she turned to look deliberately at Sheila, the welcoming smile gave way to a frank stare. Then, as if suddenly remembering all the things to be done, she whisked round and disappeared into the kitchen.

Madame Olszak’s young blue eyes smiled out of her old, wrinkled face. A thin narrow face, in contrast to Veronika’s broad bones.

“Does she really believe that?” asked Sheila. She was still shaken by Veronika’s cold appraisal.

Madame Olszak laughed and looked at Adam. “You’ve chosen a smart one, Adam. Even if she is a foreigner.” And then, watching his face, “
You
a married man! Well, well... But it suits you. You’re looking better than you did when you came
to see us six weeks ago.” She turned to Sheila, as if she had just remembered the answer she had almost forgotten in her amusement over Adam’s expression. “No, she doesn’t believe it. It’s a game we play. All the men who pass this way are Gunter, my nephew. Veronika thinks it funny. I find it useful.” As she talked, her eyes never left Sheila. She watched the girl’s face, her movements, her expressions. If Sheila hadn’t felt so exhausted, she would have been embarrassed at such open scrutiny. But now all she could feel was a soft glow of warmth and safety and happiness and fatigue. She leaned her head against the high chairback, and smiled. Madame Olszak’s soft voice went on: “I had two nephews here last week. An English branch of the family. Two British airmen who came all the way from a prison camp in East Prussia. Couldn’t speak a word of Polish. They stayed here for five days and got some skin back on their feet. Wenceslas, from the village, took them to their next stop. They were going east to Rumania. And then to Constantinople.” She shook her head admiringly. “Imagine! Such courage!”

“And such good Polish friends,” said Sheila quietly.

“The only good thing about war is the friends we discover.” Madame Olszak sat down on a bench at the side of the fire, and lifted the sewing which must have been interrupted when Adam whistled from the pine woods. It looked as if it might be a patchwork quilt, some day. “Soon need to light the lamp,” she said, frowning at the growing darkness, pursing her lips as she concentrated on the squares of bright colour. “Put out that candle, Adam! There’s no need for it now. And your wife’s all right. She’ll live. And she needs two hands to hold her bowl of soup anyway.”

Adam grinned, and obeyed. Sheila watched him as he went
over to the window table and blew out the candle. Madame Olszak was watching Sheila.

“Did he ever tell you what happened to the candle on his last visit here?” She tried to thread a needle and said irritably, “Better light the lamp, Adam, and close the shutters. How short the days are now! No time at all for work. Now come and take your soup while it’s warm. That’s better.” She shifted her sewing to let the yellow light fall across it. Veronika brought a wooden tub to the hearth-side and half-filled it carefully with hot water. As she passed between the kitchen and the room, with the alternately full and empty kettle, she would look sideways at Sheila. It was a strange look, half-reluctant, half-curious, wholly guarded.

Wearily, Sheila closed her eyes, let the warmth of the room soak into her tired body. Such luxury: warm soup, a fire, a bath, a comfortable bed, no Germans to worry about. Such luxury.

“Are you all right, Sheila?”

She opened her eyes. “Yes, Adam. I’m thawing out. It’s wonderful.” The round globe of light brought out the colours, deepened the shadows in the room. The oxblood walls were as comforting as a glass of burgundy. Veronika closed the kitchen door disapprovingly. Such a fuss about nothing, was the clear implication. Poor Veronika, Sheila thought: obviously no one had ever made a fuss about her.

“...On his last visit here?” Madame Olszak insisted.

“No,” said Sheila. Madame certainly didn’t give you time to think of your own aches or the pains of others.

“Well, I had the candle lit. My guests always arrive after sunset, and I always hear from Wenceslas—you know, Adam, that radio works perfectly. I never would have believed it.
Wenceslas’ son is learning to send out messages too, now... Well, where was I? Oh, yes, the candle. It was lit. I had heard, you see, that my nephew Adam Gunter was to arrive. The soup was ready. The water was being boiled, the bed was being warmed. Everything was waiting. And then a party of Germans arrived at the door. Four of them. They had been mountain-climbing. ‘You light your candle early, old woman,’ they said to me. ‘I need it for my sewing,’ said I. ‘When you are eighty years old, you will need a candle too.’ They wanted food. What loud voices they had! You would have thought there were fourteen and not just four men in this room. It was then I heard a bird whistling in the wood. ‘Why do you put out the candle, grandmother?” one asked. ‘Because I save it when I don’t do my sewing. You don’t need it to find the way to your mouths.’ And they began to eat the soup. But they didn’t eat much. Two mouthfuls were enough. You should have heard what they said about Polish cooking... Then they went down to the village where they had left their car, and went back to their Zakopane. Later, I lit the candle again. When the bird whistled this time, I moved the candle. Who should come in but my nephew Gunter! But he got no hot soup. We had to throw away the whole potful. Veronika had been too generous with the salt. Such a waste!”

Adam and Madame Olszak laughed. Sheila’s smile wasn’t successful: she couldn’t manage to be as objective as that about such incidents.

Madame Olszak noticed Sheila’s worried eyes, and quickly added, “I haven’t seen a German from that day to this. They don’t climb the mountains so much: they stick close to their Zakopane now. Such a lot of mountaineering accidents, we had.”

She rose, carefully folding the quilt. “You’ll find it warmer to get your clothes off and bathe in here. In this weather the bedroom is as cold as Siberia. We who live in the mountains have to take our comforts seriously.” She moved towards the kitchen. “I’ll give you my news in the morning, Adam.”

“Good news?” he asked quickly.

“Yes. All the instructions you left here have been carried out. Wenceslas has a list of willing men. And there’s other news. But not tonight. Tomorrow is time enough for the telling. Anyway, the snow is coming; you will be unable to move out of the house till the first heavy storm is over. You’ll have four or five days to rest and hear my news.”

Adam’s voice became expressionless. “Have you had any message from your son?” His eyes met Sheila’s and held them.

“No.” Madame Olszak was watching them. “What’s all this, anyway?” she asked with a smile. “An elopement? I
wondered
what she was doing here with you, Adam Wisniewski!” She came back into the room. “I must admit I am curious,” she said. “It is one of the prerogatives of old age.” She turned to Sheila. “Who are you, child? I’ve seen you before. I can’t remember where. But I’ve seen you before.”

Sheila roused herself from the warm feeling of sleep which was beginning, so comfortably, to paralyze her thoughts. “I’m Sheila Matthews.” She caught a smile from Adam. “I mean, I
was
Sheila Matthews.”

Madame Olszak’s blue eyes searched for a meaning to the name; almost—not quite—finding it.

“Your son was a friend of my father, Charles Matthews,” said Sheila.

“Charles Matthews,” the faded voice repeated slowly. And
then, suddenly, more quickly. “Charles Matthews!” Madame Olszak was really smiling now. The veil had dropped. Politeness vanished. Real emotion surged over the finely wrinkled face. “Charles Matthews...of course...that’s where I’ve seen you.” She crossed over to Sheila with her slow, even step. “I’ve been staring at you all evening, my dear. I kept saying to myself ‘I’ve seen that girl before. But where?’ It worried me.” She touched Sheila’s cheek gently with her thin brown hand. “Your father—” she glanced at Adam. “Yes, I know. That will keep for tomorrow, too. Besides, Veronika will be angry if I let my bowl of soup stand any longer.” Adam half-smiled. No one, not even Veronika, could bully Madame. But the excuse was graceful: it made a tactful exit. He opened the kitchen door, and waited.

“If she is as like her father as she looks, you couldn’t have chosen a better wife, Adam. Even if she is a foreigner.”

“I know,” he said. “Without knowing about her father, I know.” He raised Madame Olszak’s thin hand to his lips, and then closed the kitchen door firmly behind her.

* * *

Sheila had risen uncertainly from the chair, and having made that effort seemed incapable of more. She didn’t speak. There was a strange brooding look on her face. For a moment, he was jealous, and then cursed himself for a selfish fool. Jealous of a ghost of a dead father...jealous of the moments when her thoughts were not his. He lowered the lamp, saw its flame flicker and die. By the light of the fire, he watched her hands slowly fumble at the waistband of her skirt. Then she looked at him, and now she was thinking only of him. Even before she spoke, he came over to her.

“Adam.”

He held her shoulders. His hands slid to her waist. She touched his cheek.

Suddenly there was fear in her voice. “Olszak has sent no message. Could he? Has there been time enough?”

He nodded. How strange women were. To be so practical, so worrying, when there were other things to think of. “Time enough by wireless to the village,” he said. He unfastened the last hook. Her skirt fell to her feet. “...Even Olszak is human, it seems.”

She smiled at that. “Yes. Even Olszak had a mother. Extraordinary.”

“But logical.” He tugged at the tape of her petticoat. “How in heaven’s name do you unfasten this? It’s knotted like iron.” He knelt beside her, pretending to concentrate on that problem. His fingers were strangely numb and slow. Her soft voice was saying, “I’ve never quite found out yet. You sort of pull, and hope for the best.”

Now he was smiling. His eyes looked up at her quickly. She laughed, and pushed back the lock of hair which had fallen over his brow.

“And I didn’t mean
that
.”

“No? And why not, Pani Wisniewska?”

They were both laughing now.

“Such luxury,” she said, “to sleep without one’s clothes, to wash in hot water, to stand before a fire, to have a warm bed, to forget about Germans.” She stepped out of the wide circle of skirts spreading round her feet, and let the blouse and Kati’s best pink-ribboned chemise fall from her shoulders. She looked down at him. “Such luxury to be in love, Adam. Such luxury
to be truly loved.”

He wasn’t laughing any more. The light from the leaping flames of the fire flickered over her body, white in the room’s dark shadows.

* * *

Outside, a crumbling cloud of snow descended on the mountainsides and valleys. In the villages, it blotted out the house across the street the tree only ten yards away, the winding roads. On the lower mountain slopes, the scattered houses became still more alone. The large falling flakes hid the forests and the paths. There was no longer sky, or mountain, or valley. The white curtain smoothly, quietly, obliterated everything. Height and distance, shape and colour no longer existed.

In the kitchen, Madame Olszak finished the last spoonful of soup, and refused a second helping. “It’s begun,” she said to Veronika, and nodded to the unshuttered window. Veronika replaced the cover on the soup-pot.

“Time was when we always had plenty of food to last us for months of bad weather.”

“Times change. Close the shutters, Veronika. It seems warmer with them closed.” She pulled the shawl more snugly round her shoulders.

Veronika peered out at the falling snow. “It’s just coming down,” she announced. “My, it was lucky they got here before this started.”

“I imagine,” Madame said dryly, “that my nephew Gunter realised that fact. He knows the mountains.”

Veronika cleared away the soup-bowls and crumbs of bread from the table. “It was only a year ago he was staying in the village with that shooting party. They still talk about that
shoot.”

“Veronika,” said Madame Olszak, “sometimes a good memory is a dangerous thing, particularly if there’s a loose tongue attached.”

“I’m only saying it to you and me,” Veronika protested indignantly. As if, she thought crossly, I didn’t know how to hold my tongue when a German’s about.

“And that’s two people too many, my girl. Best not to get into the habit of remembering. You wouldn’t want to be the one who gave him away?”

“But there have been no Szwaby here for weeks. They took all our extra food when they put our names on their list. They won’t come, not until this bad weather is over anyway. And then there will be just some skiers, out for a good time. Those others with their lists and grabbing fingers won’t be back until we have something else for them to lift.” Her indignation changed to vindictive pleasure. “But they won’t get the new calf or our chickens. Our own men will be eating them, this summer.”

Madame relented, and nodded her head approvingly. The two women smiled. We are old, they seemed to be saying, but we are needed now as much as the young men: even we can help.

“You’ve put the Adam Gunter papers in his room? Good. They are getting worn. We’ll soon have to ask for a new set. And the skis?”

“Wenceslas saw to them the last time he was here. They’re in the attic, ready.” Veronika finished wiping the bowls and stacked them neatly on the painted shelves fixed to one wall. Time for some painting to be done round here again,” she said, scrutinising the fading colours of the flower decorations on the
wooden beam above her head.

“That can wait till after the war,” said Madame Olszak decidedly, and glanced at the hand-loom beside the window, at the spinning wheel inside the oven, at the small table with its growing pile of rough homespun.