by Emma Fraser
The clock on her mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. She would have given anything to stop time. All she wanted was here in this room. If only they could stay here for ever, wrapped in each other’s arms. If only they could sleep knowing that they had a thousand tomorrows – knowing that there would be children, that they would grow old together.
And she supposed there might still be children. They hadn’t used protection. Even if the church allowed it, Irena had never thought of acquiring it. Why would she? She hadn’t expected to make love with Piotr until they were married. But if she did have his child, she wouldn’t regret it.
She traced his face with her fingertips, trying to imprint every line and contour into her memory. He looked more vulnerable asleep, almost like a young boy. She kissed the small furrow between his brows. Then his hands were on her waist and she felt herself lifted until she was lying on top of him.
‘I dreamed you were in my bed,’ he moaned. ‘And I woke to find you here. Is it true?’
She smiled. ‘You need to rest.’
‘You think I want to sleep when I can look at you?’
‘It will be dawn in less than three hours.’ Her throat was tight, but she wouldn’t allow herself to cry.
His hands travelled up her back, sending heat rushing to her pelvis. ‘In that case we mustn’t waste a minute.’
An hour before dawn she filled a bath with water from the stove for him. When he was in, she soaped her hands and rubbed them across his back and chest.
‘You are practising to be a good wife,’ he said with a grin.
‘Will I do?’
His hands reached out and suddenly she was in his lap, the water splashing onto the floor. ‘You are perfect. All a man could ever want.’ He traced the curve of her mouth with his thumb. ‘I love you. When this war is over, when we have defeated the Germans, we will marry straight away. If I could find a priest, I would marry you now.’ His eyes filled with shadows. ‘If I don’t return —’ She made to protest but he stopped her words with a finger to her lips. ‘If I don’t return, you mustn’t mourn me too long. You must live your life.’
‘I will never love anyone else. If I can’t marry you, I will marry no one.’
‘You were meant to be a mother. You were meant to be loved. You have a great heart, Irena.’
‘And it is all yours. Please, Piotr, don’t speak to me of a life without you in it. It is not a life I would want to live.’
‘You must. It is what will make this all this worthwhile. Never give up, Irena. I can do anything – survive anything – as long as I know I am fighting for the life you will yet have.’
Now was not the time to argue. Instead, she raised her face to his and let her lips give him her promise.
A short while later he stood in front of her. He had shaved while she’d done her best to remove the dust and bloodstains from his uniform. Her heart hurt so much she thought it might shatter into a thousand pieces.
‘Come home to me, my love,’ she whispered.
He threaded his hands into her hair, pulling at the pins so that it tumbled around her shoulders. He buried his face in her neck and breathed deeply. ‘You smell so good. You feel so good. No matter what happens this is how I will always remember you.’
‘Don’t. Don’t say that… It sounds as if you think we will never be together again.’
He tipped her face so that she was staring into his eyes. ‘I will come back, I promise. You must take care of yourself for me. Get out if you can. If we don’t stop the Germans, do whatever you need to survive. Whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, stay alive. Live the life God meant you to lead. Now it’s your turn to promise me.’
‘I promise.’ She forced a smile, blinking away the tears that burned her eyes. ‘Now, aren’t you going to kiss me, dearest one?’
Chapter 5
Irena picked her way through rubble-strewn streets, thick with smoke from the hundreds of buildings that still burned, and squeezed her way past several carts piled high with pots and pans, even wardrobes and beds. Two days after Piotr left, the Germans had surrounded Warsaw and, shortly after, started bombing it. And continued bombing hour after hour, day after day. There was hardly a building in Warsaw that wasn’t damaged.
Almost more terrifying than the explosions was the awful screaming sound the German Stukas made as they dived from the sky, before dropping their bombs on top of the buildings and the fleeing civilians. Now Irena was needed more than ever at the hospital and so she made her way there each day, darting from building to building, trying to avoid the explosions and falling debris. Even if her help hadn’t been required, there was no point in staying at home. A bomb was just as likely to fall on her there as on the street. Besides, she would go crazy with only her thoughts to keep her company.
The hospital was in chaos, as it had been since the day the war started. Hundreds of people lined up in the corridors waiting to be seen, the staff singling out those who they could help and those destined for the hopeless ward.
She spotted her father bending over a mother and child as they sat against the wall in the corridor. The mother held her little boy tightly as Tata listened to his chest. He smiled at them and said a few words, before pinning a white label onto the child’s shirt.
When the mother smiled back it was clear that she didn’t have a clue that Tata had just condemned her son to death.
‘Renia! Thank God!’ her father said when he looked up and saw her.
The stretcher-bearers came forward and carried the child away, the mother trotting at his side, smiling. Was it fair to give her hope? Wouldn’t it have been better to tell her that her child was about to die so she could hold and comfort him in his last hours? Irena didn’t know any more.
‘I am fine, Tata. I brought you some bread. Have you eaten?’ She hoped he’d found a bed somewhere to put his head down for a few hours. He wasn’t getting any younger and had had pneumonia last year. He needed his rest.
‘Yes, yes. Some soup. You mustn’t worry about me. The nurses see that the doctors eat.’ He paused. ‘Any news of our allies? I haven’t had time to listen to the wireless.’
She shook her head. No word of her brother, no word of Piotr or of the West coming to their aid. ‘There could be an announcement any time, Tata. Perhaps they were taken by surprise?’
But it had been over two weeks since the Germans had attacked and still the British and French did nothing.
‘We mustn’t give up hope,’ he replied, repeating the words everyone said to each other but with less and less conviction.
She could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying. ‘Of course, Tata. We must never give up hope.’
The next day, Russia invaded Poland from the east.
Chapter 6
Edinburgh, 1989
Feeling like an intruder, Sarah unlocked the large front door of number 19 Charlotte Square. She picked up the post from the floor and placed it on the hall table. Despite the warmth of the late-summer sun outside, the house was cold and smelled musty.
The hall, which still had the original mosaic tiles, was almost as big as her entire flat. There were oil paintings on the wall and a small ornately carved table with a Bakelite telephone. A mahogany and wrought-iron staircase led upstairs.
She opened a door to her left and entered. It was a sitting room, pretty much as it must have been in Victorian times, right down to the heavy damask curtains hanging on the full-length windows that overlooked the residents’ gardens in the square. The only nod to modernity was a gas fire.
Across from the sitting room was a dining room, furnished in a similar style but with a large, heavily polished mahogany table and chairs. The fireplace in this room had a bucket of coal and kindling next to it. In front of the window was a desk and she wondered if Lord Glendale used this room as an office.
Upstairs, the largest of the numerous bedrooms had obviously been Lord Glendale’s. The room was tidy, the bed neatly made, although his jacket, a d
ark blue and purple tweed, still hung over the back of an armchair. It smelled vaguely, but not unpleasantly, of tobacco smoke. But it was the painting above the fireplace that drew her attention. It was of the woman in the photo. She was wearing a cream blouse with little mother-of-pearl buttons. She sat on a rock with her knees drawn up to her chin, her woollen skirt pulled over her knees. The sea was behind her and in the distance, cliffs. Her blond hair was blowing across her face, wisps caught in the corner of her mouth. Unlike her wary expression in the photograph Lord Glendale had left for her mother, she was laughing, as if caught in a moment of perfect happiness.
On the mantelpiece, directly below the painting and next to a neat row of pipes, was a silver-framed black-and-white photograph of the same woman, this time wearing a man’s shirt over a black one-piece bathing suit. She was towelling her hair as if she’d just come out of the sea. Magdalena Drobnik had clearly meant a great deal to Lord Glendale.
It felt intrusive to be in his bedroom so Sarah continued with her exploration of the first floor.
As well as the bedrooms, there was a bathroom with a Victorian steel claw-foot bath and, as she peeped around the door at the end of the hall, a large, elegant drawing room.
Another flight of stairs took her up to three small attic rooms. This, she imagined, would have been where the servants lived in the days when people still had them. Now the rooms were used for storage. There were several cardboard boxes and old-fashioned trunks lined up neatly against the wall.
She retraced her steps to the drawing room on the first floor. Light flooded in through the large floor-to-ceiling sash windows, which, like the sitting room below, looked out to the residents’ gardens in the centre of Charlotte Square. A faded Persian carpet covered most of the polished wooden floor and oil paintings – originals, Sarah suspected – hung from picture rails. Tall, dark-wood bookcases lined the walls and Sarah ran her fingers over the spines. Interspersed between leather-bound first editions were a few paperbacks, mainly thrillers, but also the odd crime novel.
Above the fireplace, an oversized gilt mirror reflected a group of paintings that made her gasp and whirl around. She hadn’t noticed them when she’d first stepped into the room as they had been hidden by the door. They were landscapes – or more precisely seascapes – painted in bold, sure strokes and the artist had captured the sea in motion so well, Sarah could almost smell the salt air, feel the spray on her face.
She knew the artist. It was Mum.
The memory of their last holiday rushed back, bringing with it a sickening sense of grief and loss.
It was a summer afternoon, and Sarah had been between her junior and senior honour years. She’d returned from her waitressing job hot, sticky and irritated, to find her mother in the back garden, her shoes kicked off and drinking a glass of wine. Her mother was always immaculately groomed – except for the oil-paint under her fingernails when she was working on a canvas. She never went barefoot and she certainly never sprawled. One of these facts was unusual, taken together they filled Sarah with something she couldn’t quite define. Unease? Sadness? Most of all, she felt a terrible longing. She stood at the back door and watched her for a moment. Her mother’s eyes were closed, her face tilted slightly towards the sun, her toes pressing into the lawn. She looked almost abandoned; that was the word that came to mind.
Tentatively Sarah stepped towards her, the soft grass muting her approach. She looked down on the woman who was her mother but whom she had never felt to be her friend.
As if sensing her, her mother’s eyes opened and she smiled – another rarity. It lit her face and made her seem younger. More like the mother Sarah remembered before her father had left her – left them both.
‘Oh, hello, Sarah. I didn’t expect you back so soon.’ She waved her glass. ‘Would you be a love and get me a refill? And why don’t you join me?’
Sarah’s unease grew. Mum never drank and disapproved of Sarah drinking. Before Sarah left for a night out, her mother always gave her a list of warnings: never let anyone allow you to become separated from your friends; don’t go anywhere with anyone you don’t know – especially if it’s a man; put a jacket on or you’ll freeze to death; take a pair of sensible shoes with you; make sure you have enough money to get a taxi home – you never know who is on these late night buses… And so the list went on. If her mother had her way, Sarah would spend every evening at home watching TV drinking nothing stronger than cocoa. So for her to be drinking and to ask Sarah to join her was, well, unheard of.
But nice. Perhaps now that she was almost twenty-one her mother had decided she was adult enough to be trusted to look after herself. Whatever the reason, Sarah was intrigued by this new side of her.
She poured her mother a fresh glass of wine from the fridge, noting that half the bottle was already gone.
‘Here you are,’ she said, passing her mother the glass before sitting down on the lawn. Her mother didn’t even insist on her getting a blanket in case she spoiled her clothes.
‘Here’s to summer.’ Her mother raised her glass for Sarah to chink. The wine was good, much better than anything Sarah had drank at university – of course, despite her mother’s warnings, she had had her fair share of tipsy evenings.
‘Is that what we’re celebrating?’ Sarah asked.
Her mother waved her hand in the air and a little wine splashed on the ground. ‘I’ve sold a painting! My first one! Can you believe it? And the gallery wants more. Lots more.’
‘That’s wonderful, Mum.’
‘We should take a trip,’ her mother said, ‘to celebrate my sale and your twenty-first. Where would you like to go?’ She leaned forward and fixed her brown eyes on her daughter. ‘If you could choose anywhere – anywhere at all – where would it be? Imagine the world was your oyster.’
Go on holiday? They never went on holiday. Her mother barely left the house. Sarah would have loved to have gone backpacking in Europe or volunteer in Africa the same as Gilly, but Mum had made it clear that that was out of the question. Trips, especially to third-world countries, were filled with dangers, both specific and unimaginable. So what could she suggest? Where would her mother like to go?
‘What about Italy? We could go on the train as far as Dover and take a ferry from there and then another train.’
‘Abroad,’ her mother said doubtfully.
So much for the world being her oyster. It was getting smaller by the minute. Sarah searched frantically for an alternative. ‘The west coast of Scotland, then? Or Dorset or Devon?’ The idea took hold. ‘We could go and see our old house. The one with the apple tree in the back garden.’
Another shadow crossed her mother’s face. Clearly the thought of revisiting Devon, where they’d lived when Sarah was a little girl and her parents still together held little appeal. ‘Dorset then?’
Mum set her glass on the grass and clapped her hands together. ‘Dorset, it is. I’ll find us a little cottage somewhere we can see the sea. We could go next week.’
Sarah had been planning to visit Matthew in London but she held her tongue. This trip could mean a new start for her and Mum – a chance to get to know one another. She couldn’t let it slip away. ‘Dorset would be great.’
Now five years on she wondered if one of these paintings was the one they’d celebrated? If so, Lord Glendale’s buying it had made Mum happier than Sarah had ever seen her. It had also been the start of her mother’s success as an artist. So who was he? He’d bought a number of her paintings, left her properties in his will, yet Mum had been emphatic about not knowing him.
As a clock chimed, she glanced at her watch. Damn, it was four. Gilly was coming for an early supper and Sarah hadn’t been to the shops yet. In addition, she had to drop into the office with the proofs she’d been working on at home. As long as she’d been working as a copy editor she’d never missed a deadline and she didn’t want to start now.
But she needed to know more about Lord Glendale and the mysterious, beautiful woman i
n the photograph. And she had an idea where she could start.
Chapter 7
Warsaw, 1939
Irena watched from the balcony of her apartment as the German army marched into Warsaw. There was no longer anyone to stop them. Poland had finally admitted defeat and surrendered.
With Russia against them too and without the Allies coming to their aid, their situation was hopeless. Yesterday what was left of the Polish army had turned in their weapons before being rounded up and marched off to prisoner-of-war camps, although it was whispered that many had managed to evade capture and were heading for France via Romania. She prayed that Piotr and Aleksy were amongst them.