We Shall Remember

by Emma Fraser

  Gilly leaped to her feet, almost sending her glass of wine flying. ‘Christ. I’d forgotten.’ She picked up her handbag and dropped a kiss on Sarah’s head. ‘You know there could be a story in this. Personally I can’t wait to find out what it is.’

  After Gilly left, Sarah washed and put away the dishes, wiped the working tops, swept the floor and even contemplated mopping it. But if she were to catch her father before he went to bed, she couldn’t put the phone call off any longer. As she waited for him to pick up she tapped her fingers on the hall table.

  As soon as the stilted small talk was over and he’d asked about her mother, she told him about her visit to Hardcourt & Bailey.

  ‘So do you know who Lord Glendale was?’ she asked.

  ‘Your grandparents were the only toffs I ever met. They might have known him, I suppose. You say he’s left Lily a house?’

  ‘Not exactly. And there are two.’ She explained the terms of the will.

  He whistled. ‘The pair of you have fallen on your feet, haven’t you?’

  That wasn’t quite how she’d describe her, or Mum’s, life right now, but she bit back the retort. ‘I don’t suppose the name Magdalena Drobnik means anything to you either?’

  ‘Not a dicky.’

  Bugger. She’d hoped he’d be able to tell her something. ‘Lord Glendale also left Mum a photograph of herself as a little girl. Do you have any idea why he might have had it?’

  ‘A photo of your mother, you say? Now that’s interesting.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not really up to me to tell you. It’s your mother you should be asking.’

  Sarah gritted her teeth. ‘She can’t exactly talk for herself at the moment, Dad. Just tell me what you know. Please.’

  The line crackled and for a moment she thought they’d been disconnected. Her father’s sigh came over the line. ‘Right. Fine. Did you know your mother was adopted when she was a child?’

  Sarah almost dropped the phone. ‘No!’

  ‘I guess she still hasn’t told you then?’

  Sarah swallowed hard. ‘No.’ It was so like Mum that she hadn’t. But still hurtful.

  ‘Sorry, love, I thought she would have by now, although it wasn’t something she liked to talk about. She only told me when we needed a copy of her birth certificate to get married.’

  Sarah’s head was spinning. Was it possible Mum was Magdalena Drobnik’s child? And if Magdalena was Mum’s mother, was Lord Glendale her father? It would explain the photo and the bequest – and Mum’s reaction to the woman in the photo. Perhaps she hadn’t being trying to say Magdalena. Perhaps she’d been trying to say mother?

  ‘You say she was a little girl when she was adopted. Did she tell you who her natural parents were?’

  ‘Apparently they died when she was very young. That’s all she told me.’

  ‘Died? Are you sure? Both of them?’

  ‘That’s what she said. In the war.’

  If Mum’s natural parents had died during the war, then Lord Glendale and Magdalena Drobnik couldn’t be her parents. Unless Mum had lied to Dad. She wouldn’t be the first person to smudge the truth. Better to be adopted because your parents had died than because they’d given you away.

  ‘She must have told you something else!’

  ‘I did try to ask, but Lily said she’d spent her life trying to forget what happened to her when she was a child – that people who thought talking about the past was cathartic didn’t have a clue what they were on about. I’d never seen her in such a tizz. And that was that. It was never mentioned again.’

  ‘I can’t believe I never knew any of this! She must have said how they died!’

  ‘I know it was something to do with the war, that’s all. You know, Sarah, loads of children were orphaned at the time and sent all over the country – particularly out of London.’

  Mum had been born in 1939. Dad was right. It was perfectly possible that her parents had been killed during the war.

  ‘Hold on a sec, Dad – their names – at least Mum’s mother’s name – must have been on the birth certificate.’

  ‘That’s the thing. She never did find it – all she managed to find was an adoption paper with your grandparents’ names on it.’

  So what was the connection with Lord Glendale? Unless Mum’s natural parents had been close friends of his. His family had owned a home in London and the capital had been badly bombed during the war. In which case why hadn’t he ever made himself known to Mum? To leave two properties to a woman on slight acquaintance seemed unlikely. And Mum had known Magdalena. How?

  ‘Sarah, are you still there? I need to go. Mirinda wants me for something.’

  Mirinda could wait for once. ‘How old was Mum when she was adopted?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Five or six, I think. As I said, she didn’t like to talk about it.’

  ‘In that case she would have been old enough to remember her parents. What if Magdalena was Mum’s mother? Perhaps she was a refugee and she and this Lord Glendale had an affair and she fell pregnant? Maybe Magdalena couldn’t keep her baby. She might have been Catholic, many Poles were.’ Sarah had once copy-edited a book by a woman who had been forced to give up her baby in the forties. Perhaps the same thing had happened to Magdalena? But if that had been the case, then Mum would have been given up for adoption when she was a baby. Unless Magdalena had died and that was why Mum had been adopted. But that didn’t work. No one would bequeath properties to a dead woman. There had to be another explanation.

  ‘Look, Sarah, this is all very interesting but I really have to go.’

  After hanging up on her father, she took the photo of Mum as a child into her study, and held it next to the framed picture of her and her mother she always kept on her desk. Sarah had been about six at the time and was clinging to her mother’s hand, looking up at her. Her mother was staring straight ahead, although Sarah vividly remembered the almost painful pressure of her fingers biting into her palm. Could Mum be Magdalena and Richard’s child? She tried to visualise the woman in the photo and the painting. If Magdalena and Mum looked alike, it hadn’t been obvious to Sarah – but then she hadn’t been looking for a family resemblance. Magdalena had blue-green eyes and blond hair and Mum had brown eyes and dark hair and Lord Glendale had been tall and blond. That didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be related. She wasn’t good at seeing similar features, even when friends with babies insisted they looked exactly like Aunt Geraldine or Uncle Fred.

  She lifted the photo of her and Mum and peered at it. There was little resemblance between mother and daughter; where Sarah’s hair tended to curl if she didn’t dry it straight, her mother’s fell in a sleek, natural curtain. Their eyes were different too; Mum’s were almond shaped and dark brown whereas Sarah’s had a touch of green from her father’s side. Sarah’s mouth was fuller too and while Mum had always been slim, Sarah had to work to keep off the pounds. The one thing they did share was their small slightly turned-up noses. But what struck Sarah most was that the eyes of both the child and the adult versions of her mother had the same fearful expression.

  What was Mum anxious about that day? Were they near a road and she was frightened Sarah might run into it? Certainly Mum was always worried something would happen to her only child. Sarah had been in her first year at high school before Mum, after a furious argument, had allowed her to walk to school on her own. Even then, one day during lunch break, Sarah had looked over to find her mother watching her from the school’s perimeter fence. That had resulted in another blazing row, but at least it had stopped her mother’s absurd, and mortifying, behaviour.

  If she’d lost her parents as a small child, no wonder she’d been frightened something would happen to Sarah.

  How come she knew so little about her mother? As a spasm of grief and regret gripped her, she traced the outline of her mother’s face with her fingertip. She’d never understood how Mum could be so over-protective yet so distant. She’d resented her so o
ften – always hoping that Mum would talk to her, really talk to her, like Gilly and her mother did. But apart from once, it had never happened. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to get to know her now?

  She could start with finding out what had happened to Mum’s birth parents and to do that she needed to find out more about Magdalena Drobnik and Richard Maxwell.

  Chapter 12

  At visiting the following afternoon, Sarah was surprised to find her mother more alert than she’d been since the stroke. She was sitting up in her chair, propped up correctly with her hair neatly combed.

  ‘Hello, Mum. You’re looking better.’

  Sarah appropriated a plastic chair from a patient without visitors and sat down next to her mother. It was only then that she noticed she still had the photo of the couple clutched in her hands.

  Linda stopped at the foot of the bed. ‘Excuse me a moment, ladies, but I need to take Lily’s blood pressure.’

  ‘I was just telling Mum how much better she looks,’ Sarah said.

  ‘She’s done well today. She managed a good bit of her breakfast and a little of her lunch too.’ Linda slipped the ends of the stethoscope into her ears and held up a finger before pumping up the cuff on Sarah’s mother’s arm. She listened for a while and frowned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Her BP is a little raised. Nothing to be concerned about.’ She wrapped the stethoscope around her neck and marked her mother’s chart before leaving them alone.

  Sarah reached forward and placed her hand over her mother’s. ‘Please don’t be annoyed but I spoke to Dad last night. I told him about the photos and Lord Glendale’s bequest.’

  Her mother’s eyes blazed. She pulled her hand away and tapped her stick twice on the floor. Sarah’s parents hadn’t spoken since they’d divorced and whenever Sarah so much as mentioned Dad’s name her mother became tight-lipped.

  Sarah knotted her fingers together and took a deep breath. ‘He told me you were adopted, Mum. I wish I’d known. I wish you’d felt able to tell me.’

  The fire in her mother’s eyes dimmed. ‘S… Sad.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, you could have told me.’ Sarah swallowed. ‘Is that how you know Magdalena?’

  One tap – yes.

  ‘Was she your birth mother?’

  Her mother’s face crumpled. Two taps. No.

  ‘Are you certain? You know you can tell me —’

  Her mother looked at Sarah with imploring eyes and jabbed the stick on the floor. One tap. Pause. One tap. She stared at Sarah as if willing her to understand.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. I’m just trying to work out how you know Magdalena and why her picture upsets you.’

  Her mother looked at her, her brown eyes burning with frustration.

  ‘Okay, I’ll rephrase that, does her picture upset you?’

  Two taps. No.

  ‘Does something about her upset you?’

  One tap. Yes. ‘N… N…’ Her mother was getting agitated. She waved her stick in the general direction of the ward and Sarah swivelled in her chair. Most of the beds had visitors, except Mrs Liversage who was wandering up and down the middle of the ward, crying and calling for her mother and father. A nurse took her by the arm and led her towards the day-room.

  ‘Has Mrs Liversage been upsetting you?’ Sarah asked.

  Two taps. No.

  ‘Someone else in the ward?’

  One tap. Then after a pause. Two taps. Yes and no?

  Sarah shook her head. She didn’t know who was more frustrated, her or Mum. ‘Is it being in hospital?’

  One tap.

  So her distress was less to do with the photographs than being in hospital. ‘I know you hate it here but it’s where you need to be – for the time being at least – but I’ll speak to Staff Nurse after visiting and see if she has an idea of when you might be discharged.’

  Her mother smiled lopsidedly. ‘’ome. Plis.’ It was the most she’d said since her stroke. The doctors had said that she might regain her speech in time and possibly most of the movement in her right side. Perhaps now wasn’t the best time to be considering taking her home. Not when she finally seemed to be making progress.

  ‘I’m going to London to see Matthew, Mum, and while I’m there, I’m going to see if I can find out anything about Lord Glendale. I’ll only be away for a night. Is that all right?’

  Her mother nodded.

  The bell rang to signal the end of visiting. As Sarah bent to lift her bag her mother gripped her wrist with a surprising strength. ‘Ma…’ She took a deep breath ‘Eena. F-F-Eena.’

  ‘You want me to find Magdalena?’

  One tap.

  Magdalena might not be Mum’s mother, but whoever she was, she clearly meant something to her.

  ‘I’d like to see the doctor about a date when I might be able to take my mother home,’ Sarah said to Linda before leaving.

  ‘Sarah, as I said yesterday, Lily still needs a great deal of nursing and therapy.’

  ‘I could employ someone privately.’ Although she didn’t know how. By the end of the month she’d barely enough money in the bank to live on, let alone pay for a nurse. But she could sell her car or take out a loan. One way or another, she’d manage.

  Linda was looking at her as if wondering whether to say something. The sympathy in her eyes was like a shock of ice along Sarah’s spine. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your mother’s blood pressure isn’t coming down despite the medication we’re giving her. You know that someone who has already had a stroke has an increased risk of having another. It’s possible she might never be able to go home.’

  ‘But you said —’

  ‘That she’d be going home soon. I only said that to keep her fighting. If Lily thinks she’ll never leave here she might give up.’

  ‘Mum will never stop fighting – not as long as she still has me – and I won’t let her.’ Sarah’s throat was so tight with the need to cry, she could barely speak. ‘Don’t you dare give up on her.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, we won’t. I promise. I just wanted you to be prepared.’

  She would never be prepared for Mum dying.

  She sat in her car in the hospital car park for a long time, close to tears. She’d promised Mum she’d find Magdalena so that was what she was going to do. She turned the ignition. She might not be able to do anything else for Mum, but if Magdalena was alive she was bloody well going to find her.

  Chapter 13

  Warsaw, 1940

  Most of the time Irena managed to push what was happening in Poland from her mind, but too often she was confronted with terrifying and heart-breaking reminders. Almost every day men and women were rounded up at gunpoint and made to stand with their hands against a wall while the soldiers searched them. Some were released, others shot. Nobody knew what they’d done – if they’d done anything – and nobody intervened. But as soon as the soldiers had left, people would hurry to remove the bodies, leaving lit candles in their place.

  When she wasn’t sleeping or queuing for food, she was at the hospital, studying or attending lectures. The only light in the endlessly grey, terrifying days was that the university had started underground teaching. She never discovered until the day before, where and what time the classes would be held and it was often changed at the last moment.

  Today, she’d come back from one such lecture to find a letter waiting for her. With no fuel to heat her apartment, it was as cold inside as it was outside. She wrapped herself in a blanket and sank into a chair, tucking her legs underneath her.

  She didn’t recognise the handwriting on the envelope but when she opened it, a note and two more envelopes, one addressed to her and one to Aleksy, were folded in half inside. This time she did recognise the handwriting. It was Magdalena’s.

  Magdalena was alive. Thank God. She tore open the envelope and started to read.

  My dear friend,

  I am not sure whether this will ever reach you or my darling Aleksander. A nurse her
e has offered to post them and I pray that she will do as she promises.

  I don’t even know if either of you are alive but I have to believe that you are. If you have been to our old home you will have learned that Mama and I were forced to leave it. Mama wanted to go east as she was certain that we would find Tata there. Instead, we were taken by the Russians and put behind barbed wire. My dear, I will save you the particulars, except to say that I do not expect to survive. Sadly, Mama has already passed away. She was forced to sell her coat and shoes for food and as you know she wasn’t strong. I do not think it will be long before I join her. I am so cold, so hungry, I can’t bear to stay alive.