Davide gently washed my arms with long slow strokes. It felt like silk on my limbs. It was only an old square of flannel cloth, nothing special. But after the battering I had taken, inside and out, in the forest – after the thorns and branches and twisted briars, after men with guns and friends with lies – I felt as if parts of me had been torn off.
My body was struggling to put itself back together again, in the same way my mind was. In Davide’s hands the flannel soothed the scratches. His touch helped heal the cuts. Both mental and physical. As I watched him run his strong fingers over my skin, I knew he was remembering each mark, each bruise, because every one of them told him the things I could not put into words.
‘Is it over?’ he murmured.
‘It’s over.’
‘Are you free?’
Such a strange question when we were surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.
‘Yes, my love, I am free.’ I leaned forward and kissed his lips.
He dipped the flannel in the bowl of soapy water and with a smooth, steady rhythm he cleaned my palm. My wrist. The tip of my elbow.
‘Davide, how is the man who drank the poison?’
‘He is doing better every hour apparently.’
‘I’m so glad. Thank you.’
He smiled thoughtfully as he dipped the flannel once more. He held my chin in one hand, studying each feature as he scrubbed it clean. He washed my forehead, my mouth, my ears. Firmer now. Wiping the dirt off me. The blood and the filth. Again and again till I could breathe.
I took hold of his face between my hands and rested my head against his.
‘Davide, I will be working hard – teaching more hours and stealing more tins from the kitchens – to save for the cost of identity papers for myself and the children. But,’ I brushed my lips across his, tasted the special Frenchness of him, ‘it doesn’t have to be England. France is a big country. It might have a corner somewhere for us.’
‘Klara,’ his voice was tender, ‘do you know how many people in this camp have got married to each other in the last four months?’
‘No idea.’
‘Forty-eight.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That seems to me a very awkward number. Fifty is a much neater number in the ledger.’
I laughed and twined my clean arms around Davide’s neck.
‘Kiss me.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY
That night sleep wouldn’t come. I pushed my fingers hard against my eyelids to erase what lay behind them, but it wouldn’t go.
I filled my mind with images of the good memories in my life. The strong memories. To drive out the others, the ones I fought to turn my back on. I pictured Davide’s laughing brown eyes and rekindled the feel of his hands on my skin when he soothed my ragged cuts today.
I pictured my daughter’s brave face, so fierce when she saved my life by the oak tree. And her secretive smile when I kissed her goodnight. She thought I didn’t know about the two diamonds she had concealed in her pocket when she held the box so close. To replace the ones she gave away to the thieving women in Poland’s forest.
I smiled at them all.
But as I started to finally drift into sleep, floating on its very edge, that’s when it came at me. The memory that would never go.
It was the end of us.
The German army was in full retreat. They had caused the deaths of six million Poles, half of them Jewish. The Soviets were about to march on the city of rubble that had once been my beloved Warsaw. Oberführer Axel Fleischer stormed into my apartment with Sturmbannführer Oskar Scholz at his heels.
‘Come, Klara,’ Axel said in a hurry. ‘Pack your things. We are leaving at once.’
‘I am not leaving without my daughter.’
A frown of annoyance flashed across his face. ‘I thought you’d have forgotten about your daughter by now.’
‘I will never forget about my daughter.’ I swung round to Scholz who was standing by the door, impatient to leave. ‘Where is she, Oskar?’
‘No,’ snapped Fleischer. ‘We don’t need a child slowing us down.’
‘I won’t leave without her.’
‘Very well. Scholz, where is the girl?’
‘In the convent of St Mary of the Blessed Sacrament.’
Fleischer lifted the telephone. ‘Get me Leutnant Hausmann at Headquarters.’ He fixed his eyes on mine. ‘What is your daughter’s name?’
‘Alicja Janowska.’
He waited and I dared to hope he would send for her.
‘Hausmann? I want you to go to the convent of St Mary of the Blessed Sacrament and find a girl called Alicja Janowska. Take her outside—’
My heart leaped with joy.
‘—and shoot her.’
It broke me. It robbed me of reason. I reacted without hesitation. Instinctive. Unthinking. Instant.
I ran to the bureau. Reached into my writing case and snatched out the Walther PPK I had the sense to keep hidden there. In two seconds I was back at Axel Fleischer’s shoulder, the dark-metal barrel of the gun jammed against the side of his head. His ear grew crimson.
‘Rescind that order,’ I said fiercely.
He didn’t move. The telephone receiver still in his hand.
‘Rescind that order or you will die before your next heartbeat.’
His blue eyes narrowed to slits. He tried to turn his head to look at me but the gun didn’t let him.
‘Choose,’ I said. ‘Now.’ My finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Choose.’
‘No, damn you, Klara. I will not be dictated to by you. I will not take orders from a Polish whore. Who do you think you are? If I say she dies, she dies.’
He banged down the receiver with an angry clatter. Again I reacted. Instinctive. Instant.
I pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening in the silent room. Deafening to my ears, but also deafening to something deep inside me. Oberführer Axel Fleischer dropped like a stone at my feet. I pointed the gun straight at Oskar Scholz’s heart.
‘Pick up the phone, Sturmbannführer Scholz. Call Leutnant Hausmann. Rescind that order. Now.’
Oskar Scholz looked ready to kill me, but his pistol remained in its holster. He made the telephone call. He rescinded the order.
When it was done, he stood in front of me, rigid with shock. ‘I will be the one blamed for this, Klara Janowska.’ His lip was trembling with rage. ‘Wherever you run, wherever you hide, I will find you. And I will kill you. But first, I will kill your daughter.’
I forced him into Fleischer’s study, locked the door and ran. I ran for Alicja’s life.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
‘You have a visitor.’
It was a month after Alicja and I had returned to Graufeld Camp that Colonel Whitmore greeted me in his office with the last words I’d expected and a beaming smile. He had the contented look of a parent about to bestow a Christmas gift.
‘A visitor?’ I knew no one who would visit me. This was a mistake. Or worse.
He whisked me down a corridor with long military strides. He was a man who liked to get things done.
‘Who is it?’ I asked warily.
He gave me the parental smile again. ‘Wait and see.’
I didn’t want to wait and see. I wanted to be prepared.
The colonel threw open a door with a flourish and I walked into the room quickly. To face this visitor.
‘Surprise!’ Colonel Whitmore chuckled softly.
My heart stopped. I froze. No breath. No thought. No belief in what my eyes were telling me they were seeing. I didn’t hear the colonel withdraw and close the door quietly behind him. The room was a spartan office, like any other military office, but the tall male figure standing in front of the desk was not like any other figure. It was my husband.
‘Dymek,’ I whispered.
Tears were rolling down my cheeks. This was a phantom, I knew it was. A ghost. A spectre. A trick of the light. But I felt a rush of warm gratitude to whatever gods had decr
eed I should receive this visit from my dead husband.
‘Klara.’
He started towards me. With that smile of his. That teasing one that had always known how to put my world right whenever a disaster had crept up on me. But I leaped to him and threw my arms around his strong shoulders, clutching him tight to me before he vanished again.
He may be a fantasy of my lonely mind, but I could feel the warmth of him through the navy serge of his suit, and the strength of his arms as they closed around me. Smell the scent of his aftershave where my cheek touched his.
I jerked back my head. My Dymek never wore aftershave. Yet it was my husband’s face. I ran my fingertips over it but there were no scars, no burns, just his warm brown eyes gazing at me and the long straight nose I’d loved to stroke. It was still the animated face of a man who sought adventure, but in the delicate cobwebbing around his eyes there were lines that had not been there before.
‘It’s you,’ I whispered.
‘It’s me.’ With the gentle touch I remembered so well, he wiped my tears away with his fingers.
‘You’re not dead?’
‘No, Klara, I’m not dead.’ He kissed my cheek and I expected part of my skin to melt but it didn’t. ‘See?’ he said.
Something was wrong. I could sense it. But I didn’t know what. Something wrong with him? Something wrong with me? Vital parts of me were shaking inside.
‘You didn’t die? When your plane was shot down?’
I stepped back a fraction and ran my hands over his arms and his chest, feeling solid muscle and whole healthy limbs. My disbelief was washed away by a joy that knocked me off my feet. I collapsed on a chair and Dymek knelt at my side. I reached for his hand.
He was telling me things but all I could take in was the shape of his mouth and the patch on the side of his head where there was no hair. His scalp was pink and shiny underneath.
He was shot down, he said. Both legs smashed. Rescued by Resistance fighters who cared for him in a safe house.
‘I’d have come to you. If you’d sent word,’ I told him.
‘I did. But our apartment was bombed. Your parents’ place too. I was told you had all been killed in the explosions.’ He paused, a deep furrow appearing between his brows. ‘Including Alicja.’
‘She’s here,’ I smiled.
‘How is she?’
‘Well. Strong. Brave.’
Tears welled up in his eyes. In a way they hadn’t done for me.
‘I was there all the time,’ I told him. ‘In Warsaw throughout the war.’
He raised my hand to his lips and noticed my damaged fingertips. He wound both his large capable hands around mine. Was he hiding them? Or keeping them safe?
‘I was passed through the Resistance network,’ he said, ‘after my legs healed and I got myself to England. I joined the Polskie Sily Powietrzne, the Polish air force in Britain and flew planes against Hitler’s Luftwaffe for the last years of the war.’ He paused again. An awkward, uneasy suspension of time. Neither of us knew what to do with it.
‘What about you?’ He looked at me intently. ‘In Warsaw.’
‘I got by.’
‘It is wonderful that you got out before the Russians marched in.’
‘How did you find me? Why now? After all these years, if you believed we were dead.’
He rubbed the tip of my thumb with his own thumb and I felt a ripple of pain under the skin.
‘In England I tracked down your British grandmother,’ he explained. ‘Her house in Exeter was bombed but after a lot of searching and paperwork, I found her in a village called Cherhill in Wiltshire.’
‘You found Grandma?’
I was shivering again. I stroked the back of his neck. ‘Thank you, Dymek. Thank you. You always were good at—’
He shrugged off my thanks. And my hand. ‘It was terrible informing her of your family’s death. She took it hard.’
‘Poor, poor Grandma. But now . . .’ I smiled at him. ‘She knows?’
‘Yes. She telephoned me yesterday to say she’d received an official letter asking whether someone named Klara Janowska in a DP camp in Germany was any relation.’ He laughed and I wanted to tell him how many times I had tried to conjure up that laugh in my dreams. ‘She thought you must be an imposter.’
‘But you came anyway.’
I felt him soften. Not just his lean muscles. His eyes, his chocolate brown eyes seemed to melt. ‘Of course I came, Klara.’
He took both my hands between his and for that single moment, we became one tight unit again. And it gave me the strength to sit back from him, withdraw my hands and ask in a calm voice, ‘What is wrong, Dymek?’
He exhaled hard. ‘I thought you were dead, Klara. Six long years.’
I knew what was coming. I knew it before the words left my husband’s lips.
‘I am married, Klara.’
‘What’s her name?’
He looked me directly in the eye, trying to decide whether I could take this hurt.
‘Her name is Nell. She is English, a teacher. She’s clever, Klara. You’d like her. And . . .’ The pause again, the pause that meant I would not want to hear what was coming next. ‘And we have a son. George. Named after the king of England.’
I breathed slowly. ‘How old is George?’
‘He’s three.’
‘Three years old.’
I swallowed hard. A half-brother for Alicja. In England. I rose to my feet and stood close to Dymek, placed my hands flat on his chest. His heart was racing.
I took my time studying his face. With such affection. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me. I knew I was saying goodbye for the second time to the man who used to be a part of me. Saying hello to the man who was Nell’s husband.
‘I am happy for you, Dymek. Truly I am.’
Did I mind?
Of course I minded. I minded like hell. That Dymek had found himself a replacement wife and child so fast. Before the varnish on our coffins was dry.
But did I blame him? Was I angry?
No, of course not. Not one bit. We all need love and we all need to give love. It’s what keeps our souls warm and alive. Without love, something dies in you. I thought of Davide. I thought of Alicja. I thought of Rafal, Alzbeta and Izak. How my love for them had helped bring me back from the brink.
I slid an arm comfortably through Dymek’s and led him out into the sunlight.
‘Come and see Alicja,’ I smiled, ‘and our family.’
Dymek stared at me, surprised. ‘You have more family?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
As we walked through the camp and he looked around him, I took to viewing Graufeld Camp through his eyes. Even in the sun, it was dilapidated. It was shabby and grey. Just as the DPs themselves were shabby and grey. Unwanted. It’s true. That’s what we were. Unwanted people. But I couldn’t bear Dymek to see it that way. This place that had given my daughter and me a roof over our heads and food in our belly. It had given us life. When we were in the grip of death.
‘We are lucky,’ I said at his side, ‘to be here.’
He gave me a long assessing look and said firmly, ‘You are not the same person I knew, are you, Klara? Not the bright young woman who kissed me goodbye that day in August 1939.’
I stared ahead at the group of five people – Davide and the four children – playing the simple game of French boules on a patch of dirt. Davide was teaching Izak the expert grip on a boule and they were all laughing. Rafal of course was cheating as usual.
‘No,’ I said honestly. Without regret. ‘Life changes us. That girl has gone, Dymek. You can’t walk through the fires of war and not get burned. But now Europe will be free. That is why we fought the war, that’s what so many people sacrificed their lives for. Because without freedom how can we believe in ourselves? How can we ever be happy?’
‘Are you happy, Klara? Despite—’ he waved a dismissive hand around my home, ‘—despite all this?’
‘Yes, I am
. Love heals so many wounds.’
‘You are in love?’ His surprise that love could be found in a place like Graufeld Camp was obvious.
‘Yes, Dymek, I am. And even happier now that your arrival means Alicja and I will be given our nationality papers.’
‘And entry to England.’
I nodded. The future, I’d learned, need not mean a cottage and roses.
‘Come,’ I said. ‘Meet my family.’
I waved to the tight-knit group engrossed in the game. Alicja waved back. But her hand froze mid-air as she stared at the man at my side. With a small cry, she seized Davide’s hand and they came racing towards us. I reached for them. At last we were no longer displaced persons. Our place was together.
Acknowledgements
I want to say a heartfelt thank you to my editor Jo Dickinson for her brilliance and for her wonderful support – it means the world. And my grateful thanks to the whole awesome team at Simon & Schuster who are the best. The very best. Thanks to you all.
Very special thanks to my agent Teresa Chris who is my rock and my guide, and who often understands what I need even before I do.
I am very grateful to Anne Menke and Horst Menke for helping me to get both my German language and my German geography right. Any errors are definitely mine alone.
I am also indebted to Chris Mason for the invaluable insight he gave me into his experience of the world of postwar Germany. It gave me the courage to be brave.
As always my love to my good friends at Brixham Writers who are generous with their support and laughter. And cakes.
Warmest thanks to my dear friend Marian for being the biscuit-nibbling bridge between my scrawled pages and the tidy manuscript on-screen.
And then there is Norman. Ever full of creative ideas and boundless encouragement. My huge thanks and love.
Kate Furnivall
The Liberation
Italy, 1945.
A country in turmoil.
A woman with one chance to save herself.
Caterina Lombardi is desperate – her father is dead, her mother has disappeared and her brother is being drawn towards danger. One morning, among the ruins of the bombed Naples streets, Caterina is forced to go to extreme lengths to protect her own life and in doing so forges a future in which she must clear her father’s name.
The Survivors Page 29