As she looked at him, she remembered the first time she had met him. Now his face was thinner, older; his eyes were more thoughtful, his lips tighter. It was a stronger face, the face of a man who had come to know himself. Everything had been taken from him. All he had left was his body, his brains and his courage. These were the real man: not what he had owned in land, or in money, or in the prestige of a name. And he knew that, and he accepted it.
Adam Wisniewski watched the girl’s face looking at him so intently. What was she thinking? From the first time he had met her, he had wondered about that. His memory of her as he had first seen her—leaning out of the window at the Korytów house, her eyes and lips laughing, fair hair falling to her shoulders, warmth and life in her face—had haunted him. Then later, when she came downstairs for that last dinner and his impatience had increased as he waited for her to appear, she had seemed another being. Still with the same fair hair, the same large brown eyes, the same smiling mouth. But she had become suddenly cold and remote; there was a challenge in the way she ignored him. He had watched her all through that dinner, and he had discovered two things. One was that she didn’t love Andrew Aleksander and never would. Somehow he had been relieved to know that. The other was that she was shy, and her coldness was a guard put up against a frightening world. He had been amazed that any girl with her beauty and charm should be shy, and his interest had quickened. Before he could talk to her, tease her, try to make her lose that self-control so that she would become as alive and warm as in the first moment of seeing her, events had crowded in. Personal thoughts and desires had to be forgotten. At the meeting in Korytowski’s flat he had been angry that she should have been there: she was being drawn into danger; he wanted her away. Safe. It was then he had realised the incongruous fact that he was in love with this girl: incongruous because he had at last found what he most wanted at a time when he, who had always got what he wanted, couldn’t even try to possess it. There was no forgetting her either. There never would be. But there were other things to be done, and if he kept her near him she would always be in danger. The journey from the forest to this village, without knowing what had happened except that shots from the village had been heard, had been undiluted hell. But it had proved to him that she would have to leave. Not for Olszak’s reasons, not for all that damned talk about leadership. He was a captain with a job of fighting to do. He would fight as well with her as he had fought without her. But what would happen to her if he were killed? Or if she were taken hostage by the Germans? They’d soon know that she wasn’t Polish; they’d learn about Anna Braun. Did she know what danger she was in? Probably she did. But she wouldn’t go away if that were the only reason for not staying. He tightened his grasp round her waist. Not for Olszak’s reasons, then; but Olszak’s reason would have to be used if he sent her away. These would be the only ones she would listen to.
They heard Kati clearing her throat more loudly than necessary. They were once more back in the inn at Dwór. Behind Kati was the white, furrowed face of Father Brys. He was watching them with his calm grey eyes. Sheila felt he understood everything. Without being told, he knew, and knowing, understood. Quickly she followed Kati out into the open.
* * *
In front of the inn there was a group of waiting men. Sheila knew the younger men, some seven or eight in number. They were from the camp. Adam had picked the toughest fighters, too, she thought, as she recognised them. They greeted her smilingly, with a sort of informal, vague salute.
“You cheated us out of a job, we’ve been hearing,” one called over to her as she passed, and the others grinned widely. Then they started moving into the inn with the older men from the village.
“What you need is a good scrub,” Kati said critically. “Tearstains and all. You’re a beauty at this moment I can tell you.” She led Sheila round to the side of the house where there was an open pump. “Go on, stick your head under that. I’ll have to get you fresh clothes, anyway.”
“How’s your side, Kati?”
“All right. Zofia bandaged me up. It doesn’t hurt. Not much.”
“Where are the women?”
“Cooking. The older children are pretending to work in the fields near the main road. They are keeping watch.”
“How did the men from the camp arrive?”
“When the old woman and her son got to the forest, they found the Chief setting out for the village. He had just heard you came here last night. They told him about the German spy, and about the shots they had heard (that’s what made the old woman and her son go straight to the forest instead of waiting for night to come), and the chief then chooses some men to come with him, and they come straight to the village. Not all together, you know. Not marching. Just the way they slip into places. But they all got here about the same time, just as the service was ending in the church. I was looking out of the hall window to see if everything was all right. And what did I see? First the Chief and Ladislas, then little Jan, then Kasmierz and Julian, then Edmund, and then three men I didn’t know. What excitement there was in the square! The Chief was talking to Father Brys and Tomasz. They were telling him everything. And then I knew we were all safe.” Kati was happy: the village had been in danger, and the camp hadn’t forgotten it. The camp was taking charge. All was well.
“What happened to the—to the coffins?”
Kati stared at her. “You know nothing, do you? What in the wide world have you been talking about in there?” She nodded over her shoulder in the direction of the inn. “Nearly an hour, you were. And you know nothing.”
“What happened?”
“The Chief’s a quick one. As soon as he knew what had been happening here, he gave his orders. The—” Only the slight hesitation, the drop in the girl’s voice as it spoke the next word, was there to remind them of Jadwiga—“the bodies must disappear so that the Germans wouldn’t find them. We are to tell the Szwaby that we burned them in case of typhus.” The sadness in her voice disappeared. She added, vindictively, “But we haven’t buried Ryng.”
Sheila, drying her face and scrubbing her arms with her apron, looked up in surprise.
“No,” Kati went on. “See that cart with logs in it? He’s under there. The cart is going to Nowe Miasto. Zofia’s husband had orders from the Germans to bring in a load of his best wood before the end of this week. So he is going today. The chief and his men will meet the cart at dusk just before it enters the little town. They will take the body, and when they raid Nowe Miasto tonight, they’ll leave the body with a lot of bullets in it on the road behind them. It will be found after they’ve finished the raid.”
“Captain Wis—the captain is going on a raid?” Sheila tried to keep her voice calm.
“Of course. He told Tomasz that if the Germans get enough to occupy them at Nowe Miasto, they wouldn’t come here for a day or two. And if they found the spy’s body, then they wouldn’t start searching for him here. If we had buried him the Szwaby would have kept on looking and looking.”
“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; t
heir 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.”
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“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.
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