There was something ridiculous in the fierce altercation between mother and son – comic farce bordering on tragedy, worthy of Chaplin or Keaton – but neither Gina nor Luke, the only ones in the family who’d been brave enough to stay in the kitchen once the shouting had started, were laughing.
‘I would rather die than accept a German into this family and that is absolutely my last word.’
‘Mama –’
‘Antonio,’ her voice changed as her anger turned to pleading, ‘isn’t it enough that they killed your father and made a prisoner of Angelo all these years?’
‘Not all Germans are bad, Mama. Gabrielle didn’t hurt anyone.’
‘But she is a German and they start wars, force us to fight them, make us suffer and now you want to fra … frat …’
‘Fraternise, Mama,’ Luke supplied helpfully, unable to stand the tension a moment longer.
‘That’s it! Fraternise! And it is forbidden. All the newspapers say it is forbidden.’
‘Not since last July, Mama,’ Tony contradicted.
‘So, because someone tells you it’s all right to go off with enemy women, you do! What was this woman doing when all the other Germans were running around fighting, killing, looting, burning, bombing and drowning innocent people and imprisoning your brother – and Charlie – have you seen Charlie? They put a nice, quiet man like him in one of those horror camps. They made films of them and showed them in the pictures.’
‘I’ve seen the places as well as the films, Mama.’
‘And you still want to marry with the enemy.’
‘The war’s over, Mama. We won.’
‘It’s not over for me – not ever for me.’ Mrs Ronconi’s voice softened slightly as she gazed reverently at the photograph of her husband that dominated the chimneybreast. Rigidly posed in his best black suit, white shirt with wing collar and dark tie, his face adorned with a modest version of the luxuriant moustache he had worn in his later years, he looked younger than even she remembered him ever being. After a few moments during which neither Tony, Gina nor Luke dared speak, she turned from the photograph to confront her son. ‘Antonio, you marry this girl and you will no longer be my son or a member of this family.’
The calm, quiet assertion was absolute and final. If his mother had screamed or ranted, Tony would have continued arguing. As it was he picked up his kitbag and went to the door.
‘Tony.’ Leaving her husband’s side Gina went to her brother. ‘Please, Mama, we need to talk about this.’
‘I’ve said all there is to be said, Gina,’ Mrs Ronconi pronounced firmly.
‘But Tony’s been fighting for six years. He needs to rest – to stay somewhere.’
‘Not in this house.’
‘Mama …’
‘Bye, Gina.’ Tony kissed her cheek and offered Luke his hand.
‘You can’t go like this,’ Gina protested as she followed him down the passage. ‘We’re your family …’
‘Are you?’
‘Tony, don’t be stubborn. Of course we’re your family.’
For the second time that day Tony turned his back on his sister, closed the door behind him and walked away.
*……*……*
‘That’s Theo finally down. Mary wore him out in the park but the little monkey fought off sleeping until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. I had to read him the Three Little Pigs four times. You’d think he’d know the story off by heart by now, wouldn’t you?’
‘He does.’
Encouraged by Charlie’s response and feeling that her latest ploy of ending every communication with her husband in a question was beginning to work, Alma ventured a change of subject. ‘It was a good wedding reception, wasn’t it?’
He nodded briefly as he picked up the Pontypridd Observer.
‘Did Bethan tell you she’s driving us up to see the house in Tyfica Road tomorrow?’
If she hadn’t been looking directly at him she would have missed his second acknowledgement.
‘That’s the door. I wonder who it could be at this time of night. Perhaps Mary’s forgotten her key. I told her she could go to the pictures.’ As she started down the stairs that led to the side door of the shop that was the flat’s entrance she caught a glimpse of a uniformed figure behind the patterned glass. Tentatively opening the door, she smiled in relief when she saw Huw Davies and, standing behind him, Bethan and Andrew.
‘This is a surprise, Huw. Myrtle said you had the day off.’
‘Sergeant called me back. Can we come in?’
‘Of course. Bethan, Andrew, it’s lovely to see you.’ She kissed Bethan’s cheek as she stepped into the narrow hallway. ‘Would you like tea or something stronger? I have a bottle of sherry. There’s no beer or brandy but Charlie has some vodka hidden away …’
‘I’m sorry, Alma, this is an official visit.’
‘Official? I don’t understand, Huw.’
‘The sergeant knows I’m friendly with you and Charlie, that’s why he sent for me.’
‘Is someone hurt?’ Confused, Alma looked from Huw to Bethan. She had no family other than Charlie and Theo, and they were both upstairs. Then she thought of her friends and Mary. ‘There’s not been an accident! Mary? Someone going home from the wedding … ?’
‘No one’s hurt, Alma.’ Huw put his arm around her. ‘Charlie upstairs?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got some news for him. It’s not bad, but it might be a bit of a shock, which is why I asked Andrew to meet me here.’
‘And I came to keep you company while they’re talking to Charlie,’ Bethan broke in. ‘Why don’t we go upstairs? I’ll give you a hand in the kitchen.’ Bethan led the way, leaving Alma no choice but to follow with the men.
‘It’s Huw and Andrew to see you, Charlie.’ Alma went into the living room and opened the sideboard where she kept the sherry and Charlie’s vodka. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked Andrew and Huw, lifting out both bottles.
‘Perhaps later,’ Andrew suggested.
‘I’ll be in the kitchen with Bethan then.’ Closing the door, Alma walked down the passage and into the kitchen where Bethan had already taken two glasses from then dresser.
‘I brought sherry.’ Bethan opened her handbag and lifted out a bottle.
‘Snap.’ Alma opened the bottle she was holding. ‘What’s this about, Beth?’
‘I don’t know. Huw telephoned us and asked if we’d meet him here. All he’d say is what he just told you, that he has some news for Charlie.’
Without thinking Alma filled the tumblers Bethan had set on the table to the brim.
‘You trying to get us drunk?’
‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘I thought it might be something to do with the camp Charlie was in. The papers are full of stories about the army gathering evidence for war crimes trials. Charlie must have witnessed a lot of atrocities in three years.’
‘Yes,’ Alma said slowly, ‘yes, that could be it. I only hope it doesn’t bring it all back and make him worse than he already is.’
‘Huw’s good at this sort of thing,’ Bethan reassured, recalling the times she had accompanied Huw when he’d been sent to tell women that their husbands and sons had been killed in pit disasters. ‘Why don’t we sit down?’
Alma pulled a chair from the table and sat opposite her friend.
‘Is that Theo’s latest drawing?’ Bethan repeated the question twice, before giving up. With both of them thinking about what was going on in the living room, any attempt at conversation was pointless.
Andrew had taken it upon himself to remove one of the smallest glasses from the sideboard and pour Charlie a measure of vodka. He handed it to him before sitting down.
‘You won’t join me?’
‘Sergeant will have my guts for garters if I start drinking on duty, Charlie,’ Huw demurred, as he tried to sort out what he had to say to Charlie in his mind. It didn’t help that the Russian was sitting relaxed in his chair, patientl
y waiting for him to begin. He cleared his throat. ‘We had a communication from the Red Cross. I mean the station had a communication. They’re looking for a Captain Feodor Raschenko who was liberated from Nordhausen prison camp last April.’ Huw paused, but Charlie continued to sit as composed and self-possessed as when they had walked into the room. Deciding to abandon tact and diplomacy in favour of the direct approach, Huw blurted out, ‘They want to know if the man in Nordhausen could be the same Feodor Raschenko who married a …’ he pulled a crumpled telegram from his pocket and smoothed it over his knee, ‘Maria Andreyeva in 1929 in a village … K … Kra …’
‘Krasnaya-Poliana,’ Charlie supplied in a voice devoid of emotion.
Huw looked at the paper doubtfully. ‘Could be.’
‘It’s fourteen miles north of Moscow.’
‘Then, this woman is your wife?’ Andrew stared at him incredulously.
‘Yes.’
‘This is an official visit, Charlie. I could be called to give evidence if any of this reaches a court of law, so please, think carefully before you say anything else,’ Huw warned solemnly. ‘Did you marry Alma knowing that your first wife was alive?’
‘I hoped she was.’
‘And Alma?’ Andrew asked.
‘I told her.’
‘About this Maria Andreyeva,’ Huw pressed.
Charlie downed the vodka Andrew had handed him. Leaving his chair he walked to the table. Taking the bottle he refilled his glass and poured out two more measures, which he handed to Andrew and Huw.
‘You’re facing a bigamy charge, Charlie.’ Forgetting his earlier refusal on the grounds of duty, Huw emptied his glass in a single swallow.
‘I always knew it was a possibility.’
‘Then why in God’s name didn’t you divorce her?’
‘How can you divorce someone when you don’t know if they’re alive or dead?’ Charlie focused inwards on a world that Andrew and Huw could only try to imagine. ‘I was eighteen when I married Maria – Masha; she was seventeen. She disappeared a year later.’
‘Ran away?’
‘No, Huw.’ Charlie’s voice grated oddly as if it was rusty from disuse. ‘To understand Masha’s disappearance you must understand a little about Russia. A few months after Masha and I married, Stalin began to clear villages and set up collective farms. Anyone who owned property –’ a cynical smile played at the corners of his mouth – ‘a horse, a cow, a few pigs – was suspect in the eyes of the Communists. And my father had even paid others to work for him. He was the worst of the worst in Communist eyes, a Kulak – an enterprising, rich peasant in a village of rich peasants. Our entire community stood in the way of progress. You see, everyone there owned something of value – a house, furniture, land, animals, tools. All over Russia peasants started killing their livestock and burning their crops and possessions rather than have them taken from them by the Communists. It led to a chronic food shortage – not rationing like here in the war, but famine. People started dying in their tens of thousands, the children and the elderly first. My father and the older men talked about protest but it was just talk. No one in our village had the courage to make a stand against the Communists or the heart to destroy possessions that had taken generations to acquire. In the end the inevitable happened. Everything we had was taken from us.’
‘Stolen?’ Huw frowned.
‘If a State can steal.’
‘In Russia in the early thirties, individuals’ property was put into a common pot for the use of the community to be taken, each according to their need.’
‘I see you know your Russian propaganda, Andrew. But it wasn’t quite that simple in our village. We were within a few hours’ travelling distance of Moscow. Certain party members thought our lands were just the place to build their dachas – summer houses,’ he explained in reply to Huw’s quizzical look. ‘I wasn’t there when they came.’
‘They?’
‘The party members – soldiers – I don’t know who they were. I was away getting a cot from my brother-in-law’s house fifteen miles away. Masha was having our first child. When I came back the village was empty. No – not quite empty,’ he amended. ‘Gangs of zeks – prisoners – had been moved in to burn the houses and outbuildings that weren’t wanted, in readiness to build the new.’
‘Didn’t you go after your wife?’
‘Not only my wife – my parents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, my entire family and almost everyone I knew. I asked and was told they’d been put on trains going east. I went to the railway station, it was empty, no trains – no people – nothing.’ His eyes glazed over as he retreated back to that other country, that other world.
‘And then?’ Andrew prompted.
‘I started to walk east to look for Masha and my family. I didn’t find them.’
‘How long did you look?’ Huw finally removed his notebook and pencil from his top pocket.
‘Four years. Then I was arrested.’
‘For what?’
‘Asking questions.’
‘No one gets arrested for that,’ Huw interposed.
‘Not here in peacetime.’
‘But Russia is our ally, a great country …’
‘You’ve been listening to the miners, Huw. I was sentenced to ten years in a prison camp – the standard time for asking questions in the Soviet Republic. I escaped after two, made my way to the coast, took a berth as a seaman, came to Cardiff – the rest you know.’
‘And in all that time you’ve never heard from your wife?’
‘I made enquiries, wrote letters to my brother-in-law but no one I contacted had heard from anyone in my village. I didn’t intend to marry again. I couldn’t forget Masha – have never forgotten her – but I found Alma. Of course I told her about my first wife. She – we – understood that there was no going back, not for me, not for Masha wherever she was – but that was before the war.’
‘How long after Masha’s disappearance did you marry Alma?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘How long, Charlie?’
‘Nine years.’
Huw looked across at Andrew. ‘It’s seven years, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘If you don’t hear from anyone in seven years you can apply to have them legally registered dead.’
‘I don’t know if British law applies to Stalinist Russia, Huw.’
‘Masha? She’s alive?’ Charlie looked at the telegram in Huw’s hand.
‘If this woman is your wife she’s in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany.’
‘And she remembers me. After sixteen years she still remembers.’ Charlie was more animated than Andrew had seen him since his return.
‘She must have told her story and somehow, someone connected her with you. All we have is this enquiry.’
‘Do you have an address where I can write?’
Huw handed him the telegram. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Charlie. I haven’t a clue what will happen now. The sergeant assumed it was a cut-and-dried case of bigamy, that this was some woman you met during the war, took a fancy to …’
‘In one of the Nazis’ forced labour camps?’
‘The sergeant doesn’t always think things through, Andrew.’
‘I must know how Masha is, how she survived, what happened to the rest of my family … our child …’
‘And Alma?’ Andrew reminded.
‘I need to talk to her.’ Charlie looked at Huw. ‘That is, if you’re not taking me away.’
‘I’m not arresting you, Charlie. But I think it would be best if you come up to the station tomorrow. It might be easier for you to talk to us there. And in the meantime I’ll see if I can find out anything else about this woman. From what you told me there’s no guarantee she’s your wife.’
‘She knows my name, where we married …’
‘And that you’re living here. From what I’ve heard, most refugees will lie, steal, sell their mother and give the
ir right arm to be allowed into this country. Who’s to say that this woman didn’t meet your wife somewhere and pinch her story in the hope of conning you into paying her passage over here?’
‘Then you think she might not be Masha?’ It was as if someone had switched the light out in his eyes.
‘It has to be a possibility. We’ll start our enquiries by asking for a photograph. Hopefully she’ll not have changed too much.’
‘After sixteen years in camps she’ll have changed.’
‘Do you want me to tell Alma about this?’ Andrew asked.
‘No, I’ll tell her.’
‘Would you like Bethan or me to stay here tonight?’
‘Thank you, Andrew, but no.’
‘If you need us, telephone, day or night, it doesn’t matter, we’ll come.’
Tony leaned on the bar of the Graig Hotel and ordered another pint of beer from the vaguely familiar, blowsy barmaid.
‘You’re Judy Crofter, aren’t you?’ he asked, after deciding that there was no way her brassy blonde hair could be natural.
‘And you’re Tony Ronconi. Your sister was in school with me.’
‘Seeing as how I’ve six of them, it would have been difficult for you to have gone to school round here and not have had one of them in your class.’
‘Just as well you’re wearing uniform.’ She pushed the fifth beer he’d ordered in two hours towards him. ‘Orders are, two pints and over, only to be given to serving soldiers.’
‘It’s good to know I’ve given up nearly seven years of my life for something.’ He lifted his pint, ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ Judy Crofter smiled as she wiped a cloth over the bar in front of him.
‘So, do you want a drink?’ he asked, taking the hint.
‘I wouldn’t say no to a port and lemon.’
‘Did I give you enough money?’
‘Oh yes.’ She opened the till again and tossed most of his change into it before pouring herself a drink. ‘So, how much leave you got?’
‘All over bar the official demob next week.’
‘Nice to put your feet up and see the family.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed cryptically. ‘Judy, you haven’t got any rooms here by any chance, have you?’
Pontypridd 07 - Spoils of War Page 4