‘Masha,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘please let me speak first.’
‘You want to tell me that you have another wife and son.’
‘You know. Peter said you didn’t.’
‘What would Peter know about it?’
‘He said the English officer who told him I was alive mentioned that I had another wife. Peter said he didn’t translate everything the officer said because he didn’t want to hurt you.’ Charlie sat back in his chair and reached for his cigarettes. ‘You knew I had married again, Masha, and yet you still came.’
‘I wanted to see you because sixteen years hadn’t changed my feelings for you. And I thought that if you had made a new life for yourself with no room in it for us, you wouldn’t have sent the money for Pasha and me to come here.’
‘You still love me.’
‘Feo, I’m not what I was.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘Things happened to the women in the camps.’
‘I saw. You don’t have to tell me about it.’
‘I want to. I was luckier than most. After Pasha was born there was a man who looked after me and helped me and Pasha. He was a sergeant in charge of the guards and he took care that I was never sent to the guards’ or men’s barracks to be raped like the other women. I was still pretty then. But I never loved him as I loved you, Feo. I need you to know that.’
‘You left him to come here?’
‘The Germans killed him before they sent us to Auschwitz. And by then I was too old to attract any man. That’s when Pasha started looking after me.’
‘I can’t bear to think that all the time I was living here in comfort, you were suffering in the camps.’
‘Do you love your other wife, Feo?’
‘Not like I love you,’ he replied truthfully, hoping she wouldn’t ask him to explain any further.
‘Did you live here, in this house, with her?’
‘No.’ He left the chair and walked to the window. ‘She bought it for you with my money when I told her that you and Peter had been found.’
‘And she doesn’t mind you living here with us?’
‘When I heard that you were alive I left her.’
‘Because of me?’
‘Because of you, and because with you alive my marriage to her wasn’t legal.’
‘And now I’m here, you have two wives to choose from. Which one of us do you want, Feo?’
‘I have friends I could live with.’ He deliberately avoided answering her question. ‘The same ones I have been living with since I was told you had survived.’
‘There are a lot of bedrooms in this house.’
‘Four.’
‘You are my husband, your place is here.’ She patted the bed beside her, ‘but I have just told you that I haven’t been faithful and I have grown old – and ugly.’
‘No, Masha.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘To me you can never be old, or less than the beautiful angel I fell in love with.’
‘I never thought I’d hear you call me that again.’
‘So, my beautiful angel, do you remember the first time I kissed you?’
‘On top of the hay we were stacking in my father’s barn. I thought you would never let me go.’
‘And the harvest dance that followed.’
‘When we danced until dawn and you took me home and kissed me again. My father nearly disinherited me because you’d unfastened all the buttons on my blouse and I hadn’t noticed. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had disinherited me, because in the end we lost everything …’ Her eyes were dry but they held more misery than if they’d been filled with tears.
‘Not everything, Masha. We have our son, Pasha – not that he allows me to call him that – and one another.’
‘Pasha is not a bad boy, Feo, just tough and frightened – a dangerous mixture but I couldn’t always be with him to teach him better.’
‘You kept him alive and that in itself is a miracle. Remember our wedding?’ he continued, wanting to bring the smile back to her face.
‘I prefer to remember another night, six months before our wedding when we were back in my father’s hayloft. I was sixteen, you were seventeen and the months to your eighteenth birthday that your father and mine insisted we wait to get married seemed half a lifetime away. We undressed and made love for the first time like no one else ever made love before.’
‘That night I felt as though we invented love.’
‘You made me so very happy. And I was lucky because I had that happiness to cling to in the camps. I tried to talk to Pasha about you; to explain how life should be, but it was like trying to teach a blind man about colour. I couldn’t make him understand. When he was little he thought my stories about you were fairytales like The Little White Duck and when he was older, instead of liking you and wanting to know more about you as I’d hoped and intended, he hated you for not rescuing us.’
‘He’s young, he needs time and that’s one thing we have plenty of.’
‘Come to bed.’
‘Just like that?’
‘You are my husband.’
‘It’s been sixteen years.’
‘Switch out the light and pretend they never happened, Feodor.’
She was delicate, fragile, her fleshless bones light and frail like those of a young bird. Almost afraid to touch her lest he inadvertently hurt her, Charlie moved, slowly, gently, too concerned that he might be causing her pain to think about his own pleasure.
Her lips were dry; her body as unsubstantial as that of a child’s as he lifted her on to him; her hair, thinner than he remembered. But as she drew closer and covered his body with hers the years rolled back in a way he would never have believed possible. Once again they were in her father’s hayloft. He a young man, and she a girl, two virgins about to invent lovemaking, with their whole lives ahead of them to enjoy one another – and life.
Chapter Sixteen
As Peter walked slowly up Taff Street, he saw the bars Feodor – he was making a conscious effort not to think of the man who had deserted his mother before his birth as his father – had mentioned. He even went into one. The air was blue with cigarette smoke, the lighting dim and the walls yellowed by nicotine. A dozen or so rickety tables set in an undulating sea of spit-blackened sawdust were surrounded by stools occupied by shouting, cursing men who looked as though they were in competition with their neighbours to see who could make the most noise. Overwhelmed by the unfamiliar scene, he set his features into his most intimidating expression, as he continued to stand by the door waiting for an opening between the men standing around a long, high, dark wood counter drinking large glasses of beer.
Just as one man left and he stepped forward, someone walking in behind him knocked his shoulder – hard. Turning, he fled back out on to the street, telling himself that he didn’t want to drink in a bar that had such a sour, acrid smell. Besides, the only woman in the place had been serving. A heavily painted, hard-faced, improbable redhead who looked even older than his mother.
More than anything else, he wanted to talk to girls – young and preferably pretty ones. He had seen a few he would have liked to approach on the train but he hadn’t dared go near them in front of Feodor and Andrew and Bethan John in case they laughed at him. Girls were something of a mystery. Ever since he could remember, his mother had told him tales about love. Stories featuring beautiful princesses and handsome princes who lived in magnificent castles and dark forests, who only had to look into one another’s eyes a single time to fall in love and live happily ever after. And every time his mother had begun the tales, her eyes had misted over and he had known that it was not handsome princes or beautiful princesses she had been thinking of but his father.
There’d been women prisoners in every camp he’d been incarcerated in. They’d had their own barracks and working areas, usually kept exclusively female. Newcomers among the common zeks soon learned, some the hard way, that the young and pretty women were the property of
the guards and an ordinary prisoner touched them at his peril. However, the clever and fortunate male prisoners inevitably found a way round the segregation to gain access to the women, and as soon as he’d reached the age of sexual curiosity he had fought to be numbered among the fortunate. He had even lain with a woman once, in a waterlogged ditch behind her barracks. It had been cold, dirty and uncomfortable, and too dark to see her face. And she hadn’t even been his. One of the older guards had whispered in his ear that he knew a woman prepared to open her legs for any man who had something to give her – and him. He had handed the guard a gold coin he had found in the boot of a fellow prisoner who had died in the bunk next to his and ‘paid’ the woman in apples scrounged from the guards’ kitchen in return for a couple of pints of stolen petrol.
He had seen her close up in the kitchens the next day and to his dismay discovered she was downright ugly, wrinkled, toothless and old. He had gone with her because he had burned to know what it was like to lie with a woman but although he had nothing to compare the experience with, he sensed that there had to be more. A lot more, otherwise why would people make up stories about perfect love, like the ones his mother had told him? Perhaps tonight he would find a girl- a pretty one with teeth – who’d be prepared to belong to him and no other man. A woman he could lie naked with who would help him discover if this love that his mother talked about was as wonderful and perfect as she had promised it would be.
The road began to slope upwards, narrowing as it was carried over a bridge. Peter leaned on the metal parapet and stared down at the river beneath, its dark waters gleaming with gold and silver puddles of reflected light. A bus rattled past, stirring him from his reverie, and he walked on, past an enormous building pasted with film posters of cowboys embracing women with perfectly waved hair and red, Cupid’s bow lips. Then suddenly, the road opened on to a square. A train thundered over a high bridge ahead, lights shone from a window on his left and he smelled coffee. Good, strong, appetising, real coffee, like that the kitchen orderlies had brewed for ‘staff only’ in the displaced persons’ camp.
His taste buds burst into life. He couldn’t remember ever drinking real coffee, only acorn coffee, and he wanted to find out if the taste was as wonderful as the smell promised it would be. Pushing open the door he went inside.
There was a wooden bar with stools set in front of it like the drinking bar he had looked into, but the place was cleaner, brighter – and quieter. Behind the counter were shelves of white pottery jars decorated with black letters, glass bottles of gleaming boiled sugar sweets and pastel-coloured syrups, and a massive polished steamer. And brass till. Several people, some dressed in blue serge uniforms with peaked caps, sat at tables spread out between two rooms separated by a partition that fell a door’s width short of the wall.
‘Can I help you?’ A stout, middle-aged woman in a black dress, white apron and cap asked from behind the counter.
‘Coffee.’
‘Milk, sugar?’
He hesitated before deciding to take everything on offer. ‘Yes.’
‘Only one sugar mind. I’ll bring it to your table. Where are you sitting?’
A young girl sat alone at a table squeezed in between the counter and the front door, a pretty, young girl with glossy, brown hair and brown eyes who smiled when he looked at her.
‘Here.’ He pointed to the table.
‘That’s the family table, sir.’
‘What family?’
‘It’s all right, Maggie.’ Liza lifted up the newspaper she’d been reading to make room for him. ‘Angelo will probably be arguing with Tony in the back for the next half-hour. You know what they’re like.’
‘It’ll be your funeral if Angelo’s the jealous sort. One coffee coming up.’ Maggie banged the metal jug against the steamer to show her disapproval as she mixed the milk.
‘You look exactly like Uncle Charlie,’ Liza said as Peter unbuttoned his jacket and shifted the knife in his pocket before sitting down, ‘so I’m guessing you’re the son he’s been expecting.’
‘Who is this Charlie?’ he demanded truculently, sounding angrier than he’d intended.
‘Charlie Raschenko.’
‘I only know Feodor Raschenko.’
‘When he first came to Pontypridd people couldn’t get their tongues around “Feodor” so someone called him Charlie and the name stuck.’
‘“Tongues around”?’
‘It’s slang, it means that people here found it difficult to say Feodor.’
‘Then they’re stupid. Feodor’s not difficult to say.’
‘Not if you’re Russian but it’s different for the Welsh. It’s like “tongues around”. If you’re not used to the way people speak in a place, even though you know all the words you still might misunderstand the meaning. Every area in Britain has its own slang. Take me, for instance, I don’t come from round here and when I first arrived I couldn’t understand half of what people said to me. I’m Liza Clark by the way and I take it you are something Raschenko?’
‘Peter.’
‘I never thought a Russian would speak such good English.’
‘Because you think Russians are stupid?’
‘No more than people in Pontypridd. You get clever and stupid everywhere you go, don’t you? What I meant was, it’s not easy to learn languages. I can’t speak one single word of Russian or any language besides English, although plenty of people here have tried to teach me Welsh.’
‘Languages are easy to learn.’
‘Not for me. When did you arrive?’
‘Today.’
‘And you’re out tonight.’
‘I wanted to see what the town was like.’
‘So, what do you think of Pontypridd?’
‘It’s a town like any other,’ he answered in an off-hand way, hoping the comment would make him sound well-travelled and worldly-wise. ‘How do you know so much about me?’
‘Because my adoptive mother, Mrs John, went to London to get you and your mother with your father.’
‘Bethan John is your mother?’
‘She adopted me and my sisters after my father was killed in the war.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘That’s an odd question. I suppose because she’s kind.’
‘You’re very pretty,’ he said suddenly, earning a black look from Maggie as she dumped his coffee on the table in front of him. He put his hand in his pocket and offered her one of the half-crowns.
‘You pay before you leave.’
‘But I could leave any time.’
‘And if you don’t pay your bill before you go I’ll chase after you.’
Peter looked Maggie up and down. ‘You wouldn’t catch me.’
‘Less of your lip, young man,’ she retorted tartly, returning to the counter.
He looked at Liza. ‘“Lip’’… ?’
‘You settle your bill as you leave the café in case you want anything else after your first order. Another coffee or a piece of toast or cake,’ Liza explained. ‘If you do, it will be added to your bill, then you pay for everything in one go when you finally leave.’
‘It’s not like that anywhere else I’ve been.’
‘Pontypridd may take a bit of getting used to. As I said, I had trouble when I first came here. I’m from London.’
‘I saw London today.’
‘Not the London I knew. That’s been flattened in the bombing.’
The door opened and closed behind him but Peter couldn’t stop looking at Liza long enough to check out the newcomer. ‘You really are very beautiful.’
‘I’m not, just average really.’
‘I would like to go to bed with you.’
‘Hey, young man, that’s no way to talk to a lady.’
‘Uncle Huw?’ Liza smiled up at the policeman. ‘Have you met Charlie’s son?’
‘Not yet. What was it that you just said to this lady, young man?’
‘That she’s very beautiful and I would li
ke to go to bed with her.’ Peter’s face reddened as he realised that most of the people in the café were staring at him.
‘He’s having trouble with his English, Uncle Huw,’ Liza explained. ‘What he really meant is he would like to ask me out. Isn’t that right, Peter?’
‘I hope that’s what he meant.’ Angelo had left the back room and was standing behind the counter next to them.
‘Of course it is, Angelo. Meet Peter Raschenko, Charlie’s son. In Britain we shake hands,’ she whispered in Peter’s ear.
Peter stood up and took Angelo’s hand, shaking it firmly. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, I’m Angelo Ronconi, and she,’ he pointed at Liza, ‘is my girlfriend, which means she doesn’t go out with anyone except me.’
‘You’re going to marry her?’
‘As soon as she’ll have me. And that coffee is on the house. A ‘welcome to Pontypridd’ present,’ he clarified, as a mystified expression crossed Peter’s face. ‘Liza, I didn’t know you were here but seeing as how you are, I’m taking you home. I’ve had just about all I can take of this place for one day.’
‘That’s me finished if his Lordship is taking over.’ Maggie unfastened her apron and dropped it on the counter.
‘Maggie, please, finish the shift. For me,’ Angelo pleaded.
‘Not for six months’ wages. Enough is enough. I’m going.’
‘We still going home?’ Liza asked Angelo.
‘We most certainly are. Good night, Huw, good night, Peter, it was nice to meet you.’ He opened the door to the kitchen; Tony was nowhere in sight. ‘Tony,’ he called out loudly, ‘I’m leaving. The café is all yours and as you’re the only one in, I suggest you take over.’ His conscience kept him at the foot of the stairs until he heard Tony moving about, but he carried his coat outside, and put it on in the street lest Tony call him back.
Wrapping his arm around Liza, he pulled her close. ‘Home straight away or the sofa outside the function room in the restaurant for half an hour first?’
‘The sofa.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Not one tenth as much as I’ve missed you. Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are, or how much I want to marry you?’
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