Summerland

by Lucy Adlington

  Something growled down the lane. A silver ghost came out of the darkness and caught us in blinding twin beams of light. I turned to run, as I had three months before when I walked out of Summer station and into a policeman.

  ‘Get in, you fools,’ shouted the driver.

  ‘Ma? Is that you?’ Joe crunched a few steps forward in the snow.

  ‘Do you think I’d let anyone else drive this beauty?’ answered Lady Summer. ‘Get in before the engine decides to stall – it’s been sitting in the garage far too many years.’

  ‘We are going to London!’ I yelled.

  ‘There are no trains …’

  ‘Then we will walk!’

  ‘Suit yourself. I’m driving. Let’s see who gets there first.’

  Joe laughed. ‘You’ll drive us to London?’

  Lady Summer leaned from the open car window, spilling white fur out. ‘Listen, darling, I drove an ambulance during the Blitz. I hardly think a bit of snow is going to stop me in a Rolls-Royce Phantom III!’

  Mama once told me she’d been driven across London in a silver ghost. I didn’t think she’d meant it literally. Now I found out Joseph’s papa – Lord Summer then – had really owned a car called a Silver Ghost. He’d collected Mama from the boat train when she visited England that golden summer of her memory, before I was born. Off she went north on luxurious leather seats. Now I went south in just as much comfort. It seemed Mr Varley had been tinkering in the garage as well as helping transform the Summerland estate.

  We saw a wintry England by night. Stars, headlamps, street lights and lit windows. No blackout now.

  No bombers flying across the moon or rockets whistling to their targets. I had my name back. I had my body back. I had Joe. I fell asleep on his stumpy shoulder, there in the back of the Rolls. He slept on me. Perhaps Lady Summer looked back on us in her rear-view mirror as she drove. Perhaps she kept her eyes on the dark roads. She had a lot to think about. Me? I was tired of thinking.

  The Phantom gave up the ghost in a little market town some miles out of London, just as the sun rose to shine through the morning mist.

  Lady Summer popped the bonnet to glare at a steaming engine.

  ‘We are definitely too late now,’ I said, fatalistic.

  Lady Summer began to roll up her sleeves. ‘Joseph, fetch the toolbox from the boot. I will not be beaten by a mere machine …’

  She was deep in the car innards when a jeep drove by with a sleepy-looking American lieutenant at the wheel. I remembered the Yanks from Berlin, before the city got divided among the Allies and I hid in the British sector. The Americans were good for gum and chocolate … or the butt of a rifle if you tried to pickpocket them.

  This guy pulled up and asked if we needed help. Before Lady Summer could freeze him with a glance, he’d ducked under the car bonnet with her. They soon agreed the Rolls was going nowhere until the local garage opened for a spare part. Lady Summer explained it was imperative that we get to London without delay.

  ‘Happy to oblige, ma’am,’ said the lieutenant. ‘At least as far as the next train station. Jump in.’

  She looked at him with scorn. ‘I shall wait with my car. Joseph – do you need funds?’

  ‘All good, Ma. We packed essentials. Rendezvous at the RAF Club on Piccadilly?’

  ‘Very well. David, please give my best wishes and my apologies to your father. I hope to meet with him soon, as I should have done when Hélène first spoke of him. Forgive my arrogance all those years ago, and you should know that you are always welcome back at Summerland.’

  Perhaps she said all that through gritted teeth, but she said it all the same. I could even believe she meant it.

  In the jeep I asked the driver, ‘Can you go any faster?’

  ‘Sure, pal. If I want to skid on ice and kill us all.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Madison, Wisconsin.’

  ‘Is that near New York?’ I was thinking of Brigitta’s friend Francine and her plans to start a new life in the New World.

  ‘Only a thousand miles down the road.’

  Francine – who had two tickets from the docks at Liverpool, and guaranteed work for two immigrant seamstresses. I knew the name of her ship and the date of sailing. We could get a message to Connie somehow … through Lady Summer, since she owned Gant’s factory where Connie worked. I saw a story unfolding. I told the American, ‘Well, if you’re ever in Harlem, New York, look up Connie Snow – she is going to be a big star.’

  He scratched his head. ‘Sure thing …’ He nodded at Joe. ‘What’s your story, chum?’

  ‘Halifax bomb aimer. The rest of the crew bought it when we got pranged over Jerryland and had to ditch the crate.’

  ‘Huh. War, eh? Stinks.’

  Looking around London I was struck at how messy it all was. Traffic snarls, dirt, noise, bomb ruins. How could we find one man in all the mayhem?

  ‘Wait,’ said Joe, pulling me back from the kerb as a bus roared past, spraying us with slush.

  ‘We have to be faster.’

  ‘Let’s get there alive at least.’

  The address we had brought us to a tall building guarded with stone lions, not far from King’s Cross station. I felt a rush of recognition. I’d seen this place before! The evening I crossed London I’d rested opposite those lions.

  The doors were open. I ran up the steps and crossed the lobby to a secretary busy at a reception desk. His fingers typed while his eyes were on a page of notes.

  ‘I would like to see Captain Golanski.’

  Ta-ca-ta-ca-ta-ca, went the typewriter. ‘Captain Golanski isn’t here.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’ asked Joe, suddenly sounding like a proper lord. ‘Can you at least check?’

  Ta-ca-ta-ca-ta-ca ching!

  ‘He came in, made some phone calls, then left about fifteen minutes ago, to catch the boat train to the Continent. Is it important?’

  Fifteen minutes. We’d missed him by only fifteen minutes.

  ‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

  The secretary sighed. ‘No, I don’t have an address. Or a telephone number, or a unicorn I could ride over to Germany on. Try again tomorrow. Someone may know more.’

  Tomorrow.

  We were too late. By tomorrow he could be anywhere in Europe.

  Joe took one look at my face and said, ‘What would Sophie Rover do?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s eat – or drink at least.’

  He took me across the street to a pub, somewhere I would never have dared enter when I was a girl. It smelled of beer and sweat and tobacco. He found us a ring-marked wooden table in one corner and sat me down. I was too shocked to move, in a sort of emotional wardrobe where I genuinely didn’t know what to do next. He fetched two shandies over, one at a time. No one commented on his burn scars or his missing arm, probably because there were a fair number of ex-army types drinking at the bar.

  Pretty soon I had to go to the bathroom. Gents’ not ladies’, gents’ not ladies’, I told myself over and over. There wasn’t a ladies’ anyway. Standing at the urinal for the first time ever was just too nerve-wracking. I locked myself in a cubicle. Being a boy was strange. What did it even mean anyway? Was it what you felt inside, or what other people saw, or what you had in your pants?

  I was in a daze when I got back to Joe.

  ‘Play something,’ he said, nodding towards the piano.

  I looked at the crowds of work-worn men through their clouds of cigarette smoke. Not classical fans, I thought. Probably not big on jazz either. A man reeled over and breathed beer fumes on me. ‘D’you know “Roll Out the Barrel”, son?’

  ‘How about “Nobby ’All”?’ sniggered another drinker.

  Joe casually came to shield me from any other requests.

  The piano was clunky and barely in tune. Even so, the assembled drinkers were raucous with appreciation by the time I made it to the second chorus. Soon the whole pub was singing along to Vera
Lynn’s ‘It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow’. By the end of it I was almost sick with loss. I had to get away from the crowds and the smoke.

  Joe followed me out onto the street. ‘Piccadilly isn’t far. I’ll get on the phone at the RAF Club and see what else we can find out …’

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. Nothing momentous, just a man in khaki who’d come up behind us.

  ‘Excuse me, did you drop this …?’

  He handed me something. A grey glove. But not mine. Mine was frayed and dirty and missing a button, and safely tucked in my waistcoat pocket. This glove was crisp and clean.

  ‘No, it’s not –’

  My heart stopped.

  It was almost identical. The left-hand glove to my right-hand glove. A pair.

  I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t dare look up. I felt Joe at my side, suddenly tense.

  I lifted my eyes.

  A man in a British uniform, buttons a little dull, tie a little loose, hair a little ruffled.

  A stranger. Real and not real.

  ‘Papa?’

  He gestured across the road to the lion building. ‘I forgot my briefcase … went back … heard that song in the pub. It always makes me think of my wife … then I saw you. It is you, yes? You are David?’

  The question nearly broke me. He didn’t know if it was me or not.

  Then I was crushed, my face pressed into those buttons, smelling the wool of his tie and the years-ago-familiar scent of him. I realised he was crying. His tears were wet on my hair. London ceased to exist. I was back in old Europe, in one-room apartments filled with cheap furniture and music and love.

  ‘I lost you … I lost you …’ came his voice in Polish. The voice of my childhood. My papa of tousled dark hair, firm warm hands and soft eyes behind round glasses. My papa who sang duets at the piano with …

  ‘Your mother?’ He held me by the arms and scanned my face. ‘Where is your mama?’

  Now it was my turn to hold out a grey glove. The right hand. The lost hand. Hold my hand.

  ‘Dead,’ I said woodenly. ‘Bombed in Berlin.’ Why soften the hard truth? There was no pretty way of putting it.

  My papa crumpled, as worn as the glove, which he took and pressed to his lips over and over. Then he held me in his arms again. That was when I knew he loved her, had always loved her, and me; he had loved me too. Not enough. I pulled away.

  ‘You left us,’ I said in English.

  ‘I had to! They arrested me. Don’t you remember? I had your mother’s hand and she said, “Don’t let go!” and I pulled her glove off when they took me. I said I would find you.’

  ‘You didn’t. You survived and you didn’t come.’ My voice was flat. Where were my emotions? Why couldn’t I feel anything more than a cold ancient horror? It was killing him to be punished like this. I knew it and didn’t care.

  We were buffeted by people on the pavement who didn’t care either.

  His voice became a whisper. ‘David, I was in prison, do you understand? They were taking us east. To the gas chambers …’

  While we had waited and hoped and waited and despaired, he had been as trapped as we were.

  ‘How … how did you get away?’

  He laughed. ‘You can thank the RAF for that.’

  I flicked a glance at Joe. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We were being transported by truck from a prison to a concentration camp – I don’t know which one. There was a night raid. Heavy bombers. Pounded the hell out of the railway. Flattened me in a crater. I got away, got help … Eventually joined the Free Polish Army and got my captaincy with the British. None of this is important. I have been searching and searching for you ever since. I had almost given up hope. It’s you, my dear, dear David-of-my-heart. My little boy grown big.’

  He’d been looking. He hadn’t forgotten me. I’ll find you, he’d said. Now we’d found each other. Anger trickled away like a fading piano motif, replaced by heart’s music of relief.

  ‘Aw, save it, guv’!’ came a rough voice from the pub. ‘We ain’t bleedin’ wimmin to be blubbering in the street.’

  I rubbed my eyes and thought of a saying I’d learned. ‘Stiff upper lip and all that.’ We both straightened, suddenly English-like. ‘Papa …’ How magical the word was! ‘Papa, this is my friend Joe.’

  Joe held out his left hand. Without the slightest awkwardness or hesitation, my father shook it, using his left hand too. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘And you, sir.’

  I took a deep breath. Thought, I might as well do this now, while it is still semi-bearable that my papa walks away again.

  ‘Papa, Joe is my friend.’

  I took Joe’s hand in mine. Don’t let go.

  Papa looked at our entwined fingers, then at both our faces. I was resolute. I would be me or no one. When he understood, he did not recoil or turn on his heel. His eyebrows went up a notch – no hiding that. He nodded.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Take love where you can find it.’

  But not in the street. Never in public. Back we went into the lion building, businesslike now.

  Ta-ca-ta … The secretary jolted alert as we came inside. ‘Oh, Captain Golanski, I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘I had. I forgot some files and found my visitors.’

  ‘But, sir, the boat train, it leaves in an hour. You won’t make it.’

  ‘Call and cancel, will you?’

  ‘Cancel? But the Paris meeting, the Hamburg trial preliminaries …’

  ‘Can I introduce you to Lord Joseph Summer of Bomber Command?’

  ‘Er, Your Lordship.’

  ‘And this is David Golanski. My son. I haven’t seen him for seven years, so perhaps the Paris meeting can wait?’

  ‘Yes, sir, understood, sir. I’ll sort that right away, sir.’

  Papa took us up to a third-floor office overlooking the street. Seeing the windows and the view, I was reminded again of my first evening in London, when I sat in a doorway staring at this very building, and a silhouetted man looked out. The room was filled with towers of brown legal files.

  Papa said, ‘Sit down, if you can find a free chair. Are you hungry? Did you have a good journey? I’m sorry, I’m babbling.’ He fell into Polish phrases. ‘Seven years. Seven lost years! David – your mother – tell me. How …? When?’

  I heard an odd clink as Joe set his bag down. There was a pause as he looked inside. He laughed. ‘You won’t believe it, but Mrs Rover has sneaked a bottle of her notorious homemade sloe gin into my bag. Do not ask me how she managed that.’

  ‘Gin?’ exclaimed Papa. ‘I suggest we celebrate.’

  ‘Brace yourself, sir. It’s heady stuff. Mrs Rover was an army cook.’

  Papa’s eyes twinkled. ‘And I am Polish, Lord Summer. I thrive on distilled liquids.’

  Soft-remembered moments of childhood came back to me, hearing Papa’s voice now. After cautious sips of the sweet, sticky gin I told him what I could about Mama. Eventually the room went dark, save for the orange glow of the street lamps outside. When I could talk no more my father held me again and we both wept. Then he held his hand out to Joe.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said in English. ‘Thank you for taking care of my son.’

  ‘He took care of himself, sir. Rather well, given the circumstances.’

  Papa smiled bitterly. ‘If you knew what would have happened to him, had he been found. The places that were waiting for him – the concentration camps. These files, my work … Countless testimonies of ordinary people doing brave or bestial things. Risking their lives to save strangers, or murdering innocents to gain a bottle of vodka or a fur coat. Auschwitz, Belsen – they are just two camps out of thousands. They didn’t spring out of nowhere either. They didn’t run themselves. Here, this file …’ He opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder. ‘One of the SS guards I’m going to prosecute in Hamburg. A farm girl called Carla, only just turned twenty, says she did nothing wrong, yet we have proof she carried out multiple murders and horribl
e torture of Jews in at least three concentration camps. Her father wrote to me from the family farm in Germany, saying she was a good daughter and too young to know what she was doing.’

  ‘Will she hang?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably not. She’ll fake repentance and after a few years in prison be let out to run the farm, or marry and have children, or goodness knows what.’

  Joe and I looked at each other. It could have been England, if Hitler’s Third Reich had spread that far. It could have been Summer village put to the test, everyone having to decide would they embrace the violence or resist; would they denounce their neighbours or shelter them. I felt the sore welt round my throat and remembered how it felt to dangle by the neck. It didn’t just take evil people to do evil things. Anybody could let themselves get swept along with the violence if they weren’t careful.

  ‘I have made you late. You have to go and continue your work. It’s important,’ I told Papa.

  ‘You’re important! I found you!’ He shed his bitterness in an instant and, hugging me, almost swung me round, as he had when I was little. I remembered that – being spun round the room so fast my shoe fell off and hit the piano, and we were all laughing for some reason, or no reason, and now I could laugh again. I had my Papa back.

  He stopped, suddenly stricken.

  ‘I’m sorry, David, I have looked so hard, and there are no family left alive for you meet. They were killed – all killed.’

  ‘Sir, David is welcome back at my home, at Summerland.’ Joe fixed his eyes on me, willing me to say I would stay. I took his hand but I looked at my papa.

  ‘If you are going to Europe, I will come too. There is someone else I have to find, and you have to help me.’

  ‘Of course. I have resources, a network. Tell me – who are you searching for?’

  French Fancies

  I will find you.

  I’d made the promise after talking with Francine at Summerland, after showing her the pictures and letters hidden in my Berlin coat.

  I’ll find you, Brigitta Igeul.

  Papa got busy making calls. Men and women flowed in and out of the office in various levels of harassed preoccupation.

  Over mugs of tea and plain biscuits Papa told me, ‘I’m good at finding people, believe it or not. I’ve got a first-rate team of investigators.’