by Lydia Syson
She hadn’t noticed, but he was right. The air in the church felt icy after the fields’ overbearing sunshine. There were goose pimples on her arms and legs, and her cotton frock felt all at once too thin and too short. A little girl’s dress. A little girl who was trying to be a grown-up.
“Look what I’ve brought you.” She held up the bag brightly, and he backed into the church. “You must be starving.”
“No, no, no. Not starving. I am not starving,” he said quickly, and Peggy wondered at his insistent precision. Then he made himself clear. “In Poland they are starving. I am … peckish.” A shadow of a smile crossed his face, and he nodded, relieved. He seemed proud to have got the word right. Peggy smiled too, a nervous, uncertain smile.
“Well, it’s not much. It’s been a bit tricky, in fact. But I intercepted some eggs, and managed to boil them in the kettle without anyone seeing.”
She looked around, and wondered where to unload her modest haul. Her mind kept fluttering. She’d tell him her decision in a minute. He had to go: there was no doubt about it. But first, food. Send him away fed, and then he could face the music on a full stomach. Even a condemned man gets a last meal, doesn’t he?
The wooden board over the font would have made a good table, but she couldn’t possibly put it there. Instead, Peggy headed for the box pew with the open door. Henryk’s bulky flying suit lay flopped in a heap in the corner, like a crumpled corpse.
“Oh,” she said, startled. “I thought for a moment …” And she shook her head and changed the subject. She knew she was talking too fast, and too much, but she didn’t seem to be able to slow down. Everything was racing inside, her thoughts faster even than her words. Just as busily, she began to lay out and rearrange her finds on the paint-chipped bench. “Very stale bread, I’m afraid. My aunt was saving it for a pudding. I’ll tell her I gave it to the pigs by mistake. And look … I even remembered salt!” Peggy held up a twist of paper. Her father always liked salt on his eggs.
Looking at it all laid out like that, and then at Henryk, it didn’t seem very much, after all that effort. And him so tall. Thinner in these clothes, which rather hung off him, the trouser cuffs too high. He must need so much food. No. She couldn’t do this again. He wasn’t her responsibility. She stole another glance at his face.
Henryk was considering what she had brought, hand on chin. She could hear the rasp of his fingers moving thoughtfully against his stubble. Then he leaned forward without warning and snatched something from the bench, so quickly that Peggy heard herself cry out. Not food though. He hadn’t taken anything she had brought. She felt herself stiffen, like an animal preparing to run. She had been too easily fooled. He wasn’t who he said he was. Who was he, though, and what was he going to do?
Just as he had seen her shiver a little earlier, he noticed instantly the sudden fear in her face. It was as if he could hear her thoughts. Peggy Fisher, what have you got yourself into? And who are you going to call for help out here? But it was all right. That’s what he was trying to tell her. Henryk put a reassuring hand on her arm, and then slowly uncurled the other fist to show her.
A stone. A small gray pebble.
Henryk stared at it with a strange expression. Loving and anguished. It was infinitely precious to him, this uneven bit of rock. Peggy could see that without asking. Not like a diamond or a pearl or anything like that though. More like a songbird’s egg, waiting to hatch. Henryk stroked it tenderly, bent to kiss it, and stowed the stone safely away in the pocket of his borrowed trousers.
15
The stone brought everything back. He had never seen a grown man crying before the day he left Poland. Not open tears. Not gulping and sobbing without control. Now he was pressed against hundreds of weeping men, many in uniforms like his own. The rumble of low-geared engines rose and fell in an insistent undercurrent, and gas fumes flooded his senses. Henryk didn’t know exactly when the Romanians had shut the border, but by this time hundreds of vehicles of all kinds had congregated behind it: thunderous military trucks, a few private cars—those that hadn’t been abandoned on the roadside already, for want of gas—but mostly horses and carts, wagons, and wheelbarrows, all inching along, stopping and starting, jostling for space. A relentless river of people, tens and thousands trudging at the same pace as the traffic, shadows swinging across their faces. The crossing was now open again, but movement was so slow.
Henryk could only see about five of the other pilots in his unit. They had lost Wacław long ago, not surprisingly. How could he have hoped to keep up when he insisted on dragging along that bit of broken propeller? Jan was still just ahead though, and Kazimierz right beside him, keeping up a steady mumbling prayer, repeating it over and over, till it lost all sense and Henryk wanted to thump him.
I nie wódź nas na pokuszenie, ale nas zbaw ode złego. Bo Twoje jest królestwo, potęga i chwała na wieki wieków …
When the front bumper of a smart, shiny Fiat nudged at the back of his legs, Henryk could hardly make himself look up. Stumbling, he glanced round, one hand shielding his eyes from the headlight’s glare. A woman in a fur coat stretched forward in the front passenger seat and began rapping at the windscreen, trying to wave him out of the way. She even leaned over and started bashing at the horn herself. Henryk peered at the peaked cap and impassive face of her driver and guessed he was a chauffeur. No doubt as anxious to escape capture as his employers, but trained not to show it. Everyone was on the move now. The Soviets had begun to march into Poland from the East that very morning.
He ignored the car and its owner. There was nowhere it could go anyway. The road ahead was crammed, bottle-necking at the frontier post before the bridge. And he had his own orders: evacuation orders. Somewhere over the Dniester, new planes were waiting, sent to Romania by the British. The fight would soon resume. That was the plan.
Everyone shuffled forward.
A startling bang resounded a little way ahead, causing a sudden opening up of the crowd. Silence, and then the shuffling started up again, more half-hearted than ever. But it stopped just as quickly and the whispering began. The news didn’t take long to reach Henryk. Unable to bear the shame of retreat, a cavalry officer had shot himself in the head, right there, in the road, in front of everyone. Nobody was certain what to do. Once more, everything came to a juddering halt.
Henryk took a deep breath and pushed his way through the ring of onlookers, who stood like iron filings circling a magnet. Everyone else seemed paralyzed by the fact that the dead man was an officer, and away from his unit. Henryk responded without really thinking. When you’re the oldest in the family, and the only boy, you get used to taking charge.
“Will someone help me? Please?” Henryk’s voice sounded strained and strange, even to himself. He bent down, hoping it would encourage another volunteer.
He wanted to get hold of the feet, but the dead man’s head was closer. Henryk bent down with a grunt and hoisted him up, one arm under each shoulder. The officer’s unshaven jaw sagged, and blood spewed from the corner of his mouth. It came from the wound at the back of his head too, soaking into Henryk’s sleeve. Edging sideways, out of the current of people and traffic, he twisted away from the man’s blank eyes and matted mustache. Henryk’s boots mashed against something that was both soft and rigid: he had accidentally crushed the officer’s brocaded hat. This man must have fought in the wars of 1920 too. Unlike Henryk’s father, he’d survived the events that settled the eastern borders of Poland and secured her independence.
They left the body by the side of the road. At the last moment, the young cadet who had volunteered to take his feet reached into his pocket and pulled out a grimy handkerchief. He passed it once across his own forehead, brushing his eyes too, and then carefully spread it out over the man’s face, covering his eyes.
“That’s better,” he said, and coughed, and disappeared back into the shuffling.
It took another hour to reach the red and white barrier. Henryk wondered what could be causing
such a blockage. Eventually, he realized. Nobody could bear to leave. Men were clinging to the barrier, barely able to let go. As each Pole crossed into Romania, another took his place at the frontier. They caressed the wooden post longingly, trailing their fingers like parting lovers. Some kissed the eagle on it, or pressed dry lips to the ground beneath, where others scrabbled for handfuls of earth. Henryk recognized a pilot he hadn’t seen since their training at Dęblin. Eyes shut, he was moaning softly as he embraced the guard’s sentry box.
Henryk had been stuck on the edge of the crowd since moving the body. That made it easier to step aside for a moment without the people behind falling over him. As he watched, an immensely tall and skinny bomber pilot hoisted a friend onto his shoulders, who reached up into the lowest branches of the last tree in Poland and began to snap off twigs. He passed down leaves too, which were handed out one by one, with a solemnity more suited to communion wafers. Men received them with yet more tears. Their gratitude was almost pathetic.
Those won’t last, thought Henryk. He remembered little Anna’s disappointment last autumn. A vivid scarlet leaf she had collected one Sunday afternoon in the Park Krakowski had crumbled to brittle fragments in her coat pocket even before they reached home. But I wanted to show it to Daddy. And then I was going to keep it forever, she had told him. Forever and ever. I’ll find you another one, an even better one. You’ll see. He had brushed the tiny pieces from her hand as he spoke. Really? Trusting eyes. Yes, really. We’ll go and look now.
When he was younger, Henryk always wished his stepfather could have been more dashing. More like his real father, he supposed. A cavalry officer. Then there was a time when he wanted nothing other than a pilot for a father. Now he was glad his widowed mother had married a music professor who was getting on in years, and that they had both enjoyed a second chance at family life. Too old to fight, too insignificant to care about. At least he’d always be there to look after Matka and the girls.
There was a faint kerfuffle ahead, and Henryk panicked briefly. Perhaps they were shutting the border again. Quick.
A stone. He needed to find a stone. He could keep a stone forever.
He dropped to his knees and fumbled with his fingertips, digging his nails into the soil to scoop out a pebble. Just as he managed to scrape one out, a boot landed heavily on his hand. He gave its owners’ legs a determined sideways shove with his shoulders, and closed his fingers round his prize. He must find somewhere really safe to keep it.
Henryk unbuttoned his tunic, felt for the inside pocket, and slid the stone carefully down to the bottom corner of it. Immediately after buttoning himself up, he had another thought. He opened his jacket again, shook it a few times, and stuck his hand back into the pocket to make sure there were no hidden holes in the lining that might catch him off guard. Nothing to worry about. Except for a piece of paper. What could that be? He had no memory of putting anything in there. He’d have to look later. He needed time, and light to see. Right now the whole world seemed too dark, and he wondered if the light would ever return.
The weeping grew louder, and the wind began to pick up too. Soon the first heavy drops of a late summer thunderstorm began to fall.
16
Peggy wondered if she could simply slip away. Now, while Henryk was in this dreamy state. She risked another glance at him. His eyes had gone blank, and though he continued to stare, it was as if he were looking through her and seeing something else entirely. The muscles of his face twitched slightly. He might have been rehearsing speech.
She began to practice herself, the words she might use to tell Uncle Fred she had led the pilot here deliberately, intending to lock him in before going for help—surely no less believable than what had happened.
Give him the facts. That was the order. GO QUICKLY TO THE NEAREST AUTHORITY AND GIVE HIM THE FACTS. But Peggy was less certain than ever what the facts actually were. Henryk hadn’t asked for food, or transport, or maps, or where he was, or where his comrades were, or where the British soldiers might be. He hadn’t asked for anything at all, and he barely seemed to know what he wanted.
Without making it too obvious, she glanced down at the uniform discarded on the floor. Next to the flying-suit was a jacket. RAF blue. It looked authentic enough to her, though she hardly thought herself a very good judge of these things. Maybe she should tidy it away for him, and get a better look at the same time. Peggy felt almost wifely as she picked up the jacket, shook it out by the shoulders, and began to fold it up. There. There it was. An embroidered badge, at the top of the sleeve. That’s what he was trying to show her in the night, when it was far too dark to see properly. POLAND, it said. He really was one of those crazy Poles. But crazy in a different way altogether, with not an ounce of the exotic slate-blue glamour June had described.
“Poland,” she said.
When she spoke, his eyes flickered, back to the here and now. He wore that expression you see on people when they are tuning a wireless, trying to get a clear signal. Then he nodded at her.
“Yes. Cracow, I am from.”
“Oh.” She had so many questions, but she was worried she’d be drawn in, and it would just make everything harder later. “Look. I have to go now. I’ll be in such trouble if I don’t hurry. So much to do. On a farm. You know.” She wasn’t sure he did.
Something about him made her think he wasn’t the country type. What was that place he had just mentioned? Crack-something. She would look it up when she got a chance.
Then another thing occurred to her.
“You never told me.” She swept her hands round like a ballet dancer, miming the cause of her anxiety, and the hem of her dress dropped back. “Where is your parachute?”
“I hide it,” said Henryk. “It is safe. Nobody find it.”
“Oh good. Because …” No, this was hopeless. The more she thought about it … “Look,” she said, drawing herself up. She found her voice becoming louder and slower and distinctly firmer, rather like Aunt Myra’s when she talked to Ernest. “Look. Maybe all this isn’t such a good idea after all.”
He didn’t take the hint. She would have to spell it out.
“It’s not too late. You can come back with me, right now. We can go to the Red Lion—that’s the pub—and we’ll phone the airfield, and then they’ll just come and get you and everything will be all right.” She could hardly bear to look at him. “I’ll pretend I found you here instead … Oh, in fact, I’ve got a good idea! Yes, yes! I know! You hit your head. You forgot everything. And now you’ve remembered. It often happens, I’m sure. I’ve read about it in lots of stories.”
Peggy beamed at him, confident that she had found the perfect solution.
Except clearly it wasn’t. As soon as she’d spoken, she saw the fear returning, crawling along his bones and under his skin and into his eyes. It crept along her spine too, and she knew right away that he couldn’t forget anything. That was why he was here, and not drinking in some mess with his mates, or playing cards or backgammon, or whatever fighter pilots did when they weren’t flying.
Henryk shook his head. His mouth opened. He was about to start pleading with her. She didn’t want that. She’d had enough of pleading. It didn’t work. Look at her mother, pleading with her father. Not to take the peace pledge. Not to make a fuss. Pleading about the leaflets. Pleading about the letters and the newspapers and the meetings. Pleading with him to change his mind—he was too old to be called up yet anyway, he could just keep his head down, keep quiet, accept the way things were, it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t have to take a stand, make a scene.
“Don’t. Please don’t.” She found herself looking over her shoulder, as if they were being watched already. “You’ll be safe here. Until your ankle is better, and then … well, then we’ll see.”
17
It must be a warning. Side by side, they hung motionless on the fence, noses pointed to the sky. Despair or defiance. Ernest stared at the wire twisting through the moles’ necks, just under their
whiskery chins. He couldn’t see how hanging them there would stop the others tunneling. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen of them, he counted, unable to take his eyes off the gibbet. Their paws were like little baby hands, with perfect pink fingers, and if you looked closely, you could see the dirt from their digging still clinging to the crevices. Soft bedraggled black fur. In the stomach of one creature, maggots were beginning to squirm.
Ernest backed away, bile rising. There was no getting away from his own guilt.
Uneasily, he went back to his search, methodically working through the hedgerow to find the perfect twigs. Hazel and willow worked best for the traps. They had to be just the right length and thickness. Pencil-size for the mumble pin, but you needed a long bit of willow for the mole stick. And that evening—unless there was an air raid—he and Fred would sit in the kitchen, whittling away in after-supper silence, comfortably absorbed. He didn’t mind that bit.
Peggy would probably be able to help him find an excuse not to go with Uncle Fred to check the traps later. She was good at thinking things up. Ernest couldn’t possibly tell him the truth about how he felt, though Dad would understand, of course. He didn’t think it was silly or squeamish. A dead animal, in your bare hands, that you’ve killed yourself …? Ernest shuddered, imagining the feel of a stiff, cold body, hard under velvet. Seeing the gibbet made it harder to forget the purpose of the whittling.
“That’s the one,” he said aloud, feeling for his pocketknife. “Perfect.”
He crouched down to cut the switch at its base, leaning against the trunk of the willow for balance. For some time Ernest moved along the bank, occasionally swatting at mosquitoes, enjoying the methodical task of stripping the leaves. At last he had a good pile, and he was feeling creaky and hunched, so he stood up and stretched.
A loud plop made him turn, but there was nothing to see except for the circles on the water surface below getting bigger and bigger. Like an ever-expanding target, Ernest thought, crouching down in the reeds at the edge of the ditch, where the water was green with duckweed. After a few minutes’ observation, Ernest spotted the frog surfacing. One of the new kind, he was sure: the ones that made such a racket.