A Different World

by Mary Nichols

  She watched other people come and go, some stoical, some in tears, a very few jubilant. Her turn came and she was conducted into the courtroom. It was an austere room and there were few people there. The general public were not admitted, but she noticed several members of the press, invited no doubt to witness her humiliation and report on the wonderful justice of the new Polish government. Father Karlowicz was there and so was Dr Andersz.

  Her crimes were read out to her. She was accused of being a member of the Armia Krajowa who allegedly used it as a front to prepare terrorist activities and espionage against the Soviet Union. The organisation had cooperated with the Germans and given them supplies that had been dropped by the British and Americans. It was so palpably false it was almost laughable. But Rulka did not laugh.

  Her cross-examination went on and on, the same questions she had been asked in her interrogation, the same answers, except that she now admitted to being coerced into the Home Army. At the end of it, Tomasz Gorski was allowed to speak on her behalf. He repeated what she had told him in the waiting room and then called Father Karlowicz, who attested to her good character and her skill as a nurse. He was followed by Lech Andersz, who said much the same thing. ‘I have known Krystyna Nowak since 1942 when she came to Warsaw to nurse,’ he said. ‘She has always been conscientious and honest. She nursed wounded Russian soldiers with the same devotion to duty as she did her Polish brethren. There are many who owe their life to her skill.’

  The outcome was a mild sentence of six months which she had already served and a fine of a thousand zloty. It was better than she had hoped. She thanked the judge and was taken back to prison. Until her fine was paid, there she would remain. She had no money, so who would pay it for her? Jan?

  Jan had joined the people clearing rubble from the church, separating what could be used again from mere hard core. It was hot, back-breaking work and at the end of each day, his face, nose and mouth were caked in grey dust. He was glad to get back to the cellar of Jasna Street and clean himself up and make himself something to eat. Stanisław Roman had provided him with identity papers in his own name, but there was a fictitious reason for his eight-year absence. It was borrowed from his brother, so that if enquiries were made they could at least find a Grabowski in their records. ‘You were taken prisoner by the Russians early on in the war and sent to a gulag,’ Roman had said. ‘You were released during the general amnesty when the Soviets became an ally of Britain and America, and joined General Anders’ army. On release you came back to your homeland. You have recently come to Warsaw to help with the rebuilding. Have you got that?’

  ‘Yes. Am I Jan or Jozef?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, they both have the same initial letter, easily confused. But make sure you do not fall foul of the authorities.’

  He was back in his home city, under his own name, but it was not the homecoming he had dreamt of. The wife he had come back to find was in prison. His home had been requisitioned, there were still bodies being unearthed as the rubble was cleared, and unexploded bombs and shells were still killing people. Sappers were still going from house to house, district to district, clearing them, after which they posted a notice: ‘Checked, no mines.’

  He straightened his aching back as the undertaker’s hearse drew up alongside him and a gaunt figure, in a dress too big for her, emerged from it. He stood and stared. ‘Rulka?’ he queried.

  ‘Jan.’ She smiled, revealing a broken tooth. ‘Don’t you know me? Have I changed that much?’

  ‘Myszka. Oh, Myszka.’ He held out his arms and she went into them. She seemed tinier than he remembered and the feel of her in his arms was nothing but skin and bone. She was laughing as the tears rained down her face. She brushed them impatiently away. ‘I haven’t cried in years.’

  ‘They said you were in prison.’

  ‘So I was, but they let me go with a fine. Good nurses are hard to find.’

  ‘Who paid the fine?’

  ‘The organisation.’

  ‘What organisation?’

  ‘Never mind. Can you leave? Where are you living?’

  ‘In the Jasna Street cellar.’

  ‘How did you find out about that?’

  ‘Stanisław Roman suggested it. It was filthy, blackened by fire, but I cleaned it up.’

  She turned back to the undertaker who had remained sitting in the driving seat. ‘Thank you, Stan,’ she said. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  ‘My privilege,’ he said. ‘You two must have a lot to talk about, so I’ll leave you. Good luck.’

  Hand in hand, they found Father Karlowicz, who congratulated Rulka on her release, and sent them both home with his blessing. ‘Be good to each other,’ he said. ‘The missing years will be hard to fill. You are neither of you the same people you were when you parted, so be tolerant of each other.’

  Jasna Street had been cleared of most of the rubble and a start made on rebuilding, but there was a chronic shortage of labour and building materials and progress was slow. What new buildings were being constructed were concrete blocks of tiny flats with shared kitchens and bathrooms and there was a long waiting list for one of those. The cellar it would have to be. It reminded Rulka of her years with the Home Army and Colin and their life together. She found it difficult to relax and respond to Jan’s lovemaking, even though he was gentle and tender. She was only too aware of her emaciated body, which he must surely find repulsive. It was not only her body, but the broken tooth which had happened during one of the interrogations in the prison, and the hollowness of her cheeks. In the end, he gave up. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said. ‘The rest of our lives.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I should be the one who’s sorry. Shall we talk instead?’

  ‘Yes, tell me what your war was like.’

  And so he talked about England and flying and being shot down and escaping, of meeting Jozef, and finding his way over the mountains and back to her. He did not mention Louise or Angela; they were locked away in his heart and in his memory, where they would have to stay. ‘Now tell me about what you were up to,’ he said. ‘Boris Martel told me you were a heroine.’

  ‘He found you, then?’

  ‘Yes. I had no way of knowing what had happened to you, but when he told me you were alive, I had to come back.’

  ‘Did you know what you might be coming back to?’

  ‘I had a rough idea. What about you? It must have been grim.’

  ‘It was. I don’t want to talk about it.’ She couldn’t put into words what it had been like, the danger and the exhilaration, the slaughter and the suffering, the comradeship and the determination not to be subdued. But it had been in vain. They had lost and yet the will to resist was still there, still strong. It was why she had joined the Freedom and Independence Organisation to continue the fight, this time directed against the Soviets. Lucky for her, her accusers did not know that and her ‘crime’ had been that she belonged to the Home Army. How could she explain all that to Jan, a Jan who had never known real hunger and repression. His body was pink, well-nourished, muscular. He had all his teeth and his hair was as thick as ever. He had known comrades die, she did not doubt that, but he had never had to see women deliberately run over by tanks, never had to eat cats and dogs, or walk through sewerage up to his armpits.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, breaking into a long silence. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’

  She rose from the bed and went to gather up her clothes. ‘Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘Some sausage and a cabbage, a little beetroot too.’

  She finished dressing. ‘I’ll make barszcz and bigos, then. Can you get the fire going?’

  He dressed and went off in search of firewood. Life would get better, he had to believe it. One day they would learn to live like human beings again. They would have a proper home and enough work to keep them out of penury and then, maybe, Poland would be free and independent again.

  Chapter Thirteen
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  Early summer 1960

  Jenny stared at the tall young man in casual slacks and a donkey jacket who stood on the back doorstep of the Pheasant. His smile was mischievous and vaguely familiar. ‘It isn’t … It can’t be … Not Tommy Carter.’

  ‘The very same,’ he said, laughing.

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him over the threshold. ‘Come on in.’ Then, ‘Stan! Stan! Look who’s turned up like a bad penny.’

  Stan appeared from the cellar where he had been tapping a new barrel. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Where have you sprung from?’

  ‘I’m back.’

  ‘So I see. Are your mother and Beattie with you?’

  ‘No, I left them in the States. Beattie got married last year. He’s a car salesman. Mum and Russ divorced. It didn’t work out. She’s got a new fellow now. I didn’t fancy playing gooseberry, so I decided to come home.’

  ‘Home? You still call this home?’

  ‘Definitely, have done ever since the war drove us out of London.’

  ‘Sit down. We were just about to have lunch. We have to wait until the bar closes, so it’s always the middle of the afternoon by the time we have it. My goodness, there’s so much catching up to do. I don’t know where to start. Where are you staying? How long are you here for?’

  ‘I’m here for good, I think. I didn’t take to life in the States and I was homesick, but I stuck it out until Beattie married and Ma took up with Randy; it was then I began to think of coming back.’

  ‘You’ll find a lot has changed.’

  ‘So I noticed. There are houses all over Mr Sadler’s meadow and there’s a bypass. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place when I got off the bus. And the Pheasant has changed, hasn’t it? It’s twice as big as it was.’

  ‘We’ve expanded into providing restaurant meals. And we’ve got more bedrooms. It was the only way to survive; the old idea of the village pub only serving alcohol wouldn’t provide a living nowadays, in spite of Macmillan telling us we never had it so good.’

  ‘What happened to everyone else, Miss Fairhurst and Angela?’

  ‘They live in the schoolhouse. Louise is headmistress. The school has been expanded too, though children are only there until they are eleven now. Then they go on to secondary school or Swaffham Grammar. Angela goes there. You must go and see them.’

  ‘I will. Do you think you can put me up for a bit, just until I find a job and somewhere to live?’

  Stan laughed. ‘Oh, I think we can manage that.’

  Jenny had been laying the table and dishing up while they talked. ‘Come to the table,’ she said. ‘You can tell us all about what you’ve been up to while we eat.’

  ‘Are you coming to the dance on Saturday?’ Rosemary Richards asked Angela, as they sat side by side on the bus on their way home from school. ‘Toby’s taking me.’

  ‘I dunno. I’ve got no one to go with since I ditched that creep, Nigel Barker.’

  ‘Why did you ditch him?’

  ‘He was spreading tales about me.’

  ‘What tales?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I told him if he repeated them again, I’d have the law on him.’

  ‘Good for you. I could ask Toby to get one of his mates to partner you, if you like.’

  ‘No thanks, I don’t fancy blind dates. Anyway, Mum likes to approve of my boyfriends, and as for Granny.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘She’s oh, so Victorian. She doesn’t think you should have boyfriends before you’re at least twenty and then only chaperoned.’

  ‘Did your mother approve of Nigel?’

  ‘She didn’t exactly disapprove. After all, she’s known Nigel’s mother for years and years …’

  ‘Did you tell her what Nigel said?’

  ‘No, course not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s all lies and it would hurt her.’

  The bus drew up at the end of the road leading to the village and Angela left it to walk home. ‘Ring me if you change your mind,’ Rosemary called after her.

  It was only half a mile to the schoolhouse, a walk Angela had made every day of every school term since she passed her eleven-plus and gone to the grammar school. She could have done it in her sleep. At the end of this term when all her exams were finished, she would go out into a wider world. Living in a village was so restricting, nothing ever happened. Everyone knew everyone else’s business – or thought they did. And if they didn’t know it, they made it up. Nigel Barker had been all over her trying to get her to have sex with him, just because he had taken her out once or twice and she had allowed him to kiss her. ‘What are you holding back for?’ he had demanded. ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it is not.’

  ‘Don’t believe you. Girls always say no to start with when they really mean yes.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Can’t see why you’re so particular,’ he had grumbled. ‘Your mother never was.’

  She couldn’t help herself; she had to ask. ‘What’s my mother got to do with it?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.’

  She had been furious and when he tried to kiss her, had thumped him over the head with the tennis racket she was carrying. He had winced and put his hand to his head, so it must have hurt. Serve him right. But things like that were difficult to forget and his words festered. She might have confided in her mother, but when it came to it, she couldn’t, didn’t know how to begin.

  She didn’t remember her father. According to Granny, he had been killed in the war, though that didn’t account for the fact that her surname was Fairhurst, the same as Granny’s. She had come to the inevitable conclusion her mother had never married. It didn’t bother her. Mum was still Mum, whom she loved. She was not only Mum, but her best friend. She would not allow anyone to say a word against her, especially creeps like Nigel Barker.

  She went in at the back door of the schoolhouse to the kitchen where her grandmother was preparing their evening meal. Granny had come to live with them when Grandfather had died of a stroke. He had been an invalid; she had never known him when he was fit and healthy, but even bedridden he had frightened her on the few occasions she had seen him. Granny sometimes smiled, but she never laughed. And she was so strait-laced she found fault all the time. Her arrival in the household had not made for harmony, but Mum had told her to be tolerant, that her grandmother had had a hard life and needed understanding. It was difficult when Granny criticised her clothes, her love of rock and roll and dancing and nagged her to do more about the house. If there had been a man in the home, it might have been different.

  Mr Young had been trying to court Mum for years, ever since his wife had died of cancer, but Mum would have none of it. ‘I’ve got enough to keep me busy without having to look after a husband,’ she had said, laughing.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked her grandmother.

  ‘In the front room marking books.’

  Angela put her head round the door of the sitting room. ‘I’m home, Mum. Just going up to change.’

  Louise looked up from the exercise book she was marking and smiled at her daughter. At eighteen she was growing into a lovely young woman. With her blonde hair and blue eyes and determined chin, she was the image of Jan. Every day she noticed it more and more, a constant reminder of the man she had loved and lost. He had taken her at her word and never tried to communicate with her, but she wondered if he ever thought of her and his daughter. Perhaps he had other children, half-brothers and -sisters to Angela, but they would never know.

  The years had passed incredibly swiftly. The horrible post-war years of austerity were over and life was easier. She had a good job, which had allowed her to give her daughter a happy childhood, a happier one than she had had. Angela repaid her by being loving and considerate. She worked hard at school and was expected to do well enough in her exams to get her to Cambridge. Jan would be proud of her
if he could see her now. Sometimes she wondered if Angela remembered her tata, the man who had given her that rather battered teddy bear which still sat in pride of place on a chair in her bedroom.

  One day she would have to tell her about Jan. She ought to have done it sooner, before her mother came to live with them and insisted on telling all and sundry that her daughter’s husband had been killed in the war. She ought to have said something to Angela then, but she had only been eight at the time and she wasn’t sure she could make her understand. The village had a new housing estate and a lot of incomers from bombed-out London who had settled in the village and had not known her during the war. A few people in the village knew the truth, but they were good friends and saw no reason to bring up the subject.

  Angela would want to marry herself one day, though she hoped not too soon, and then it would all have to come out. ‘Don’t see why,’ her mother had said when she mentioned it. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ And so she prevaricated.

  She piled the marked books up neatly and went into the kitchen to help her mother finish preparing the meal, just as Angela came down in jeans and a striped shirt.

  ‘How was it today?’ Louise asked her, as they sat down to eat.

  ‘Not bad. We had to write an essay comparing Tennyson with Browning. Thank goodness I’d swotted them up. Only two more to go. The history one is going to be the hardest.’ She had chosen to take history, English and mathematics at A level and had a provisional place at Homerton to study modern history. ‘Then it’s no more school for me.’

  ‘University is still school,’ Faith said.

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s nothing like school. It’s for grown-ups.’

  Louise smiled at that, but didn’t comment. ‘Are you going to take that summer job Aunt Jenny offered you?’

  ‘Perhaps. I want to save up for when we go to Rome.’ The school had arranged a visit to Rome in August to see the sights and some of the Olympics. When they came back she and her mother were going on holiday together.