A Different World

by Mary Nichols

  Tommy raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to your new life and continuing success.’

  They all said ‘Here, here.’ and she basked in their good wishes.

  Walking home along the leafy lanes afterwards, she took her mother’s arm and laid her head on it. ‘Will you miss me when I leave home?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I will, can you doubt it? But you are grown up now. I can’t keep you tied to my apron strings. And I will have Granny for company.’ She wondered how she and her mother would deal with each other when there was only the two of them in the house. At least Mum might stop finding fault. She was glad she had her job and could retreat behind her books and lesson preparation.

  ‘I wish my father could have been here tonight.’

  ‘So do I. He would have been so proud of you.’

  Angela looked up at the clear night sky. ‘Those same stars are shining over Poland too, aren’t they? We aren’t so very far apart.’

  ‘No, looked at it like that, the world is a small place.’

  ‘I thought he might at least have answered my letter.’

  ‘You can’t be sure he received it.’ In a way Louise hoped that was the case, it was easier to bear than the thought he simply didn’t want to have anything to do with her or his daughter. ‘Never mind, we’ll enjoy our holiday, won’t we?’

  They were going up to the Lake District to stay in the cottage that she and Jan had used when he was on leave, though it had been extended and modernised to accommodate tourists. She had taken Angela up there the first year after the war and they had roamed over the hills, taken a boat out on the lakes and generally lazed about. Angela had loved it and so they had gone again the following year. It had become an annual pilgrimage, though Angela had never known why it was so special. Louise wondered if this year might be the last time they would do it together.

  Ambleside was crowded with tourists, but the cottage was a little way off the beaten track up a steep, winding road. ‘Your father used to carry you up here,’ Louise said as they toiled up to it, carrying shopping bags of provisions. They had spent two days walking and climbing and on the third decided to go down to the lake and take the passenger ferry to Windermere and do some shopping. ‘He carried you everywhere.’

  ‘We came here with him? You never said before.’

  ‘No. It was wartime. When he was on leave we used to come up here to escape everyone.’

  She stopped to change hands with the shopping bags. ‘I swear this hill gets steeper every year.’

  ‘There’s someone standing by our cottage gate. He looks a bit lost.’

  The man didn’t move, but stood watching them approach. Louise looked up and her heart skipped a beat. It was an hallucination, of course it was. She had just been talking about him, remembering what it had been like years before and her imagination had conjured him up. This man, in sports jacket and beige trousers, was a stranger, he had to be, but oh …

  He gave them a wide grin. ‘Louise.’

  ‘Jan!’ She dropped the carriers. A couple of oranges fell out and rolled back down the road. She didn’t even notice them. ‘It is you!’

  And then she ran into his arms and they were both crying and laughing at the same time, feeling each other’s faces, kissing, pausing to stand back and look at each other in wonderment and kissing again. Angela looked on, her bewilderment turning to recognition, then a broad smile.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Louise said. ‘How did you get here? How did you know where to find us?’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ He turned from her to Angela. ‘Hallo, sweetheart.’ He held out his left hand to her; the right was round Louise’s shoulders.

  ‘You did get my letter, after all.’ she said, as he enfolded her in his embrace.

  ‘Yes, and I thank you for it with all my heart.’

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Louise said. ‘We’ve got lots to talk about.’

  She led the way, leaving Jan and Angela to retrieve the shopping and follow her.

  Over a hastily concocted meal, they talked. They talked all afternoon, sometimes with excitement, sometimes more sombrely, as he explained about Rulka and how Angela’s letter had come just when he needed it most. ‘I sat down to answer it,’ he said. ‘But it would have taken a whole book to write down how I felt and it would not have been the same as talking to you face to face, so I gave up my job, the tenancy of my apartment, packed my bags and came.’

  ‘Was it difficult?’

  ‘Not especially. I said I wanted to go to Rome for the Olympics. I flew into East Berlin but instead of taking a flight to Rome, I crossed the demarcation line into West Berlin. There are hundreds doing that and I simply merged in with them. I got on a plane to London, took a train to Cottlesham and walked into the Pheasant. Jenny told me where you were.’

  ‘You’re not going back, are you?’ Angela put in. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you did. I’ve got a father I never knew I had and I don’t want to lose him again.’

  ‘That is up to your mother,’ he said, looking at Louise. ‘Are you going to send me away again?’

  ‘Do you want to stay?’ she asked.

  ‘More than anything in the world.’

  ‘Oh, Jan!’

  ‘I would probably have come back, even without Angela,’ he said. ‘It became more and more obvious to me that I belonged here with you. But I couldn’t leave. I had obligations.’

  ‘I know,’ she said softly.

  ‘After Rulka died, I considered it, but then I thought you might have married and you might not have told Angela about me and I’d be intruding. Angela’s letter made up my mind for me.’

  ‘I thought the same thing. You had a wife and your duty was to her. I understood that, so I tried to dissuade her.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘But she is as stubborn as you are.’

  ‘She is a lovely girl, Louise. You have brought her up well. I am proud of her. And of you.’

  The excitement and euphoria calmed a little in the next few days as they continued their holiday, walking and climbing, swimming, taking the ferry, hiring a boat. But they knew that when the time came to return to Cottlesham there were practical problems to overcome – not least was Louise’s mother.

  Faith knew about Jan’s arrival because Jenny had told her, almost as if warning her that when they came back, things were going to be very different. She didn’t need that warning; she knew perfectly well how her daughter felt about the Pole. She was determined not to like him. He had led her daughter astray, had condemned her to a life of spinsterhood and her granddaughter to bastardy. And now he was back, the time had come to carry out her threat to leave. When she had confided in her friend, Greta Sadler, Greta had suggested applying for one of the retirement bungalows being built on their old field. ‘My old man’s got a bit of influence on the parish council,’ she had said. ‘It was his land and he can pull a few strings. They’re not bad places and you will have your independence. We’ll still be able to do things together.’

  ‘Then let’s do that. Louise has been without her husband so long, it won’t be easy for him to settle in. They won’t want me playing gooseberry.’ She was determined to maintain the myth that her daughter had been married all along.

  She was unprepared for Jan’s charming manners, his bowing and kissing her hand, his compliments about her youth and elegance, nor his so obvious devotion to Louise and hers to him. Her daughter positively sparkled. ‘We are going to be married,’ Louise said, bursting with happiness.

  ‘And what do we tell our friends? Your husband was supposed to have been killed in the war. And you can’t say this is a different man; Angela is the spitting image of him.’

  Jan laughed. ‘So I didn’t die after all. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has turned up years after being declared dead, especially if they’ve been behind the Iron Curtain. We will be married quietly at a registry office somewhere.’

  ‘It’s only a formality, Mum,’ Louise said. ‘As far as I’m concerned I’ve
been married to Jan since 1941. I don’t need a ceremony and a bit of paper to prove it.’

  ‘All the same we will do it,’ Jan said.

  ‘That’s as it should be,’ Faith said. ‘I’ve made my own arrangements. I’m going to move into one of the bungalows on the Sadler estate so you can have the place to yourselves.’

  ‘When did you decide to do that?’ Louise demanded.

  ‘As soon as I knew Angela was determined to find her father. I knew she wouldn’t give up.’

  Angela laughed and hugged her grandmother. ‘Granny, you are priceless.’

  Faith beamed. For once in her life, she had done the right thing. Jan wasn’t the ogre she had always imagined him to be, he was charming and considerate and she could see why Louise had fallen for him. But she could not stay under the same roof while they were sharing a bed. Louise might say she considered herself married but she wasn’t, was she? They laughed when she suggested he should stay at the Pheasant until the wedding.

  ‘How would that look, Mum?’ Louise said. ‘My husband comes back after years away and I send him off to sleep somewhere else. Have a heart.’

  Faith had no answer to that and was very glad when a bungalow became vacant and she could move.

  The wedding took place in Norwich on the last Saturday in September. Stan, Jenny, Angela, Faith and Tommy were the only witnesses. Louise, wearing a suit in pale-blue shantung, could not have been happier. It had been a long, long wait but it was worth it. Jan had always got on well with Stan and Jenny, but it was wonderful to watch him and Angela together. They talked and laughed and teased, just as if they had never been apart.

  ‘You’re glad now that I went in search of my tata, aren’t you?’ Angela asked her mother when they were all round the table at the Bell having a celebratory luncheon. ‘You would never have got together again if I hadn’t.’

  Louise reached out and put her hand over Jan’s. ‘Yes, I’m very, very glad.’

  Jan had bought a small car and the week before they had taken Angela to Cambridge and settled her into her accommodation, and afterwards Jan had gone for a job interview. Knowing Marshalls wanted a pilot to ferry wealthy passengers in small private aeroplanes, Tommy had spoken to his boss and Jan had been offered the job. ‘I’m going to be flying again,’ he had told Louise, whirling her round and round the hotel room they had taken at the University Arms until they were both dizzy and fell onto the bed laughing.

  After the wedding breakfast, the guests went home, leaving Jan and Louise to enjoy the rest of the weekend together. They wandered about the town, visited the castle, walked along by the river, stayed in bed late. She couldn’t say that the years apart had shrunk to nothing because they were both older and perhaps wiser, but their feelings for each other had not diminished. They were still young, young enough to enjoy each other, to look forward and not backward.

  Jan watched her cross the playground and usher her pupils inside, then he set off for Cambridge and his first day in his new job. The misery of the post-war years in a Poland he could not recognise was behind him and the future beckoned. One day, when Poland was truly free, he would take his wife and daughter on a visit. Until then, he was content.

  Author’s Note

  I would like to acknowledge the generous help given to me by Adam Zamoyski, who vetted my spelling of Polish words and set me right about people and events.

  Mr Zamoyski is an award-winning historian and author of several books on European and world history, among them A History of Poland and The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II. He is also a distinguished commentator and reviewer. I am in his debt. Any errors remaining are, of course, my own.

  Bibliography

  The following are among the many books I used in researching this novel.

  Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies, Pan Books, 2004

  The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II by Adam Zamoyski, Pen & Sword Aviation Books, 2009

  For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kościuszkco Squadron by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, Arrow Books, 2004

  Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World by Jan Karski, Penguin Classics, 1944

  Poland Alone: Britain, SOE and the Collapse of the Polish Resistance 1944 by Jonathan Walker, Spellmount

  The Struggle: Biography of a Fighter Pilot by Franciszek Kornicki, published in Poland by Stratus 2008 and in England by Mushroom Model Publications

  The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Clare Mulley, Macmillan, 2013

  Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during WWI by Taylor Downing, Little Brown, 2011

  RAF Evaders: The Comprehensive Story of Thousands of Escapers and Their Escape Lines; Western Europe, 1940-1945 by Oliver Clutton-Brock, Bounty Books, 2009

  A World to Build: Austerity Britain 1945-48 by David Kynaston, Bloomsbury, 2007

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  About the Author

  MARY NICHOLS has spent much of her life in East Anglia and often sets her novels in that area. She has written numerous short stories, historical romances and family sagas, as well as a biography of her grandmother. Mary is the bestselling author of The Summer House, The Fountain, The Girl on the Beach, Escape by Moonlight and The Kirilov Star.

  www.marynichols.co.uk

  By Mary Nichols

  The Summer House

  The Fountain

  The Kirilov Star

  The Girl on the Beach

  Escape by Moonlight

  A Different World

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

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  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2014.

  This ebook edition first published in 2014.

  Copyright © 2014 by Mary NIchols

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1558–9