Adam picked up the paper. Zygielbojm had left a suicide note in which he explained that the only honourable thing to do in an uncaring world was to kill himself, to draw attention to the genocide taking place in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The hollow pit in Adam’s stomach deepened. So Zygielbojm hadn’t been melodramatic at all. He had taken this shocking action because he believed that he had to take a stand. Zygielbojm had sacrificed his life in the hope of awakening the conscience of the world. Adam gave a mirthless laugh. He had died trying to shame those who felt no shame.
Adam let the paper drop and walked on, his long stride swallowing the stately curve of Regent Street. He had dismissed Zygielbojm and his anguish as theatrical posturing. A man who, as it now turned out, was far more noble and highly principled than himself. He kept walking, oblivious of everything but the failure of his mission.
Thirty
‘Jolly good,’ the recruiting officer said when Adam applied to join the RAF. ‘You Poles are demons in the air. I don’t know where we’d be if you boys hadn’t come to our aid in the Battle of Britain. And we certainly could do with more airmen right now.’
Adam didn’t understand why the other airmen in the squadron burst out laughing when he later repeated that comment. A party was in full swing in the mess hall the evening he arrived, and the sound of clinking glasses, raucous voices and loud music indicated that a great deal of liquor had already been consumed. The air was fuggy with cigarette smoke and every few minutes an outburst of bawdy laughter indicated that someone had told another blue joke.
A few drunken voices were bellowing ‘It’s a Long-Vey to Tipperary’, and ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ in strong Polish accents, while in a far corner a couple of men were beating out jazz rhythms with their fists on a table.
‘So they said they could do with more airmen? That’s British understatement for you!’ The speaker combed his fingers through thick dark hair brushed back from a film-star face and Adam recognised Romek, whom he’d met in the camp in Romania. Romek roared with laughter and collapsed into a chair while the others joined in. Adam looked from one to the other, baffled.
‘My dear friend,’ Romek said, slapping Adam’s shoulder. ‘They’ve got more Lancasters and Halifaxes than pilots, and that’s because —’
A stocky airman cut in. ‘That’s enough, Romek,’ he said, indicating Adam with a motion of his head. ‘He’ll find out soon enough.’
But Romek had drunk too much to hold back.
‘My honoured friend,’ he slurred. ‘Why do you think you were assigned to Bomber Command? Is it because you are so handsome? No. Is it because you are such a good flyer? No. I’ll tell you why. It’s because you are DISPENSABLE!’ He hiccuped. ‘They think the Luftwaffe knocked us out of the air because we lost our nerve. So we’re just air-force fodder for our beloved Air Marshal, who wasn’t nicknamed Bomber Harris for nothing. He’s going to bomb the hell out of Germany, even if he kills every single airman in the RAF in the process.’
His speech over, he slumped into his chair, lifted his whiskey glass and drained it in one gulp.
The laughter stopped, a hush fell over the hall. As Adam looked at the thoughtful faces around him, he realised that Romek was probably right.
‘In vino veritas, eh?’ he said lightly.
The conversation soon turned to a more agreeable topic — English girls, whose appetite for Polish airmen was apparently insatiable.
‘The English do everything back to front. Instead of metres, they have yards; instead of litres, they have pints; and they drive on the wrong side of the road. And God knows how they handle their women because they’re all crazy about us!’ Tomasz’s ribald chuckle belied his innocent appearance. With his round face and a lock of almost white hair falling over his forehead, he looked like an altar boy in a village church.
‘They’re not like Polish girls,’ he continued. ‘No flirting or playing hard to get. You kiss their hand, tell them how beautiful they are, bring them a few flowers and they can’t wait to go to bed! It almost makes war worthwhile!’
‘And you can forget those stories you’ve heard about English girls being cold,’ someone chimed in. ‘They’re as steamy as August in Warsaw!’
Later that night in their hut, Adam took out the silver cigarette case that Elzunia had given him. As he took out a Camel filter, he ran his fingers along the smooth case and traced the finely embossed initials with his fingertips. He thought about Elzunia and wondered what had happened to her. The other men were still boasting about their recent conquests, but his mind was on the Ghetto Uprising and the girl who had sprung forward and pulled him away from the window just before the bullet pierced the glass.
His reverie was interrupted by creaking and rustling on his left. Tomasz, who occupied the next bed, was removing a small package wrapped in brown paper from his kitbag under the bed. He raised it to his mouth, kissed it and put it back. He turned and saw that Adam was watching him.
‘That’s our sacred Polish soil,’ he said. ‘I never go anywhere without it, even when I’m in the air. That’s the only reason I’m here, fighting this fucking war and bombing the hell out of Germany — so Poland can be free.’
Adam lay on his bunk, watching the cigarette smoke curl towards the ceiling when the door opened and in sauntered a fellow who was beaming and saying something in English that the others couldn’t understand. After several attempts to communicate, Romek dragged him over to Adam’s bed and said in a slurred voice, ‘This chap, he speaking English.’
‘Thank God! A civilised Pole at last!’
Adam sat up and looked into a boyish face splotched with freckles and surrounded by springy hair the colour of a ripe pumpkin.
‘You are Scottish, I think,’ Adam said.
‘Nah, mate, I’m an Aussie, but Dad’s family came from Scotland; that’s how I got this name. Stewart McAllister. The Poms all think I’m a Scot, too.’ He looked around the hut. ‘You lot are Poles, aren’t you? I reckon I’m a ring-in.’ He saw Adam’s bewildered expression and grinned. ‘Am I going too fast? Or is it the Aussie accent?’
Adam and Stewart talked long after the others had dropped off to sleep, Adam liked the Australian’s open manner and Stewart was intrigued by the intensity of the Pole, who spoke little but listened attentively, assessing him with his brooding gaze.
Stewart rifled in his pocket and pulled out an official-looking card with gold lettering. ‘Strewth, I almost forgot. I’ve been invited to a party in London tomorrow.’ He looked at Adam. ‘I reckon I could get you in. Wanna come? There’ll be some big-wigs going. Might be good for a laugh.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t like those — what do you call them — big-wigs.’
‘Listen, mate, you want to get away from the base as much as you can. Once they get you up in the air, God knows when you’ll have the chance to get away again.’
Amused by the fellow’s infectious enthusiasm, Adam promised to go to the party. He could always slip away if it became boring.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed that someone was ordering him to bomb Berlin and shouting that he was dispensable.
Thirty-One
Judith McAllister’s sharp gaze swept over the gathering like a searchlight, resting briefly on each group before moving on. The scene was typical of so many official English receptions she’d attended since arriving in London. The men, masters of the art of understatement, murmured noncommittal pleasantries over their whiskey, while the women smiled vaguely as they sipped sherry.
Above the murmur of polite conversation, glasses clinked as waiters in tails with starched white napkins over their arms offered drinks and crackers decorated with gherkin slices and rosettes of mayonnaise.
‘I’d like a beer, thanks,’ she said. The waiter’s eyebrows jerked up towards his brilliantined hair. A few minutes later he returned with a single glass of lager on his large tray.
‘Here you are, madam,’ he said. His tone implied that females who drank be
er weren’t ladies.
Judith took a mouthful and pulled a face. The English had conquered countries all over the world and imposed their laws and customs everywhere, but they’d never got the hang of serving beer cold.
Placing the glass on a mahogany console, she checked her wristwatch and looked around. Bloody Stewart was late as usual. She hated these staid, boring functions, but he always managed to get round her. She shuddered to think of all the times she’d lent him money he never returned or covered up for scrapes he’d landed into. Each time she vowed never to bail him out again, but each time she had succumbed to her younger brother’s entreaties. Ever since he was small, she hadn’t been able to resist that innocent smile of his. Everyone had their Achilles’ heel and she supposed Stewart was hers.
‘Hi, Sis. How’s tricks?’ At the sound of his voice over the phone the previous day, she’d let out a sigh of relief. The sorties across the Channel had intensified, and casualties were increasing, but because of wartime censorship she never knew when he was flying out, or when he’d returned. ‘How about coming with your brother to a shindig the War Department are giving at Admiralty House?’ he had asked. Before she could refuse, he said, ‘Oh come on, Jude. I haven’t seen you for ages. It’s time to get out of those hospital corridors and see how the better half lives. They reckon your hero might even put in an appearance.’
She took the bait. ‘You think Mr Churchill will be there?’
‘Bloody oath, the old war horse himself.’ Pushing his advantage, he continued, ‘Here’s your chance to get out of that starched bib and tucker you’re always wearing.’
She let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘I suppose it’s going to be one of those la-di-dah functions then?’
‘Just la,’ he said, chuckling.
Judith usually paid little attention to fashion, but she noticed that the women at the reception were dressed to the nines. From their ankle-strap shoes to their gloved hands and smoothly coiffed hair, these women looked a million dollars, as the Yanks would say. As she was marvelling at all the time, expense and effort it must have taken to achieve this elegance, she looked up and caught sight of herself in the gilt-framed mirror above the Regency fireplace. She felt like a weed in a rose garden. Her face had too many angles. Picasso rather than Renoir, she chuckled to herself. The beige houndstooth suit she’d bought because it was serviceable now seemed too long and dowdy, the flat-heeled shoes made her look like a schoolmarm, and her crinkly red hair, which she had tried to coax into a roll around the nape of her neck, was already beginning to unravel.
‘You’d be quite good-looking if you did something with your hair,’ her friend Nancy had told her recently, surveying her with an appraising look that wasn’t flattering. ‘And your figure’s not bad either, if only you’d stop hiding it under those loose blouses and frumpy skirts. As for those clompy shoes …’
But Judith wasn’t interested in crippling her back or feet in a quest to catch a man. Might as well face facts. At thirty-six, she was a confirmed spinster, mostly by choice, although if she’d ever come across a man who didn’t feel diminished by a professional woman, she might have considered a relationship. The only men she encountered were her patients who regarded her as a dragon, and the doctors who thought she was a dyke. The medicos weren’t above seducing the giggly young nurses who were impressed by their status, but they had no interest whatsoever in women with positions of authority.
Throughout her nursing career, which spanned almost twenty years, Judith had heard the disparaging way physicians and surgeons referred to hospital matrons as being unfeminine — certainly not marriage material. That was fine by her because she was married to nursing.
‘Damned if I’m going to be any man’s subservient wife,’ she told Nancy and chuckled. ‘If anything, I’m the one that could do with a little wife to take care of all those tedious everyday chores.’ While Nancy shook her head, Judith continued, ‘I’ll just concentrate on mending broken bodies and leave charmers like you to break men’s hearts.’
The English born-to-rule voices around her sounded affected and the conversations shallow. How did people sustain such enthusiasm when they had so little to say?
Her mind kept wandering back to the training course she was giving at St Bart’s, and the young nurses whose minds these days were on their sweethearts in the armed services, rather than on their lectures.
The bitter smell of cigar smoke and a sudden buzz of activity made her turn towards the far end of the reception hall. A stocky man with bulldog features, round shoulders, and a belly that seemed to balloon from his neck had entered the room. Winston Churchill was shorter than she had imagined but he exuded power. She always listened with admiration to his forceful broadcasts on the BBC but sometimes wondered whether he felt equal to the task that his ambition and world events had thrust upon him. The Prime Minister was soon surrounded by an entourage of politicians and bureaucrats, and the guests resumed their conversations, tactfully avoiding looking in his direction.
On her right, a tall woman in silk and pearls was lamenting about her nanny. ‘One never really knows what foreigners are thinking, does one?’ she was saying. ‘The French nanny we engaged for Rupert and Jane upped and left after three years. Said she wanted to be with her own people. I told her we needed her, and, anyway, she was much better off here because our Mr Churchill’ — she stole a discreet glance in his direction — ‘would soon make mincemeat of the Jerries, but she wouldn’t listen. My mother always said you couldn’t trust the Frogs.’
Sympathetic nods and assenting murmurs encouraged her to continue complaining. Bored, Judith moved on and joined a group of men in striped suits and waistcoats. At least they wouldn’t be complaining about nannies. But she didn’t find their conversation about the relative virtues of race horses, the appalling condition of the golf course at St Andrews, and a scandal concerning a highly placed bureaucrat any more interesting than the women’s chatter. You’d never guess there was a war on.
She was relieved when someone introduced a new topic. ‘I’m not sure what to make of those Mitford sisters,’ one man said. ‘And, as for that Oswald Mosley character …’
One of his companions, a short man with a shiny bald head and long teeth looked thoughtful. ‘You’re absolutely right, of course, but one can’t entirely discount some of his views. After all, one wouldn’t want Britain to lose its character and become a dumping ground for colonials of all colours, would one?’
Judith turned to the speaker. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we colonials are helping you fight this bloody war,’ she blurted in a voice that sounded more Australian than usual. The man’s expression reminded her of a fish that has just been reeled in and can’t figure out how it came to be dangling on the end of a hook.
‘Watch that temper, Jude,’ she muttered to herself as she walked away. The sooner she got away from these pompous bigots the better. If Stewart didn’t turn up in ten minutes, she’d leave. She walked towards the long window and gazed at the smooth baize lawns of Pall Mall. It was a calming view that proclaimed that no matter what chaos there was in the rest of the world, there would always be an England and it would always have impeccably manicured lawns. Taking a deep breath, she turned back towards the assembled guests.
Leaning against the wall on the other side of the room was a gaunt man with an air-force cap set at an angle. His jacket was nonchalantly draped around his shoulders in a way that was decidedly un-English, a cigarette dangled from his hand and a sardonic expression twisted his mouth. Judith heard him ask for a vodka and chuckled at the waiter’s effusive apology. Vodka, like cold beer, was in short supply in London.
He had high cheekbones from which the flesh fell away into deep hollows and in his pitted complexion her trained eyes recognised the residual scars of smallpox.
She didn’t realise she’d been staring until his mocking glance met hers. He bowed, raised the glass as though toasting her, swallowed the contents without pausing, placed the empty gl
ass on a passing tray, picked up another whiskey and walked towards her.
Bowing stiffly, he said, ‘Adam Czartoryski. I think I should not be speaking because we are not introduced, but I think you and I are what you English call strange man outside.’
She smiled. ‘You mean odd man out. And I’m not English, I’m Australian.’
‘Is same, no?’ He spoke very precisely, sounding every consonant.
Before she could enlighten him about the ocean of difference between the two nations, he waved his arm to indicate the gathering. ‘These people are very happy with themselves, isn’t it?’
His sardonic tone made conversation difficult but she sensed he wanted to talk. ‘What made you come here?’ she asked.
‘I am messenger from small nation, begging for crumbs from rich man’s table.’
She was surprised how well he spoke English, apart from dropping the indefinite article, which she found quaint. She was about to ask what he meant when he raised his arm to silence her. From his frown, she saw that he was listening to the conversation of the group nearby.
‘Our so-called allies in Europe are a dead loss,’ a man was saying, and, when she looked around, she recognised the man with the long teeth who had made the disparaging remark about colonials. ‘I don’t suppose anyone was surprised when the French fell over themselves to surrender. They’re always brave with words but damned cowards when it comes to action. But they’ve all crumbled like a pack of worn-out cards — Belgium, Holland, Norway. No bloody use at all. Damned collaborators, the lot of them.’
‘It sounds as though the Poles are still struggling on,’ someone commented.
‘The Poles? Don’t make me laugh. They’re primitive. Back in the Middle Ages. Going to battle with horses and lances. And their pilots threw in the towel after three days. It’s pathetic. They haven’t got a clue.’
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