*
A Saturday dance and concert had been arranged by ‘friends of Poland’ in Kirkton of Lochend, a small town not far away. A three-tonner picked up about twenty of us, private soldiers and non-commissioned officers. I went along with them: to make sure matters didn’t get out of hand, but also to keep myself away from the Pitnechtan pubs.
I had been to several such parties already. This one started like all the others. There was a platform at one end of the hall, with Lady Somebody in hat and tweed suit sitting on a chair and waiting to say a few words. In a corner the band was sorting out its music – accordion, fiddle – and a fair-haired girl was waiting to sing a few songs.
A gramophone was already playing a foxtrot, but nobody was dancing. The young women were all perched on benches along one wall, whispering to one another. The red-faced country boys were huddled along the opposite wall in their tackety boots, glancing furtively at the girls. This was a ‘temperance’ hall – no strong drink. But a half-bottle of whisky was slipping from hand to hand.
Our lads burst in, a khaki surge of men, and stopped for a second to take in the situation. Then they went straight to the girls, bowed, stunned them by kissing their hands and swept them off on to the dance floor. Boy, what dancers they were then! I watched their partners’ faces grow pink and blissful as they were spun and swung. I watched the faces of the Scots boys along the wall darken as they looked on. Their bottle circulated more boldly.
Private Jaciubek whirled past me, his arms full of amazed beauty with its mouth open. In Kirkton of Lochend, all the dreams of the movies had arrived at last. I remembered Helen in that Greenock kitchen, ironing a blouse and winking at me as she sang ‘Someday, my Prince will come... !’ Private Jaciubek, a coal miner from Silesia, would soon be telling his partner: ‘In Poland, I am Count, big castle, you come and we ride sledge together in my forests...’ Corporal Godzik, whose family mended tyres in a Praga backyard, would offer that sweet freckly Land Girl a tour of the Tatras in his Rolls-Royce, a ski holiday in one of his father’s luxury hotels.
Why not? Mrs M had said that all refugees needed to be actors. Foreign soldiers too, especially those whose homes and old lives had gone for ever, had a duty to invent new realities. The Germans had shot Private Jaciubek’s father as a hostage, and his town had been annexed and renamed by the Reich. He was about as much a Count as he was a Polish miner now. And what and who was I? Unlike these men, I had not used my imagination. If my parents were still alive, which did not seem likely, they would have had no chance to become actors. All they could imagine would be staying alive until the next day. I should use my own freedom while it lasted.
Well, I could dance too, as well or better than my soldiers. My men had given Lady Somebody no pause to make her speech of welcome, so I took her off for a waltz to console her. I put on a bit of a show, whipped her about more than I needed to. But she threw her head back and enjoyed herself. When the music stopped, I walked her to the trestle table bearing cream soda and sausage rolls, and she took a glass of lemonade.
‘Thank you, Major.’
‘You haven’t danced like that for a long time, have you?’ I watched her eyebrows go up; she wanted to ask ‘How do you know that?’ but stopped herself. I could read her thoughts. I was in a strange mood, reckless, a bit manic, drunk without alcohol. When she had finished her lemonade, I asked her to dance again but this time she was wary in my arms, keeping me at a polite distance.
We sat down, and talked a little. Lady Somebody was called Margaret. She was slender, in early middle age. I liked her snow-white hair, red cheeks and sapphire eyes. Would I bring a few friends to lunch one Sunday at ‘our place’ near Forfar?
‘And your husband?’
‘He was at St Valéry. With the 51st.’
‘A prisoner?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I am so sorry.’
We were quiet for a moment.
‘You must all be very homesick. For your poor country.’
‘Yes. Yes, we are. Thank you.’
I looked at the dance floor. My lads did not look homesick at all; the accordion band had struck up, and the girls were shrieking with laughter as they showed the Poles how to do the Gay Gordons. My feeling of manic restlessness returned. I excused myself, and went over to talk to the young singer at the far corner of the platform.
She was sorting through sheets of music, arranging them on her stand.
‘Ach, no, I’m no a professional. Just a local nightingale, ken?’
‘So what do you sing?’
‘Old favourites. Burns songs – have you heard of Robert Burns? That’s fine, then. I sing them straight, ma ain fashion. No that BBC way, warbling like German Lieder, that fairly scunners me.’
She selected a song sheet, studied it and then looked up at me.
‘There’s one song here... maybe it’s the wrong thing, but then maybe it would be saying something for you folk. D’ye know what was the Jacobites, the Forty-Five?’
‘Bonny Prince Charlie?’
‘Huh, so you do so know! Well, Burns wrote this song, “It was a’ for our Rightful King”. About the Jacobites leaving Scotland for ever, going into exile in Ireland. About farewell.’
‘Show me. Let me read it.’
In those days, the language of Burns was usually closed to me. When Scots friends recited, I would nod and pretend. But these words were not closed:
Now all is done that men can do,
And all is done in vain;
My Love and Native Land fareweel,
For I maun cross the main, my dear,
For I maun cross the main...
I read on, to the song’s end, and then read it again. I glanced up and met the singer’s worried stare.
‘Maybe it’s no the right thing for the night. A wee bit too...’
I cleared my throat. ‘No. No, you sing it.’
‘I’ll keep it to near last – last before “Auld Lang Syne”. It’s a fine air forbye.’ She whistled a few bars, but it was hard to hear her over the din of the band. I gave her a friendly smile and moved away.
The evening went on. Some of the Scots boys tried to repossess their women, and there were tricky moments. I followed two huffy rivals out of the hall and pulled them apart before serious damage was done, and the Scot, after spitting on a comb and carefully rearranging his hair, gave me a pull from his bottle. It didn’t help. The wild feeling was turning physical, a crawling on my skin, a hurt in my chest.
The singer did a couple of songs, with the fiddler accompanying. She had a clear, pretty voice with a tang to it, like the voices of mountain girls in my own country. There was polite applause, then more dancing. Near the end of the evening, I called for silence and thanked Lady Margaret, the band, the singer and the organisers on behalf of the First Corps of the Polish army. More applause. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed across the hall to where the singer was waiting. She gave me a nod, and then began:
...The sodger frae the wars returns,
The sailor frae the main;
But I hae parted frae my Love,
Never to meet again, my dear;
Never to meet again...
She was right about the tune: simple and sharp as an arrow. Before she finished, I was making my way towards the door. ‘Corporal Godzik, you’ll be responsible for getting the men to the lorry and back to camp. I have to wait and come later on my own.’ With his arm round the Land Girl, he winked. The major gets off with Lady Somebody; it’s the way the world is.
Outside, it was a warm summer night. I walked rapidly away, without thinking where I was going. Down the street to a square with a war memorial. Down a side street until I came to a bridge over a small river. There was nobody about. I leaned on the parapet and studied the braided currents shining at me in the dark, the passing clots of foam. After a long while, I heard ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in the distance and the sound of motors starting.
I walked back. The singer was comin
g out of a side door, calling something over her shoulder and buttoning up a long woollen coat. When I took her by the arm, she seemed not to be surprised and let me walk her slowly as far as the town square. We didn’t say anything. I let her go and stood aimlessly, until she put her arm round my waist and pulled me gently away and along until we reached the river. There I began to tremble and shudder, and she guided us off the roadway and into the darkness under the bridge.
Even now, I remember the softness of her coat as I clutched her, and the feel of its big, smooth buttons. I started to weep as I have never wept before or since. At first loud sobs, so loud that she pressed my face into her shoulder. Then tears, streaming minute after minute so heavily that I thought, for a muddled second, that I was going to empty my whole body and soul through my eyes. She said nothing, but from time to time ran her fingers through my hair. Her coat collar grew soaked with tears, her neck was wet. But she stood with me for many, many minutes, maybe half an hour, until I slowly remembered her existence, pushed myself shakily back against the stones of the bridge pier and stared into her face. Her expression was serious, investigative rather than inquiring.
I thought about the feel of her neck. Maybe she had been expecting something else from me under the bridge. But she pulled out a handkerchief and made to wipe my face. I pushed the handkerchief away.
‘You look a right ticket,’ she said softly.
‘A what?’
‘A mess, son, a mess.’
‘Son? I’m older than you are.’
‘So where’s your mother, then? Is it her you’re wanting?’
‘No. Not a mother, not a woman. I don’t know.’
‘It was the song. I could just see you were in trouble when you were reading it. I’m sorry for that.’
‘You are a good person.’
She laughed and we kissed, a tight hug and kiss like brother and sister after a long parting.
‘Are ye right, then?’ I said I was fine. We set off back to the town square, swinging our linked hands. On the way, she sang for me, a cheery song about a tailor who fell through the bed, thimble and all. The small town was silent and asleep.
In the square, we faced each other. There were no street lights allowed in wartime Kirkton, but the moon had risen, casting a gleam across her features that made her look older. I could see just what she would be like at forty: handsome, sure, broad-shouldered from years spent carrying the trust of men and children.
She asked: ‘How will you get back?’ Then, hesitating, she said: ‘I’m staying with my auntie just down the way. There’s a couch you could...’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll hitchhike back.’ I needed very much to be alone. She nodded. ‘Ships that pass in the night, huh?’
‘I’ll never forget you,’ I said, wanting to mean it. We kissed again and she turned away, waving once before she walked round the corner. When she had gone, I set off to walk back to Pitnechtan.
It was a friendly night, rich with country smells, and on the road I met an owl, a pair of whirling bats, two half-seen beasts plunging in the hedge which I thought were deer. Once I heard the rumble of many aircraft passing overhead until their sound died away towards the North Sea. As I tramped, I felt emptied and even happy, thinking of nothing but the noise of my boots as the miles went by.
The sun was well risen by the time I arrived back at the camp gates. Tired and pleased with my aching legs, I made my way to the door of the officers’ mess to seek a cup of hot tea. It was Sunday morning and a few colleagues were already standing round the urn, waiting for a truck to take them to early Mass. It was only when one of them spoke to me – ‘How was the grand ball last night, Major?’ – that I realised that I couldn’t remember the singer’s name. Had I even asked her what her name was? I couldn’t remember that either.
13
Not long after the dance at Kirkton, the Colonel sent for me. I stood to attention before his desk. He did not tell me to stand easy. The Colonel was not a professional soldier, but he had metamorphosed himself into the old-fashioned kind of Polish commander, with traditions of discipline drawn from the Tsarist and Prussian armies. In other words, he treated his officers coldly, sometimes harshly, but to ordinary soldiers he was fatherly and intimate, using their first names as if they were children. The British did exactly the opposite, relying on their own easy-going, unquestioned class system. Their officers were a band of brothers, often old schoolmates, whose commanding officers addressed them by their Christian names, while ‘other ranks’ were kept strictly at a distance.
‘I am not satisfied with your performance, Major. You have become casual. You are drinking too much, with civilians in the town. The other night, you went absent when your duty was to escort your men back to camp after a dance. And your intelligence reports are not contributing anything. Nicely written, but I am not training journalists.’
He tapped a finger on a movement order lying on his desk. ‘Szczucki, you are in the wrong job. The talents you have – languages, foreign experience, an independent mind – are being wasted here. For some reason, you have lost energy. I don’t ask why, it is not my concern; every Polish soldier receives bad news or no news. So, Major, I am having you transferred for parachute and radio training.’
‘The silent-shadowy ones, sir?’
‘Obviously. Assuming you survive the course, you will find yourself back in Poland long before the rest of us. Among the Germans. That prospect should restore your energy.’
This news did not come as a complete surprise. The adjutant had privately warned me of the Colonel’s plan a few days earlier. And what the Colonel thought about me coincided with what I had come to think about myself, since the night under the bridge at Kirkton.
I could see now that for nearly two years I had been tormented by this sense of loss. Escapology had been no use to me; one can dart free of a person, a duty, a place, but not of an absence, a hole. It was as if I had been abandoned by something, or had abandoned it, but I could not give that something a name. Certainly, I had lost captaincy of my own feelings. What had I wanted from Helen, or why had I let myself become entangled with Johnston?
Supposing it would still be possible to go back to Poland after this war, how much did I really want to? And how could I bear to sit so tranquilly, so contentedly, in my warm office in this Scottish backwater while tanks blazed on African sands and battleships sank? And while – in my own land – men and women were put up against walls with their mouths crammed with plaster of Paris, to silence their screams as they were machine-gunned?
I had no answer to any of these questions except the last. No, I could not bear it. It was time to escape into a world where the problems would be reading my compass at night, jumping from an aircraft without fouling its tail with my parachute, hitting the ground without breaking my leg.
But as often happens in wartime, high suspense deflated into anticlimax. For no particular reason, my transfer was postponed, then postponed without a date. With little to do at Pitnechtan – my replacement as intelligence officer had already taken over my desk – I set myself to learning German properly, and spent the weekends in Edinburgh with an old Austrian lady who gave private language tuition. Her idea of conversation practice was to take turns reading Schiller’s Die Räuber aloud. I wondered what Gestapo interrogators would make of my Romantic choice of idioms. At least I was acquiring a fine, querulous Viennese accent.
One day, my successor told me that a civilian had rung me on the office telephone, and would call again in an hour. He pretended not to be listening when the call came, and I pretended to be discussing camp supplies – ‘about those blankets’. But Johnston sounded unusually calm and civil. We arranged to meet next Saturday morning on the station platform at Inverkeithing, on my way to Edinburgh.
Once again, I did not at first recognise him. A stocky, formidable man in a blue suit, white shirt and stripy tie stood grinning at me. A short ginger moustache, setting off his white teeth, made him look voracious.
‘Very good of you to look after it, Mike. I should have come through and uplifted it a while back, but...’
‘But what?’
‘But work comes first, am I no right? Specially with a war on. We need to set an example to the lads and not walk away from the desk when we feel like it. An example to the lassies too. Else they’d aye be off in the toilet blethering about the film stars.’
‘What the hell are you talking about? Desk? Lassies? Have you left your boat?’
‘The fishing? Ach, that was just my seaside adventure, what they call a brief encounter. I’m with Lang & Wilson’s now, down the way at Rosyth, in the engineering wing. Quite a well-managed old firm, in my opinion, but not venturesome at all.’
I thought of several things to say, but was too astonished to try any of them. ‘Lang & Wilson’s?’
‘The shipbreakers. Breaking dead ships for scrap. They call us the navy’s undertakers. I say: salvage merchants by appointment to Mister Churchill. Oh, gosh, this war sure keeps our books full.’
The whistle blew. As I climbed back into the compartment, he followed me and asked through the window: ‘The gold watch? Did you mind and bring it?’
‘It’s in your suitcase – Johnston Melville!’ He said nothing, but his grin vanished. Sharply, he raised his head to look me directly in the eyes and for the first time, I felt that he was dangerous to me, a fugitive no longer. Steam poured up and the train lurched off towards the Forth Bridge.
*
Another winter, more of a six-month autumn of downpours, drizzle and soaking mists, crawled across the tens of thousands of foreign servicemen – Poles, Canadians, Americans, French, Free Danes and Norwegians – who waited in Scotland to be called into battle. Every morning, they wiped the rust off their virgin weapons and marched out to salute the hoisting of their soggy flags.
The Death of the Fronsac_A Novel Page 12