by Hilary Boyd
By evening, the Rynek looked magical, lit up and glowing, café tables dotting the square, humming with people chatting and strolling in the warm June evening. Tim and Julian, retired teachers from Norwich, both tall and rangy, tanned from regular rambling weekends, asked her to join them for supper. They’d found an outdoor table in a little café tucked into the corner of the square.
‘Na zdrowie!’ Julian raised his shot glass of vodka late in the evening. ‘Here’s to an inspiring tour.’
Tim and Connie followed suit, although Connie had dispensed with the vodka long ago in favour of white wine. But the delicious potato pancakes, the meaty pierogi and the vanilla cheesecake – all in portions that would have fed the three of them for a week – were fighting with the alcohol in her stomach and making her feel a bit queasy. She wanted to lie flat on her bed and undo her black jeans, but she couldn’t be rude: they were both so charming.
‘Are you coming tomorrow?’ Tim asked, suddenly sober. He was the quieter of the pair, Julian the talker.
She nodded.
‘So you think it’s right we go? I’m curious, obviously, but is it OK to gawp at somewhere so ghastly? Isn’t it voyeurism?’
There was silence.
‘No, it’s an important memorial,’ Julian said. ‘We need to see just how terrible it was, so we never let it happen again.’
‘I get that,’ Tim said, ‘but fitting it in like a tourist attraction between beer and pierogi seems somehow disrespectful.’
‘Connie?’ The two men looked to her for an answer.
She thought for a moment. ‘I think it is a crucial memorial, as Julian says. We’ll be paying our respects. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know, but Mirek was telling me it’s an immensely powerful place, evocative and so heartrending … There aren’t tour guides shouting and waving umbrellas, or people taking selfies. I feel it’s right to go, personally.’
Connie let her gaze wander across the square. It was still full of people, although after eleven now. Something caught her eye: a figure, walking behind their table in the half-darkness. She twisted round, her heart hammering. But whoever it was had gone by the time she’d turned. There had been something familiar about the set of his shoulders, the way he walked … Jared? She shook herself. Christ, Connie, get a grip.
‘Everything all right?’ Julian was saying, concern in his sharp blue eyes.
‘Yes … I thought I saw someone I know.’
Julian continued to eye her. ‘You look shaken, Connie.’
‘Do I?’ She forced a smile. ‘Too much vodka, I’m seeing things.’
Both men laughed. ‘We ought to be heading back,’ Tim said reluctantly. ‘Tomorrow is going to be gruelling.’
She strolled between them on the short walk to their modern glass-fronted hotel, attempting not to think about Jared. Once in her room, the bright lights, patterned fabric and clean lines, the twenty-first-century version of G-plan furniture – all so anonymous and safe – calmed her. It was unthinkable that he would be wandering the Rynek at the exact time she was eating there. Although even the vaguest thought that he might be both disturbed and excited her – the recollection of their last encounter setting her body on fire so that she found it almost impossible to sleep.
What struck Connie as they arrived in Auschwitz was its stark enormity. Like everyone else of her generation, she’d seen countless films and photographs of the camps over the years, but they didn’t take into account the sheer scale of the place. The images, by reducing the scale, also drastically reduced the impact. The reality – with that deadly railway track running straight through the middle, like an evil truth – was overwhelming.
The temperature had dropped and it had rained heavily overnight, the balmy summer wiped out in a stroke as if it had never been. Which seemed appropriate, in a way, their coach arriving at Auschwitz in the sullen grey light of mid-morning. Not all of the tour group were present. Audrey had cried off at the last minute, another five of her passengers had never had any intention of going, and Connie didn’t blame them.
The buildings seemed solid, almost prosaic, at first. Not immediately ghastly. Not until she faced the infamous glass cases of shoes and matted hair, the suitcases and spectacles. Then Connie went cold. And the silence. Queues and queues of people, hundreds probably, at any one time, filing slowly past the exhibits in the purpose-built barracks, and barely a sound to be heard.
‘You first.’ Tim stood aside to allow her to enter the wooden hut. It was freezing inside, the floor just mud, the visitors stepping across duck boards. Most of the wooden huts had been burned, but this one had been preserved: a death hut for women too ill to work, not worth gassing, just left to die. ‘And this is the summer,’ Tim whispered, shivering like Connie, although she had on her Uniqlo padded jacket, he a professional-looking anorak. ‘This happened in my lifetime, Connie … Can you imagine?’
On the coach back to Kraków no one spoke. Some of the tour had gone on to Birkenau and a chilling walk through a gas chamber; others had declined, staying in the café by the car park. But all of them were mute with shock.
The group was scheduled to eat in the hotel that night, and sitting in her seat, watching the Polish countryside slide past in a blur through the steamed-up coach windows, Connie wondered how any of them would find words to express what they had seen. Or if they would even try.
In the end, dinner had been drink-fuelled and noisy, her charges letting off steam in a boisterous manner that seemed to verge on hysteria. We just want to celebrate life, Connie thought, but was glad to reach the quiet of her room when the meal was finally over.
She took off her make-up and slipped into the light blue voluminous T-shirt she slept in on tour, took off her watch, plugged in her phone and sank beneath the soft hotel duvet with a sigh of relief. She felt properly warm for the first time that day. England, still on daylight saving, was currently two hours behind Poland, so this might have been the time to ring Devan, to share some of the horror that still clung to her, like a scab, with someone she knew would sympathize.
But, these days, she was so unsure of the reception she might receive that she couldn’t face calling. The last thing she needed right now was to talk to a husband who was either drunk or remote – or both.
She lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. The bedside light was still on, but she didn’t want to be in the dark yet, the images from the day still rolling silently round her head. She must have dropped off, though, because she wasn’t totally sure if she heard the knock on her door, or whether it was in a dream.
Groaning silently, she stumbled out of bed to check. A passenger who can’t undo his toothpaste, she thought, irritable at being woken.
‘Who is it?’ she asked through the door.
‘Me,’ said a voice she instantly recognized.
11
Connie, still clutching the door handle, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.
The voice again, more cautious this time: ‘Connie?’
She hesitated for a second longer, swallowing hard, then slowly pressed down on the handle and pulled the door open a crack.
Jared stood in the corridor, looking uncertain. When he saw her, his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Phew!’ He spoke quietly. ‘I thought maybe you’d swapped rooms with one of your people and I’d be frightening some poor eighty-year-old to death.’
‘You nearly frightened me to death,’ she retorted. Although the sight of him made her stomach lurch, she said, with as much firmness as she could muster, still through the crack in the door, ‘Jared, go away. You can’t come in. It’s the middle of the night.’
Jared looked surprised. ‘Don’t be angry, Connie. Please.’ And, when she didn’t move, he went on, ‘Can I come in … only for a minute? I just had to see you again.’
His voice trailed off as a young man in the grey uniform of the hotel walked swiftly along the corridor, staring at them both as he passed.
Connie panicked, terrified that some
of the group might still be up and spot a strange man outside her room. She pulled the door wider and ushered Jared quickly inside before anyone could see him.
Finding herself face to face with him in the dimly lit hotel room, she didn’t know what to do or say, very conscious that all she had on was a T-shirt that barely reached her knees. She crossed her arms, didn’t ask him to sit down and he made no move to do so, just stood close to the door.
‘So, it was you … last night, in the square?’
Jared looked puzzled. ‘Me? I’ve only just arrived.’
‘Really? I could have sworn I saw you, around eleven, walking across the Rynek.’
‘Not me, Connie. My plane got in at eight this evening.’
She went and sat down on the bed, her whole body trembling with surprise, and finally indicated the only chair in the room, a wooden armchair with padded, patterned cushions. ‘You really can’t be here, Jared.’
He sat forward, forearms on his thighs, hands clasped, seemingly intent on making his case to her. ‘I’m on my way to Warsaw to meet this new design group.’ She must have looked puzzled, because he quickly explained, ‘I’ve just sold my kitchen design business, and I’m looking for partners in a new venture.’
Connie waited. So that’s what he does, she thought. It made him slightly less mysterious, but he had questions to answer. ‘Are you telling me you just happened to arrive in Kraków at the exact same time as me? And that you just happened to stumble across the information that I was staying in this hotel?’ Her voice was low but fierce. She wished she could stop trembling, but the combination of his presence in her bedroom and her naked lower half was not exactly helping.
Jared smiled sheepishly. ‘I won’t lie to you, Connie. I checked out your tour website and timed my meeting to coincide because I wanted to see you again.’
‘Jared! You can’t just follow me around Europe when the fancy takes you.’
His look was hard to read. ‘I had to see you, Connie. That night at the lake …’
Now he stood and came over to her. She felt quite incapable of stopping him as he sat on the bed, put his arm round her shoulders and drew her close. His jacket was cool and smelt of the outside – it reminded her of the night at the lake too. She wanted to bury her face in it, to inhale the scent of him.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she repeated weakly, closing her eyes as she tried to resist the surge of desire his touch engendered.
He didn’t reply. His hand was lightly stroking the skin of her upper arm, his thigh lay tight to her own bare one.
Connie managed to pull away but did not stand up. She wasn’t sure she could. ‘You have no idea what a day I’ve had,’ she said desperately, not looking at him, not daring to.
‘I have. I went last year.’
She gave a shaky sigh. Without thinking, she allowed him to take her in his arms again, feeling the agonizing pleasure of his hair brushing her forehead, the pressure of his arm, holding her close.
‘It was so unbelievably awful,’ she whispered, trying to distract herself from the arousal she couldn’t suppress. ‘Incomprehensible. We all know about it. Know every grim detail. But seeing it close up … imagining those families …’
‘That’s the thing. People just like us,’ Jared said. ‘Hell.’
Then she felt his fingers under her chin, raising her face to his. For the longest second, they gazed at each other before he kissed her. It was slow and soft and exquisite – but not demanding. It turned her body to water, nonetheless.
‘We can’t,’ she whispered, although every inch of her told her they must.
He didn’t reply, just pulled her up from where they sat and lifted her in his arms, laying her gently on the bed, pulling the duvet over her. She watched as he peeled off his jacket and shoes, his jeans, until he was in his cotton shirt and boxers. Then he slipped into bed beside her.
Turning her gently on her side and bringing his body close, he wrapped his arm loosely across her body. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said quietly.
But Connie couldn’t and, judging by Jared’s quick breath on her neck and the tension fizzing off him, it was clear he couldn’t either. She longed so much to make love to him right now, she could scarcely bear it. Is it wrong? she asked herself, as she lay, hardly daring to breathe, trying to control her desire. The cold, the anguish and hate that had stalked her day, the smell of terror that still haunted the place, seemed to reproach her. She felt ashamed that she was alive and free, able to enjoy the sensuous warmth of Jared’s body against her back. But the life surging through her veins right now was irresistible, impossible to deny. She took a shaky breath, then turned to him.
Connie must have slept very deeply because when she woke Jared was gone.
A note, written on hotel stationery, was propped on the bedside table. All it said was ‘Warsaw? x’.
She stared at it for a moment, remembering. The sex had been blissful. Quick, intense and cathartic, their bodies were so ready, so pumped with desire, that all thought of what she was doing – and whether she should be doing it – was temporarily banished. She had just let go. Now, through the haze of sleep, her pulse couldn’t help but quicken at the prospect of seeing him again. Shame seeped around the edges of the thought, but she was too discombobulated, as she hauled herself out of bed and got ready for work, to give it proper attention.
Miles and Deborah Loader from Worcester – in their mid-seventies, a lively, inquisitive couple – accosted Connie as soon as she got out of the lift. They had obviously been waiting for her, but she was late down to breakfast, having dressed and packed on autopilot, her thoughts consumed with Jared.
‘Connie, dear,’ Deborah began, both of them flanking her as if they were worried she might make a run for it, ‘we don’t want to fuss, but we wondered if you could help us with something.’
Connie tried to focus. Something was wrong because Deborah, usually so engaging, looked pale and upset this morning. ‘Of course,’ she said, with her best smile.
Miles seemed a bit embarrassed as he took over. ‘We’re going home.’
‘Oh …’ Connie was surprised. No one had ever left early from one of her tours.
Before she had a chance to ask why, Deborah hurried on: ‘We haven’t told anyone, because we didn’t want to make an issue of it, but some of my family died in Auschwitz.’
She bit her lip and Connie thought she might be about to cry. She took her arm and guided her to one of the chairs in the lobby, urged her to sit. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yesterday was a journey I’d always vowed I’d make one day,’ Deborah went on. ‘But it’s taken it out of me. I don’t feel able to enjoy the rest of the trip now.’
Connie’s head was banging with tiredness. She ran through the company protocol for a situation like this, dreading the hours she might have to put in to sort things out. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’ll want to fly home?’
‘We’ve booked a flight for later today,’ Miles assured her. ‘Our problem is, how best to say goodbye to everyone. Deborah doesn’t want anyone to know the real reason – we only told you because we didn’t want to lie to you. You’ve been so kind. But we thought you might have a suggestion.’
You’ve come to the right person, if you’re after a plausible lie, she thought, guilt suddenly washing over her, like an icy wave, as she confronted Deborah’s grief for her dead family in light of her betrayal of her living one. ‘You could just say you haven’t been well, that the tour is more tiring than you expected?’
Miles nodded, but hesitated, glancing down at his wife, who was sitting very still, head bowed, as if she were in another world. ‘We wondered … would you mind saying it for us?’ he finally asked. ‘Then we could just slip away. Deborah really isn’t up to all those questions, the hugging and stuff.’
Connie knew what he meant. ‘Of course I will,’ she said, swallowing hard because she suddenly felt nauseous. She dithered, not wanting to rush off and leave them in the l
urch but worried she might actually be sick. She tried to breathe, but the waves of cramping nausea pulsed through her body, like the incoming tide. ‘Will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back,’ she muttered, fleeing to the Ladies behind the foyer before they had a chance to reply. When she reached the safety of the cubicle, she flopped down onto the seat and bent over, head between her knees, rocking backwards and forwards, finally confronting her betrayal.
People in the throes of an affair, Connie had often observed, often appeared buoyed up – the damage and distress coming later, of course – carried away, initially, by the blind thrill of it, as if it were the most glorious thing in the world to cheat on the person you love. Connie felt sick, not elated, as the reality of last night hit her. Yet she seemed completely unable to stop the juggernaut. Warsaw, she thought, as she sat there, head resting on her folded arms in the hotel toilets. Tomorrow night. And her body melted in direct defiance of her shame.
When she returned to the foyer, Miles and Deborah had gone.
How Connie got through the packed day – sorting out the Loaders’ departure, the journey to Warsaw, the settling of the group in the new hotel and supper with five of them – she would never know. But get through it she did. Now it was nearly midnight and she lay on her bed, fully clothed, too enervated even to undress.
Jared had not been in touch. But, then, he never told her what he was planning. In a way, though, the random nature of his visits made their affair – because what else could she call it now? – seem less solid, less premeditated … but, she was ashamed to admit, also more exciting. Will he come tonight? She hoped not. Sleep was the only thing she needed right now.
Connie awoke a couple of hours later, still dressed and lying on top of the duvet, the bedroom lights blazing. She was cold and disoriented, her mouth sour from the wine at dinner. Dragging herself to sitting and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she shivered. We’re only in Warsaw for two nights, she thought, as she stumbled out of her clothes and into the bathroom, wondering how she would feel if Jared didn’t appear.