Magda's Daughter (21 page)

The square opened out in front of Helena and she stopped, amazed by how much larger it appeared in moonlight. Was it her imagination, or were the lights that shone from the houses here much stronger than those in the street? She moved closer to the churchyard wall and gazed at the scene, imprinting it on her mind.

She had the oddest feeling that only a thin curtain separated the present from her mother's world; that if she tore it down she would be able to step into the past and see the scenes Magda had described so vividly. The sounds from the houses around her faded, and the strong, sweet tones of violin and accordion, playing the country dance and gypsy tunes her mother had hummed, filled the air.

She saw Adam Janek – tall, upright, handsome, with piercing blue eyes and a confident air of authority, just as her mother had described him – a sepia photograph come to life, as he crossed the square to where her young mother was standing with her sister, Julianna. She watched him bow over Magda's hand, before leading her into the centre of a group of dancers.

She saw her great-grandmother, sitting in a huddle with the other elderly widows, all dressed head to toe in black, even stockings and shoes, in full mourning for husbands who had died in the previous century. Her farmer grandfather lifted his fifth glass of local beer high and smiled benignly across the square at her mother, Adam, uncles, aunts, the world in general and her grandmother in particular, who was sipping home-made wine and gossiping with the other village matrons. Her mother's voice echoed through her mind: ‘I never saw my father and mother dance. Not once. But my mother loved gossiping with the neighbours, and my father loved drinking and talking to the other farmers when work was done for the day. And they both liked seeing us children dancing and enjoying ourselves.'

A breeze blew across the square, rattling loose casements, picking up and scattering the fine dust that coated the ground. It stung her eyes and face. She wiped it away with her handkerchief, and the ghosts she had conjured dissolved into the darkness. The only dancer left in the square was the moonlight.

A stray cat darted before her so quickly she barely had time to see it before it was gone. A dog barked in a side street, and a door slammed somewhere.

She glanced behind her at the dark, forbidding churchyard, full of whispering trees. Then she looked towards the lane that led to the house her mother had always referred to as home. She could wait no longer.

When Ned had offered to take over Josef's task he was unaware that there was a lean-to shed next to the bar that was full of bottles of varying shapes and sizes. Anna took him by the elbow and showed him the shed, bottles and crates. Although she couldn't speak a word of English, she managed to make him understand that he could not place bottles of differing sizes or types in one crate, and that each type of bottle had its own specific crate.

Leaving the bar in the hands of a trusted customer for a few minutes, she beckoned him into the courtyard, switched the light on in the barn and showed him exactly how she wanted the crates stacked.

What Ned had assumed would be half an hour's work stretched into two hours and, as the minutes ticked by, he began to wonder if Josef had found Helena and, if so, where they both were. And what exactly they were doing that was delaying their return.

For as far back as Helena could remember, she had lived an urban life. First in the flat above the shop in Taff Street, and later the room she had shared with Ned in Bristol. The nearest she had come to the countryside was the year she had spent in a university student hall, when she had occasionally seen squirrels scampering across the lawns.

The lane that led to the Niklas house was narrow, and after she passed the last of the houses on the outskirts of the village there were no more lights, only unfenced fields, trees and moonlight. In the places where the branches overhung the road she couldn't even

see her hand when she held it up in front of her face. But worse than the intermittent pools of pitch darkness were the noises.

Strange scurrying in the bushes conjured images of giant rats. The hoot of an owl froze her blood. Distant howling – could it be wolves? – sent terror crawling over her skin. And a snuffling in a ditch reminded her of an article she had read about a wild boar killing a hunter.

Magda had only described happy daytime rambles, not fearful night walks. Whenever her mother had travelled by night it had always been as a passenger on a farm cart. And on Sundays, when the family had attended the church, or made formal visits, the farm pony and trap had been used.

Magda had described her daily trips to .and from school with her brothers, sister and the children of the farm labourers who lived outside the village. In winter there had been sledging and skiing, snowball fights and skating on nearby lakes and ponds. In spring they had enjoyed the fragrance of cherry, apple, plum and pear blossom on the trees that bordered the road. In summer they had watched the fruit grow and slowly ripen until they judged it just short of ready when they had picked and eaten it slightly green, because if they'd waited the fruit-pickers would have left none for them. But the blossom had long gone and it was too dark for Helena to make out any fruit.

Helena stopped several times, searching across the fields for lights, but she saw only darkness. After she had walked for half an hour, the woods closed in again and she could see nothing beyond the trees. More peculiar scratching and scrapings gave her a reason to quicken her step.

She turned a corner and there, on her left, set back from the road behind an orchard illuminated by a perfectly round, low-slung moon, was the Niklas family farmhouse, exactly as Magda had described it.

After her mother's lies about Adam Janek being her father, Helena hadn't known what to expect. But the house was large, three storeys high. Lights were on in two rooms on the ground floor and one on the second floor. She walked up to the orchard gate so she could take a closer look, and spotted a light burning in one of the outbuildings. She could hear a man talking softly.

She stood there, allowing her imagination free rein just as she had done in the square, immersing herself in the past that Magda had painted so vividly. Lost in thought, she only noticed that a cloud had scuttled across the moon when the world was plunged into darkness. Startled back to the present, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

Heart thundering, she stood stock still, hoping that whoever it was would pass by without seeing her, but just as suddenly as it had covered the moon the cloud moved on.

‘Helena?'

‘Josef,' she whispered, recognising his voice.

‘I thought I'd find you here. ‘

‘You've been looking for me?' She was angry at the inference that she couldn't take care of herself.

‘Ned asked me to find you. He was worried.'

‘If he was that worried, why didn't he come himself?'

‘Because he said you wouldn't talk to him, and thought a stranger would be better. Although I don't feel like a stranger.' He leaned on the gate beside her. ‘Farmers don't appreciate visitors at this time of night. They go to bed early.'

‘They're still awake. The lights are on and I heard someone talking.'

‘That doesn't mean whoever it is wants to talk to you,' he warned.

She tried to decipher his features but it was difficult in the darkness. ‘Do the Niklas family still live on this farm?'

‘People by the name of Niklas live here, yes,' he answered guardedly.

‘My mother told me that her father and older brother were killed in the war, but her younger brother Wiktor, sister Julianna and mother survived. Do Wiktor and Julianna live here?' she persisted.

Josef sighed. ‘The farmer's name is Wiktor. He lives with his mother, sister, wife and children.'

‘Is his sister married?'

‘No.'

‘How many children –'

‘Don't you think that you should leave the questions for your uncle, Helena?'

‘If he is my uncle.'

‘Anna recognised your mother from the photograph you showed her, didn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then you've no reason to think that he isn't your mother's brother.' He left the gate and turned back towards the road.

‘I can't help feeling that Anna didn't tell me everything she knew about my mother and Adam Janek,' Helena said quietly.

‘People around here would rather forget the war than talk about it. Being a war orphan, I can understand why.' He held out his hand. ‘Come on, I'll walk you back.'

She fell into step beside him but didn't take his hand. ‘I know your mother died in the massacre and your father was taken by the Germans, like my mother. Did you have any relatives who survived the war?'

‘I didn't say that my father was killed.'

‘He survived?'

‘He was marched away by the Germans and didn't come back. But the priest told me that someone from the town had met him in a Displaced Persons' camp after the war. He probably decided to make a life for himself in the West.'

‘He never tried to contact you?' she asked in surprise.

‘He may have thought I was dead. Either way, it hardly matters now. The priest, Anna and Stefan became my family.'

‘You never looked for your father?' she persisted.

‘Why should I? If he'd heard I'd survived he would have known where to find me. He was the grown-up, I was the child. If any searching had to be done, it should have been done by him.'

‘And you never think of him?'

‘Never,' he insisted resolutely.

‘Family is everything.'

‘You learned that from your mother?'

She knew he was mocking her but said, ‘I won't rest until I find out who my father was.'

‘You may never rest again.'

‘There has to be a record of my birth.'

Josef threw back his head and laughed. The sound echoed eerily around the quiet road.

‘What's so funny?'

‘You were born during the war.'

‘So?' she countered irritably.

‘Records were kept in villages like this one that had a church open at the time but if you were born in Germany to a Polish slave labourer, the chances are your birth was never registered. And even if it was, Germany was flattened after the war. Buildings were bombed, whole towns burned, including records offices.'

‘But I have my birth certificate. I needed it for my passport.'

‘Your birth certificate or Helena Janek's?' Josef interrupted.

Helena faltered. Even her birth certificate must belong to the girl buried in the churchyard. ‘A copy of Helena Janek's.'

‘Not the original?'

‘It bears the stamp of the Displaced Persons' camp. My mother applied to have it issued there.'

‘She would have found it comparatively easy to give you the identity of a child whose birth was registered in a Polish parish church.'

‘As opposed to that of an unregistered bastard born in Germany?'

‘You can't be sure of that,' Josef said sympathetically. ‘But what does amaze me is that your mother was allowed to keep you. Most Polish women taken by the Reich were sterilized. If they weren't and became pregnant, they were either sent back to their families or to a concentration camp.'

‘That still leaves me without a name or birthday to call my own.' Helena burned with anger. ‘I wish my mother were here, in front of me right now … I'd …'

‘Shout at her?' he suggested.

‘Demand to know the truth.'

‘The truth?' he repeated. ‘The truth is that you, like me, are alive to enjoy this beautiful world when so many other children who were born the same time as us are not.'

‘Alive without a history.'

‘You know who your mother is,' he reminded her.

‘But I can't even be sure that I was born in 1943.'

‘You know that you certainly couldn't have been born any earlier. The question is, how much later?'

‘There are photographs of me that were taken when I was a year old, and some of me and my mother at the Displaced Persons' camp in July 1945.'

‘And you look how old?'

‘My mother told everyone I was two. No one questioned it.'

‘The chances are that, after being in a labour camp, both you and your mother were malnourished, so no one would have questioned you being small for your age.'

Helena did some rapid calculations. Her mother had given birth three weeks before being taken by the Germans in June 1943. She couldn't possibly have had another child much before April 1944, which would have made her only fifteen months old in July 1945. She hadn't had a great deal of experience of small children, but she did know the difference between a one-year-old and a two-year­ old. And Bob Parsons had seemed sure of her age.

‘Have you noticed how beautiful the sky is in the country?' Josef said. ‘I hated having to study in Warsaw because of the lights. The sky looked different there. It wasn't so clear, and the stars weren't so bright.'

‘I can't think about the sky.'

‘You should. Just look at it and you'll see why. It's beautiful. It's also late, you must be tired, and tomorrow is another day. You'll drive yourself mad if you keep asking yourself questions that have no answer, Helena.'

‘I will go back to the farm tomorrow.'

‘It would be better to send the Niklas family a note first.'

‘Why?'

‘Because your grandmother is a frail old lady who has been through a great deal,' he warned. ‘The sudden arrival of a granddaughter she might not know she had, to announce the death of a daughter, could make her ill.'

‘Of course my grandmother knows about me,' she snapped.

‘You are sure of that?'

‘As sure as I can be.'

‘Because of the messages she sent to you in letters your mother read to you?'