Homeland (15 page)

Stella looked back at the men. ‘I wish Lyndon could find something like that, something that really interested him. All he’s sure about is what he
doesn’t
want to
do.’

‘Well, that’s not a bad start.’

‘Trouble is, it seems to be everything.’

‘Ah.’

A boom of laughter rose from the fireplace. In the ring of jovial, swaying figures Lyndon was still and silent.

Bennett said, ‘Why don’t you take him away for a bit, Stella?’

She looked up, startled. ‘What?’

‘Take him right away. It’s friends he needs at a time like this, and I suspect he has a fine friend in you.’

She blushed furiously. ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . I mean . . .’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I . . . couldn’t leave my work, not in term-time.’

‘Christmas then?’

‘But . . .’ She made a face that implied insuperable difficulties.

‘You can’t mean that people would notice you were unchaperoned?’ he said with heavy irony. ‘Well, what about staying in a youth hostel? Or with family friends?’

‘I don’t know . . . I . . .’ But for all Stella’s show of indecision the idea clearly excited her. ‘Yes,’ she said at last, with a small irrepressible laugh.
‘Why not?’

‘And Lyme tomorrow – take my advice,’ said Bennett. ‘Make a good long day of it.’

It rained steadily for the next three days then froze hard for two nights running. The succession of wet and cold seemed to unleash the winter’s quota of contagious
diseases more or less simultaneously. First, two children and three elderly patients came down with high fever, headache, and aching limbs, most probably the symptoms of influenza, though in the
children’s case Bennett couldn’t rule out the possibility of poliomyelitis. A day later, three small children from a single family developed whooping cough. Then, barely two days after
that, a child in a nearby village presented with diphtheria. Bennett treated her with penicillin, but the disease was advanced, the child weak, and he didn’t hold out much hope. For the
patients with flu and whooping cough penicillin could do nothing, and symptomatic relief, quarantine, and strict antisepsis were the order of the day, though as ever these measures offered little
guarantee of disease containment or individual outcome. Within two days the child with diphtheria died, followed soon after by two of the elderly influenza patients. At the beginning of the second
week three new cases of diphtheria cropped up in the same village, and the whooping cough took off like wildfire, with two to three cases notified each morning. Bennett’s days and nights
blended into a round of house calls and snatched sleep. Then, just as he began to wonder if the epidemics would ever burn themselves out, two of the children with diphtheria whose lives had been
hanging in the balance began to rally, three days went by with no new cases and, apart from the sudden loss of a baby to whooping cough, the worst appeared to be over.

The public health boffins liked to advance a link between high rates of morbidity and poor housing, but here on the Levels it seemed to Bennett that the association was far from proven. Towards
the end of the emergency he was called to an old boy of ninety-six who lived in a house under the banks of the River Tone. The place had been flooded so often that a succession of tidal marks
embellished the whitewash in ripples of frosted bronze that stretched four feet above the floorboards. Even now, at the end of what might be termed the dry season, the damp seemed to be trapped in
the very fabric of the building, as though the river, running close to the back of the house behind tall banks that rose almost to the height of the upper windows, was secretly leaching water into
the foundations and up through the brickwork. Yet, apart from a touch of bronchitis, the old boy was amazingly fit, and boasted that he hadn’t had a day’s illness since catching the
influenza in the epidemic of 1918. He lived on a diet of smoked eels, Spam, and vegetables which he grew in the narrow strip of earth between his back door and the slope of the riverbank. He had
been born and lived all his life in the house; ‘And I shall hop the twig here right enough too!’ By contrast, the baby who’d died of whooping cough had lived above the reach of
the water in a stone-built house, which though cold was free from damp. Seeing the pallor, lassitude and general sickliness of the surviving children it seemed to Bennett that their susceptibility
to disease owed less to their housing than an inadequate diet and the heavy smoking of the parents. But while the parents accepted his recommendation to feed the children chicken broth and fresh
fruit, the idea of cutting down on an innocent pleasure like smoking met with stubborn resentment. They did not pay him good money to be preached denial.

While the epidemics ran their course he asked a colleague to stand in for him at the convalescent home. Quite apart from not having the time to go, he was in dread of carrying infectious
diseases to men not yet restored to fitness. When he finally judged it safe to resume his Wednesday clinic, it was to find a small package waiting for him in the administrator’s office.
Inside was the book he had lent Wladyslaw, with a note that read:
Dear Dr Bennett, My request to stay near here is lost, or perhaps forgotten, and now I am sent to join my brigade in Yorkshire.
When I arrive there I will request return transfer to Somerset again. Forgive me, please, if I ask one more favour. I will be very grateful if you ask administration in Middlezoy Camp to explain I
want to come. I would like this farm job still. Until then, I thank you for your great help and friendship, and for this book, which I return with this letter. Wladyslaw

It was two days before Bennett found time to go to Middlezoy. The Polish resettlement camp was spread over three sites just outside the village in overflow barracks which had been thrown up
hurriedly in 1944 to house D-Day paratroops leaving from the airfield at Westonzoyland, and abandoned shortly afterwards. Squads of Polish soldiers were working their way through the sites,
repairing and refurbishing the bare metal Nissen huts and prefabricated concrete blockhouses. As each grid was completed a batch of new arrivals was installed, and perhaps a quarter of the camp was
now occupied. He saw women for the first time, and men in air-force uniforms, and heard what he took to be Polish music coming from a wireless.

Bennett was directed to a British liaison officer named Robertson. He was a Scot of about thirty-five, with thick black eyebrows, a shock of white hair, and an air of mild harassment. Armed with
a telephone and a battered wooden desk, he had set up an office in the concrete administration block.

When Bennett outlined Wladyslaw’s situation, Robertson said immediately, ‘I’ll gladly make a request. But I can’t promise anything. Transfers are strictly an internal
matter for the Poles.’

‘What are the criteria for a move? Do you know?’

‘I’d only be guessing.’

‘Is there anyone who might be able to tell me? A senior officer, perhaps?’

‘You could try. But you’ll have to brush up on your Polish. There’s only one of them speaks proper English, and I have the devil of a job getting five minutes of his
time.’

‘That must make your job interesting.’

The black eyebrows lifted expressively. ‘I’ve resorted to sign language, a great deal of smiling and back slapping, and the imbibing of strong drink at all hours of the day and
night. Have to watch it though. They’ve taken to drinking this firewater from France. Lethal stuff. I don’t ask how they get hold of it. It keeps them happy and that’s the
important thing.’ He gave a grunt. ‘Not so happy that they don’t complain, of course.’

‘What about?’

‘The food, mainly.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Appalling. But as I keep telling them there’s bugger all I can do about it.’

‘What about getting out and about? Do they go to the village?’

‘Oh yes. Middlezoy. Westonzoyland. Even further away.’

‘How are they getting on with the locals?’

‘Mixed. It’s fine when they go around in twos and threes, but they will keep going to the pubs in a huge gang. And you know how it is with Poles, two make a party and ten a
riot.’

‘There’s been trouble?’

‘Not in
that
sense, no. But not surprisingly the locals feel a bit crowded out. And not just in the pubs either. In the post offices as well.’

‘Why on earth the post offices? Sending a few letters?’

‘It’s not the letters. It’s the bloody great food parcels they send back to Poland every week. Full of tinned salmon and corned beef from the NAAFI – all the things that
civilians haven’t seen for years. I keep telling them not to make it too obvious, to go in ones and twos, and avoid making a queue – you can imagine the local post mistresses trying to
weigh a series of parcels going to Poland. But they don’t see the problem. They don’t appreciate the need to tread carefully. Here, have you seen this?’ He produced a newspaper
from a drawer and handed it across. ‘The cartoon.’

The newspaper was not one Bennett normally read, but he knew the cartoonist Low by repute. The cartoon depicted a British union official berating a Polish soldier on a horse. The union official
was saying: –
and none o’ that fancy cavalry riding, picking up other blokes’ pay-packets with yer teeth.

‘There’ve been more in the same vein,’ Robertson said.

‘I’ve seen them.’

‘Not that I agree with the British brass, advising the Poles to take the flashes off their uniforms before leaving camp – as if people are going to be fooled into thinking
they’re Tommies. My lot are too proud anyway, say they’d rather take it on the chin. And you know what? I don’t blame them. Damned if I’d be prepared to sneak around as if I
had something to be ashamed of. There’s been a lot of nonsense about luxury living too – the camps being better than the Ritz. The War Office is talking about inviting newspaper
correspondents into the camps to show them the truth. It won’t be a moment too soon.’

He shut the newspaper back in the drawer with a bang, and stood up. ‘This chap of yours’ – he looked down at his notes – ‘Malinowski. You say he’s got a job
waiting for him?’

‘Yes, on a farm.’

‘Have they obtained their Ministry of Labour clearance?’

‘I’m not sure about that.’

‘Well, they’ll need it. Here . . .’ He produced a form. ‘Take a tip from me. Tell them to say they’ve been looking for someone to fill the job for months and had no
luck at all.’

‘But it’s true.’

‘No harm in spelling it out, though. Otherwise it won’t get past the eagle eye of the trade unionists.’ Catching Bennett’s expression, Robertson said in a wry tone,
‘Well, that’s what we’ve come back to, isn’t it? The socialists said it all when they came to power. We are the masters now. And they were damn right, weren’t
they?’

Bennett made a series of house calls to elderly and infirm patients he hadn’t managed to see for some time and arrived home just after eight, praying there would be no urgent messages to
take him out again that night. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt so weary. His lungs were raw and wheezing, always a danger sign.

Marjorie greeted him with a smile and a shake of the head, which meant there were no urgent messages. It wasn’t until she had led him into the sitting room and pressed a sherry into his
hand that she added, ‘But there’s someone waiting to see you.’

He gave a faint sigh. ‘I was so hoping . . .’

‘It’s Stella, your cricketing friend.’

‘Goodness,’ he said in quite another tone. ‘Did she say what it was about?’

‘No. But it’s not urgent. She said she’s more than happy to wait in the study.’

The aroma of roasting meat had met him in the hall, a smell he associated with Sunday lunches and family gatherings. Catching it again now, his stomach gave an audible grumble.
‘We’re not expecting people for dinner, are we?’

‘No.’

‘But it’s a roast?’

‘Lamb,’ she said innocently. ‘I thought we might have a bit of a treat.’

He threw her a look of mild rebuke. ‘How did we come by this lamb, may I ask? It wasn’t in settlement of a fee, by any chance?’

‘Old Mr Pilbeam asked if you wouldn’t mind. He said he couldn’t manage cash at the moment.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose I have much choice, do I? But you know how uncomfortable I feel about accepting meat when everyone else is having to scrape by on their rations.’

‘But there’s no harm in a little barter, surely, darling? And it’s not as if we were the only ones. In fact, we must be the last people who still worry about it.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘Sometimes I think you walk around with your head in the clouds.’

‘You make it sound as though everyone’s doing it.’

‘Well, I hate to shatter your illusions, darling, but they
are
. Only since the war, of course. It was different while we were still fighting. But now, well . . . people can’t
see the harm. And I have to say I rather agree.’

If the sherry had warmed Bennett’s blood, it had also eroded his energy for argument. He said mildly, ‘So we’ve joined the band of grey marketeers, have we? Spivs, or whatever
they’re called nowadays.’

‘Spivs!’ Marjorie cried with a splutter of delight. ‘Oh, darling, what a wonderful thought!’ Pretending to eye him in a new light, she shook her head, and kept shaking it
until her laughter had subsided. ‘And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve given our meat coupons to a family who really need them.’

He would have been very surprised if she had done anything else. They had married in 1916 after a three-month courtship, and spent most of the next eighteen months apart. When he finally
returned from the war, in poor health and unable to work, it could have gone terribly wrong. Instead, it had got better and better, mainly because she was the most generous-spirited person he knew,
and from witnessing people at every extreme of misery and joy he had learnt that in the currency of human relations generosity had the greatest value of all.

Marjorie took a step closer and examined his face. ‘You’re looking dog-tired. Shall I put Stella off till another day?’