Homeland (37 page)

‘Not tonight.’

‘What’s got into you, Billy boy?’

‘I told you – I’m not in the mood.’

‘Not hankering after your lady-love, are you? Not yearning for a bit of
amour
, Somerset style?’

Billy gave a weary groan. ‘For Christ’s sake.’ He had long since regretted telling Ernie about Annie, not the least because, being rather drunk at the time, he had got carried
away with the facts, boasting that Annie was crazy for him, implying she had demonstrated it in the best possible way. He’d been trying to play down the idea ever since, without success.

‘Come on, then’ – Ernie jerked his head towards the girls – ‘we’re wasting valuable time.’

Billy gave in with bad grace. ‘All right. But ten minutes at the most. Then I’m off.’

Ernie led the way through the crush and, in a well-practised manoeuvre, drew the redhead and her friend away from the rest of the group and bought them a drink. As Ernie began his routine
– ‘Know what? I dreamt about you all last night’ – Billy eyed the redhead’s friend without enthusiasm. Her name was Irene. She was short and hard-eyed and drank gin
and lime. She told him she worked in a nearby clothing factory.

‘So what’s your line of work?’ she asked in a bored tone.

‘The motor trade.’

‘Mechanic?’

‘Buying and selling cars.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Her shrewd eyes looked him up and down, and she raised her eyebrows sceptically.

Billy threw the question back with a stare.

‘You’ve got dirt under your fingernails.’

‘So what?’

‘So . . . strange sort of buying and selling.’

‘Just goes to show – you can never judge by appearances.’ Noticing that her hair looked none too clean, catching under the cheap scent a faint hint of the unwashed, he thought:
Then again, sometimes you can.

‘Sell many cars then?’

‘Enough.’

‘Got one yourself?’

‘Are you always this nosy?’

‘Just asking.’

But she wasn’t just asking; she was sizing him up, deciding if he was good for another drink or two; even, if all went well between her friend and Ernie, a proper night out as a
foursome.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re out of luck.’

She retorted swiftly, ‘And why would I want to be in luck?’

‘You tell me.’

She glared at him. ‘You think I was
begging
or something?’

Billy looked around for somewhere to dump his glass before fighting his way out through the crowd.

Irene hissed, ‘You’re all the bloody same. Big-headed bastards. Thinking you’re God’s gift. Well, I’ve got news for you – I’m not in the market for more
troubles. I had a bloke, didn’t I? Waited for him all through the bloody war. And the moment the bastard got back, he only went off with someone else, didn’t he?’

‘Bad luck.’

She eyed him uncertainly, trying to gauge the spirit of this remark. ‘Yeah, well . . .’ Another look, more trusting this time. ‘Don’t suppose I was the first to fall for
a bastard.’

Fearing her trust more than he feared her venom, Billy leant towards Ernie. ‘I’m off.’

Ernie hissed in his ear, ‘Come on, mate, another round—’

‘Nope.’

‘I’m
asking
you.’

‘No. I’m off.’

Ernie seemed on the point of anger, then the tension went out of him and, slapping Billy on the shoulder, he said in an odd tone, ‘Watch yourself, eh?’

It was only as Billy got out into the street that he realised Ernie had spoken to him in a tone of pity.

T
HE TRACTOR
clawed its way up the steepening slope, until, meeting a drift, it strained and juddered, and seemed to hover, even to lift its nose, as if
it might rear up on its hind wheels at any moment. Hastily, Stella stamped on the pedals and the tractor rocked back against the brakes with a violent jerk that caused the trailer to dip sharply
under Wladyslaw’s feet.

Stella flung a backward glance at him, her eyes in the gap between hat and scarf alive with comment. He gestured for her to take her time, a slow damping motion of one hand. She nodded and let
the tractor roll back a short way before heaving on the gear lever with both hands and attacking the snowdrift from a different angle. This time the tyres bit and held, and with a violent roar the
tractor ground up the slope and lurched over the rim of the drift. Reaching more level ground it surged calmly through the deep soft upper layers of snow like a boat through water.

They were nearing the last stop on their supply round, a cottage in a snow-filled gully. Through the fast-falling snow Wladyslaw thought he could make out the occupants trying to dig their way
along the track, but if so they still had a long way to go. Stella swung the tractor through the gate and charged at the drift, but the snow banks rapidly closed around them in soft impenetrable
walls and she reversed out before yanking on the handbrake. Wladyslaw clambered off the trailer as she jumped down.

Her eyes were bright with exhilaration. ‘That hill was a bit steep.’

‘I had absolute confidence,’ said Wladyslaw, lifting his eyes to heaven and pressing his hand against his chest in an exaggerated pantomime of heartfelt relief.

‘I should hope so too!’ she declared.

‘Your hands,’ he said solemnly.

Obediently, she took off her gloves and held her hands out to him.

‘They don’t feel dead any place?’ His concern was practical but also self-interested because it gave him the opportunity to take her hands and rub them and hold them tightly
between his own.

‘Nose is OK?’ He prodded it with his finger.

She wriggled it and laughed.

They moved round to the back of the trailer and began to sort the load.

‘Are you sure I can’t bring anything tonight?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Not even cake?’

‘No.’

‘Cider?’

‘No.’

‘Would it be safe to assume that the evening is to have a Polish theme?’

He dragged the last bag of coal to the edge of the trailer. ‘It is safest in this life to assume nothing.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘You are a woman of impulse.’

‘Yes!’ she declared. Tilting her face up to Wladyslaw’s, she repeated with a triumphant laugh, ‘Yes!’

He shook his head at her, barely able to contain the surge of agonised happiness that swept through him. Her joy thrilled him not only because it mirrored his own, but because it gave
confirmation to what was happening between them, and seemed at last to have put paid to the past. For weeks the shadow of the cousin-lover had lain between them like a sword. Stella never spoke of
him and Wladyslaw certainly never asked, but often he would catch a look on her face that he learnt to dread, an expression of bafflement and loss that cast a chill over his heart. According to Dr
Bennett the cousin had left soon after Wladyslaw’s arrival and was believed to be in London. It was said he was planning to go abroad, a prospect that seemed almost too much to hope for
until, in one of Wladyslaw’s more tormented moments, it struck him that travel might lend his rival a spurious aura of romantic endeavour.

‘This evening,’ Wladyslaw said, ‘there will be a theme, yes. But not Polish.’

‘No?’ Stella narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Am I allowed a clue?’

‘No clues. You must wait.’

She pretended to put her mind to it, to see if she could second-guess him, but it was only a game, she was happy to wait.

The people from the cottage arrived just then. Wladyslaw helped them to carry the supplies down the leeward side of a hedgerow where the snow wasn’t too thick. It was the third time the
family had been cut off in six weeks, and now their water pump had frozen, forcing them to draw water direct from the well. Before Wladyslaw left, they offered him some brandy called applejack and
laughed when he drank it like vodka, in a single gulp.

By the time he got back to Stella she had reversed the tractor out into the lane, and they set off immediately. A sharp wind met them on the ridge road and Wladyslaw shouted and mimed to Stella
to pull her scarf up over her nose. Then he hunched low in the trailer, but not so low that he couldn’t watch her with proprietorial pride, the way she drove like a veteran, swaying her body
in counter-movement to the more violent lurches of the tractor, gripping the juddering wheel, tolerating no opposition from the gear stick. If the effect was slightly marred by her need to extend
her leg beyond its natural reach to operate the clutch, it in no way detracted from the overall impression. He loved her determination and her panache, the way she refused to be deterred. She had
taken a couple of driving lessons when the blizzards closed the school, and had been rattling around on her uncle’s tractor ever since.

All around, the snow fell swiftly in swirling blurs of fine flakes that blotted out everything but the occasional tree and the hedgerows reeling past on either side, their branches caked with
huge unwieldy clots of snow. At one point their way seemed blocked by a drift that had formed opposite a gate, filling the road and completely submerging the leeward hedgerow, but by creeping close
to the gate and keeping momentum Stella managed to push through.

Coming into the village, approaching a fork in the road, Stella swivelled round and catching Wladyslaw’s eye jabbed a finger left. He nodded vigorously and she turned down the hill towards
Athelney. As they bumped over the level crossing Wladyslaw found himself looking to left and right as if for trains, but there had been no trains for more than two weeks and the track was buried
under parallel bulges of snow.

They passed through the next string of cottages and turned onto a low road that rose to cross the Tone just above its junction with the Parrett. Stella halted on the bridge. The scene was of
unrelieved whiteness. Snow drooped on the trees and billowed in frothy waves over the riverbanks, while all around the flakes kept falling and falling. The two rivers were locked in ice that was
for the most part snow-covered, but in places scratched and scathed by the wind and the myriad criss-crossings of bird tracks. Stella peered upriver and down, searching for two young Bewick’s
swans that had failed to escape to open water when the freeze set in. She had been feeding them regularly at this spot, but the previous day the one she called Merlin had disappeared, and now there
was no sign of Lancelot.

‘I can’t see them,’ she called.

‘Maybe they both have flown together,’ Wladyslaw suggested.

Her fretful glance declared she thought this unlikely.

On the far side of the bridge she turned the tractor round and drove back along the road below the Parrett, scanning the high banks, diverting up any track and wider pathway that offered the
smallest view of the meandering river.

At a place named Oath she turned through a gate and parked below the high mechanism of a sluice gate. Without waiting for Wladyslaw she jumped off the tractor and scrambled up the bank. Reaching
the top she made an exclamation, whether of relief or disappointment he couldn’t tell until she called out, ‘I think it’s Merlin!’

Joining her, Wladyslaw saw the swan floating in the pool of ice-free water just below the sluice.

‘I’m pretty sure it’s him,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Definitely.’

She had brought bread and vegetables and threw the scraps down piece by piece. ‘Look! Look!’ She laughed. ‘Greedy thing!’

‘He’s hungry all right.’

‘You really think it’s him?’

‘Yes, I do believe. Or I would not say this.’

She looked at him and said, ‘It’s true. You wouldn’t.’

‘He is like me. A simple creature.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

When the food was gone, they stared wordlessly into the pool. Around them the flakes fell swiftly in a veil, the deep snow-filled silence was mute and unresonant; they might have been lost in a
secret world. He went and stood behind her shoulder, almost touching it. Slowly she inclined her head towards his in a gesture that sent a whisper of joy into his heart. He looped an arm around her
waist and drew her gently against him. Standing there in the unearthly silence, with her body resting against his, he felt he was caught in a fantastic dream. Only the icy encrustations of her hat
against his cheek seemed to have an edge of reality.

She moved, and the dream broke. All his senses were alert to the need to speak. The moment had been of such significance that he felt it must be acknowledged, revered, affirmed. He decided to
say some of the things he had intended to say that evening.

‘Stella?’

She turned to face him. Close up, her nose was very white, the cartilage like carved ivory; her cheeks under the freckles were dappled with delicate patches of colour, her eyes damp and bright
from the bitter air.

‘I wish to tell you this – that I have decided to stay in England. Definitely. To make my life here.’

‘Oh, Wladek . . . I’m so pleased.’ She put a gloved hand to his upper arm. ‘So pleased. I hope you never have reason to regret it.’

He smiled down at her. ‘I think this is impossible. I also tell you that I have received yesterday papers to apply to London University.’