Homeland (41 page)

‘I certainly wouldn’t argue with the idea of luck. We all need it now and again.’

Lyndon looked as though he might say something else but appeared to think better of it. Glancing around at the kettle, he made to get up.

‘No, please don’t worry,’ Bennett said. ‘I should be getting back anyway.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Lyndon led the way into the hall.

‘Are you here for a while?’ Bennett asked as he pulled on his coat.

‘For a few weeks. Till I start my new job.’

‘Ah. And what’s that?’

‘Colonial Office,’ he replied without enthusiasm. ‘Burma.’

‘How exciting.’

‘I rather doubt it. The work’s going to be boring as hell. And the diplomatic life – well, I’ve glimpsed it. I’ve no illusions on that score. Cocktail parties.
Snobbery. Petty politics.’

‘There’ll be compensations, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, I’m hoping to get upcountry now and again. To get right away. It’s very beautiful there.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

When Bennett had wrapped the last scarf around his chin, Lyndon opened the door and they shook hands.

Lyndon said, ‘Your younger brother, the one you found . . . Did he . . .?’

‘He died. There at the clearing station.’

‘You were with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘He had some luck then, at the end.’

The roof had not been designed to resist blizzards blown in by gale-force winds. The snowflakes, fine and sharp, found their way up through the overlaps of the tiles, emerging
in puffs of white dust to settle over the floor of the loft in a series of ridges and corrugations. It took Wladyslaw ten bucket-loads and five journeys up and down the stepladder to clear it, but
this was as nothing compared to the first snows, when large areas of the loft had been knee-deep in drift.

With the last bucket-load deposited out of the window, he closed the trapdoor and put the ladder away. He lit the fire in Stan and Flor’s room so that it would be warm by the time he
brought Flor up from the kitchen, then went down to the unused parlour and made up a fire of coal and kindling which he would supplement with apple wood just before Stella arrived. He shook out the
rugs and dusted the furniture and swept the floor and put fresh candles in the candleholders, two of them brass, the rest improvised from cored apples.

At six he went into the kitchen to find Stan ladling stew and potatoes into a bowl and Flor propped up in her easy chair, a napkin round her neck, an apron draped over her lap, a spoon clutched
in her hand. At the sight of Wladyslaw, she stretched out a gracious hand; but for the spoon, she might have been a famous beauty demanding homage. He bowed over her hand and kissed it, as he
always did, and saw her face break into a delighted smile.

‘Does this Joe eat like you?’ demanded Stan. ‘Like a blithering horse?’

‘He will pay for his food, Stan. OK?’

‘
Joe.
What sort of a name is that? It’s bloomin’ English.’

‘Like Stan is also Polish.’

Stan scoffed emphatically, though he never tired of Wladyslaw bringing up the idea so that he could shoot it down in flames. ‘Stan-
ley
. I keep telling you: Stan-
ley.
English
as they come.’ Then, as he handed Wladyslaw a bowl of beef stew and potatoes: ‘Question is, does this Joe play cribbage or does he not?’

‘I will ask. But I think he is too tired tonight.’

‘No use to me then, is he? And you neither, with your English lessons.’

‘I play cribbage with you tomorrow, Stan. OK?’

He grumbled, ‘Don’t have much option, do I?’

Wladyslaw carried the bowl of stew up to the apple store to find the place in darkness and Jozef fast asleep. It took a lot to wake him, and even more to get him to sit up and eat. Wladyslaw
didn’t have to look for the empty bottle to know he had finished the vodka.

After supper Wladyslaw lit the fire in the parlour and took a bowl and a kettle of hot water up to his room to wash. The room was at the end of the house and very cold. Ice glittered on the
inside of the window and his breath emerged as vapour. Quickly, before the cold had time to bite, he stripped and scrubbed himself energetically from head to toe. He had no suitable civilian
clothes so he put on his army shirt and trousers over some clean underwear he had washed and dried the previous day. Combing his hair in front of the patchy mirror, feeling his body smart from the
cold, he felt great lurches of agonised happiness. It seemed incredible that this amazing woman should even now be making her way to him through the snow, that she should be coming not just as a
friend but as a lover, the unquestioned owner of his heart. He saw her before him in the falling snow at the lock, the brilliance of her gaze, the pallor of her carved features in the bleached
light, the sudden unexpected upwelling of tears; he felt again the touch of her lips, the way they had moved softly against his; he heard the confident joyful ‘Yes’ that told him she
had begun to love him in return; and his optimism surged, he felt that his poverty and lack of prospects would not after all be an impossible barrier. He knew only that he had told her the truth,
that his life would have no purpose if he couldn’t be near her, that all his happiness lay in seeing and hearing her.

Hurrying down to the kitchen, he went up to Flor and lifted both arms wide in a gesture of regret. ‘I must take you up early tonight, dear lady, because I have English lesson.’

Smiling, she put down her crossword puzzle and reached up to loop an arm around his neck. He lifted her easily, lightly, swinging her up into his arms like a lover, and perhaps it stirred a
memory because, though their progress up the stairs was necessarily ponderous because of his leg, there was a wistfulness in the tilt of her head, a certain dreaminess in her eyes. When he placed
her carefully on the bed, however, the dreams had gone and she fixed him with a look that was sharply maternal, a blend of affection and wonder at this, her most unexpected foundling, the son of
the wild winter, blown in with the wind and the blizzards from God only knew where.

They bade each other goodnight in their customary fashion, she with a wave and a cracked smile, he with a hand to his chest and a short bow.

It was just before seven when he placed some apple logs on the fire and lit the candles in the parlour. He arranged the chocolate biscuits he had bought from the village shop on a plate
alongside two teacups and saucers, and laid out the information from London University on the desk flap, with a pad and pencil to make notes. For the finishing touch, he fetched the picture
postcard of London he had borrowed from a comrade at the camp and propped it up on the mantelpiece, angled to catch the light from the nearest candle.

By the time he had finished, the apple wood was sending up bright flames and giving off its sweet seductive scent. While he waited for Stella, he searched through the papers from the university,
looking for information about money, his most immediate concern. So far as he could gather he had the option of a student grant or taking extended leave from the Resettlement Corps on normal pay,
from which he concluded that the value of the two must be about the same. But whether the money would cover the cost of rented accommodation they didn’t say. A student hostel was out of the
question, not only because of his age, but because it would rule out any chance of starting married life. And he could not contemplate so much as a year, let alone two, without Stella.

By twenty past seven he had lost all concentration and was staring into the fire. By half past he was listening to the wind buffeting the window and berating himself for letting Stella refuse
his offer to collect her. He saw her slipping on ice, lying helpless with a broken leg. He saw her falling into a ditch, twisting her ankle. Five minutes later he pulled on his jacket and hat and
went out into the night. The snow seemed to have stopped, though the blustering wind was sending sprays of powder off the roof and scuffles of snow along the packed surface of the yard. He started
up the hill, his eyes scanning the whiteness, his ears reaching out to catch the slightest sounds above the hissing and skittering of the wind, and castigated himself again and again for not having
gone to collect her.

He had reached the steepest part of the lane when he saw someone emerging from the pale gloom ahead. The figure was moving lightly along, it could only be Stella, and he shouted her name. She
waved, and in his joy he quickened his pace.

She began to speak while she was still some distance away. ‘Wladek, I’m sorry, I’d have come sooner to tell you but – well, something’s come up, you see.’

He grasped her shoulders and laughed with relief. ‘Here you are! I thought something had happened. I thought you were lost or fallen or . . .’ Something in her manner or her silence
made him pause.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

Only then did he understand that she wasn’t coming.

‘Your aunt is not well?’

‘No. It’s . . .’

Her hesitation made him nervous. ‘What?’

‘It’s my cousin. He’s come home. And – well, I have to see him. I have to.’ She murmured again, breathlessly, ‘Sorry,’ and this time the word was like a
stake driven into his heart.

A
S THE
train lumbered clear of the hills Billy saw in the first light of dawn a low ground mist stretching away towards an indistinct horizon, and close
under the track the dark glint of waterlogged fields and overflowing streams. Twice in the night the train had slowed to a crawl for what seemed many miles, and twice it had stopped altogether in
the middle of nowhere. The guard had said there was a broken-down train ahead, but during a halt at Frome the ticket collector told him it was the flooding.

A dark hill rose up and the train roared through a tunnel and a series of cuttings before slowing for the last stop before Athelney. While Billy was still alone in the compartment he stood up
and, knees braced against the seat, spruced himself in the high-set mirror, smoothing his hair back with long passes of the comb, setting his jacket square on his shoulders and straightening his
shirt and tie. The suit had cost him all he had, but despite the occasional misgivings about the style, which in his more critical moments seemed uncomfortably reminiscent of George Gibbon’s,
he considered it money well spent. No one in the village would have anything to match it.

Sitting by the window again, he thought about the day ahead. Until as recently as yesterday he had intended to go straight to Annie’s, partly because he would be passing her door and
nothing would be more natural than to stop and say hello, partly because he wanted her to see the suit so she would realise that he’d made some money while he was away and wasn’t coming
back out of desperation. But now he was having second thoughts. To call on her even before he’d dumped his stuff at Crick Farm would be to appear too keen, never a good idea. Better to wait
till the evening when the suit could be explained by a late meeting or some other important business. Now, more than ever, he wanted to strike the right note with her, to underline the fact that
his postcard, sent a few weeks ago, was no joke. It had taken three attempts and two wasted cards to get the message right.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m coming back to
start a new business.
The bit he’d got wrong was the signature. To avoid the soppiness of
Love, Billy
or the flatness of plain
Billy
he wrote
Guess who?
, which
he’d regretted the moment he dropped the card into the box. He’d taken care to put Ernie’s address at the top of the card, however. He told himself it was for news of the farm,
but really it was a test to see if she was still interested.

Her card had arrived three days later.
Dear Billy, What news! Can’t wait to hear about it. Everything fine at Crick Farm. Love, Annie.
He set store by the ‘Can’t
wait’; a woman wouldn’t write something like that unless she meant it.

The train stopped and some people climbed into his compartment, three youths with the threadbare coats and frayed shirt cuffs of junior clerks, and a couple of chattering shop girls. The girls
flicked him appraising glances, and for a while he eyed them right back.

Starting off again, the train seemed to launch itself off the edge of the town onto a wide sea. As the row of high-backed houses fell away, the watery wilderness of Middle Moor opened out to the
north, wetter than Billy had ever seen it, and then Aller Moor, completely flooded, with the Parrett wandering aimlessly alongside, just two banks snaking along the surface. If the drove-roads were
still afloat he couldn’t see them.

Then the train squeezed past Oath Hill and began its ambling journey across the corner of West Sedgemoor, the greatest ocean of them all with nothing but water on either side, and just the
occasional willow and stubbled oblong of uncut withies to indicate the pattern of the beds and rhynes beneath, and marking the edge of the moor a long line of pollards like lampposts fringing a
winter beach.

The ridge rose up, returning them to dry land. Then the train panted through the cutting and they were at sea again on Stan Moor, where the flood was so high it seemed to have swallowed up some
of Burrowbridge and possibly some of Athelney as well.