Magda's Daughter (11 page)

‘From what I remember of the duty-free shops on the ferries, chocolate might be, too. Perhaps we ought to buy another bag as well?' he suggested.

‘We already have a duffle bag and a suitcase each.'

He recalled what Peter had said about the customs officials in East Germany and Poland. ‘I can manage another bag.' He glanced out of the window. ‘Taff's Well already. We'll soon be at Cardiff Central. But after that, we won't need to make another change for two-and-a-half hours. Do you want to have an early lunch on the train or a later one in London?' When she hesitated, he added, ‘Tell me you're not hungry and I'll make you eat two lunches. One on the train, and another in London.'

‘Can't we make do with a sandwich?'

‘No, we can't. I'm already hungry and I ate six times as much at breakfast as you.'

‘I suppose it would save time in London if we ate on the train,' she conceded.

‘Let's hope it's edible. Train food always tastes slightly odd to me, but I admit I haven't eaten much of it since I started driving.' He looked out of the window again. ‘Another ten minutes and we'll be there. Perhaps I should have let my father take us to Cardiff after all. We no sooner seem to have climbed on this train that we have to get off.'

When they reached Paddington, Ned brushed aside Helena's protests and insisted on summoning a porter and taking a taxi to Victoria.

‘Ned's rules. Number one: carry your own cases as seldom as possible, to minimize the risk of pulling a muscle, not to mention wearing yourself out. Number two: take taxis. They save time and effort. You can walk for miles on the tube, so taxis are a cost-effective necessity, not a luxury. Besides, it will give us more time to shop.'

‘We won't have much money left to shop,' Helena warned.

‘I had a bit put by for a rainy day.' He dug into his pocket and tipped the porter who had carried their cases from the train to the taxi rank.

‘The way you're spending, anyone would think we're millionaires.' Helena stepped into the back of the cab after their cases had been loaded. ‘And London is expensive. When Mama and I came here for a weekend so I could go round the museums, we couldn't find a room in a decent hotel for less than twenty-five shillings a night. Or a restaurant that served a meal for less than four and sixpence.'

Ned climbed in beside her. ‘When we return to Pontypridd, we'll cut the housekeeping allowance by five bob a week to make up for the dip in our savings.'

Helena lifted her duffle bag on to her lap, conscious of her mother's ashes safely tucked into the bottom beneath her toilet bag and spare sweater. ‘There'll be no housekeeping until we marry.'

‘If there was, the headmistress of the Girls' Grammar School would have a fit. Don't worry, sunshine, I have no intention of ruining your reputation.' He smiled wickedly. ‘Or mine.' He leaned forward and spoke to the driver. ‘Could you take us to Victoria station, please, so we can leave our luggage there, and then on to Carnaby Street?'

‘Be glad to, sir.'

‘Carnaby Street?' Helena repeated in surprise.

‘You need to buy a new, non-student wardrobe. You have a grown-up job that starts in September, remember?'

‘I doubt I'll find anything in Carnaby Street that the governors and headmistress of Pontypridd Girls' Grammar School will approve of. It'll be knee-length skirt suits, shirt blouses and sensible shoes, not mini-kilts, skinny rib sweaters, trouser suits and stilettos.'

‘Then we'll buy you things that you can wear in private.' He adopted an excruciating French accent. ‘When we're alone.'

‘I think we'd be better off buying the things Peter suggested.'

‘We can pick those up anywhere. If you want grown-up clothes we could go to Liberty's, or just sit, take the air, and have coffee somewhere.' A truck in front of the cab belched out a cloud of diesel fumes. ‘Forget what I said about air. Let's just have fun.'

Chapter Six

Given the frequent visits his family had made to London to shop and see the sights, Ned knew the city well. At first, Helena resented his determined efforts to keep her entertained, but by reminding her that they had four hours to kill and might as well use the time profitably, Ned succeeded in coaxing her into shops. And, once she was in them, he insisted she try on a few outfits.

When he tried to persuade her to buy a psychedelic smock dress that skimmed the top of her thighs she smiled. But afterwards, when she caught herself laughing at the antics of a street clown, she thought of her mother and felt horribly guilty. Ned sensed her mood, caught her hand and bullied her into entering a teashop where he ordered coffee and a plate of cream cakes.

‘Magda wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life crying for her.' He took her duffle bag and set it on the chair between them.

‘I know, but she's not even buried …' She reached for her handkerchief.

‘She soon will be. And after we've done all we can for Magda, we'll return to Pontypridd and marry quietly in a register office, as I suggested.'

Helena nodded. ‘But we will have our union blessed in church.'

‘Of course. I think we should just invite Alma, Theo, Peter and his family, and my parents, brother and sisters to the wedding and blessing, and everyone who was invited to the wedding your mother planned to a party afterwards. We'll hold it in the New Inn.'

‘Wouldn't that be extravagant?'

‘Not as extravagant as a wedding.' He was relieved that he'd finally managed to draw her attention from her mother, but he could see that she knew exactly what he was trying to do.

‘Thank you for being patient with me. Your father was right,' she conceded, ‘Mama would have been horrified at the thought of me racing off to Poland with her ashes.'

Ned glanced at his watch. ‘Time we found another taxi and headed back to Victoria to catch the boat train.'

‘So soon?'

‘We might not find a taxi straight away. Besides, we've been here for two and a half hours. And that's something we might regret later. The only thing more tiring than travelling is shopping.'

‘But we did manage to buy some things on our list, and a few that weren't.' She picked up her duffle bag and the carrier bags of clothes he'd persuaded her to buy.

‘There's one thing I really do regret,' Ned said when they were waiting on the pavement for a taxi to appear.

‘What's that?'

‘I didn't haul you into a register office before we left. If I had, we could have shared a cabin tonight. I've missed sleeping with you, sunshine.'

Again, Helena tried to suppress the thought that she and Ned had been making love when her mother had been dying. It wasn't all right – not yet. But perhaps after she had done all she could for her parents in Poland, it might be.

It was ten-thirty before Ned and Helena walked up the gangplank of their ferry at Harwich. As Ned had predicted, they were exhausted. Helena had fallen asleep half an hour before they had reached the port. Ned had pulled her head down on to his shoulder and wrapped his arms around her in a way he knew he would never have succeeded in doing if she had been awake. He had enjoyed the intimacy, even though Helena had been unaware of it, and hoped it heralded a return to the close, loving relationship they had shared when they'd lived together in Bristol.

A porter carried their cases to their cabins. Ned wasn't pleased when he discovered that not only were he and Helena sharing with three complete strangers, but their cabins were in different corridors.

‘We should have booked first class, and called ourselves Mr and Mrs John.'

‘With different names on our passports?' she questioned.

‘They would be different if we had married last weekend because you wouldn't have had time to apply for a new one. I had hoped that we would at least be reasonably close to one another,' he complained when they reached her cabin door.

‘I'm so tired I could sleep standing up,' she yawned.

He saw the stewardess staring pointedly at the ‘Ladies Only' sign. ‘I'll look round the duty-free shop. It won't open until we're at sea, but at least I'll be able to earmark what we need. You go to bed.'

‘Do you mind?' She blinked in an effort to keep her eyes open.

‘Better you fall on a bunk than on the floor, sunshine. Meet you here in the morning?'

‘OK,' she mumbled.

‘Don't make a move until I get here, or we'll risk missing one another,' he warned.

‘We could meet on the train.'

He lowered his voice. ‘We should go through customs together.'

Helena knew that Ned was thinking of her mother's ashes. They were in an oak casket, which Ned's father had placed inside a secure, airtight container used to transport medical supplies. He and Ned had tried to persuade her to pack them in her suitcase instead of the duffle bag, but she couldn't bear the thought of her case going astray.

Andrew John had checked all the regulations he could find on the import and export of human ashes between Britain, Europe and the Soviet bloc, and, as far as he could ascertain, there were no health or agricultural restrictions. But that didn't mean the customs officers of all the countries they were travelling through would be sympathetic.

Helena left Ned and went into her cabin. She was amazed at how much had been shoehorned into a tiny space. The cabin held four bunks, two on either side, the bottom ones four feet below the top ones, which were too close to the ceiling for comfort. The narrow gangway between them led to a minute washroom, which was barely eighteen inches wide. Above the sink and lavatory was a sign – ‘DO NOT DRINK THE WATER' – printed in such large red letters that she wondered if it was safe to use it to wash her face.

The air was stuffy and stale with a chemical taste. She looked around for a porthole she could open but there wasn't one; the cabin was obviously in the centre of the ship.

She was too tired to do more than take her toilet bag and pyjamas from her duffle bag, wash her hands and face, clean her teeth, and change. Taking the bag with her, she climbed into one of the top bunks without even bothering to look for the light switch. The sheets were cold, coarse and stiff with starch. There was only a thin grey blanket, but given the stifling atmosphere, she doubted she'd need more. The other bunks were still empty when she wrapped her arms around her bag and closed her eyes. Within seconds she plunged into a deep and dreamless sleep.

It could have been minutes or hours later when she awoke in pitch darkness to the sound of snoring. She lay tense and fearful until she recalled where she was. Muscles aching, she turned over on the hard narrow bunk and cracked her head on the ceiling.

‘What was that?' a stranger demanded in a harsh Scottish accent.

‘Sorry,' she whispered, blinking hard in an attempt to adjust her eyes in the gloom.

Her companion grunted, and the sounds of heavy breathing and snoring reigned once more. Helena lifted her arm and tried to look at her watch, but she had taken Peter's advice and left the expensive one with fluorescent numbers in Ned's house. And she couldn't read the face of the cheap replacement she had bought.

The noise and vibration of the ship's engines resounded through the metal walls, a dull, persistent drone that made her feel as if she'd been locked inside a giant cement-mixer. And as if that weren't enough, she could hear an irregular swooshing and swishing. She turned her head gingerly and saw the outline of a light-coloured garment hanging on the back of the cabin door. It swung alarmingly towards her then receded, and she realised the boat was rocking from side to side.

Nauseous, she swallowed hard and closed her eyes. She knew she'd never find her way to the bathroom in the dark. The only thing she could do was lie still and try to sleep until the ship berthed at five o'clock.

She tried everything she could think of – counting the novels she had read for her degree work, and the ones she had read simply for enjoyment; furnishing the new house in various colour schemes – but it was no use. She couldn't sleep. What was worse, her mother's image persisted in intruding into her mind.

Magda standing in front of the sideboard in their living room, lifting one of the small glasses of Polish vodka that she had poured. Helena felt she only had to reach out to touch her. ‘Your papa is looking down on us, Helena. He is very proud of you and what you have accomplished.'

Papa, whose absent presence had ruled their lives ever since she could remember, and not only when she had done something praiseworthy. Whenever she'd misbehaved, or disappointed her mother, Magda had looked mournful and said, ‘You have made your papa in heaven very unhappy.'

Helena tried to recollect every crumb of information Magda had given her about the man who had fathered her. She knew that Adam Janek and her mother had both been born in the village where they had grown up, that they had attended the same small school, and that he had been her mother's childhood sweetheart – the only man who had ever kissed her, according to Magda. And even then he had waited until her sixteenth birthday.

But was that true? Wouldn't Robert Parsons have wanted more than a few kisses before incurring the expense of bringing her and Magda over from Germany at the end of the war? Or had relationships between men and women really been so different in the 1940s, as Magda had always insisted?

According to Ned, times changed, people didn't, and the number of unmarried mothers who had been incarcerated in workhouses during the last century proved it. But for all his belief in timeless and universal morality – or rather the lack of it – Ned had never dared argue the point with her mother whenever Magda had voiced disapproval of the ‘swinging sixties'. And whenever she and Ned had returned home from college, she had always been very careful to hide the packs of birth control pills that the college doctor had prescribed for her.

But whatever Robert Parsons had or hadn't been to her mother, Magda's life after the war had been very different from her childhood and early life in Poland. Helena knew that much because of the wonderful stories she had related of the idyllic rural life she, her two brothers, and sister had led on their parents' farm while they were growing up.

Magda's descriptions had been so vivid that Helena was certain she would not only recognise the large wooden house set in fruit orchards – if it was still standing – but also be able to find her way around it; from the back door in the yard that opened into the enormous farmhouse kitchen, to the dining room, twin parlours, downstairs bathroom, and up the stairs to the six bedrooms and attics.

She knew the house was on the outskirts of the village; that it was half-­hidden by trees, and surrounded by family fields that had been tilled for crops and grazed by her grandfather's cows and horses. Her mother had ‘walked' her around the outbuildings; the stables, barns, poultry sheds, pigsties and enormous cowsheds, which housed over a hundred cows and calves. She knew how eagerly the entire Janek family had waited for spring and summer because the warm weather meant forays into the woods for horse-riding, picnics, and berry­ and mushroom-gathering.

Her mouth had watered when Magda had waxed lyrical about the mammoth cooking sessions that her grandmother, Maria, had supervised at harvest time. Every female member of the family, including the maid – Magda had been at pains to stress that the maid was not paid to do the dirty work, but the daughter of another farmer sent for training, who lived in as one of the family – had pickled, preserved, smoked and dried the surplus fruit, vegetables and meat that would see the family through the winter.

Magda had taught her to cook and bake in the small kitchen of their flat, painstakingly passing on Polish family recipes. Together they had made the Eastern European Easter and Christmas delicacies: home-made marzipan and cinnamon cakes; savoury and sweet dumplings; pancakes; sausages; and fruit-flavoured custards, which the Janek family had enjoyed on high days and holidays. Magda had stressed, between mixing, beating and kneading, that when the time came, it would be Helena's duty to pass on the knowledge of her Polish heritage to her own daughters.

There had been tales of uniquely Polish celebrations, saints' days, family weddings, christenings and funerals. And the best story of all, which she had never tired of hearing, was her mother and father's wedding. Magda's account never varied, so Helena knew it by heart. How it had taken Magda, her mother, grandmother and aunts an entire month to stitch Magda's wedding dress, which was made with real white silk bought in the best store Cracow had to offer. That it had taken Magda and her grandmother two days to travel to the city, and two days to travel back. And that had been without the two days spent shopping for the wedding finery. She could even remember the first time Magda had told her the story. It was a freezing November evening during her first year at the Girls' Grammar School. She had finished her homework early and they had been sitting in easy chairs on either side of the fire.

‘We were away six whole days, and for two of us to be away from the farm for so long put a strain on those left behind. My father, brothers, and sister had to work many extra hours to make up for our absence.' Magda's dark eyes had glowed in the firelight as her knitting lay forgotten on her lap. ‘How my father complained when we returned! But not for long. He was so proud of me when he saw me in that white silk dress with the lace veil. And he loved my Adam. He knew that I had caught the best husband a woman could hope to have. The strongest, most God-fearing, hardest-working man, who was not only kind, but also handsome and rich …'

Magda's most treasured possession had been the wedding photograph, which her sister, Julianna, had sent to her in the Displaced Persons' camp after the war. The look of love that had been etched in Adam Janek's eyes when he had turned to watch her mother walk down the aisle of the church, had been captured in that picture.