Magda's Daughter (23 page)

‘Is this the priest who was with her when she died?'

‘Yes. He is Irish. His name is Father O'Brien.'

‘He looks a good man.'

‘He is.'

‘And this photograph?' He picked up the only one in a frame: Magda and Adam on their wedding day.

‘Hung in our living room.'

Wiktor stared at it for so long, Helena wondered if he had fallen into a trance.

‘You're right. My sister did love Adam Janek,' he declared. ‘If the heads of the families in the village agree, you can bury my sister's ashes in his grave. Although I would have preferred to bury her body.'

‘So would I,' Helena agreed. ‘But it would have been difficult, if not impossible to arrange –'

‘So you said.' Wiktor waved his arms and her explanations aside. He looked to Josef. ‘You will find out if there are any objections in the village?'

‘You know the people here, Wiktor.' Josef set down the salami roll he was eating. ‘If you agree to the interment of your sister's ashes in Adam Janek's grave, so will everyone else.'

‘You will arrange to open the grave and conduct the ceremony, Josef?'

‘When?' Josef asked.

‘Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock.' Wiktor pushed his chair back from the table, picking up the brandy and chocolates.

‘May I call on my grandmother and aunt to show them these photographs of my mother?' For all her efforts to remain calm, Helena's voice wavered with emotion.

‘No, but I will come here tomorrow after I have buried my sister's ashes. We will talk then. ‘

Helena was devastated by her uncle's attitude, but tried to remember Magda's insistence on politeness at all times. ‘Thank you. Just one more thing: I would like to put my mother's name and dates on Adam Janek's gravestone …'

‘I will arrange it.' Wiktor pulled his cap from his pocket and flung it on his head.

‘But the wording –'

‘Josef will take you to see the stonemason. You will give him the date of Magdalena's death, but I will pay the bill.'

Wiktor walked swiftly through the archway as though he couldn't bear to be in Helena's company a moment longer.

Helena waited until her uncle had left before blotting her tears in her handkerchief. Then she gathered the photographs from the table and returned them to the box. ‘Thank you for persuading my uncle to allow me to bury my mother in the churchyard, Josef.'

‘All I did was hand him your note. What hymns would you like sung at the burial service? I take it you want a Catholic mass?'

‘Please, but it might be more fitting if my mother's family choose the hymns and how my mother should be buried.' Helena couldn't help wishing that they could have made the decisions together.

‘I'll call on Wiktor again this afternoon.'

‘Is there anywhere around here that I can buy flowers?' Helena asked.

‘Flowers?' Josef smiled. ‘If the women want them for the house, they go out and pick them.'

‘For a funeral wreath?'

‘What could be better than wild flowers, especially for your mother who grew up here?'

‘You're probably right,' she conceded.

‘But there will be a market tomorrow morning, at six in the square. Someone may bring roses to sell.'

‘I'll look there, thank you.'

Josef buttered another roll and pushed slices of sausage into it. ‘I have work to do. I'll see you later.' Taking the roll, he walked through the back door into the bar.

‘Well?' Ned asked impatiently, when Helena didn't volunteer any information.

‘My uncle has agreed that my mother can be buried in Adam Janek's grave tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. Josef is arranging it.'

‘And the conversation you had with Josef after your uncle left?'

‘Was about flowers. Sorry, I didn't mean to exclude you. I didn't even realise that we were speaking in Polish.'

‘I know you didn't.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' Upset by Wiktor's frosty reception, she turned her anger on Ned.

‘Nothing.'

‘You've been –'

‘Please, Helena, let's not quarrel,' he pleaded. ‘We've both been under a lot of pressure. It's time to finish what we came here to do and move on. As Magda will be buried tomorrow morning, we should look for a telephone, get in touch with Norbert, and make arrangements for him to drive us back to town the day after. There we can try to make reservations for our return journey. But even if we don't succeed, we can jump on a train. We may not have a reserved seat but –'

‘I can't leave here the day after tomorrow.'

He struggled to hold his exasperation in check. ‘Why not?'

‘My uncle said he'd visit me here after the funeral tomorrow. I have to talk to him. I have so many questions, and I want to meet my grandmother, my aunt, and my uncle's children.'

‘If he'd wanted you to meet them he would have taken you back to the farm with him this morning.'

‘They're busy. It takes a lot of hard work to run a farm. My mother always said that no one in the family ever had a minute to themselves.'

‘Sunshine, don't take this the wrong way –'

‘I won't take it any way because you're about to say something horrid. Frankly, I'd rather you didn't say anything at all.' She pushed the box of photographs into her duffle bag.

‘All I was going to say is, I don't understand Polish but your uncle didn't exactly seem over-friendly towards you.'

‘It's as Josef said – my coming here is a shock. One moment Mama was writing letters to her family and sending them parcels of luxuries. The next, I turn up in the village and announce that she has died. It's bound to take time for them to adjust, just as it has for me.'

‘Of course,' Ned agreed. But he couldn't help thinking that Helena hadn't begun to accept Magda's death herself. And probably wouldn't until her mother's ashes were buried.

‘Then there's my grandmother. She's elderly and in ill-health. She's already had to bury her husband, one of her sons, her son-in-law and baby granddaughter. My mother's death will be a heavy blow at her time of life.'

‘All the more reason for your uncle to introduce her to the granddaughter she has never seen.'

‘He will introduce me,' she countered.

‘When?'

‘Soon.'

‘He told you that?'

‘Not in so many words,' she conceded impatiently. ‘But that's why he's coming here tomorrow after the funeral. To talk to me and make arrangements for me to meet the rest of the family.'

‘I hope you're right, for your sake.' Ned refilled his cup of coffee.

‘Of course he wants me to meet them. They're my family!' Her voice rose precariously.

‘Yes, they are, Helena,' Ned agreed. ‘I would just hate to see you disappointed, that's all.'

‘I can't sit around here all morning. I have to see Josef. My uncle said he would take me to see the stonemason who is adding my mother's name and dates to Adam Janek's memorial.' Helena picked up her duffle bag, went to the back door of the bar and knocked on it. Ned watched Josef open the door and smile at Helena. He pushed his plate aside, left the table and went up the stairs. The thought of Helena turning to Josef for help had taken away his appetite.

‘Your uncle meant old Henryk. He's the only stonemason we have left in the village.' Josef carried a bucket of pigswill across the yard, emptied it into the trough in the sty, stood back and watched the sow push her piglets aside so she could dip her snout into the mess. ‘I don't know why Wiktor didn't make a note of your mother's date of death.'

‘I don't either.' Helena hadn't considered it at the time, but now she thought it odd.

‘But you heard Wiktor; he wants to pay the bill and so he'll decide the wording. I wouldn't argue the point if I were you,' he warned. ‘He is a proud man and probably sees it as his responsibility to arrange his sister's memorial.'

‘The last thing I want to do is argue with my uncle. Josef, can I ask you something?'

‘There's an old Polish saying: “You can ask what you like, but you may not always receive an answerË®.'

‘We have a similar saying in Britain. I can't help feeling that all of you are keeping something from me …'

‘I told you, people in the village hate talking about the war, and, given the way your mother left here, they're not going to be anxious to tell you anything about her.'

‘That's all?'

‘What else could there be?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I've finished doing what I have to around here for an hour or so. We could visit the stonemason now, if you like?'

‘That would be wonderful. Thank you.'

‘I could take a message …'

‘I'd rather go myself. That way I know there'll be no mistake.'

‘I am a school teacher. You can trust me with a simple message.' When she didn't answer him, he said, ‘But as you're intent on going, we'll walk the long way round past the small lake. You may even find some flowers for tomorrow.'

‘I'd like that. Let's go.'

‘Don't you have to get your coat?'

‘My cardigan is warm enough.' She was suddenly loath to face Ned, and wanted to leave before he returned downstairs, saw her with Josef and became even more jealous than he already was.

Ned emerged in time to catch a snatch of Josef and Helena's Polish conversation, as they walked through the archway that cut through the house. He ran after them and glimpsed Helena's long blonde hair as they rounded the corner of the street. Furious with her for shutting him out, he returned to their room. Anna was there, tidying up. He grabbed his jacket, muttered sorry, and ran back into the yard.

If Helena could go for a walk, so could he.

‘Is this the nearest lake to the village?' Helena asked.

Josef was leading her down a path that cut through a thickly wooded area.

‘Yes. It's a fifteen-minute walk from the square – or a ten-minute run – and has been a favourite playground for the village children for generations. You'll soon see why.'

They walked into a clearing. A gleaming expanse of sun-dappled water, fringed by dark conifers, lay in front of them. Josef stepped on to a wooden pier that jutted into the lake, walked to the end, sat down and dangled his legs above a bank of reeds.

Helena sat next to him, and noticed a small rowing boat tied to a mooring ring. ‘Does that belong to anyone?'

‘Possibly, but whoever owns it doesn't mind everyone in the village using it. I'll take you out in it some time. There's a small island around that curve. You can't see it from here. Every stray duck and swan in this part of Poland has made it their home.' He leaned back on his hands and looked across at a family of wild ducks swimming beneath the overhanging trees on the opposite bank. ‘This is my favourite place on earth. The one place I have almost always enjoyed peace and quiet. I say almost,' he added wryly, ‘because occasionally there were other children around when I was growing up. But more often than not, I had the place to myself. There were only two other children my age in the village, and, as their fathers were farmers, they had more chores to do around their houses and yards than I did.'

‘So you spent most of your time alone?'

‘The Communist government wasn't kind to priests after the war. After the authorities locked the churches and outlawed religion, many monks, nuns and priests fled to the West. My foster-father was one of the few who didn't. He insisted that the villagers needed him more than ever, which was true. But he was given a job in the meat factory and forced to work six twelve-hour shifts a week. Anna was busy looking after the bar and her brother, as well as running the house, so, apart from homework checks and meals, I was more or less left to my own devices.'

‘Was your foster-father forced to work in the factory because he was a priest?'

‘Because there was a shortage of manpower after the war. Everyone around here worked long hours – factory-workers, farmers – and my foster-father chose to carry on working after his factory shifts, conducting mass, christenings, weddings and funerals, which meant that I saw far more of Anna than I did of him.'

‘Did he conduct the ceremonies in secret?'

‘Not so secret. Everyone knew it was going on in people's houses. As I said to you, the authorities turn a blind eye most of the time.'

Helena breathed in deeply. ‘It's certainly beautiful here.'

‘You'd never think that two miles down the road there are two large factories that employ over two hundred people.'

‘You wouldn't,' she agreed. ‘My mother told me that the countryside around the village was beautiful, but I didn't expect to find it unchanged. I thought, like Britain, there'd be more building – new houses, shops and factories to replace those that were destroyed during the war.'

‘Our country is poor and although a great deal was destroyed during the war, a fifth of our population was killed, so there was no need to do much more than re-build the parts of our cities and towns that were destroyed. Our government didn't have to cater for an increase in population like yours.' He glanced across at her and smiled. ‘You look quite at home here.'

‘I feel it,' she concurred.

‘In the land of your ancestors. Wiktor Niklas was right; it is odd that your mother never returned, not even to see her own mother.'

‘She was terrified of the communists.'

‘Why? She became a naturalized British citizen, didn't she?' ‘We both did.'

‘So why didn't she come here with her British passport? No one could have done anything to her, and she would have been able to see her mother. I think that would have meant a great deal to the old lady.'