The Ice Saints Read online

  She gave him a look of deep pity and love. Now he, too, knew he had failed. He had meant her to assent and be in some way broken, but she only sympathized.

  A few yards farther on they emerged to the main road, which was lined with poplar trees.

  ‘So this walk wasn’t just a walk, after all.’

  Tadeusz laughed. ‘A Polish walk. Not an English one.’

  He was relieved to have got his task over. He had given up sulking and was as confident and attractive as he had ever been.

  Where the forest ended, huge fields stretched out, divided into a mosaic of little strips. Some women were thrusting seed potatoes into the thin soil.

  ‘Tadeusz, do let’s stop trying to prove things to each other. Come to England just for a holiday. No one’s going to make anyone believe anything by pushing it down the other’s throats.’

  She was the one who failed now; he merely waved her away. He talked without stopping all the way back in the tram and they arrived home cheerful, confident and hungry, and friends for the first time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tadeusz and Rose were walking down a long slope of grass towards the water. He had changed his mind now and was quite used to coming for walks for the mere pleasure of a beautiful day. Behind them somewhere Janet and Witek were following. Some sort of break-through had taken place; everything was going all right with them and from now on it always would. They were perfectly happy, as happy as one was in the summers of childhood. Boats were gliding up and down the lake – of course, it was the Serpentine! – and between the trees you could see the flash of the new glass buildings of Knightsbridge. To the right, though, over beyond the Barracks, stood a tall chimney which Rose did not remember having seen before. She had heard they were knocking down the Imperial Institute and this must be some part of the reconstruction plan. All the same, the black chimney looked out of place in the sky over South Kensington.

  ‘That’s the Imperial Institute, isn’t it?’ she asked Mirek Sypniewski.

  He flinched at the word ‘Imperial’.

  ‘No, it’s a factory,’ he said.

  ‘But it doesn’t smell.’

  ‘Nothing smells in dreams.’

  Witek was gently shaking her shoulder. ‘Five o’clock.’

  She gasped with anguish, unable to remember where she was. The room was dark and Janet still slept.

  Rose sat on the edge of the bed shivering. It was her first experience of the great Iron Curtain dream which, under the fences and naked sand of the frontiers, links up a world of sleepers with its vision of the summers which have for long been left out of the calendar.

  In the kitchen Rose and Witek drank tea and chewed at pieces of bread. Tadeusz’s bed was beside them; he lay in an almost frighteningly deep sleep, twisted as though he had been thrown down from a great height.

  They took a workers’ tram to the railway station. She had wanted to travel by air but Witek paid only half fare on the trains. Witek had insisted on accompanying her, in order to surround her with attention: he felt that if she could see how smoothly it was possible to manage things, she would approve more both of the country and himself.

  When they arrived at the station the platforms were almost empty, brightly lit and raked by a cold wind. The waiting- room, however, was crowded with people, soldiers, peasant women with bursting bundles, old men in suits of dark corduroy, children and young girls, who seemed to have been there all night at least, waiting for the train. There was nowhere else to go and nothing Witek could do to alleviate the impact which he imagined this must be having on Rose; but if he could have arranged the train an hour earlier, or hurried the sun into the sky, he would have done so.

  When finally the train was shunted in, he was among the first to stampede the still-moving carriages. He secured a corner seat for her but in the ensuing struggle was forced out of his own place by a woman with a baby. Rose was left isolated, speechless, while Witek retreated to the corridor. Their journey was to take five hours.

  The train did not move off for another hour.

  The lamps paled along the platform, where soldiers and militiamen were pacing up and down to keep warm. There was no real dawn; everything became dully visible, the darkness going away like a strain from the eyes. The train shuddered and began to move. Factories slid away; there was a long view of fields, and from time to time a river, a battered village or an old woman watching a cow.

  Witek threw anxious looks in Rose’s direction. He was ashamed of the rough appearance of the peasants in the carriage. He had no sense of common identity with them but only of impatience that they existed, in such large numbers and so obviously not up to standard. After about twenty minutes he leaned across to ask Rose if she was comfortable.

  She was not, but nothing was to be gained by saying so.

  Now that her suspected foreignness was confirmed, the other passengers reacted to it in different ways. Two or three turned their heads away and did not look at her for the remainder of the journey. The woman next to her, however, gave a little fluttering smile. Rose made gestures of admiration at the baby; it was a sturdy child with a large nose and a positive attitude.

  The train moved slowly across a plain which seemed designed for a battlefield and had often been exactly this. The landscape was uninteresting but there were always people in sight, for all grazing animals must be watched and discouraged from wandering. Goose girls drove their flocks over the shorn grass and little boys threw stones at horses to keep them off the railway line.

  A boy came swaying down the corridor expertly carrying a tray with glasses of boiling tea. Most of the passengers took one. Rose burnt her hands. The woman next to her blew on the tea for a moment, then gave a sip of it to the baby. The baby fixed Rose with a solemn and perplexed stare, and was suddenly very sick.

  Rose at once put her tea on the floor, stood up and took a box of English Kleenex from her night-case. Together, she and the woman cleaned up the baby and threw the balls of soiled paper out of the window. Rose gave the rest of the Kleenex to the woman. The blue and white box excited comment and admiration and was handed all round the compartment. After this, she decided to give up her seat so that the baby, which was far too large for the woman’s lap, could lie down and sleep.

  She joined Witek in the corridor. He gazed at her with affection, he was delighted to be travelling with her, but because the peasants were disappointing and the baby had been sick (though very obviously it had been a well-fed baby) he felt he had to keep apologizing.

  Rose managed to quieten him down. She asked him what he was going to do in Warsaw. He produced a slip of paper on which he had planned out his day. Rose’s time-table was consigned to the margin of this. At the centre was his appointment with Mrs Goldberg at the Ministry of Higher Education: ‘I am confident that she will have some good news today about our English philology department.’ He would also be visiting the bureau of the State Publishing House which dealt with textbooks. ‘They wish to reprint my book – with some important revisions, of course. And then—’

  Rose interrupted him. ‘What about Tadeusz’s passport? You said you’d do something about that.’

  ‘Yes. I have an acquaintance at the Foreign Ministry. I shall telephone.’

  ‘Good.’

  Somewhat ruffled, he went back to his list, from which this item had been omitted. Rose would be visiting her friends Mr and Mrs Tatham. Was the pronunciation correct? He would not call for her there but would look for her, during the afternoon, at the British Institute. ‘You will have an opportunity to meet with Mr Pilkington. He has been very helpful to me.’ From there they would go to take a small cup of coffee, prior to Rose’s departure on the afternoon plane.

  ‘You will be staying long in Krakow?’ he asked her. This had been discussed several times in his presence. But Janet and he each possessed the faculty of becoming deaf when the other was addressed.

  ‘Four days.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Back
to Biala Gora.’

  ‘I wonder if you will be pleased with Krakow.’

  ‘They say it is very beautiful.’

  ‘I wonder if you will be pleased with the people.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Other Polish people do not like them. They say they did not have the war there. Only one house was bombed.’

  ‘You mean the other people wanted it all to be bombed?’

  ‘They say Krakow people did not suffer so much.’

  ‘Then they only like people when they have suffered?’

  It might be true. If you had not suffered, you had less reality for them and they could not concentrate on you for very long. Whenever she was with Witek, she felt he liked her as a person but also considered her as a symbol of something which was not very praiseworthy; like the inhabitants of Krakow, she was classified, dismissed.

  You could not judge him harshly, however, when you considered what he had to put up with in the normal run of events. He was returning to Biala Gora tonight, by the train which arrived at four in the morning. He had early classes tomorrow. This was the sort of procedure he was used to, travelling underfed on dawdling trains, waiting in anterooms, suing for power and action at the Ministry. Only with so few other pleasures available, it was perhaps easier for him to sacrifice himself to useful ambition.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Oh, Rose, you must tell us what it was like, was it simply ghastly, we’re longing to know. What are you going to drink, I expect you need one, I know I do. Mark will be back fairly soon. You don’t mind the children coming in for a bit, do you? They’ve just been on one of Nanny’s smashing walks and I always feel they need reindoctrinating a bit after that, don’t you know. Nanny’s such a fearful fascist reactionary, it simply isn’t true.’

  During the ten days since Rose had seen her, Alexandra gave the impression of having increased in bulk and resplendency. In black stockings and a scarlet wool dress designed to celebrate rather than camouflage her pregnancy, she stood wide-legged with her behind to a blazing fire. Her fair skin, her shining teeth and eyes were almost cruelly healthy after the deadened complexions and steel-rimmed mouths of Biala Gora.

  Rose drank whisky and retreated into the depths of her armchair. Alexandra did not ask her any more questions. Three small children in gaiters were shepherded in by the nanny. For a few minutes the room was full of their shrill voices in counterpoint to a complicated story which the nanny was telling; a toy had been left behind on the grass and an elderly lady – ‘she was ever so heavily made up but her English was quite good’ – had picked it up, brought it to them, and then wanted to buy it. ‘Of course, it was Simon’s own tedda so I couldn’t really offer to do anything to oblige her, could I? There’d have been ructions.’

  To Rose watching, this scene was like a pastoral entertainment at a considerable move from reality. So Tadeusz and Mirek and such people must have observed her, and felt that the things she told them of London were played out on an apron stage with a set of conventions as remote and arbitrary as a court masque. Only the elderly lady in the nanny’s story could be recognized: she gave one the feeling of where one was.

  After lunch Mark offered to drive Rose to the British Institute.

  ‘Don’t bother yet, please. My brother-in-law won’t be there till three-thirty.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you some of the city.’

  She watched him as he drove, liking him more but still a little frightened of him. He was conventional and even pompous, but he was also really interested in what happened. His pompousness was mitigated by the fact that when some situation appeared comic (he did not like wit) he could be seen unexpectedly shaking and weeping with silent diaphragm-heaving giggles.

  ‘This is Lazienki Park. Like to have a look?’

  ‘All right.’

  A group of people watched them get out of the foreign car with CD plates. Farther down the path some children were feeding a red squirrel. It jerked to and fro like a clockwork toy, and scrambled all the way up a man’s arm. It had thin fur and a degenerate-looking face.

  The park stretched out in limpid sunlight, with some of the trees still showing the amputations of shell fire. Ornamental water wandered in and out, and there were swans, a rustic bridge, a Greek theatre. Yellow scaffolding criss-crossed the little Lazienki palace, which was then being restored. The whole place was beautiful but had a strange, vaguely unhappy look, as though it were being called back unwillingly from the past; Rose thought suddenly of those two English ladies at Versailles.

  In the middle of the park they sat down on a bench.

  ‘How is your sister? Really, I mean.’

  She glanced at Mark, unwilling to offer evidence of unhappiness to anybody so detached and so successful. He was gazing across the water at the Greek Theatre. He sat with his long legs crossed, the right foot twisted back under the left ankle. She had never liked men who were able to do this or who kept their handkerchiefs up their sleeve. His sister Elizabeth, however, had always told her that Mark was good, using the word with an odd precision, like a technical term.

  ‘Is she happy?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Mark, it’s been awful—’ and now she had started, she told him all about Janet and Witek and their competition over Tadeusz.

  ‘Poor Rose.’

  ‘I’m the last to be pitied. I feel after this none of us, you, me, anyone in England, ought to pity ourselves ever again.’

  He was silent at this, and threw away his cigarette.

  ‘I was afraid it might be like that. I didn’t tell you this, until you’d seen for yourself. I’ve met your sister.’

  ‘No? When? She didn’t tell me.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. She turned up at the Embassy. I happened to be around, I can’t remember how it was now. She was pushed on to me. The Consul usually looks after these things.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last autumn. Soon after I got here.’

  ‘It was probably my fault then. You see, I wrote that you were being sent here. She met Elizabeth when she was in England.’

  ‘Oh, so that was it.’ He sounded irritated.

  ‘What did she want?’

  He gave a sort of incredulous snort. ‘She asked if I could arrange for her to go to England.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Rose was silenced by this for a moment. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Your sister knew the position really. She has dual nationality. She can get a British passport whenever she wants. But if she did that I don’t know that the Poles would let her come back. The real trouble always is the children. They are Poles and we can’t help them.’

  ‘Did she mention Tadeusz?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Perhaps she thought he could be included in her passport.’

  ‘She couldn’t do that. He’s Polish.’

  ‘He was born in England. Scotland, actually. Glasgow.’

  ‘They won’t recognize that here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No. And last autumn, of course, nobody knew about my aunt’s money.’

  Mark said: ‘When I explained to your sister about the passports, she went away and I thought perhaps she might have settled down again. On the whole it’s the intelligent ones who’ve managed to stick it. The Scottish mill girls and people like that have all gone home.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Rose wondered if Janet was intelligent.

  ‘I thought I’d better tell you that she’d been to see us before she knew anything about this money. Incidentally, who does know about it?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘My brother-in-law doesn’t know. He is just getting a new job, and, of course, he’s in with the Party.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell him sometime. It’ll be a bit of a test for him: expediency or belief.’

  ‘Oh, he believes in it all right. If you have anything to do with education, you might. But if
you worked in a shoe factory you probably wouldn’t.’

  Mark laughed at this. ‘So you can’t tell him yet?’

  ‘No. And so we can’t tell Tadeusz.’

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’

  ‘I—’ She stopped. At this moment she couldn’t tell him about inviting Tadeusz to England. It would appear devious, and was not. Mark might be unconvinced of this, however, and she suspected he could arrange to stop the visa. Rose was learning suspicion easily.

  ‘Oughtn’t I to wait, Mark? I want to invest the money and the income and hold on. This can’t go on for ever. Tadeusz’ll be grown up and able to make up his own mind. Besides, things may get better.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. The other thing is they could apply for an emigration visa. Sometimes whole families get these.’

  ‘No good, I’m afraid. Witek certainly doesn’t want to leave, nor does Tadeusz.’

  Mark laughed shortly. He stood up and then looked at his watch. These difficulties had made him lose interest. ‘Then I suppose your idea is best. Waiting, I mean.’

  ‘I suppose so. If only everyone can wait.’

  They walked slowly up the hill to the car.

  While he was unlocking the doors he said: ‘By the way, it is better not to discuss these things in the car.’

  This remark took away any easiness that was left from the spring afternoon. They had sat and talked in the park only because there were no microphones there.

  Later Mark tried to make some amends: ‘I don’t know how long your visa’s for, but I do wish you’d come and stay with us for a few days. Alexandra would love to have you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mark. The only thing is, while I’ve got time, I feel I should go back to my sister.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But a day or two would be lovely.’

  ‘Let us know, will you?’ He stopped the car. ‘This is the place. No, I’ll come up, too. There’s a book they were meant to be keeping for me.’

  *

  The stairway of the British Institute was lined with travel posters, Woburn Abbey, the Giants’ Causeway, the Trooping of the Colour. In the reading-room some battered-looking old ladies, reading Vogue and the Illustrated London News, eyed the newcomers furtively: perhaps it was one of these who had offered to buy Simon Tatham’s teddy bear. There was no sign of Witek Rudowski.