The Ice Saints Read online

  ‘Look, please let’s take a taxi. I’ve been travelling all day.’

  ‘If you like we may take the tram.’

  Thinking that Tadeusz was still worrying about Priestley’s play, she dared not object. But even the tram-ride seemed to take longer than was conceivable. Everybody stared at Rose, who stood with her eyes downcast. She felt impossibly far from England, and even from the Tathams’ house in the capital. Only to imagine Alexandra here would be absurd, and all Mark’s considered advice seemed to refer to nothing at all. Rose’s elation at her arrival had gone. Instead she quaked with nerves at the prospect of meeting her sister.

  *

  Janet, who was twelve years older than Rose, had trained as a nurse and met Witek in a war hospital. Their son Tadeusz was born in England but the Rudowskis had proudly bestowed on him a name that could not be anglicized. Janet, like many nurses, had always been unquestioningly kind to everyone, and her kindness had led her to this war-pocked city in Eastern Europe.

  At thirty-six Janet had the thickened body of a woman in late middle age. She clung to Rose with hands that were like claws. Emotion welled up, originating from the separation, but due as much, in Rose’s case, to physical exhaustion.

  Very soon after, however, the staff nurse’s briskness came out once more and Rose recognized it with affection. ‘Witek has the front room all to himself now. His books are there, of course. You and I’ll sleep in here.’

  The room they were standing in had divans along two of the walls. There was a round table in the middle of the room, some potted plants, dog-eared American magazines; a shelf of Janet’s favourite books from her childhood, and copies of Eckersley’s Brighter English, Allen’s Living English Structure and Jespersen’s Growth and Structure of the English Language. The furniture had a poverty-engrained look like the furniture in very cheap lodgings.

  ‘This is where I work, really, so you’ll have to move out during the day. But I’m sure Witek won’t mind you sitting in his room while he’s at the University.’

  ‘Where does Tadeusz go?’

  ‘He’s on a camp bed in the kitchen. He’s fine there, frightfully tidy. He gets it from me. Well, now you know how we stand. There are some hangers for your clothes in the hallway. And I’ve cleared you out a couple of drawers. I packed the things into an old trunk, actually. Do you know, I’ve still got my school trunk, the one I had at Cheltenham. I don’t know why I keep it really. It isn’t as though I was ever likely to move anywhere any more. Is that all right, then?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I simply must go somewhere.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’ve got out of the habit of asking. They never ask you here. The aunt is through the kitchen.’

  The place was not clean, and squares of newspaper were pushed on to a nail. The printed language looked frightening, so utterly unknown.

  Janet took such pride in her arrangements that you had to accept them without question. Rose remembered Mark Tatham’s warnings about drink. I’ll need about half a bottle, she thought, before I dare tell her that from now on, all this can come to an end.

  The moment he had delivered Rose to the flat, Tadeusz stepped backwards and disappeared into the dusk. He and Witek were both absent for supper. Rose thought this was insufferably rude and it was almost too much for her waning self-confidence. While they drank tea and ate cold ham with very good bread and butter, Janet talked on.

  ‘Do they all do their eyes like this now?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know – mascara. I saw it in those Vogues you send me but I thought it was only for models. I mean, I wasn’t to know, living here, was I?’ She seemed on the defensive as though everything that had happened was her own fault.

  Rose noticed that Janet still held her knife like a fountain pen, the way nurses did, and remembered how her father used to tease her about it. Watching her while they ate, she was all at once overwhelmed by pity for Janet. She needed the attentions of their childhood, hot milk and biscuits, an early night. Could you get biscuits here or even milk? From Janet’s conversation she gathered that the extent of one’s deprivations was so enormous as to be only a subject for jokes. You could only suggest something for her to deny its possibility with a hard laugh. Rose was sure that this bitterness was something new, that it had not been there when Janet last came to England.

  ‘I have to pay twenty zlotys duty on each of them.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘The Vogues. But it’s worth it. You see I give them to my dressmaker. She copies the patterns and she alters things or makes them up for me free, from time to time. You’ve got to be smart about things like that in this place, I can tell you.’ She poured out more tea. ‘Not much supper tonight, I’m afraid. You see I had my evening lessons earlier, to be free when you came. No time for shopping.’

  ‘The ham was jolly good.’

  Rose was miserable. Her father and she had comforted themselves for some years with the idea that Janet’s stoical cheeriness made her life here somehow possible. Evidently this was not so. Rose tried to cheer herself by thinking that her own arrival had made Janet homesick – she had always surrendered easily to the simpler emotions – and this had turned her against her surroundings. Whatever was to happen to the Rudowskis now, Janet was too emotional to be permitted to have her own way. She had to be told, but it was Witek and of course Tadeusz who were the ones to decide.

  Chapter Four

  When Witold Rudowski finally returned from England in 1948, it was proposed that he would head the new Department of English Philology at Biala Gora University. But the plan came to nothing. Next year two departments of English at other universities were closed and their staffs dismissed. Except in the capital, all teaching of English above the elementary level ceased. Witek instead received the post of arranging and conducting translation classes for the other departments at Biala Gora. His colleagues were mostly elderly ladies in destitution, who had once had English governesses or had been to convents in England. He found himself guiding young historians in translating from English translations of Marx and Lenin or from original texts by Howard Fast and Jack Lindsay.

  During these years Janet and he lived by teaching privately and by doing translations for official publications. When more English was permitted in the secondary schools he quickly wrote a textbook which was accepted by the Ministry of Education. It was not a very satisfactory book and he realized its imperfections sooner than anyone. But this led him to a more detailed study of phonetics and intonation and idiomatic expressions. He was a man who, once he took something up, became easily obsessed by it and devoted himself to it to the exclusion of everything else. In spite of having a foreign wife, Rudowski survived the difficult years without danger, and although exhausted from overwork he conducted his course at the University with an efficiency which shone beside the amateurish efforts of his colleagues. He went to the political meetings and seminars which were numerous at that time, feeling that he ought to be interested, and survived them in a state of torpid inattention like a public schoolboy in chapel. As with so many hardworking people, he did not have quite enough time to bother about what was happening to his colleagues who failed to adapt to the régime.

  When after 1956 a new proposal was made for a Chair of English at Biala Gora, Witek was the obvious choice of candidate. He alone had continued with English studies all the time. He was supported at the University by several influential people, including Dr Zwiersz, the representative of the Party. And he had good friends in the Ministry of Higher Education whom he was always visiting with plans for student exchanges or for holiday courses to be directed by himself, which they politely pigeon-holed.

  Against him, however, was a faction which included Professor Markiewicz, the international lawyer and present Rector of the University, old Professor Barcik, of the Chair of Comparative Philology, and their supporters. Rudowski had done nothing which they considered to be a work of serious scholarship. His doctoral thesis, which he had put to
gether hurriedly after his return to his native land, was an ill-constructed effort entitled ‘H. G. Wells: Prophet of Revolution’. It had been accepted at Warsaw University but the professors here did not think much of Warsaw. Above all – this, though not consciously formulated by any of them, was always at the back of their minds – Rudowski had nothing of the mana which surrounds a professor.

  In a society which now considered itself to be classless but which still paid respect to its intellectuals, this aspect of university life had increased in importance with the years. One elderly man might be surrounded by half a dozen assistants, former pupils, usually women, who typed his manuscripts, brought him mushrooms from the country and tried to keep on good terms with his wife. His influence would also be felt among his male disciples not only in Poland but in the Polish diaspora at universities in North and South America. How could you imagine Rudowski in a position like this? Choosing him for the Chair would in fact diminish themselves, the professors thought.

  Witold Rudowski was short and square, and his hair and skin had the same pale almost colourless look. A true Silesian, he came from the border country near Biala Gora where there had always been a strong German influence. But traditional characteristics must have been dormant in him, because already Tadeusz looked like a nineteenth-century patriot on the barricades.

  Witek kissed Rose affectionately and asked her about her journey.

  ‘Tadeusz met you all right? He always gets everything wrong.’

  ‘Oh perfectly. And I recognized him at once.’

  ‘Would we have recognized you, I wonder? Your photograph does not do justice to you.’

  ‘I photograph terribly badly.’

  ‘I thought that last one was very good,’ Janet said.

  ‘You must excuse my not being present when you arrived. You see, I had a meeting of the lecturers at the University. In any case I thought the two sisters would like to have the evening to themselves.’

  ‘But I expect we’ll have lots of time together.’

  ‘Darling, I must tell you I’ve got lessons nearly all tomorrow. Zosia cooks lunch for us at about two.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Please, you mustn’t worry about me.’

  ‘Tomorrow, let me show you the buildings of our university. They are not very beautiful, in a bad German style, I think.’

  ‘I don’t know if Rose is interested.’

  ‘Oh, I am. I’d love to see them really. Not just the buildings, but to know about it all.’

  ‘Would you like me to make some more tea, darling?’

  ‘Perhaps Rose would prefer something stronger. I have some jarzembiak, a sort of vodka made with some berries. I don’t know what the berry is called in English, if indeed it has an equivalent. A dictionary I have consulted on this point suggests “spindleberry” but I believe that is not probable.’

  ‘Whatever it is, I’d love to taste it.’

  While Witek went into his own room to fetch the bottle, Janet sat silent and looked offended. Rose had agreed to the last two things suggested by Witek. Was she going to have to accept each of their suggestions alternately, regardless of what she herself wanted, in order to avoid coming down on one side or the other?

  Witek poured little glasses full of red liquid, for her and for himself.

  ‘Cheerio.’

  The liqueur, after a delicate summer taste, was a slow- spreading warmth.

  Witek fixed Rose with a bright interested look.

  ‘You must know that we are very anxious to know of all aspects of English life. Could you not tell us something of your experiences? Anything.’ He laughed. ‘The first thing that comes into your head.’

  He created an atmosphere of sadness and embarrassment.

  The girl was determined not to wince but to help him as far as she could: Janet must really learn not to be beastly to him in front of her.

  ‘Witek, you make things much too difficult. What is it you want to know?’

  ‘Everything! Your work, for instance. We know so little of modern English life.’

  ‘But you meet other English people, don’t you?’

  ‘Rarely in Biala Gora. There is Mr Loasby, a young English scholar, who was once at our house. And when I am in Warsaw I go to see Mr Pilkington, at the British Council, usually to borrow films and tape recordings. But Mr Pilkington is a very busy man and has not time for many callers.’

  ‘Oh, I thought English people came here quite often.’

  ‘Ah ha!’

  All at once he was prancing up and down in front of her, rubbing his hands together. She watched with astonishment, wondering what had happened.

  ‘She says off-ten. She says off-ten. You see, Janet, you and Daniel Jones’s dictionary are not always to be relied on.’

  Janet was roused by this. ‘But, Rose, we all said “orphan” when we were little. Surely you did, too. Can’t you remember?’

  Rose, who had not appreciated why all the fuss was being made, said: ‘I must have picked it up somewhere.’

  ‘Can it be that there has been a change of usage in recent years, since, for instance, we left England? That might bear some looking into. Well, we cannot worry Rose about this. It is our profession and not hers. But what about Rose’s profession? What job have you been doing, Rose?’

  ‘Well, after Daddy died you know I went to live with this friend of mine who was at school with me, Elizabeth Tatham. I got a job as a secretary, as I’d already done typing and shorthand. But it was terribly boring. I mean there was no one you could talk to, I mean no one you could really talk to. So I gave that up and got a job with this friend of Elizabeth’s. She has a sort of furniture shop and does interior decoration, that sort of thing.’

  Rose felt foolish reciting all this to Witek Rudowski, on a spring evening in Biala Gora. Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, was at the very opposite end of the world. Witek could not possibly picture anything she was talking about and watching him she could almost see his mind still working away at the problem of ‘off-ten’ and ‘orphan’. She hurried through as fast as she could, chattering merely to convince Janet that she took no sides.

  ‘Well, this friend, my friend’s friend I mean, was frightfully nice but she was always going on at me. I mean I tried to stop her but in the end I had to leave. So that was one job.’

  Rose laughed a little triumphantly at reaching this conclusion. Witek stood up and poured her another tot of jarzembiak.

  ‘What do you mean? Was she unjust to you? Did she restrain your wages?’

  ‘Oh no. Actually, it turned out she was a Lesbian.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  Rose was vanquished.

  Janet explained briskly.

  ‘I see.’ He was genuinely shocked. He gulped and said in a strained voice: ‘Thank you. I had always been meaning to look that word up.’ Then, more confidently: ‘I did not know that that kind of thing still went on.’

  Rose felt a sudden wave of fondness for him.

  Later, when they were in bed Janet said: ‘I wish you hadn’t told him you would go to the University tomorrow morning. He’ll keep you there for hours, and I’d promised you’d have coffee with my friends.’

  ‘I’ve promised now.’

  ‘Try and get away as soon as you can.’

  ‘Perhaps I won’t want to.’ Rose tried to find a comfortable position on the divan, which was hard and lumpy. ‘Don’t think I’m being beastly. I want to find out about things for myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sure. I thought you came here to see me.’

  Rose put her face on her elbow and looked across at the other bed. Janet was staring at the ceiling. They waited for the silence between them to turn into sleep.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning Rose was hurried out at half past eight when her sister’s first pupil arrived. She found Tadeusz in the kitchen, and hugged him. Afterwards, she was surprised she had done this: the previous evening she had felt he disapproved of her.

  �
�There is tea. Mummy said, will you make eggs if you want them.’

  ‘I don’t think I do. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes. I can sleep anywhere. In February when Papa and I went to ski, we slept on the floor of a hut with twenty-six other persons. Twenty-eight of us and the stove. That was all in the hut. We carried our food on our backs.’

  ‘Where was this? At Zakopane?’

  ‘Everybody goes to Zakopane. This was right up in the mountains.’

  ‘Where you saw the bear?’

  ‘No, that was last week, in a different part of Tatry.’

  ‘You seem to spend a lot of time on holidays.’

  ‘Polish people like excursions. They all live too close together so when they can get away, they go. Also there are cheap tickets for students. But now I must not go so much because I am working for matura examination. It is very difficult, there are many subjects and I cannot do Russian. Our Russian teacher is no good, she is an old woman who was born in Kiev and looks like a pig. Nobody likes her.’

  ‘Because she is Russian or because she looks like a pig?’

  ‘Both. Only she is not Russian really, but Ukrainian. We do not like Ukrainians, too.’

  ‘Either,’ Rose corrected him.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Either, when there are two things. You meant to say “We do not like Russians and we do not like Ukrainians either.” So there are two lots you don’t like.’

  Tadeusz said: ‘More than two. We do not like Czechs, too. And Lithuanians. And Germans. And Jews. Couldn’t I say “too”?’

  Rose was silenced.

  He devoured a large slice of black bread smeared with very pale butter. ‘If I pass matura examination, I will try to go to the University. Either here or in Warsaw.’

  ‘Are you going to do English?’

  ‘No.’ He filled his glass up with tea. ‘There is no English department yet at our university. Probably they will begin one soon, with Papa to teach. But what is the use of studying English if we cannot go to England?’