The Ice Saints Page 6

  ‘Aunt Louise was an old devil,’ Rose said carefully. ‘I expect she knew she was making difficulties. You must remember it’s Tadeusz’s money. What will he think about all this?’

  ‘He’s only a child.’

  ‘It’s his money. And in some ways it isn’t a terrible lot.’

  ‘If for years you’ve had nothing! Witek and I saved some money once and then they changed the currency and we lost it all. You’ll never understand, Rose.’

  ‘I mean, the money is not a lot if it is to help Tadeusz through his life. How’s that to be done?’

  Janet’s silence showed that she had got the point. ‘I see. Yes, it’s going to be very difficult.’

  ‘The boys are coming back for supper, aren’t they? I don’t think we should tell them yet.’

  Janet nodded.

  ‘It’ll be a shock for Witek. I mean, he’s after this job at the University, isn’t he? And he’s in with the Party, so he can’t be expected to be pleased at the idea of his only son becoming a Capitalist.’

  They both giggled at this. Janet said: ‘Of course, it has nothing to do with him at all.’

  ‘He controls Tadeusz’s life.’

  ‘I have no intention of telling him about it.’

  The two women were a little drunk now, and exhilarated with dealing with something rather out of their depth. Their voices, chiming to a family tune of the upper middle class, rang out strangely through the dark, cramped flat. For them their grandparents would have expected marriage trusts and portions, but rising prices, the war and their father’s career in education had made this impossible. Nevertheless both the sisters still thought and spoke about money in a way which was quite unknown in the city outside, where the native population had had a tradition of proud spend-thriftness, of leaving commerce to the Jews and German merchants. Communism, which makes all financial values completely arbitrary, had only increased this.

  What the men of the family would think, therefore, was uncertain. Rose remembered how Mark Tatham had warned her in Warsaw: money means such different things in different places.

  Witek and Tadeusz could now be heard coming into the hallway. Flushed, tipsy, the sisters embraced one another and prepared to tell lies.

  *

  Witold and Tadeusz were in the middle of an argument which did not break into English until they sat down at table. In this house, their language, with its slithery arcane noises, had become like a secondary sexual characteristic. It emphasized their privacy and separateness as men. You could as easily keep secrets from them as they from you: people can’t guess thoughts in a foreign language, however well they speak it. Now, apart from their polite greetings, Tadeusz and Witek were too preoccupied to notice the suppressed excitement of the two women.

  Tadeusz turned to Rose: ‘It is not right. This teacher is giving us so much work for her class, we have no time for anything else. My colleagues wish to make a protest.’

  ‘She is quite correct,’ Witek said. ‘It is in the syllabus. She will show you it.’

  ‘Then we shall all fail.’

  Witek said to Rose in his educational voice: ‘It is difficult for him because many subjects are required. But he must do well. The number of students with secondary education increases every year and there is great competition for university places, especially for the courses he will follow.’

  Rose tried to listen but she was watching her sister. There was a strange expression on Janet’s face: she looked as if she was about to call Tadeusz back from somewhere he was going, but did not have the courage to raise her voice.

  Tadeusz as usual ate ravenously, refused a second glass of tea and asked if he could leave.

  When he had gone, Janet said: ‘It’s his health I worry about, with all this cramming and homework. A few years ago he had a spot on one lung. I sent him to the mountains at once, and it cleared up. But with this continual strain and being forced to keep up with others at all costs, you never know. There’s a bad family history too, unfortunately.’

  She fired a glance of hatred across the table and Rose saw Witek flinch from it.

  Rose felt sad for him. He was not much as a man, but he had everything to lose, and he was going to lose it. After the giggling excitement of half an hour ago, Rose protested inwardly against these wrecking tactics, longing to blurt out the truth if only it would take away the stricken look from Witek’s face. For the first time, Rose feared that Janet was a little crazy. She would use this good fortune, not for the calm and absence of desperation which a bank account was supposed to give you, but for revenge, to smash and destroy and create an unhappiness as fierce and broken as her own had been.

  Chapter Nine

  After three days Rose began to move more easily in and out of the three rooms of the flat and the triangle of Rudowskis. There was still the discomfort of being accommodating instead of helpful, the slight ache of always feeling one is in the wrong chair, the hurry of shifting from room to room with the risk of leaving a pair of nylons, a half- finished detective story or a packet of cigarettes stranded, while the money-making activities of the house went on. The Rudowskis were furtive about these in a way strange to Rose, who had earned her own living since she was eighteen.

  For the time being everything went on as usual. Neither of the sisters made any move towards confiding in Witold. Instead they bickered indecisively between themselves.

  ‘I told the solicitors I’d find out what would be best for Tadeusz.’

  ‘But it’s so clear, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Rose, there are hundreds of people in Biala Gora who’d give their right hands to escape to the West. They are too proud to admit it to you. But I’ll admit it because I happen to be one of them. Do you imagine I’d have come back in 1957 if it hadn’t been for Tadeusz?’

  ‘Why don’t they go then?’

  ‘Because they can’t get passports. And they haven’t any money.’

  ‘That’s older people. They want to be comfortable and there certainly isn’t much of that here. But what about the young? I wouldn’t want Tadeusz to end up like Mickey.’

  ‘That’s quite different,’ Janet said impatiently.

  ‘Mickey’s Irish. They’re supposed to be like the Poles. We must try and find out what’s right. Not make him unhappy, too.’

  ‘He’s too young to know what he wants.’

  ‘And Witek, too.’

  ‘Him!’

  *

  On the fourth afternoon, Rose was cornered in the kitchen without cigarettes.

  ‘Derek Loasby is on the telephone.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The Englishman at the University.’

  ‘I remember. Your friend, the one who blinks, told me about him.’

  She went into the other room and picked up the telephone. Janet’s student, an elderly surgeon, was sitting on the divan breathing heavily just behind her.

  ‘Yes?’

  A hearty English voice went into some complex apologies and emerged with: ‘I just wondered if you’d like to come out sometime and have a cup of coffee or something.’

  ‘When, exactly?’

  ‘Well, now.’

  Rose glanced round her. The surgeon was staring politely ahead of him. The alternative to Loasby’s invitation was the afternoon in exile, isolated in the kitchen. On the other hand the coat and skirt she would have to wear lay in the divan drawer underneath the surgeon. Already she seemed to feel his measured breath on her calves, urging her to decision.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Shall I come and call for you?’

  Janet and the surgeon were as motionless as waxworks.

  ‘I’ll find the place. Where is it?’

  ‘The Kaprys. You were there with Miss Barcik.’

  ‘I’ll be about half an hour.’

  Without looking round again, Rose snatched a packet of cigarettes from the table (these in fact belonged to the surgeon) and returned to the kitchen. Some time lat
er she heard the surgeon leave. She went through to retrieve her coat and skirt before Janet’s next pupil arrived.

  ‘I must say I haven’t found that young man very friendly considering we were the only two English here. I could have given him a lot of tips. But he goes off on his own and nobody seems quite to know what he gets up to.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll find out.’

  ‘Did you remember your key? I’ve got my class at the Engineering Institute this evening.’

  Chapter Ten

  In the café where Rose had sat with Janet’s friends, the first room was quite full and there was no sign of anyone who looked English. She headed through the tobacco-smoke and smell of old clothes into a larger room beyond. Here faces were thrust forward at each other over the wet-ringed tables, tongues loosened not by drink but the urgency of getting their say. On a yellow brown dais ornamented with plywood cut-outs of lyres, a violinist and a pianist were performing. Above them hung a sort of mosaic relief, representing a huge-footed woman carrying sheaves of wheat.

  The girl saw a hand shoot up, followed by a young man in a tweed coat.

  ‘I daren’t leave here, someone will grab the table,’ he shouted to her, and indeed at his first movement two stout surly men carrying plastic briefcases pushed Rose aside and made towards it. One of them seized hold of the chair Derek Loasby was keeping for Rose. Loasby got it away from him by force.

  ‘Sit down on it quickly.’

  She did so, feeling herself used as a weapon in their conflict. The men moved off, scowling, between the tables.

  ‘They’re so predictable, the Poles. Hospitality at home and awful manners in public.’

  Rose looked doubtful at this generalization, which was perhaps only occasioned by the pomposity of nervousness. She hated the starts of conversation, ‘drawing people out’ as though they were to be extracted from holes: they had far better stay where they were.

  As soon as she could, she took a careful look at Derek Loasby. His hair was dark red, his nose another shade of red and some pimples along his neck, made by a dull razorblade, were nearly purple. A fall of dandruff lay on the rough tweed of his collar.

  ‘Coffee? It’s not bad here, compared with the other places.’

  He would keep shifting around, in his seat. These movements, which were constant with him, did not indicate any particular excitement, nor were the questions he now fired at the girl evidence of any real curiosity. He was too full to the brim with himself for that.

  In the end he got hold of a waiter, a surviving pachyderm from the days before the war, whose mournful appearance was enough to make even Loasby reject the pretence, often helpful with girls, that he was a habitué of the place. Instead he quite competently ordered two large coffees.

  ‘It’s jolly nice seeing someone English again. I love it here, of course. But you can’t go around saying that to people. They don’t even like you to, for one thing.’

  ‘Surely some people like to hear nice things?’

  ‘Party people. They’ve no time for us, we’re the decadent Westerners. Jolly good fun, too. Some people say to me, why didn’t you go to Warsaw or Krakow, more going on. I like it here. Do you know, I’ve been the only English person here this winter.’

  ‘There was my sister.’

  ‘British wives don’t really count do they? Sorry, is that rude?’

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t know really.’ Rose was not really attending to what he was saying, being put off by the pugnacity of his approach. He was half-way over the little table; he had adopted from the natives the tactic of close breathing, even the direct stare into the shrinking pupils. He only drew back when the waiter placed two glasses of muddy-looking coffee between them.

  ‘Put the sugar in and then the saucer on top. The theory is the grounds go down.’

  They emptied the little bowls of grey sugar on to the bubbling surface of the coffee. Rose burnt her fingers trying to get at the saucer under the scalding glass.

  ‘Here, take my hanky.’ He produced something stuck together and sooty.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  At this rate it would take half an hour to drink the coffee and he was pushing nearer.

  ‘I wanted to ask you. We meet up, me and my friends, every Saturday. We dance at the Students’ Club. How about it?’

  Rose did not bother to hide the effort of reaching a decision on this. She did not even pretend that she had not understood, as one often did on receiving an invitation that might be unattractive.

  Though callow, Loasby was not stupid. A moment of pure misery made him tremble: he had overshot the mark with someone who was really worthwhile.

  ‘All right,’ Rose said.

  A smile of relief shone all over his face. It would not stop, it went on and on.

  Rose smiled back.

  ‘Jolly good. I’m sure you’ll like this place we go to. They’ve got a very good jazz group. There’s a lot of good things about this country when you know your way around. And, with parcels, there’s very little you can’t get.’

  ‘What parcels?’

  ‘You have them sent from England. Nescafé, aspirin, things like that. Ball-point pens. You haven’t any ball-point pens, have you?’

  ‘I’ve got one but I use it.’

  Now he had started to press his foot against hers. The girl retreated. She hit an unexpected leg of the modernistic table, and their coffee slopped over.

  ‘That’s a pity.’ He was still talking of the ball-point pens. ‘You could have some sent, couldn’t you? Though through the post you might have to pay duty. Nescafé is better. I’ve got friends who’ll take anything like that off me. I sold some clothes before I went to Vienna at Christmas and stocked up again there.’

  ‘How did you get the money out?’

  ‘Easy. I took a Russian camera and sold it.’

  He had got carried away again. He shot a panicky trapped look at the surrounding tables. There was no sign that anyone had understood a word he was saying, but should there have been? He gulped, turned pinker, and was silent for a moment. Miss Barcik had hinted that Loasby told lies; in fact his stumbling candour was so obvious that it was quite unrecognizable to anyone not accustomed to the English.

  ‘I – I must say I’ve met an awfully nice lot of people. There’s this girl, perhaps I oughtn’t to mention her name just now’ – he gave another glance at the grey men surrounding them – ‘You’ll meet her on Saturday. And the others, too. Everyone here is really sociable.’

  ‘It’s surprising, isn’t it, when they all live so close together.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s just it. If you’ve never been lonely you never want to be alone.’

  ‘What happens if you can’t stand the people you live with?’

  ‘That’s too bad.’ His face drew nearer again. ‘In London if you’re young and poor you can have a horrible time. They said: “Join the Young Conservatives”. Well I did and all the girls were plain and the lads just as desperate as me. No help at all. Coming here was a revelation, I can tell you.’

  There was a sort of wet film on his eyes; pity for himself.

  Somewhat repelled, she said: ‘But you only have a nice time because you’re English. What if you were a Pole?’

  He leaned back in his chair and put his thumbs in the armholes of his pullover. ‘I’m sure I’d have an even nicer time.’

  ‘This is a wonderful country,’ he added in a loud voice, looking furtively round him.

  This seemed to leave them much where they were before.

  Chapter Eleven

  While Rose had coffee with Loasby, Witold Rudowski was sitting at home with a pile of language tests in front of him. Outside the walls and windows of the opposite block shone with the melancholy light of a late spring evening; inside the flat, it was already dark.

  Witek was unable to work. Two or three times his impatience at himself brought him to the window: the mere sight of other people, the representatives of mass society, might remind him of his
duties towards them.

  The janitor’s children were playing in the dust under the walnut tree. Three young men who had acquired shares in a motor-cycle were engaged in roaring the engine up and down. And now the lame ex-soldier had gone to let out his tumbler pigeons. Five of these flew up on to the roof opposite, where they fussed and shimmered in a black and white group. Then, when the soldier called them, they fluttered down one by one, performing on the way a complete back-somersault in the air, and alighted inside the walnut tree, which was still leafless. The pigeons stayed there, dark fruit-shaped objects against the bright sky.

  Motor-cycles and pigeons were cures for the depression and anxiety caused by the blunt resistance of the physical world. This seemed not to obey his compatriots as it did the Germans and the British. Witek’s cure was ski-ing, in which nothing whatever got in his way. But now the hills nearest Biala Gora were bare except for little corners of old snow among the spruce trees. You had to go to the Tatry, a hundred and fifty miles away, for good ski-ing at this time of the year.

  Dreaming of mountains, Witek went back to the language tests.

  Each period of his life had presented him with immediate problems which must be solved before he could move on. Like most conformists, he had no resonance. He bored others because of his lack of feeling for the past; he never joined in those impassioned conversations by which Poles recapitulate their country’s history and increase the unease of their destiny. Up till now his hopes had been limited and precise.

  The shock had come the moment he saw Rose’s luggage: two suitcases of brown pigskin, the smaller one having zip- fasteners. She had bought them for this visit and because she had travelled by air they were still unbattered. They smelt new.

  As such things will, however much we tell ourselves they are evidence of no importance, the suitcases represented all the difference between his life and the life of somebody who might have a chance of possessing Rose. You couldn’t get anything so completely achieved as those suitcases here. Not a pair of scissors nor a vacuum cleaner nor a decent meal: they all had something wrong about them, some immediate defect or built-in drawback. Increased prosperity would never change this. Officially he considered it unfortunate that people here attended church so assiduously, but the churches were the last places where, among properly made things, actions were properly performed.