The Ice Saints Page 7

  And so even in Rose’s absence, Witek was disturbed, steeling himself not to look at the frail tangle of her nylons across a chair, her underclothes innocently hanging up to dry in the kitchen. These extensions of Rose into the surrounding area were what made her remarkable. Here nobody’s possessions had any personality any more, so that where you lived became no more informative than the mark of your head on the pillow. Rose’s irritating untidiness made her always present.

  He could escape to the University; there his tape recorder was waiting to be played with, papers were ready to sign and useful little conversations happened in corridors. But this afternoon by chance he was alone at home. Tadeusz was at a school meeting: he was his class representative on the committee dealing with summer excursions. Janet at the Engineering Institute was giving one of her evening classes.

  Giving up the attempt to work, Witek lay on the trestle bed which stood among his bookshelves. He yawned and stretched in the way people have whose fantasies are too much for them. Then he dozed off.

  He awoke to hear someone coming into the flat.

  ‘Tadeusz?’

  Rose stood in the doorway.

  ‘You’ve been asleep,’ she said.

  He sat up, confused. ‘Impossible to work. A slight headache.’

  ‘Shall I make tea or something?’

  Waking reality descended on him like a cloak of lead. His tongue fumbled with the stiffness of the English language, which so often seemed to paralyse a small section of his brain. He could never manage to say quite what he meant but always something ponderous and banal. He had hardly realized this before and it would not have mattered with anyone else but Rose.

  ‘I help you,’ he said, ‘Rose.’

  They stood on either side of the kitchen table. Against the drumming of tap-water in the kettle, Rose said: ‘I’ve been meeting the local Englishman.’

  ‘I hear he is very nice.’ In fact, he had heard of nothing but suspicions and pertinent questions.

  ‘No, not really. Rather stupid.’

  Witek laughed nervously, a little appalled that she should criticize one of her countrymen to him so brusquely. Giving opinions about other people was betraying them a little: it was not to be done without a painful sense of duty.

  Rose lit the gas. ‘I want to find out things and he obviously doesn’t know the right answers.’

  ‘Please? To find out things?’

  ‘Yes. Witek, what do you think is going to happen here?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Is life going to get any better?’

  ‘But life is getting so much better every day. Sometimes we must be wondering, can it be true?’

  ‘I suppose so. Are you happy? I know it’s an awful thing to ask.’

  ‘We have our work. Janet has her work. I have my work.’ It sounded like an exercise in the Simple Present Tense. ‘This is not perhaps interesting for you. But – I feel I am doing good.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ Rose said, slightly repelled. ‘But what about Tadeusz?’

  ‘He is an ambitious boy.’

  ‘Can he do any good here? Would he be better off in England?’

  ‘I cannot tell. Remember, he is a Pole – I do not hear very good accounts of Polish people in England.’

  How impossible it was! All that one might offer Tadeusz, perhaps holidays abroad, perhaps an English University, the freedom to go anywhere he liked for a few years, would mean nothing at all to Witek.

  ‘But wouldn’t you like him to travel abroad?’

  ‘Here we cannot get money for foreign travels. Only for scientific workers. There is not foreign currency.’

  ‘They use that as an excuse. In the West, even the poorest students go. They just go. Why can’t Tadeusz?’

  Witek looked pained. She was attacking him. What good would it do him to agree with her, merely to join in her mood?

  ‘He would waste a lot of time from his studies and the others would be in front of him.’

  She turned away, defeated. Witek watched her, with hurt love in his gaze. Any relationship with someone who disapproved of him as much as Rose did could only be painful. Mentally he tried saying good-bye to her, in the same way that Janet was always saying good-bye to Tadeusz: they existed in another world, into which they could not be followed. But, like Janet, he could not quite give up hope.

  When Rose faced him again, she was fierce.

  ‘If you could leave Poland, would you?’

  ‘No,’ he shouted back. ‘Of course not.’

  After this, they both faltered.

  ‘Do forgive me asking, Witek. You know, with Janet and everything, I can’t help thinking about it.’

  ‘I understand.’ He frowned. ‘I cannot know what Janet tells you. I know she is not happy.’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘I know,’ he said, more loudly. ‘But perhaps we are not all to blame. This is new, since she was in England. Before that, life was very hard for us and then she was wonderful.’

  ‘She thinks Tadeusz is missing something.’

  ‘I understand. You think so, too.’

  ‘I don’t know. But I must find out.’

  ‘Why must you find out?’

  Rose made the tea with a good deal of fuss and then said: ‘Because I’m fond of you all and at the moment I don’t have anyone else I much care for, that’s all.’

  It was enough for him. He was perplexed by their whole conversation: half-scared and half-flattered, like a hired guide to whom lady tourists suddenly ask a lot of personal questions.

  Rose poured two glasses of tea. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘There isn’t lemon, I am sorry.’

  ‘Do you have lemons here?’

  ‘There were some about three weeks ago. I could get two for Janet. She was keeping them for something and they went bad.’

  ‘Poor Witek.’

  He frowned, stirred his tea and handed her back the spoon.

  Then he looked quickly down into his glass. The warmth in his eyes was not only from the tea. Again he had noticed her nightdress hanging on the line behind her. It was all frills and ridiculousness and it made him want to cry. With anguish he imagined Rose’s flat in Kensington, a place where she was not merely represented by a nightdress or a crumpled stocking, but extended to pictures and furniture and a bed. A bed which was not folded up before breakfast, but existed in all its flagrancy throughout the day. He had covertly examined the pictures of such beds in the magazines which Rose sent to Janet.

  ‘You asked me if I leave Poland. I did not say clearly what I mean. Later, if I get the post of head of the English department, I wish very much to re-visit England. In one year, perhaps.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  He stared across, deep into her eyes, then looked away. ‘You will be in London?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. What about Tadeusz?’

  ‘Tadeusz?’ He was puzzled.

  ‘Witek, why don’t you let Tadeusz come to England for a little while. I’d pay his fare and put him up and I know some children of his own age who’d love to show him round.’

  ‘Tadeusz?’

  ‘Yes. I want him to come – on a visit.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Just so that he can see England.’

  ‘That is not possible.’

  ‘Why not? It’d be such fun.’

  ‘It is not possible.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I mean, if he can get a passport and everything.’

  ‘It would disturb him in his school work.’

  ‘All right, for a short time only. In the holidays.’

  ‘No. I can’t allow it.’

  Suddenly she was sick of him. She moved off to the sink, showing an impatient back.

  He watched her for a moment and then realized that she was not going to speak to him again. She was sulking, as Janet did. Neither of them wanted anything to do with him, only with Tadeusz. He put down his glass, began to say something but the numb fee
ling of speaking English lay over his brain again.

  Yet he could not leave her thinking ill of him. ‘Rose.’

  ‘No, it’s no good. You’ve told me it’s no good.’

  ‘It is not me but—’

  ‘It is you. Other people go.’

  ‘No, you do not understand. Things are not so easy for me. In any case, it is too late to apply for a passport. That takes four or five months.’

  Rose counted quickly on her fingers. ‘July, August – say the end of August. There’d be time.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Witek, do let him come. He’ll love it.’

  ‘You have not spoken with him about this?’

  ‘No, but I will. He’ll persuade you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Please not. Do not speak. It will disturb his work. Although he complains of his courses he is a very diligent boy.’

  ‘He can’t apply for a passport without knowing it, can he?’

  ‘I will see first what may be done.’

  ‘You’ll let him apply. Oh, Witek, thank you.’

  ‘No. Well, perhaps.’

  He had never seen her look so happy before. Since her arrival she had been cast down, not only by the way in which she found them living but by the muted sadness which lay over everything in Biala Gora.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I promise nothing. But there is a chance.’

  He shivered, feeling he had bartered something away for nothing, or for nothing more substantial than a frilled nightdress on a hanger. Later, when he was alone, he would run his face across it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rose was delighted at what she had gained. Once she had got his confidence, she thought, Witek would accept her judgement on a good deal more. And that night, before they went to bed, she told Janet.

  ‘He said Tadeusz could come to England this summer.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’

  ‘All very secret, of course. He doesn’t want me even to tell Tadeusz yet.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Please don’t. You’ll make my position very difficult. I’ll have to make all sorts of promises, of course, about looking after him and sending him back in time for the school year.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But it’s what we want, isn’t it? We want Tadeusz to be able to choose his life.’

  That night Rose’s elation was so great that she did not notice that Janet was scarcely enthusiastic. But by the following morning Janet had evidently changed her mind. With the replete looks and shared glances of those who are keeping secrets, the sisters watched Tadeusz eat his breakfast. It was as much as they could do to stop touching him the whole time.

  As he devoured his scrambled eggs Tadeusz was conscious of something going on behind his shoulders. He judged it to be one of those female mysteries which adolescence had made him confident to dismiss. He smiled tolerantly to them both, swallowed a second cup of coffee and prepared to leave. They kissed him, seeing him off out of their immediate love with a sense of relief.

  Janet had only three pupils on Saturday and the rest of the day she wandered round absent-mindedly attending to the flat, humming bits of dance-tunes that dated from the war years. She was much nicer to Rose, who began to regret Derek Loasby’s invitation and the prospect of a student’s Saturday evening.

  While Rose was changing to go out, Krystyna Kazimierska arrived. Janet went to make tea, and Rose, too, was retreating into the kitchen. The other stopped her, and sat admiring her clothes while she changed. She made little appreciative noises at Rose’s underwear.

  ‘How is Janet?’

  ‘Much more cheerful,’ Rose said, without equivocation.

  ‘I am so happy. It is a wonderful thing to have you here. But Rose, when are you starting to see the rest of our country? My sister has written from Krakow saying you may go there whenever you like. She has the room empty because her daughter is abroad.’

  In the stress and complications among the Rudowskis, Rose had forgotten she was here disguised as a tourist; everyone expected her to go away from Biala Gora at some time or other.

  ‘I’d love that.’

  ‘She has many friends who would take you around Krakow. Here there is nothing for tourists to see.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘She doesn’t speak English. But you can speak French with her.’

  Janet, humming ‘You are my sunshine’, came back with tea. Mrs Kazimierska watched the two sisters intensely. She caught Rose’s eye and seemed to be signalling indecipherable messages, perhaps about Janet. Rose was being asked to take part in one of those Slav bouts of feeling, so strange to the Anglo-Saxon, in which sympathy goes mounting up to the point of explosion, after which any indifference looks like betrayal.

  There was no doubt, however, about the change in Janet.

  She swirled airily between them and when the bell rang she ran to it with a stagey lightness.

  *

  ‘Oh, do come in. You are a stranger. It’s really quite an honour for us isn’t it? I’m sure you’re so busy.’

  At the doorway, Derek Loasby eyed Mrs Rudowski with distrust. Though he still shifted from one foot to the other with his usual suppressed excitement, he was still constrained and embarrassed when he greeted the other two.

  ‘Now do tell us what you’ve been doing,’ Janet went on. ‘We’re fascinated to know, simply fascinated.’

  He blushed. What was the hag up to? His confidence waned; he suspected he was being teased. He muttered something about learning the language.

  ‘Try some out on Mrs Kazimierska and me. Oh, please do!’ She clasped her hands to her breast, pleading.

  Loasby looked at Rose but she was offering no help. He toyed with the idea of an obscenity he had just learned, but was scared of the formidable Mrs Kazimierska.

  She rescued him. ‘Elzbieta Barcik says he is very good. But he speaks Russian, I think.’

  ‘Yes, I learned it at the University.’

  ‘Oxford or Cambridge?’ Janet asked.

  ‘London, actually.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She looked at Rose with a twinkle.

  Loasby stood frowning, unable to understand what was going on. Perhaps Mrs Rudowski had heard some scandal about him and he was unwelcome. With an effort he tried being less self-conscious, and decided that she might be drunk.

  Rose said: ‘We ought to be going.’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be waiting for us.’

  In the hallway, surrounded by bicycles and packing cases and skis, he helped her on with her overcoat.

  ‘Just a moment. I’d better take my key.’

  Rose, too, was surprised and worried by Janet’s behaviour. Perhaps this was how middle-class women had spoken in the thirties; how their mother, as housemaster’s wife, had dealt with the parents of boys she considered common. Or perhaps Janet had learned it at a military hospital, from some snobbish matron roaring through the menopause. It was a folk memory preserved through years of Communist exile, a faded wreath from the bourgeois world.

  Loasby heard Rose’s voice raised in anger. Her sister answered: ‘Why should he get away with it, a little oik like that?’

  Rose came back. She did not speak but pushed her chin right down into her coat collar. She took his arm as they walked to the tram stop.

  When they were in the tram she said: ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought.’

  ‘No, I must. I think living here turns some people mad.’

  ‘What’s an oik, anyway?’

  ‘It’s – it’s a slang expression. From the war, I think.’ She stared out at the dark blocks of buildings and the empty streets.

  ‘You have to be tough living here, that’s all.’

  ‘Why should anyone have to be tough,’ she complained. ‘It’s awful isn’t it?’

  Loasby was silent: the Spartan atmosphere was one of the things that attracted him, though it would be impossible to explain it to her.


  They had forgotten to pay their fares. The conductress now stood between them, in a coat of rough sheepskin and with a face of Mongolian impassivity.

  ‘She’s tough all right.’ He handed over two coins. ‘“What breath blew out the light within that brain?”’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘From a poem. I can’t remember which,’ he added awkwardly, though he could.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Some people have still got the lights in their brains all right, I can tell you. You just follow me.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The whole centre of Biala Gora, including the medieval market-place and the Town Hall, was destroyed by the Germans during their retreat in 1945: a centre of Germanic culture could not be allowed to fall into the hands of Slav barbarians. The Polish authorities, when they re-occupied the city, were in some doubt about restoring it in a style which had never been Polish. But evidently these conflicts of opinion had now been overcome. The gables of merchants’ houses were beginning to take shape behind a maze of scaffolding. The Gothic Town Hall was already completed and its cellar had been handed over to the Students’ Union. Soon the market-place of Biala Gora would be a place for tourists to visit. Its years as a mass of rubble would scarcely be referred to: it would be first new, then old, all over again.

  Derek Loasby led Rose Nicholson across the cobbles to the portico of the Town Hall. While they waited to be let in, music and light were welling up out of a grating at their feet.

  A small plump girl with crew-cut hair was the first to greet them. Derek biffed her confidently on the behind. ‘This is Wanda. She doesn’t speak any English, in fact we don’t let her. Her job is to help me with my Polish. I wonder what’s happened to old Mirek. Gdzie jest Mirek?’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders and continued to stare blankly at Rose. Three other girls left their friends and gathered to inspect Rose. Loasby greeted them all. This, then, was the explanation of his bouncy happiness: here he crowed and strutted in triumph. He had found a place where neither his spectacles nor his manner nor the recrudescent boil-crop on the nape of his neck made any difference; a place where, as now, some incomprehensible mistake in his use of the language roused a conjoint peal of laughter; where he could be a joker without ever making a joke.