Although the evening was cool, Adam didn’t seem to notice that Judith was shivering as they strode along the Embankment. He didn’t even seem to notice that she had loosened her hair or that she wore a short floral dress that showed off her legs. They had arranged to meet at The Connaught but he was too restless to sit in a restaurant. She had dressed for a romantic dinner, and had forgotten to throw a coat around her shoulders before running out of the nurses’ home, but as soon as she saw his drawn face, she suggested going for a walk instead. Dinner with him in this state would be neither romantic nor relaxing.
The trouble with Adam was that she never knew until the last moment whether he would keep any of their arrangements. Sometimes he broke their rendezvous because his leave was cancelled or because he had to meet someone to discuss the situation in Poland or rush back to the base for some emergency. Although Judith regarded punctuality and reliability as essential, and reprimanded nurses who were even a minute late, she always made allowances for Adam.
She felt confused and troubled because she didn’t understand him. That unexpected kiss after the ball had been followed by disconcertingly casual behaviour. Nursing was straightforward. You had a problem and you dealt with it by applying the appropriate treatment. But relationships with men had no set guidelines to reassure you. Nancy, on the other hand, always seemed to know what was acceptable and what wasn’t. ‘Don’t tell me he’s stood you up again?’ she’d say, her blonde curls bobbing indignantly under her nurse’s cap. ‘I don’t know why you put up with it.’
No matter how often Judith explained Adam’s commitment to Poland, Nancy dismissed the excuses. ‘I don’t know politics but I know men, and he’s messing you around,’ she said. ‘Give him the flick.’
Judith was too embarrassed to tell her friend how often Adam’s gaunt face figured in her thoughts and dreams, or how minutely she still examined every detail of their walk along the Embankment when he had kissed her.
‘I wouldn’t be putting my shoes on just yet,’ Nancy had said acidly that evening when she saw Judith dressing for dinner. ‘He’ll be calling any minute to tell you he can’t make it.’
But on this occasion, Nancy’s predictions proved wrong, and as Judith shivered in the breeze that blew up from the river, she walked so close to Adam that the woollen fabric of his jacket scratched her bare arm. From his set jaw, she could tell he was brooding over something, so she decided to break the silence.
‘Isn’t it wonderful that Paris has been liberated?’
He shot her a sharp look that made her flinch and she added quickly, ‘Surely it can’t be long before Warsaw is liberated too.’
Adam gave a cynical laugh. ‘Who gives a shit about Warsaw? When we begged them to let us drop supplies for our resistance, they couldn’t spare the planes or the fuel. But we had to give them air support on D-Day, so Paris could be liberated.’
Five years had passed since the war began, and Poland, Britain’s oldest and most loyal ally, was still fighting the Nazis, while France, which had surrendered in 1940 and set up a collaborationist government, had been rewarded by having its capital liberated. While he vented his anger about this latest instance of Allied duplicity, he walked so fast that Judith wished she’d worn sensible shoes. She was relieved when they stopped near Tower Bridge and leaned over the parapet.
A fine mist had risen from the river and swathed the Tower of London in a soft, ghostly light. ‘Looking at it now, you wouldn’t believe all the bloodthirsty things that have happened here,’ she said.
He looked amused and she wondered whether she sounded like a naïve colonial. Although she’d been living in London for several years, its palaces, towers and domes still excited her. ‘In Australia, we reckon a building that’s a hundred years old is pretty ancient, so it’s incredible to see landmarks that are over a thousand years old,’ she said.
He put his arm around her shoulders and, for the first time that evening, he looked straight at her. ‘I think you are cold and hungry. We go for dinner, yes?’
Over their consommé, which was tasteless and lukewarm, she studied his face. In her company, its deep lines had softened and his mouth looked less bitter than usual.
‘What are you going to do after the war?’ she asked.
He shrugged and pushed away the half-eaten soup. ‘I don’t know. War has taken so many years of my life, I wonder if I will fit into a peaceful world.’
‘Will you go back to Poland?’
He looked down at his long fingers. ‘Life outside Poland I cannot imagine. If a democratic government is set up, I’d like to be part of it.’
‘You said if.’
‘I hope that will happen but who knows? Stalin has stacked the provisional government in Lublin with his supporters. They call themselves the Committee of National Liberation, but whenever the communists talk about liberation, I wonder about their real motives.’
She looked thoughtful. The London newspapers were full of stories extolling the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union, and of the heroic Russian soldiers who were about to liberate Eastern Europe.
‘I keep reading articles that praise Russia and the Red Army,’ she said. ‘They glorify Stalin and criticise Poland for not giving in to his demands.’
His face darkened. ‘Yes, it’s true, we are very unreasonable people.’ He spat the words out. ‘We don’t believe that letting an enemy cut off our arms and legs will make him our friend. The commentators have backed the wrong horse, as you say in English. One day they will regret it, but by then it will be too late.’
At the next table, a man was holding his companion’s hands, gazing at her lovingly. He said something that made her blush and look down, and Judith wondered what it would be like to receive such ardent attention, and to indulge in intimate chitchat instead of discussing global politics. Although she suspected it wouldn’t be stimulating like her conversations with Adam, she couldn’t help stealing envious glances at the amorous couple.
‘What about you?’ Adam was asking. ‘What will you do after the war? Will you go back to Australia?’
‘Eventually I will. I miss the sunshine and the friendly faces. But for now I’m hooked on Europe. There’ll be a lot of reconstruction going on, and they’ll probably need nursing sisters to set up health services and train nurses and so on,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’d like to get involved in.’
He was looking at her closely but whether it was friendly interest or something more intense, she couldn’t tell.
‘You are an interesting woman,’ he said after a pause. ‘I have never met anyone like you.’
She took it as a compliment but decided not to repeat it to Nancy, who was bound to find some negative interpretation.
Outside the hotel, he leaned against a street light and lit a cigarette. As he exhaled, he said, ‘I look forward always to seeing you.’
A wave of impatience swept over her. She’d had enough of this pussy-footing around, enough of all the talking, guessing, interpreting, analysing and playing games. It was wartime, they were adults and every sortie could be his last. She placed her hand on his arm, pushed her hair back from her flushed face and looked boldly into his eyes.
‘If you’d like to spend the rest of the night with me, we could go back inside and get a room.’
She held her breath. Would he be shocked at being propositioned? But he said nothing. Putting his arm around her, he squeezed her shoulder and led her through the portico towards the reception desk.
From the smirk of the clerk whose insolent glance noted their lack of luggage as he watched them sign the register in different names, Judith wasn’t surprised that he’d allocated them one of the rooms at the back of the hotel. It was at the end of a long corridor that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and looked out onto the rear of grimy buildings crisscrossed with fire escapes.
The room was small and dark, and the gold fringes at the base of the curtain pulls were worn from decades of handling. In the weak light of the lamp, which cast shadows on the ceiling, the burgundy bedspread looked blotchy.
‘This must be their worst room,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll tell them to change it.’
Judith raised her eyebrows. ‘Why bother? We didn’t come here to admire the décor, did we?’
He was looking at her with that amused expression again. ‘I’ll ask them to send up a bottle of something. What about champagne?’
‘I’ve never been keen on champagne,’ she said. ‘I think it’s overrated. Why don’t we have your national drink?’
When the bottle of Wodka Wyborowa arrived, he poured out two glasses. ‘Do you know the right way to drink vodka?’ he asked.
She nodded and they clinked glasses.
‘Let’s drink to Poland,’ she suggested. ‘How does that national anthem of yours go? “Poland hasn’t perished and never will”?’
‘I’d like to drink to you,’ he said. ‘You’re such …’
‘An interesting woman?’ she prompted with a touch of sarcasm.
‘A very interesting woman.’ He raised his glass, drained it, and leaned over to kiss her.
She kept up with him glass for glass, but, when she pealed with laughter at everything he said, he took the glass from her hand, placed it on the coffee table and took her in his arms.
Several hours later, he was lying on his side, his head propped up with one hand while he caressed her with the other. ‘That night at Admiralty House, you looked so crisp and starched, like the typical matron who frightens everyone in the hospital.’
She looked at the damp, rumpled sheets, shook her tousled hair, and burst out laughing. ‘I’m certainly not crisp or starched now!’
The morning sun shone weakly through an opening in the curtains, and, when Judith opened her eyes, Adam was already pulling his shirt over his head. She lay very still, not wanting to dispel the memory of the previous night. He saw that she was awake, sat down on the edge of the bed and kissed the palm of her hand.
‘You were right about the décor,’ he said. He folded his arms around her and kissed her so passionately that the fragment of her mind still capable of rational thought started concocting an excuse to be late back to the hospital.
But he was already dressed. ‘I’d better get back to the base,’ he said.
‘That’s a beautiful cigarette case,’ she said as he picked it up from the bedside table and placed it inside his shirt pocket.
‘A girl in Poland gave it to me,’ he said. ‘I never go anywhere without it.’
‘An interesting girl?’ She hated the archness of her question but it was out before she could stop herself.
He thought for a moment. ‘An extraordinary girl.’
Judith swung her legs onto the floor and reached for her dress. She wished she hadn’t asked.
By the time Adam returned to the base, the briefing officer was pinning photographs and maps on the wall.
‘Our intelligence people in the Thames Valley have been studying photographs taken by a reconnaissance flight over Poland recently. They’re photos of the IG Farben industrial plant at Monowitz, and they’ve identified a power station, carbide plant, and synthetic rubber and synthetic oil plants,’ he said. ‘Monowitz is two-and-a-half miles east of a place called Auschwitz.’ He tapped his pointer on the map.
Adam craned forward. That was where they’d spotted the watchtowers and barbed-wire fences.
‘Today your task is to bomb the IG Farben plants at Monowitz,’ the officer went on. He was about to step off the dais when Adam spoke up.
‘Sir, that plant is part of Auschwitz–Birkenau. It’s a concentration camp.’
‘What’s your point, Czartoryski?’
Adam tapped the photograph. ‘Thousands of people are still being transported there every day by train to be gassed and incinerated. While we’re bombing the plant, why don’t we bomb the railway line that leads to the camp? That will delay the transports and save thousands of lives. And maybe by the time they repair the line, the war will be over.’
The officer looked dubious. ‘Quite a scenario you’ve created. The trouble is, you’ve got things back to front. Look here, I have nothing against bombing the bastards’ death camps and making it harder for them to murder people, but that’s not our immediate concern. Our priority is to bomb the Monowitz plant to stop them expanding because, as you’re well aware, the German war machine depends on oil and rubber production.’
In a more sympathetic tone, he added, ‘Once we cripple the German war machine, they’ll have to surrender. And that’s when they’ll stop killing people in those ghastly camps.’
As they were walking to their lockers for their parachutes and mae wests, Stewart muttered to Adam, ‘Just like we’re getting them to surrender by bombing their cities. How many sorties do you reckon we’ve made over Cologne and Berlin?’
Half an hour later, Adam swung the Lancaster around the perimeter track to the end of the runway. The green light flashed and they took off. Soon they were flying over the North Sea towards the enemy coast. The atmosphere was so relaxed, they might have been on a pleasure flight, until Stewart pointed to the starboard beam. ‘Flak ahead.’
From the jets of red tracer all around them, they realised they were in the middle of an aerial battle. Adam gripped the controls and hauled the plane around, twisting and turning to escape the fighters. It rocked wildly from side to side, there was a powerful upward thrust, and they rose above the flak, high among the clouds.
Adam looked down through a break in the clouds and clenched his teeth. Below them stretched the railway lines that carried entire communities to their death. It would be so easy to drop a few bombs and halt these obscene transports, and he chafed at his own powerlessness, and the apathy of the entire world.