Chiara was shivering-white-cold furious, every word she enunciated in rapier-sharp, rapid sentences. “Anything else you forgot to tell me?” Her black eyes bored into him. “To protect me?”
Her father stood silent, head bowed, like a wee boy about to get the strap. The comfortable, well-proportioned sitting room of the Corelli family home, curtains drawn against the chill autumn night and fire ablaze in the large hearth, was often the setting for heated family discussions. Family fights were unknown. Arms windmilling, voices raised, heated discussions about important things such as pasta, the color to paint the chip shop or gelato versus ice cream were the most this family ever argued about.
“Cara. Please, we try to do what is for the best.” Her tiny aunt stood in the doorway, hands wrestling with invisible knitting, trying to support her brother.
“Oh really? Well, it didn’t work. And, Aunty Lita, I can’t believe that you too hid this from me.” She stared at her. “Peter was hiding a DP, a displaced person, who is on the run from the police. But none of you told me. You thought I should be protected like a little princess. That is such an insult. What next? Oh yes, you forget to tell me my future husband is in prison. Yes, yes”—she held up her hands to ward off the excuses—“I know he’s out on bail now. And I have to hear from Joanne that he was arrested. Do you know how that made me feel?” Especially, she thought, since I always lecture her about trust in a marriage.
Her father called out when he heard the front door opening.
“Out.” And the door slammed.
“What’s wrong?” Chiara stood shivering on the doorstep like a bedraggled little bird, lost in a storm.
Joanne tried to steer Chiara into the kitchen, but the girls were pulling her by the hand in the opposite direction.
“I’ve had a big fight with my father about Peter and—”
Joanne shook her head imperceptibly and gestured with her eyes toward Annie, who had immediately latched on to their conversation.
“Later,” she mouthed.
“Play with us, Aunty Chiara,” Jean pleaded.
“We’re about to have mince and tatties, Scottish haute cuisine. Join us.”
Chiara smiled at Joanne’s feeble joke.
“And Bill’s out late so we can have a good blether.”
She knew Chiara didn’t like Bill. But then he too had made it clear he had no time for “turncoat” Italians. And she had no idea where Bill was tonight. When he was home he was monosyllabic. Joanne put it down to guilt. And more and more, especially when he’d been drinking, he’d spend the night in his workshop. So he said. The business had problems; that much she had been able to twist out of him. But her husband didn’t believe in a woman knowing a man’s business.
“It’s no him. It’s the drink.” Granny Ross always had an excuse for her son.
“That’s the Scottish national anthem,” was Joanne’s retort.
The girls had had their story and were now in bed. A wind was up, rattling the last of the leaves from the rowans. The two friends sat each side of the fire talking quietly, on their third cup of tea.
“What really gets me is that I thought they—Peter, Papa, Aunty Lita—were all doing secret wedding stuff. They were keeping a secret, all right—a secret missing Polish seaman. My own family, my fiancé, didn’t trust me. They did it to protect me, didn’t want to worry me, they said.”
“That was wrong.” Joanne knew the feeling of being shut out.
“Aiding an illegal, something like that, that’s what he’s charged with. Peter was seen crossing the canal bridge, heading north, with the sailor in his car. The idiot! This could affect Peter’s business badly, our business too. I know some in the town still think of Italians as cowards, turncoats, traitors—that’s a mild way of putting it. I’ve heard much worse. We’re not responsible for what happened in the war, I was a child! Papa suffered! My mother was killed.” Chiara was becoming more agitated. “And so many Italians who were born here, been here for ages, were interned in camps—just for being Italian, for being on the wrong side.”
Joanne didn’t know what to say. She knew the sentiments of people in wartime. Prejudice had nothing to do with being rational.
“I’m going to tell Peter I can’t marry him.”
“Chiara! You can’t. You love him.”
“I love him to bits but if we don’t trust each other, there can be no marriage.”
There was nothing Joanne could say. It was too raw a subject for her.
The fire had burned down to a deep devil red. From the wireless in the corner, the round plummy voice of the BBC announcer introduced Mahler’s second symphony. The opening chords began, the music a salve for raw emotion. Slowly, surely, as the adagio led into the opening movements, Joanne opened up.
“I’ve never known real trust,” she began quietly. “It’s not the way Bill sees a marriage. He tells me what he thinks I need to know, no more. He doesn’t share, doesn’t talk, he provides for his family, that is what men do, but talk? Discuss things? Share his thoughts? I think that only happens in films and books, and even then, you have to be a foreigner. No Scottish man would talk ever about his dreams, tell you he loves you …”
“Except Rabbie Burns.”
“Aye, Rabbie. Goodness, would you not want to marry him?” They both laughed.
“Even though we had to get married in a registry office,” Joanne continued, “the ‘love, honor and obey,’ especially the ‘obey,’ is how Bill thinks it should be. As for love, well, he does love me in his own way. Honor, I don’t think he’s ever wondered what that means.”
Chiara sat silent, slightly uncomfortable at the intimacy of the conversation, but knowing Joanne needed to talk to someone.
“You probably guessed, but yes, we ‘had to’ get married. We barely knew each other. End of the war, a handsome soldier laddie swept me off my feet. I brought complete disgrace to my family. My father literally barred me from his door, very dramatic it was, biblical, well, he is a minister, and he has never spoken to me since … nor my mother.” She shook her head and forced a smile. “I wonder how many war brides have the same story. After all that death, we were avid for life, for a new start. We were intoxicated by our survival when so many …” Her throat started to close up. “Another cup of tea, that’s what we need.” She rose abruptly.
It was the last thing Chiara needed, but she was used to the Scottish custom of endless cups of tea in every situation.
Settled back in her chair, Joanne determined to be more cheerful.
“I saw Margaret McLean today, she told me that Annie has a game of ringing doorbells and running away.”
“That’s my girl.” Chiara smiled.
“I’d be too scared. I was a right goody-goody, a true daughter of the manse.”
“Me too. All Italian girls are supposed to be princesses.”
“When I was little I thought God was my grandfather. My father called him ‘our Father’ when he preached his sermons. But my mother used God to threaten me. You know; He was watching, He knew when I hadn’t tidied my room, knew what a naughty girl I was, all that kind o’ thing. I suppose I was lonely, my sisters being much older than me, but I had books, books were my escape. When I first read Jane Eyre, I used to fantasize that my mother was like Mrs. Rochester and that my real mother would one day appear.”
“And you wonder where Annie got her imagination from.”
“This time it’s Wee Jean with the fantasies, some nonsense about the wee soul Jamie, the boy that drowned, being taken away by a hoodie crow.”
Chiara stared at her.
“It’s a horrible big black bird that eats carrion and waits around at lambing time for the carcasses of dead and sometimes not so dead lambs.”
“Euch!” Chiara shuddered. “Children have great imaginations; they need to explain the things that scare them. A crow, that’s a new one. But this wee boy drowning, so terrible for the parents, the family.”
“Aye. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Angus and Margaret McLean were sitting quietly together over their ritual evening G&T. Rob had wine, a taste he had acquired when on exchange holidays with French family friends. He was desperate to ask questions, knew that his father rarely expressed an opinion and wouldn’t speculate nor ever break a client’s confidence. Rob and his mother knew none of those restraints.
”My, my,” said Margaret. “A fine mess.”
“Peter did give assistance to the man, a person the police wanted to interview, the procurator fiscal can’t ignore that,” her husband gently pointed out.
“Maybe Peter didn’t know the police wanted him when he helped the man,” Rob offered.
“Ignorance is no excuse in law. And please remember, you’re a reporter. You investigate. You report. And you inform the police if need be. It’s not your job to play detective.”
“Don McLean is always telling me the same thing. I’d like to find this sailor, though. A great story.”
“We all would. For Peter Kowalski’s sake.” Angus McLean looked thoughtful. “The police will have checked the trains and roads and of course boats. This man can’t have vanished. If you believe he is up the glens, why don’t you go to Beauly? Ask Dr. Matheson if he has anyone on his list who would notice unusual goings-on in the glens. You know country people; no one can walk across a field without someone seeing them. You never know.” An afterthought struck him. “Dr. Matheson knows Mr. Stuart, the head gamekeeper up Cannich way. There’s not much escapes his eye. What with his precious pheasants and stags and the salmon, he’s always on the lookout for poachers. He would spot a stranger, if that’s where this Polish man is.”
“Thanks, Dad, I might just do that. It’s worth a try anyhow.”
“I also seem to remember,” Angus went on, “the old ghillie, this one’s father, he knew Peter from when they were building the dam. They played together.”
“Football?”
“No,” laughed his father, “the fiddle. Though in Peter’s case it would be the violin. A good player, I’m told. Classically trained. I recall them playing at one or two dances at the Spa Pavilion in Strathpeffer. Peter was far too good of course, but they rattled off a fine jig.”
Margaret agreed. “Yes, that was fun, wasn’t it, Angus?”
Rob could never imagine his father having fun. Enjoying himself, yes. But fun? Still, it was a good lead and the prospect of being out and about on his bike appealed to him.
“Thanks, Dad, I’ll give Dr. Matheson a call right now.”
“Give him our regards,” Margaret called after him as Rob left to use the phone in the hall. She turned to her husband. “You do know something.”
“Only one thing for certain. Peter Kowalski is a good man. Inspector Tompson needs someone to charge, makes him look competent. The police here have the added problem of searching in Ross-shire, in a different jurisdiction. Peter’s a foreigner. For some, that means he must have done something. So, this arrest is opportune.”
“No one would believe anything bad about him.” Margaret was certain.
“Maybe,” said Angus, “but I’m afraid I don’t have your faith in human nature, and people believe that the police are always right. ‘No smoke without fire’ sort of thing. Peter Kowalski could lose a lot more than his reputation if he ends up with a police record.”
Rob arranged to meet the young ghillie. Young Archie had inherited his father’s job and his love of the glens. Even though retired, old Archie Stuart was “fit as a fiddle,” as he told everyone who asked. In late Victorian times the estate was at its peak. As a young boy, he always knew he would follow his father in the service of the clan chief, lord of the vast estate. Vast in square miles. Vast in glens and hillsides. Nearly empty of people. The people, rounded up like cattle, had been driven to the four corners of the earth. Rob had heard there were more Highlanders in Canada than in the Highlands.
Rob drove up the steep winding track to the gamekeeper’s cottage at the top of the glen. The scars of the clearances were visible still. Ruined croft houses, remains of dry stone dykes marking lost fields, now reclaimed by ferns and gorse and whin and heather, a brighter shade of green on the hillsides showing where crofters had fertilized and cultivated the land, now they were empty, except for the sheep. Only ghosts and the faeries remained.
In this particular glen, what land had not been claimed by the sheep was now underwater, flooded to bring electricity to the towns and villages of the rich farmland below, to a booming population born to replace the souls lost in two world wars.
Rob reached the only habitation at the very head of the glen, and with the engine switched off, the silence of nature—with the birds, distant water, a low drone of insects and the wind rustling the birch and rowan and setting the pines to sighing—he took it all in in a second and was enchanted.
“Come in, come in.” The old man welcomed Rob heartily, shaking his hand. The grip was excruciating. Rob tried not to wince.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stuart.”
“Archie, lad, call me Archie. Mind, now they call me Auld Archie. How’s your father? And your mother? I remember her fine from the dancing in the Strath. A fine bonnie lass your mother. Didn’t think young Angus had it in him to land such a catch.”
“Young Angus?” Rob was bemused. His father young was a strange concept. “It’s good of you both to see me.” He nodded to the younger replica standing behind the table.
“Aye well. It’s been on my mind to talk to someone. I just never got round to it.”
“There’s not much to tell anyhow,” joined in young Archie. “It’s not as if them old crofts have been lived in for near a century. Didn’t his lordship sell that one off?”
“Not sell, no. An understanding I heard. And only to Peter,” Auld Archie explained.
“Peter? Peter the Pole?” Rob was excited. His trip up here had not been wasted.
“I thought that was why you came, lad.”
“Oh aye. To help Peter. But we can’t help Peter till we find this other man, the other Pole. Peter’s been charged with hiding him, Mr. Stuart.”
Father and son looked at each other, shocked.
“Charged, you say? Well, well. That changes things, surely it does.”
“My father’s his solicitor, and he got Peter out on bail, “ Rob explained. “But the best way to help Peter is to find this missing sailor and persuade him to turn himself in to the police.”
“Da, you might as well tell him.” A look went between father and son.
“He’s no sailor, lad, that I can tell you. He wouldn’t know a half hitch from a granny knot.”
His son nodded in agreement.
“No, we thought he was Peter’s friend. Peter asked us to keep an eye out for him and take up some supplies. Not that your man was grateful. Oh no, always girning on about summat.”
“You say he’s gone?”
“Aye, he’s gone aright.”
Rob was stunned. “So where is he? Do you know?”
“Aye, we do that, young Rob. A cup o’ tea?”
“No thanks.” Rob recovered quickly. He knew Highland etiquette. You waited. Talked about this and that. The son would follow the father, saying nothing except to agree or back him up. “Well, only if you’re having one. That would be fine.”
The old man in his widower’s kitchen made a fine cup of tea, but no homemade cake appeared, only shop biscuits, and Rob was starving. He tried to sit still as he waited the excruciatingly long time it took the kettle to boil on the wood-burning stove. He tried to stop his fingers tapping invisible typewriter keys, writing up his scoop in his mind. He could see the headline: “Local reporter finds missing Pole.” No, “. . . missing sailor.” No …
“Sugar, lad?”
Early afternoon saw Jenny McPhee, with Joanne at her side, lead a curious procession down the street and stop in the mud-patch garden of a gray-harled council house that looked as though it had been designed to encourage a quick turnover of tenants via the mental asylum or suicide. If there was grass, it was in single blades. Trees were sticks with a side limb or two poking up through the moonscape. Broken prams, rusting bikes, skeletons of cars and vans and broken dreams, made a playground for the tribes of bairns and dogs that roamed the council house scheme.
Joanne had taken the phone call.
“Don, it’s for you.”
She couldn’t help but hear the conversation.
“No, Jenny, I canny come over. Jenny, I’ve a newspaper to put out. Aye, uh-huh, no, I haven’t the time. No. Really? Hold on a wee minute. …” He turned to Joanne, raising his eyebrows in a question.
“Yes, I’ll go.” She had no idea why or where she would be going, but anything involving Jenny McPhee intrigued her.
“Jenny? Joanne Ross will be over. And remember, you’ll owe me.”
He scribbled down an address and hung up. When he explained, Joanne was at a loss as to why she should be there.
“A witness, that’s what Jenny wants. No one, especially Inspector Tompson, will ever believe a tinker. They want you there as a witness to whatever the blazes is going on.”
They stopped outside one of the houses. Jenny quietly gave the orders. “One of you, round the back. Jimmy, Geordie, wi’ me.”
Firmly clutching her disreputable bag under one arm, she banged on the door. No answer.
“Keith, Keith.” Adding quite unnecessarily, “It’s your ma.”
“Keith?”
“Ma eldest.” Joanne was astonished. How many more McPhees were there?
“Not a drop o’ common sense that one—for all his fancy education. And living in sin, he is. What’s the world coming to? We’re Travelers and proud of it. No sin in our family.” She smirked. “Weel, a few close calls maybe.”
She continued banging on the door.
“I’m comin’. Hold yer horses.” A voice echoed down the hallway.
The door was opened by Keith McPhee. That he was a McPhee there could be no doubt. He had the ginger hair and as many freckles as stars in the sky.
“Ma, Jimmy, I’ve told you. It’s no good. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Where’s your manners, boy? Are you no going to ask us in?”
Keith stared at Joanne, glanced at the woman hovering at the end of the hall. “It’ll have to be the kitchen. We have a friend staying. He’s … he’s sleeping.”
Joanne and Jimmy followed Jenny, and the three of them sat round a small table in a small kitchen with Keith standing by the sink, Geordie waiting in the hall. The unknown woman stood by the door, ignored. Joanne was curious; no doubt this was the scarlet woman. Older, late thirties maybe, well dressed, a country air about her, she would not have been out of place presiding over a Women’s Institute meeting. And the kitchen was tidy and nicely decorated with lace tablecloth and lace curtains and a busy lizzie in a pot on the windowsill growing up and over, framing the view toward the firth. Joanne wondered all over again what on earth was going on.
No introductions were made, so Joanne smiled at the stranger. “Joanne Ross, pleased to meet you.”
“Shona Stuart. Pleased to meet you too.” The woman blushed.
“It’s no you we’ve come about, lass. It’s your visitor.” Jenny started. Half a second later there was a commotion in the hall. Jimmy McPhee ran out, sending the chair flying. He returned dragging a tall stranger, held on one side by Jimmy and on the other by Jimmy’s clone, Geordie.
“You’ve picked the wrong McPhee to run into, Mr. Missing Polish Seaman,” chortled Jenny. “Ma Jimmy may be half a foot shorter than you but he wis the army bantamweight boxing champion.” As most Scottish fighters were bantamweights, it was quite a claim to fame.
Everyone was still for a moment. In the crowded kitchen, with no one sure of the next move, Joanne took charge.
“Shona. Why don’t you and me make a cup of tea and then we can all sit down and sort this out.”
“Aye, lass, a nice cup o’ tea would be welcome.” Jenny McPhee reached into the voluminous bag, then handed Shona her contribution, a half bottle of whisky.
“Add a wee drop to mine, would you?”
Shona Stuart was so astonished at Jenny’s even speaking to her that she forgot the invasion of her house. And everything else besides.
“She’s not such a bad soul, ye know,” said Jenny in a loud whisper to Joanne. “It’s that boy of mine that’s led her astray.” This of a man nearing forty.
Another knock at the door.
“That’ll be Allie, ma second-youngest,” Jenny explained. “He was out the back in case thon one”—she nodded toward the stranger still held in Jimmie McPhee’s embrace—“made a run for it.”
Keith went to open the door to his brother. Rob was there too. So was a windblown and bowlegged Auld Archie Stuart. Rob had given him a lift on the back of the Triumph all the way from Glen Affric.
“Dad!” cried Shona in astonishment.
“Lass,” he replied.
“Archie,” said Jenny.
“Jenny,” came the reply.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” pleaded a completely confused Joanne.
“So?” Don demanded when they were back in the office.
“Well, I went up the glen to meet Archie Stuart and brought him back on my bike,” Rob began. “It was terrifying. He’s a hopeless passenger, leaning the wrong way into bends and everything—”
“And I went to the council house, like you told me,” Joanne chimed in, “with Jenny and Jimmy and Keith and two, or was it three more McPhees, and this Polish sailor was there, oh, and Shona Stuart, and Rob turned up with—”
“Haud on, haud on.” Don held up his wee stubby pencil for silence, then hauled his short stubby body onto a stool by the big table, rearranged the piles of paper in front of him, reached for his spiral shorthand notebook. “Right. Ladies first.”
“Righty-oh.” Joanne took a deep breath, organizing her thoughts. “We”—Don waved his pencil in the air—“sorry, Jenny and I, sorry … Jenny McPhee, myself, I think three McPhee men, including Jimmy, went to the house down the ferry, where we met Keith McPhee, who is living there with Shona Stuart—”
“Archie Stuart the ghillie’s daughter?” Don looked up from his squiggles.
“And Archie Stuart the ghillie’s sister,” Rob added.
“Wheesht, wait your turn,” Don warned him.
Joanne stopped, confused. Rob jumped in.
“This Polish man, Karel Cieszynski, had a fight with the captain, who is Russian, of the Baltic timber ship, and who had the Pole onboard illegally, for money, and the Polish man—Karl, as he wants to be called—jumped or was pushed overboard into the river, if you believe his story, that is. It was an ebbing tide and he was picked up by some tinkers who were fishing”—Don snorted—“or poaching for salmon,” Rob acknowledged with a grin. “And they, the tinkers, took him to their camp down by the council dump and let Peter Kowalski know about him because he was Polish and”—Rob picked up the look on Don’s face—“and because there might be a reward in it for them. And because this Polish person knew Peter Kowalski’s name.”
“Curious, that,” Don commented.
“So Peter took the man up to his fishing camp, an old but and ben up Glen Affric, because the man didn’t want to go to the police until he had a chance to return to the ship to collect his belongings. So he said. Then the man Karl got young Archie to take him back to town so he could confront the captain and get his belongings and young Archie took him to the only person he knows in town, his sister—who is the fiancée of said Keith McPhee, son of—”
“Aye, I know all that.” Don stopped him and continued squiggling furiously.
“So where does Jenny McPhee come into all this?” Joanne queried.
“There has to be something in it for her.” Don looked up. “No, I take that back. It’s most likely because Peter Kowalski got charged. That put the wind up them. See, Jenny McPhee, all tinkers, know that if Inspector Tompson and his ilk had their way, tinkers would be charged with any and every crime ever committed. So it’s in their best interests that this man hands himself in and the less said about their role the better.”
“But they rescued him and, at the time, had no idea he was wanted by the police,” Joanne protested.
“What’s that to do with the price of fish?” Don shut his book, slithered down from the high stool, stuck his pencil back behind his ear and reached for his hat. “Right, Rob, you finish up this story. We’ll see how much we can print. Joanne, it’s getting late, off home to those bairns of yours.” He caught her grateful look. “They’ll be fine, you know; children have to learn one day that they too can die. It’s all part of life.” He patted his pocket to check that he had his cigarettes. “If anyone wants me, I’ve gone to see a man about a horse.”
“In the Market Bar,” Joanne and Rob chorused.
The afternoon had been a long one for Angus McLean. Not only had he had to deal with a recalcitrant police inspector who was ignorant of the law as far as illegal aliens were concerned and was determined to charge Karl with something, anything, but Angus also had to sort out the legal status of both the Polish men, an area of the law he was not familiar with. Contested wills and property disputes had been the highlights of his career for the last ten years.
Inspector Tompson had gained his position in the police force as a direct result of his time as a military policeman, not from merit. A man with no imagination, no empathy, he had no understanding of the decisions some men make when death and despair are all around. He saw them simply as foreigners.
Angus McLean, solicitor, husband, father and well-liked citizen of the community, was a kind man. His mildness belied a tenacity that had often surprised clients and judges, but never his wife. While a student in Edinburgh, he had glimpsed the underbelly of Scotland’s so-called egalitarian society; in the tenements off the High Street, the Cowgate, off the Royal Mile, in the drinking and gambling dens, on street corners where women huddled in doorways and on church steps, waiting for customers, Angus had witnessed another world.
“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small … The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.” That was the Edinburgh of his youth.
A subdued group gathered around his desk—Gino, standing bail for his prospective son-in-law, Peter Kowalski, and Karel Cieszynski.
“Well now.” Angus started the proceedings. “The procurator fiscal’s office says the charge against Karl—may I call you Karl?” He took the nod as a sign to continue. “It is all quite simple—illegal entry. There’s a good chance an application for asylum will be looked at favorably; we will gather some sponsor and prepare the case. I’m hoping the charge against Mr. Kowalski—Peter—will be dropped. Now, I understand you are staying with Keith McPhee.”
“He has offered me a room.” The voice came out tobacco stained and weary, the accent thick but understandable.
“Yes, well, we may have to review that situation,” Angus McLean hurried on, “and I think perhaps, now that we are all together, you should explain to us exactly how you come to be here.”
Karl hesitated. “My English is not so good.”
“Good enough.” Gino wanted an explanation now.
“Karl,” Angus interrupted, “you will have to tell me—us—what happened if we are to support your application for residency in Scotland.”
“I am ashamed I have made trouble for Mr. Kowalski.”
Peter said nothing. He was so angry he felt he would explode and a seething silence was his way of keeping his temper in check.
Karl took a deep breath, sat up, backbone straight, a vagabond transformed into the long-lost Polish gentleman. He accepted a cigarette. Gino was smoking, Peter had a Balkan Sobranie alight and Angus was coping, just, with the fug-filled room.
“It happened so fast,” Karl started. “Poland betrayed, invaded. We were rounded up like ducks and told we had new owners. That is our history. I was an engineer in my father’s mine so they needed me, but the Nazis turned the mines into death camps. To them we were human refuse, from Poland, then Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, everywhere. I survived, but not my father.”
What he couldn’t tell them about were the deaths by the day, the hour, of men and women, boys who had never left their mothers, dying as they slaved at the coal face, bodies pushed into unused shafts, someone else stepping up to take their place.
“But how did you get here?” Gino was impatient. Everyone had their stories.
“Sorry if I do not tell it right. I must explain from the beginning. So.” He continued. “The Russians liberated the mines, ha! I and a few other survivors now were sent to the Urals, to the coal mines there. Punishment for working for the Nazis.”
“My God.” Angus could not comprehend the horrors Karl had endured.
“I was lucky, you could say.” Karl gave a short barking laugh. “I was given a supervisor’s job. They needed mine engineers. I had privileges. Later I married a fellow prisoner, a Ukrainian. She also survived a labor camp only to be rounded up by the Russians. But her health was not good. We had some small freedom in that camp, a small life, but a life. We found love. Now she is dead.”
He stopped. He couldn’t tell them of the swing he had made her, the swing that had brought back her smile, the smile she had lost when she was dragged from her home by the Russians, the smile she found again as she swung herself up to touch the red apples with her toes.
Angus rose. “A drink, Karl? Anyone?”
“I want to finish. I can never say this again.”
“A dram first.” Angus kept a Tomatin Distillery malt. “I certainly could do with one.” The gentle Highland voice sent out an air of calm.
Karl took a swift slug of the water of life, then plowed on.
“I buried her in the orchard under an apple tree. I left her where she was happy.”
Gino envied Karl that. He had not been able to bury his wife; he had been a prisoner in North Africa before being sent to the camp in Scotland.
“One Russian helped me after my wife died,” the story continued. “The war was over, we were free—ha! Free! It took three years of my pitiful salary to bribe my way back to a mine job in Poland.
“I didn’t want any of the Russians to know my background. I am from the bourgeoisie. I am just a miner, I told them. When I arrived back in Silesia, it is very hard, but in the country people eat better. In winter they hunt wild birds, that is if you know your way through the minefields. In summer the forests are full of people searching for fruit, nuts, mushrooms. It is like the Middle Ages.
“Then I get permission to visit my family village. I find that my mother is dead also. Then I meet my mother’s friend Madame Kowalski, Peter’s mother.”
Peter leapt from his chair, his long strong arms grabbing Karl by the lapels, shaking him, shouting, swearing at him in Polish, yelling, “She’s alive? What do you know? Why didn’t you tell me?” followed by unrepeatable curses and finally tears.
Angus’s secretary came bursting in to see what the commotion was. Gino reached up, patting his future son-in-law on the back, trying to soothe him as one would soothe a heartbroken child; Karl slunk lower in his chair, doing nothing to ward off the attack.
Angus waved his secretary out with “It’s fine, it’s fine” and when the commotion had subsided, he topped up the glasses with a healthy dram of whisky.
“I must tell you,” Karl said simply. “I must go on.” He took a gulp of the spirits and took up the story again. “My mother’s family is Jarosz, they have been trusted servants on the Kowalski estates for centuries.”
Slowly, recognition dawned on Peter. He nodded.
“Madame Kowalski knows Peter went to Scotland. She had news from a priest who works with the Red Cross. She learned of the town where you are. She wants me to escape, to find her son, and she says to me to have a new life. She gave me gold. This is how I am here.”
Tiring visibly, he looked down at the floor.
“First, I had to find a ship. Gdansk, anywhere in Poland, is too dangerous, many guards, traitors reporting anyone looking for escape. So I take many months, through the marshes and forests, to make it to Tallinn, then weeks to find a captain who would take me. I give him all the money I have left.
“When we arrive here I want to go to the police. But the son of a Russian bear, he said no. He knows there will be big trouble for losing a crewman when he gets back home. He asks for more money, but I have none. He asks me what I hide in my coat, I don’t tell him. He hits me, I hit him, but he is big, big man and he throws me into the river. I nearly die. But the fishermen catch me and take me to their Gypsy camp. That is my story.”
The rough kindness of strangers who had helped him out on many, many parts of his journey was a story for another, later time. And the final cruelty, the irony that broke his carefully constructed carapace of courage, what he was unable to tell his listeners just yet, was that he had failed in his mission. On the cusp of freedom, the precious, carefully guarded package, carried on the long march across the occupied Baltic states, across the North Sea, the package entrusted to him by Peter’s mother, carefully hidden deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, was lost, stolen by the scoundrel of a sea captain.
It was Gino who broke the long silence.
“We have the necklace.”
“The necklace?” Karl stared in shock. “Madame Kowalski’s necklace?”
Angus McLean looked completely lost.
“Why did you not tell Peter about his mother and the necklace?” Gino continued, “I do not believe you tell us all your story.”
The reply was a short sharp bark of a laugh, perhaps a cough.
“How to explain my idiocy, my cowardice, my failure …” He stopped, momentarily lost in thought, then stood, drew himself up and, in a quaintly old-fashioned gesture, bowed from the waist.
“Mr. Corelli, I promise you, as a Polish compatriot and a gentleman, I did not steal Madame Kowalski’s necklace. Please believe me it is my deep regret I lost it. I came back to the town to get it from that lying Russian thief. But then I am told that the ship has sailed.”
Gino did believe him. He knew the times threw up strange tales. He knew you could never judge a man for what he did in the darkness of war. His innate kindness overtook his doubt. “Hold up, my friend. We will explain all later. First we must feed you.” Gino smiled up at Karl. “My sister and daughter are waiting.”