Above my desk at home hangs a picture of my mother, myself, my two brothers, and my sister, gathered on a grassy outcrop high above a rocky shoreline, somewhere along the Pembrokeshire coast. My father liked to take us touring on the weekends, and we could have been near St. Anne's Head, or the Stack Rocks, or Strumble, or farther up the coast toward St. David's. It is impossible to tell, and the photograph reveals no clues, except that a small crescent of pebbles and sand is visible at the water's edge below, framed by a semi-circle of jagged crags jutting up menacingly from the foaming sea.
Each of us wears a coat, and my mother is holding my youngest brother up for the camera. An unhappy look sits upon his face - a three-year old who would rather be back home. A blue stocking cap sits crookedly atop my head and frothy whitecaps are visible in the background, crashing into the cliffs. It looks and feels like late autumn, just before winter's full onslaught. The sky is gray, the grass has lost its color, the wind tussles my mother's dark brown hair, and my sister looks pale and chilled. Likely, there was a cold wind blowing – once, years later, my mother remarked that she had never one day been warm in Milford. She never spoke poorly of our time there, and I do believe she enjoyed the adventure of it. She was not despondent when we left, however. It was, in many ways, an isolated and rugged place.
I perused this photograph once again as I logged on late one raw, rainy night in early February, checking my mail before going to bed. I was scrolling mechanically through my messages, only half-reading and preoccupied by a matter at work, when suddenly I sat up at attention and frowned. Displayed before me on the screen was a message from an unknown address, titled ‘Old Mates From Milford.’ I leaned back in my chair, eyes fixed upon the words. Had someone actually responded to my inquiry of two weeks past? Who? For several moments, I remained motionless, save for the fingers of my left hand tapping as I thought. Then I opened the message: Hello, do you remember me? You better! You knew me as Adamski but now I am Caron Nolan, and still in Milford. Do you remember us? Write me back, I can’t wait to catch up with you after all this time – I’ve not forgotten you!
As a result of my impressive birdie on the 5th hole, I retained the honors on the 6th tee. By this point, I was positively stuffed with confidence – and why not, three up with four to play, and having just dealt my opponent a devastating psychic blow? The augers were beaming brightly, like festive lights. Hugh, of course, maintained his air of bemused distraction. I knew, however, that he wished keenly to win the match. He kept glancing furtively toward the sky, as if hoping for rain, and perhaps a premature and inconclusive end to the contest. He couldn’t lose the match if it was rained out – instead, he could claim a draw amid a quintessential Pembrokeshire downpour, and avoid the ignominy of defeat at the hands of the returning Yank. Nary a drop of moisture was in sight, however, only huge billowy clouds, like impish, airborne islands, skimming across a placid blue expanse.
The sun was climbing higher and the day was warming. As was my mood, which was altogether chipper. I considered proposing that Hugh hit his drive from the ladies’ tee – the 6th was another par-5, the longest hole on the course, in fact, and uphill as well – but concluded such a gesture was unnecessary and might constitute poor form. It would more than suffice simply to thrash him sternly here, on the 6th hole, and thereby claim an irrefutable victory in our dramatic reunion match.
Bending to tee my ball, I shot him a swift look. He was staring inquisitively at the head of his driver, seemingly deep in thought. It occurred to me that I ought to be able to hit a thunderous drive, then perhaps reach the green in just two shots. For, aside from its length, hole number 6 was actually rather benign, with ample driving space, no vales of gorse and muck, no brambles, no water, no trees. Why, once upon a time, my father had even managed to eagle this hole, I recalled. My father – he of the violent, self-tutored swing! I knew the miracle had occurred because I had witnessed it with my own eyes. In fact, it stood out in my memory with its own gilded glow, like a picture preserved in a lustrous frame.
It had been a dull, pewter-skied Sunday afternoon, clouds lingering listlessly overhead, periodic rumbles of low thunder in the distance. Hugh and I had just putted out when my father, playing in a foursome behind us, struck a 3-wood from the fairway that pierced the air like a crossbow's bolt and, incredibly, came to rest a mere three feet from the pin, where Hugh and I had just been standing. I turned back down the fairway to see my father poised in his high, contorted follow-through, held up my hands to show how close his ball lay, then remained to watch him hole the putt. Long years of awful golf were thus redeemed, and my father never forgot his eagle on the 6th hole. Whenever thereafter we spoke of golf in Milford, he resurrected the feat anew, verified that I still remembered the glorious occasion, and recounted in minute detail the weather conditions, the club choice, the purity at impact, the flight of the ball, and its slow roll toward the cup.
What if I eagled the 6th hole now myself! What a story! What a tale, if I could duplicate his wondrous feat! What a brilliant idea! And so easily within reach; one of my long drives, another fiery 3-wood to the green, then a bit of luck with the putt – yes, I could do it, of course I could do it! And bring a wonderful sort of memento back to my father in the bargain! And, furthermore, not incidentally, thereby irrevocably doom my cunning companion, who would likely be playing a middle-iron into the green for his third shot. What a dandy way to wrap up my grand triumph! Stepping up to the ball, I felt assured the happy outcome was all but pre-ordained, and must surely come to pass.
I paused for a moment, taking in the turquoise midday sky and ruminating upon its untroubled loveliness.
Abruptly, however, my serenity was punctured. “Do you remember when your father eagled this hole?” Hugh asked suddenly, just as I was taking my stance. Only a moment earlier he had been gazing sleepily at the road behind the tee, paying no attention to anything at all. What was up?
“No,” I replied warily.
“No?” he cried, eyes round in shock. “Of course you remember – he hit a 3-wood from the middle of the fairway and it almost went in the hole! We were on the green there, and his ball rolled up and you looked back and waved at him. We watched him make the putt! You must remember that!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you remember my father eagling this hole? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I just remembered it,” he said defensively. “You really don’t remember your Dad's eagle?”
“Not really,” I replied, perhaps a bit defensively myself, a bit clipped, then prepared again to hit my drive. What gambit was this? He was such a crafty character, subtle and conniving. Some ruse was afoot – he had no more just happened to recall my father's eagle than I might just happen to recall Newton's Third Principle of Thermodynamics before striking a putt. I was no dupe for his tricks, however - whatever they were.
But suddenly then, and inexplicably, I felt a rush of guilt over having denied any recollection of my father's greatest golfing triumph, as if I had betrayed him in some indirect and convoluted way.
My mind was wandering – had I hit my drive yet? Focus! I stepped away from the ball.
“Okay, I remember now,” I said to Hugh.
“Good!” he exclaimed, sighing with relief. “Good, good, thank goodness - You don’t want to forget something like your father making an eagle on the longest hole on the course!”
I fixed my gaze again upon the ball.
“That would be unforgiveable,” Hugh observed.
I waggled my driver. The heads on these things certainly are big these days, I remarked to myself.
“Wouldn’t it be something if you eagled it too!” Hugh piped up again, a quiver of excitement in his voice, as if he would enjoy the feat far more than I, or my father, possibly could. I shifted my eyes and stabbed him with a glare. “Oh yes,” he mumbled, trailing off, “what a thing that would be, what a story … oh my, yes, what a story, what a tale to tell, indeed …”
I had been camped on the tee for some time now, looking at the ball, stepping away, looking at the ball, stepping away, waggling, glowering, hesitating. My father's eagle notwithstanding, I had to hit my shot. I set my teeth, therefore, and shoved Hugh into the background, where he seemed to continue muttering while gazing idly across the empty road behind us. I exhaled slowly, wound my left shoulder loosely beneath my chin, shifted my weight onto my right leg, cocked my wrists, followed neatly with a downswing, turning my hips and shifting my weight back onto the left, lagged the club, drove my right shoulder smoothly through, stayed behind the ball, heard a smack that was neat and precise, and produced my finest drive of the day, the small white ball jetting straight and high down the middle of the fairway, soaring like a raptor on the hunt, then daintily drawing and descending to rest, with a kind of lordly aplomb, upon the bright green sunlit expanse recumbent before us.
I stood motionless, watching the ball arc and land, and did not want to move, for I felt within a spell, balanced on a narrow ledge in a narrow space between time; the years and the people, the doings and omissions of the past mingling with the present, old stale doldrums stirred by a fresh wind, and the moldy film of loss dissolving, as the bright, round pellet rocketed with a hiss against the burnished sky, hung momentarily above the rolling course and the Haven's softly lapping waters, then fell silently onto a spot upon the lush fairway - exactly where, perhaps, my father had stood waggling his 3-wood thirty-plus years ago, preparing to swing his lashing swing and claim his great achievement.
I turned to Hugh and saw him smiling at me eyes aglow, thin hair streaming in the breeze, as if he were privy to the selfsame spell, the identical transport, and had stepped alongside me through this slit in time to experience as well its strange, nostalgic happiness.
I vacated the tee and coolly twirled my driver.
“Long and straight at the same time?” said Hugh. “Well, I am mildly impressed.” He leaned forward and placed his tee, then stood back up and looked down the fairway. “I suppose I’m glad you came back, even it was just to show me up.”
“I didn’t need to come all the way back here just to show you up,” I replied. “I did that plenty in the old days. I guess I just got stuck on this place. Don’t know why.” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.
Hugh struck his drive with his typical lack of show. We departed the tee and took off strolling down the fairway. His expression turned pensive for a moment. “Bloody ridiculous place to get stuck on,” he then said playfully. “We thought you Yanks would never leave, then all of a sudden here you turn up again!”
I stared at the open message on the screen. I read it again, then once again, more slowly. I recognized its sender immediately; knew her well, in fact - and had not forgotten her either. I sat at the computer thinking, remembering - pulling from a dusty file the story behind the sender, a story that wound through several families in Milford, and through the Marshal House and into my young life there as well, and this story unfolded now in my memory as if written in a book before my eyes.
Like so many things in Britain during that time, the tale that lay on the other side of the message on my screen was connected to the war. More particularly, it was connected to Hitler's decimation of Poland. That some link should exist between my days in Milford, and Germany's invasion of Poland and the ensuing great conflagration of the twentieth century, may seem perhaps more than remote – nonetheless, however, such a link existed, and was real.
Following Poland's demise, the utter destruction of the Polish Army, and the massive displacement and killing of huge numbers of civilians, the British government launched an intensive recruitment campaign among refugees and survivors. Fervor was not lacking. Large numbers of Poles flocked to join the Brits in resistance against the Nazis, and Britain put these Poles to work in all manner of roles, dangerous and mundane, throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic, and elsewhere.
Some of these Poles had experience in aviation and became affiliated with the RAF, soon assembling into their own flying unit – which became known as the 304 Squadron. In 1942, the Polish 304 was assigned to an RAF base set up in Dale, on the Pembrokeshire waterway's northwest coast. There, the 304's mission was to hunt German submarines, protect Allied convoys, and harass enemy shipping. In this way did a sizeable cadre of Polish pilots, mechanics, and support personnel come to the Haven in the middle of the war.
Of course, the Allies eventually prevailed. But the devastation in Poland had been vast in every conceivable way. As a consequence, thousands of the Poles who had served with the British had neither land nor home to reclaim, nor any person awaiting their return – and, in any event, not all were eager to repatriate to a country falling under the heel of the Red Army and Stalin. Thus, when peace eventually arrived, large numbers of these Poles who had made common cause with Britain found themselves completely alone and adrift, as bereft as orphans.
The Brits knew they owed a debt, however, and undertook to pay it. In 1946, the government established something called the Polish Resettlement Corps, intended to aid the relocation of these now-rootless Polish soldiers into various communities throughout the United Kingdom, and assist them in fashioning new lives. Thousands took part in the program. By the time it was cancelled, the record-keepers estimate as many as 150,000 Poles had been resettled throughout the UK – including in Milford Haven.
One of the Poles who made his way to the quiet little fishing village was Stefan Zelinski, my friend Alan Zelinski's brooding step-father. When I later learned the story of the Poles in Milford, I formed at least a small sense of what that grave, haunted figure perhaps saw, or thought he saw, or wanted to see, staring out the windows of the Marshal on dark nights, alone in the sitting room with only a small lamp burning, and the possible origin of the long, thin scar that marked his face.
I recall particularly one of our afternoon forays along the tracks above Scotch Bay – it was late on a lovely September day, and I had once again asked Alan Zelinski what his father had done in the war. “I told you I don’t really know,” he had replied testily. “He doesn’t talk about it and we don’t really ask him,” then returning his gaze across the bay's unruffled waters. Indifferent Alan seemed to lack any deeper interest in the matter. Persistent as I was when something snagged my imagination, however, I wasn’t about to abandon my investigation so easily.
A few days later, therefore, after school, I arranged to find Mrs. Zelinski alone, tending her small garden back of the hotel, and turned the conversation toward the subject of the war; which, I told her untruthfully, we were studying in History. “Was Mr. Zelinski in the war?” I queried innocently. “Alan said he was.” Mrs. Zelinski was examining and snipping at her roses. “Well, in a way,” she replied absently. “He did something secret – he always said he took an oath not to talk about it, and he never has.”
I scarcely believed my ears. It seemed inconceivable she could have lived with the man this long - his mysterious scar, the limp in his gait, his pensive, preoccupied deportment - without being driven mad by curiosity as to exactly what it was he had done that required the taking of an oath! I felt compelled, therefore, to probe a bit further. “Maybe he’d tell me what he did?” I suggested. “He probably didn’t take any oaths to the Americans.” Mrs. Zelinski turned from her roses to fix me with a stare. “I doubt it,” she said flatly, conveying quite clearly that pursuing this line of inquiry was worse than hopeless and would, more to the point, incur her displeasure. And, indeed, something in her tone and look did persuade me to foreclose further efforts at fleshing out the shrouded wartime exploits of the veiled and enigmatic Mr. Zelinski.
It continued to baffle me, however, how she and Alan managed to restrain themselves from interrogating the cryptic gentleman until he cracked. I would have given it a try, at least.
Also relocated to Milford through the resettlement program was another Pole, a man named Pyotr Adamski. This refugee ex-soldier had been an airplane mechanic with the 304 Squadron when it operated out of Dale, before moving on to another posting. At the end of the war, however, he determined to return to the Pembroke coast. Something about it had made an impression – whether the natural beauty, the peace and tranquility of the waters, some particular person, some indefinable quality of air and light and feel, is unknown. Return, however, he did. And, while Stefan Zelinski married the widowed owner of the Marshal House – whose first husband, I later learned, had himself perished early in the conflict – and thus took up a new career as a hotelier, Pyotr Adamski rented a small room in Milford and went to work on the fishing trawlers, as the fishing industry was thriving anew and offered steady employment to any man willing to work. Pyotr was willing to work, and so work he did, on the trawlers. And once he began working, he began saving a little money. Then a little more, and a little more. And then, in 1950, Pyotr married a local girl. In 1952, they had a daughter, their only child, named Caron. And this happened to be the same year in which I was born myself, across the ocean in America.
And now, these stories – the one belonging to the crafter of the message upon my computer screen, and the other to its reader - arrive at a point of intersection. Through those cloudy currents that direct these kinds of things, it transpired that, sixteen years later, by which time Pyotr had his own boat, and my father was building the next-to-last of the great Milford refineries, I came to be idling in early spring with a cohort of lunkish pals alongside the muddy field behind the Grammar School, watching the Junior girls’ field hockey team host Haverfordwest, a light rain drizzling off the brim of my cap, when my attention lit upon a lithe, brown-haired figure streaking sprite-like across the pitch, maneuvering the ball effortlessly with her stick. Something about the scene and the action caught my eye and my interest and, as I studied more closely, it was obvious no one had any chance of catching or defending this brown-haired girl. She raced and swerved and zigged and zagged at a speed and with a grace that stood out as if illuminated by a spotlight, far outclassing the other players. I stared and squinted, and forgot the drizzle. Perhaps it was the wet hair streaming out behind her shoulders. Or her dark, glinting eyes, intently tracking the ball and scouting the options, shifting left, shifting right. It doesn’t matter - something drew me in, and I followed her course across the pitch as she skipped in and out and around her opponents’ flailing sticks, then suddenly drove the ball hard past the goalie and threw her hands to the sky in exultation. And, as the ball distended the back of the net, I too experienced the odd sensation of wanting to throw my hands to the sky in celebration.
I concluded we must be in different classes, for I had never seen her before.
“Who is that girl?” I asked Tommy Ryan, who was standing beside me, periodically kicking me in the shins then smiling sweetly when I glowered at him.
Ryan frowned his freckled brow and peered across the field. “Which one?” he asked. I pointed at the girl with the glistening dark hair. “That one,” I said. “The girl who just scored.”
Ryan had lost interest, however, and was now twisting Aiden Lloyd's ear, so I turned to Mickey Dunn and asked, “Who is that girl who scored the goal?”
“Pole,” said Dunn.
His response made no sense to me. “What?” I asked.
“Pole,” repeated Dunn.
At that point, Ryan jumped on Dunn's back and both of them, Dunn and Ryan, fell to the ground, wrestling.
The match soon ended, but my eyes followed the girl whose nickname, I had by then deduced, was evidently ‘Pole,’ as she departed the field. Gone was the taut, feral intensity. Now she was all smiles and laughs with her teammates. Tufts of grass jutted from her hair and mud streaked her face; she seemed to shimmer with a splendid, healthy glow, a luster left behind from effort and energy expended in a joyous pursuit, the happiness of a special skill flexed and spent. I stared as she passed, heading to the changing room. For some reason, I hoped she might glance my way. She didn’t, however, and I watched her disappear.
Once the players were gone, and the spectators taking their leave, Dunn and Ryan finally ceased their wrestling and rose from the ground, filthy and disheveled. Ryan looked at me and asked, “What?”
My thoughts had remained upon the dark-haired girl, and I looked back at Ryan stupidly. “What?” I repeated dully.
Ryan looked at Dunn. “Americans are thick,” he said.
I could only grin at his pronouncement, rendered with such certitude – for such was Tommy Ryan's playful, endearing nature that it was impossible to take serious offense at anything he said, though during the course of a typical day he said innumerable outrageous things to everyone.
The girl they called Pole was gone, along with the rest of the team. I walked home with my band of friends, alongside the Haven on Hamilton Terrace, then across the bridge to Hakin as it grew grey and cold, and home to Wellington Road, where later I climbed into my warm bed and thought about the girl I had seen and listened to the rain outside until I fell asleep.
Dumbstruck and still, I sat before my computer – as if Ryan had been spot on point and the sad truth was that Americans were, in fact, thick. My finger hovered above the mouse. The message from Caron Adamski – the girl they called ‘Pole’ – had instantly unleashed a tumbling torrent of images, and spirited me back: running after school on a bitter, frosty day, chasing across the playing fields behind the gymnasium, grabbing her scarf, my cap falling to the ground, our breath gusting out like clouds into the frigid air; rambling with friends on the grass-thick cliffs above Newgale as the waves barrel onto the wide, sandy shore and our youthful laughter carries away on the gentle, ever-present wind; riding the bus to a party at Sam Winter's house in Dale, where we hold hands and watch the red and blue sailboats bob on the water and kiss innocently when it grows dark.
Then it is late afternoon on another day, a close, cloying, late-spring day. To celebrate the impending completion of the refinery, after which we would all be leaving, the Americans had organized a baseball game on a makeshift field behind the Esso Club. Caron sits on a hill rising behind home plate, with the sun falling red at her back. Our days in Milford are waning and I keep glancing at her from my position at second base with an empty feeling, so contrary to the cheeriness of the other Americans, who are brimming with excitement at the prospect of returning home. My youngest brother, only four, wanders up to her clutching his Teddy Bear and briefly plops down at her side, then wanders off, and she lifts her hand in a wave as the scarlet sun descends and the game comes to an end - and I sense my life in Milford ebbing away, receding like the tide in the Haven itself.
In my helplessness and perplexity, I grow tongue-tied and speak little as we walk to Waterloo Square after the game, where she bears home to the left across the bridge, and I bear home to the right. After dinner that evening, I retreat to my room and open the window and sit looking out at the night, smelling the waters of the Haven as a peaceful wind brushes across my face, watching the yellow moon hover serene and severe above the quiet countryside, and wishing we never had to leave. I know with a harsh, brittle, certainty that I will never see these people again, never see this place again, and will suffer with my heart rooted in this little corner of the world while the rest of me travels far away.
And then, of course, before I knew it, like the sudden, too-quick fall of darkness after a drab, sluggish afternoon, we were gone from Milford. Gone, I mourned, forever. I had been sick and queasy the entire day, forcing my mind to other things, trivial things, humming, playing songs in my head, kicking a ball against the wall out back, feeling my stomach tighten and squirm and wanting – in truth – to cry discreetly. And then, just as the ragged clouds pasted across the sky began to gray, the taxi arrived. With a terrible, nightmarish clarity, I heard its tires crunch the gravel as it turned into our drive and came to a stop. I stood rigid in the foyer as the driver's knock sounded on the door and echoed loudly – too loudly, too conclusively, too final - through the empty house. Then everything happened swiftly and with cold precision.
My father opened the door and twilight flooded in. I looked outside and saw the cab. My father helped the driver load our luggage, then called for us to come. I walked out of our house and then we were in the taxi as it backed out of the drive, crunching the gravel again, turned right at Waterloo Square, descended the hill out of Hakin, crossed over Victoria Bridge, and delivered us to the station.
My father and I carried our bags onto the train. I stepped out alone then, onto the platform, where a group of my friends had gathered to see me off. I stared numbly at their faces and fumbled at words I never could recall, then boarded again and, as the train rumbled and drew away, leaned far out the window, as far as possible, as far as desperately possible into the thick, gray dusk, until my life in Milford shrank and vanished and was no more. I craned my neck, peered achingly into the distance, until there was nothing left to see, only blackness. Then I finally gave up, withdrew back into our compartment, into my seat, and sank quietly into a deep, dark pool as we sped on through the long night to London, and back to America.
No, I had not forgotten. I remembered it all, and had never forgotten.
I replied to Caron with a long message, then went to bed and dreamed again of Milford; a happy dream, in which I returned and stepped off the train on a brilliant, crisp, and shimmering morning, into the waiting arms of my smiling troupe of friends.
Of course, I proceeded to lose the 6th hole. My exemplary drive quickly became a topped 5-wood - frustratingly, my second of the day - followed by a badly sliced 8-iron, a chip into a bunker, two sand shots out and two putts, for an 8. Sadly, there would be no regaling my father with epic tales of replicating his great triumph. Instead, Hugh won the hole with a bogie and I was now just two up with three holes to play.
I sensed the tide was turning.