A chauffeur-driven car was waiting for them outside the station when they reached Edinburgh. The rain was falling steadily, combining with the smoke from the chimneys to create a heavy smog.
‘Good evening, sir,’ the driver said to Richard.
‘Evening, Crawford. This is Miss Kraszewska.’
Irena held out her hand. There was an awkward moment where Crawford looked at Richard before stretching out his hand and giving her fingers the briefest of squeezes – almost as if he couldn’t bear to touch her.
‘You’ve confused Crawford,’ Richard whispered as the man put their luggage in the boot.
‘Why?’
‘He doesn’t expect to shake hands with my guests. He’s old school.’
None of it made sense to Irena.
‘What old school?’
Richard threw back his head and laughed. ‘It’s an expression. I’ll fill you in later.’ He slid her a glance. ‘That means I’ll explain.’
Although she was almost fluent in English, the expressions and idioms people used still bewildered her sometimes. Of course, they had nonsensical ones in Poland, too, but those she could follow. It was at times like this, she felt most dislocated. Despite the kindness the British people had shown to her, she doubted she would ever feel at home in this country.
They drove through cobbled streets before turning into a large square surrounded by elegant houses. They’d barely stepped out of the car before a woman in a dark suit ran down the steps to meet them.
‘Darling! It’s so lovely to have you home again.’ She lifted her face to receive Richard’s kiss before turning to Irena. ‘You must be Irena! Are you exhausted? Come inside out of the rain.’
Another woman, pin thin and with a worried, time-wrinkled face, met them at the top of the steps. When she saw Richard her face broke into a smile.
Richard picked her off her feet and hugged her. ‘Hannah! You’re even more beautiful than the last time I saw you.’
The older woman blushed. When Richard put her back on her feet she swiped him on the arm. ‘Away with you and your nonsense. Oh but, your lordship, it’s good to have you home.’ She stood back and surveyed Irena with a frown. ‘I don’t know what my sister has been feeding you in London, lass, but it looks to me as if you’re in need of fattening up. I’ll get back to the kitchen and get something sorted for you. Dinner won’t be until seven.’
As soon as Hannah scurried off and Crawford had relieved them of their coats, Lady Glendale led them into a large, high-ceilinged room where a fire was blazing in an elegant marble fireplace.
‘Take a seat by the fire, Irena,’ Richard’s mother said quietly. In the light of the room Irena was able to see her better. She was older than she had appeared out on the street, but she was beautiful in a way Irena suspected would never fade. Her honey-blond hair was swept up in an elegant chignon, but where Richard’s eyes were blue, hers were a deep chocolate brown.
‘As soon as you have warmed up, I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up. Hannah will bring you a tray,’ Lady Glendale said to Irena.
‘Freshen up?’
‘Mother means a wash or a bath and change,’ Richard explained.
‘Thank you. And thank you for being so kind, Lady Glendale.’
‘I think it is more appropriate if you call me Dr Maxwell if we are going to be work colleagues.’
‘How have you managed to get it all arranged so quickly?’ Irena had imagined it would take weeks.
‘Mother never wastes time when she has something that needs doing,’ Richard said, dropping a kiss on the top of his mother’s head.
‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ she replied. ‘There are several Polish medical students here already. All of us at the university think we should do what we can for those of you who managed to get away. We have decided that you must have your lectures with the Scottish students at the university, but you are to have your clinical training at the Polish Hospital. It’s part of the Western General, which is being used as a military hospital.’ She slid a mischievous smile at Irena. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find you plenty to do.’ Dr Maxwell stood. ‘Now I’m afraid you are going to have to indulge me for a few minutes while I find out what my son has been up to.’
‘Perhaps I could go to my room now and have a wash before dinner?’ Irena said. She felt awkward intruding on the family’s reunion.
‘Of course. Richard, would you take Irena up to the green room? I’m afraid all the maids have gone off to do war work of one kind or another. It’s only Crawford and Hannah left.’ She gave Irena another smile. ‘Although with Richard and his father away, there’s only me rattling around. Speaking of which, how is your father, Richard?’
Richard stood and held the door open. ‘He’s well. I’ll take Irena to her room and then I’m all yours, Mother.’
Irena luxuriated in a long hot bath, until she’d washed away every last speck of grime and dust. When she returned to her bedroom, there was a tray of tea and scones on her bedside table. Nibbling a scone, she brushed her hair before tying it into a knot. She peered at her face in the mirror, grimacing at the reflection staring back at her. There were still dark circles under her eyes and lines around her mouth she was sure hadn’t been there a few months ago. Although she’d put on a little weight while she was in London, she was still thinner than she could remember ever being. But then wasn’t that fashionable these days?
Why was she worrying about her appearance anyway? What could it possibly matter? Nevertheless, rightly or wrongly, she longed for a tube of lipstick to replace the one she’d finished, or some foundation – anything to put some colour into her too-pale complexion.
As she made her way back downstairs, just before seven, a gong sounded and Richard and his mother, their arms linked, walked into the hall. Richard had shaved and changed out of his uniform into a dark suit and white shirt and bowtie. His mother was wearing a short evening dress. They looked up at her, but if they noticed she was wearing the same dress as earlier, they didn’t comment.
‘Come along, my dear,’ Dr Maxwell said. ‘I’m afraid you missed the glass of sherry we always have before dinner, but I’m sure Crawford will have unearthed some wine to have with dinner.’
They sat at a long, polished mahogany table set with fine china and crystal. Crawford came around to her left and poured her a glass of wine, so red it seemed to glow. Irena took a sip and as the alcohol hit her stomach, she felt herself relax. Dr Maxwell waited until they had been served with a thick vegetable soup before she spoke.
‘I understand you were working in a hospital in Poland during the first months of occupation. That must have been a terrible experience.’
Richard raised his glass to his mother. ‘Mother has some idea what it must have been like for you. She served near the front line in the last war, you know.’
For a moment Irena glimpsed a profound sadness behind Dr Maxwell’s brown eyes, then Richard’s mother blinked and it was gone.
‘I believe it is so much worse what we do to one another now,’ Dr Maxwell continued. ‘At least in the last war – who would ever have thought we’d see two? – we didn’t have the weapons we do now. I see some of the aftermath in the Western General. I do a round there once a week, Irena, as well as work at the Royal Infirmary.’
‘Mother ran a small private hospital for years. She was one of the first women in Scotland to qualify as a surgeon after the war so they are pleased to have someone with her experience at the military hospital.’
‘I still have the hospital, Richard, although I tend to leave it in the hands of my very capable colleagues now that there’s a war on. Unfortunately, we need surgeons more than ever. In which field do you hope to specialise in, Irena?’
‘Paediatrics.’ Then before she could help herself she was telling them about the children in the ghetto and how so many had died from lack of food or safe water. Richard and Dr Maxwell listened in silence.
‘Oh, my dear, how awful. Did you tell any of this to my husband? He works for the War Office. I think he’d like to know.’
Richard was watching Irena closely, admiration and sympathy in his blue eyes. She swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t want – or deserve – either.
‘Most of it. Not everything. You get so used to keeping quiet about everything. It had to be secret.’
And she should have remembered that. What had she done? If word ever got back to the Nazis about the help Henryk and Stanislaw were giving in the ghetto they’d be arrested and then their typhus scam would also have to stop. How could she have been so stupid? She reached out a hand. ‘Please don’t tell him. I mean, of course he should know what the Nazis are doing to us and particularly to the Jews. Someone needs to do something to help. But…’ She tailed off. Of course she couldn’t expect them not to disclose where they had got their information. And of course they would never do anything to put people in danger. At least not knowingly.
Richard had come to stand behind her. He rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment. ‘You can trust us not to give your chums away.’ He sat back down, his mouth set in a grim line. ‘None of us in the RAF like it that we’re not bombing that lunatic Hitler to smithereens. But the men in the war cabinet are so bloody cautious. Sometimes I wonder if they are ever going to let us fight this war they way we should.’
‘Richard!’ Dr Maxwell interrupted. ‘We have to trust that Churchill and people like your father know what they are doing.’
‘In the same way the British government knew what they were doing when they refused to accept your lot in the last war? They’ve changed their minds since then. It only took them twenty years to do so.’
‘What do you mean?’ Irena asked.
Richard waited until Crawford had cleared their soup plates and placed some fish in front of them before he answered.
‘Mother was with a unit of women who called themselves the Scottish Women’s Hospital. They were led by a Scottish doctor called Elsie Inglis – she’s dead now.’ He glanced at his mother, all traces of his earlier anger appearing to have disappeared. ‘But it’s your story, Mother. I think you should tell it.’
‘It all seems a little tame now compared to what you have been through, Irena,’ Dr Maxwell said quietly. ‘When the last war broke out, Dr Inglis gathered several women together: doctors, nurses, orderlies, chauffeurs – everybody and everything that was needed to set up a field hospital. However, when she offered their services to the British government they were less than impressed. In fact, they rejected her offer outright.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘But Dr Inglis was the sort of woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She went to the Serbian and French governments and offered to help them instead. Naturally, they were only too delighted to accept.’
‘Mother went out with one of the first units. To Serbia, if I remember correctly?’
‘Yes. Richard’s Aunt Dorothea – my husband’s sister – was there too. In the beginning she was an orderly in a unit in France. Later she came to Serbia as a chauffeur.’ The colour drained from her face and she raised her hand to her forehead.
‘What is it, Mother? One of your headaches?’
Dr Maxwell nodded.
Richard was instantly at his mother’s elbow with a glass of water. ‘I shouldn’t have brought up the last war,’ he said to Irena as Dr Maxwell took a sip. ‘Mother doesn’t like to talk about it.’
Irena could understand only too well. There were many things she could never speak about.
‘When are you leaving tomorrow, Richard?’ Dr Maxwell asked.
‘I’m on the sleeper, so I’ll be here when you get home from the hospital.’
‘You have to go back so soon?’ Irena said. ‘I thought you were on leave?’
‘I am. Forty-eight hours.’
‘Yet you took the time to come with me to Dumfries?’
‘It was my pleasure.’
Once more she was forced to revise her opinion of him. Under his flippant exterior he was a decent man. When Richard’s mouth twitched and he raised an eyebrow, she realised she’d been staring at him.
‘Could I fetch you something for your headache? A cold compress – an aspirin perhaps?’ she said to Dr Maxwell, flustered.
‘Would you mind dear? There are pain killers on my dressing table. My room is the first one on the left at the top of the stairs. I’d ask Crawford or Hannah, but they’re kept so busy and neither manage the stairs as well as they used to.’
‘Of course.’
Irena found Dr Maxwell’s bedroom easily enough and as she’d said there was a bottle of aspirin on her dressing table. As she reached over to pick them up she noticed a photograph lying face down and instinctively picked it up to set it upright.
It was of Richard’s mother when she was younger, standing next to a dark-haired man Irena didn’t recognise but who was clearly not Lord Glendale. There were mountains in the background so it could be Scotland, but she didn’t think so. Isabel’s skirt was long, falling to just above her ankles, and she was wearing a white blouse, buttoned up to the neck. There was something familiar about the man next to her. He wasn’t in uniform, although what he was wearing could have been military issue: a plain shirt without an insignia and a leather jacket. But it was the way they were standing that made Irena wonder. Although they weren’t touching and both were staring into the camera and smiling, they were leaning into each other in a way that strangers wouldn’t.
Was the man a lover from a time before Isabel had married Lord Glendale? If so, it was odd that she kept the photograph in her bedroom.
It was none of her business and she was keeping Dr Maxwell waiting. She placed the picture back the way she’d found it, hurried back downstairs, and handed the bottle of pills to Richard’s mother.
‘Thank you.’ Dr Maxwell tipped a tablet into her hand and swallowed the aspirin with a sip of water.
‘Could I come with you – to the hospital, I mean?’ Irena asked. Now she was here she was keen to get back to seeing patients.
‘Not tomorrow. Perhaps the next day. You should rest a little. Once we have you on the wards, you’ll be worked hard, I promise.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘Would you excuse me? I’d think I should lie down for a while.’
After Dr Maxwell had left, Richard seemed to change again. He tapped his foot on the floor as if desperate to be away from her company. No doubt he had plans for that evening.
‘I should go to bed too,’ Irena said.
‘I’m going to see if I can find some chums of mine down at the club. Won’t you join me?’
‘No, thank you. But you go.’
Richard seemed disappointed. ‘If you’re sure? It doesn’t seem polite to leave you on your own on your first night in Edinburgh.’
‘I am perfectly sure.’
The darkness in his eyes cleared. ‘I’m hoping to meet a friend for tea tomorrow if she’s free. Why don’t you come along?’
He was only being polite. If this friend was another girlfriend she was unlikely to want Irena there.
‘I can’t imagine your friend will want to share you with a stranger. Especially if she only gets to see you for a short while every so often.’
‘Oh, Kat won’t mind. She’s not my girlfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’ve known each other all our lives and could never be anything but chums. She’s training to be a nurse at the Royal. I’m certain the two of you will hit it off. You know, with both of you having medical backgrounds.’
Irena hid a smile. Men were simple creatures if they thought a shared interest meant two women would get along.
It seemed Scottish men weren’t different to Polish men at all.