All the Days of Our Lives (55 page)

Saturday was very cold and foggy, and Molly set out through the shrouded streets to meet Phoebe Morrison at their usual cafe. In the fog the blackened buildings, many of them bomb-damaged, loomed ghostly around her. Buses appeared suddenly out of the gloom. It was so cold it had been a struggle to get out of bed, stepping out onto the cold lino and quickly shoving coppers into the metre to get the gas fire on.

‘I’ve had enough of this winter,’ Molly murmured to herself, through her scarf. It was even colder and danker down in the Tube. Everyone looked pale and exhausted, and Molly supposed she must look worn-out as well. She could have done without having to go out today.

By the time she met Phoebe in the steamy atmosphere of the little greasy spoon where they liked to meet, Phoebe was already stubbing out her first cigarette.

‘Molly.’ She waved from a round table at the back. Molly couldn’t remember now why they had chosen this place. It was quite easy for them both to reach and, in its scruffy way, quite cosy with its stained tables and rickety chairs. It was hardly worth trying to put sugar in your tea, as there was scarcely ever any to be had, and it was a challenge even to find a teaspoon to do it with.

‘I got you a cup while I was at it,’ Phoebe said, indicating the white cup in front of Molly, full of sludgy-looking tea.

‘Thanks,’ Molly said. Phoebe was still bundled up in her green coat and Molly kept hers on too.

‘Had a good week?’ Phoebe tapped another cigarette out of the packet and put it in her mouth to light, leaning her head back slightly. Then she straightened her head and briskly breathed out a lungful of smoke.

‘Yes, not bad,’ Molly said. She was hugging herself. ‘Blooming freezing, though, isn’t it? I can’t seem to get warm.’

‘Try and relax. It helps.’

There was a silence, so Molly said. ‘How’s your week been?’

‘Oh – the usual. We’ve been pretty pushed actually.’ Molly knew that Phoebe worked in the government department dealing with roads and transport, though she had no real idea what she did there and Phoebe showed no enthusiasm for it.

Molly sipped her tea, wondering just why Phoebe had asked her to come. She didn’t seem to have anything to say, and yet, somewhere in the woman’s manner, she could sense something: a kind of excitement.

‘So,’ Phoebe said. ‘Have you heard?’

‘No. Heard what?’

‘About the army. Recruiting women again. Of course, a few ATS have been hanging on, scattered about the place. But now it’s serious – they’ve just got royal approval. They’re calling it the Women’s Royal Army Corps.’

Phoebe sat back with a what-d’you-think-of-
that
? look on her face.

Molly stared at her over her cup. Her mind was spinning. It had been over, for them – for all the women. Go back home, get on with another sort of life: we don’t need you now. We only need the men. That had been the message. But now . . .

‘D’you mean . . . ? There’s really going to be another army?’

‘There is indeed. I’ve had a good think and I’m already pretty set on joining up again. I know it’ll be different – after all, there’s no war on. It’ll take adjusting to, in its way. But I don’t find much joy in civilian life, to tell you the truth. Forces life is more my thing. And what about you, Fox?’

That Phoebe Morrison had already switched back into army parlance didn’t escape Molly.

‘Me?’ she felt giddy. ‘They wouldn’t want me – would they?’

Phoebe Morrison leaned forward and said sincerely, ‘My dear girl, whyever not?’

April 1949

‘Is that you, Em?’ Cynthia called as the front door banged shut.

‘Yep – only me,’ Em said, shedding her wet coat. Talk about April showers.

‘Hello, love!’ She heard Dot’s voice as well. She and Mom were obviously having one of their chinwags.

Cynthia and Dot were in chatting position at the table with the teacups, and Cynthia was already pouring a cup for Em. Dot, their old neighbour, smiled up at her.

‘All right, bab? You’re looking well.’

‘I’m all right – you OK, Dot? What about Lou: is he better?’

‘Oh, we’re not so bad. His Majesty has to take it a bit careful – they say his heart’s weak, but there’s no stopping that one, when he gets going.’ Dot spoke with fond exasperation. ‘I do worry – but what can you do?

Dot’s Italian husband, Lou Alberello, was a big-hearted, vigorous man, a life-and-soul-of-the-party type. It was hard to imagine him ever quietening or slowing down. ‘Norm all right?’ Dot asked.

‘Oh, he’s all right, yes,’ Em said. ‘Where’s Robbie?’

‘Young Jonny’s round,’ Cynthia said. Jonny was one of Robbie’s school pals. ‘They’re out the back. You sit down for a bit. Have a Rich Tea? Oh, I forgot . . .’ Cynthia got up and took an envelope from the shelf. ‘This came for you. Must be from Molly.’

‘Oh, good!’ Em took it, smiling at the address. Molly knew Em was living with Norm’s mom and dad, but she never remembered to address letters anywhere but Kenilworth Street.

‘How’s she getting on?’ Dot asked, before Em had even got the envelope open.

‘Oh!’ Em exclaimed. ‘Oh my goodness!’

‘Oh, Mom . . .’ Em, with tears in her eyes, handed Cynthia the letter. ‘Read that – oh, good for Molly. When I think of all the different things she’s done and all those places she’s been – and I’ve never even moved from here! Makes me feel a proper stick-in-the-mud!’

‘Never you mind, bab,’ Dot said. ‘Not everyone’s meant to be a rolling stone like Molly. You’re here, making a home for your lad, and you may not get any thanks for it, but that’s what matters – and don’t you forget it.’

‘Thanks, Dot – I s’pose you’re right,’ Em said, smiling. She leaned over and touched Dot’s hand. ‘I know you being around has always made all the difference to everything – hasn’t it, Mom?’

‘Oh, it certainly has that,’ Cynthia said.

Em drained her cup. ‘Anyroad, I’d better not dawdle. I need to get Robbie home for his tea.’

May 1949

Katie had already been certain of how much she loved Marek, but from Christmas night – when they had sat up talking almost all night, holding each other, kissing by the dying fire – she knew she was even more deeply, tenderly immersed in her feelings for him. She had never felt so completely at home with another person, or experienced so much longing for them. Life without him was unimaginable. Even being apart from him for a few hours made her yearn for his presence, for the sight of his face and their endless talking and laughter.

When, in the New Year, they told Sybil that they were intending to marry, she was as pleased as if she was a mother to each of them. And in some ways it felt as if she was.

‘I couldn’t be more delighted,’ she said, smiling up at them. She was sitting by the fire in the dining room and they stood rather bashfully before her, close, so that the backs of their hands were touching. ‘You make a lovely couple, and I’m sure you’ll make a good go of it.’

Katie and Marek looked at each other, beaming with the miraculous sense of their love and happiness.

‘Though it is quite quick,’ she cautioned.

Katie, though rapturously in love, had thought about it carefully. More soberly now, she said, ‘We’re very sure. And Marek has lost such a lot. I don’t have anyone much, either. We both want family . . . I suppose we feel there’s no point in delaying.’

Sybil nodded. ‘I see.’ And they could see also that she did.

‘The thing I’d feel less delighted about,’ Sybil went on, ‘is the prospect of losing you both. Have you thought where you might live? There’s nothing much going, you know.’

Once again they looked at each other, their smiles fading a little.

‘We have thought . . .’ Marek said.

‘. . . But we don’t really know, until we look.’

Sybil regarded them in silence for a moment. ‘Well, why not stay here?’

‘Could we?’ Katie said. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would be able to. Again she looked at Marek. ‘That’d be ideal, wouldn’t it?’ They would only have had to go and find lodgings in a house elsewhere and start again.

‘I can’t see why not, at least for the time being,’ Sybil said. ‘I’m sure we could arrange things – that is, if it would suit you, of course. It seems foolish to uproot yourselves, especially as your sister is next door now, Marek.’

Though she was trying to sound detached, as usual, Katie was touched to see an urgency in Sybil’s expression. She wanted them to stay: it mattered to her. Glancing at Marek and seeing agreement in his eyes, Katie said, ‘Sybil, that’s so kind of you. I’m sure we’d love to stay here. We’ve been very happy here, and Michael likes it – and we can always help you with the garden and everything. I’ll cook . . .’ As she said it, her spirits soared even higher. They would work out which was to be their private room in the house, but it was so lovely here, and she would have found it a terrible wrench leaving Sybil.

‘You are very good to us, Miss Routh,’ Marek said, with a little bow. ‘We are very grateful.’

‘Oh, not at all!’ Sybil pulled herself up from her chair and stood before them. Katie felt like embracing her, but didn’t quite dare to. ‘Your sister knows?’ she asked Marek.

‘Yes. We told her yesterday. She is glad.’

Sybil nodded. ‘And when is the happy day to be?’

‘We thought in the spring,’ Katie said. ‘May the fifteenth. It’ll only be very quiet – at St Francis’s. As long as the priest can marry us that day. I’ll make my own dress and everything.’

Sybil smiled at her eagerness and, stepping forward, kissed each of them on the cheek. It was so unexpected that Katie found tears in her eyes.

‘I hope you’ll both be very happy,’ Sybil said. ‘I’m very glad that you’ve found one another.’

It was a busy, exciting time. As well as the arrangements to be made, they were both working hard and making plans. Agnieska, who for the moment was working in a shop, had decided to apply to train as a nurse, and Marek sometimes talked about training too, in psychiatric nursing.

‘One day I shall do this,’ he said. ‘But for the moment I carry on earning my living – and I can be with you.’

‘What would you have done if the war had not happened?’ Katie asked both of them. Agnieska said she might have been a teacher, like her parents. But now she felt that nursing was something that was important to her. Marek thought he might have been a farmer.

‘But now everything is different’ was all he said.

Katie could see how much these choices were the result of what they had experienced, how much of the suffering of others they had witnessed, how it had changed them. They were both people of compassion, who wanted to offer the rest of their lives to help.

Over those months, once the brother and sister could see they had a safe, loving listener in Katie, the two of them talked more and more. Experiences came pouring out that they could talk about to no one else. Katie began to appreciate the enormity of what had happened to Poland: the war, the invasions of the Germans from the west and Russians from the east, the gross brutality of both, had been like an explosion that scattered a country and its people into smithereens. Soldiers and others had fled west so that the Polish government itself was in exile in London, many of its forces scattered across Europe. Through Marek and his family, she took in the scale of the Russian deportations east into slave labour, the deaths upon deaths in the Siberian snows or in central Russia. The Jewish population had been almost wiped out in Nazi death camps. And now, thanks to the border agreed by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in 1945, the district surrounding Lvov, where the Wozniak family had lived, was no longer Poland, but Soviet Ukraine. And the government of Poland was no longer Polish – it was under the command of Soviet Russia. To return now would mean almost certain death.