A Song At Twilight (23 page)

‘We knew it was coming to an end, of course,’ he said at last. ‘We had watched Hitler march over Europe all that year. We saw him enter Prague in March, stripping the banks of their gold to rescue his own destitute economy. We knew he was coming closer to us.’

‘You knew that he would invade Poland?’

‘Those who understood the situation did. Others buried their heads in the sand and refused to see the signs. And we were unprepared. Our army relied on cavalry still, and our air force had only antiquated planes. We could never stand up to an attack.’

‘Wouldn’t Russia help?’

He made a swift gesture of repudiation. ‘Poland has been dominated by Russia before! We didn’t want them on our soil.’ His shoulders slumped a little as he added, ‘Perhaps that was a mistake. But whatever might have happened, Germany invaded on September the first and so it all began. A second world war, only twenty-one years after the end of the first.’

There was a short silence, broken only by the crackle and hiss of the fire and the soft murmur of Hughie, telling himself the stories as he gazed at the colourful pictures in his book. Alison said, ‘What happened then? After the invasion?’

‘We were prepared, up to a point,’ he said. ‘Our army was in position along the borders, ready for defence. But how could we, with our old-fashioned methods and equipment, hope to stand up against the might of the Germans with their tanks and their armaments? By the end of the month, they had completely overrun our country. Along with many others, I came to England and I’ve been here ever since.’

‘And you’ve never heard from your family in all that time?’

‘No. How could I? They are in enemy hands.’ A small spasm of pain twisted his features. ‘But we hear things. We hear of the atrocities being committed there. People starving. People killed for no reason. There are many of these stories.’

Alison thought of her own parents, living comfortably in Lincolnshire in their own home. Like everyone else, they were deprived of many of the pleasures of peacetime, but they had enough to eat and sufficient warmth. They might be bombed from the skies, but they could feel secure within their own community. They weren’t afraid of soldiers in the street. They didn’t have to live behind high walls.

And she would hear very quickly if anything happened to them.

Silently, she reached out and touched his wrist. He turned his hand over so that their palms met, and he curled his fingers around hers. She felt their warmth and strength, felt the sensitivity in his long, musician’s fingers, and a strange, warm ache ran up the inside of her arm directly into her heart.

It was growing dark when they stirred at last. Hughie had fallen asleep over his book and the only light in the room came from the smouldering fire. Alison, feeling as if she had woken from a deep sleep, turned her head and looked into Stefan’s face. He was lying back in the chair, and she knew that telling his story had been almost too much for him.

He had stopped talking at last, and laid his head back in the chair, drained and exhausted, and Alison had remained quiet, feeling his hand in hers and not wanting to let it go. But now it was almost dark and she knew she must move.

Gently, she withdrew her hand and murmured, ‘I have to draw the blackout curtains.’ She stood up and drew the heavy curtains across, then switched on the lamp. Hughie, feeling the light on his eyelids, moved and whimpered a protest, and she laid her hand on his cheek. Stefan sat up slowly and looked at her.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve taken up your whole afternoon, and made you unhappy.’

‘No. You’ve made me sad, but not unhappy. And I’m glad you told me. I’d like you to come again, and tell me more. Talk for as long as you like.’ She looked down at his pale, tired face. ‘I’d like to hear more about your family.’

‘Thank you.’ He leaned forward and put another log on the fire. ‘And now I think I should go.’

‘Oh, no,’ she protested. ‘Stay for supper. Andrew will be home soon – he’s not on readiness tonight. He’ll be pleased to see you.’ She hesitated, then said quietly, ‘You said once you would like to play on our piano, but you never have. Would you like to play now – some of your favourite music, the kind you used to play at home? Would it be any help at all for you to do that?’

He was silent for so long that she feared she had offended him. Then he nodded his head.

‘Yes. I would like to do that. It would be good, I think.’

He went over to the instrument and lifted the lid. For a moment or two his fingers drifted softly over the keys, barely touching them. Then he sat down and began to play.

From the first note he struck, Alison recognised that this was no ordinary piano-player. Stefan was a true virtuoso. She listened, enthralled, as he went into the intricacies of one of Beethoven’s sonatas, and even Hughie stopped his game and fell silent. From there, he moved on to some Chopin and then, lightening the mood, to some jazz. And then he struck a note that went straight to Alison’s heart.

It was the piece written especially for his country – for his city. A piece that had been written after the war had begun, a piece that his family and all those at home – if they were still alive – had probably never heard, and yet it seemed to speak both to them and of them, and of all the dangers they had faced and were still facing.

It was the Warsaw Concerto.

‘You’m keeping well,’ May observed one morning as she threw used tea leaves on to the living-room carpet. ‘Were you like this with Hughie?’

‘Mm, I hardly knew I was expecting.’ Alison touched her swelling stomach. ‘Except for this, of course, and all the kicking. They’re both going to be either footballers or boxers, I’m sure.’

‘Everyone always thinks that,’ May said. She knelt on the floor and began to brush up the tea leaves, bringing dust and fluff up with them and leaving the carpet clean and bright. Andrew had suggested a month or so ago that Alison should ask her to help with some of the housework, and May had been pleased to do so for a few shillings a week. She had several jobs around the village now, as well as her war work sewing for the Marines and her voluntary work, but she always seemed to have time for a cup of tea and a chat, and she often took Hughie for a walk to give Alison a rest.

‘Have you thought of any names yet?’ she asked, sweeping the tea leaves into a dustpan. ‘I expect you’d like a little girl this time, wouldn’t you? Pigeon pair.’

‘I don’t really mind. I like little boys.’ Alison looked through the window to where Hughie was playing in the back garden. It was a fine March morning, with a light breeze tossing the yellow-headed daffodils in a ballet dance beneath the hedge. She was darning Andrew’s socks as she spoke, May having firmly taken away the newspaper with which she’d been about to polish the windows. ‘I think Andrew would like a girl, though.’

‘Ah, men like to have a pretty daughter.’ May sat back on her heels. ‘And you stay friends with your daughter, too. You know what they say:
A son’s your son till he takes him a wife. A daughter’s a daughter the whole of her life.
’

‘Oh, I can’t believe I’d ever lose Hughie,’ Alison protested, looking out of the window again. Hughie was crouching down, watching something in the grass – a beetle or a worm, probably. He was fascinated with all wildlife just now. ‘In fact, Andrew says he’s too much of a mummy’s boy.’

‘I’m not saying you’d
lose
him. Just that he’d have to put his wife first and she’d go to her own mother. ’Tis only natural.’ May glanced up and saw the expression on Alison’s face. ‘Here, don’t you go looking like that! ’Tisn’t going to happen next week. You’ve got twenty years or more before young Hughie starts to think about getting wed.’

Alison laughed. ‘I know. It’s just that I can’t quite bear to think about him growing up at all, let alone leaving home. Well, all I can say is that when he does think about getting married, I hope he finds someone as nice as you, May. I’m sure I’d be very happy about that.’

May smiled but then got up and picked up the dustpan, taking it outside to tip the contents into the bin at the bottom of the garden. Alison watched her pause to talk to Hughie, stooping to examine whatever it was he had found, and then return to the house.

‘You’ll never believe what that boy’s studying. It’s a snail with its horns out. He says it’s his pet and it’s called Oscar and he’s going to keep it in his bedroom.’

‘Oh, is he indeed? I’ll have to search his pockets when he comes in.’ Alison looked at her friend. ‘May, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you looked a bit odd when I mentioned Hughie marrying someone like you. Have I touched a sore spot?’

May began to shake her head, then sighed and went to put the dustpan and brush away. She came back and sat down opposite Alison.

‘To tell you the truth, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I didn’t know how to put it, like, but now you’ve brought the subject up …’

Alison stared at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re asking for Hughie’s hand in marriage! You’ll have to wait a while, I’m afraid.’

May laughed a little and said, ‘No, it’s not that. It’s about Ben.’

‘Ben Hazelwood?’ Alison remembered May’s mother asking her if May had said anything to her about him. ‘Are you having any problems with him?’

‘Not problems, exactly. But us’ve been out a few times together – to the picture show on the airfield, and he’s taken me to a couple of dances, and us goes for a walk now and then. And – well, us likes each other.’ Her cheeks coloured. ‘Us likes each other a lot. But I don’t know if I ought to let it go on. I mean, I’m just an ordinary maid, I don’t have no education or nothing. I don’t even talk right, I know that. I couldn’t ever fit in with his sort of life.’

Alison looked at her thoughtfully. May was sitting upright in her chair, her fingers busy pleating the folds of her pinafore. Her face was pink and her eyes very bright.

‘What does Ben think about that?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. He don’t seem to have thought about it at all. Tell you the truth, I don’t really know
what
he thinks, but I do know he’s getting too fond of me. And I can’t tell him to stop, can I, not when he’s putting himself into danger night after night, and he’s lost his brother and his poor mother’s so upset still.’ May lifted her head and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I can’t hurt him now, but if I lets it go on any more he might be even more hurt when – when …’ She sniffed and felt in her sleeve for a hanky, then burst into tears.

‘May!’ Alison came out of her chair and went to put her arms around the sobbing girl. May leaned her head against her.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come over all unnecessary.’ She blew her nose. ‘It’s just that I’ve been worrying about it, and I keep thinking I must tell him we didn’t ought to see each other no more, but I haven’t got the heart to do it. And I
wants
to see him,’ she finished piteously. ‘I wants to go out with him and – and all that. Even though I know it isn’t right.’

‘But why isn’t it right?’ Alison asked. ‘I know you’re from different backgrounds, but I don’t think that matters so much these days. Not with the war on, and everything. People are getting all mixed up now, they’re not so separated as they used to be. And Ben’s a nice boy.’

‘That’s another thing,’ May said. ‘He’m still a boy really, for all he goes up fighting in the air. He’m three years younger than me, and it ought to be the man that’s older.’

‘I don’t think three years matter all that much,’ Alison said. ‘It’s not like ten or twenty. What do your parents say?’

‘I haven’t talked about it to them. I haven’t talked about it to anyone, to tell you the truth. It’s not as if Ben’s
said
anything, you see. I might be reading more into it than there really is. Maybe he just wants a bit of fun.’

‘I don’t think Ben’s that sort,’ Alison said. ‘And I think you know how he feels, without having to ask, don’t you?’

May nodded. ‘I just don’t know what to do about it,’ she said despondently.

‘Do you have to do anything? Can’t you just enjoy it, and let things develop as they will?’

‘But I’m going to have to stop it in the end. I know his parents wouldn’t want me as his wife, I know it! His father’s a vicar. They’ve got education. They’ve got a lovely home, I’ve seen photographs of it. I wouldn’t fit in at all. They wouldn’t think I was good enough for Ben. And my mum and dad – they’d tell me to stop putting on airs and keep my place. They’m beginning to think something’s going on as it is.’

‘But they like Ben, don’t they?’

‘Of course they like him! Everybody likes him. That don’t mean to say they want me
marrying
him. I tell you, Alison, they wouldn’t want that at all and it’s me they’d be annoyed with. They’d think I’d led him on, or set my cap at him, or something.’ She blew her nose again. ‘I tell you, I’m proper mazed with it all.’

Alison felt helpless. ‘I don’t know what to say. I think you and Ben would be very happy together. I don’t think the differences matter at all, but I know they would to a lot of people, and that might make it hard for you both.’ She sighed and moved back to her chair. ‘If only you could just forget all the problems and enjoy the time you have together.’

May glanced across at her. ‘And that’s another thing, isn’t it ?’ she said quietly. ‘Us don’t know what time us do have together. I might tell Ben it’s all over and the next day he might go and get killed, and I’d never know …’ She began to cry again. ‘All I’d know would be that I’d made his last day miserable. I can’t do that. I
can’t.
’

‘Of course you can’t.’ Alison wanted to take the girl in her arms again but at that moment Hughie burst in through the back door, his face scarlet with distress. Both women moved automatically, but he ran straight to his mother and buried his head in her lap.

‘What is it? What’s the matter? Have you hurt yourself? Stop crying, sweetheart, and tell me what it is.’

He raised his face. It was wet with tears and contorted with fury. ‘It’s Oscar!’ he bellowed. ‘My snail! He’s all broken up! He’s all smashed! A bird came down and pecked him and now he’s dead! My snail’s
dead!
’