Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase (31 page)

‘No, not today. He’s busy.’

‘Oh, what a pity. He hasn’t visited me in such a long time.’

‘I know, Babunia. But he sends his love.’

‘How’s that wife of his?’

‘Anna? Oh, you know. Gone. She left years ago, remember? When I was six?’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. I don’t trust her one bit. She’s a nice enough young woman, but …’

It’s a strange kind of lucidity. But I’m getting used to it. As a matter of fact, I know that Anna is well; we met for lunch in London again last week. But I don’t tell Babunia that, mainly because I think it will confuse her.

I have completed the nails of one hand. I adjust the stool and take up her other hand. Red suits her, despite her advanced years. The radio programme is about Billie Holiday. I half listen to the story of her infamous life. Insistent jazz music seeps from the radio and dances around the room on the breeze.

‘I know this one!’ I say. ‘Are you still a fan of Bill— Babunia? Oh, what is it?’

Tears roll down her thin, colourless cheeks, and her lips are trembling. I continue to paint her nails, knowing that when you are crying the last thing you want is to be looked at.

‘I always think of him,’ she says eventually, in a whisper. ‘When I hear her sing.’

‘Think of who?’

‘Him. When I hear her songs.’

‘Do you mean John?’ I ask.

‘John?’

‘John. My dad. Your son?’

‘No. Not him. Not today. Not even Sidney, today. I do wish my sons would visit me!’ she cries, suddenly animated.

Who was Sidney? Was he the lost baby Anna mentioned to me? Anna. The woman who is slowly becoming my mother again. Despite everything, I like her. She’s funny and sharp and unconventional. There’s a freedom in forgiveness. And she’s thrilled for me and Philip.

‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Babunia,’ I say, taking a chance, opening the door, inviting her to confide in me. ‘But I’m here to listen, if you do want to.’

There is a long, dreamy pause during which she seems to drift off from me, arguing with herself, in silence.

She frowns. ‘My husband,’ she says at last.

‘He died in the war, didn’t he? A long time ago, wasn’t it?’

Silence.

I decide to jump in and say it. ‘Jan
wasn’t
your husband, Babunia, was he? It’s okay, you know. Nobody minds.’

She ignores me. ‘I don’t think he died at all. Not then.’

‘Oh.’ I slowly paint the nail on her wedding finger. She wears no ring, and I can’t remember there ever being one. Why didn’t I notice this before? Widows wear their rings, don’t they? ‘When do you think he died, then?’

‘I don’t know, you see. It’s not for me to know. But I always felt he was alive, breathing air just like me. It was a comforting thought. I miss him so much. Do you know, I thought I saw him once. But he didn’t see me. And goodness knows, it probably wasn’t him. He was with a woman with blonde hair. She was much prettier than I ever was.’

Babunia’s hand shakes, but I squeeze it gently in reassurance, careful not to smudge the polish. I wonder if she notices. I sense she is somewhere else, a long way from here, and a long way from now.

‘He was a good man, Roberta,’ says Babunia finally, and she looks out into the garden where the children are frolicking in the sunshine, playing tag. But she does not see them.

‘Of course he was,’ I tell her.

‘But proud. Like all men.’

‘That’s their undoing sometimes, isn’t it?’ I say, glad to have some common ground at last. ‘Pride?’

‘Often it is,’ she says sadly.

‘Do you miss him still?’

‘Of course I miss him.’

‘You didn’t live over the brush, did you?’ Sometimes it helps to keep things light, to make little jokes. Despite the endless confusion, she still has her sense of humour, subtle and quiet.

‘No. We never lived together. He didn’t want me to keep the baby. Was it so wrong of me? I never saw him again … but I don’t think it was wrong. Do you?’

I feel drained, exhausted. Her words are off-kilter, like discordant music.
He didn’t want me to keep the baby
. So she
did
have an abortion. I wonder. Oh, that pivotal, tantalising line in my grandfather’s letter! What you do, to this child, to this child’s mother, it is wrong.

‘Oh. I … I’m not sure what to say,’ I whisper.

‘He wasn’t my husband’s child. But he wasn’t even my child, you see. It was all rather … confusing. He was Aggie’s. No. Not Aggie’s. What am I talking about? Oh dear. Oh. What was her name? Nina! Yes, that was her. Tall girl, fat. Stupid girl, really, and I … oh, the poor thing. She was hopeless and helpless. I tried. I did. I told her. I expect she’s dead by now. I’ll never know if I’m truly wicked or not. I had an accomplice, but she was a witch. But he thought I was. I had to go home. I had to go back to Mother’s house. Do you know what I found under my bed?’

Mute, unsure of what to say, I shake my head. Did she help somebody else to have an abortion? This Nina she keeps talking about, this Nina she has mistaken me for on several occasions?

‘
The Infant’s Progress
. Of all the things. I’ll never forget that wretched book. I put his last letter inside it. He told me off, you see, in his letter. I kept that book for years. I think it’s gone now, and the letter with it. And I lost my temper with him and I burned all the other ones. I burned the blue ribbon. I even burned his shirt, Roberta, can you imagine? I had never washed it. All those buttons … what a fool I was. I should have kept that, I should have kept everything. I have nothing of his, nothing else at all. I lost him, you see. I was so angry he wasn’t going to marry me after all. I was furious with him for years and years. I asked him to be my husband. Can you imagine? I thought he wanted to be my husband. But he wouldn’t forgive me. I can’t tell you how terrible it made me feel. He broke my heart into so many pieces. So small I couldn’t find them and put them back together again. Just as well they’re all gone, isn’t it, really? But I don’t regret what I did. John was worth it. It was right. We don’t get everything in life, do we?’

Well, at least that makes sense. My mind is racing as I try to piece together all that she has said.

‘Who was Nina?’ I ask.

‘Nina? I don’t know any Ninas! Don’t ask questions. I can’t remember everything … I’m not going to tell you!’ and now the sad, wise old lady is a stroppy child again.

I know I have pushed her too far. So we sit in silence, listening to the radio, and I make tea. She sips hers with a shaking hand. I look at her and wonder if we shall ever talk again. She is barely present now, grey and thin as rainfall on a winter afternoon.

Possibilities present themselves to me. I don’t like any of them, so I turn them away, one by one, like tiresome beggars. She was a marvellous mother, both to my father and to me. Nothing else matters. As Philip would say, the rest is all bollocks.

Philip. My fiancé. How grand that sounds, and how strange. I decide to tell her my news.

‘Did I tell you? Philip and I are engaged.’

‘Philip? I don’t think I know a Philip.’

‘He’s a nice man, the very best, and we are going to be very happy,’ I tell her.

She nods, seeming satisfied with that.

‘We’re getting married in August, and I want you to come.’

She raises her eyebrows and smiles. ‘We’ll see,’ she says, with a flash of that wry humour I have always loved.

The programme about Billie Holiday has finished. I turn the volume down to a soft background murmur, half-hearted waves breaking on a distant shore, but Babunia doesn’t seem to notice. Carefully, because I don’t want to disturb her, I reach for my handbag. I find Jan’s letter, now much creased and crumpled, open out the two fragile pages, smooth them flat and place them on the side table next to Babunia’s chair. She has fallen into a childlike doze and, after undoing her chignon, I gently brush her long grey hair, over and over, until it shines.

A
nd now that it was over, he had only vague ideas of what to do, or where to go. He was done with flying, and that was his only certainty, apart from knowing he would not return to Poland. Perhaps America? One day, yes, perhaps. But there were things to do first, here in England. There was unfinished business to attend to.

He drove to the cottage in Lincolnshire, and from the road it all seemed much the same. He fancied the same curtains were still hanging at the windows. Yet, on closer inspection, he saw that the garden was not nearly as well kept as it once had been. There were no hens. There was no laundry on the lines, although it was a warm day in May.

He opened the gate and shuffled along the path, and suddenly it was five years ago, and he imagined he could hear the woman’s mournful humming. But he could not. He knocked on the kitchen door. It was opened by a young man, who regarded him with suspicion and impatience.

‘Yes?’

‘I am Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski.’

‘Do I know you?’

‘No, but I knew this cottage. I stayed here. I was a friend to the lady who lived here then. Do you know her, I wonder?’

‘Sal might. Sal!’

A young woman, a land girl, came to the door. She was neither Aggie nor Nina.

Jan bowed. ‘I am looking for a Mrs Dorothy Sinclair.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know her. I think Aggie did, though.’

‘Is Aggie still here?’

‘No. She left in 1942, I think it was. She got moved to a farm in Yorkshire. I heard she’s going to marry a GI when he gets demobbed. They’re going to Alabama, I think. Or is it Arkansas?’

‘And Nina? Do you know the girl named Nina?’ Jan tried to suppress his impatience.

‘No, but I heard talk of a girl called Nina having a baby.’

‘You did?’

‘A little girl. She got married, I think. I don’t know what became of her, though.’

‘Ah.’

‘Aggie used to talk about a woman named Dorothy. But I didn’t know her.’

‘Is there a music box here? A gramophone?’

She looked startled. ‘Yes.’

‘May I have it, please? I lent it to Dorothy at the start of the war. I have come to reclaim it.’

‘It makes no odds to me,’ said the girl. ‘Bill, what do you think?’

The young man shrugged. ‘We’re leaving soon to go home, only going to leave it here. Do what you like with it.’

They stood aside to let Jan enter the kitchen, which was no longer Dorothy’s kitchen. It was dirty and dark. The parlour beyond was dusty and tatty, with packing boxes jostling for space. The young woman indicated the gramophone on the sideboard, and Jan, thanking her, lifted it, wincing. The younger man offered to help, and Jan was forced to accept. While Bill took the music box to Jan’s car, Jan gathered up the remaining records; some were missing, he thought. He thanked the girl.

She smiled. ‘So where you from, then?’ she asked.

‘Poland.’

‘Oh.’

‘You going back?’ asked Bill, who had come back inside.

‘Sadly, no.’

‘Don’t bloody blame you.’

He thanked them again, and returned slowly to the car.

And a few weeks later, Oxford. He was feeling better, stronger. The drive to Lincolnshire he should perhaps not have undertaken. Then, he had been weak. But now, all was on the mend. It was summer, and Oxford was a nice city, he thought, grand. And he wandered, marvelling at the colleges, the ivy-clad buildings, unscathed. And he asked people, those he met by chance, in shops, in libraries, in the street. He made himself a nuisance, but a charming one.

‘Honour? I am looking for a Mrs Honour?’ (For hadn’t Dorothy once told him her maiden name was Honour?) ‘With a grown-up daughter, Dorothy?’

He was on the point of giving up, tired, unconvinced, his initial energies and hopes waning, wishing he had kept Dorothy’s letter or at least memorised her address before his stupid pride had made him throw it away, when a woman, eager to help a handsome foreigner, brightened and did not shake her head.

‘Ruth? Ruth Honour?’

And thus he found himself, tired and shaking, outside a house with a blue door in the north of the city. He breathed hard and knocked. Nobody answered. He peered through a window. The house seemed to be empty, forsaken. He spoke to a neighbour, who was peeping at him over a neatly cut box hedge.

Yes, he’d known the people who had lived there. An old lady and her daughter, both widowed, and the daughter’s little boy. Nice family. But they’d gone, oh, three or four years ago? No, he had no forwarding address. The daughter, he thought, had married a Polish man who had died early in the war.

‘Do you recall her married name?’ Jan asked him.

‘Pilkowski? Pentrykowski? Something like that.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jan, his chest swelling with a feeling he could not put a name to. ‘And did she marry again, do you know?’

‘I don’t think so, no. But as I say, it’s been a good while since they moved away. The house has an owner, but nobody lives here. They do collect post periodically, so they may have a forwarding address. Are you Russian?’

‘Ah. Of course. Thank you for your time. No, I am not Russian.’

14
^th
August
1945

My dear Dorothea,

I have been trying to find you, with no success. I have got as far as your mother’s house in Oxford, and there your trail seems to run cold. I write to you there, in the hope my letter can be passed on to you. A vain hope, but all I have. I think, if I try hard enough, I will find you. I suspect you go by my name, and you are most welcome to. In fact, it is my privilege. There can’t be too many Pietrykowskis living in England! But at the same time, I do not want to bother you. You may be married again, with new name, and happy, and you no longer think of me. So if this letter reaches you, that is good. If not, so be it. I have a plan for my future, and if I do not hear from you, I will carry it out.

As you can see, I have survived the war, as I told you I would. I fought long and hard, and I became exhausted. As you say here, I ran out of steam. Last few months of war, I am in hospital. My old injury gives me gyp, I tire greatly, in my mind and body, and in the end I suffer a collapse of it all. Terrible. Thoughts of dying, feeling so weak and feeble and sick. But I am better now and all in my life is dancing and singing and light again. Almost all, because you are missing. I let you go and I should not have. It is the worst mistake of my life. I love you more than ever, and I was wrong to judge you so badly about your baby. I want you to forgive me and marry me, as we expected, if you are free to do so, of course, and if you want to. No doubt you are angry with me, disappointed by the letter I sent to you. I regret each and every word of it. I was wrong.