Spring Will Be Ours (7 page)

‘It is possible,' Tata said again, ‘but we are all praying that it won't happen.'

‘But … but even if there is,' Anna said, frowning, ‘you wouldn't have to go, would you?'

‘Well …'

‘What?' Surely he wouldn't, he wasn't in the army, was he? He was just an ordinary doctor.

‘I am in the Reserve Corps,' he said, ‘like most professional men. If Poland were to be invaded, I expect we would all be called up.'

He had known all this all summer, and he hadn't said anything? He and Teresa had had a secret like that from her and Jerzy? She could feel a great lump of misery begin to fill her throat, and turned away.

‘Anna …' He came to sit beside her, and put his arm round her. ‘I am telling you the truth, because it's better to do that, isn't it?'

She could hardly speak. ‘Why … why didn't you tell us before?'

‘Because it may not happen, after all. Why worry unless you have to? We wanted you and Jerzy to have a happy summer. And tomorrow we're going on holiday.'

‘Still?' She blew her nose.

‘Of course.'

‘But Tata,' said Jerzy, still standing by the window, ‘will I have to go?'

‘Do you imagine you are old enough to join the army, you poor ignorant boy?' said Tata, and began to sound like himself again. He got up, and looked at Wiktoria. ‘And now, perhaps …'

‘Of course. Lunch is quite ready – Teresa, my dear, would you be kind enough …'

The two women went out to the kitchen.

‘All right now?' Tata asked Anna.

She nodded. ‘Yes, thank you.' But unease gnawed at her. ‘I'm just going to the bathroom.'

In the corridor she heard Teresa's and Wiktoria's low voices from the kitchen. She stopped, her hand on the handle of the bathroom door, and listened.

The British and the French … allies … the Anglo-French agreement … pledged to come to Poland's aid … invasion … Tomasz might not have to go
…

He might not have to go. That was all she cared about. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Inside, she looked at herself in the mirror, and splashed water over her burning, angry face. This time tomorrow they would already be on the train out of Warsaw.

‘Look, Tata, quick!'

From the
kajak
Jerzy pointed to the river bank: in the meadow beyond, a stork stood motionless amidst the rippling grass. Tata stopped paddling and they rested, watching. The bird raised its head, then picked its way slowly through the field; Jerzy shifted a little, and the
kajak
rocked.

‘Careful!' said Anna, and the stork suddenly lifted its wings and took off, flapping awkwardly and low over the field at first, then, gaining power, steadily rising into the morning sun and away to the woods beyond.

It was ten o'clock, already growing warm, though on the river they still needed to wear jumpers. They had been travelling for just over a week; pitching their tent and exploring the countryside around for a day or two, then moving on, a journey of sunlight and water. The river meandered between deep banks planted with silver birch trees; sunflowers nodded over every corner of a field or patch of vegetables they passed. In the afternoon heat they stripped off and swam past clumps of reeds and rushes, or paddled over broad flat rocks on the river bed, where the water flickered. Grey church spires and the red-tiled roofs of distant villages marked the horizon; when they walked inland on baked mud paths and unmade roads they passed clusters of cottages under dirty thatch. Barefooted children stared from doorways; the single rooms inside were dark.

In almost every field a horse stood irritably flicking flies in the heat; men in shirtsleeves and women and children in kerchiefs moved through the corn and hay with scythes, bending and swishing, piling and tying. In late afternoon or early evening, the waggons moved slowly out of the fields and back to the villages, the children swaying on piles of hay six or seven feet high. Ragged lines of geese followed, honking; hens ran squawking to the verge.

In the larger villages Tata bought bread, potatoes and sausages, smoked bacon and yellow apples. He and Jerzy and Anna gathered sticks as they made their way back to the tent, and laid a fire, sticking the potatoes in at the bottom.

‘I wish we could live like this always,' Jerzy said that night as they sat round the embers. He poked them with a stick; ash sighed through the charred branches to the ground.

‘One always thinks that on holiday,' said Tata. ‘By the end of next week you will be impatient for your piano, your friends. You'll have had quite enough of your dull old Tata.' He stretched, and stood up; twigs snapped.

‘Light the lamp, Tata, and stop talking nonsense,' said Anna. ‘Let's go and read in the tent.'

The tent was awkward to handle, heavy old canvas with stiffened guy ropes, but roomy enough for the three of them. Tata had had it for years – he thought his own father might have used it in the last war – and he and Mama used to go camping in it in the twenties, when they were first married. Anna and Jerzy had seen pictures of them in the album he kept in his desk: laughing at each other into the camera, striking poses, or caught unawares: Tata – he had more hair, then – gazing into the distance with a cigarette or Mama bending down to pack more into the rucksack, showing slim calves above ankle socks and summer shoes. Tata still had the heavy black box camera; he'd used it all holiday.

It was growing dark. Anna picked up the water can and saucepan, and shivered: though they had camped well back from the river bank, she could feel the chill rising from the water. Jerzy stamped out the last of the fire.

‘Come on, you two!' Tata called, and they turned and saw the pale yellow glow of the paraffin lamp through the canvas, and his shadow, as he sat down and reached for the book.

He looked up and smiled as they pushed apart the entrance flaps and went inside. ‘Here –' he picked up the rug beside him and passed it to Anna. ‘I told you to bring two jumpers, didn't I?'

‘Yes, Tata.' She pulled the rug round her shoulders and sat down, leaning against his shoulder. Jerzy flopped on to his sleeping bag.

‘Come on, then, where've we got to?'

He had been reading to them for as long as they could remember. When they were small, and especially after Mama went to hospital and Wiktoria was looking after them, he came every night and sat on their beds in turn, reading the fairy tales and nursery rhymes they still had on the bookshelf in their room. When they went to school he continued, although as they got older and his practice more demanding it was sometimes only at weekends; but it had never stopped. Long after their friends had outgrown being read to, Jerzy and Anna continued to listen. Much of last year had been spent reading.
Peasants
, the quartet of novels which made up Reymont's great hymn to rural Poland. For the holiday, they'd brought with them a volume of short stories by Sienkiewicz, reading one, or part of a long one, each evening.

‘Now …' said Tata. He slipped out the cracked leather bookmark and peered at the title of the next story. ‘This one is called “The Lighthouse Keeper” – it's based on a true story, I think.' He shifted a little, settled back against his rolled-up sleeping bag, and began to read. ‘It so happened that the lighthouse keeper in Aspinwall, not

far from Panama, disappeared without leaving a trace. As this

occurred during a storm, it was supposed that the unfortunate

man must have gone too near the edge of the island rock on which the lighthouse stood, and been washed away by a wave.

This was the more probable, because his boat was not found

the next day in its rocky niche. The post of lighthouse keeper

therefore fell vacant …'

‘Can you see all right, Tata?'

‘Perfectly, thank you, Anna. You can move a little to the left, perhaps, so that your shadow does not obscure the page entirely …'

She moved, lay down, closed her eyes and listened.
‘The task of finding a new lighthouse keeper devolved on

the Consul of the United States who lived in Panama, and it

was a task of no small difficulty … Life in a lighthouse tower

is an extraordinarily hard one … it is a claustral life, and

even more than claustral, for it is a hermit's life … It is,

therefore, not surprising that Mr Isaac Folcombridge was in

great perplexity where to find a permanent successor, and his

joy may be imagined when that successor most unexpectedly

appeared that very same day. He was a man already old,

seventy years or more, but hale, erect, with the movements

and bearing of a soldier. His hair was quite white; his

complexion was as sunburnt as a creole's, but judging from

his blue eyes he belonged to no southern race. His face had

an oppressed and sad, but honest expression. Folcombridge

took a fancy to him at first sight.

‘“Where do you come from?”

‘“What have you been doing up till now?”

‘“I've led a roving life.”

‘“A lighthouse keeper must be fond of staying in one place.”

‘“I need rest.”'

Tata cleared his throat. They lay listening as the interview continued. The old man, Skawiński, showed himself in his papers and testimonials as a courageous soldier who had fought in any number of campaigns throughout Europe and against the South in the American Civil War.

‘“Do you know anything about life at sea?”

‘“I served three years on a whaler.”

‘“You've tried different occupations?”

‘“It's because I never could find peace anywhere.”

‘“Why?”

The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Fate.”

‘“You look to me too old for a lighthouse keeper.”

‘“Sir!” the candidate burst out in agitated tones. “I am very tired and battered about. You see I've gone through a lot. This post is one of those I've most longed to get. I'm old. I need rest. I need to be able to say to myself: You are going to settle down here now, you're in port. Oh, sir! this depends only on you … I've had enough of all that wandering.”

‘The old man's eyes were so beseeching that Folcombridge, who was kind and simple of heart, felt touched.

‘“Well!” he said. “I accept you. You are the lighthouse keeper.”

‘The old man's face lit up with an unspeakable joy.

‘“Just one word: for the slightest negligence in your duty you'll be dismissed.”

‘The old man was rowed out to the lighthouse. That night he stood on the balcony close to the mighty lantern, and stood gazing out over the sea, secure and at peace.

‘His misfortune had been that as often as he pitched his tent and lit the fire on his hearth to settle down for good, the wind tore away the tent pegs, scattered the ashes of his fire, and brought himself to ruin … it seemed as though all four elements persecuted him … He believed that some powerful and avenging hand was pursuing him everywhere, by land and water … Yet he had the patience of an Indian, and the great and quiet resisting power that springs from rectitude of soul. During his service in Hungary he received several bayonet thrusts because he refused to seize the strap shown him as his means of safety and cry: “I surrender.”

‘At last he was overpowered by one thought only: the thought of rest. It took complete possession of the old man, and absorbed all other desires and hopes … now, suddenly, in the course of twelve hours, he had obtained a post that seemed chosen out of all others in the world for him.…

‘One hour followed after another, and he was still on the balcony. He gazed; he drank his fill. The lens of the lantern flung into the darkness a mighty cone of light, beyond which the old man's eyes were lost in a distance that was pitch black, mysterious and terrible. Yet that distance seemed to be running towards the light. Long, jagged waves rolled out from the darkness and, roaring, reached as far as the foot of the little island, and then their foaming manes were visible, glittering, rose-coloured, in the light of the lantern. The tide was fast coming in and pouring over the sandbanks. The mysterious language of the ocean was approaching from the deep, ever stronger, ever louder … A storm growled in the distance. On the dark heaving waste a few little green lamps flashed, hanging on the masts of ships …

‘Skawinski went down to his room. The storm had begun to howl. Out there men on those ships were battling with the night, with the dark, with the waves; but inside the room it was quiet and still … there was only the rhythmic tick-tack of the clock that seemed to rock the tired old man to sleep.'

Anna heard the dry sound of pages turned, her father's steady voice filling the tent as he read on.

‘Everything with which the lighthouse keeper comes into contact is huge, without concrete or definite form. The sky is one element, water the other; and between those immensities one solitary human soul … The old man lived in the company of the tower, the lantern, the rock, the sandbanks, and solitude …

‘His tower guarded him against all evil. Indeed, he only left it at intervals, on Sunday mornings. Then he put on his long blue official coat with silver buttons, hung his crosses on his breast; and he carried his milk-white head with a certain pride when, as he came out of church, he heard the creoles say to one another: “We've got a proper lighthouse keeper!” But he returned to the island immediately after Mass, and was glad to return, for he still felt some lurking distrust of the mainland. On Sundays, too, he would read a Spanish newspaper that he bought in the town, or the
New York Herald
, borrowed from Folcombridge, searching through them for their scanty news of Europe. Poor old heart! In that watchtower and in another hemisphere, it still beat for his country …

‘Homesickness had passed into resignation. The whole world now began and ended for the old man on his little island … Moreover he was becoming a mystic … ceasing to exist as a separate personality … becoming ever more one with that which surrounded him … in the end it seemed to him that the sky, the water, his rock, the tower, and the golden sandbanks, and the swelling sails and the gulls, the incoming and outgoing tides, were all one great harmony and one mighty, mysterious soul; and he was submerged in that mystery, and felt the presence of that soul which was living and at rest. He sank into it, he was cradled by it, memory fled; and in that captivity of his own separate existence, in that half-consciousness, half-sleep, he found a peace so great that it almost resembled death.'