Chapter 12
– It must…
It was dark. Sláma never slept well, it was too cold and too hard and his cough too troublesome for that.
Since that Poindexter fellow had come he had slept even less well, of course. Every blessed private night hour was spent staring up into the dark and wondering about them, his family, his children… about Sarah, who still loved him enough to do this thing even though it couldn’t work, but she had tried…
He thought of her getting his letter. Would she cry?
It must have been a nightmare, her life, specially after he left her pregnant a second time. And the husband’s suicide: he’d only seen him those few moments, but he’d looked the strong and silent type – they cracked all at once, with no warning, like an oak-tree in a storm – no flexibility, no give, no bend in them at all. Poor Sarah – panenko Maria, his poor darling Sarah: mother of god, who has special care for mothers, look after her….
Well god alone knew what would happen to him in here, but
at least now he could draw joy from the picture that was burned in his mind,
and the knowledge of his little son.
Charles – Karel. And
No point in straining your eyes waiting for the dawn; it would come whenever it was ready. It didn’t bring anything to look forward to anyway, so why bother? He closed his eyes, saw Sarah’s face on the inside of his eyelids. This wasn’t a place you felt desire; rather he saw her as a thing of comfort, something representing everything he had ever known that was warm, and sweet, and wholesome, and good. If he thought of her breasts it wasn’t to make love to them even, but just to rest his head there and be rocked. Her sweet snatch was a place where once he had been made welcome, wanting to be, needing to be, and then from that same blessed place had come his children; he gave thanks to god for her womanhood, that it could have been so, without needing to come there again right now. That had been the former Sláma, the lover. This one was the weary survivor.
And yet the thought of her body still pleased him, the
way perhaps Adam and Eve remembered
It wouldn’t come to anything, it couldn’t, but just the knowledge that she had tried was balm to him. Her letter had been everything he remembered about her: her passion, her love for him, her joy and pride in the children… he had lost sight of that, almost, as god-awful as it had been here, and as long as it had been. Now he could feel the reality of her once more, only a thought away, more solid and believable to his soul than this nightmare he himself was living.
They came for him quickly; he wasn’t prepared. The first he knew of it was footsteps and then before he could sit up in bed, someone shone a flashlight in his face and yanked him up by the armpit.
“Come on, bastard.”
“Where? Why?” They had come for Machaty like this, dragged him to the commandant’s office. Three days later, he was dead of a brain hemorrhage.
”You don’t ask, Sláma, you say Yes, sir, I’m coming.”
“I don’t go anywhere willingly unless you tell me where.”
That was perhaps a risky thing to say – but so was going quietly. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. If you made a fuss, and then you didn’t come back, at least someone might remember – enough to get word out to your family, months from now.
The answer was the flashlight in his face. It smashed his lip against his teeth, caught his nose too. It hurt.
Sláma resisted. It might kill you, but if it didn’t you’d even more likely be dead. Where was everyone? They were pretending to sleep, or else they’d be next. Would he wake-up on the doctor’s table, his head in a pulp? Or not wake up…?
Blows rained down on his hands and arms, that were crossed in front of his face. The floor came up to meet his cheekbone.
There was rough handling, grunts and groans too, though he was not sure if it was him. It must be, yes? God, it hurt enough to be… someone was dragging him; then he was thrown somewhere hard: wood, not stone. The back of a lorry?
Engine fumes came through the cracks between the planks. It was freezing and he wore only his nightshirt that was also his undershirt that was also his only shirt; and his threadbare shit-stained drawers. He hadn’t had time to pull his trousers on over them, even.
He shivered, tried to stretch his stiff limbs.
Cobbles; the grinding of gears. They were taking him somewhere. His last ride?
Probably.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The telephone rang just as Poindexter was unfastening Daphne’s brassiere. He wanted to ignore it, but Daphne worked in the Ambassador’s office and would be thinking it could be important; it might be her boss, even. She was Eileen’s friend. He had moved on from Eileen in a no-hard-feelings way a couple of weeks ago; at least, he hoped there wouldn’t be – he himself certainly didn’t feel any. Daphne was more sophisticated, and Eileen was getting a bit fixed on him.
He answered it, under her quizzical frown.
What? Some mysterious telephone call from across the border? He was supposed to show up and be prepared to receive something?
What?
Damned if I know, said the voice: that was the message. Came through back diplomatic channels, you know, the cloak-and-dagger chaps, cagey at the best of times, never get a straight answer out of them even if you ask them if their mother was on the game…
Stand by, were the instructions. There might be more.
Later the Ambassador himself called. He’d had a ring from a chappie in the Czech
government’s liaison section. Not that
they ever liaised with anybody, it was just window-dressing, but apparently
they were spitting-out a pilot. It was
more trouble to keep him than it was worth, and he wasn’t worth much to them to
give up. A concession was wanted about one of their chaps, that had been caught
spying in
Poindexter took a taxi.
It was bitter cold, and if HMG were paying he’d rather be driven. He hoped it was Sláma – why not? He’d asked the ambassador if he thought he
ought to take one of the official embassy cars, with the diplomatic
license-plates, and the ambassador had sighed and said hadn’t he made it clear
this was a no-fuss thing? They were
trying not to raise any hackles, old chap, yes – ? Did the word ‘subtle’ appear in his
vocabulary? Jolly good. So a taxi seemed like a good compromise, even
if it cost a bit. An RAF plane cost a
damn sight more, didn’t it? The latest
was that a call had come in from the office of the chief of police in
He shivered, asked the driver to turn up the heat. About half-way there he was sorry he hadn’t brought a traveling-rug for his lap; a bit later it occurred to him that his passenger might have appreciated one, too. Oh, well, never mind. Too late now.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The telephone shrilled its double rings in the night.
The first thing Sarah thought of as she dragged herself
to consciousness was bad news – but the worst had already happened with
Charles; her elderly parents had died within months of one another years
earlier, so what could it be now? Had
something happened to her married sister, in
Then she thought about Sláma, and jumped out of bed. God, don’t hang up, she willed the caller, let it ring – give me a chance to get downstairs without breaking my neck – “Burford double-four double-three?” she said, her heart knocking.
“Mrs. Strickland?” The line was crackly.
“Yes,” she said.
“This is Ted Porter, in the Foreign Office. We’ve been advised that there’s been a development in your case… ”
“At four in the morning? Oh god, is he dead?”
“No, apparently not.
The Czechs contacted our chap in
Something warm and wet ran down her leg; she had wet herself. She didn’t care; stood barefoot on the hall-rug and let it trickle past the hem of her nightie and onto her toes. She clutched at the hallstand, that still had Charles’s hat on top of it. “Oh! Is he all right? What are they doing with him? Where is he now? Is he safe?”
“He’s on his way to RAF Lynsted, in Kent, madam. Don’t know much; he’s a bit the worse for wear, according to our chap over there, but he’s alive – and he’s ours. Thought you ought to know. There’s a note in the file, to ring you at any time, day or night – hope it wasn’t an imposition?”
“Oh, you did the right thing,” she said, “god bless you — thank you… when are they arriving?”
“About four hours’ time, madam. They’ve just taken off. That’s what I was waiting for, before giving you a ring. Should just about give you time to get there, if you hurry.”
“You know where I live, then?”
“Madam, this is the Foreign Office. I’m holding your file. You’ve been writing to us for years. Do you have any idea how thick it is? It’s our job to know a lot more than that…”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, madam.”
There was a ‘click’ at the other end of the line.
Sarah’s knees gave way and she sat in the middle of her own puddle. Not that it mattered; nothing did. Nothing – nothing – nothing, not besides this…
Franta would laugh at her.
She stood up, ran to clean it up and get washed and dressed and go to ring the neighbours’ doorbell and ask the wife to come and stay with the children….
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sláma was somewhere familiar, but he didn’t know where. He lay very still; when he moved, his head split. There was a throbbing and he was surrounded by engine-noise. How could he be airborne? But he would have bet his life on it that he was – you don’t forget what that feels like.
He was flat on his back. His hands felt something hard through canvas: the wood poles of a stretcher?
“Kde to je,” he asked, in Czech: where is this?
“Sorry, sir,” came a cheery voice from by his right ear, “you’ll have to speak English now, sir – this is the RAF, you know!”
He opened his eyes. The cavernous khaki fuselage of a transport surrounded him. At least, it felt cavernous after a Spit; you could have driven a car in here, several of them bumper-to-bumper. Webbing straps hung from the struts, benches lined the sides. He was on one of the benches. Opposite him a crew of about half-a-dozen were sitting comfortably, smoking; he couldn’t see the cockpit from where he lay.
“I don’t believe,” he said, “excuse me, let me see your uniform? Come more closer, please…? ”
The man who’d spoken to him came round where Sláma could see him. He was wearing a Flight Sergeant’s stripes and the dusty blue-grey battledress-blouse Sláma knew so well. “Squadron Leader Slammer, sir?”
“Yes, that is me – but I don’t understand… why I am here? Is it real, that this is RAF transport plane?”
“Yes, sir, a Vickers Valetta — they made ’em over from
“Excuse me please, what is M/O? I don’t remember… ”
“Medical Orderly, sir, it’ll all come back to you, I’m sure. That’s a nasty-looking knock on the head you’ve had… or two or three, by the looks of it? What happened to your face, sir?”
“I hit on a – how you say? It’s steel, makes light in the dark.”
“On a torch, sir?”
“Yes, on a torch. In the hand of the guard… I told him I don’t come because he won’t tell me where it is we are going. God! They have bring me here? Where is it we are going now?”
The sergeant wore a grin that could have lit up the plane. “Back to England, sir, where’d you think?”
“Proboha!” Sláma felt all the air leave his lungs. He’d hoped it, but to hear it put so simply and cheerfully was too much for him. He coughed. Then he thought about Sarah and the children and he began to tremble.
“Here we go, sir, look, here’s the M/O. Can you sit up a bit?”
Sláma tried. He hurt all over, and felt weak still from the head injuries. His surroundings swam. “I think later — ” he said. “Do you have cigarette? Coffee in thermos? To eat, perhaps? I am starving… ”
They gave him all three. He hadn’t had a cigarette in weeks. It helped with the shaking, anyway, even if it made him cough again to drag the smoke into his lungs. The thermos had tea in it, not coffee – but it was hot and strong and sweet with real condensed milk. The M/O propped him up a bit so he wouldn’t choke, and they dipped rich-tea biscuits for him in the tea that was in the lid of the thermos, and he bit off the soggy parts.
“God,” he said, “god, that’s good – you don’t know — this is heaven, I am coming from a place that’s like hell and it’s not to be believe yet.”
“From the look of you, sir,” said the sergeant, very gently for a burly man of his size, “I’d say that sounded about right. You look bloody awful, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying-so… worse than we’d expected, even.”
“You were expecting me?”
“Well, we was headed back to Blighty anyway, routine-like, and the old man got a ring down from Vienna that we should wait for you. Sir.”
“Squadron Leader Slammer, sir,” said the M/O, “can I just take a listen to your lungs now, sir? And take your pulse, like?”
“Do what you like,” said Sláma, “but if I am dream then don’t wake me up, that’s all.”
“Turn over on your side, then sir, back to me, please? I’ll just pull your shirt up, sir – deep breath – that’s it – oops, no choking, sir – let’s just have a listen to that cough… and again, just a nice deep breath – righty-ho.”
“How I am?” asked Sláma, wryly.
“I’ve seen better, sir, I’ll have to be honest. But you’ll live, sir. Nothing a nice rest and plenty of good food and a few dozen pills won’t take care of… ”
Sláma felt the sore places on his head gingerly. His cropped hair was matted with blood. The cuts weren’t deep but they were nasty gashes nonetheless. Two were inside the hairline and one was across the forehead – these had all bled, apparently; one was a bruise but no cut on his cheekbone from the floor, and the last was the fat-nose-split-lip one from the first flashlight-blow. From the smell he thought someone had dabbed iodine on them, but it had only added to the sticky mess.
“You could do with a bit of a clean-up, sir,” said the Flight-Sergeant. “Are you up for it, sir?”
“God, yes,” said Sláma, “you don’t know how sweet is this word ‘clean’ — !”
“They wanted you out of the country, sir, before there was any sort of a fuss made. It’s a bit hush-hush, sort of a tit-for-tat all under the table. So we didn’t have a lot of time to think ahead, what might be wanted. But me an’ the boys have had a bit of a whip-round, and we can do you a nice rig, sir, a full set of kit, at least you can walk off the plane looking ’uman again, sir – or let us carry you off, if walking’s too much for you, sir —”
“I will walk,” said Sláma, “and thank you – I don’t know what to say – ”
“I was ground crew on the old 310 squadron, sir — I got mates still in there, where you come from… ”
“The 310th? God, so you speak at all Czech?”
“Oh, no, sir, they all spoke English with us ground crew, sir. Just among themselves. You was probably the same.”
“We was,” said Sláma, “ – were, yes. We had some Czech ground crew and some English also, like you. All Czech pilots. So do you have soap? I don’t mind if it’s cold the water, only for god’s sake let me wash – !”
“Come on, sir! Where do you think you are? Back in Czechoslovakia? This is the bleeding RAF! We got ’ot water for you, sir! A whole nice big thermos!”
Under the blankets Sláma realized he was still dressed in his underwear from prison – and nothing else. Besides stinking, it bore rips and stains in various places. “I am sorry,” he said, “they don’t give us anything – no clothes, no toilet-paper, no medicine, no soap for us to wash our clothes – please get rid it, will you, these things?”
“Righty-oh, sir, we’ll ’ave ’em off you in a jiffy!”
His clothing was entirely vile and he was ashamed of it when it came off him. They drew off the stiff, greasy rags; covered his naked body tenderly with the blanket, exchanging glances. One of them muttered “’strewth!” under his breath. Sláma gathered that he must be in worse shape than he had thought. In prison everyone looked dreadful, so you stopped thinking about yourself. He realized now how thin he must be, that his ribs stuck out like a washboard or the pathetic flanks of a starved horse, that the old and new bruises on his body would look shocking to those not used to them; that the deliberate red stippled cigarette-burns on his pale belly and thighs and genitals would be a distressing sight. “Not so pretty, I’m sorry,” he said. “Will be better when it’s clean, a bit. Sometimes we have – what are they called? Little insecties that bites you and lives on your skin – but I don’t think so now. But don’t get too close my hair, let me wash. I can do.”
“Don’t tax your strength, sir,” said the Flt/Sgt, “let us help. You just do yer privates, like, an’ then lie back an’ we’ll take care of the rest.”
They did so, soaping him all over a limb at a time, his front and then his back, and drying him with a coarse thin Service-issue towel that to Sláma was like linen from Buckingham Palace because it was clean and absorbent. It was chilly in the plane, but no colder than prison, and they did their best to keep the rest of him covered with an extra blanket or two. The M/O washed the blood out of his hair, lifting his head from the pillow, and the Flt/Sgt rinsed it and rubbed it dry with the towel. He was especially careful over the cuts. Sláma had forgotten how gentle people could be, and it brought tears to his eyes.
They shaved him, with someone’s kit from a personal ditty-bag, not well but better than he had been shaved in years. Then they pulled-on clothes that were the same as his old rig, and felt so dearly familiar: clean jersey lambswool drawers, ankle-length, with a tidy two-button double-front placket; an undershirt ditto; blue standard-issue RAF uniform-shirt; grey-blue battledress trousers, with the small cuffed bands at the ankles to gather them close if wanted; and a matching battledress-blouse only about three sizes too big. It would have been tight on him in 1945.
He felt the collar of the shirt. It was too loose, of course. “Excuse me, it’s a lot to ask,” he said, “do you have tie?”
“Didn’t think you’d want to be so tightly buttoned-up, sir.”
“I want to look like an officer,” said Sláma, and coughed.
“We’ll rustle one up before we land, sir, how’s that? Don’t want to restrict your breathing just now,” said the M/O.
They put socks on his feet, asked him what sized shoes he wore. “I don’t know,” he said, “never I can remember in English. In Czechoslovakia it’s 42, but – what it is for my RAF kit? God, let me remember – it’s a men’s eight, perhaps? I don’t know… ”
They went through their own kit-bags, found him some nine-and-a-halfs, put an extra pair of socks on him to take up the slack.
He was starting to feel faint again; the exertion of all of this had been almost too much for him, and his head was aching fiercely. “I think I must sleep,” he said, “excuse me, it’s – I prefer to ask you more, but – what it’s called, you have a knock on the head and it’s – woozy? Yes?”
“Concussion, sir, you’ll have a lovely one, with them knocks you got. We’ll put another compress on. Close yer eyes, sir, we’ll be quiet an’ let you ’ave a bit of kip… ”
“Thank you,” he said, and slid away into some state that was not quite a faint, nor sleep, but had elements of waking in it too: enough to be half-aware of the conversation as he lay with his eyes shut and the plane throbbed. There was a cool cloth on his temples. It felt like rest, and that was all he could ask for.
They were talking about him: hardly surprising.
“Skin an’ bones… Cor, ’d’you see ’is dick, then? Some bastard’s been puttin’ out ciggies on ’im!”
Sláma let the memory of it wash through him and away again numbly. It was over, now. It had only ever been about power, and humiliation – it wasn’t as if he had any secrets, knew anything to tell. The beatings and semi-starvation had been worse, really, because they were systematic, ever-present, and their end-results were harder to live with than some immediate agony. The torture had been almost incidental, the pleasure of a sadistic commandant. Though he thought that if he ever reached home and got as far as Sarah’s arms, and she still wanted to be his woman, that when she saw him without his clothes she would probably cry. In fact, even if she didn’t want that, she still would, clothes or no clothes. Whatever caring was left between them would encompass that much shock and pain, he knew, to see him like this. So he had better get ready for it, then. She would be glad to see him, but it would be painful too. She wouldn’t have changed, hardly, while he — he had grown old, and had been broken.
He felt his breathing become laboured at that thought. He must have made some sort of sound of distress, because the sergeant put a hand on his brow. He let his eyes flicker open.
“Rest, sir,” said the sergeant in a kind tone, almost like his own when speaking to his child, “close yer eyes, we’ve got a ways to go yet. We’ll wake yer, never you fret. Want another blanket? Here you go, keep them teeth from chattering…!”
Sláma did as he was told. Sleep came this time, sweeter than the stupor of being beaten.
He woke in an emotional state. He had dreamed that he was back within the
walls of Mirov prison, and that this miraculous release was the dream. He clawed his way to wakefulness gasping,
unsure of anything, in a panic of loss and disappointment. Czech words tumbled from his mouth again, it’s no use, it’s hopeless, leave me alone:
“Nemá to cenu, — ne! ne! je to beznadìjné, –
nemá to cenu —! Nech mě být —— Ne! ne!”
“Steady on, sir, calm down – no need to make a fuss, look, Squadron Leader Slammer, sir, wake up – it’s all right, sir!”
“God,” he said, struggling to sit up, “Pane bozhe! I am think I am in prison —!” The sergeant held him up, propped against his broad shoulder. Sláma felt how thin he had become, that this man held him like a child. He had been compact, muscular – now he was scrawny. “How far it is?” he asked.
“About another hour, sir. Here, let’s get another cup o’ tea down you. Hand it over, Brian! – a cuppa for the Squadron Leader, here! Have you got anybody back in England, sir, or is it going to be a fresh start for you, then?”
Sláma drank the tea gratefully. Mirov dissolved again into nightmare, and in its place came the faces of his children in that unforgettable photograph. “I have family,” he said, “Never I have lived with them. But two children I have — a girl, a boy — never I have seen the boy at all — I think I will see him now… proboha… – please, do you have handkerchief?” The Flt/Sgt took out his own, shook it open, gave it to him. Sláma dried his eyes, blew his nose. “I have also – I don’t know, if she will marry me – but their mother… ”
“Oooh, that’s luvly, sir! Just luvly, innit? ’Ow old are they, then?”
Sláma named them, told their birthdays, described them. No more tears, he promised himself, wiping his face. He’d had to be strong all this time; he could manage it now, surely?
“An’ are they going to meet you, sir, d’you think?”
‘No,” he said, “that’s not possible, it is so quick I am out of prison and to here, look — what day it is? What time?” He had realized he didn’t even know.
“Wednesday, sir. About seven o’clock in the morning. Want to stay sitting up a bit, do you, maybe even take a little walk, get your sea-legs back again before we start our descent, sir?’
They held on to him as he stood gingerly, took a few steps. The plane was very stable, so if he swayed it was his balance and not the motion which betrayed him. He didn’t feel too strong, but strong enough to get off the plane under his own steam anyway, if it took all the will he had.
Chapter
13 – Grace
The countryside turned grey, then pearly. The sky was softly overcast and a hoar-frost spangled the fields and hedges, the stubble and the grass verges. Sarah Strickland drove carefully, knowing she was in a state and that she must pay attention to everything or she wouldn’t get there in one piece – which would be very stupid indeed after all this time. She knew her knuckles were white on the steering-wheel because as it grew light they gleamed. It was November and the sun came late: it was almost half-past seven.
Not far to go, she thought. Lynsted was this side of Canterbury and she was already through London. She’d taken the A40 into London, now was on the A2 out of it on the other side. The traffic had been light, thank goodness, because driving through London as the early-morning rush built in the darkness could have been nerve-wracking. The Foreign Office chap had been right, she needed the four hours’ notice he’d given her – in fact, by the time she was out of the house, twenty precious minutes had gone. She tried to drive fast, as fast as was still responsible, but carefully. The road-atlas lay open on the seat beside her and she checked it now and then, the names of the towns. At least now they had their signposts back again! She remembered trying to get about the country during the War, when you were always having to stop for directions because the place-names had all been taken-down in case of invasion.
The time Sláma’d been plucked up out of the North Sea and she’d gone to see him in hospital – she stared at the road unwinding in front of her, saw his pale face against the pale sheet and the sharp shape of his nose. There had been blue shadows under his eyes, his lips were pale, even… god, how would he look now? She must prepare herself for a shock, she knew that, and not give away to him that she felt it, because after all this time he ought to see joy in her face, not horror. And yet she knew as surely as she knew her own body that she would not help being able to feel both, not if he had been mistreated and hungry and it showed. He would look older, she must be prepared for that. Perhaps his hair would be far back off his forehead, now, the temples altogether bare. At the very least he would look worn, weary. What did that matter? Nothing, nothing at all, only that if she was prepared for it then she’d be able to greet him without anything in her face to hurt him.
She imagined bathing him, holding his hand, holding the rest of him – not sexually, not yet, not if he wasn’t ready, just cuddling him in bed and telling him how precious he was to her, of her giddy joy at his return. She could almost feel his cheeks in her palms… his beautiful chin under her exploring disbelieving fingertip, his dimples, the whorls of his ears —
Franta, she said, not knowing she spoke out loud, Franta ——
The entrance to the airfield was signposted off the road beyond Sittingbourne: a lane that said Rodmersham, Lynsted, RAF Lynsted. Just to see the letters RAF brought a thrill to her. At Fowlmere, the times she’d come — oh god, each of them so fraught with feeling — it had been the same: the red-white-and-blue roundel, the letters, that stood for everything her beloved was and did, all his duty, all his courage, all his sacrifice and that of all the rest of them, too, all that it meant beyond the pure appearance of it. She wondered whether in the history books a thousand years from now the letters RAF would still appear, in accounts of the Battle of Britain, just as Harold’s house-carls that formed his shield-ring at the Battle of Hastings were not forgotten all this time on. But unlike poor Harold and his companions, these defenders of the sky had withstood impossible odds to win their battle.
There were two planes in the air, as she drove up to the gate and stopped. The guard came out of his box to see what she wanted.
“I’m meeting someone,” she said. “He’s arriving from Vienna, I think. They rang me from the Foreign Office, to tell me. Squadron Leader Sláma. He’s been in prison.”
“Prison, madam?”
“Oh god no, not like that — I mean, in Czechoslovakia he’s been in prison, all the RAF pilots have, under the Communists, and somehow they’ve let him go and he’s coming home — !” She felt her throat fill with tears again. “Please,” she said, getting a grip on herself like the sensible woman she knew herself to be, “my name is Strickland, Sarah Strickland, and I’ve been waiting for this since 1945…. Please let me in – look at me, I’m not going to sabotage anything –!”
He smiled. “No, madam, I don’t expect you will. Just had to ask – no entry to unauthorized personnel, and all that. They’ll be coming into the main flight building, I should imagine – that’s the low concrete-and-brick one, long, single storey, over there by the runway, d’you see? You have to go round the end of the barracks here first, turn left by the mess-hall. Um – madam – you might want to button your cardigan up again the right way, now it’s light —?”
He twinkled at her, swung the arm of the gate up for her to come in.
She looked down; oh, goodness. It was all over the place. She’d missed two buttons in the middle on one side, as well as starting offset to begin with; her blouse was looking not-quite-right inside it, too. “Thank you,” she said through the stricture in her throat, “that’s awfully kind of you.”
“Not at all, madam,” he said. “Good luck — I’ll look forward to seeing you both on the way out!”
The reality of that struck her like a pole between the eyes and she almost couldn’t see to drive on. She’d imagined seeing Sláma, taking him in her arms, holding his face in her hands – but then she was going to drive out of here with him sitting beside her, right there in the front seat where the atlas lay open –! And take him home; have him, love him, care for him, share her life with him, bring him to the children that needed him so badly and he them… in an hour, less, she would be doing that!
Or would he need a spell in the hospital first? God, if they kept him here, what would she do? She’d left with the neighbour’s wife kindly sitting by the fire in her overcoat over her nightie, still in her slippers, cocoa in her hand, just to be in the house so Sarah could leave…. Gertie Harris was kind, but she wouldn’t be able to stay indefinitely! And she herself hadn’t packed a bag; she’d almost driven off in her own slippers, had to come back in the house to put her shoes on that she’d been sure she’d already laced-up but she couldn’t have, unless she’d taken them off again in her scramble.
Well — she would manage. Whatever happened, they would cope. Please god let him be well enough to come home right away – but if he wasn’t, she’d accept that too. Anything, anything, only god let him be all right, all right, all right….
She followed the guard’s directions as best she could remember them, keeping her eye on the building he’d pointed-to beyond the flight control tower. Pulling the car up next to a line of other vehicles, some of them RAF and some civilian, she engaged the handbrake and put it in neutral and let out the clutch and turned off the engine and sighed. Oh, yes, her cardigan… with trembling hands she buttoned it back the right way, her blouse too.
It was hard not to see his fingers there, helping her, the day he had made her come for the first time ever in the back of his car and she had been shaking too much to manage them. His face had been so luminous, then — filled with tenderness in the knowledge of what had just happened between them, and how much it had meant. He loved me too, back then, she thought, he really did; he loved me the day we sat in the tea-shop, even, and he told me he wouldn’t, couldn’t be my lover. There had been a light in his eyes for her, a special admiration and affection, even that first time…. for who she was, not just her woman’s body. Because he’d been in England two years, and he hadn’t had anybody in all that time. He could have, a handsome man like him, but he hadn’t. They had talked like old friends, and the understanding between them had been so easy, so natural —
She drew a deep breath and got out of the car. Her coat lay on the back seat and she put it on again: frost still lay thickly on the grass, turning each blade stiff and white like a stick of angelica. It was raw, the wind coming-in from the north-east and over the salty reaches of the Thames Estuary.
She thought about how often he must have seen all this from the air, her country laid-out like a map beneath him till he knew it better than almost any Englishman, its shapes, its colours, the ins and outs of it.
As he knew me, she thought. He took care to get to know things, to become familiar with them…
A larger plane came lumbering out of the east, low now, its propellers a blur in front of high-set wings. It was squat and rather ugly, a transport not a fighter. It made one circuit of the airfield, losing height steadily, to come in low and at a shallow angle down the runway from the west. Sláma had explained to her that when you can, you always want to take off and land into the wind: did she remember about lift? It gave you a bit more lift, at this most vulnerable time. He hadn’t said that, not used the word vulnerable, but she’d understood it. At this time you want lift, he said, even when you are landing, till you are safely on the ground, you want the air under your wings so you can control it….
The pilot of this plane made a picture-perfect landing, smooth as a whistle, barely a bump even.
Did it have Franta on it?
She pulled her coat closed without taking the time to button it; found the double-doors, went inside.
They’d found him a tie.
Sláma tied it himself, sliding the knot as best he could to smartness
even thought the shirt-collar was too big for him now. So now he’d get off this plane, and they’d do
what with him? Take him to a room, most
likely; debrief him, perhaps? Would they
even care? He wasn’t a prisoner-of-war,
after all. And the flight-sergeant had said it was under-the-table, this
release of his. So if they didn’t do
that, then what? Give him a checkup,
probably; feed him, if he was
lucky. And he’d be able to give someone
Sarah’s name, and ask them please to try to find her. Perhaps there would even be a policeman
knocking on her door, to tell her that someone in
He thought about the RAF food, and how he had come to despise it once in that other lifetime he’d had. A plateful right now seemed downright ambrosial, though – just the prospect of it made his mouth water painfully.
Sláma swallowed, leaned his head back against the back of the bench as they landed. In his pocket was five pounds seven and fourpence-halfpenny, the result of a whip-round the boys had had for him after the first one for clothing. “You never know,” they said, “you might want to stand a round, or buy yourself a sandwich… we’ll feed you on the base, of course, but sooner or later you’ll be needing the readies, won’t you? Give you a bit of a start, like, till you get settled with your pension or whatever —!”
His head still throbbed from the beating, and his skin felt like sandpaper, exquisitely aware of the new clothes; did he still have a fever? Probably. The orderly hadn’t wanted to tell him much, only that he’d do for now.
They touched the ground, braked sharply, ran out the
distance to stopping. And so he was once more back in
The lumbering plane made its way to its stopping-place, wherever that was. The pilot came back and shook his hand. “A privilege, Squadron-Leader Slammer,” he said: “Good luck, sir.”
What did he need luck for, now? This was all the good fortune he needed, right here, for ever more — just to be here.
They all wanted to shake hands then, and though it hurt – they had no idea how bruised he was from the beating, the blows that had fallen on his hands and forearms that were crossed over his head – he did so with a smile and heartfelt thanks for their kindnesses, their generosity. He couldn’t imagine leaving the plane on that stretcher, dressed only in his fouled rags; here he was getting ready to walk off it like an officer, instead. They had given him his dignity.
So there was the door opening, and the air coming in, and
it smelled of
He took the sergeant’s proffered arm, knowing his limitations and not wanting to fall on his face. That got him to the steps, and then he could hold onto the side-rail. A keen wind blew across the runway, but after the inadequacies of his clothing at Mirov his present uniform felt warm and snug; the wind barely penetrated it. He took each step carefully, watching his feet so as not to stumble.
A cry came to him on the wind: someone was running across the tarmac to the plane. It was Sarah and she was calling his name, her voice breaking on it.
He clutched the rail, felt his knees buckling. The Flight Sergeant was right behind him and saw what was up; gripped him firmly under the armpit before he could fall. “Crikey,” he said, “Look, sir — she’s here to meet you! Steady on, sir — easy does it… that’s right, one step at a time, down you go… ”
There were seven or eight more steps. Sarah stood at the bottom of them, the wind whipping her hair. Her cheeks were wet, wetter even than his. He tried to see through the blur to where he needed to put his feet, if he was ever going to make it all the way down to her. He felt embarrassed to be so weak and helpless; but that was how it was for him and it couldn’t be helped.
“Franta,” she was saying still, looking up at him, “Franta — !”
“Frant-oh,” he said gently. Because after all this time, these years, so much pain and hopelessness, she was saying it to him, and he wanted her to see the miracle of that.
“Frant-oh,” she said, holding open her arms, and he managed the last step and the ground was hard and stayed put and he crossed the yard of it to her and came there.
Hi knees wanted to give way and he tried to speak, but couldn’t. His head was swimming again. “Hold me up, Sarah,” he heard himself telling her, “darling, I am sorry, but I am going to fall down if you don’t — ”
She held him up. “Please help,” she was saying to the Flt/Sgt, “he can’t stand-up… ”
The same strong arm came under his and he could stand with its strength under him. He leaned on it, opened his other arm to Sarah and so that way she could stand in his embrace, instead of him clinging to her not to fall over. She put her face into his shoulder for a moment, gulping, then looked up at him the inch or two that was between them, for he wasn’t that tall and her shoes had a small heel on them. She took his face in her hands; cupped it.
Her eyes filled with tears, and he saw the horror in them, anyway. But the joy, too, the disbelief – and the love for himself. That most of all. It had been a long time since he’d seen anything of the kind. “Franta,” she said, “sorry — Frantoh, Frantoh… my darling — ”
“So you see I am here,” he said, “má krásko, srdíèko, I
told you I would come back if you asked me to, and so now I have come… ”
The Flt/Sgt was
looking away, kindly, just holding Sláma up so he could say hello to the love
of his life, the mother of his children.
“I see,” she
said, “I can’t believe you’re safe…!”
“Me too,” he
said, “it’s not – I can’t believe. How
are the children?”
“They’re fine,”
she said, “they’re wonderful — oh God, Franta, I want to kiss you, but your
face — !”
“To hell with my
face,” he said, more harshly than he meant, and kissed her. It hurt, of course, the split lip and all,
and he didn’t press his mouth to hers as hard as he would have done otherwise –
but it was sweet also. Her mouth
trembled under his and she was holding his head as if it were a piece of the
True Cross. It did feel a bit like a
block of wood…
“Shall we go
inside, then, sir?” asked the Flt/Sgt gently, “get you out of this wind?”
Sláma put one
arm round Sarah and the other across the shoulders of the sergeant, and that
was how he got across the yards of concrete and tarmac into the flight
hall. It was all as in a dream, not
knowing from one moment to the next what to expect, and finding it most
shockingly ordinary at last, even while in another sense it was the most
extraordinary few minutes of his life.
The chairs were the same as at Fowlmere, with their scratched wooden
seats and rickety legs; the walls were
painted the same blue-grey, the same slightly stale smell of sweat and oil and
tea pervaded the place.
“I need sit down,”
he said, “please — ”
They got him to
a chair with another one beside it, and even a small table in front. He collapsed into it, gripped the table. His head swam again for a moment, slowly
righting itself. Sarah was looking into his face, waiting for him to
speak. He loved that about her, that she
knew when it wasn’t the time to say anything, when you needed a moment to catch
your breath. He’d forgotten how good she
was at it, reading him, and he her. It
was sweet to remember it now. “I will
talk to you,” he said, “god, Sarah, I will, in a minute — let me first only — ”
“I understand,”
she said, taking his hand and holding it.
“I don’t want to overwhelm you, either — god, I could say so much — but
just get your breath, darling.” She
turned to the sergeant. “Do you think we
could have a cup of tea for him, or something? This must be a shock — ”
“Coming right up
already, my dear,” he said.
“Oh, thank you,”
she said, “Franta did you hear? They’re bringing you a cup of tea —!”
“Jolly good,” he
said, and laughed the way he used to. The smile hurt his face and he saw her
see where he didn’t have those teeth any more; and the pain in her face and the
joy too because he was laughing.
“I’m not so
pretty, I know it,” he said. “It’s all
right, that you see it. You can look at
me – I won’t be hurt. It’s been a long time — I must look – what’s
the word? god – a fright to you.”
“You look
beautiful,” she said, “you look awful, Frantoh, and you still look absolutely
beautiful, the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life — ”
“No,” he teased
her, “No, that has to be the children — our children — ” and then on that the
thought of their son hit him like a tidal wave and he felt again all the
emotion that had overwhelmed him on first learning of him, and he put his face
into his hand that wasn’t holding hers and wept.
She leaned forward and drew his head to her shoulder and he sobbed there
harshly for a few moments. “Sorry,” he said, “I am make wet your coat, look —
give me handkerchief, it’s in this pocket I think — ”
She got it out and gave it to him and he blew his nose in it again and
sat back, breathing hard. “It’s too
much, Sarah,” he said, “I am sorry, it’s too much for me — ”
“I know, she said, “I know — it’s all right, darling, take your time —
take all the time you need — look, here’s your cup of tea.”
“I think first I am not going to see you more,” he said, sipping it and
then gulping its sweetness into him.
“Then this man comes, Poindexter, and he tells me we have son. I weep.
I write you letter, quickly before he leaves. You got, yes?”
“Yes,” she said, “my darling, yes.”
“Good,” he said,
‘I wanted you to have. Because he has
give me your letter, your photograph, my god, Sarah, so beautiful they are, krásný,
I try to tell you in letter, how it is to see them — but I did not know for
our son, Sarah — all this time — what has happened, from our goodbye —— do you
think I would not have write to you?”
“I know you
would,” she said, “hush, don’t upset yourself!
We can talk about all of it, Franta, just drink your tea and get your
breath!”
“I have drunk
it,” he said. Why was she going on about
getting his breath? He wondered; why not just ask her? He did.
“Darling, listen
to yourself,” she said, “you’re gasping — wheezing – you’re grey, your hands
are blue, look — ”
He looked; they were.
“What it is,
wheezing?” he asked.
She imitated
him, hhuh-huhh, huh-huhhh, the sounds his breath was making as he sucked it in
and out of his chest.
“I am sorry,” he
said.
“No, no, Franta
don’t be sorry – god, it’s not your fault!
Hush — I just want you to
understand you don’t have to say all these things at once — you’re really here
now and we have time, love, time!”
Sláma turned to
the sergeant, who was standing a few feet away to be tactful, but close enough
in case he was needed. “Please,” he
said, “can I have other cup of tea?”
Sarah was
fumbling in her handbag with her other hand, the one that wasn’t holding
his. “Here,” she said, “I brought
another picture of the children — !”
It was a
snapshot, not a formal studio portrait as the other had been, and of course
more recent. Charles was on a swing, his
fists clenched around the ropes, and his
sister was behind him: she was about to
let go of him at the highest point of the parabola, and the excitement of that
was in his face, and the pride and triumph in hers. Her hair-ribbons were a
white blur. It must be a swing in a
tree, because he could see the trunk and the bulk of leaves. Behind them a flower-border was a bit
out-of-focus. “Krásný,” he said
again, “krásný… That’s your garden? – they are in your garden?”
“Our garden,
now, Franta,” she said, “yes, they’re in our back garden.”
“He is big,” he
said, “from the other picture I see he is grow.
And Frances, my god, she is a small woman like you almost… how old she
is? No, wait, I know, I just don’t think
it in English, she is eight years, yes?
Because she has had birthday in September and already it is November –
isn’t it? Or only October?”
“November,” she
said, “November the eleventh, my darling.”
“So these are
your flowers,” he said, “all these you have plant, yes? You and your garden, Sarah!… ”
“They’re all my
flowers,” she said, “The children most of all – and you planted those, Franta!”
“Proboha,” he
said, remembering, “yes, it’s true, I have —!”
He didn’t want
to give her back the snapshot. It was absurd, but after having to surrender the
other one even though it tore his heart out to do so, he needed to hold this,
at least till he could see them. “I
keep,” he said, “I can’t give back, do you understand? Let me put my pocket so I can take out again
and look when I want — ?”
“Of course,” she
said, “I brought it for you!”
It was his. They
were his. This was all his, now. It was overwhelming, to go from having
nothing, barely even a shred of hope, to having all his dreams at once. He heard his breath coming in and out
raggedly, and tried to make it be calm so she wouldn’t worry about him. The sergeant set the fresh cup of tea down in
front of him, and so then Sláma had either to let go of the picture or her hand
to drink it. He put the picture down
where he could still stare at it, kept hold of her hand. She held it in both of
hers, was rubbing his fingers slowly, the palms, the knuckles.
He squeezed
back, reassuringly, because he had run out of words again.
The sergeant
bent over him. “Now you’re safely on the ground, sir – it’s a bit early in the
day, but I thought perhaps, under the circumstances – I‘ve borrowed it off one
of the lads, sir.” He gave him a discreet glimpse of a small silver hip-flask. “Brandy, sir – would you like a spot, in your
tea?’
“Jezishi
Christe, yes,” said Sláma.
“I have not had to drink since – well, it was our doctor’s birthday and he gave
us vodka, a year ago, in infirmary, but not since I came into prison before
that — don’t put too much!”
God, that tea
went down even better than the first cup.
He sat back again, felt the flush come into his cheeks swiftly. His stomach was empty, after all, it wouldn’t
take long to hit his bloodstream like this.
“Oh, darling,
that’s a bit better,” said Sarah softly, “you’ve got a spot of colour to you
now – you looked like a corpse when you got off the plane – sorry, love, but
you did–!”
“I can see for
your face,” he said. “Oh, don’t
cry. I know you can’t help – I telled it
to you, I know how bad I look —!”
“Yes, but I was
determined not to show it,” she said, “I knew I’d be shocked and I didn’t want
you to see that… ”
“You think I
can’t read your face?” he asked, “after everything we are together —?”
“No,” she said,
“no, of course you can. You always
could.”
“Of course,” he
said, “because always I see there what I love to see. You… ” She blinked, held his hand more tightly. “In prison,” he said, “all the time I think
about this day I have with
“I am blessed,”
she said, choking on the word, “today I am.”
“So it’s
answered, my prayer,” he said softly, “see?”
To see him so
battered and thin almost broke her heart.
Nothing she had imagined had prepared her for the shock of that. He looked so much worse than anything she
could have foreseen that she didn’t know how it was that she didn’t scream and
then howl, when she saw him: howl for
rage, for pity, for the pain of seeing it and the pain that had caused it, all
she saw. He was beyond lean, he was
pitifully thin. And so pale… The uniform was not large, and he couldn’t
fill it: it hung on him. Her Franta, whose graceful strong body had
been sweet as a nut, hard-muscled, lithe and fit and shapely – had carried her
weight through the hallways and stairs of a London hotel to safety when the
bombs fell – now looking as if he couldn’t lift more than thistledown. His cheeks were hollow, the bruises and cuts
shocking to behold. His mouth, dear god
his sweet mouth – it was pale in the lips, red inside, cut and swollen, teeth
missing when he smiled at her…
She held his
hand in hers. The fingers were crooked,
as if they might have been broken here and there and not set. His nails were lavender, not pink, cracked
and ragged at the tops and dirty – whoever had cleaned him up hadn’t been able
to sit and care for these details. She
would, she thought fiercely, she’d get him into a nice hot bath to soak away
some of that painful creaky stiffness with which he held himself, and then
she’d take his hands in hers one at a time and tend to them as they deserved,
make them look like her sweetheart’s again, the Franta Sláma who had always
been so tidy in his turnout.
He saw her
looking at his hand and shrugged, apologetically; squeezed hers back. Sarah realized that neither of them had said
‘I love you’ to the other, as they had so painfully over and over when they had
parted; not because it wasn’t true, but
because it was obvious and there was no need even to say it, not now, not yet.
That was almost sweeter than anything, to know that and know he felt it
too. They had gone beyond it already to
the things that mattered more; they
weren’t a honeymoon couple, or star-crossed lovers any more; they were two
adults who had a life to share now.
They had only
kissed once, too. There would be time
now for all the other kisses; there was
no hurry.
He sat and
wheezed, looking into her face, and she
held his hand longer. Everything lay
between them, all the mistakes and the injustices, the years and all the hurts
– and nothing. They let that be so and just stared at each other.
Nonetheless,
Sarah became aware after a few minutes that beyond the magic circle of their
chairs and table the sergeant was holding-back a small knot of people. Some had uniforms, and one was dressed in
white with a clipboard. They were all
waiting because Franta Sláma had just now stepped off the plane from hell into
his new life, and he hadn’t even caught his breath yet. Let them wait a bit longer, she thought, it
won’t do them any harm to wait. He’s
waited three years in prison for this – and we’ve waited five years for the
sight of each other.
Sláma swallowed
and put down his tea-cup; held his
belly. He looked up at the sergeant, saw
everyone else too. “Please,” he said
straightforwardly, because how else could he say it but that, “where is
toilet? I need — I need now.”
“Come this way,
sir,” said the sergeant kindly, helping him up, “I’ll take you.”
They set off
across the hall; Sláma could feel
everyone’s eyes on him still. “Hurry,”
he said, “please.”
The cramps were
sharp. Everyone had the shits in prison,
you expected that, it was just the way things were. But now he didn’t want to soil his new
clothes and be shamed in front of everyone, in front of Sarah.
The sergeant got
him into the stall, helped him unbutton himself. In time, thank god; a small miracle when he needed it.
“I’ll just wait
outside, sir,” the sergeant called to Sláma, “take yer time. We all know ’ow it is, no need to bother
yerself, we’ve all ’ad it. Just let me
know when yer needs a ’and up.”
“You are very
kind,” said Sláma, shaking, “thank you.”
It didn’t take
long, it never did, because they had so little inside of them. It was just that when it came it wouldn’t
wait. He didn’t know if that was from
their poor health or some dysentery they all shared around. Probably the latter. God, he shouldn’t even hold Sarah’s hand,
then, till he got himself fit for human company again. And he wasn’t fit to touch the children,
perhaps not even for them to see him now while he looked so dreadful that Sarah
was biting-back a cry in her throat the whole time she looked at him. He could see it there, a lump, a whimper,
some scream behind the brightness of her eyes.
He didn’t want to traumatize them.
Perhaps, as much as he hated the idea, he needed to be in the hospital
first.
The fact that
there was paper to wipe himself – as much as he wanted, even – that was a
second small miracle; and the wonderfully disinfectant-smelling force of the
flush, its sparkling volume, the cleanness of the water yet another.
“Thank you,” he
called out, ” – if you can just take me under my arm to come out now, I don’t
want to fall — ” It humiliated him to
admit it, but it would be more humiliating still to insist he didn’t need help
and then go down like a felled tree and crack his skull on the gleaming sink.
The sergeant
held him up again with the same firm hand under the elbow while he leaned
against the sink, turned on the taps, marveled at the hot water coming
out. There was a soap-dispenser, and it
had soap in it: no genie from a bottle
could have been more welcome. He
lathered all the way up to his wrists and tried to work the lather under his
nails, too, the way doctors did.
“I am sorry, I
don’t hurry,” he said, “I mean, I can’t hurry.”
“Take yer time, sir,
didn’t I tell you that?”
“Yes, you did,”
he said, with so sweet a smile that the sergeant saw what that woman had seen
in him even through all the poor old battering he’d had since. There was a dark-blue towel, the kind
stitched into a loop, hanging on the rail.
Sláma reached for it, smiling again.
At a towel. The sergeant wondered
privately how many of the fellows that came in here washed their hands at all,
let alone like this; but he’d seen the
clothing they’d taken off him, and understood what he was trying to accomplish.
Sarah was
looking up at him as he came to sit back down.
Sláma hoped none of these people expected him to be going anywhere in a
hurry, because just sitting here was all he could manage for now. He felt dazed, light-headed, as if the world
was whirling and he needed to be in this still little piece of it, this
ordinary corner that was out-of-the-way and ugly and utilitarian and yet filled
with everything he cared about, since it had also the snapshot of his children
in it — so he could just get used to the idea that he was here and not
there. He hoped they understood that.
“All right?” she
asked him softly, in such a tone that he knew even if he hadn’t made it, it
still would have been all right.
He nodded.
The chair – his chair,
now – was welcome. He sat in it before
his legs gave way, put his hands back on the table. At first he put them palms-up, then turned
them over. “Also I have cleaned my
nails,” he said, “best that I can. I
have see you look. Sorry.”
“Oh god, Franta,”
she said, “I was upset for you because you were always so particular about
things like that! I wasn’t disgusted —!”
“I was,” he
said. “Do you have nail-file, to clean them better?”
“It doesn’t
matter,” she said, “darling, not now… ”
“It does matter! It matters to me!” he said fiercely, then saw
her recoil from the force of his tone and the sharp way he had disagreed with
her. “God, Sarah,” he said, “I’m sorry,
I don’t mean to be angry, it’s with me I am upset, I hate to come to you so, I
hate it — !”
“I understand,”
she said, though he saw from the fresh tears in her eyes that he had hurt her
on top of the hurt she felt on seeing him.
He didn’t know what to say.
“Here,” she said, reaching inside her handbag and feeling round the
bottom of it, then giving-up and looking till she found what she sought, “ –
here, darling.”
It was a small
steel nail-file, the sort with a little curved hook at one end to clean under
the nails too. “I was going to do it for
you,” she said.
“No,” he said,
“let me. This time. Other time you can do. Then again I wash them
and then we can hold hands properly. I
promise.”
He did so,
insisting on returning to the Gents to wash again. They wouldn’t understand; she didn’t, even. They didn’t live with what he’d lived with,
hadn’t seen the things he’d seen. Perhaps he would tell her, and perhaps not.
The waiting
people asserted themselves on his return, this time. One was the commander of the base, already
alerted over the radio by his flight crew just who it was that was returning,
one of our own lads, DFC and bar even, and so wanted to welcome him and shake
his hand. Just as well he’d washed them so well, then, thought Sláma, if
everyone here was going to do that. The
fellow had almost as many medal-ribbons as Sláma did, though not the French and
Polish ones too; it was a pleasure to
look into the face of someone who’d been up there, and have that in common.
Another was some
person concerned with documentation, who seemed unruffled by the fact that
Sláma said he didn’t have any and even the clothes he was standing up in
weren’t his, what did they expect, a passport from the crack of his arse? – and said merely in mild tones that of
course that was to be expected, and he was here to put that right, sir.
Sorry, said
Sláma, you get touchy where I am come from.
And I am tired and hungry, and my head aches still, see where they have
hit me? – and this is too much for me right now. Can I please have to eat something more than
biscuits?
Sarah looked at
him with a small smile. This sounded
more like her Franta every moment, saying what was needed and not going along
meekly with anyone else’s plans.
“The canteen’s
this way, sir,” said the Wing Commander in charge of the place, but when Sláma
stood-up to go and find something to eat he swayed and they sat him down again
and promised to bring him a plate
instead. What would he like?
“Do you have
soup?” he asked.
Sorry, sir, not
at eight o’clock in the morning, and here they’d already washed-up the
breakfast things, so there was no more porridge. But how about a nice bowl of scrambled-eggs,
just for him?
God, yes, he
said, and do you have toast? With
butter?
Of course, sir,
coming right up!
Sláma’s head was
spinning. He turned to Sarah. “Come closer,” he said. “Put here your chair. Put your arm round me. Hold me.
Yes, so. God, yes.” He leaned against her shoulder and put his
head back next to hers. The white-coated
man with the clipboard stepped forward, then, after the others had dispersed
for now.
“Can’t you see
he’s resting?” whispered Sarah, “look at him, for god’s sake! Please come back later, can’t you?”
But it was a
good thing he didn’t go too far, because then Sláma slid off the chair in a
faint, and would have collapsed on the ground in a grey-blue heap if Sarah
hadn’t caught him and called-out for help.
“Probably
hunger,” said the white-coated man, whom Sarah had begun to hope was a doctor,
“that and the brandy someone’s slipped him, from the smell of it.” They brought Sláma round with cold wet towels
to the face, and chafing his wrists, and
keeping his head down till he stirred and moaned. The doctor was taking his pulse; nodded in approval if not satisfaction. “He’s
coming to,” he said, “his pulse is getting stronger, too. Hold on to him, then we’ll get some food into
him before we start on anything else.”
Sarah had begun
to feel as if time was standing still, as if now that her dream had come true
it was advancing in slow-motion and that each frame had more hurt and
bewilderment in it for Sláma than either of them had expected or considered
when all they had thought about was his being here, being safe. And he had to live through them, moment by
moment, there was no cutting straight to the happy ending where all was rosy
and the children ran into his arms. The
three years of prison had damaged him, taken from him so much of what ought to
have been his: health, joy, beauty,
pride — getting them back was going to be a lengthy process too, though please
god not three years?
Perhaps his
lifetime, she thought, knowing in the pit of her stomach even as she thought it
that it might be true.
Sláma was over
the fainting-spell now and they had brought him the bowl of scrambled
eggs. Someone in the kitchen had taken a
great deal of care to make them perfect: they weren’t dry and frazzled at the
edges, nor were they too broken-up to stay on the fork. These were deep-golden curds, creamy at the
edges, with a little salt and pepper to make them perfectly appetizing. Beside them on the tray was a plate of
buttered toast, cut crossways into triangles.
It was only sliced-bread, canteen-style, but from the stunned way Sláma
stared at it Sarah knew with a sharp pain how little he had had to eat; how extraordinary this meal now appeared to
him, in all its simplicity. He ate
slowly, chewing with care, breathing between mouthfuls, long deep sighs. He left the crusts of the toast, as if it was
another miracle that there might be enough for him to be able to do so and not
wolf down every crumb, but just enjoy the soft middles. “My how-you-say, this pink by the teeth,” he
said in explanation, seeing her looking at the leftover crusts and saying
nothing, “in prison this is hurt all time.
Gums, yes. Will be better when I
get enough to eat, I am sure. Is deficit
of vitamina, I think, like sailors get old times. But for now – if I don’t must – it’s good not
to eat hard things. Can’t believe I can eat enough.”
”Don’t have too
much,” she said, “not all at once.”
“I know,” he
said, and slowed down his consumption even further. The last forkfuls must have been cold, but he
seemed to savour them no less.
Sarah realized
that she herself was hungry, but that could wait. It made her tummy rumble, though, smelling
the food and watching him eat; and then it wrung her heart right after it to
think how hungry he must be; how starved
of everything.
“Now then, sir,”
said the doctor, picking-up his clipboard again from a nearby chair, “let’s see
about getting you looked-over, shall we?”
Sláma turned
apologetically to Sarah. “Excuse,” he
said, “I want to go home with you only, right away and to see the children as
you want too, but I need this – I can’t go home without. Perhaps even I have disease. Tuberculosis, I don’t know, what people have
in the prison. Bad things.”
“I understand,”
she said, her heart quailing, “ –
darling, I know. It’s all right. We’ll manage.
I’ll ring the Watsons, they’ll help, I know they will. We’re still in touch, they’ve been wonderful…
I’ll just need to ring over there and ask the neighbour to get
“How you say
their names,” Sláma said, “it’s – so ordinary — that they are real – it’s like
– “ He slapped his hand against his chest like a blow: “to here… ”
“They are real,”
she said softly, “and you’ll see them soon.
When you’re ready.”
‘I am ready
now,” he said in some agitation, wanting her to understand, “I have a hunger to
see them, a pain, god you can’t understand, how that I want to see them — but
only that I am not good enough yet — do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she
assured him, “darling, yes.”
He calmed down,
recovered his breath; turned to the
doctor. “So we go to infirmary, yes?”
“That’s right,
sir. Can you walk, or shall I send for a
wheelchair?”
Sláma saw Charles
Strickland in his wheelchair. “I can
walk,” he said.
It took a
while. Sarah was shown to a
waiting-area, and the doctor led Sláma away to an examining-room. It almost killed her to let him out of her
sight again. And if anyone could be alone with him, then… she felt absurdly
jealous. It hurt to think that she
hadn’t yet been able to be; that there had been other eyes and ears ever since
he had stepped off the plane. She’d
barely held him, even —
When a
stiff-capped nurse came by, Sarah asked her apologetically if there was a
telephone anywhere she might ring home on, to see about the children for the
day. She’d left home in the middle of
the night, she said, no notice, and hadn’t thought ahead as she should have
done…
The nurse was
kind. There was a telephone in the
dispensary round the corner, she told Sarah, she should just pick it up and tap
the cradle a few times and the operator would come on the line and connect her.
Sarah found it,
and when Gertie answered and asked her if every thing was all right, then, she
almost broke down. Yes, she said, oh god
yes, he’s here, he’s safe — but oh Gertie — oh my god — what they’ve done to
him —!
Never mind, said
Gertie kindly, and clearly unable to imagine all she meant: she was sure a few
weeks of good food and attention would put the roses back in his cheeks, now,
wouldn’t it, love?
“Yes,” said
Sarah, “thank you… ”
Not to worry
about a thing, she wasn’t; they’d have
the kiddies for as long as necessary, even another night. What was that, dear, speak
up — oh, ring over to her friends the Watsons, too? They’d come over, would they, spend the night
in case they were needed? Well,
whatever, dear: everything was going to
be just fine… all right, then?
Sarah thanked
her again and rung-off quickly before the tears came. They were coming, now: now that he was not here to be upset by them,
and no-one was staring, she could let go for a second or two, didn’t have to
keep the impossible self-control she’d forced herself to maintain. Better to do it now, while Franta couldn’t
see her. It had to come out, tears
always did, and better alone here. God,
here they were, a whole mass she knew had been waiting in her throat; she gave in to it, put her head on the desk
and sobbed. She felt her knees draw up
to her belly, her feet twist in anguish:
for all he had suffered that she had feared for him, and it was true –
and for all the pain of waiting and not knowing, in which time she had not let
herself fall apart like this.
Then she heard
Sláma’s voice over her own sobbing: I
must go to her, listen, she is crying — excuse me — Sarah, Sarah, srdíèko,
yes, sshhh, sshhhh, there, yes, it’s all right; cry, cry, Sarah, cry — and he was kneeling on the floor in front of
her, his arms around her, holding her head to his shoulder.
The doctor stood
in the doorway. Sláma motioned with his
head to leave them, and he did. Sláma
drew Sarah down onto the floor then, so she could sit against him while he sat
leaning back on the desk, and held her to his thin chest while she sobbed.
So she was alone
with him, though it wasn’t what she had imagined.
“I’m sorry,” she
said, “Franta, Franta, I’m sorry – I shouldn’t — I’ll stop — give me a minute —
I just… ”
“Don’t say
you’re sorry to me,” he said, “be true, Sarah.
It hurts you to see me like this. I know it. These tears, it’s better I see them too. We
can’t look away, from what has happened, srdíèko. Only we can say yes this is what has
been, and it hurts, and now we go on. Me
too I want to cry. A lot. I think perhaps tonight I will ask you to
hold me and I will. I know it. But not now.
So here it’s your turn. Later it
will be mine. Yes?”
“Oh god yes,
Franta,” she gasped, “oh my love… ”
“That’s it,” he
whispered, “you need to say these things, don’t you? And everybody is watching and you can’t — me
too I want to hear them — tell me, tell me, Franto my love, Franto you are
safe, say these things.”
She did, into
his chest, into his neck and the blue battledress-blouse and the palm of his
hand and then at last, against his mouth.
He kissed
her. “See, it’s better, isn’t it?” he
whispered. “Me also I need to say to you
god, god, I have miss you, I have been in pain, it has been so long and so
hopeless, I think I am never going to see you again and I cry aloud to god for
that — srdíèko, zlatíèko, miláèku, drahoushku, all these things I have
miss and miss, and mùj syn, má dcera
— my son, my daughter, and you, Sarah, Sarah, my Sarah —!”
They clung
together on the tile floor of the dispensary for a few minutes, shaking and
comforting one another. Once her tears
were shed Sarah could stroke his face, smooth his cropped hair with its silver
streaks, trace the lines at the corners of his eyes, run her fingertips over
the whorls of his ears, touch his head and hands and chest in all the ways she
needed to, to know that it was really Franta – the ways she couldn’t in front
of everyone.
He seemed happy
to be touched. He lay with his head back
against the cupboard behind them and sighed and held her close to him. “I am sure I will be dead and not see you,”
he murmured, “I hear from Poin-Dexter we have this child from this time in the
church and I am guilty, I think it’s wrong I have love you so much as that,
then I see his face in the photograph and Frances also, and I know — I know
it’s a good thing after all, what we did — I think perhaps it’s not too much
sin, not too big wrong, what we did, if god could be so good — ”
“Yes,” she said,
“yes, love.”
“Also — this is
the punish, perhaps, if not this child that is innocent —— you must know it will be hard for us now, even
if I am free and we are happy — please Sarah, be patient – I’m not your sweet
Franta that went away, I am old man and I am hurt and bitter — they have broke
me, I am not any more complete – do you understand? I must tell you this… Prison is bad place, it changes people, you
think yourself No I won’t become that but you do… don’t expect I am still Sláma
that you love before, Sarah, please?
Have patience… ”
“I promise, “
she said, “whatever it takes, Franta.”
“Frant-oh,” he
said softly, “see, I am thinking, I must believe it, now you can talk to me to
my face and I am here, it’s a miracle,
no? And so you help me believe it also,
you say Frant-oh…”
There was a
knock at the door and the nurse came in.
“Doctor says if you don’t
mind, he’d like to continue the examination, please, Squadron-Leader Sláma,”
she said, not unkindly but with the air of someone who has a lot of things to
do besides preside over two middle-aged lovebirds whispering sweet nothings all
over her dispensary floor.
Sláma got up
carefully, with help from Sarah and the nurse on either side. He felt like skin and bone, thought
Sarah. He flashed one of his little
Franta-smiles at the nurse, saying, “I am sorry. I have to come in here and see my Sarah. We don’t have even a minute to say anything
important without people watch – you will forgive, yes?”
The nurse came a
little unstarched, shook her head.
“Dearie dear,” she said, “you’ve had a narrow escape, from the looks of
things, haven’t you.”
“Yes,” said
Sláma, “yes, I have. And now excuse me
Sarah, I am going to go see all what is wrong with me — ”
The nurse
brought Sarah some magazines, to look at while she was waiting, but she
couldn’t focus on any of them. She
wanted to be present, but she could see that for Franta this was humiliating
enough as it was; and that he needed to be able to talk to the doctor freely
about his physical condition and medical history, without worrying that she
would be upset. She thought about his
cough, his shortness of breath, the glitter in his eyes, the febrile heat of
his hands with their papery skin; his
pallor, blue nails, about the way he had been so seized with cramps and had to
hurry to the toilet, as unsteady on his feet as he was – about the bruises and
cuts. She prayed that he didn’t have
T.B., at least. What else could he be
suffering?
He emerged
dressed again, she was glad to see that anyway.
“Doctor wants me to rest,” he said, “perhaps go again to other doctor
when we are home, but — I can leave with you.”
“Thank god,” she
breathed, knowing only then how much she
was counting on sleeping with him tonight and holding him, not surrendering his
poor broken body to a hospital bed with starched sheets and firmly turned-down
corners. It wasn’t about sexuality,
though if by some grace that was still alive enough in this new Franta that he
wanted it, in spite of his exhaustion and illness, then oh god nothing would be
sweeter – but most of all she wanted to care for him, cuddle him.
“Yes,” he said,
“I want to go home and see them. But he
says please can we go to hotel tonight not too far away, and he will finish his
tests that he has make today, and I am to take his pills and sleep, and then we
will ring tomorrow here and he will give me clean bill and we can go the rest
of the way home. If I am strong enough
to travel more. Really he would keep me
but he understands we need to see each other, and I need to sleep with you, not
in some bloody hospital bed, I am not so sick as that. He says Burford it’s too far for me to travel
today – is that all right? Is it
problem?”
“It’s not a
problem, darling,” she said, “nothing’s a problem. We can work out anything, now you’re here and
you’re safe. The neighbours are
wonderful, they’ve already promised… perhaps later we can ring home and I can
talk to the children, kiss them goodnight – you could say hello – ?”
He went stiff
for a moment: “I am not ready for that,”
he said, “first I need to see them, I think.
They don’t know yet who I am… ”
“Of course,” she
said again, marveling at his instinct for what he could do and what he could
not — though he was going to be sweetly surprised if he thought they didn’t
know about him.
The doctor
emerged, filling-out something on a chart.
It was a much fatter chart than it had been when Sláma had disappeared
with him. There was something in his
eyes that frightened Sarah.
“Nothing to
worry about, in the long term, I’m glad to say,” he said cheerily, “everything
looked much better than you’d expect in a man in this condition. There’s a slight murmur of the heart, but
nothing time and rest and diet won’t take care of I think – well, really,
that’s true for everything, just about.
May I continue?” he asked, turning to Sláma and looking over his
spectacles: it was a gesture of
courtesy, not too talk about a patient in front of him without his permission.
“Of course,”
said Sláma, “then I don’t have to find again all these words to tell her that I
don’t know.”
The doctor sat
down. God, it’s that bad? thought Sarah, he can’t just say it standing
up, everything that’s the matter with him now?
“He weighs eight
and a half stone,” the doctor said, looking over the tops of his spectacles at
them – mildly, kindly. “I have his records from 1945, at least I rang over for
the basic information, and he was eleven stone then. So he’s lost two and a half stone. This is quite common, of course, we saw a lot
of it when our chaps got back from the Far East — god, some of them were down
to five and six stone, even, and the good news is that they do gain it
back. There’s some residual loss of
strength, but with exercise to build up the muscles again he should be almost
as good as new in – a year, perhaps? It
doesn’t do to go too fast, you need to build the muscle, not put on fat instead. Take it slowly, there.”
Sláma turned
twinkling eyes on Sarah. “He is saying don’t make me fat with your excellent
cooking,” he said.
“Of course,”
said Sarah.
“Lots of
protein,” said the doctor, “and not too many potatoes. Butter and fats are all right, he’s been
depleted of oils – look at his hair –
but again not too much. Plenty of
fruit and veg, hm? Now speaking of all
that, there’s some symptoms of dysentery, but nothing worse, and I’ve given him
some pills for that. Make sure we don’t
go too far the other way – take him to your doctor as soon as you get home, and get him over there
once a week for a month – more often, if he needs it.”
Sláma stared at
his lap, said in a low voice, “That means if I say we need to stop the car then
we stop, Sarah.”
“Of course,
darling,” she said.
“The lungs I
am concerned about. The sputum seems clear of TB, and there’s no
blood in it, but I would consider this close to a walking pneumonia, probably
of a chronic history. I want to get that
sorted-out. That’s the other reason I
want him to see your own medical man, as soon as you get back. This isn’t something you hope for the best in
– he needs someone to listen to his chest, his heart, on a regular basis. If the symptoms get worse, not better, you
should send for the doctor right away.
And if he has difficulty breathing at all, then it would be wise to get
him to a hospital and not wait to see if it improves – or for the doctor to get
there.”
“Yes,” said
Sarah. She had expected this, so while it was anguish to hear, it was not a
shock.
“That’s the main
reason I would have kept him,” said the doctor, with a particular kindness to
his tone now that softened it, even with all the harsh and frightening things
he had been saying, “ – just to keep an eye on that. But I think – under all the circumstances –
that a quiet evening with you and a good night’s rest will do him more good
than anything we can do for him. Just you keep an eye on him. The concussion should sort itself out, but
now he’s not faint from hunger any more, he shouldn’t be blacking-out
again. If he does, that’s a serious sign
too. Don’t ignore it.”
“God, no,” said
Sarah.
“And sorry, old
chap, I know you want to, but no smoking.
You’ve been without them for a while now, so it won’t be too hard – with
your lungs I wouldn’t want to go getting bronchitis again, and all of
that. Not worth the risk. Could put you straight in the hospital – and
we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Sláma rolled his
eyes. “Do prdele,” he said, “I am looking forward – all right, I
understand. No more cigarettes…
ay!”
“I’ve put him on
a course of penicillin,” the doctor finished, “ – make sure he takes them
all. And here’s my number – I’d like you
to have your own doctor give me a ring, please, once he’s had a look at
him.” Here he looked at Sláma and seemed
to be raising his eyebrows.
Sláma shook his
head slightly.
Whatever it was,
then, they weren’t going to discuss it here.
Sarah felt a chill down her spine.
The doctor
leaned forward, looked Sláma in the eye.
“Talk to each other,” he said.
“That’s the best medicine I can give you. I’ve worked with chaps in your situation, I
told you — it’s the only thing. If you
bottle it all up, it’ll dog you forever.
I’ve seen chaps lose their marriages, go round the bend.”
“Yes,” said
Sláma softly, “always we talk, Sarah and I.
About the hard things too. Don’t
worry.”
“Good,” said the
doctor. “All right, then. Now – if you want to be off towards home,
today, I think a London hotel would be best, mm? Because then you’ll be close to a
hospital. I’d be happier knowing you
were only five minutes from medical attention.
No remote country getaways for you.
And that’s enough strain, that much distance. Rest this afternoon – you can get up for a
bit of supper, if you’re up to it. Don’t
overdo things. Mm?”
Sarah realized
he was talking about her and Sláma together, and bit her lip. “Of course not,” she said, “I’ll take care of
him as if he was made of glass.”
The doctor
smiled. “Well,” he said, “perhaps not
quite. But no exertion.”
Sláma smiled
down at his lap. “Thank you,” he said.
“Off you go,
then,” said the doctor, “ — don’t expect it to be easy – starting a new
life. It won’t. Remember that, and you won’t be so likely to
come a-cropper and start blaming yourselves.
Or each other. All right?”
“Thank you,”
said Sarah.
“Here,” said the
doctor, “I thought you might not have come prepared for all these
expenses. Have a lovely evening on
me. Stay at the best. It’s a gift, don’t worry about repayment.” He
put an envelope into Sarah’s hand.
“Don’t open it now,” he said, “trust me, there’s enough. I’ve spoken to the C/O and we added some of
the petty cash, too. So really it’s from
all of us. As a welcome-home.”
“My god, thank
you,” said Sarah.
“No,” said the
doctor, “don’t thank us. Thank Sláma
here, for his service. That’s what this means, from all of us. We respect that – respect it a hell of a lot. He didn’t have to come here, back then. This is the least we can do… ”
She slipped it
into her handbag. There seemed to be a card in it, so she couldn’t tell what
else was inside. It didn’t feel very
fat, but then it didn’t need to; twenty
pounds would take care of everything.
“Thank you again, anyway,” she said, “for even thinking of it.” The doctor nodded, a small smile playing
about his stern mouth.
They stood up
and Sláma reached for her hand. Slowly,
hand in hand, they walked along the corridor and down the stairs and outside
into their new life together. Sláma had
to stop to catch his breath several times;
their pace was slower than a crawl.
But they were there: it had
begun.
Chapter 14
– Mated
Sarah got Sláma
settled in the passenger-seat, and tucked the dear old blue-grey rug round him.
It seemed poignant that he had no luggage, only what he stood-up in, and even
that was a gift. He was coming to her with nothing, nothing at all – only
himself.
Not even his
strength, nor his old easy optimism, nor his health – just himself.
God, thank you,
she prayed, let me not find fault with this, with him, as hurt as he is; thank you thank you thank you, for ever and
ever. It was enough; it was so much more than enough that she
still could not believe it, that he was here and safe after all.
Nothing else
mattered.
Sláma dozed off
on the drive, even though he didn’t want to and kept waking and
apologizing. He wanted to look at her,
he said, and also out of the window at this beautiful precious country that had
reached out its hand to him, as he had brought himself and his skills to it in
1940.
“Darling, please
don’t worry,” she said, “you’ve got the rest of your life to look at me,
now. We’re back to where we were before
Frances was born, before Charles came home, before anything went wrong and we
had each other… now we do again. One day
you can even take me for granted.”
“No,” he said,
“no, not that.”
They smiled.
“Keep me awake –
tell me about the children,” he said, “I want to hear all about them,
everything, what it’s they like, who they are, what it’s their interest and
talent, their friends, their teacher, everything… and if I go to sleep, tell me
again? I am too – I can’t find word,
it’s more than tired – to talk, but I want to hear you… Please?”
“Spent,” she
said, “exhausted.”
“Spent, yes,” he
said. “So tell me… ”
She told
him.
Sláma watched
his sweetheart’s face as she spoke, her eyes on the road except for a brief
tender flash towards him now and then.
He almost could have devoured it…
her lips shaping the words, the line of her jaw, the strands of her
hair, her hands he remembered so dearly on the steering-wheel; her bosom
sweetly agitated under that cardigan when she smiled at him and it made her
breathing quicken, god love her. In the
old days, just being so close to her as this would have given him a hard-on,
specially if they’d not been able to be together for a while. But now he felt no such stirrings, or almost
none; there was too much else to feel,
and he was too overwhelmed and too numb still.
He wondered if she would be disappointed in him, in bed, now. Well, he might not be such a stud, but still
he could please her…. The thought of
that did warm him, in that old sweet way, at least enough to feel something,
and he let it, grateful for that at least like a fire you are afraid has gone
out altogether when you wake in the morning and it’s cold, but underneath the
ashes there’s a tiny wisp of smoke:
maybe if you go down on your hands and knees and blow on it carefully,
just so, it’ll take after all….
She smiled at
him and he thought a few moments more about making her come, felt the scars he
had down there stretch and hurt a little. Do prdele, would that spoil
things? He almost hadn’t been sexual,
not physically, not the last year anyway;
you didn’t have that fire in you any more when you were half-starved and
ill… so he had no idea even if it would hurt, now, to make love. The thought of being so vulnerable as that
again closed something down inside him.
It didn’t make any sense – but it wasn’t about sense. It was about survival, and being hurt. His stomach knotted, his balls drew tightly
up. This was going to be a lot harder
than talking, to find that Franta again.
Enough, he told
himself; whatever is, will be. Later, we’ll see…
The hotel they’d
stayed at all those years earlier hadn’t been rebuilt from the bombing, so they
found one driving down Piccadilly overlooking Green Park, with a lovely view
through trees towards the Palace. The
London streets made her nervous, and Sláma was helping her navigate with the
road atlas even though she didn’t want him to.
“What?” he said, “this is what I can do, to read a map, it’s nothing,
let me feel useful, Sarah!”
They walked
slowly to the desk together. Sarah was
still wearing her wedding-ring – she hadn’t taken it off, wasn’t expecting the
telephone call – so it saved her the embarrassment of explanations again. The girl at the desk gave Sláma odd looks,
with his dreadful cut face and pasty colour, but he was in uniform and that
spoke for itself. He might have been in
an accident, thought Sarah, or – anything – it was nobody else’s business. She asked for the rates of rooms with their
own bathroom and toilet, and if there was one with a lovely view over the
front, please?
They ran from
eighteen pounds to forty-five, madam, the girl told her. The forty-five is the Presidential Suite. The
twenty-fives are very nice, the American tourists like them.
Sarah opened the
envelope, till now forgotten in her handbag.
Inside was a
card and some folded notes: two hundred
pounds. The card was the plain Service-type, very elegant and restrained, with
the squadron numbers, ‘RAF Lynsted,’
the roundel and a small blue ribbon tied through holes. It said, simply: All the best in your new life, from
everyone here.
God, she
said. Her entire house had cost three
thousand pounds, freehold: two hundred
seemed a fortune.
“I don’t want to
be president,” said Sláma with a small smile, “it’s too big for me, such a
room, look how I am thin, it will be echo and you will lose me. Please, just a comfortable room, it’s enough…
”
“Which has the
nicest bathroom, and a good view?” asked Sarah.
Last time they’d had to leave the light off, or close the blackout
curtains; now she wanted to be able to
sit by the window and order tea and hold hands and look outside at the grass,
the bare trees waiting for spring. And
Franta needed a nice bathroom, close by:
it wasn’t an extravagance.
“That would be
the fifth floor, madam,” said the girl.
Her tone had changed when she saw the big notes in Sarah’s hand. “Twenty-five pounds.”
“Here,” said
Sarah, unfolding two tens and a five – “thank you.”
“If you’ll just
sign the register for me, please? No
need to pay now, madam, we can settle-up everything when you leave in the
morning!”
Sláma had
stepped away, was resting his hand with apparent casualness on a
chair-back. Sarah saw the weariness in
him. Quickly she wrote: Sqn/Ldr & Mrs. Sláma, Orchard Cottage,
Burford, Oxon. Please lord, let that
be the truth, she prayed, soon. Soon.
“Can I see him
up?” she asked, “please? He really needs
to rest, he’s – been through a lot. I’ve left the keys in the car, so if it’s in
the way, someone can move it — till I get down again.“
“The bellboy can
park it for you in our garage, if you wish, madam,” said the girl, “and bring
up your luggage. Room 511 – here’s the
key.”
“Oh, thank you,”
said Sarah, “yes, please – but there’s
no luggage.”
“No luggage,
madam – !?”
“That’s right,”
she said. Never apologize, never
explain, she thought: she could go out
for toothbrushes and clean underwear later, while he was sleeping. Oxford Street was just a few minutes’ walk
away, with all the shops, and there was plenty of money now, thanks to the
doctor’s kindness – and the C/O’s too.
“Very good,
madam,” said the girl with a sniff.
Sarah took
Sláma’s hand and they walked slowly to the lift. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the
smells of lunch from the hotel dining-room drifted past. “Do you want something to eat again, first,
darling?” she whispered.
“No,” he said,
“I need to lie down. With you. Food is
later.”
They went on
up. 511 was a lovely room,
high-ceilinged and high-windowed, with tall blue curtains drawn-back with
sashes and a view over the trees just as she had hoped to the roofs of the
Palace itself and beyond. You could see
across the Mall too, past the statue of Queen Victoria to the silver that was
the lake in St. James’s Park. But most
important of all, it had a huge wide bed, big enough for three at least; and a
bathroom that must once have been another bedroom, before the days when
plumbing assumed such importance, and now boasted not only a huge bath with no
war-time economy line in it but a tall frosted window, a settee, two washbasins
side by side, and a separate toilet off to the side in its own small room.
So Franta would
be comfortable, then: everything he needed right here, no stumbling down any
corridors, not even any embarrassment if she was helping him take a bath and he
had to go suddenly.
She wanted to
help him take a bath, very dearly.
“This is – I
can’t believe,” he said, his voice halting.
“You can’t understand, I don’t want you to imagine — where I have
come. But it’s – from hell to this, it’s
too much.”
“Just lie down,
darling,” she said, “let me help you get those clothes off and just snuggle
into bed and don’t worry.”
“It’s like
before,” he said, “you and me, in London… but the difference is — painful.”
Yes, my darling,
she thought, it is – and yes, it was. The contrast between that afternoon of
their ‘honeymoon’ and now was almost too poignant to contemplate. But he was here – he was safe – they were
blessed – and he would heal, and be better, and they would have one another to
cherish for the rest of their lives, now, till the days became graced with
ordinariness.
He turned
bloodshot brown eyes on her, an apology in them. “Don’t ask me to make love,”
he said, “not yet, Sarah.”
“Darling,” she
said, “of course — I’m not asking anything of you, anything at all — I don’t
expect anything — just lie down and let me hold you?”
“Yes,” he said,
and together they unfastened his buttons, took off his tie, his shoes, socks,
and so on down to the creamy underwear.
“That’s good,” he said, “no more clothes off. Let me go piss, excuse me, I forget better
word, and get into bed when still I can stand.”
She drew back
the blankets and the dazzling sheets, arranging the elegant damask counterpane
at the bottom of the bed where it wouldn’t be creased. He came back from the lavatory and sat on the
edge and she helped him pick his legs up and swing them onto the mattress. The pillows were plump and soft; he turned his cheek into one and sighed
deeply. “In prison I think never again
will I be clean,” he said, “or comfortable, or — please, Sarah, if you don’t mind, is too much
to ask — take off your clothes and hold me?”
He hadn’t
taken-off his, though. Was he cold? No, or he wouldn’t have asked her to
undress… He doesn’t want me to see his
body, she realized with a chill. God, is
he so bruised and hurt? So bony he’s
ashamed? His darling body that was her
joy and delight, the body he’d shared with her so freely…
“Of course,” she
said, and peeled off her blouse and skirt and petticoat, stockings and
suspender-belt, knickers and brassiere, till all she wore was a slender chin
round her neck. He held his arms open to
her and she came into them.
“Jezishi
Christe,” he said, and trembled. She held him;
he shook and she held her warmth up against him till the middle of the
bed warmed up with the two of them and he breathed more easily, softly; laid his good cheek against her breast and
slowly relaxed his taut limbs. “Je
toho moc — too much,” he murmured, “too much… too much
—— ” and fell asleep.
When Sláma woke,
there was a note on the pillow beside him.
It read: Franta darling, I have
just gone to the shops before they close to get us toothbrushes and clean
things for tomorrow and pyjamas. If you
feel ill at all, please pick up the telephone – the receptionist will
answer. I’ll be back soon my love. Kisses, for ever your Sarah.
He lay and
breathed in the scent of the clean linen, the scent on the pillow where her
head had been, the smell of everything clean and fresh: lavender soap on his hands from where he had
washed them here before going to sleep.
The key sounded
in the door and he met her with his eyes.
“I missed you,” he said, his dimples somehow appearing in the hollow
cheeks.
She put down
shopping-bags and came to him.
“What time it
is?” he asked her – they hadn’t come up with a watch for him, on the
plane. They had been so generous with
everything else that he could hardly complain about that. He imagined how it
would have been if they’d carried him off the plane on the stretcher the way
he’d been carried onto it, filthy and unshaven and in those disgusting rags, to
come home to Sarah like that, and was grateful to the point of tears that they
had been kinder than that.
“It’s just gone
four o’clock,” she said. “Would you like
some tea?”
“In a minute,
perhaps,” he said. “Cuddle me some more,
I have missed you. Prosím –
please.”
She climbed back
into bed with him and again he laid his head on her breast and sighed. “This,” he said, “just this… ” His
hand sought the curve of her buttocks, rested there as if on a familiar lucky
place: a banister, the arm of a
comfortable chair.
“Mmmm,” she
said.
“I can give to
you climax,” he said softly, “if you like… I would be happy – just I don’t
think for me I can do — but for you, Sarah you know it’s my pleasure… ”
“Oh, love,” she
said. “There’s no hurry, really there
isn’t! Later, perhaps?”
A shadow passed
across his face. “Of course,” he said,
“you couldn’t feel for me before what you felt, I understand it … ”
“Franta, don’t
you dare! Don’t you ever, ever say
that! My god, do you think you’re not
still the most beautiful sight to me? Do you think I don’t want to be your
lover again? I do – I do – I do! But we have time… I just want you to rest and
feel like yourself again!”
“I will feel
more like Franta,” he said, “when you want this with me. To make my beautiful Sarah come alive again
in my hands. Tell me when you permit… prosím,
Sarah.”
She wanted to
say yes; felt ashamed of herself for
being so greedy. He needed to rest…
“Soon — ” she said, kissing his brow.
He cupped her breast with his hand as she leaned over him and outlined
her nipple with his thumb. She
gasped. His eyes danced; a faint flush came into his cheeks. “Just I am seeing if I still can do,” he
said. “You remember Honziku, yes? My friend Machaty? They are beating him, in prison, very
bad. He comes the infirmary when I am
there because I have pneumonia. I see
him, god, he is a mess, Sarah. They have
beat out of him the shit, the crap, he is bloody, his face is broken… he is
holding up his hands. Doctor, check my
fingers, he is saying, that’s what matters, my fingers… not broken, says the
doctor, no, they will be all right, Machaty.
Honziku, I tell him, you will play again piano. It’s all right. He smiles — each we smile at other — then he
is dead next day or two.”
She shuddered,
drew him closer.
“So when they
break my fingers, I am thinking, is my hand still good? Can I fly?
Does it still feel sensible? Can
I use for lace my shoes, fasten my buttons, write with pen? Can I one day make woman pleasure, to come
still?”
“Yes,” she said,
her lashes wet, “yes, Franta. Of
course.”
It was different,
because she was agonizingly aware of his broken state and so was he. It wasn’t something you could overlook,
pretend wasn’t there. His breathing was
harsh, or else rapid; and he was a little more clumsy than the Franta of old
because his hands shook and his mouth was sore from the beating. Still, for all the time it had been — five
years! — she responded immediately, and he knew her as well as he ever
had: in fewer minutes than that she was
gasping out his name and he was feeling her waves with his fingers and making
sounds in his throat that weren’t quite sobs but were almost.
He held her
close and stroked her hair. A sweet
minute passed without the need for speaking.
“Oh, Franta,”
she said, “you always could — !”
“That’s better,”
he said, “god, Sarah, you don’t know, how I have wanted that — I don’t know how
to ask you but — I feel better, I can’t explain — ”
“Don’t explain,
darling,” she told him, “don’t even try… ”
“Good,” he said,
“because I can’t. It helps — but still I
am afraid…. ”
“Of what?”
“Of many
things. That I don’t be Franta you
remember. I know it, I’m not. Don’t tell me no because it is so, Sarah, I
know what I am and who I was… ”
“Yes,” she said,
trying to understand, “of course… I understand that — but darling, it doesn’t
matter! Does it —?”
“It matters,” he
said.
“We have time,
sr-jeech-ko,” she said, her throat aching.
“Yes,” he said,
“ – ani, Sarah, that, yes. Yes.
So — later I will tell you more… when we have had dinner. When we are in bed again tonight. I promise the doctor.”
“Promised him
what?”
“To speak to
you, to be honest with you.”
“About what?”
“Oh — things
like what it is I am afraid.”
Her heart
froze. “You can’t say that and leave it,
Franta!”
“Sorry. No.
Well… today for example, in the
doctor’s office, I must ask him doctor do I have parasite? See in prison you can’t imagine, Sarah, it
shames me to tell you but you must understand, there is bad things, people
can’t help — there is worms that is long and they live in you — ”
“Tapeworms?” she
said, shuddering.
“Yes. And little
insects that bite you, they live your body, your hair – he tells me I don’t
have, or else I can’t come to you, I tell him doctor you must be honest, can I
go home with her, am I too dirty? He
says no tapeworm and he gives me pills but still he has to look my shit for the
microscope and my piss he make culture for infections and he will tell me
tomorrow — sorry, I tell you this after dinner, I intend.”
“Darling, it’s
all right,” she said.
“It’s not,” he
said, “I hate —!”
“If it was me,”
she said, “and I was in that condition, like you, would it change the way you
felt about me?”
“Proboha,
never!” he said, “ – you are the mother to my children! You are for my life the love that was the
most. Is the most… ”
“Well, then… “
she said softly.
He let out a
great sigh. “All right,” he said, “I
believe. I try.”
She could see
that it meant the world to Sláma to have taken-back his identity as a lover,
however less than before. She had not
seen it as something for her to give him, till today; she’d thought it was his gift to her, ever
since that first shattering time in the car when he’d asked her so sweetly and
naturally, that she would permit him to reciprocate, no? But she did more clearly now: that her response to him confirmed something,
something about him, about the way they were together. Still, even now. God, if it could all be so easy as that
—! –
so natural… so sweet.
They got dressed
again and went down in the lift to see about dinner. Sláma didn’t feel like walking far, of course,
not out anywhere, so they took a table in the hotel dining-room. The menu made him tremble and he put it
down. “In prison you don’t have choice,”
he said, “it’s another too-much thing, Sarah… ”
“You always
liked chicken,” she said, “didn’t
you? When I’d get one from the Watsons,
and we’d have it roast? Remember? Does that sound appealing? They’ve got Irish Stew, too, but I think that
would be too rich – and you wouldn’t want the roast beef… it’s always tough,
these days.”
“Pick
something,” he said, “anything. I
eat. Another day it make me happy to
choose. Not today, I can’t. Little bit a
time.”
She ordered him
the roast chicken, and herself the Irish Stew.
Some things were still rationed, and there was an apologetic note on the
menu about that, but it was better than during the War, at least. They held hands across the table, didn’t need
to talk a lot even though there was so much to say. Perhaps there was too much.
When the food
came, Sláma stared at his plate.
“Darling, is it
all right?”
“Yes, “ he said,
“but I can’t look so much food. It makes me – my stomach can’t think about it.”
She took his
plate aside, cut-up the sliced breast of chicken, and put a few strips on his
bread-and-butter plate, along with one small roast potato she mashed into the
gravy and a few soft florets of cauliflower.
It looked like a plate she’d make up for Charles, a small child’s
portion.
Sláma shot her a
grateful look and took it back happily.
He’d learned to scoop with his fork since leaving; not that she cared about table-manners. She served him one more time like that and
then he said, “That’s enough. Just I
finish the gravy.” He scooped it up with
his dessert-spoon. She didn’t care who
stared.
“D’you want a
sweet?” she asked him, “they have nice ones on the menu!”
“I don’t know,”
he said, “yes, I have not had sweet – except for you – in years. I want sugar, I think how-you-say, like cigarettes, crave,
yes? And doctor say no cigarette for
Frante, so yes, I will have sweet. Just
small. Just to taste. You finish.”
She ordered him
the treacle-sponge-pudding with custard, and they shared it. Sláma wanted the idea of it more than the
pudding itself, but it made him happy to taste the extreme sticky sweetness
and, by contrast, the smoothness of the custard. He ate a couple of mouthfuls
only. “God,” he said, leaning forward to
whisper to her, “it’s milky like you – this custard, it’s like your breast,
Sarah – I like. I have forgot how much.”
She bit her lip
and smiled at him, and held his hand under the tablecloth, for that.
It was dark, of
course, by the time they had finished, but Sláma wanted a little fresh
air. “I want to be free to walk,” he
said, “look down street, in park, think if I want I can go there — I don’t go,
just I can if I want — yes?”
They crossed the
street to the park, walked slowly under the trees a little distance in the
glare of the streetlights. Taxis went up
and down Piccadilly; there was a hum of
life, London’s pulse beating. “I like,”
he said, “I am happy to be here. With
you. I begin to feel normal, just little
bit.”
Standing at the
corner again, waiting to cross the street back to the hotel, they waited for a
gap in the traffic. More taxis came by,
and buses; the diesel-fumes wafted over
them. Sláma began to breathe in rapid
gasps, and then in some distress he put both hands to his chest and belly. “I am sorry,” he said, “I think I eat too
much — ” and he knelt by the gutter and vomited.
Sarah knelt
beside him, her hand on his shoulders.
He retched for a long time, his sides heaving and his body
trembling. A pair of shiny black shoes
appeared on the pavement beside her, and with a sick feeling herself she
realized it was a bobby. “Had a drop too
much, then, have we sir?” came a hearty voice.
She rounded on
him. “No,” she said, “no, you’re
mistaken. He’s not drunk, he’s ill!”
Sláma looked up,
wiping his mouth on the handkerchief the lads had given him. “I am sorry — ” he said.
The policeman
frowned. It was hard to see the
thinness, here in the streetlights; but the
cuts and bruises were apparent. “Been in
a fight, have we, too, sir? Dear, oh dear, this isn’t the right sort of place
for this, you know! This is Piccadilly! This isn’t Shepherd’s Bush! Can’t go making an exhibition of yourself
here, sir! Get the missus to bring you
home, I’d say, or else we’ll have to take you in for d-and-d, I’m afraid… ”
Sarah stood to
her full five feet three inches. The
bobby was six feet without his hat, almost seven with it. “You don’t
understand,” she said. “He’s been in
prison —! He’s just got out — ”
“Sarah, you
don’t help,” said Sláma, “let it be — ”
“Not here,” she
continued, furious, “He hasn’t done anything!
Anything at all! He’s Czech and
he fought with the RAF and he’s got a DFC and bar and they threw them all in
jail in Czechoslovakia for being heroes, and he’s just come from there today –
today! – and he’s ill and he’s starved and he couldn’t keep his dinner
down! So don’t you go calling him drunk
and disorderly when he’s worth three of you any day!”
Sláma had
stumbled to his feet. “Some she say is
true,” he said, “I am sorry I have puke in your nice clean street. I can’t help.
I have been in prison in Czechoslovakia, yes. I was pilot, yes. But she’s not to say I am worth more than
you. Excuse her, she is upset for
me.” He put his arm round Sarah.
The policeman
looked at him in the glare of the sodium-lights. Face to face, it was clear that the bruises
on his face weren’t the kind given in an equal fight; no, someone had given the poor bastard a good
going-over, by the looks of things, while he was defenceless. He could also see now how thin he was, how
the clothes hung on him, as he hadn’t been able to when the fellow was
bent-over puking his poor old guts up.
“That’s all right, sir,” he said, “I can see now. Jumped to conclusions — can hardly blame me,
I hope, sir? Not too many like you round
here, in fact you’re the only one I’ve had in a few years… plenty of the other
sort, the drunks.”
“Yes,” said
Sláma, “thank you for understand.”
“Thank you,”
said Sarah, “I’m sorry I was rude.”
“That’s all
right, miss,” he said, smiling now, “you was proper upset fer him, wasn’t
you! I would ha’ bin, an’ all, in your
situation. Tell you what, though, let’s
get you both back to wherever it is you come from, eh? That way there’ll be no
more misunderstandings... ”
The Piccadilly
Hotel’s lit doorway was across the street, just a few yards down from them.
Sláma pointed. “We go there,” he said.
“Righty-ho,”
said the bobby, stepping off the kerb into the street and holding out his hand
to stop the traffic. There was a squeal
of brakes. He strode ahead of them into
the middle of the street, the sodium glare of the streetlights shining on his
hat-badge, and held up the other direction, too. “Come along, then,” he said, “no hurry – just
take yer time, sir. They can wait while
you crosses. Do ’em good – they’re
always in such a rush, round ’ere.”
They did so,
Sláma walking more slowly than he had when they had crossed before; came safely to the other side. So it was more than a gesture, then; the bobby’s kindness had meant not having to
push beyond his strength. Bless him,
thought Sarah, thanking him with her eyes as they passed. The button on the top of his tall black hat
glinted as he followed them, saw them onto the pavement again, watched Sláma to
be sure he stepped all the way up the kerb and didn’t trip.
“Thank you,”
said Sláma when he had made it and had breath to talk, “it’s kind — ”
“Good luck to
you, sir,” said the bobby, and saluted.
Sláma saluted back.
They went back
up in the lift to their room. Sláma
stood by the window, rubbed his head and face.
A deep sigh escaped him. “Sarah,
excuse me, this is what I don’t want but I can’t help, to be — weak before you
— ”
“Don’t be
silly!” she said, “Remember our first
time?”
He smiled in
spite of himself. “How I can forget
that? I remember every thing – the fog
of the windows, my hat on the seat, your boots outside, you are so wet for me,
and then you are so surprised… my beautiful Sarah – !”
“Yes, and what
about the cigarette I insisted on, even though you told me I shouldn’t, and me
throwing-up in the ditch?”
Sláma
laughed. “Till I die I don’t forget
that,” he said, “how I give you first time climax and you are so shaking you
try cigarette and you puke… it was so sweet, Sarah, you are so – how you
say? You can be hurt but you are open
anyway – you want so much and you are afraid so much and you trust me — ”
“Vulnerable,”
she said.
“Yes, that is
it. And you are also beautiful so. Má krásko… ”
“Yes – as you
are to me, Franta. I think – I think
it’s your time to be vulnerable, my darling…
”
He hung his
head. “I don’t want,” he said, “but you
are right.”
Her heart
squeezed again, the way he said it. She
still had not seen him without his clothes, even… She asked him softly: “Can I draw you a bath? A nice hot deep one?”
His shoulders
slumped. “Yes, please. That will be — another too-much, but I want.”
“And you haven’t
had any dinner, not that counted, so I’ll find something for you afterwards. A sandwich, or some soup, or something,
something easy to keep down… ”
“Later. Let rest my stomach. One thing a time, Sarah,” he said, ruefully.
Why was this so
awful for him, the prospect of taking off his clothes in front of her? Well, she was about to find out.
Sarah turned on
the gleaming old-fashioned taps.
Steaming water came thundering out like Niagara, filling the bottom of
the huge tub immediately. One of the pulls hanging from the ceiling was for a
radiant modern electric-heater, and she turned it on too. It glowed orangey-pink and warmed the large
room quite effectively in the time it took the bath to run nice and deep. This was how the other half lived… they were
getting their twenty-five pounds’ worth, anyway!
She went back
out to the bedroom. “Darling, are you
ready?” she asked.
He had drawn the
curtains to enclose the room; was
standing in front of the window anyway, though it was curtained now, with his
back to her. He had taken-off the safe
familiar RAF-issue long drawers and long-sleeved vest – they were folded neatly
on the bed – and so stood naked. By the soft bedside lamplight, with its
shadows and highlights, she could see the knobs down his spine; his ribs, his
skinny buttocks that had been so round and firm; the thinness of his arms; how bony his knees
seemed now, robbed of the firm strength of graceful calves below them and the
once hard-muscled thighs above.
He was a
patchwork of bruises in all shades, the most recent ones deep purple, others
fading to green and yellow. She stuffed
her knuckles in her mouth and bit down on them hard.
“This,” he said,
“this is what I don’t want you for see.
But the doctor says you must.”
Still he kept his back to her.
“You’ll get
better,” she said, her voice shaking, “darling it won’t always be like
this… whatever they’ve done to you, my
god, it will heal, Franta —!”
“Please, Sarah,”
he said, “not before I have asked you not to cry. Always I tell you cry, miláèku, I have
you, Franta is hold you, cry, it’s all right.
But please, Sarah, not now. Not
yet. Just look. See.
Can you?”
“Yes,” she said
– a promise. She kept her knuckles in
her mouth.
Sláma turned
round.
She made one
small sound, bit it back.
“You see,” he
said, “I don’t need tell you what they have done to your Franta. You see it. I can’t hide even if I want.”
“Yes, I see,”
she said. Tears filled her eyes,
welled-over, trembled on her lashes.
“Love — ” she said.
“The doctor tell
me when people is torture they want pretend it’s not happen. But it does not go away. And they must speak about it. I don’t want.
But you see anyway, so — another time we speak, not now.”
“Of course,” she
said. “Franta, what can I do?”
“Understand,” he
said, “if I am – difficult – and then —
if you can, I don’t know — make it better, Sarah.”
Her heart wanted
to stall in her chest, but he needed her to be calm. His eyes beseeched her not to make a fuss,
not now; just to accept all that he was,
and was not.
“Yes,” she said,
while her throat was screaming silently, ‘What did they DO to you! How did
you stand it!’ — “yes, love. Yes,
Frant-oh. Of course.”
“That’s my
Sarah,” he said, “I knew if I ask you can do this for me. Not to cry. Thank you, miláèku. And so now where is this bath you have got
for me, it’s ready? You will soap me
like a baby? Make sure I don’t miss any
place behind the ears?”
She held his arm
while he stepped in. “Proboha!” he exclaimed.
“Have I made it
too hot?”
“No — no — yes,
but it’s wonderful — not in three years I have bath — my skin hurts – but I
want it, god, it’s good — ah — ahhh!
Help me to sit down, Sarah, my legs it isn’t strong… ”
Sláma was like a
child in the bath, tired but happy and even playing with splashes and laughing
when the slippery soap shot out of her hands and disappeared underneath his legs. Sarah tried not to focus on the
cigarette-burns – that was what they were, wasn’t it? what else could they be?
– nor on his genitals that were so tenderly beloved of her, had been so happily
shared before, and now were something he was self-conscious of, unsure
about. Instead she bathed him as she
would one of the children, not teasingly at all but straightforwardly, soaping
his armpit when he held up his arm, and his feet when he lifted them out one by
one. There was a sponge, a loofah and a
stack of face-flannels: “Do you want me
to use this on your back?” she asked, holding up the loofah.
”No,” he said,
“I like your hands. I love your
hands. Always I want your hands. In prison I think for your hands. Not your mouth, not your kiss, but just to
touch. For comfort. I pretend it’s your hands, your arms, to hold
me like baby, rock me to sleep.”
Sarah did as he
asked.
The towels were
gigantic. Sláma laughed in pleasure to
be wrapped in one, have another smaller one for his hair. Sarah dried it carefully, dabbing where he
was cut. The doctor had said it could be
stitched, or not – they were a day old, by then. It was starting to heal already, so Sláma had
said not.
“Now, darling,”
she said, “I bought you some pyjamas.
Come and put them on, and I’ll show you what else I got you.” She helped him dry the rest of himself,
kneeling to do his lower half, seeing alternately the Franta of 1941 who had
been her ardent beautiful lover, and the image that stood between then and now:
of some faceless torturer grinding the glowing end of a cigarette into his
flesh. His belly had a dozen or so
bright pink scars, his thighs and the velvet skin of his testicles about the
same; his member half as many even in
its smaller area. It was sweetly soft, had felt like a sea-anemone when she’d
washed it gently earlier. She’d felt him
tumesce slightly then, with a faint smile for her as he felt it too; but deliberately she hadn’t turned from nurse
to mistress, and it had been no more than that, a sweet look between them.
“Franta,” she
asked, her voice shaking, “I want to kiss you… not to get you going, just –
because I want to – can I?”
“Of course,” he
said, “I think you will want to. Because
you are my Sarah and I know you.”
Chastely she
kissed him. He stroked her hair. “It is better already little-bit,” he said
softly, “when you do that. If you
accept.”
Accept? This?
Never — never never never: but
you, my love, always, she thought.
Sláma exclaimed
over the pyjamas: too good, he said, never I have such luxury pyjamas even when
I am flyer! We sleep in our underwear
always, usually, to get up in hurry… or with you, nothing at all —!
Sarah had
guessed at the size: she’d bought a
Small. She’d thought about a Medium, but
if they flapped on him he’d feel more humiliated. Besides, she thought, when he got his old
solidity back, she could wear them. He
was pleased with them, turning this way and that in front of the mirror with a
smile. “I look like human,” he said,
“like rich man going to bed. Not
prisoner… ”
“You are,” she
said.
“I know,” he
said, “I have children… a woman that loves me so much she moves even the world
to get me out of this shit-hole, excuse me.
Yesterday I have nothing and today I have everything. It’s too much, je toho příliš – but I try – I try to accept…. ”
Next Sarah
pulled out a soft thick flannel dressing-gown.
It was Air Force blue, with a thin white stripe. “I hoped you weren’t tired of this colour?”
she asked, “it was that or Navy – or red… ”
“You know it’s
my colour, miláèku,” he smiled,
and she helped him pull it on over the pyjamas.
He pronounced it perfect. “Now I
can sit, yes?” he asked, “you have finished dressing me?”
“Almost,” she
said. Kneeling at his feet, she took out
a pair of leather slippers lined in lambs’-wool. They were the kind with no heel, so as long
as they were close in size they’d fit.
“Je
toho moc,” said Sláma as she drew them onto his feet, “ – I tell you, too much,
Sarah!”
“That’s it,” she
said, “for now. Here’s for tomorrow
morning — ”
“What is this?
The cave of Aladdin?” he asked, reaching out to touch her hair again where it
clung in damp tendrils to her cheek after the splashes and steam in the
bathroom.
“At the very
least,” she smiled. “I tried to think of everything – a razor – a comb – a
brush – a toothbrush – tooth-powder for both of us to share – shaving-tackle,
you know, a mug and brush and shaving-soap, I hope you like the smell… a
nail-set… I’m going to do your nails, trim them and file down the rough edges…
I’m going to do your toes, too – no arguing… and here’s clean underwear for
tomorrow, I don’t want you to have to put on anything that isn’t clean, ever
again – and socks… ”
“Too much,” he
said again, a catch in his voice. “But
it’s all right,” he added quickly, seeing her bite her lip, “I’ll get
used. Thank you, zlatíèko. And now show me what you have for
you. Because you also you don’t have
luggage, yes?”
She pulled out
an ivory satin nightgown, a matching robe with cream and coral-pink roses and
sagey leaves appliquéd all round the hem, and clean underwear for the morning.
“That’s all?”
asked Sláma, in disappointment.
“Oh, darling,
this was pure extravagance – I really shouldn’t have – I don’t need the nightie
– I have plenty at home, but I wanted to look pretty for you… all I really
needed was a toothbrush and clean knickers!”
“You don’t get
even stockings?”
“Oh no, I always
rinse them out at night and they’re dry by morning.”
“You do,” he
said then, “you do look pretty for me.
In your apron – in your Wellington boots – in anything at all, má
krásko. But I am happy to see you in
new things that makes you feel beautiful also.
Please, put them on for me in a minute?
Just for looking-at, and to sleep, I mean… Only first perhaps you can ask the kitchen if
they have for me to eat something? Is
too much trouble, no?”
“Oh darling,
yes,” she said, “I’ll go down right away.
What do you want?”
“I am thinking,”
he said, “while I am in bath. I am wanting very plain to eat. It’s weak, my stomach, it hurts from so much
puking… excuse, I tell it to you, yes? So you understand?”
“Of course!” she
cried.
“Thank you – oh god, Sarah, miluji t˘e, I love you – that you understand me, that I don’t need have shame for any thing… so, what I am think, it’s that stuff we get for breakfast every day, in the RAF, yes? I can’t think the name, we eat it but we don’t talk about it, it’s grey and it has lumps… you eat with milk and sugar and they put in salt, god knows why but now I like it so, it’s habit for me to like. What it’s called?”
She had enjoyed his explanation, didn’t interrupt him with the word till he had finished: “Porridge, darling.”
“Yes, porridge.” Sláma brightened. “You can ask for this?”
Sarah bent and kissed him on the nose. “I’ll ask for anything, for you,” she said, “don’t you know that? Are you sure that’s all you want?”
“I’m sure,” he said, “so I don’t eat too much and puke again. One time is enough. This porridge it’s plain, it’s easy, don’t have to how-it-is, chew so much, yes? — and if I ever fly bomber you can be my tail-gunner, god! How you go after that police! So now you ask for breakfast-thing in night for me, because I want. Thank you… ”
“Yes,” she said, blushing. “I’ll go down, then? And be right back… ”
“Kiss me,” he said, “to hold me till you come back – I don’t like when you leave… don’t need to kiss the mouth because I have been puking and not yet I have brushed my teeth – I will now, you have get me toothbrush – but here… ” He pointed to his forehead.
She kissed him on the mouth, gently.
Sláma’s
self-appointed tail-gunner slipped through the swing-doors into the
kitchen. She didn’t want to talk to any
of the wait-staff, and besides, the dining-room was closing up now; they had stopped serving dinner at eight and
it was already half-past.
A thin man in a
striped apron was softening butter in a basin.
“Oh, hello,” she said, “excuse me — ?”
He looked up in
surprise. “Dining-room’s that way,
madam,” he said.
“I needed to ask
you something,” she said.
“Well,” he said,
“I’m a bit busy. Beg your pardon… ”
“Please – can
you just listen?”
He had blue
eyes, lines all over his face as if it had been creased into a very tight ball
and opened again. He raised an eyebrow.
“I really need a
bowl of porridge,” she began.
He interrupted her. “Sorry, dear,” he said, “but it’s out of the
question, see —!” He spoke to her as if
she were about eight years old. “Night
staff comes in now and bakes all the cakes and bread for the morning. That’s why I’m softening this butter, see,
for the pastry-chef. Day-staff’s gone
home. Morning-staff, they comes in at
four, see. They’re the ones what makes
the porridge. Vats of it. But not now.
Come back in the morning, we’ll fix you up a nice bowl. Gallons of it,
you can have, any time after five. All
right?”
“I do understand
about the staff, yes,” she said, “but I was hoping you could make an
exception. You see… perhaps… could I
just have a saucepan and I’ll make it myself? That wouldn’t be too much
trouble, would it?”
“Sorry, dear,”
he said, “nothing doing. You’d be in the
way. You’ll just have to wait. It’s like
Piccadilly Circus down here, in a few minutes, when the pastry-chef gets going,
an’ all his crew. He doesn’t like
nobody anywhere near. Specially not a
guest! Gawd, that’s more’n my job’s worth, to let you near a saucepan, madam!”
Sarah took a
deep breath. “Please listen why… “ she
began. “It’s not for me… ”
As she told him,
the creases turned to sympathetic crinkles.
His blue eyes softened and then went bright. He nodded as she spoke, in her husky voice
that hurt to say all over again the hard things that Sláma had endured. His gaze flickered to her hands, knotting in
front of her, and back to her face as she bit her lip and looked at him in
entreaty.
“I got it,” he
said. “Hang about a bit. That’s different, innit? You’re in luck. You wait here while I has a word with
Dickie. He’s the head pastry-chef, but
he did his bit – an’ in the RAF, an’ all – somebody ’ad to cook fer ’em, didn’t
they? Be right back… ”
Sarah waited, looking
around her at the gleaming pans hung from racks coming down on chains from the
ceiling; the stainless-steel bowls you could have fitted little Charles into,
almost; the copper skillets, the lids as big as lorry-wheels, the knives
hanging like machetes in a row on the wall.
The dinner-smell was fading, and she could smell the sweet butter and
sugar in the bowl on the counter. A
cardboard carton with two dozen eggs sat beside it. Fresh eggs!
They had them in the country, of course, but dried-eggs were still more
common everywhere else. But this was a
nice hotel, wasn’t it…
Her new friend
came back grinning. “We’ll fix you up,”
he said, “me an’ Dickie – no worry at all.
Just give us yer room number, an’ we’ll bring it up. No need to wait.
Might get into trouble, anybody finds you ’angin' about ’ere. All right?”
“Oh god, how can
I thank you?” she said.
“Give ’im a kiss
from us,” he twinkled. “What room was
it, then?”
“Five-eleven,”
she said, “ – oh, thank you… ”
“Any time,
madam. Dickie says you want anything in the middle of the night, till ’e goes
’ome at four, just pop on down. ’E’ll
scramble you a nice egg, make a bit o’ toast, crescent-rolls’ll be ready by
three… sure you don’t want nuffink else now?
Nice plate o’ bacon-an’eggs?
Kippers? Very appetizing, is
kippers… ”
“No, no thank
you,” she said, “he just wanted some porridge –!”
“Off you go,
then. Won’t be more ’n two ticks.”
Sarah shot him
one last grateful glance over her shoulder.
He nodded.
Sláma’s face lit
up when she returned. “You don’t know,”
he said, “is miracle when you walk in this door. Almost I want you to leave again so I can see
you come back more… it’s all right you
can’t find porridge. I’ll eat the
morning.”
“Oh, you’re
going to get your porridge, darling,” she said happily, and told him about the
pastry-chef.
Her friend from
the kitchen brought it up himself. He
had put on his white sous-chef’s hat, to add to the occasion. He bore a large tray. It was only just large enough; besides the
covered china serving-dish of porridge, it held a pot of tea and china for
two; snowy napkins ditto folded into
ruffles and sticking out of the tea-cups;
a large jug of milk and a smaller one of cream; a silver salt-shaker; a bowl of white sugar and another of Demerara
and a little ramekin with sultanas in; a
small dish of canned peaches and another of raspberries in syrup; a pot of honey, and a yellow rose.
Sláma looked at
it. The lamplight caught the hollows in his cheeks, the glitter of his
eyes; his cropped hair and the cuts and
bruises. The sous-chef looked at Sláma;
saw all of that, and Sláma’s emotion too.
“There you go, sir,” he said warmly.
Sláma
swallowed. “Thank you — !” he whispered.
“You’re quite
welcome, sir. Eat up! I’ve told yer missus, come down again any
time, tell us what you fancy, we’ll fix it up for you. Anythink.
Anythink at all. Got it?”
“It’s too kind,”
said Sláma helplessly, “too much trouble, too much… ”
“No, sir,” said
the man softly, “it’s the least we can do.
Sir. Now then, tuck in! Nighty-night…” He closed the door behind him silently.
Sláma looked up
at Sarah. The tray lay on the side-table
in front of him. The kindness of it
broke him. It was all too much, it had
been all day, everything piling up one on top of another that he wasn’t used
to, had no defences against, and this was the last straw. His shoulders jerked, and he began to cry
helplessly with his face in his hands:
cascades of bitter sobs.
She went to him,
held him to her breast.
It was a storm –
how could it have been anything else, once it started and he couldn’t
stop? He had even told her it would have
to come; he knew himself that well. Now
that he was safe, and it was safe, and he didn’t have to be strong every second
any more just to survive, it wasn’t possible to hold it back. “Je
toho moc, je toho moc!” he sobbed, “je
toho moc! — too much, it’s, Sarah – ah – ah!”
She had imagined
holding him in the night, not yet. But a
tray offered with love by strangers had undone him. “Frantoh… Frantoh,” she said softly, over and
over, till the storm subsided.
“I didn’t
expect,” he gasped, “it’s too much —! ”
“Love,” she
murmured, “it’s all right… ”
He sighed
deeply, withdrew from her arms. “The
worst it’s, I don’t think that’s the last,” he said. “It’s the beginning. But —
” He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then got up to
go and splash water on his face and wash properly. She heard him blowing his nose in the
bathroom.
When he
returned, she smiled at him.
“I am hungry,”
he said, “come, will you eat with me?”
‘No,” she said,
“remember, I had dinner! But I’ll have a
cup of tea with you… ”
After a bowl of
porridge and milk, with a little sugar sprinkled on top but not too much, Sláma
took off his slippers and dressing-gown and climbed back into bed. “Now you show me,” he said, “this new thing
you have to be pretty for me… just for looking, yes? and then you put your arms round me, yes? For sleep…?”
She did…
Sláma slept
fitfully. Whenever Sarah woke, she was
aware of him beside her. Sometimes she
knew he was awake, from the rigid way he held himself then, as if braced for
something. Sometimes his body was
relaxed in sleep. Whenever he woke, he
turned to her and nuzzled against her.
Then she went back to sleep holding him, and it would start again, the
same little pattern.
Some time in the middle of the night, he spoke: Ne, ne — ne!
She shook him
awake.
“God, I think I
am back there,” he said, “hold to me, for god’s sake.”
Later she woke
again. She could see his face by the light
from the door of the bathroom, that she’d left open a crack. It wore an odd look, of sadness mixed with
uncertainty. When her eyes met his he
bit his lip. “Do you want me?” he asked
her.
“God, Franta,
how can you ask!”
He spoke in a
rush: “Before I think I can’t and I am
afraid to try but now I am lie beside you and I am feeling — a lot. This and much other things. But I don’t know, if I can… ”
“Love…!” She held her arms open to him.
He scrambled
into her embrace almost desperately.
“Are you enough wet? – from
before? Sarah — excuse me… please, yes,
it’s all right?”
“Sssshhh,” she
said, “love, yes —!”
He entered her
roughly, not like Franta her sweetheart but as you might expect from a man who
has just been released from prison. His
movements were jerky and swift. She drew
him into her, not caring.
He gasped as he
took her. What was wrong? Only gasps – no voice, no words, not even
broken ones: he was as silent as he was
rough. Franta, whose sighs and groans in
sharing the act of love had melted her from their very first time…
That was more
shocking than the urgency of his plunging:
this absence of his voice – as if he wasn’t there, somehow. In a few sharp thrusts he shuddered and
jolted – holding his breath, till he let it out all at once with an involuntary
‘uh!’; gasped, panted. The sweetest moment of all, his climax inside
her, now violent and inward, not shared at all – as if he was ashamed, or
trying to hide it.
God, where was
his voice in this most precious of intimacies?
Where was he? Sarah blinked,
stunned; held him close anyway. His breath escaped all at once again and he
gasped; then it turned to coughing, till
he clawed it back like a winded creature pursued by its fate: a hare, a frantic dove.
“Love,” she
said, her voice trembling, “love… ”
Sláma lay on top
of her and shook. “Excuse,” he said, the
words breaking, “it’s best what I can — I don’t think I can do it at all, then
I wake and I am wanting you, I want to be sweet but I can’t, I can’t, nemohu — I’m sorry… ”
“Sssshhh,” she
said, kissing him, “Franta, it’s all right.”
“Not how you
expect,” he said, “ – excuse me… ”
“No, love,” she
said, “but it was you… that’s all that matters.
Whatever you need… Only next time – darling, say something…? I don’t care how quick it is, or how rough,
or anything… but Franta, you didn’t make a sound…!”
“I am sorry,” he
said again. His voice had a hurt note,
now – defensive, almost: “– in prison is
habit. Nothing is private. Not even to make yourself feel better. You don’t make sound, god help you.”
“Love,” she
said, “of course… but you’re not in prison any more — ”
“I am not that
Franta that you loved,” he said, shaking, “I am this one who is come from
prison, and it’s not the same… do you think I can help? I try, Sarah!”
“I know… ”
“No, you can’t.
I can’t explain and you can’t know. I am
sorry, Sarah —!”
She closed her
eyes, felt the hot sting anyway. He
didn’t move, and she held him close.
Sláma shook till
he fell asleep on top of her, his face buried in her neck. She felt the sharpness of his bones: pelvis, ribs.
It grew uncomfortable, but she embraced that too. His softening flesh slipped from her after a
while, in a little gush of seed and a ‘mh–?’ from him in sleep, but she held
him there still in her arms and between her thighs anyway. If that was where he wanted to sleep, needed
to sleep, after everything, she wasn’t about to let him go.
There would be
time to find his voice — wouldn’t there?
Could he…?
He didn’t weigh
much. Heavier than his slight body was the
loss of something essential that he used to be;
the pain of his silence in the very act of love.
Sarah stared up
into the dark.
It had been one
of the things about Franta Sláma that enchanted her, thrilled her. In her dreams and her aching it was always
this moment she longed-for, more than any other: the instant when he would reach that place he
sought inside her, fill her with himself.
She’d often
wondered why it was so shockingly sweet to her, with him. In her marriage it had just been another
thing that happened. On Sarah’s part,
back then, it wasn’t that she disliked it – only that it was disappointing, not
what she’d hoped. Charles was discreet,
his grunts restrained. Who knew
why? Lest he sound too animal,
perhaps? A chap shouldn’t go over the
top at these times, she could hear him thinking – or at least, not make a big
fuss about it. Wife was good enough to
put up with it, didn’t do to sound too triumphant… anyway, his enjoyment was for him, not for
her. She was the means of affording it
to him. If she was feeling generous,
perhaps she’d give him a bit of the old you-know before going to sleep. Unfortunate, that she didn’t seem to
enjoy it all that much, but then women were just that way, weren’t they? All of them, probably, not that he’d know –
not like chaps, were they. That was why
they couldn’t really understand, how a chap felt – but if you were lucky they
put up with you anyway. Wives, especially: that was why you got married, so you could
have that and not feel guilty, and make a life together based on everything
else you had in common, right? – even if that side of things wasn’t all you’d
hoped-for as a bachelor, before you found-out how women really were. It just was that way, always had been, always
would be.
That was how
Charles approached her, anyway:
half-apologetically, hoping it wasn’t too much trouble; yes, it was a bit of a let-down over all but
at least she still put up with it, and he should be grateful; he was – if she’d just be kind, he’d soon get-it-over-with,
god yes… None of this found its way into
words, of course, because he was not that kind of man; but all of it was loud
and clear from his face, his actions, all he didn’t say. After all, when he’d used that ‘f’ word once,
the one that described her, to justify his failing to please her, she’d gone
very silent. Wouldn’t want to reproach
her with it, eh? So he didn’t – except
in every approach, every satisfaction he took for himself from her aching body,
avoiding her eye.
With Franta the
same act was invariably sweet – and on occasion shattering; beyond imagination,
beyond sense. It moved her to her very
bones to hear his gasps, his groans, his broken words of love. He brought all of himself to her without
reserve; sometimes he took her face in
his hands and looked into her eyes even as he moved in her, so she could see
his nostrils flaring and his pupils widening and the brilliance shining there,
right before he fell over the edge… into her.
Sometimes he liked it when she urged him to spill, specially if it
wasn’t the first time they’d joined their bodies together that day and the
overwhelming urgency wasn’t there; asked
her, even, to tell him that...
Why? Why did he like it so much?
Because you
sound that you mean it, Sarah…
I do! Oh god, Franta, I do…
That’s why I
like, he said. That’s why I come for
you, when you say, srdíèko.
Because my body also it knows you mean… it wants to give you what you
ask…
God, Franta, I
love you —!
I know, he
said. I feel it… Sarah, Sarah!
Unashamed; she had been unashamed, incandescent in her
love, glorying in how he was made and all he was – all the manhood of him, the
precious Franta he brought to her and shared so sweetly with his looks, his
kisses, his tendernesses; his gasps, his groans, the darling seed of him. Here was a man respected by his peers,
decorated by the country whose uniform he wore, who flew an aeroplane bearing
the roundel of his native land because he couldn’t bear to see it lost to evil
without a fight; a man among men — and he loved her, caught fire with her, gave
her her joy too… and then was hers, in
that moment: altogether hers, lost in
her – human, naked, precious. Hers,
deliberately so, offered and given:
hers. With his groans and his
spurting he told her so.
And he still
was: even like this, no less so — only
more. What had he overcome, alone in the
dark beside her, struggling with all he felt, to ask her for this now? What had it taken, to bring her this much of
himself, as hurt as he was?
Sláma shuddered,
twitched, jerked up his head. “Ne —
ne – nech mě být — !”
“Franta –
Frant-oh, darling, it’s all right – look, you’re here… ”
“Kde to je… what… where… oh Sarah — I don’t believe ——
”
She stroked him,
feeling the rough crop they had made of his hair. Sláma shuddered again, collected
himself; pulled his body from on top of
hers and curled-up against her instead.
Sarah caressed the back of his head gently, avoiding the cuts, hating
the human beings who’d inflicted them and repelled by the savage force of that
in her soul – the fury, the impotent rage, the despair, the outrage… It was a bitter and terrifying feeling.
Did Sláma feel
that? Had he felt it, all these three
long cruel years?
How could he
not?
And if he had
moved from there to resignation for his own survival, because who could feel
like that so long, what had it cost him?
She heard his
voice telling her, earlier, of something else not to be borne, or so she’d
thought, ‘This is what is and we must accept… ’
The doctor had
tried to tell them, Sláma and her too, of the many difficulties that still lay
ahead of them even in their joy. He’d
worked with returning prisoners, men who’d been tortured; his patient eyes behind those spectacles had
seen it all, recognized it again with sadness and compassion.
Sarah thought of
the angry red stipples of the cigarette-burns, and shivered; held Sláma against her own soft warmth,
willed him to feel her love and acceptance.
In the morning, she thought, she’d tell him she was sorry right away,
before he could apologize for the way he’d been with her. How did she dare have asked him for anything
beyond what he found of himself to give her?
Sláma slept the
fitful sleep of someone exhausted, haunted, tormented, overwhelmed. Sarah woke when he did, reminded him where he
was, touched him in some simple way while he calmed: her hand over his on top of her hip, her palm
to his cheek, her feet entwined with his, her belly curved softly round his
buttocks and her face in-between his shoulder-blades.
She thought of
their children, curled up in bed a hundred miles away, and how soon now they
would come to know this man who was their father. No need to call him that: just for them to know and love one another as
they ought was all she could wish for.
And he would sing them songs in Czech, and play with them – and together
they would heal him…. This might be hard
for him, finding himself again as lover – but that would be easy, she knew
it. Slowly, slowly, an hour at a time,
day by day; they would. If anyone could heal him, surely it would be
them – ? … his children. His own flesh and blood, made in love… people, now, taking his features and his
being into the future.
Somehow the
night ebbed and the soft light of morning took its place.
Chapter 15
– Choreography
Sarah woke to
find Sláma staring at her in the greyness.
His eyes were red-rimmed, tired-looking;
tender.
She kissed his
forehead. “What? What are you thinking, love?”
“Good morning,”
he said. “Do you really want me to tell
you?”
“Of course!”
Sláma smiled at
her. “I am thinking how it’s different
your tits. Than before. When we were lovers in beginning they had
different shape – more like point, yes?
Now it’s round…. I am thinking
it’s a rose – before it’s how-you-say not open?
Before, it’s the promise of a flower… now it’s full rose… both it’s krásný, I like, don’t think one is better – just
different — my Sarah… ”
“You know why,
don’t you.”
“Yes,” he said,
“that’s why it’s for me krásný,
make my heart hurt. Because you
are mother for my children —!”
Sarah smiled
back at him, bit her lip. The contrast
between this Franta and the one who had reached for her so desperately a few
hours earlier was bewildering. Which was
he, deep inside? Which one was the true
Franta Sláma, now? Could he be both?
“Also,” he said,
“I am think that I am ashame. I want to
say you I’m sorry. For before, how I am
to you. It wasn’t right, to come to you
so. I should have know. Excuse, Sarah, please… ”
“No,” she said,
“I won’t. I don’t accept your apology.”
“God, you do
like Karel? You don’t mean — ?”
“Of course
not! ’Course I don’t mean that! I mean you haven’t done anything to be sorry
for! Franta… ”
Sláma
swallowed. “Frant-o,” he reminded her,
trying to say with it again that he was here, the wonder of it.
“Yes,
Frant-oh. And that’s all that matters. Darling, I never should have asked you to do
or be anything different. It’s my
fault. I won’t do that again, I promise
you… ”
“But you say
what you feel,” he said softly, “what you are thinking, you must do that,
Sarah. I’m not – make from glass, you
can’t protect me. We must say what we
feel, or else it’s over for us, I think.”
“Come here,” she
said, “put your head on these roses of yours.
Let me just hold you.”
“That, yes,” he
said, “in prison I think for this all the time… till it make me too alone, and
then I don’t think any more, but I want anyway — ”
His head felt
like the grail to her. She touched it carefully, cupped his cheek in the
palm of her hand, felt the rough bristles of his beard along the angle of his
jaw. She sighed; he did, too.
There was contentment in it, along with other things. He seemed not to be feverish any more.
“I am afraid, to
make love — ” he said into the gentleness of that silence.
“I know,” she
said, “it’s all right.”
“I want you to
touch me and then I can’t bear… it’s too much — it’s the same, pain and
pleasure, it hurts — in my heart, in my
head I want you to touch but my skin, even my balls, god, it’s afraid you will
hurt me… I must learn again, to accept —— ”
“We have time,
love,” she whispered, her heart aching for him.
He
shivered. “Do you think it’s too much I
take other bath?” he asked, softly. “I
like so much — I can’t get enough, to be clean – and the hot water… I want even
more than food, I think.”
“Of course it’s
not,” she said, “shall I go turn on the taps?”
“In a minute,”
he whispered. He turned his face to her,
kissed each nipple in turn. “I don’t
know where is the Franta that you want,” he said. “I think he is lost, I don’t know. But I will try to find. It’s difficult — much harder than talking… ”
“No… don’t say
that. You don’t have to, not for
me. It’s all right. ”
“Don’t say no,”
he said, “ne, it’s not good here. Because this is true for me,
Sarah… you must believe.”
“Yes,” she
whispered, “sorry.”
“That not,
also,” he said, “please – no sorry, not
from me to you, not from you to me, yes?
We must learn this thing, I think, how to be — no?”
“Yes.”
“Like children
that is walking, they falls down. A
lot. Oh… you will tell me when we are
driving today, all about that for the children, yes? For Frances and for
Charles also, how it is they stand-up, how old they are, what is words that
they say — all that I have missed… ”
“God, yes,” she
said.
“Thank you,
Sarah. And now please I will get up for
the toilet, and then you will help me with bath?”
Sláma sat down with his back to the taps.
Sarah
frowned: “No, love, why didn’t you get
in the other way? Won’t you be more
comfortable?”
“I am hope you
come in too —?”
She had put-on
her new dressing-gown, to draw the bath and help him. She took it off, stepped into the tub; knelt there, her hands on his shoulders. He leaned forward simply and took her breasts
in his hands, put his mouth to one, suckled.
It was a sweet
bath.
They were both
rosy, flushed from the hot water and one another when they got out. Sarah reached for a towel and held it open,
and Sláma took the corners and wrapped it round her instead. “Always I remember in London how we do this,”
he said. “All my life I dream for that,
how it will be sweet one day to take bath with woman. Never I have done, before.”
“What, not even
with Hanicka?”
He smiled, shook
his head. “No, she is young, she live
with matka and tata, never we are so easy to be together, always moments that
is stealed. This bath we have, you and
me, it’s only one for my life that I take with woman. But I want more… it’s krásný, no?”
“Get inside this
towel right now, Franta Sláma, and let me dry you.”
“I permit,” he
twinkled. Sarah had put-on the heater
before they got in, so the bathroom was wonderfully warm, not like at
home. When they were dry he drew her to
him. “You will permit me also, yes? What I want…
I don’t know for me, like before, but you, look at you, you are open
like rose, this is wet here that’s not from bath… do we have time? We must leave early?”
“We have time,”
she said, through a suddenly-aching throat.
Sláma drew her
into the bedroom and held open the bed-covers.
She got in; held open her arms.
Sláma came into
them.
That it brought
him a sharp joy to arouse her was not in question. He was almost laughing with pleasure, making
love to her. She ran her hands up and
down him, his back, his chest. He
shivered; whispered, “Sarah, be patient
for me — let me do this first —?”
She let him.
When she was
almost at the cliff-edge of feeling he paused, buried his face in her
belly. “Sarah, if you want, I will
try. Again. I must…
I am afraid but I will try… not for you to touch me, not yet, I can’t
bear – just let me start all the way, to
be in you…?”
“Oh god, love,
yes – !”
“Come then, let
me give you first… so I know, I can feel you — ?”
He brought her
almost all the rest of the way, his hands and mouth shaking. When she gasped his name he stroked her
back. “You are so close there, yes? Then please, Sarah, you go over and me under. Let me lie, so – it’s not so difficult for me
– last night I have pain for my ribs, where it’s still hurt from this beating I
get — ”
“Of course!” she
said, doing so, and gave herself to his love-making the rest of the way till
she fell off the precipice again altogether. He was breathing raggedly; his arousal was more straightforward than the
emotions that played on his face, and so sweet she could have cried. “Krasny, Frant-oh,” she said, kneeling and
finding herself drenched, gliding over his flesh.
He made a
strangled sound.
She climaxed,
his heat within her, knowing he felt it.
Her cries were soft, high-pitched, made his eyes brim-over. Sláma crooned, like her sweetheart from
before; as he had that very first time
in the back of his car, sweetly, tenderly;
held her close till the waves ebbed away.
He kissed her,
then, with his cut bruised mouth.
“Sarah, I am try,” he said, moving in her jerkily. “I open my mouth for you but I don’t know,
what it is that comes out… I can’t control — ”
“Yes, love,” she
said.
“I ask you here
because I am think it will be bad sound, frighten the children at home… ”
“Yes, love!” she
said.
“So love me,
Sarah — I try to give you Franta that you want… ”
“Oh, god, yes… ”
she breathed.
He pressed his
lips together, then deliberately instead opened his mouth wider, almost in a
grimace. A painful gurgle came out,
something at the back of his throat that he was pushing all his breath past.
“It’s all right,
Franto,” she said, “darling… ”
“More,” he said,
clutching at her, “do it more —!” He
pulled her down onto him with an urgency that shone in his eyes, sounded in
sharp uh – uh – sounds.
“Love, yes…
” she murmured.
“I can’t,” he
said brokenly, “to be lover that you want, it’s to give — to surrender — I have
forgot, I don’t know, nemůžu – I
can’t — ”
“It’s all right,
love,” she whispered. He was
gasping. In his eyes she saw the
absolute terror of being vulnerable, of letting-go the taut control that held
him together and allowed him to continue in the world as a whole man.
“You can help,”
he gasped, “help me — tell me let go Franto, how you have — tell me – tell me!”
She told him.
He jolted his
hips to penetrate her further. “More,” he cried,
“don’t stop... Ask me, tell me — I try to come for you,
Sarah —!” Now the groans he made were
cries of pure pain.
“Love, come for
me,” she told him, “sweetheart, darling, sr-jeech-ko, spill… Franto, fill me –
that’s it – my sweet love, let me feel you… ”
“More,” he said,
clutching at her shoulders, her breasts.
He was begging her to help break all his defences, she saw that. What she had asked of him was to be exposed
again, to be vulnerable: he was trying
to give it to her. “More, Sarah, say it
more — ”
“Let go, love,”
she told him, “Franto, give me everything, don’t hold back… darling, fill me
with stars… ”
“Ani, ani — tell me, yes – like so, yes – prosím –
ani!” His fingers bruised her
skin; his eyes bruised her soul, the
struggle in them.
“Spill for me,
Franto,” she told him, her voice cracking.
He took a deep
breath then and held it, thrusting into her swiftly and deeply. Then he let it
out, and with it a howl. She gathered
him in her arms; Sláma pressed his face
between her breasts and with his mouth muffled there he shrieked.
She felt him
throb.
“Ha – hahhh –
hahhhh,” he keened against her flesh, “Haaaaaaahhh… ”
She bit back
sobs. “I’ve got you,” she said instead,
warmly, “you’re safe – darling, you’re safe… it’s all right — ”
The bed shook
with his trembling.
“I’ve got you,
love,” she repeated, “you’re safe… ” – what else could she say? She didn’t know.
When he could
say anything at all he gasped, “I know it – I know — that’s only how I can do
it for you — give you this you ask me – Sarah, my Sarah!”
She held him.
Against her
breast, he said, “That is so hard, Sarah – I am so afraid — other Franta he was
not afraid to feel, but now — what I feel, it’s
—— it’s too much, I don’t have other words… I am breaking for it, to
feel so much, to permit this — ”
“Yes,” she
whispered back, “I saw that — I realized... darling, I won’t ask you
again. Not till you’re ready… ”
Sláma squeezed her arms then, pulled back his face
to meet her gaze. His was fierce,
brimming. “You must,” he said, “you
must, I can’t do if you don’t… ”
“How can I ask
you, when it hurts you so?”
“It is hurt more
not,” he said. “To be afraid, it’s
hurt. To feel my body that closes, runs
away, it’s try to protect – from you! My
heart knows it’s you but my balls it’s afraid still… Such a god-damned mess
that I am… God, Sarah, will I be normal
again? One day? Man that can take his woman to bed and not
cry like animal?”
She held him,
rocked him. “No, you weren’t,” she said.
“It feels… ”
“But you
weren’t. You were my darling
Franta. That’s all.”
“Still you want
me so, this broke Franta?”
“How can you
ask!”
“Tell me to
hear… ”
“I want you, I
want you, miluyi-chi, Frant-oh, I always want you. For ever and ever. Wait till you read the poems I wrote about
you, when I missed you more than I could bear — ”
That seemed to
please him, cheer him. His demeanour
changed; Sarah realized it was because
he was again speaking of her, his sweetheart, and not himself, that was perhaps
too broken to bear to contemplate. “You
have? You will show me? Remember in bed that time at the beginning, I
tell you, you are poet, Sarah! These
words you tell me that’s so beautiful, and we are making love…! Now you have write of us?”
“God, yes,” she
said, “that was all I wanted to write about... ”
“I can’t wait!”
he smiled. “You put me in poem? Ayh – !”
He pulled her down to him, kissed her.
Drawing her head to his shoulder, he murmured, “Tell me all how you have
miss me… ”
She brushed his
still-silken skin with her lips; began.
Sláma was happy
then, comforted, distracted, the pieces of himself reassembling into a whole
once more. He kissed her, laughed a
little, sounded like the Franta of old…
They got
up; Sarah watched him shave. His frown at himself in the mirror was quite
sharp. Then he grinned at her. “Jezishi Christe,” he said, “you must be fool for love, Sarah – I have think I was
more handsome, yes in prison too, but this is — what, a face only a matka can
to love? How can you stand to be in bed with such a face? I frighten my self… ”
She grinned
back.
“Sarah, my god,
you think I will frighten the children?
It looks terrible – this cuts – they will think I am the bad man that is
come to get them… ”
“No, they
won’t,” she said, “they will think you need kissing all better. A sentiment with which I agree, by the way… ”
“Kiss away,” he
said, “ — be gentle, only, for this one here the mouth. Still it’s hurt a bit… for the rest, kiss all
you want. Prosím.”
They washed,
dressed, were all ready to go down to the dining-room hand-in-hand in search of
breakfast, when a soft tap sounded at the door.
Sláma looked at
her, raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t think anybody is know that we are here,” he
said, “isn’t it?”
Sarah shrugged,
palms-up; went to answer it.
A young chef
stood there with another laden tray. She
didn’t recognize him, but the tray spoke for itself. In fact, it even bore a lettered card: For
the Check Pilot, God Bless You Sir.
“Good morning,
mum,” he said with a grin. “Breakfast on
the house today, mum, for your pilot.
That’s orders straight from our head pastry-chef, and he made some o’
these with his own hands before he went home, mum. Told us to bring ’em up to you at nine… hope
that’s not too early?“
Sláma had come
to see what was the matter. He stood
behind Sarah at the door in his borrowed uniform, his chin on her shoulder
playfully.
“Proboha,” he
said, “Sarah, it’s another too-much, what I am going to do? Look what there is —!”
The young man
stepped forward. “Shall I put it down
for you, sir? Mister Noakes was right
particular about it, he was, left very strict instructions. I ’ope it’s to your satisfaction, sir… ? Madam?”
Sláma shook his
head. “It’s kind,” he said, “I don’t
know what I am to say, but – yes, of course – I hope only that it’s plain, yes,
I can’t eat only nothing rich… ”
“Oh, I think he
got the idea, sir,” said the young man. “We’ve just now cooked the hot stuff,
o’course, so — if it’s to your liking, then?
Nothing else you need? I’ll be
off, then… ”
Sláma said
“Thank you,” huskily. Sarah reached for
her handbag, to give him something.
“Oh no, madam,
no you don’t. This is from all the
kitchen staff, mum, every bleedin’ one of us.
Don’t want no thanks, specially not that sort. Just send it back down with a bit eaten here
and there, we know you won’t finish it all, and we’ll be happy.” He waved, whistling down the corridor.
Sláma was
staring at the tray. By his count there
were about ten things on it, of the type to tempt a small and jaded appetite,
perhaps a troubled one. In the center a
chafing-dish complete with spirit-light kept warm four lacy crepes folded-over
into triangles with lemon-wedges, two porcelain egg-coddlers, a small oval dish
of sautéed button-mushrooms and two feather-light orange-smelling
popovers. Around the margins marched a
chain of thoughtful additions: stewed
plums, a prune compote with golden soaked dried pears, a pair of crescent-rolls
and another of plain brown ones warm from the oven and wrapped in a napkin;
dishes of butter-curls, jam, honey and marmalade, a plate of plain toast cut
into fingers, another dish of porridge, this one the nutty kind that needs an
hour to cook to perfection, which it was and had; a pot of coffee and another of tea… he groaned.
“Help me,
Sarah,” he said, “make small plate for me… not too much, I don’t mind what you
choose, but just a little, yes? If I
stare at this I think I will get too much the mouth water… ”
He stared out of
the window across the park while she did so.
His hands clenched into fists and let go again, knotted and unknotted,
rubbed one another’s sore places. Then
he ran one hand through his hair, quickly and just once, in a gesture of the
old Franta that made her heart flip.
Turning, he smiled.
“The world,” he
said, “ — there is good people, yes?
Everywhere that I go people is being kind… ”
“Yes: here, love.
Is this enough? Too much?”
“It’s
perfect!” She had made him one small
plate and one small bowl, each with a little of everything; no more than a spoon or fork-ful, to start. “Now I eat slow, it’s good, I think. No more walking in the street too late, I’ll
be all right… ”
“Jolly good,”
she said, hoping he was right.
He twinkled at
her. “Eat,” he said, “please – prosím!”
What tempted her? Goodness!
She had always liked a nice breakfast, and this one certainly ranked
with the finest that might be being served across the Park in the Palace right
at this very minute, she thought.
They sat at the
table and held hands. “I have not thank
you,” said Sláma, “all that you do.”
Sarah stared at
him.
“But it is big
thing,” he said.
“No,” said
Sarah, “you are. To me. Now then…
see what you like. Isn’t this a
feast? I never saw anything like
it! I didn’t give you any prunes,
though… ”
Sláma grinned.
“It’s better not,” he said.
They set off
when they were ready, not wanting to feel any pressure to hurry. Sarah was eager to go home to the children,
but she felt also that the world was whirling and glittering around her darling
Franta with the giddying speed of a kaleidoscope. To take everything very
methodically seemed by far the wisest thing to do. If she herself was feeling overwhelmed by it
all, she could barely imagine how it must be for him. He had exclaimed even over the new clean
underwear, the brand-new socks, the virgin cakes of soap in the bathroom.
Sláma held the
gazetteer open to the pages of Central London and helped her find the streets
to get back out on the A40 towards Oxford.
She’d tucked the lap-rug in round him before they set-out, as it was a
chilly morning. It took the heat a while
to come up in the car: she heard his
teeth chattering. “I should have got you
a coat –!” she said, stricken.
He smiled at
her. “Think,” he said, “when we are home
you can take me to shop… isn’t that what women like?”
She imagined it,
and all the other dear things that lay ahead.
“You’ll go saying it’s too much,” she said, reaching for his hand, “I
know you. You’ll be satisfied with one
more pair of socks and a shirt or two… ”
“You will help
me,” he said. “I will say I can’t, it’s
too much, je toho moc, and you
will say Franto, it’s easy: just say
yes, thank you. And I will say it. Just not too many things new in one day,
yes?”
“Well, today we
have the children,” she said, “so — I think that’s enough, don’t you —?”
“God, yes,” he
said.
On the way
through the rolling Chilterns Sarah told Sláma all the rest she could think of
about the children, these years he had missed.
He asked her questions now and then, but for the most part he sat back
and listened. He did ask her, after they
had stopped for petrol in High Wycombe, how it was that Charles had killed
himself. “I regret,” he said when she
told him, “for him I regret this. That
he is so black in his how-is-it? No
hope, despair, yes? And for you, to find
— god! That was not so good, srdíèko,
I think.”
She shuddered at
the memory. “But if he was still here,”
she said in a tight little flat tone, “then you wouldn’t be… because it was
only after he died that I could change the birth certificates, and try again
with all the requests — ”
“I understand,”
said Sláma. “I have to thank him that he
doesn’t want to stay. It’s very strange…
”
She shivered.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “He … it was
hard for him, really, it was impossibly difficult — not just the children, but
being crippled – he wasn’t the same.
He’d get these moods – so aloof, sometimes he wouldn’t hardly speak, not
for days. After we moved and he didn’t
know anybody, people were friendly, in the village – you’ll see – but he didn’t
make new friends easily… And he never
understood about us. You and me… That we were serious. He thought I’d had a fling – he only ever
talked about it once. He said he thought
about you enjoying me. That was how he
saw it, that you’d had something belonging to him. I don’t think even then that it ever occurred
to him that perhaps I’d enjoyed you, too, Franta.”
Sláma put his
head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
“The first time with you,” he said, “in the car – when you told me what
he said to you — I have want to punch him.
That he has hurt you with this lie.
Do you remember, how hard you cry, because I make love to you a little,
like any gentleman?”
“It wasn’t a
little,” she said.
“No,” he said, “
– and yes, srdíèko. It was five
minutes in the back of a car… and then you are mine. Because I have love you like this. So little – so much — ”
“It meant
everything,” she said. “You saw who I was… ”
“God, yes,” he
said. “That I have seen this first
day. At tea, when you are looking to
Karel and saying to me with sad look, ‘he’s very sweet!’… and I see how it is
you have give him – what you give – because you are extraordinary woman. And you know that I know and still you can
sit and look me the eye. You make a
little pink the face, but you don’t look down.
Because you see also that I love Karel.
And I am thanking. That he isn’t
any more virgin, this thing that is hurting him to think each time he flies,
that he is going to die and never know it, how it feels to be a man, to be
loved. I see woman that is also
beautiful on the inside.”
“I did hurt him,
though.”
“No,” said
Sláma, “I have. He was a good man. But… I can not resist to you. I try — ”
They both
thought of that long-ago conversation in the car, the tea-shop.
“Thank god you
changed your mind,” said Sarah.
“What, with all
that is happen to break your heart, drahoushku?”
“God, yes, Franta… I’d do the same in a
heartbeat!”
He shook his
head. “I will understand one day,” he said, “perhaps. Or no.”
They passed
villages with churches: spires, towers… Sláma thought about their good-bye, and
all that had come from it. “In Mirov,”
he said, “they make us work, you understand?
Not to sit in cell all day. We
come big room and there is work all day, can’t take a break. Some is packing boxes of pencils. Me I am sewing at machine, the uniforms. I sit and this room, it was chapel of the
prison. Before Communists. It is tall like church, yes, has painted
ceiling… blue, like heaven. It’s bizarre
– ! Even there is little angels with wings look down… and colours for the windows. I think a lot about how I have behave in
church, with you… I ask to be forgive, you know, because I am human only and I
love you so much, I can’t bear when you ask me and you are so much hurting… ”
Sarah put one
hand on his knee and he squeezed it.
“One day,” he
said, “guard fell asleep. In his
chair. One by one we see, we stop
working. God, to take a small break… you
can’t understand, unless you have been working, working for hours each day and
they hit you if you stop. So then there
is this gift, this minute of rest… we
get our breaths, yes? And we stand-up
and stretch — me I am go to stand in the light…
there is piece of light there, through window, it’s red, it’s gold… and
I see there Karel behind me, like in sunshine, how he fly always right behind
me… I hear his voice. He says ‘I’m right
behind you, Franto – where I was always.’” Sláma’s voice was soft, almost cracking but
not quite. “Can you see? The light it’s
all in my face and I think, perhaps I am forgive… for Karel — and for you also…
”
“Love,” she
said, “Franta — Franto!”
“Then comes to me Poindexter, and he tells me we are making together
son, that day. I don’t know if it’s
blessing for you, I am afraid for you it’s too difficult – but for me I am in
prison and I have no future and now I hear I have also son… God, Sarah, can you imagine —!”
“No,” she said.
“I want to, but I don’t think anybody could, if they hadn’t been through what
you have… ”
“It’s better
so,” he said, “really I don’t want you to imagine. But — just to try to understand, what it can
mean to me…! – how much —!”
“Can you imagine,” she said, “when I got your letter!”
“I am imagine
this every word as I am writing,” he said.
“I don’t know how I can hold pen, to think your face. But I must take this chance.”
“You told me you
were all right…!” this came out half on
a sob, now that she knew how far it was from the truth.
“You are concern
for me, I can tell your letter. I don’t
want you not-sleep, I don’t want you imagine how it is. Already I break your heart enough, this
Franta Sláma. I want you to be calm, to
bring-up our children and not hurt in your heart for me more – what good will
it do, that? Is thing I can give you,
not to fret… ”
“But it wasn’t
true!”
“This wasn’t to
bear, srdíèko. You know that,
now. Not for you, especially. For me to bear is enough. Anyway, when I am writing it, I have just
hear from you, I have see a photograph of our children, so – it’s not too bad,
yes?”
She flashed him
a glance, not wanting to take her eyes off the road. It was filled with the knowledge of his love
for her, and he saw that and felt it like a hand on his chest. Somehow he wanted her to know that more than
anything else — and she did: this Sarah
that was god’s gift to him in all the joy and all the pain, his to love, now,
again, at last – as he had never stopped doing, not even through all the hurt
and despair.
Not even when
he’d tried, please god forgive him for that.
But what was he supposed to do, when he couldn’t have Sarah any more,
but try to love someone else? As if
he could…! But it wasn’t in him, not so
soon anyway. No; not even when he’d asked other women out, and
found them sweet or dear but not what he wanted; kissed them gently goodnight, because they
expected it, and not rung them again;
gone back to his rented room and spilled alone, for Sarah… Not even the one time he’d given-in, back in
Prague, not wanting to break any hearts but needing a woman so badly it hurt,
and sought a prostitute – and found to his self-loathing how far that was from
what he really wanted in a woman… not
just to come in her, but to be special and beloved in doing so.
Because there
was a book, and in it was written: Sarah
and Franta, these two it has to be together….
Perhaps, in
another few years, he would have got over her enough to start again? One day (he had told himself, then) – one day
surely the ache wouldn’t have her face, her name on it…? If he tried, he could put someone else’s
there, couldn’t he? Someone sweet and
understanding – because he would have to tell her, why he hurt still… you don’t keep secrets like that from a girl
when you’re courting her seriously, it’s not fair. So he would have to confess what had
happened, to make him so gun-shy, so careful.
And a nice girl would forgive him that… wouldn’t she? So one day he would have the family he longed
for, be the husband and father he had always thought he would be?
But prison had
come, instead.
Sarah’s voice
woke him from a doze filled with memories of another hotel in London, and
stories by the fire; of a baby glimpsed
through a window, and a little girl’s hand in his, tugging at his heartstrings
till it took all he had not to weep…
“Franta, look,
it’s only fifteen miles to Oxford! We’re
about another fifteen miles beyond, darling, and then we’ll be home!”
“Home,” he said,
and cleared his throat. “Frances will be
at school, yes?”
“That’s right,”
she said, “Charles will be with the neighbours, unless the Watsons came down,
and Frances gets home about half past three.”
“I can’t believe
I am to see them,” he said, going very pensive.
Something sparkled on his lashes.
“Won’t be long
now,” she said, softly, and squeezed his hand again.
Sláma’s gaze
took-in the honey-coloured stone houses, the undulating shoulders of the
Cotswolds. A few late roses bloomed here
and there on walls; sheep dotted the
fields. “I remember this,” he said, “I
fly over here and I see how it’s krásný.
Like where you are living before, but here it’s the middle of this. Before you are on the edge but here it’s even
more. This is picture-perfect, yes? You are living in post-card, I think. Are we close your house?”
“Very,” she
said. “Just round this corner, and then
down the lane a bit, and we’ll be there.
We bought in the village, for Charles’s sake. So he could wheel himself to the shop, and
the pub, and so on. We put his bed in
the dining-room…”
Sláma thought
about a life without work, without any point, like that. His heart went out to Strickland. “When I am strong then I can ask RAF, will
they let me have back my commission — ?
What do you think?”
“I don’t see how
they could refuse you,” she said, “but whatever they do, you’re here now and
that’s all that matters.”
“Yes,” he said,
“but you must understand I am responsible – I will work to support you now,
Sarah. And our children. If they will have me back to RAF, that’s the
best. But if not, perhaps I can be
civilian employee… god, how much I want teach again to fly –!”
Sarah gave him a
sparkling glance: “Here we are… ” she said.
16 –
Trusting to Air
They had
pulled-up in front of a charming house of the same pale-gold stone. A climbing-rose rambled over the front of it.
Sláma tried to
keep his breathing steady. His hands
began to tremble and he clasped them in his lap. His throat closed tight. “Proboha,” he said, and then, “Jezishi Christe, odpust’
mi… ” He felt unworthy, in need of forgiveness for
having wanted so much, taken what wasn’t his, and now somehow being given it
all.
He looked at his
beloved. She waited patiently, not
saying anything, letting him catch his breath again. It hurt in his ribs to breathe, as it had when
he had forced himself past all his defences to be naked and needy in the act of
love with her. He let the breaths come,
one at a time, hearing himself high-pitched and gasping a little. Sarah put her fingertips on his chest and
rubbed it, her face filled with understanding. Sláma put his hand over hers and
rubbed some more. Now they were here his legs felt like limp
twine.
The front door
opened, and Fred Watson stood there holding the hand of a little boy.
“Mummy!” cried
the child. “We made an aeroplane! Mr. Watson made it fly! It went all round the garden and now it’s got
stuck in the big apple-tree!”
Sarah looked at
Sláma one last time with a little smile, and got out of the car. Their son ran down the garden-path to the
open gate and into her arms, and she picked him up. “We left the gate open for you, mummy!” he
said.
“I see,
darling,” she smiled, ruffling his dark hair.
“Have you been a good boy for Uncle Fred and Auntie Bea? I’m sure you have, you’re always good when
mummy asks you, aren’t you?”
“’Course he
was,” said Fred Watson, following Charles down the path and coming to the
car-door on the side where Sláma sat.
“And hello to you, sir, after all these years, Squadron Leader Slammer. Here you are!
Eh?” He opened the door, held out a
gnarled working man’s hand. “Bea’s just
getting tea ready,” he said warmly, “she’ll be right glad to see you too,
sir! Come on, then, out you get — hold
on to me, I’ll give you a hand, see?”
Sláma let
himself be pulled out of the car by the strong arms of Fred Watson. “Please, it’s Franta,” he said, “like before,
yes?” He swayed a little, and Fred saw
how it was with him and kept hold of his elbow.
Charles looked
at him over the bonnet of the car.
“Mummy,” he asked, “is that Franta?”
“Yes, darling,”
she said.
“Hello, Franta,”
he said, cheerfully, politely, as if it was a very simple and straightforward
thing that this thin and battered man was on his doorstep.
“Hello,
Charles,” said Sláma. “Your mummy has
been telling me about you. She says you
like planes, yes? Me also I like
planes.”
Charles reached
out across the car. “Mummy, put me
down. Franta, will you help me get my
plane down? Mummy says you’re a pilot.”
Sarah set him on
the ground and he came round the front of the car to Franta, took his
hand. “Come on, Franta,” he said
confidently, “I’ll show you.”
“Goodness me,
young sir,” said Fred Watson, “where are your manners? Shall we let your Franta catch his breath and
say hello? He’s come a long way, you know.
We’ll worry about your plane in a minute, eh?”
“Sorry,” said
Charles. “Franta, did you catch your
breath yet? I think we can reach it with
a big stick… but I might have to climb up there. Uncle Fred said I couldn’t, not till Mummy
came home.”
“Show me,” said
Sláma. “But don’t walk too much
quick. I am a bit slow today. My legs it’s stiff from the car, yes? Perhaps Mr. Watson will come to help also?”
His eyes met
Sarah’s over the car. Charles’s hand
found his, tugged at it. His
four-year-old face was like the picture of Sláma at six that Matka always kept
on her bedroom-dresser, his first school-portrait, except that there was
something of Sarah round the mouth and in the colouring.
She lifted her
eyebrows: was he all right?
He nodded.
She put the
fingertips of her right hand to her mouth, involuntarily; closed her eyes for a second.
“Come on,
Franta!” said Charles.
“Excuse,” Sláma
said, “yes, I come. Fred, you can give
me your arm, yes? Just for this minute, till I am not so light the head?”
“Oh, I think
your missus can take over there,” said Fred with a broad smile. “I’ll just pop inside and tell Bea you’re
here — she’ll be tickled pink!”
Sarah came round
the front of the car and Sláma put his arm round her. Charles ran ahead, round the side of the
house and out-of-sight. Leaning on
Sarah, Sláma followed.
A broomstick
lashed to the clothes-prop did the job.
It was Sláma’s idea; casting his
eyes round the garden for something long enough, he’d seen the pole right away
holding-up the clothes-line with the laundry on it. The children’s clothes flapping there brought
a fresh lump to his throat. Dreams
didn’t have things like laundry in them, little shirts and socks. Dreams had rosy edges and silk-sheeted beds
where everything was perfect the first time with your beloved and you were
strong and sexy and it was easy. This
was his life, and it was sweeter than a dream.
He hadn’t been perfect and Sarah had held him to her anyway. And a family lived here, a family that wore
knickers and socks and pinafores: his
family. “Look,” he said, “you must see
if it’s dry the washing, this clothes, and if it is then you can take down,
yes? And so you use this… almost it’s big enough. Needs a how-you-say — ” he made the gesture
of sweeping the floor, “ – on the
end. This you have, Charles, don’t you?”
“’Course we do,”
cried Charles, running to fetch it.
“Wait,” called
Sláma, “you need also to put them together, yes? What it is that is long and it comes in a
ball, and you pull it off and you use it for parcels?”
“You mean string,”
said Charles, “was that a riddle? I like
riddles. Why do you talk funny, Franta?”
“I talk funny
because I am learn English,” said Sláma, “when I am little boy like you I speak
other language. Czech.”
“Oh, yes,” said
his son, “Mummy said. I forgot.” He frowned then, looking at this Franta more
closely. “Did you fall down?”
“No, why? Oh, these cuts my head? Yes, I am tripped on the floor. That is before I come here. It’s better now. Don’t worry about it.”
Charles ran off
to fetch the string and the broom. There
was a bench under the big apple-tree that graced the middle of the lawn, and
Sláma sat in it, Sarah by his side.
There was also a swing, on the other side of the tree, hanging from a
sturdy bough: the same swing Sláma had seen in the snapshot that was still in
his pocket.
Above their
heads, the little balsa-wood flyer dangled, caught between twigs. The apple-tree had lost its leaves, of
course, but a few apples still graced its upper branches, too high to pick. Sláma was stirred by some fellow-feeling as
he noticed them: naked and scarred, the
tree still felt the sun and offered its meagre best, whatever remained of its
fruiting. And in the spring, it would be
dressed again from sky to root in blossom….
A handful more
trees stood in rows further back, at the bottom of the garden: he thought he remembered the house was called
Orchard Cottage, from Sarah’s signing the hotel register. That was fruit-trees, wasn’t it?
Sláma choked-up
again, cleared his throat. “Sarah, I am
happy you sit with me, just,” he said. The garden was walled with a tall golden
stone wall, covered here and there with ivy and other creeping climbing
things. He recognized some of the plants
in the borders: grey lavender-clumps,
roses, currant-bushes, the waving creamy heads of grasses. It was sheltered, lovely; the sun was out, so even for November it
seemed cheerful and warm out of the wind.
“This orchard, this is fruit-trees, yes?”
“Yes,” she
said. “It’s a hundred-year-old orchard,
so some of the trees are a bit past it, but some of them still bear. We’ve got
a pear, two apples, a quince, a damson and a cherry… ”
“You have here
cherry-tree?”
She smiled. “In the spring, when they’re all in blossom,
it’s gorgeous… ”
“I had for you
cherries,” he said, softly. “That
day. I have brought them because I love
you so much and I want you to be healthy with this child of ours that is inside
you and I want you to eat fruit and it to be sweet for you and you will eat
them and think of me after I have gone back to the base. I had for you so much cherries… for all the
children too… ” He shook his head. “I didn’t know, what to do with them,” he
said, remembering, “you understand, yes?
It is that day I come to you at your house and there is Charles come
alive from the dead and I am staring at him and I know it’s finished, I see in
your face. And I have all these cherries
for you… and all that I am feel for you,
all this future and this child we are having together and all it’s gone, I see
your eyes… and I am pretend I don’t know you — god! Sarah… this is worst moment my life.”
Her fingers were
warm in his. She stroked his hand. “Worse than when they threw you in prison?”
“Yes,” he
said. “That was other worse. Different kind. Other bad.
Also when we say goodbye in the church – and when I have see Frances in
the window the day after she is born – I think Sláma, you deserve this, do
you? It’s so bad, what you have
done? And then Karel is killed in front
of me to help me, and… it’s a lot. And
prison, that we won’t talk about now.
But always I remember this moment I see your husband and I know I don’t
have you any more. And it’s no good the
cherries.”
Sarah put her
head on Sláma’s shoulder and he leaned his against it. Her hair tickled his jaw and he nestled closer
to feel it more.
“That’s my
dream, you understand,” he said, “my dream with you, that we have life
together, and this day it’s broken, it’s all I can think, I am drive back to
the base and try not to have accident, and I am think I was dreaming only, it
was sweet like the cherries and then it’s no more good, it’s lost. Till now… ”
“Love… ” she
said: “Miluyi-chi, Franto.”
“You remember
now this all the time? Ah, yes! That it’s Franto when you say to me? I like… it’s sweet. I have again with you cherries. When you say Franto.”
“God, Franta –
Franto… oh! I want to kiss you! – but
I’m not going to just yet, not in front of the children. I want them to get used to you, first – is
that all right?”
“Of course.”
Charles came
running up, waving a broom. “Look what
you are doing,” said Sláma, “see, it’s long!
Don’t hit your mother the head, please?
If you hold the middle, you see better what is happen with both ends,
yes? That’s good. Now we have to plan, look, this is big
operation. What’s next?”
Charles stared
at him.
Sláma motioned
with his head to the clothesline. Charles’s face brightened with understanding.
“Take the clothes in?” he asked.
Sláma nodded.
“Mummy, will you
help me? I can’t reach… ”
“Of course I
will, darling,” said Sarah. “Run back
inside and fetch the clothes-basket, then, and the peg-bag… ”
Sláma watched
them. His son was very careful. He was eager to get to the clothes-prop, but
his mother passed him the dry clothes one by one and he put them in the basket,
making sure no sleeves dangled over the edge.
He played with one of the pegs, tweaking his own nose with it and
yelping. When Sláma’s mother had
taken-in those mountains of laundry every day to keep them all, she had used
the split-pin pegs the gypsies made. His
little sisters were always taking them to make dollies, and asking him to draw
the faces on the little round knobs at the top.
These pegs seemed different: they
had a spring, he thought. No: Sarah had
both, the old-fashioned kind and the new ones.
But Frances would be too big for clothes-pin dollies, anyway, now… He watched as Charles finished the task; felt a glow of pride in his responsibility.
The laundry was
all in the basket. Charles looked at
Sláma expectantly. “You are ready? Then
bring, and remember, how do you hold thing that is big? To control it? Good, yes, in the middle and you watch the
ends… so, good. Now see, we need something
to make it stronger. At this join
place. So these pieces they don’t go
flap-flap and fall like this. Like when
you break your arm, yes?”
“A splint?”
asked Sarah, coming to them with the clothes-basket under her arm.
“Yes,
exactly. Charles, you can find a stick,
yes? So long —?”
Charles trotted
off. Sarah sat down by Sláma. “I dreamed
of this,” she said, “how you’d be with him.
I knew — god, Franta, I can’t believe you’re here and we’re really going
to have you… ”
“Me also I can’t
believe,” he said. “That’s good, you
have make good choice, Charles. Now hold
together like this, so I can — ” He
gestured for winding and tying, not remembering the words, not sure even if he
had ever known them, but making it clear what he meant anyway. The joint was accomplished. He lashed it very tightly, with multiple
knots, Charles putting his finger on them and Sláma showing him: “ – over and
under, then under and over other way, yes?
Now I put here finger and you make next one… this way, remember? That’s very good!”
“It’s long
enough,” declared Charles, “I know it is!
It will reach, won’t it! If you
do it…?”
“Good, so then
give me your hand,” said Sláma, “and also we ask your mother I think, to give
me hand also. Because I must stand on
bench. Sarah, do you mind? Thank you, miláèku, I put my hand your shoulder, yes? So now give me our big stick that we make,
Charles… does it go so far?”
He
stretched. It was an effort and he felt
it in his sore ribs, but he would not have surrendered the task for
anything. The tip of the broom nudged
the little plane and it tipped; another
nudge, and it fluttered to the ground. Charles ran to get it.
“Wait,” called
Sláma, “what about your crew? You leave
here your crew to get down by himself?
You are pilot – what does a good pilot, do you think, when his crew is
stuck? What he helps first, his crew or
his plane?”
“Oh, sorry!”
said Charles, coming back and holding-out his small hand. Sláma gave him the clothes-prop. “It is extra-long now, with this other stick,
so put it down safe,” he said, “yes?”
Charles did, and
returned gravely to offer Sláma his hand to get down. Sláma took it and leaned on Sarah too and
stepped back onto the ground. It wasn’t
that he needed the other hand, but that he wanted Charles to be aware. That was what tatas did, wasn’t it? — be honest and loving with their children,
help their sons to grow to men in these small moments? Was he starting too soon? He didn’t know how else to be, though, if not
like this. He couldn’t pretend he was a
stranger, could he?
Sarah’s glowing
face told him not.
“Charles,” he
said, “look the wind. If you throw this plane,
which way it will fly? We are go inside
now, because I am not too warm. I think
Mrs. Watson has make tea and I want. So
we leave you here and you don’t want your plane again in tree, throw it
little-bit and look the wind. Mm?”
“Will you teach
me how to fly? Really fly?”
“Of course,”
said Sláma, “when you are – oh – more ten years older, maybe you will be
fourteen or fifteen. Can’t be younger
than this, it’s too much responsibility.
Not for children, to fly real plane. But you will be a man and I will
teach you. It’s a promise, yes?”
Charles flung
his arms round Sláma’s legs, then ran down the garden shouting “I’m going to be
a pilot! I am! I am! I really am!
Mummy, Auntie Bea, I’m going to be a pilot…”
Sláma shook his
head. “Let’s go in,” he said, “my hands
it’s a bit cold. When comes home Frances?”
The sitting-room
was at the front of the house, its bow-window looking into the lane. Outside, the climbing-rose offered the last
of its creamy petals before the deep frosts to come. Mrs. Watson had come out of the kitchen in
her apron and flung her arms round Sláma and squeezed him as if he were a
long-lost son. He had squeezed her back,
whispered in her ear, “I am thank you so much, for all that you have do for my
Sarah… ”
“Dearie dear,” she
said, “you’re all skin and bone, my pet!
We’ll have to feed you up, we will!
Good thing I made this cake, then, isn’t it! Don’t you go thanking me.” She took his head and drew it to hers. “Don’t you dare,” she murmured. “I always said it was a shame, a crying
shame. The way you was with them
kiddies, I knew you ought to have your own.
And she was barmy about you – we all was. Even me, a bit. Broke my heart, that night you rang, pet… ”
“Me also,” he
said. “God, who can believe?”
“Sit yourself down
and have a nice cup of tea! That’s
right, over by the fire, I knew you’d be here soon, I had Fred light it for
you. Remember the furniture, do you?”
There were the
same pictures on the walls, the same titles in the book-case: even the same Turkey rug, wine-red and blue,
more worn and faded now. The same clock
ticked on the mantelpiece, flanked by the same ugly china dogs he’d made fun of
then with their red blotches and painted-on gold whiskers. They were just as absurd now, but far dearer
than he ever could have imagined then when he was calling them names. Sláma looked at the settee. God, did he remember it. Sarah did too; she blushed and met his
gaze. They each saw the two of them, so
long ago, also in front of the fire, their clothes in a heap on the floor,
their bodies merging in the act of love right there on those same worn
brick-pink cushions…. the heat of them
together as they were then, the incandescent joy in one another; the firelight flickering on bare skin, in
shining eyes.
“I bet,” smiled
Mrs. Watson, “there’ll be a lot of memories, won’t there… and a lot to get used to all over again,
eh? You’ll want to wet your whistle, I
expect, won’t you, pet?”
“Yes,” he said,
“yes, please… prosím. Thank you.”
To sit by the
fire with Sarah and drink a cup of tea, and know that in a couple of hours
their daughter was coming home too… and that tonight he was going to lie down
in Sarah’s bed upstairs and sleep beside her… wake there in the morning, and
every morning from now on – how could he believe it?
“Didn’t you tell
me you had dog, when I see you with Frances?” he asked.
Sarah stirred
her tea. He remembered the way she had
watched his every movement, that first day, dragging her eyes from the teaspoon
in his fingers, the identity bracelet at his wrist clinking against the
cup. “It was sad,” she said, “he got out
one day and ran in the street, and he was run-over. He was fast but he wasn’t very clever.”
“Oh,” Sláma
said, “that’s pity. Mrs. Watson, this is
good cake… you put here apple, yes? I
can’t have more, I have small stomach now.
But it’s delicious, thank you.
And so when dog is lost, you don’t get other?”
“I had my hands
full,” she said, “it was not long after Charles died.”
Mrs. Watson
stirred her own tea vigorously. “And she
was too busy writing letters, she said warmly, “weren’t you? That and the housework and the
examination-papers she marked and the children…
and then all those letters, day and night, whoever would listen and
plenty that wouldn’t. For you,
dear. She wasn’t going to let you rot in
there. No time for a puppy!”
Sarah
blushed. “I managed,” she said.
“And I want him
to know it!” cried Mrs. Watson. “What
you didn’t do, for this… ”
Sláma
nodded. “I can’t imagine,” he said, “but
it’s my life… ”
Sarah put her
hand on his knee. “You had a dog, didn’t
you,” she said. “Barcha — ?”
Sláma nodded
again, touched that she remembered.
“Now you’re home
again,” said Sarah, “we could get another… ?”
After tea, they
made sure Sláma went upstairs to rest.
It wasn’t hard to tell he needed it, just from the looks of him. He took off his shoes, lay under just the
eiderdown in his clothes. He didn’t want
to fall asleep in his underwear and have to get dressed again with fumbling
fingers before he could see Frances when she came home from school. The anticipation of it filled him like a
lover, or a race-horse at the gate: soon
he would see her, soon, his little girl —!
He was too excited to sleep, though, and stared instead at the ceiling
with its old wooden beams, the curtains at the window Sarah had drawn to dim
the room. Always her flowers… these had cabbage-roses on, in shades of
crimson and blush-cream against dark foliage.
He would have known it was Sarah’s room if he had been set down here
from Mars, let alone Czechoslovakia. It
felt like the same eiderdown, inside a new cover: he remembered its warmth and lightness over
him that Christmas they had slept together, oh bliss, and made Frances in their
loving of one another.
His bowels
cramped then and he had to use the lavatory;
but it wasn’t as sharp as the day before. Those pills were helping already. God, was that the same towel he was drying
his hands on? She’d had a set of them,
green ones – ten years old, now, and threadbare, but he remembered the colour. Yes, and she had the same scented soap, too,
that English Leather with the label…
Sláma went back
to bed, hearing Charles’s voice downstairs, and Fred Watson’s, and Sarah
talking with Bea Watson in the kitchen – he had little doubt they were talking
about him, alas, but it was understandable – he hoped Sarah wasn’t saying too
much about being disappointed, or shocked.
She was still happy, wasn’t, she, over all? He would have to ask her… she would tell him the truth, he thought.
Sleep took him
gently, then, as weary and overwhelmed as he was, with no taint or echo of
prison.
Sarah was
leaning over him. She was shaking his
shoulder gently. “Darling,” she said,
“it’s time. Frances is coming home
soon… ”
Sláma sat up,
rubbed his eyes.
“You slept,” she
said, “I’m so glad… they rang from the doctor’s, at RAF Lynsted. Everything looked all right on the
tests. He just wants you to see our
doctor here, tomorrow.”
He cleared his
throat. The relief washed over him: nothing to worry about, then. No infections, no TB, no dire thing waiting
to ruin his happiness now. “Did you tell
him I am try to talk with you like he tells me, not to hide – ? And to make better in the head, not the body
just, like he is concern?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What he has
say?”
“He said he’s
proud of us.”
Sláma smiled a
small smile. “Wasn’t easy,” he
said. “Me too I am proud. Afraid the next time also, if I come to you,
to be difficult for me still — but — we will be all right, Sarah, yes?”
“God, yes,” she
said, sitting on the bed and smoothing-down the collar of his shirt. Sláma had
loosened his tie: she slipped it back up
in place.
“How I look?”
asked Sláma, nervous now. Frances was
older than her brother by four years;
she would hardly have the same uncomplicated, uncritical child’s
response to him that Charles had had.
“You look
wonderful,” she said, “a sight for sore eyes.”
“You make for
this new cover,” he said, patting the counterpane, “but it feels same like
before. Has feathers in, yes? We sleep under that Christmas when I am
come. Was warm even with no
pyjamas… mmmm. Also towels in bathroom, they are same. Green
with strip down. Stripe. ”
She looked at
him. “What don’t you remember? You haven’t forgotten a thing, have you!”
“I hope not,” he
said. “In prison you think about a lot
of things… you try not to lose one detail.
Before in RAF I try to forget some of it because it is too much hurt.
But after in prison then I remember because it’s comfort. That it has happened good things to me one
day. Your house, your garden, the place
we stay in London… your knickers in my car!”
A door
slammed. “Mummy, mummy, where is
he? Auntie Bea said you went to get
Franta – where is he?”
Sláma drew
breath. “Má dcera… ” he murmured.
“Sarah, let me get up... I want
to see my daughter – our daughter…!” He
sat up, got his feet to the floor.
Frances had the
same idea, it seemed. She ran up the stairs two at a time, arriving in a rush
on the landing and almost crashing into the wall on the turn. And then she was standing in the doorway,
four feet from Sláma.
Her eyes dropped
from his face to the counterpane, where her mother’s hand was still in Sláma’s,
and back again. Her eyes widened, but
she said nothing. It seemed she felt a
little overwhelmed, too.
“Darling, here’s
Franta,” said Sarah softly. “They let
him go, just like we’ve been praying for.”
“Hello, Franta,”
she said. She had her mother’s nose, her
mother’s milk-and-roses skin; his chin
and eyes. She could have been his little
sister Eva.
“Hello,
Frances,” he said, “yes, I am Franta. I
am very happy to see you… ”
“Were you
asleep? Did I wake you?”
“I was
awake. Yes, before I slept, it’s not
good manners the middle of the day but I was tired, I’ve come long way.”
“From
Czechoslovakia,” she said, “Mummy showed us. In the atlas. Where you were. Was it awful, in prison?”
“Yes,” he said,
“yes, it was, srdíèko. But now
I’m not there, I’m here. So it’s
better.”
“Is that how you say it! Say it again…”
“What?”
“Sr-jeech-ko. Mummy says it but she doesn’t say it like that. It sounds English when mummy says it.”
“Srdíèko,” he
said, “má dcera.”
“What did you
say?”
“I am saying
sweetheart, or it’s also darling — my child.”
It was all right to say that, wasn’t it?
It wasn’t like my daughter, it was just a tenderness you’d use to a
child. Many people had called him my
child, or even my son and sonny, when he was little. Specially they did to the Sláma children,
that had no father of their own.
Frances dropped
her satchel. Her eyes were almost
starting out of her face. She was pale,
except where roses of emotion bloomed in her cheeks.
“Mummy said I
wouldn’t remember you,” she said, “but I do.
I remembered you when you said that.
I thought it was a dream… We fed
the ducks. There was a dead bird and it
had a long beak. I put leaves on
it. You sang. Mummy cried.
We had tea in a shop. You took
the tomato out of my sandwich.”
“Proboha,” said
Sláma.
She came a few
steps closer. “Mummy said I was too
little to remember,” she said, “she didn’t tell me those things. I just know we
did them.”
“You have good
memory,” said Sláma, somehow, past the constriction in his throat.
“We’ve been
waiting for you,” she said. “I ran all
the way home from school.”
“Me too I’m
excited,” he said.
His daughter
came all the way up to Sláma, where he sat on the edge of the bed. She put her hand out slowly and touched his
face by one of the bruises. “Who hurt
you?” she said, indignant.
“It’s past now,”
said Sláma. “That was my life
before. Now I’m here. Is that all right?”
Frances nodded,
biting her lip. He saw a constraint in
her.
“What?” he
asked, softly. “I’ll try not to –
how-you-say – disturb you – I know you have a way that it is with your mummy
here and I won’t get in the way, I will try anyway. And you don’t have to like me, not right
away... People have to get to know each other, don’t they?”
She leaned
forward; put her cheek by Sláma’s, and
whispered in his ear: “Can I talk to you
by myself?”
Sláma turned to
Sarah. “Do you mind? I think – Frances has something she wants to
talk to me about… ”
Sarah raised her
eyebrows at her daughter, amusement and curiosity in her eyes. “Feel free,” she said, “I’ll go and put the
kettle on again.”
“Now,” said
Sláma gently, “you can tell me anything, I won’t be upset. Even if it’s bad and you don’t want to say
it. People must always say, yes? It’s
better, so.”
Frances looked
him up and down. There was something he
couldn’t read in her gaze, but it reminded him of the look his sisters had worn
when he left them behind to go play with the boys and they wanted so badly to
come with him.
“Why did you
sing to me?” she asked him.
He smiled. This
wasn’t too hard. She must have been
turning that strange and wonderful day over in her thoughts, bewildered by
it. He had been bewildered by it
himself, not to say overwhelmed, so it was hardly surprising if it had somehow
stuck with her, too. “Because you have
ask me to,” he said, “and your mummy was singing and she couldn’t sing any more
and still you are want song. So I sing
you.”
She nodded
gravely. “Why did we put leaves on the
bird?”
“Because it was
dead,” he said, “and you were sad. You
wanted to take it because you were little and you didn’t understand, and so
instead we put leaves, so it can go back to the ground, because it’s dead.”
Her face was
inches from his, her look intense. He
was reminded of the interrogations he’d had, except that this one was performed
with the fierce desire to know, to understand, and not to hurt.
“Why did you take the tomato out of my
sandwich?” she asked.
He smiled,
then. “That’s easy. Because you don’t like. You tell me.
So I take out for you.”
“What happened
to your teeth?”
He felt
self-conscious then, thought perhaps he shouldn’t have smiled at her, since he
was so ugly just at the moment. Perhaps
he had frightened her. He said, “I had accident, in Czechoslovakia, and they
came out. I’m sorry, it’s not good to
see. I can’t help. Don’t be afraid, I’m not bad man. Here I think I will find dentist to help me
put back, yes? So it won’t look so
bad?” He couldn’t keep the sadness from
his voice, at the thought he had come
home a fright, upset his children.
“I don’t care
about that,” she said, “I just wanted to know.”
“Thank you,” he
said, moved.
Frances had not
finished with him. “My father said you
have to eat things even when you don’t like them. He said it was good for you.”
“Oh,” said
Sláma, “well, everybody thinks what they think.
Me, I have spent the war eating carrots and I’m not a better person, I
think. But he was your father, so you
must listen his opinion. Because we
respect our parents, yes?”
A quick grin
flashed across her frowning face, before it resumed its focus. “Why did mummy
cry?” she asked.
Sláma felt his
shoulders slump a little. “Because she
was sad,” he said.
“Why was she
sad?”
“Because we are
used have be close, good friends, and now I am go away to my country and we
don’t see any more. So we are saying
goodbye. Sometimes goodbye it’s sad.”
“My father was
sad,” she said.
“Yes,” said
Sláma, “I heard that. It must have be
difficult for him, to be hurt in the war so he can’t walk with you and carry
you on his shoulders.”
“You did,” she
said. “It was high… I could see a lot.”
The flame in her eyes was brighter than ever.
He nodded.
“I wanted you to be my daddy,” she said, that
yearning in her face again. “That’s why
I remembered. It was like a dream.”
“Me also,” he
said, touched to the quick, “it was special day. Like a dream for me too. I am touch you remember so long time, from
when you are small.”
She touched the
cleft in his chin, so like her own. “I
thought you weren’t. I just wanted it to
be true. But you are, aren’t you,” she
said. It didn’t sound like a question.
“What?” he asked
her, confused by her statement and the straightforward way she made it. What was she telling him? Surely she didn’t mean….
“You’re my real
daddy,” she said, “aren’t you.”
Sláma’s skin
went cold, every hair standing-up.
Stunned, as if struck by lightning, he swallowed. No words would come. He wondered what she felt, as she said it so
calmly. This pronouncement didn’t seem to bother her: in fact, she said it with the air of someone
whose cherished dream has come true. Of
all things, he had not expected this.
Dear god, what should he say?
Didn’t he owe it to Charles Strickland to deny it? And surely at least he couldn’t say yes
without asking Sarah…
Frances
stretched out her hand again, touched his cheek. He put his over it. “That’s why you did all those things, isn’t
it,” she said. “Like a daddy does. The things I remember.”
He didn’t deny
it. His heart wouldn’t let him, not to his own child. How could he? He said nothing, instead.
“Don’t worry,”
she said, “I won’t tell Charles. He really wanted you to be his daddy too. I told you, we’ve been waiting for you to
come. He’d be jealous if he knew you
really were mine. But you’ll be like his
daddy too, won’t you? He does want one…
a proper daddy… ”
“I will be
whatever you want,” he said.
“Why did you go
away?” she said. “Why did you go away,
if you were my daddy and it made mummy cry?”
He closed his
eyes at the memory. “Because I think it
was better,” he said. “I couldn’t – live with you. I wanted to.
But your – your father Charles is come back and nobody thinks he is
going to. And he is married your mother,
long time. It was too complicated, for a
girl of eight years old to understand everything – even a very intelligent one
like you, who understands so much. It
was too complicated for me also, I think.
I too, I couldn’t understand.
Only that I had to do right thing, not to hurt more your mother. But you must know this only — that everybody
has loved you, Frances. Me also.”
Frances put her
arms round Sláma’s neck. “I won’t tell,”
she whispered. “I just wanted to
know. Don’t cry, Franta.”
“Sorry,” he whispered
back, “I don’t cry. It’s all right.”
Her arms were
slight and strong. He clasped her
lightly, not wanting to frighten her, but she gripped him harder than
that. “Mummy’s been unhappy,” she said. “I tried to be good… ”
“You don’t have
to try more, not now,” said Sláma, his throat aching again. He knew how it was when your father died and
you tried so hard to be good, not to trouble your matka any more than she was
already troubled. “It’s for parents to
take care. So you can be yourself. I hope now your mummy will not be so
sad. Me too I’m work to make it happy
here — ”
Frances was
solid and real in his arms, clinging to him.
She was dressed in a school-uniform of red sweater over a white blouse
and grey skirt, with grey knee-socks;
her hair was tied-back with grips and thin red ribbons. He allowed himself to stroke it. It filled his palm and fingers as he lifted
it, thick and curly as his had been when she was conceived. Perhaps his would grow back that way, a
little less of it now and streaked, alas, but still mostly dark and curly?
There was a
knock at the door, the clink of cups on a tray.
“Mrs. Watson was ahead of me with the kettle…. tea, anyone?” came
Sarah’s voice, softly.
Frances drew
back, looked at Sláma owlishly. “Shall
we tell her?” she whispered, “I think I wasn’t supposed to know. But I just did. I think I always knew. But I thought it was just a dream – and then now when I saw you… ”
“You choose,”
said Sláma. “For me, I like the truth
always. It’s better, so... especially to
the person that you love. For them to
know, what is on your mind. But it’s up
to you, for now. Maybe later she has to
know that you know. But now, you
choose... Yes, come in, srdíèko, we just are talking about you. It’s nice, what we say.”
Sarah came in,
laden with the tea-tray. Mrs. Watson had
set-out more slices of apple-cake, of course, golden and moist; also there were small sandwiches heaped on a
plate, brown-bread and egg, white-bread and ham; and a jam tart baked on a plate and decorated
with twisted strips of pastry. “She’s
not putting up with it,” she smiled, “Bea can’t stand to see you all skin and
bone, not if she has anything to say about it.”
Sláma saw
something sparkle on her hand: his ring.
“Oooh, lovely!”
cried Frances, “I’m starving! School
dinner was horrid today – stew with swede!”
“Darling, Auntie
Bea set you a place downstairs at the kitchen-table. She’s expecting you — ”
Sláma took the
tray from Sarah, set it carefully on the bed. He looked at Frances and raised
his eyebrows; his daughter nodded, an
odd look on her face. Well, it was a big
secret to have been holding to her little heart all this time, wasn’t it, he
thought. She might well look odd, with
it right there in front of her now, confirmed, large as life – himself, the
mysterious and mythical Franta come back from memory into this poor
knocked-about reality. But she looked
brave also, like her mother the day Sarah had come to him to ask him if he
wanted her the same way she wanted him…
brave enough to claim what was rightfully hers.
“There’s enough
here to share,” he said, “if you don’t mind, miláèku. Frances has something she wants to talk
to you about… ”
“I want you to
teach me all those words,” said Frances, “the ones you say. The way you say them.”
“Of
course,” said Sláma. “Have a sandwich, má dcera, and so
then tell mummy what is on your mind, yes, srdíèko?”
“Mummy,” began
Frances, helping herself to a ham-sandwich, “I never told you, because I didn’t
want to hurt your feelings. But I never
wanted Father to be my real daddy.
Because he was sad all the time and he didn’t play with us and – and –
he read the books he liked, not the books we asked him for, he said they were
for babies, and – and – when I asked him things, he didn’t really answer… and
he made me eat stuff I didn’t like – and I had a dream — about a daddy that was
different… ”
“Sit down,
Sarah,” said Sláma softly, seeing her holding onto the door-frame.
She did so,
reaching for his hand. Hers
trembled; he squeezed it reassuringly. She thinks this is a child, he thought, but
it’s a small person reaching for what is really true in the world… For what it
is she can count on. Say it, má
dcera, he urged her in his mind.
Frances looked at him then, as if for permission, and he tried to look
encouraging in a mild way.
Frances finished
her sandwich, reached for another. She
searched her mother’s face to see if it was all right to go on.
“Go on,” said
Sarah.
“It was Franta,
all the time,” said Frances triumphantly, “I knew! He loved me like a real daddy. I remembered him… you said I couldn’t and I
believed you, but I did, I did! And it
was him… it was Franta! My daddy!
In my dream… He didn’t want to go
away, but he had to — he’s always wanted to be my daddy — right?” She turned to Sláma for confirmation.
He gave the
slightest nod.
Frances turned
to her mother. “I asked him,” she said.
“Don’t be cross with him. He
didn’t say yes. He didn’t tell me. I asked him.
Because I already knew — ”
Sarah’s eyes
filled with tears.
“It’s all right,
mummy,” said Frances. “I didn’t tell you
about my dream because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. That I wanted a different daddy. We can still go to Father’s grave and put
flowers there. And call him Father. And I won’t tell Charles – he’s too little to
know. That Franta’s really my
daddy. He’d be jealous, anyway. But we can be a proper family, now – can’t
we? And he’s going to go to Mr. Dixon to
get some new teeth. I asked him – Franta.
And we’ll make him all better from prison, right?”
Sarah put her
hand to her mouth.
“I thought I
dreamed it,” said Frances again, between bites. She finished that sandwich too,
cheerfully.
“Darling,” said
Sarah huskily, “then there’s something else you ought to know… if we’re talking
about these things. Big things. Private things, right? He’s Charles’s daddy, too. Both of you.
Right, Franta?”
“Yes, said
Sláma, “it’s true.”
Frances
gasped. “He’s going to be so happy!” she
cried, “can I tell him?”
“Ssshhh,” said
Sláma gently, “I think not yet. It’s a
thing you can know at eight years old because you are big girl already and you
know what is private, not to talk about to people, don’t you? Because your other father he didn’t deserve
to be talked-about now he is dead. But
Charles, he’s four years old and he won’t be able to keep it inside, yes? Not the way you have done, such a big girl
you are. Is that right, Sarah, srdíèko?”
Sarah nodded.
“Please,” said
Sláma, “pour me this cup of tea you have brought? I am – it’s almost again too much, I need…
you understand?”
She smiled at
him tenderly, seeing with that plea how hard he was trying to keep his emotion
under control for Frances’ sake.
Frances sat down
happily at the end of the bed. “Now,
teach me, Franta,” she said. “Sr-jeech-ko?”
“Srdíèko,” he
said.
“And what’s
this? Nose?”
“Nosem.”
“Eyes?”
“Oèi – má
krásné oèi, that’s ‘You
have beautiful eyes.’”
“Mazh krazni
o-chee?”
“Ani –
yes.”
“What’s
this?” She pointed to the little valley
between lips and nose.
“We don’t have
word by itself – we say, údolíčko nad rty.”
“What can I call
you that means daddy so it’s secret?”
“Franta is good…
”
“No, that’s your
name. I mean really daddy… ”
“Tata,” he said.
Her eyes
shone. “My tata,” she said. “My really tata.”
Sarah looked at
Sláma.
“I never have
tata,” he said. “Always I want. You are lucky girl, Frances, you have two.”
“My tata,” she
said, kissing his cheek, being careful to avoid the bruise. “Have a sandwich, tata, you’re too thin… I’m going to watch you eat it.”
“Ani, má
dcera,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s yes, my
daughter.”
Her eyes
danced. “Too little to remember!” she
said, “ – to remember my own tata? My
daddy that sang to me?”
“You’re right,”
said Sarah, “I was wrong. You weren’t
too little.”
“I rode on his
shoulders, too,” said Frances. “I
remember everything. It felt
special. It’s the first thing I
remember. I don’t remember anything
before that. But I remember that.”
Sláma cupped her
rosy cheek with his hand. With her
mother’s lovely complexion and his dark eyes and hair, she looked like the Snow
White of the storybooks: really a
striking child.
He thought about
the moment he saw the photograph of her growing-up, in Sarah’s letter that
Poindexter gave him. God, how poignantly it had struck him then, these
beautiful children he and Sarah had made:
made in love, in trust, in the force of their human connecting. Children he had thought never to know; that it must be enough for him just to
believe that they existed because of him – and that he could pray for them,
think of them, hold to the thought of them….
“Some things you don’t forget, yes?” he agreed, softly.
“Right,” she
said. “Like that one. Franta – tata – stop crying, and have another
sandwich.”
Sarah took his
other hand in both of hers, pressed it.
It hurt, but he wouldn’t have told her so for the world, because she was
doing it out of love and emotion. He had
no hand left to wipe his face with. There was nothing to be ashamed of here,
was there? Was this weakness?
No; he thanked god for it, that he was alive and
here to feel all he felt.
“Have another
sandwich, tata,” said
“Ani, má
dcera,” he said.
Finis