Devastation Road Page 23

  ‘God. Looks like a bloody lung,’ grumbled Haynes.

  But Owen had seen it as a scarlet heart or a box kite sent up on a string held by him and his father.

  In the bedroom of The Swallow hotel, booked under the name of Gainsborough, he had sketched her. Not the mechanics of her. No guidelines. Not the muscles or structure of bones or where the heart might sit or the liver or lungs or how the major arteries ran through her body like wires. He sketched her clothed in only her skin as she sat on the end of the bed, her head turned to the window.

  My face, she had said with a smile.

  He glanced up at her over the edge of the paper.

  I want you to draw my face.

  The man was called Myska. He was a small, timid creature with surprisingly large earlobes and a diminishing hairline that had retreated to such a degree that it now formed little more than a crown around his head.

  At first Janek didn’t seem to know him but the man was evidently pleased to see him, grabbing him out of the throng of people, talking fast and excitedly, all the time holding Janek’s arm and gesturing at perhaps how well he looked or how tall, and then talking just as fast at Owen, not realizing that he was English and hadn’t the slightest idea what the man was going on about.

  ‘Myska?’ Janek said eventually.

  ‘Ano! Ano!’ said the man.

  Janek’s face cracked into a smile and then a laugh. ‘Myska!’ He clutched the man by the arms and they gave each other an awkward hug, squeezing each other hard.

  ‘Josef Myska,’ Janek said. He held his head between his fists and circled about. He clearly couldn’t believe it.

  Owen wondered whether he should wander back to the tents and leave the two of them to it. Nearby a couple of French girls from the Mission Militaire de Liaison Administrative were trying to teach a group of Russians how to dance the jitterbug. Someone shrieked. Another firecracker whizzed through. Otmar and Mikoláš were shouting and laughing.

  Janek dragged Owen over and slapped him on the back. ‘Josef Myska.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen. ‘So I gather. Nice to meet you.’ He shook the man’s hand.

  ‘He is my friend. He is . . . er . . .’ He spun around on his foot with excitement and frustration. Then he pulled his wallet out and took out a newspaper clipping. He pointed out a man in a photograph, a man too short to be seen within the demonstration but for a hand held up in a clenched fist. Janek held Myska’s own hand up and manipulated the fingers into that same fist. ‘Myska,’ he said. ‘Look, look!’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Owen. ‘Very good. So you’re the one with the armband. I remember now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Janek. ‘Old friend.’

  ‘Old friend,’ said the man. He thumped his fist in the air and shouted. ‘Československo Čechoslovákům!’

  ‘Československo Čechoslovákům!’ Janek yelled.

  Both of them laughed, then they took each other in a headlock and circled around for some time, grappling playfully.

  ‘Kde je Petr?’ said Janek, releasing him and still laughing. ‘Je tady Petr?’ He looked around as if expecting his brother to appear from a tent or walk out from among the people around them, drunkenly dancing and shouting.

  ‘Myska and Petr,’ he said to Owen. ‘Jsme bratři.’ He squeezed the two fingers of one hand together. ‘Yes? Comrades. Československo Čechoslovákům!’ he bellowed again, punching the air. This was where his revolution would start – from here in the camp now that Myska was here with him and surely Petr too.

  ‘Kde je Petr?’ he said again anxiously.

  Myska then said something: ‘Není tady.’

  ‘Co?’ Janek’s tone changed. The enthusiasm and fervour fell from his face. He asked the man the same question again. This time it sounded more like a demand but the man gave the same reply, then added, ‘Opustil nás.’

  ‘Ne,’ said Janek. He shook his head, but the man nodded.

  ‘Je v Americe,’ the man said. ‘Už nevěří našemu poselství.’

  Janek’s frown tightened. ‘Ne,’ he said. ‘Ne.’ He shook his head again and kept on shaking it, saying the same thing again and again, over the top of everything this man was trying to tell him. ‘Ne. Ne,’ he spat.

  Then, without warning, the boy hurled himself at Myska, bringing the man heavily to the ground, and he had smashed two punches into the man’s face, shouting, ‘Lháři! Lháři!’ before Owen had a chance to pull the boy, still kicking and then sobbing, from him.

  ‘Můj bratr,’ he said to Owen. ‘Gone.’ Then, with a voice that bellowed out of him, he shouted it out: ‘Traitor!’

  Owen found him among the trees, some distance outside the camp, far from the muffled voices and singing and the heady sounds of music.

  Josef Myska had gone, shouting abuse at Janek and Owen as he wiped the blood from his nose. There was no sight of Otmar and Mikoláš either – the first sign of trouble and the boys had disappeared. Now Owen sat beside Janek on an overturned oil barrel, the woods around them dressed in gloom, with only the slight gleam of moonlight catching on the leaves. The boy was huddled with his knees up, the torn flag wrapped around him like a blanket. Owen didn’t know what to say. In the photograph that Janek had shown him, Petr had been a soldier, but through the newspaper clippings Owen had seen and the snatches of things he’d understood, the man had grown to become something else. A revolutionary, someone had said. Or a resistance fighter. A member of the Czech underground. Or just an idealist who had pulled other people in with him only to lose faith in it and wrangle himself a flight to America, abandoning the hopes and love and loyalty of all the people he once knew.

  He saw how similar he and Janek were now, both caught up too much in the lives of brothers whom they could never keep up with, and chasing after shadows when all they had really needed was to stand up on their own. Janek seemed so young now, like a child again, wrapped in a flag that was made of nothing but ripped and sewn bits of material and painted with a blurred and faded symbol. He wondered when the boy had last seen his brother. On their journey together, Owen had always imagined Petr might simply appear from the trees one day, elusive to the end.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said under his breath. ‘I wanted to thank you, for pulling me out. For saving my life.’ He had been meaning to say it for some time.

  The boy gave a faint smile, then brought his arm out from under the wraps of the flag and rested it lightly on Owen’s shoulder. The moonlight caught in the glass of his watch – the watch that Owen had mended for him and was now fastened around his wrist.

  Owen returned to the party and the warmth of the braziers. A collective drunkenness had infused the revellers, the whirl of dancing and cacophony of sounds merging into a wash that even in his own soberness made him feel sick. And between the swirl of bodies, he could just about see them – Anneliese holding the infant in its papoose and Janek leaning against the side of a building, his arms folded, a bottle of something held in his hand that occasionally he would uncross his arms to slug from, stone-faced, and then knit them back together. Owen could see that Anneliese was pouring out a desperate babble of words. She would turn herself inside out for the boy. Owen had said to her that she couldn’t live with those lies.

  ‘Believe me. I know.’

  Now here she was cutting herself open in front of the boy. This is who I am. Janek gave her nothing. He let her talk and talk herself into crying, and then the baby too. She was pleading with him, this girl whom Owen thought maybe Janek had fallen for, but now everything was changed. Then he saw the boy drop his arms. He drew himself up and he spat into her face.

  Owen pushed hurriedly through as Janek strode away. He grabbed hold of Anneliese by the arm and led her swiftly away from the crowd, the spit still there on her face. Her eyes were full of shock.

  ‘He spat at me,’ she said.

  ‘He thinks you betrayed him. You slept with him. You let him fall for you. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘But I didn’t mean to,’ she s
aid. ‘I didn’t want it to matter. Why does it matter what I am? I didn’t do anything to hurt his people.’

  He took her to a doorstep and sat her down, the baby still crying in her arms. It was dark and cold away from the fires and she held the infant close, her eyes staring, wet and glittering. How fragile she had become, he thought, now that she wasn’t Irena; how vulnerable and broken. She sat there, gently rocking the infant, trying not to cry.

  Owen didn’t know what to say that would comfort her. In the morning the trucks would come to take Janek away, and a car to take away him. No decision had been made about Anneliese other than that it was impossible for her to stay at the camp.

  ‘I’m glad the baby is well again,’ he said. ‘I tried to see him on the ward but he’d already been discharged.’ He didn’t tell her that he’d looked for her too but hadn’t been able to find her. ‘What will you do?’ he said.

  She was silent, and then she lifted the infant a little. He was quiet now, dozing in her arms.

  ‘Will you take the child?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’ He held his hands out.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean will you take it with you? When you go.’

  He paused.

  ‘Please.’

  He felt himself flush. ‘I can’t,’ he said quietly. ‘How can I?’

  There was a silence.

  He stared at her. ‘Oh good Lord, Anneliese, you know I can’t do that.’

  ‘I could leave it again,’ she said after a while. ‘I could put it down somewhere and—’

  ‘No. I thought you were going to find the father. You might still find Krysztof. Who knows? Maybe he will take him; maybe he will love him. People change. Wars change people.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘His name was on one of the lists from the other camps. I saw it on a noticeboard.’

  ‘That’s good news then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not that list,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’

  Krzysztof Krakowski was dead.

  Another silence grew between them, long and large enough for the space to fill again with music and voices around them, and the crackle of a bonfire.

  ‘I can’t take the child,’ he said again. ‘You know that. I’m sorry.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  At 1745 at RAF Warboys – the Huntingdonshire airfield Owen had been stationed at since he’d completed his training – they were called into the briefing room where Group Captain Collings gave them their operational instructions. After a first sortie to Hamburg three nights before, they would be going out again.

  Max had been out of sorts all day, and in the crew briefing he took several verbal swipes at Owen that made even Budgie, their navigator, raise an eyebrow. Owen tried to think nothing of it. They were all tired. The squadron had already lost a Lancaster on the first sortie, taking six men with it. The strain was starting to show. It was a week since Owen had been reposted to the airfield – and since he had made his last deceitful trip to Caversham Rise, while Max had been journeying from where he’d been previously based at Wickenby.

  Owen remembered when he’d first walked into the Warboys canteen.

  I’m nabbing this FE, Max had shouted to anyone who cared to listen as he leapt over to the table to grapple Owen around the neck. That’s my brother. Best bloody FE you boys are going to see.

  Barely a week in, though, and something had abruptly changed.

  By 2130 they were at their lockers, nervously checking their kit and pulling their flying suits on over their uniforms, then their flying boots and parachute harnesses, fixing their shoulder straps. They collected up all the paraphernalia of gloves, helmets, oxygen masks with their intercoms, and then their Mae Wests. This was the point when Owen always felt most sick. By the time the WAAFs drove them out to their craft, the adrenalin was usually kicking in. Tonight, though, he felt sicker than ever, glancing across as Max did up his laces with a yank and fastened his straps.

  Dear Christ, Owen thought. He knows.

  The rest of the crew filed out.

  Blinkin’ ’eck, I hope you ain’t planning on flying at this speed, Skip, joked Tapper. We’ll never get off the bloody ground.

  Then they were gone and, as Owen turned to fix his harness, he realized that only the two of them were left.

  Max took a couple of folded sheets of paper from his locker and shut it with a clang.

  Max, for God’s sake, what—?

  But Max had already slammed Owen hard against the lockers.

  Owen gasped. Jesus Christ.

  His brother’s face was seething. I want to show you something, Max said.

  What?

  And I want you to be honest with me for once.

  What on earth are you talking about?

  Max thrust the papers hard against Owen so that he had no choice but to take them. Go on, he said. Look.

  Owen held the crumpled sheets. His heart was in his mouth. Even though they were still folded he recognized the cream weave of the paper and the worming indents of his pencil markings showing through like narrow trenches of deceit.

  I said look at them!

  His hands shaking, Owen slowly unfolded the first and stared at the drawing. It looked so pathetically childish now: the bumblebee drawn to look like a flying machine with a cog for a heart and its wire-frame wings, the pulleys and pistons for hauling the wings up and down, and swag bags of pollen that he’d humorously labelled. He had held it up to the hotel window.

  The mechanics of a bee. Reconfigured – as you can see – in the style of the late da Vinci. It had made her laugh.

  Look, Max, this isn’t what you think, he said.

  He hardly needed to unfold the second sheet – he knew what it was – but he did.

  I thought you couldn’t draw faces. I’d say you tried pretty hard with this one.

  Max was right. With the same intricacy and precision with which he had plotted every screw and rivet at Hawkers, so too had he reproduced Connie’s face: the lines in her irises, the curve of her jaw, the blemishes of tiny freckles . . . This creation though, unlike the Hurricanes or the prototype Typhoon, had been crafted out of nothing but his love.

  There was nothing in the picture to suggest that she had sat naked for him but for the bareness of her shoulders. She had said it herself: I want you to draw my face.

  I bumped into her, he blustered. In town. That’s all. We had a quick tea in . . . But he couldn’t think and he didn’t know what he was saying anyway.

  Here. Max snatched the pieces of paper and rattled them in his face. Right bloody here. You must think I’m a bloody fool.

  Owen stared at the stationery, at the small but treacherous footer:

  The Swallow-Hotel, Shepherd Market, London W1

  It was somewhere near dawn when he woke, Anneliese playing heavy on his mind. The air in the room was cold, and colder still outside as he picked his way through the parade ground, the embers of the bonfire still burning, the shadows of tents and little pockets of litter seeming to loom up out of the ground.

  He saw her up ahead hesitantly making her way with nothing but a bag, the baby and her grubby coat around her. He could hear her hushing the child, the hard soles of her shoes crunching over the stones. He knew where she was going but he did not try to catch up with her, nor did he call out to her, although he could have, the words there and ready: Don’t, Anneliese. Come back.

  She walked on oblivious, but then at the gates she stopped, hoisting the child further up on her shoulder and repositioning the strap of her bag around her neck. And then she quietly pulled the gate open and slipped delicately through. Only then did he glimpse the pale skin of her face. She turned and walked down the road, and he watched as she disappeared almost silently into the dark.

  JANEK

  Connie’s arm was wrapped around him and hot against his chest. It was the lifting of it away from him though, the unpeeling of her from him, that woke him properly.

  He op
ened his eyes.

  Has your bear lost an eye? Six words, and a hand reaching beneath the bench to pull out the button that had been lost in the dark. And she had seen right into him, perhaps heard the slight English tone in his accent, seen the tension in his neck, or the nervous way he gripped the papers, fingers stained with sweat and ink that was lifting from the documents. She had given him a chance. In the chaos that then ensued – the upheaval in the carriage this small child was making for him – he had inadvertently slipped the button into his pocket as he had made his escape. Now he sat on the bed and held it in his hand.

  He had ducked unnoticed from the carriage and was standing outside on the timbered platform holding on to the rail, looking up at the plane – sleek, silver and beautiful, turning above them as the train pulled across the bridge and the river rushed below. He had stared as the plane passed overhead, its engine guttering over the rattling clank of the train’s wheels. From the swollen belly of the plane, a single pellet appeared. He watched it fall, slowly at first and then gathering speed as it plummeted through the sky, faster and faster, falling furiously towards them.

  Out in the compound, dawn had broken and the morning was making a sluggish start. People wandered about, the odd truck kicked up stones as it rumbled through, and the medical students were trudging out in their ghost-white suits, skirting puddles where it had rained during the night. He had seen neither sight nor sound of Janek since last night’s party. But here was Anneliese, returned, standing behind the wire fence staring in, the forest stretching on behind her and the grass growing around her ankles as if she had been there as long as the trees. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide and gazing blankly at him, not with fear but bafflement. It was only then that he realized how dirty she was. Her arms were locked rigid and plastered in mud right up to her elbows. She couldn’t catch her breath.