Churchill's Triumph Page 8

  “He favors the brave.”

  “I walked for week—more. Always at night. Steal little food, throw away my officer’s uniform. I grow very weak. Then I stumbled across labor camp filled with Polish soldiers. I know there is only one way for Pole to survive in Russia, and that is as part of their slave machine. Alone, you die. So next day I smuggled myself on to work detail and into camp. They not look for that, not someone trying to get into camp. And I became Marian Nowak.”

  “Why that name?”

  “Nowak was soldier in my command. First man to be killed. At border, even before war starts. He argued with SS officer, was shot, like dog. He was brave man, loyal man. Simple man. Good man, if you want to become invisible in labor camp.”

  “And he was—a plumber.”

  “I do not know. When they ask, it was first thing in my head. There was so much confusion in camp, they have little idea who is there, so many without papers. And when they ask what I can do, I think it safer to be plumber than some sort of prince. So I trained myself to be plumber. Russian plumbing not very complicated, Mr. Churchill. And I have small gift with languages, so lifetime later I end up at Hotel Metropol.”

  “And no one ever asked? No one made inquiries?”

  “Of course. This is Russia. But it is also war. Chaos. And yet war will soon be over. We will have normal service once more. And Marian Nowak comes from Piorun, in western Poland. Soon, very soon, Russian army is there. Then they discover that Marian Nowak is dead six years ago. And his adventure will finally be over. The gentlemen of NKVD will insist.”

  Churchill retreated within a cloud of tobacco haze. He was unsure of this man. The story stretched not only the emotions but also the imagination—yet so many did. The Soviet world was an edifice of impossibilities in which there were no such things as straight lines or common sense. When eventually Churchill emerged, his tone was guarded. “Sawyers says you want our help.”

  “Yes. I want your help to live.”

  “How?”

  “If I stay in Russia I am dead. In months certainly, perhaps in weeks. I want you to take me with you when you leave.”

  “I am afraid that would not be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we are a diplomatic mission, not a baggage train. There are rules and conventions which must be observed.”

  “Like spying on your guests?”

  Churchill’s temporary lapse into silence indicated that the young Pole had scored a point.

  “There are rules about many things, Mr. Churchill. Stalin listens to none of them. He pretends to be liberator, but he sends in Cossacks. You know Cossacks, Mr. Churchill? They are very special people, special habits. When Germans raise hands to offer surrender, Cossacks prefer to slice them off with sabers. And last week they liberated German extermination camp in Poland. Its name is Auschwitz. Every female prisoner in camp who was still woman was raped, dragged from huts, even the Russian women, and—”

  Churchill waved him down. “How d’you know all this? You’re a plumber, for God’s sake.”

  “Exactly. And I live with other servants. Drivers, waiters, cleaners. We are invisible. Yet we know everything.”

  Churchill shot an uncomfortable glance in the direction of Sawyers, who was, as always, lurking nearby.

  “That is why I can be useful to you, Mr. Churchill, if we agree to help each other.”

  This time, Churchill didn’t immediately dismiss the offer.

  “I know you do not trust me—cannot trust me,” the Pole continued, “but I pray with you not to trust Stalin. You, of all people, must not trust him.”

  “Why, in particular, me?”

  “Because he dislikes you.”

  “He has no reason for that!”

  “He will never forget what you are and what you tried to do to him after last war. You are not only class enemy but his country’s enemy, too—a double danger. I think he is afraid of you a little, Mr. Churchill. But Mr. Roosevelt is different. Stalin likes him. He pities him, respects his courage because of his legs. And is nice to him because he thinks President is open to persuasion. You are not.”

  “Is that meant to be an insult?” Churchill said, angry now. A knot of tension was binding them all.

  “It depends from which side you measure it.”

  “And all this you know from gossiping with servants?” Churchill bawled, but the Pole stood his ground.

  “Stalin says you are man who smiles before trying to slip kopeck from his pocket. Roosevelt, he says, is different. The president is interested only in bigger coins. But Stalin believes you will dip for kopeck simply for pleasure.”

  That had to be the end of it. Churchill would strike back: it was the only way he knew. The young Pole would be swept away in the onslaught that would inevitably follow such a brazen insult. But, instead, something turned inside the old man. The face that had been crossed with concern lightened and, little by little, a chuckle emerged, one that grew in strength until the old man was wiping his eyes with the corner of his bed sheet. “I don’t know who you are, or what you are,” he chortled, “but one thing’s for certain, you’re a bloody terrible plumber!”

  “So, in this matter of honor, you will help me, Mr. Churchill?”

  Churchill reached once more for his cigar, a sure sign he needed more time for the struggle with his thoughts. “I’m not sure. I can’t see how anything can be done, but…” He waved towards the bathroom. “Better fix the leak. Then we’ll see.”

  The Pole stood firm, reluctant to leave without an answer.

  “I will think about it, and if I think it appropriate I will summon you,” Churchill said dismissively. “So you’d better not make too good a job of the pipework.”

  “That is not problem.”

  Anyway, what shall we call you? Nowak? Ratsinski?”

  “It is pronounced Raczynski. But I do not think there will be much need for Polish aristocrats after this war, so. . . let it be Nowak. A brave man died with that name. I am proud to live with it.” He picked up his bag, yet hesitated once more. “Mr. Churchill, you must understand, I do not worry for myself. I am not so important. But last time I leave my home in Warsaw I have—I had—wife and baby girl. I need to know. What happened. So I must respectfully insist you take me with you, not for my sake, but for my little girl.”

  “I understand, Mr. Nowak.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Then he was gone, and soon the sound of dropped tools and clattering pipes floated out of the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, the job was done and the Pole was at the door, preparing to leave. Churchill was still in bed, trying to ignore him.

  “One thing I forgot to tell you,” the Pole said, almost as an afterthought. “The meeting between Mr. Roosevelt and Stalin yesterday. It was very private—only two leaders and interpreters. Apart from when they ask waiter to bring coffee. That was when they discuss British Empire.”

  “What?” Churchill exploded, sending an avalanche of papers tumbling to the floor.

  “Perhaps there are other things I have forgotten to tell you,” the Pole said. “We shall see.” He offered a smart salute as he left.

  ***

  The incident occurred shortly after Churchill had left for the Livadia. Sawyers related it to Sarah that evening.

  “I were in his bedroom mindin’ me own and ironin’ me trousers, not dressed for visitors, when door opens. No knockin’ or nowt, mind. And in comes this young lass. How can I put it to you, Miss Sarah? Even in her uniform you could tell she had what you might call…” he stretched for the word “… an athletic disposition.”

  He wriggled his eyebrows and Sarah giggled. Sawyers was a gifted mimic with an elastic pink face that seemed to store any number of dramatic expressions; a generation earlier he might have been in music hall.

  “So she�
��s standin’ there, smilin’, carryin’ this tray of cakes. And me standin’ at ironin’ board all knobble knees and shirt-tails. So she’s beckonin’ to me, sort of suggestin’ like we might have tea together, as gals do. And the more I’m shakin’ me head at her, the more she’s wavin’ at me. I had to stand on me principles very firm, I did, very firm, Miss Sarah.”

  “A man of iron, you are, Sawyers.”

  “And blow me down if ten minutes later an electrician doesn’t burst in. No knockin’. No hello, no how’s-your-father—nowt. Miserable face he had, all saggy, like an ’and-me-down sweater. But big shoulders, b-i-i-ig.” Sawyers spread his hands extravagantly to indicate the girth, and his eyes bulged with amazement. “And he had a screwdriver the size of a bayonet stickin’ from his bag, God’s truth, he did. So he ignores me and starts fiddlin’ wi’ the plug. You know, the one we broke wi’ the bedside lamp? Has his back to me so’s I can see nowt of what he’s doin’. So I shouts at him, but he don’t flinch, let alone turn. So I shouts some more, and he just gets on wi’ job even faster. It were clear he weren’t going to move. Brazen he were, Miss Sarah, bra-a-azen. And I guessed he must be one of those YMCA characters.”

  “NKVD.”

  “Probably one of them buggers, too. So I’m standin’ there practically in me altogether wonderin’ what on earth I can do. I can’t let him go fixin’ what Mr. Churchill took such care to smash. So I takes me courage in me hands, so to speak, and I cross to the door. And I’m closing it, like. Very quiet. Very quiet. And that were the first time he takes any notice of me. So then I cross the room and I’m kneelin’ down right besides him.”

  “What—in your. . . ?”

  “Me altogether, that’s right, miss. And all of a sudden he’s got eyes like an owl, he has. Strugglin’ to take everythin’ in. Should’ve seen him, Miss Sarah. Eyes rollin’ all over the place. He looked at me, shirt buttons strainin’, me legs all uncovered and pink, then he looks over to closed door. That’s when I give him one of me smiles.”

  “One of those Brighton-seafront smiles, eh?”

  “Oh, miss!”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Dunno. He were runnin’ away too fast for me to hear.”

  She burst into laughter, hugging herself with pleasure. She wanted to hug him, too, but he was a servant and that would be going too far. Yet he was the most devoted of creatures, almost superhuman in his loyalty to her father, and in her view that allowed him the little mysteries of his private life. Suddenly, however, her expression changed. Little creases of concern gathered round her eyes. “But what would you have done, Sawyers, if. . . if he had. . . ” She trailed off, unwilling to complete the thought.

  It was the turn of Sawyers to give himself a hug of English pleasure.

  ***

  Nowak. From Piorun. It was a small community nestling in the fold of a broad, winding river, and set back from the major routes on which the armies of invasion had marched throughout many centuries. It had often been overlooked, much to its good fortune. Everything in Piorun was on a small scale: modest houses, narrow doors, straw roofs, gardens separated by low fences over which the women would lean and gossip, keeping an eye on the children. Few owned more than a single horse or cow, and most of those who did had had them confiscated. There was little industry: the people found a living largely in the patchwork of surrounding fields and scattered forests, yet they shared a keen sense of community that was focused around the main packed-earth square, which was both meeting point and marketplace. It held the only two buildings of any significance in the town: the church, and the two-story wooden building on the opposite side, that served as either mayor’s office or school, depending on which entrance you used. A row of young alders stood along one side, giving shade to the mayor’s office, and a garland of leaves and flowers hung above the church door, but by February it had been reduced to a handful of withered brown stalks. The square stood at the end of what was mockingly called Boulevard 3rd May, although in truth this was little more than a rutted ribbon of rocks and mud. The boulevard was one of the few pretensions of the plain, simple people of Piorun.

  It was also fortunate in some measure that Piorun lay only twenty miles from the German border and not much more than a hundred from Berlin. On the first day of the war, the panzers had passed it quickly by. There wasn’t any opportunity for the sort of resistance that was to bring disaster tumbling down upon so many other Polish towns. And there were no Jews, never had been. But the war didn’t completely neglect Piorun: many young men went off to the army and, when the battle had been lost, threw in their lot with the underground. Most of the other men of working age who remained, and also many of the women, were taken away by the Germans for forced labor as part of what was called the pacification campaign, which only encouraged an even greater number to take to a life among the forests of elm, oak and beech. Some Volksdeutsche moved in, as they did all over the Greater German Reich, grabbing the best of the land, forcing the owners out of their homes to live in mud-floored hovels, but in Piorun the Volksdeutsche were relatively few in number and huddled together on the outskirts in a community that became known as the Settlement. The inhabitants that remained in Piorun during the Occupation, the old, the young, the wounded and infirm, were left to lead a life of obscurity and, for wartime Poland, relative lack of hardship. No one actually starved—at least, not until the last, most terrible winter of the war.

  The local German garrison was the 1147th Fusilier Battalion of the 563rd Volksgrenadier Division—there were so many designations and divisions nowadays, so many gaps that had to be filled, like mushrooms spawning in a dark cellar. Yet the men of the 1147th enjoyed the obscurity of Piorun. There was no glory in it, but many had already encountered the glories of the Russian front and had developed an affection for dullness. They didn’t press the inhabitants any harder than necessary, they tried to turn a blind eye to the widespread pilfering and black-market activities, and they worked hard to avoid offering reasons for a visit from anyone higher up the Nazi food chain. Yet as the frontiers of the Greater Reich drew in, everything became a little more brutal. The garrison commander was sent off to find fame at the front—not for any misdemeanor, but simply because he was a whole man—and many of his men were ordered after him. They were replaced by the old and the very young, drafted from the Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth, and those who had experienced the worst of the war, who knew it was being lost, and who neither knew nor cared for the people of this place.

  It was a coincidence for this story that the burmistrz, or mayor, of Piorun was Stanislaw Nowak, the father of Marian. It would have made no difference to events if he had been a Kula, an Andrzeyevski, a Smolarski or a Gawlik, or a member of any of the other families who had lived in Piorun for generations, for Piorun was very much a family affair. Yet the coincidence added to the sorrow. So when it became clear that Piorun and all the other parts of Poland would not remain much longer in German hands, the abuses began in earnest. A thirteen-year-old boy found out after curfew was beaten to death, leaving terrible marks in the snow. Another who had thrown stones at a passing truck was dragged from his mother’s kitchen and disappeared. Rape of any young woman became commonplace. Yet the incident that most stirred the hearts of those left in Piorun was the abuse of a fifty-six-year-old grandmother who was set upon in her own home by three drunken soldiers of the Wehrmacht. They subjected her to unimaginable indignities, and only let her live so that she could tell the tale. Piorun was catching up rapidly with the rest of the country.

  And then the rumor spread that the retreating Nazis, as a last act of hatred for the Poles, were executing all elected officials in the communities they were being forced to abandon. The local doctor heard it first, and he whispered it to the innkeeper. It spread quickly and soon the whole town knew. Stanislaw Nowak was the only elected official in Piorun: he was not only widely respected for his common decency but also related by blood or marr
iage to many others in the town. So at mass on Sunday—the only community gathering allowed by the German authorities—he was instructed by his fellow townsfolk to leave. The priest—also a Nowak, the mayor’s brother—even took for his text Exodus 14, the flight of the Jews from Egypt. Partly because of the common decencies for which he was renowned, Nowak was at first reluctant to quit his post, but he had already lost both sons to this war and he was told, with inflexible firmness, that it was his duty to draw a line under his family’s suffering and to go.

  The priest blessed him, every member of the congregation hugged him, and by nightfall he was with the underground of the Home Army in the forest. He was fortunate that, after the worst and most vicious winter of the war, the thaw was setting in: it erased his footsteps and left no trail.

  The same thaw was also slowing the Russian advance through Poland, turning frozen tracks to mudslides, but everyone knew that was only temporary. The tide might slow, but it wouldn’t turn.

  It was mid-morning on Monday when the German Kommandant, Kluge, discovered that the mayor had fled. Within an hour he had arrested Nowak’s wife. By the time the light was fading he had announced that, unless the mayor returned, she was going to hang in his place.

  ***

  Churchill studied his friend the President from across the table in the ballroom at the Livadia. There seemed to be empty spaces in the American’s suit, as though he’d shrunk, or perhaps he’d always overestimated his size and, in truth, had never quite measured up. They’d been discussing the unconditional surrender of Germany and were getting nowhere, partly because Roosevelt, the presiding officer at this conference, didn’t know where he wanted to go. Kept changing his mind, shifting his position. It hadn’t always been like that with Roosevelt—in fact, at times, quite the opposite. Too damned keen to rush in and grab the initiative, or was it just about grabbing the headline?