A Feather on the Water(28)

Martha had read enough about the situation in Poland to know that the country was on its knees. But she hadn’t grasped that a power struggle was going on. “How long will it be, then? Until people can start going home?”

He rolled his eyes again. “Your guess is as good as mine. You’re gonna have to sit tight here for a while. Problem is, no other country wants these refugees. I guess plenty of them would give their right arm to be let into the States or Britain. But those doors are shut, and there’s no sign of things changing anytime soon.” He huffed out a breath. “Come spring, there might be some movement. Just gotta keep them all fed and watered until then.”

“So, what do we do if more people arrive in the meantime?”

“There’s an old stable block—back there.” He jerked his head at the warehouse. “They kept horses to haul logs for the mill before the Nazis brought Polacks in to do it. Wouldn’t take long to convert it into accommodations. You could fit a couple of hundred in there, easy.”

“Is there a water supply? What about heating?”

“There’s a tap,” he replied. “Get the DPs on it: there’s sure to be some guy who knows how to fix plumbing. Cut a hole in the roof for a stove—piece of cake.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, if there’s nothing else, we need to get a move on.”

“There is something else. We had a Polish woman who came to the office yesterday: she’s trying to locate a GI who got her pregnant and promised to marry her.”

The major rubbed his chin with his knuckles as Martha repeated what Jadzia had told Kitty and Delphine.

“If he was serious about marrying her, I thought there might be a chance of getting her over to the States,” she said.

He shook his head. “There’s no right to immigration to the US for these foreign women.”

“But there must be thousands like her across Europe.”

“I don’t doubt it. It’s a massive headache for the army. There’s pressure on the government to change the rules. Who knows—things could open up soon.”

“How soon?”

“End of this year, maybe.”

“But her baby’s due in a couple of months.”

He forked the air with his hands. “Nothing anyone can do. You’ll look after her, I’m sure.”

“But you’ll chase down the boyfriend?”

He frowned. “I’ll make inquiries. We had a batch of men leave last week. Course, it would help if we had a surname.” He punctuated the sentence with a click of his tongue. “We gotta start winding things up now: once you take charge, I’ll get a roster organized to have someone watching this place twenty-four seven. And there’ll always be someone in the guardhouse. The main difference after today is that the kitchens and the forestry detail will be unsupervised. But the DPs have been doing it for long enough now to run things themselves.”

Martha watched him disappear into the stone building attached to the warehouse. The realization that she would soon be responsible for running everything was terrifying. What had she been thinking, coming to this place, believing she could help these people? She barely knew how she was going to house them all and provide enough food for the coming winter—let alone give them any kind of hope for the future.

“It will be okay. Don’t worry.” The voice made her jump.

“Mr. Dombrowski. I didn’t see you.”

“I waited in the car,” he said. “And please, call me Stefan. Mr. Dombrowski sounds like . . .” He mimed someone standing to attention.

“Okay.” She smiled. She would have liked to add that he could call her Martha. But she was afraid it would sound too familiar. If she was going to run this place, she needed to maintain a distance—however awkward that might feel.





CHAPTER 7


The three women were eating breakfast together. It was the first time in almost a week that they’d all sat around the table at the same time.

In the immediate aftermath of the army pulling out, things had been chaotic. The men in the forestry detail had stopped working two days after Martha had taken charge. They had marched to the office, axes in their hands, and sat down on the cobblestones, refusing to budge.

It was only after Stefan had been summoned that Martha had grasped what the problem was. He explained that the GIs who had been supervising the work had given out extra packets of cigarettes as an incentive to the men. Without this inducement, the DPs didn’t see why they should have to do a job that was much more physically demanding than any other work in the camp.

Martha wondered why Major McMahon hadn’t told her about this. Possibly he hadn’t known. The situation was easily remedied, but it had left her feeling even more anxious about what she was taking on. To forestall further trouble, she had called the leaders of all the blockhouses to a meeting. With both Stefan and Kitty translating, she had listened to their concerns about the day-to-day business of camp life and made a list of what needed addressing.

Aside from practical issues, one of the main problems was the lack of education and training for the young people in the camp. Martha had welcomed Delphine’s suggestion of recruiting and teaching auxiliary nurses to help in the hospital. Kitty had offered to organize English lessons, and she’d also come up with the idea of a sewing school. She’d discovered that a couple of elderly women had made the robes that Father Josef wore to conduct services. They’d fashioned them from garments they’d found in the clothing storeroom, cutting them up and expertly remodeling the fabric. They’d also embroidered the delicate altar cloth Kitty had seen in the chapel. Her idea was to persuade them to pass on these skills, producing items that could be sold outside the camp.