A Feather on the Water(94)

He ran his finger along the scar on her cheek. “He is a bad man?”

“Not always. I think he was just . . . lost. He drank too much. It changed him.”

Stefan rubbed his chin. “You ran away from him? Came here?”

“Yes, I did run away. I was too afraid to face up to him. I never thought I’d . . .” She hesitated. “I didn’t do it with the intention of falling in love with someone else.” There. She had said it. The words hung in the air like smoke from an explosion.

“It is not possible to choose—who you love.” He slipped his hand from her grasp, lifting his arm to encircle her shoulders. When they kissed, it felt as if the forest had closed in around them, cocooning them, just for that moment, from the world outside.

“I don’t want to make things worse for you,” she murmured, as she broke away. “It’s too soon for you—I understand that.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “You waited all this time for me. You don’t mind waiting a little more?”

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t mind.”

They stayed there, just holding each other, as the sun slowly sank behind the trees and, all around, twilight flowed like dark smoky water.





PART THREE





CHAPTER 29


Kitty had been married for more than six months when she finally received the documents that would allow her to join Charlie in America. Martha was in the office with her when she opened the envelope.

“It says I can travel on any army ship leaving Germany from the end of this month.” Kitty looked up. Her face was drained of color.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to go?” Martha had the telephone receiver in her hand. She had been about to call the base, but she put the phone down. Kitty should have been dancing around the room. Was she having second thoughts now that the plan to go to the States had become a reality? Did she regret getting married in such a hurry?

“I’m desperate to see Charlie,” she said. “I miss him like mad. But I can’t leave, can I? Not yet. I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Why not?” Martha looked at her, perplexed. “This is your future, Kitty. You mustn’t jeopardize it by worrying about us.”

“But I do worry. Every time people leave, more DPs arrive. It’s never-ending. You and Delphine can’t carry on like this. It’s been well over a year since we got here, and neither of you has had a proper break. It just doesn’t seem fair for me to go swanning off to America.”

“We’ll manage.” Martha tried to smile. “You deserve this chance to be happy. This place certainly won’t be the same without you, but that’s no reason to hang around when you could be on a boat to the States.”

“What will you do? Will UNRRA send someone to replace me?”

“Probably.” Martha avoided her eyes. She didn’t want to lie to Kitty; she hadn’t told the others that the latest communication from Munich had relayed that the organization would cease to exist in a few months’ time. The UNRRA was to become the International Refugee Organization. Their work was winding down; the camps would soon be empty. But as Kitty had rightly pointed out, that was not the case at Seidenmühle.

“You think they’ll deploy someone from a camp that’s closing down?” Kitty wasn’t going to let her get away with such an evasive answer.

“I expect so.” Martha knew that this was unlikely. It was what she’d thought would happen, but so far there had been no hint of it. It seemed that when a camp closed, the people who had been running it simply melted away to wherever they had come from. She suspected it came down to money. The cost of running the camps was a burden the Allies were obviously keen to shake off as soon as possible.

“I don’t know how they can keep on closing camps, though,” Kitty said. “No one wants to go back to Poland now. Not even the food bribe is working anymore.”

Martha nodded. Stalin’s grip on Poland was tightening by the day. Soon there would be no place for the DPs to go.

“I’ll write to Charlie,” Kitty said. “He’s just moved to New York to start his college course. I need to check that it’ll be okay for me to be on campus with him.”

“What about your parents?” Martha said. “Will they be able to join you there?”

“In theory, yes. Once I’m living in America, I can sponsor them to immigrate.” Kitty was looking out the window at the DPs filing past on their way to the mess hall. “I wish I’d heard from them. I haven’t had a letter in weeks. Charlie’s mother gets a newspaper called the Chinese Pacific Weekly. She told him there’s civil war there now: the Communists fighting the Nationalists. I just don’t know how they’re going to get out of Shanghai.”

Martha wished there were something she could say to ease Kitty’s mind. She had so much to contend with. The troubled, lonely girl Martha had first encountered on the ship from England had transformed into a confident woman forging a future not just for herself and her husband but for her parents, too. If only the people she loved were not on opposite sides of the world, separated by oceans from one another; if only the end of the war had brought peace to China as well as to Europe. If only . . . They had to be two of the saddest words in the English language.