She hauled me into the kitchen and slammed the door. The candle on the table wavered in the draft.
“I know where you’ve been,” she hissed, smacking my arms with her open palm and then with the back of her hand, blows buffeting me with each thought. “You little slut, you’ll bring shame on all of us.”
I dodged a blow to my head and pulled myself out of reach of her slaps, around the table.
“Don’t you know that Bill could be shot?” she raged. “That you could be shot?”
“He’s going to come back and marry me. We’re engaged,” I protested.
She faced me across the flame of the candle, and it threw witchlike shadows up over her face.
“You little idiot, don’t you think they all say that? Don’t you think that’s what men have always said? How will he come back when we’re the slaves of Russia? He’ll be back in London with his old girlfriend and never think of you, the stupid little farm girl who let him have his way.”
“That’s not true. I didn’t. It’s not true.”
“He’ll promise you anything to do dirty things to you. I didn’t think you were such a fool. You’ll be pregnant with his bastard child, and nobody will ever marry you. They’ll all know you’ll do it for free. We’ll be a laughingstock.”
“It’s not…I haven’t…He wouldn’t…”
“You’re the same as Matylda and Dagmar. I thought you were better than them. Does he give you money?”
“Mother!” I was shocked.
“They say Matylda and Dagmar do it for cigarettes and chocolate. Is that it? Did you sell yourself for a square of English chocolate?”
Now I was outraged too, hot with the temper I’d inherited from her. “I don’t know how you can think that. You brought me up. You know me. Or perhaps you do it for chocolate yourself? Is that what the Oily Captain gives you?”
We stared furiously at each other across the table, and she flopped into a chair. The light of the candle cast angry shadows on the kitchen walls. I sat down opposite her, barely able to keep still or quiet.
Her voice was softer, and I knew she was struggling to bring herself under control, just as I was. “As soon as the road and the harvest is finished, they’ll go back to Lamsdorf and be sent somewhere else, to another place. Captain Meier has told me. Your Bill will be sent to a munitions factory or a mine, and you’ll never see him again.”
“That’s not true.”
“Look. The Russians are coming, and the Nazis are getting ready to withdraw into Germany. They won’t let their prisoners run free to join the Red Army and fight against them. They aren’t such fools.”
I looked across the table at her, and in the flickering light, her face seemed older than I’d ever seen it before. The heat of my anger slowly drained, and I tried to speak calmly, to sound like a grown woman, not a petulant child.
“And I’m not such a fool either. I haven’t done the thing you think. Not without being married. He’s going to come back. I know he will, and I’ll wait for him.”
My mother bit her lip and nodded. “Then you’re going to be terribly hurt. He’ll never come back. Once he gets home, you’ll be like a dream, the only good thing that happened to him in all these years of hell. But his old life will close around him, and it’ll be easier for him to slide back into that than to come looking for you.”
“Then I’ll go to find him.” I saw myself setting out with a new hat and suitcase, climbing on a train to take me to Bill.
“Izabela, listen to me. I know more about the world than you.”
“We will be married. You’ll see. I’ll prove you wrong.”
She pulled the candle toward her. “It’s late. We have the turnips to harvest in just a few hours. We both need to sleep.”
I stood up. She was right. We were both exhausted.
She crossed the kitchen with the candle and stopped at the foot of the stairs. “One thing.”
“What?”
“Promise me you won’t go down to the sawmill again at night. It’s too dangerous. If they catch Bill outside the wire, they’ll shoot him or take him straight back to Lamsdorf for punishment.”
I hesitated a long time, and the candle flame stuttered.
“All right,” I said, “I promise. Not at night.”
I was already forming other plans for us.
Seven
The next morning I left the house early and went to confession. As I’d hoped there was nobody else in the church, not even the busybody village ladies who almost seemed to live there, polishing brass and fussing with flowers. I confessed my anger with my mother and blushed to mention my impure thoughts and deeds. The priest gave me absolution, but before we left the cocoon of the confessional box, I said, “Just a minute, please.”
Beyond the carved screen, I heard him sit down again.
Before I could have second thoughts, I stammered, “I need to…Can I ask you something, Father?”
“Anything, my child.”
He was a young priest, new to the village, and not much older than me.
“Will it be a secret if it’s not a confession?” I checked. “Nobody else must know. Not even my mother.”
There was a moment’s silence behind the screen, and then he said, “You can tell me anything, and I won’t repeat it.”
I thought I could sense the interest, the curiosity he was trying to keep out of his voice. I wished I could see his face. I took a deep breath.
“I want to know if it would be possible to be married in secret, without banns being read.”
He was cautious. “Banns are always read. How else would we know if the couple are free to marry?”
I persisted. “But in wartime, if the lives of the people depended on it being a secret, would it be possible? Might it be possible?”
“Who’s the man?” he said sharply. This time he didn’t call me “my child.”
“A prisoner. A British prisoner of war.”
He let out a long, slow exhalation. “I’d have to ask the bishop for special permission.”
The bishop had once been outspoken in his opposition to the Third Reich, and I was hopeful.
“Then will you ask him very soon, please? The Russians are coming, and the prisoners could be taken away any day. We want to be married before they go. We might never have another chance.” I played my last card. “Or we could ask the British camp chaplain perhaps. He comes around to the work details sometimes, but he’s a Protestant, and I wouldn’t feel properly married in the eyes of God.”
“No,” said the young priest, “that would be a sin. As it happens I’m cycling over tomorrow to see the bishop about another matter.”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.”
“Just one more thing.” I could almost feel the heat of his blushes. “In wartime people do things they…wouldn’t normally do. What I mean is…don’t allow yourself to be drawn into the sin of fornication.”
“No, Father, we both want to be married,” I said sanctimoniously.
“Yes, good. Very good. I’ll see what can be done.”