‘Mikhail’s getting the October Group to sort those out for himself and Mara. If they can get two people to England, I should think they can get four,’ said Matthew. ‘Will you risk it?’
‘Yes,’ said Andrei. ‘I don’t think there’s anything to keep me in this country. Once I believed there was, but all the searching and the enquiries… Yes, I’ll risk it.’
The energy was still in his eyes and his voice as they walked along the road, but when they came within sight of the town, he faltered and Matthew had to grab his arm to prevent him from falling.
‘I’ll recover soon enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right.’
England, early 1980s
He did recover, but Matthew knew he was not really all right. He knew Andrei got through the tense, exhausting, complex journey to England by sheer force of will. When they finally reached the tiny village of Melbray and St Luke’s Convent, he was scarcely able to walk.
Mara and Mikhail were already there. As one of the October Group had pointed out, passports and visas could not be created overnight, and Matthew and his father had had to hide out in the Romanian convent for nearly two weeks before they could leave. That, too, took its toll on Andrei; Matthew saw him start every time he heard footsteps, and at night, in the small room they shared, he heard his father’s agonized dream-ramblings.
When they arrived in Melbray, Mikhail was away attending an interview for what the English called a sixth-form college – a place where he could complete his education and go on to university. Matthew was grateful for the smattering of English he had learned in Budapest, but he could not manage the odd English place names very well.
‘It’s safe here,’ Mara said, almost at once when she met them. ‘We can’t be found here.’
They were given a room overlooking lawns and lanes, and were welcomed at meals in the long refectory. No one fussed, no one asked questions; they were free to do whatever they wanted. ‘We are accustomed to helping people from troubled lands,’ said one of the older sisters.
England was almost exactly like the childhood worlds Matthew had created. Here were the cool green fields and silvery rivers, and the houses with flower gardens. Here were the shops with everything anyone could want to buy all arranged on the shelves. He thought Melbray beautiful, even in the midst of a frozen December. It was a strong, stark beauty, made up of blacks and whites and greys. Matthew wanted to paint everything. He had no paints with him, and did not think he had enough money to buy any. The October Group had managed to arrange for the exchange into English currency of the little he had, but it was still not much. But if he could not have paints, he could sketch the area. He would like to sketch St Luke’s itself and have the results framed for the nuns who were being so kind. There were river views which would make really good subjects as well, twisty lanes, and unexpected houses made of brick, looking as they had been dropped carelessly down in their gardens. Along one of the twisty lanes, only a short distance from St Luke’s, was a house called Fenn House. Matthew liked it; he liked its Englishness and its air of having been here for a long time.
‘It’s usually rented to people for the summer,’ said one of the nuns, when Matthew asked about Fenn House in his halting English. ‘So it tends to be a different set of people each year and there’s no – do you know the word continuity?’
Matthew repeated it carefully, and understood the gist. He said he had admired the house and seen lights in the windows. Did people take holidays in December?
‘No, but we heard there’s a young widow there at the moment, recovering from her husband’s death. Very sad. Her small son is with her. Her name is something rather unusual, something a bit foreign – a name we don’t often get in this country, I’ll remember it in a minute… Petra, that’s it. Petra Kendal.’
Matthew liked walking to Melbray and trying out his English in the little shops. Occasionally Mara came with him, but she seemed nervous outside the confines of St Luke’s. When Andrei was stronger, Matthew persuaded him to accompany him. It took a bit of doing because Andrei was still deeply hesitant about venturing far from the convent. There was also a degree of agoraphobia. Matthew had noticed this and been unsure how to handle it, but one day Andrei said, quite openly, ‘Matthew, I know you’re aware that I don’t like going outside. It’s a hangover from Jilava and I think it will eventually fade. But all those years of living in a confined space – those small cells…’
‘I understand,’ said Matthew, with the familiar twist of pain. ‘Take your own pace.’
‘He’ll probably beat it in his own way,’ said Mikhail, when Matthew reported this. ‘Don’t force anything. Don’t fuss or crowd him.’
Matthew did not, and when Andrei occasionally spoke about Jilava and some of the brutalities he and the other prisoners had endured, he listened carefully. When once Andrei said, ‘I’m not telling you all of it, Matthew, because you’ll never get rid of the images.’
‘I understand that. But I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.’
He was pleased when his father finally accompanied him to the village. Andrei was nervous and hesitant on the brief walk, but when they reached the little main street with its cluster of shops, his scholar’s curiosity kicked in, and he became interested. ‘We’ll do this again,’ he said as they walked back.
The third time Matthew took him into the small inn, which the English called a pub. They drank a glass of cider each, which Andrei enjoyed, and exchanged a few halting words with some of the people in the pub who were friendly and casual.
‘That reminded me a bit of home,’ said Matthew as they walked back. ‘D’you remember? We used to go into the little town and I always had lemonade at a teashop and we talked about the arithmetic cartoons.’
‘Of course I remember. Did you ever do anything about those cartoons?’
‘No. One day I might.’
They fell into the way of walking to the village two or three times a week, looking at the shops which even in this small place seemed to them to have a bewildering variety of goods, generally going into the pub for their glass of cider. Matthew tried the beer which the English always seemed so enthusiastic about, and thought it tasted peculiar.
The lanes were starting to become familiar, and they shared newly acquired English expressions as they walked back, liking the quirkiness of the English speech and the casual companionship of the people in the pub. It’s going to be all right, thought Matthew. He’s starting to put Jilava behind him.
River mist drifted into the lanes, like wisps of thin gauze as they walked. It clung to the skeletal trees, turning the landscape monochrome, and Matthew was entranced. He had already made several rough studies of the area and had begun a detailed sketch of St Luke’s. There was a small general-purpose shop in Melbray that could provide a framing service, and Matthew was hoping to present the finished sketch to the nuns on Christmas Day.
They were on their way home on one of these afternoons, nearing Fenn House, when a young woman with dark hair came walking out of the mist towards them.
Matthew thought, afterwards, that it was about as romantic an appearance as you could get. She seemed simply to materialize out of the mist and for a moment all the old legends – the tales Mara’s grandmother used to tell of wood sprites and forest naiads – rushed into his mind. Then he saw she was not a wood sprite, at all, she was an ordinary human being, wearing a long woollen coat with a deep hood framing her face, and a scarf wrapped round her throat. A small boy was at her side – he had her dark hair and eyes – and Matthew remembered the sisters mentioning a young widow being at Fenn House.