‘I am sorry,’ he said when he’d relieved the dryness of his throat. ‘We all need hope in these times. I myself should like a little hope, if you know where there is any to be bought. Of course, if you feel our story will help people to hope then you ought to write it as your editor says.’
‘Thank you. I’ll… try to do it justice.’
He smiled sleepily at her, although each curve of his lips was accompanied by a wince, as if it gave him pain. He seemed like a man in whose nature it was to smile frequently and who had forgotten for the moment that he shouldn’t.
‘Piotr told me of you,’ he said slowly, his speech slurring as the morphine began to overcome him. ‘He told me there was a woman on the mountain. I told him he must have been delirious. A woman on the mountain! I said it was the face of the Madonna he must have seen as he hovered between life and death. The Madonna does not wear lipstick red like cherries, he told me. Nor does she wear a scent that smells of peaches and honeysuckle. He said he thought at first he was seeing his wife, but he knew when he woke up in the hospital and you were again there that it wasn’t so.’
‘Jolka. He called me by her name.’
‘Yes, Jolka. He talks a lot of Jolka, this wondrous Jolka, but I have not met her. She will be coming here soon.’ Teddy seemed fatigued with the effort of conversation, and he sagged back against his pillows. ‘He is a good man, this Piotr. When our plane came down, it was he who pulled me from the flames and saved my life. Sometimes, alone in the night, I could wish he had left me there, but all the same, he is my brother.’
‘I know,’ Bobby said softly.
‘You must write of this in your magazine. Write of Piotr Zielinski, who saved my life, so all may know of it.’
‘I will.’
‘Perhaps it may find its way even to my family in Poland one fine day.’
Topsy came back with another chair and sat down beside Bobby.
‘Oh, you’ve tired him out, Birdy,’ she said, looking at the weary man. She softened her voice. ‘Teddy, my love, would you like us to leave you?’
‘No, stay a little longer,’ he murmured. ‘It does me good to hear you. The nights are so silent that I like to hear the happy talk of healthy people in my days.’
‘Is it true what he says?’ Bobby asked Topsy. ‘Is Piotr’s Jolka coming to visit?’
She felt a lot of curiosity about Piotr, the gunner, and about the wife he had momentarily mistaken her for on the mountain. Teddy had been unconscious when he came down and it had been Topsy who had helped with his surgery and been here when he woke up, so in a way, it felt that he belonged to her. Piotr, however, had spoken to Bobby on the mountain, and she felt a certain ownership over him likewise.
‘That’s right,’ Topsy said. ‘Not to visit but to stay. She came up from their home in Warwickshire to see Piotr as soon as she received the telegram from his commanding officer explaining what had happened. A day or two after she went home, I had a letter from her asking to be allowed to telephone me. You’ll never guess, Birdy.’
‘What will I never guess?’
‘You know the darling little painting we have in the cottage over the fireplace, of my father’s old hunting lodge by the lake in the woods? It’s not one of the grand oil paintings from the house that we took to furnish the place but a little one that stole my fancy in an art shop in Leeds – I recognised at once that it was my father’s lodge and so of course I had to have it. Well, who do you think painted it?’
‘I couldn’t begin to guess.’
‘Then I’ll tell you. It was Jolka!’
Bobby blinked at her. ‘You mean Piotr’s wife is a painter?’
Teddy’s eyes were closed but he was listening, not sleeping, and he nodded.
‘Very talented,’ he murmured. ‘Very celebrated. Ah, you should hear Piotr boast!’ He laughed softly. ‘Oh, to be the doting husband of a fond wife.’
‘It seems she and her husband stayed in this area for a little while when they were newlyweds freshly emigrated from Poland three years ago,’ Topsy went on. ‘That was when she painted Father’s lodge. We had a lovely long chat on the telephone. She said how inspiring she’d always found this part of the country to be, and she asked if there was any place here that she could rent – somewhere she could concentrate on her painting and where she and her little boy could be close to Piotr. Well, the lodge itself is vacant now since the previous tenants moved away so I said she was welcome to it at half the rent I charged the old tenants if she painted me something lovely to remember them all by. She and the baby are moving in next week, and then when Piotr is well enough he can be moved there to convalesce.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Bobby said. ‘I’m sure it will help his recovery to have his family with him. He sounded quite devoted to his wife. I hope I shall get to meet her.’
‘Would you like to see Piotr?’ Topsy asked. ‘One of the nurses wheeled him off to be bathed half an hour ago. I have to meet Dr Fisher in the dispensary shortly for a lesson on how to mix the diamorphine doses, but you’re welcome to wait here until they bring Piotr back. Don’t worry about Matron if she starts giving you some of her looks. She’s all bark and no bite.’
‘I’d like to speak to him very much.’
Topsy glanced at Teddy, who seemed to be fighting against sleep. ‘I think we ought to leave him now, don’t you?’
‘I wish you would stay with me, Topsy,’ he mumbled.
‘If I stay then you shan’t sleep, shall you, naughty boy? I’m sorry, but I am a nurse, you know, and I must be a little strict at times. You’re weak, which means you need to rest so you can heal. Besides, I have an appointment in the dispensary in five minutes.’
