Page 39 of The Dark of the Moon
‘Are you sure you don’t want to join the others for lunch?’ Dan asks. We’d agreed the night before that we’d only stay for the morning session.
‘No thank you,’ Finn replies. ‘We have to go home for our Marmite sandwiches and then Philly will need to have a post-prandial pause afterwards.’
He knows me so well now. To be honest, I’m more than ready to get back. All the excitement, and all those old emotions, have quite taken it out of me. Dan comes home to have lunch with us too. As I’m cutting the crusts off our sandwiches, Finn asks me, ‘What is there to eat when you go for tea at The Ritz?’
I see his father glance at him in surprise, although of course I realise what he is really asking.
‘Well, actually, I believe you have sandwiches quite like these ones. Only they probably have things like cucumber and smoked salmon in them, not Marmite. And then they’ll bring you scones with jam and cream, and the most beautiful little cakes, decorated with fruit and rose petals. The tea will be served in silver teapots and poured into fine china cups. It’s supposed to be an extravaganza. But I’ve never been.’
‘So you never did meet Janina again,’ he says, carrying our plates to the table and pulling up his chair.
‘Sadly, no. I looked for her after the war ended, but I’m afraid her story was one like so many others. Through my contacts in Intelligence, I managed to find out what had happened. You’ll recall their surname was Krakowski – a Jewish name. After the baby was born, they spent months hidden in the little village in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Suspicion and jealousy were rife, though, and all the more so once the Germans had taken over the whole country. Eventually, Janina and Jakub were betrayed by a French neighbour. The Gestapo came and arrested them, and they were sent away to the camps back east. It was ironic, really. They so wanted to go home to Poland and in the end they did – or, at least, to what had been their homeland before it was overrun by Hitler’s army. I found their names on the Red Cross lists of people who’d been murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Jakub Krakowski. Janina Krakowska. They were killed a few days apart.’
‘The baby too?’
I sigh. ‘You know, Finn, the Nazis often didn’t even bother recording the babies that were killed. Or maybe Janina and Jakub’s tiny daughter died on the journey to the camp. The conditions would have been terrible, and many people did die en route, their names never recorded on any lists.’
Finn nods, then carries his plate over to the sink. ‘Shall we have a Prince chocolate biscuit for pudding?’ he says.
‘You go ahead. I’m not very hungry. And now I definitely need to go and have a lie-down.’ Those thoughts of Janina and Jakub weigh heavily on my mind, and I feel exhausted suddenly. ‘Will you be OK on your own for a bit?’
‘Of course. I’m going to do some maths.’ He studies his biscuit, then takes a bite, starting to nibble around the edges before making any inroads into the chocolate in the middle. It’s another one of those habits of his.
He pauses as I get to my feet, reaching for my stick. Then he adds, ‘I’m sorry you never had tea at The Ritz, Philly. I’m sorry you didn’t get Closure for Janina and Jakub and their baby either.’
What an old head that child has, and those young shoulders of his carry such a heavy load of anxiety, day in, day out.
Finn
In the afternoon, after we’d got back from the dinghy sailing, I was sitting on the porch when Philly came down from her rest. She had only eaten half of her sandwich at lunchtime and then said she needed to go and lie down on her bed for a while.
Dad had stayed to have lunch with us too. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come back and do the afternoon session, Finn? You did so well this morning.’
I said no thank you and I would be OK doing some Sudokus for a while.
‘You know, tomorrow is the last day of the camp and we’re going to be doing the expedition to Fort Boyard. You could both come too, if you like.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Today was enough.’
‘OK, well, you could just come and wave us off, if you prefer. I’d love it if you even did that. See how you feel in the morning.’ Then Dad drove away in the car to get back to the harbour.
When Philly reappeared, I asked her, ‘Have you had a long enough pause?’
‘I feel like a new woman,’ she said.
I looked at her. She was still just as old as she had been when she went upstairs. In fact, she was 1 hour and 12 minutes older. But I didn’t say that, because Mum once told me talking to ladies abouttheir age is another thing We Don’t Do, after one of her friends said she’d be turning the big 4-0 soon and I said actually she looked a bit older than that, more like the big 4-5.
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘shall we go out on the bikes and look at some more gravestones?’
‘I think I’d better just stay here for the rest of the day, if you don’t mind,’ she replied. ‘Even after a good rest, I’m still feeling a bit wiped out after our exciting morning.’
Then she said she’d been doing some thinking, after our sailing trip, and she’d reached the conclusion she was spending too much time chasing ghosts when she should really be concentrating on being in the land of the living while she still actually was. She said going out on the dinghy and cycling around the island with me had shown her that, and she thought we’d spent enough time in graveyards.
‘But we haven’t found Ben yet,’ I said. ‘It’s Unfinished Business. You still haven’t got Closure.’
She nodded and her eyes looked a bit cloudy again. ‘Yes, but I don’t think he’d want me to let however many months and years I have left on this Earth pass me by. There’ve been too many false hopes, too many dead ends, and they take their toll. When I was out on the dinghy today, I realised I’ve spent too much of my life living in the past. I want to share what time I have left with my family now, especially with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, making happy memories like the ones we did today. There’s been enough sadness without continually chasing after more of it.’ Then she picked up her ancient iPad and opened it up.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Are you going to do a crossword now?’
