‘Nothing like that. You’d be the first to hear. It’s this journalist…’
Faith sighed. She really didn’t want to have this conversation again. A journalist, a man called Jake Denbigh, wanted to interview Grandpapa for a series of articles he was writing about changing attitudes to refugees. Marek Lange, a Polish refugee who had fought on the side of the Allies in the last war, had attracted his interest.
The interview seemed a valid enough enterprise to Faith. She’d read some of Denbigh’s articles and she’d heard him once or twice on late-night discussion programmes on Radio 4. As far as Faith could see, the interview would be something her grandfather would enjoy. He was an opinionated man, and would relish the chance to express his views. She thought it would add a bit of variety to a life that was becoming more and more circumscribed by old age, but Katya had been against it from the start.
‘I told you what I think,’ Faith said now. ‘It’s up to him. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘It’s more urgent than that,’ Katya said. ‘Marek’s agreed to do the interview. It’s happening this morning.’
‘Well–good for him.’ Her toast was done. She hunted round for the spread.
‘I’m not so sure. I’ve had a bad feeling about this from the start. I don’t trust this Denbigh man, so I looked some stuff up. A few months ago, he got involved in a witch-hunt in Blackburn about a man they said was an ex-Nazi. It got nasty.’
‘Oh.’ That gave Faith pause for thought. Her grandfather had escaped from Nazi-occupied Poland to join the Polish Free Forces in England in 1943. He had arrived alone, his family and his past lost in the chaos behind him. All that was left were the stories he used to tell her when she was a child, stories about his own childhood, a childhood that had been obliterated as surely as the cities of Europe had been razed in the final destruction of that conflict. His war years in occupied Europe were something he never spoke of, ever.
If Jake Denbigh’s focus was Nazis, especially if he was looking for lurid headlines, then Faith shared her mother’s misgivings. ‘He isn’t going to talk to any journalist about it,’ she said slowly. ‘He wouldn’t discuss it with his own family, never mind a stranger.’ She sometimes thought it would have been a good thing if he had done, but now it was probably best left where it was, sealed away in his mind.
‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ Katya said. ‘This man is a professional. It’s his job to get people talking.’
‘I’m not confident. I just don’t know what to do. It’s still up to Grandpapa in the end.’
‘I thought…’ Katya said, the tentative note in her voice triggering Faith’s alarm system, ‘…that maybe you could go over. Sit in on the interview. Then if this Denbigh person tries anything…’
Perhaps she should. ‘I’ve got meetings today. It depends what time they’ve arranged the interview.’
‘Eleven,’ Katya said.
She was meeting Helen at nine–that would take less than an hour, with luck. She’d pencilled in the rest of the morning for writing the article…she could work on that tonight, cancel her plans for the evening. She’d still need some time to prepare for the meeting, but it was doable. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there.’
She checked the clock as she put the phone down. It was almost eight–she’d better get going. Her meeting with Helen today was a professional thing, part of her new role. If the two women hadn’t known each other so well, it could have been tricky.
Helen had left Oxford with a First, but instead of pursuing the academic career she had planned, she had come back to Manchester to marry Daniel Kovacs. This decision had been beyond Faith’s comprehension. Helen was pregnant, but that didn’t seem to be a good reason to give up her academic carer. Faith didn’t like Daniel–he was attractive, but there was a watchful hostility about him, a coldness that made him a strange choice for the warm, vivacious Helen. Despite Faith’s misgivings, Helen had been unstoppable. She had asked Faith to be godmother to their son, Finn, who had been born six months later, and this had gone a long way towards healing the slight breach in their friendship.
Their lives had taken different routes after that. Helen had stayed near Manchester, moving with Daniel to Shawbridge, one of the small cotton towns on the outskirts of the city, to live on a road that was not much different from the one where she had grown up. Daniel’s work as an electrician was thriving, and Helen became a full-time housewife and mother.
Faith had stayed at Oxford to work on her PhD. She took her duties as godmother seriously, visiting as often as she could, writing letters, sending cards and presents, surprised at how much she enjoyed Helen’s baby, who grew up into a bright, serious little boy. Five years later, Helen’s second child, Hannah, was born. Faith decided she had been wrong. Helen seemed happy with her life, with her children and with her enigmatic husband.
But then Helen had got restless. She decided that she wanted to take up her career again, and despite Daniel’s opposition had embarked on a PhD. Once she had completed that, she had landed a three-year research post at the Centre for European Studies. She had been lucky to get it. Her search for work was confined to Manchester. Even this level of commuting was difficult as Daniel insisted that his work hours made it impossible for him to deliver or collect the children to and from school.
And then, just a few months ago, after twelve years of marriage, she had left Daniel.
Faith pulled her coat around her as she left the house. It was one of those bleak January days. The wind was whipping the clouds across the sky and blew gusts of rain against her face. She threw her bag on to the back seat and edged out into the rush hour. The grey winter streets made her think longingly of Mediterranean landscapes, of blue skies and warm breezes. One day she was going to work somewhere where the sun shone for more than six weeks a year, somewhere that had warmth, light and space.
Stuck in the stop-go queue into the city, she tried to focus on the meeting she had with Helen in half an hour. Helen was currently working on a paper for a major conference in Bonn, in May. The paper was supposed to be complete by the end of the month–the organizers wanted camera-ready copy in advance–and Helen had fallen behind.
It was understandable. Her life was in chaos. Daniel, outraged by her departure, was fighting her for custody of the children and for the house. He was being as difficult as he could be about child support, and Helen’s salary barely covered her expenses. On top of this, the crucial deadline for the Bonn paper had been too much for her, and she had appealed to Faith for help.
Faith ran possible solutions through her mind as she negotiated the roundabout on to the M67. She wanted to manage it so that it didn’t become a big issue to Antoni Yevanov. Helen’s position at the Centre was vulnerable in the face of ongoing cuts. Her appointment was due for review at the end of her first year, and its continuation depended very much on her successful completion of the paper and the reception it got at Bonn.
The traffic was heavy all the way, and it was almost nine by the time she got to the university. There was a queue for the car park and she was tempted to look for a space on the street, but she wanted a fighting chance of seeing her car again. The rain was falling hard by the time she managed to park. She could feel the rain dripping off her umbrella and trickling down inside her collar as she hurried across campus to the Edwardian façade of the Centre for European Studies. She pushed open the glass doors and entered the lobby, blinking the rain out of her eyes.
The warmth of the building enclosed her with its smell of new carpet and paint. The soothing murmur of activity filled the air, a subdued clatter from keyboards, the distant sound of doors opening and closing, the clunk and hum of the lift. She paused on her way through the lobby to catch her breath, and looked at the display boards. Amongst all the fliers for conferences in Madrid, Paris, and New York there was a glossy poster for the forthcoming Brandt Memorial Lecture. Antoni Yevanov: ‘After Guantanamo–International Law from Nuremberg to the 21st