Nocturne Read online

  Dedication

  To my darling grand-daughters, Sarah, Maya and Allie

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prelude

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Part II

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Part III

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Ideas, interviews & features included in a new section…

  About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  About the Author

  Other Books by Diane Armstrong

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  POLISH PRONUNCIATION

  E/e elongates the ‘e’ so it sounds like ‘eh’

  L/l sounds like the English ‘w’ (so ‘Mila’ is pronounced ‘Mi-wa’)

  N/n sounds like ‘gn’

  O/o sounds like ‘oo’

  S/s sounds like ‘sh’

  W/w sounds like the English ‘v’

  Z/z sounds like ‘Zh’ in ‘Zhivago’ (so ‘Elzunia’ is pronounced ‘El-zhun-ia)

  Prelude

  August 1939

  That year, summer was more beautiful than ever, as though God was bestowing one final gift before turning his back on them forever. That’s how it seemed to Elzunia Orlowska whenever she heard her parents discussing the impending war. But despite the gloomy predictions, life went on as usual, and as she strolled arm in arm with her girlfriends in Warsaw’s Lazienki Park after Mass one sultry afternoon in August, she dreaded the thought that their lives would soon change.

  Heads together, gossiping about the other girls in their class, Elzunia and her friends pulled the petals off the daisies and chanted, ‘He loves me, he loves me not.’ Elzunia tossed the stalks away. Hers always ended ‘he loves me not’.

  Love was on their mind because of the new American novel everyone was talking about. Like Elzunia, all the girls fancied themselves as Scarlett and longed for a masterful Rhett Butler to burst into their lives. They read and reread the scene where Rhett carried Scarlett upstairs to the bedroom, hoping to find some clue that might reveal the mysteries of sex.

  Elzunia thought it was the most romantic story she had ever read. But, as usual, Elzunia’s parents had a different interpretation. Her father said that Gone with the Wind was about a society destroyed by war and the end of a way of life, while her mother argued it was about illusion and self-deception.

  Although the prospect of war unsettled Elzunia, in some ways she was secretly excited by it. War gave people the opportunity to be noble and brave, and freed them from their meaningless existence. And perhaps it would give her the chance to fulfil her dream.

  Ever since she had been given Florence Nightingale’s biography for her thirteenth birthday almost a year before, she had been fired up with longing to become a nurse. She couldn’t wait to use the first-aid box the Red Cross had recently issued to all the girl scouts, and, as she rearranged the bandages, scissors and elastoplast, she imagined herself tending selflessly to wounded soldiers on bloody battlefields, and being rescued by a dashing officer as bullets whizzed past and buildings blazed.

  Before going their separate ways, the girls stopped at the ice-cream barrow under the lime tree. The vendor was a cheeky fellow who winked at them as he scraped the vanilla ice-cream against the metal tin, placed a scoop of the heavenly stuff onto one wafer, and squashed it flat with another.

  ‘Definitely not Rhett Butler material,’ Elzunia whispered and her friends laughed as they licked the ice-cream oozing from the sides.

  ‘Not even Ashley,’ Lydia giggled, but turned around to sneak another look at him, just the same. ‘I can’t believe there’s going to be a war.’ She waved her arm to encompass the park. ‘Does this look like a war’s about to start?’

  Elzunia and Gosia exchanged glances. Lydia could be incredibly childish. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ Elzunia said. ‘Hitler will take one look at Warsaw, see us enjoying ice-cream in Lazienki Park, and give up his plan to conquer the world.’

  But Lydia wasn’t listening. She was ogling the boys who swaggered past and whistled under their breath as they gave the girls the once-over. Their eyes were glued to Lydia’s bust and Gosia’s Veronica Lake hair. Elzunia noted that they never looked at her. Why would they? Her hair was the colour of dried mud, and her chest was as flat as their maid’s ironing board.

  When the girls reached the lake, the boys hung around, pretending to look at the swans. Lydia suddenly stopped as though to shake a pebble from her shoe, and Gosia tugged at Elzunia’s arm. ‘Come on, Elzunia,’ she said. ‘Let’s have some fun.’

  Elzunia shook her head, irritated with her companions for sounding so frivolous. She felt much older than Gosia and Lydia, but, where boys were concerned, she sensed she was younger than they were. She had an hour to fill in before meeting her parents at the café in the park, so, leaving the girls to flirt with their pathetic Romeos, she headed for the rose garden for the Sunday-afternoon concert.

  At three on the dot, a portly woman in a black taffeta skirt swishing against her thick ankles stepped onto the platform, acknowledged the audience with a curt bow, and sat down at the piano. Almost immediately she struck up Chopin’s Military Polonaise with such fervour that the hair piled on top of her head wobbled and the pins flew off, loosening strands of hair around her jowly cheeks. Elzunia thought she looked comical but everyone else was listening with such reverent attention that she buried her face in a handkerchief to stifle her giggles.

  It was music that she knew
well. On these long summer evenings, when the sky was still blue at nine o’clock, and a light breeze billowed the lace curtains in their salon, her mother often sat at the piano and played Chopin. Whenever she played the nocturnes, their haunting cadences made Elzunia feel sad, as though someone close to her had died. Her mother’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and with each movement the light glanced off the amber brooch that she always wore on the lapel of her jacket.

  As a child, Elzunia was fascinated by the honey-coloured light that shone through the amber, and loved touching its smooth surface, but as she grew older she felt sorry for the helpless insect embalmed in the resin. She sometimes wondered whether it had sensed the approaching danger and attempted to escape from the engulfing mass that had trapped it for all eternity.

  As the stirring notes of the Military Polonaise hung in the warm air, in her mind’s eye Elzunia could see her father galloping into battle, sabre raised. Like his ancestors, Edward Orlowski had fought for Poland’s independence and could trace his lineage back to medieval times when the Lithuanian prince Jagiello married the Polish princess Wanda to merge their two countries to form one nation. From time immemorial, knights, counts and crusaders of the Orlowski family had been ready to lay down their lives for their country. Poland’s history was defined by battles and invasions, and Elzunia often wondered what was the point of all that sacrifice and suffering, because no sooner had they helped to repel one lot of invaders than others appeared. But for the past twenty years, ever since the end of the First World War, Poland had been independent, and the white eagle on Poland’s scarlet flag fluttered proudly from all the public buildings in Warsaw. Her father always said that courage was the noblest human quality and Elzunia longed to live up to his ideals.

  The pianist was playing a ballade and the dreamy cadences formed a peaceful background for Elzunia’s reverie about her father. Even though she was almost fourteen, she still rushed up and hurled herself into his arms the moment she heard his key turn in the door in the evening.

  ‘You’re getting too old for that! Father’s had a busy day at the law courts; let him sit down!’ her mother would scold, but her father would just laugh and twirl Elzunia around the room while her mother shook her head.

  From her mother’s quick, sharp glances and critical comments, Elzunia knew she wasn’t the daughter of her dreams. She was active and boisterous, and preferred climbing the cherry trees on their country estate to spending hours at the dressmaker’s studying pattern books and having pins jabbed into her during endless fittings.

  Unlike her daughter, Lusia Orlowska spent hours perfecting her hairstyle and translucent complexion. Which was only to be expected of a woman who owned the most exclusive beauty salon in Warsaw, where the wives of diplomats, politicians and businessmen had their faces pummelled with creams and their egos soothed with compliments. Lusia’s only competition was Madame Françoise’s Salon. Madame Françoise, who pretended to be French, was so envious of her rival that she spread lies and rumours in an attempt to try and lure her clients away, but she never succeeded.

  The concert was over and Elzunia walked along the avenue of beech trees to meet her parents. As they walked towards her arm in arm, she saw that people turned to look at the towering man with the thick moustache smiling down at the slender woman with her upswept blonde hair and a face like a Florentine cameo. She resembled the mannequins in the Warsaw Illustrated magazine that was her bible. Lagging behind her glamorous parents in her long socks and comfortable sandals, strands of fine hair flopping over her face, Elzunia felt like a pale moon trailing in the shadow of a brilliant sun. The outdoor café was filling up and they made their way to a vacant table, past flustered waitresses carrying trays of walnut tortes, sugar-encrusted doughnuts and cream-cheese pancakes.

  As she bit into her vanilla slice and sent a puff of icing sugar over the table, Elzunia studied her mother delicately sipping black tea with lemon and no sugar. No food ever entered Lusia’s mouth before she considered its potential effect on her waistline. Elzunia considered her spoilt and vain. Although she was ashamed to admit it, even to herself, she knew she was jealous of her mother because of her father’s admiring glances and compliments. Gosia and Lydia, whose parents often fought, envied Elzunia’s happy home life, but she thought it was more painful for a child to grow up in a family where the parents were so besotted with each other.

  None of this bothered her brother. Four years older and a revolting know-all, Stefan inhabited a different world, especially now that girls were running after him all the time. What they saw in him she couldn’t imagine, but when one of them told him he looked like Cary Grant, he started smearing brilliantine in his hair, parting it on the side, and talking through his teeth in what he imagined was English.

  At the next table, two men raised their voices as they argued about Germany’s plans. One of them said Hitler was bluffing, while the other banged his fist so hard on the table that his glass crashed to the ground.

  ‘Are you going to tell me he was bluffing when he invaded Sudetenland, Austria and Czechoslovakia?’ he shouted. ‘Wake up, for God’s sake. We’re next on the list!’

  Images of German soldiers marching through towns, arresting, torturing and shooting ordinary people, tightened Elzunia’s stomach with dread.

  ‘But how come Hitler can do those things?’ she asked as she sat between her parents in the back of the horse-drawn doroszka on the way home.

  Her father leaned over and squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Dzidzia,’ he said, using the pet name he’d given her when she was a child. ‘Worrying about tomorrow sucks all the pleasure from today.’

  She nodded. After all, he would always be there to protect her and whisk her away from danger, like the knights in the stories he used to tell her.

  The doroszka driver flicked the mare’s rump with his whip and the horse turned into Okopowa Street and trotted along Nalewki. This was the Jewish part of Warsaw and it seemed to Elzunia that, compared to the rest of the city, this was a bubbling cauldron. No one walked or talked slowly here; everything was speeded up. Merchants ran to and from their storerooms, haggling, arguing and gesticulating. Wherever she looked, carters were loading or unloading trucks, hauling oranges, sacks of flour or bales of cloth onto waiting barrows that they wheeled at a run into open doorways. Every wall was pasted with notices and hung with advertisements, and tiny workshops in passageways resounded with hammering and whirring. Some of the men had long beards and the women strolling along the street had dark eyes and long skirts. Craning her head out of the carriage, Elzunia asked the driver to slow down so that she could have a better look at these exotic people, but her mother made an impatient gesture and told him to drive on.

  Suddenly everything stopped moving. The street became as still and silent as a tableau. It reminded her of the time at the movie theatre when the projector had jammed and she had sat staring at a frozen image of soldiers with bayonets poised, ready to strike. Elzunia couldn’t hear the horse’s hooves clattering on the cobblestones, the sound of doors banging or people calling out. In the ghostly stillness that descended over the street, she had a vision of an enclosure that surrounded these houses, sucked out the air and entombed all the people. She was holding her breath when her mother’s exasperated voice brought her back to the present.

  ‘Elzunia, did you hear what I said?’

  She blinked several times and everything returned to normal but she was silent all the way home because her mouth was as dry as sand. The late-afternoon sun lit up her mother’s amber brooch and Elzunia’s gaze rested on the insect trapped inside, engulfed by a pitiless force that it had been powerless to resist.

  Part I

  One

  The ballroom of the Europejski Hotel opened out onto a large semi-circular terrace and, as Adam Czartoryski propelled his companion towards the French windows, the band leader climbed onto the podium, raised his baton in his plump hand, and the orchestra struck up ‘Perfidia’. Weaving between the
dancing couples, Adam smiled to himself. The sensuous movements of the tango seemed a musical version of foreplay.

  On the way to the terrace, Adam had to navigate around the buffet table where people were piling caviar, mushroom pancakes, smoked salmon, pike in aspic and chicken kiev onto their gold-rimmed plates. August was coming to an end, and all around him people were discussing the coming war, but the only campaign on Adam’s mind at that moment was his conquest of the enchanting brunette he’d finally managed to lure outside.

  Elena’s bare shoulders and black hair gleamed in the moonlight, and Adam could already visualise her stretched out on his settee like The Naked Maja, her hair cascading over her soft white body. Leaning against the wrought-iron balustrade, he breathed in Elena’s perfume and found it spicy, secretive and full of promise.

  He caressed her bare back and felt her quiver as she leaned her head on his shoulder. Things were looking good. His colleagues, who tended to categorise women by their nationality, often said that English girls had cool eyes but hot bodies, while Spanish girls set you on fire with their glances but never delivered. But Elena’s back felt warm and pliant under his hand, and he was convinced that by the end of the evening he’d prove them all wrong.

  It had been the best summer Adam could remember. Being a trainee diplomat had opened doors to exclusive soirees, receptions and balls like this one, hosted by the Spanish ambassador, whose daughter he was presently courting. Like a keen angler, he assessed each season by the catch, and this one had been quite remarkable. In fact, in order not to disappoint all the eager mesdemoiselles, fraüleins and señoritas who flitted in and out of his life, some evenings he’d had to bid a hasty farewell to one so that he could keep his rendezvous with another.

  He swung Elena around to face him and squeezed her waist. ‘Let’s get away from here,’ he whispered. ‘I know a nightclub where they serve shashlik and play wild music all night. We’ll dance the czardas and you’ll feel like a gypsy princess.’

  She shook her head. ‘This is my father’s party. I can’t leave.’

  Adam dropped his arms and turned away without saying a word. He never pleaded.