Peter Dickinson - Shadow of a Hero

‘Last night. I stayed with him on the way down.’

‘Why didn’t you stay with Steff and Mollie?’ said Momma, refusing, as always, to notice the fact that her sons didn’t get on with each other. ‘It’s only a few miles different.’

‘I took a cup of tea off Mollie,’ said Van. ‘Don’t you want the wine, Momma?’

She shrugged and spread her hands with a twisting motion, as if she were wringing out an invisible cloth, a gesture she never used to make but which Letta had seen again and again on the streets of Potok. It meant almost anything you wanted it to mean.

Grandad was still watching Van.

‘Wasn’t I given some almond brandy?’ he said. ‘Did that find its way home? We will need it after the dumbris .’

‘In any case,’ said Van, ‘Mollie’s spare room is pretty well chock-a-block with paperwork for next year’s festival.’

‘Next year’s festival?’ said Momma.

There was a silence.

‘They aren’t seriously going to try and have another festival next year?’ she said.

‘It has been suggested,’ said Grandad, ‘but I, for one, was not aware that the project was sufficiently far advanced to fill a whole bedroom with paperwork.’

He spoke drily, but Letta could hear he was both surprised and angry.

‘It isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘At least according to Nigel. He says they were hardly back before people were ringing up wanting to book places. Mollie kept telling them how iffy it was, but they still insisted on putting their names down and some of them are sending money. She’s just keeping track.’

‘It’s not at all iffy,’ said Van. ‘It’s going to be in Listru.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Listru’s in Bulgaria!’ said Momma.

‘Listru is in the Southern Province of Varina and we have a perfect right to hold a festival there,’ said Van.

‘What do you mean “we”?’ snapped Momma. ‘This is childish. You can’t do anything. It isn’t your business any more. I’m not talking about you, Poppa, but . . . Oh, Van! Letta! You’ve got British passports. This is where your life is going to be! This is where you belong! Varina’s over!’

‘You wouldn’t have said that a month ago,’ said Van, teasing, not seeming to notice how upset Momma was becoming. ‘Half Potok saw you dancing the sundilla in the Square.’

‘Yes, I know. Yes, I had a good time . . .’

‘Tears streaming down your face,’ said Van.

‘Listen. I was saying goodbye. I was happy once in Potok, long ago, when Steff and you were born. And now I was saying goodbye, because I knew I could never go back. It wasn’t real any more.’

She banged her fist onto the table so that the teapot rattled on the tray.

‘I think it was the reallest thing I’ve ever known,’ said Letta.

She couldn’t help it. She had to say it. It was true, and it mattered to her not to pretend, in spite of understanding why Momma felt the way she did. Momma drew a breath to yell at her, held it, and let it out.

‘Of course it was lovely, darling,’ she said carefully. ‘Especially lovely for you, with everything so happy, and no memories from before.’

‘Until they came for Grandad,’ said Letta.

‘Exactly,’ said Momma. ‘And that was when it stopped being a lovely dream and started being real.’

‘I don’t buy that,’ said Van. ‘That happened because our country is occupied by foreign powers. It’s got nothing to do with being real. In a real Varina it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘In a real world it did,’ said Momma. ‘And trying to hold a festival in Listru will only make it happen again, worse. The Bulgarians can be just as nasty as the Romanians – nastier, if anything. And anyone who tries to get there from outside will be just wasting their money. All they’ll do is sit in a coach for four days and then get turned back at the frontier.’

‘There are ways past frontiers, if you know how,’ said Van.

‘Van, please!’ said Momma. ‘Can’t you see what dangerous nonsense you’re talking? Poppa, do say something.’

‘It need not be dangerous, or nonsense,’ said Grandad. ‘For myself, I think we should attempt to hold a second festival.’

‘We’re going to hold one,’ interrupted Van. ‘We’re not talking about a few coaches being stopped at the frontiers, we’re talking about a hundred thousand native Varinians from the Northern Province all crossing the Danube together.’

‘This isn’t the Thames,’ said Momma. ‘Have you seen the Danube?’

‘Course I have,’ said Van. ‘There’s quite a few boats. We can build rafts and tow them. How are they going to stop us? Are they going to turn their guns on raft-loads of women and children?’

‘If they thought no-one was looking, they might well,’ said Grandad. ‘If we were to reach such a confrontation, I would not take the risk. I would prefer to negotiate with the Bulgarian regime. We could for instance offer to postpone the proposed referendum, which they certainly see as provocative . . .’

‘Not on your life!’ said Van, cutting in again. ‘That’s going to happen. It’s not negotiable.’

‘Oh, Van!’ said Momma. ‘You’re talking as if you could make the Bulgarians do what you want. And the Serbs and Romanians. You can’t. Do you imagine you can fight them? They’ve got armies, with tanks and guns and war-planes. It won’t be like old Restaur Vax fighting the Turks any more. It will be hell.’

‘It’s not going to be like that,’ said Van. ‘In any case Restaur Vax didn’t win that war – not by himself. What he did was make enough of a nuisance of himself for long enough for the British and the French and the Austrians to get tired of having this mess on their doorsteps and tell the Turks they’d got to lay off. That’s what we’ve got to do now. The trick is to stir things up and keep them stirred until everyone, even the Americans, realizes we’re not going to go away and they make the occupying powers give us what we want. If we can’t stir things up one way, we’ll stir them another.’

‘What do you mean?’ snapped Momma.

Van just looked at her, saying nothing. He wasn’t simply teasing. There was something else, some meaning in the tense silence, which Letta didn’t understand.

‘As Van says, that is the trick,’ said Grandad quietly. ‘I think there is very little difference among any of us over that. The argument is about how the trick is to be performed. Ideally we should persuade the outside powers that our cause is just, which it is, that we are prepared to be obstinate about it, which we are, but also reasonable, which we are not. To attempt to hold a cultural festival in the old capital of one of our three provinces fills the bill as neatly as can be expected. I think we shall be prevented, but I will certainly act as if I intended to go, and if I am allowed to I shall do so.’

‘So will I,’ said Letta.

Momma rose, grabbed everyone’s mugs and banged them onto the tray.

‘I think you’re all mad,’ she said in English. ‘I see I shall have to talk to Steff. Open the door for me, please, Letta.’

She marched out, catching a pleat of her skirt on a loose screw on the door-plate. She ripped it free and tramped on down the stairs. As Letta was closing the door she turned and caught Grandad’s eye. He made a minute gesture with his hand for her to push off, so she took the pack of crumpets and left. As she went down the first flight she heard Grandad’s voice asking a question, and Van’s answering, cautious but obstinate. Then they were out of earshot.

Momma was already on the phone, saying ‘Hello, darling. Is your father there? Can I have a word with him?’

Letta patted her shoulder comfortingly, but got no response, so she went into the sitting-room and started flicking through the TV channels. There seemed to be nothing but dreary cricket and ancient Westerns. Van used to be good at cricket, she remembered. When she was small Momma had once taken her to watch him having a trial for the Hampshire Second XI. Cricket was like the sundilla , she thought. Probably all countries have something like that, meaningless and boring to anyone outside, but really important to people inside. Look at baseball, for heaven’s sake! Momma thought cricket was meaningless and boring – she’d only gone to watch because Van had been playing. But she’d cried while she’d danced the sundilla . Despite what had happened at Lapiri, she wasn’t really free, and she never would be.