I should have asked that male chauvinist pig… that racist… that Yankee don whether he could pronounce “Karol Wytola”, but you always think of the best comments after the event.  Karol Wytola.  Now that was a name to conjure with, at a Catholic College.  Pope John Paul II.  Was he going to make funny comments about the Holy Father’s name? 

I had tried to ring home from a callbox at Cambridge station, but my call had rung out into an empty house, and so the first thing I did when I arrived in Chenham station was to try from a callbox there.  This time, I managed to raise my sister, Lynn.  "Oh, hello Marya, " she said.  "How did you get on at your interview?  Did you get in?"

“What's the matter with Dad?” I demanded, passing over her question.  “Is he going to be all right?"

"He's in hospital."

"Yes, I know.  Mum left this message.  I've been really worried.  What happened?"

"He had stomach pains."

"But he was all right this morning, when he drove me to the station."

"He didn’t want to worry you.  He had had stomach pains all night.  He went to the doctors this morning and they sent him to hospital in an ambulance."

"In an ambulance?"

“Yes.”

"What do they think it is? 

"I don't know, Marya.  Urcky thinks they’ll do tests.  Steve says…" 

Lynn had started going out with Steve when they were both thirteen.  They used to walk home from school together holding hands, his white school uniform shirt hanging out over his trousers and she, her blue-checked convent school dress hitched up as far as it would go, gazing up at him with puppy dog eyes.  From that point onwards, everything Lynn said would seem to be prefixed with, "Steve says...  "

“Who’s with him?” I asked, cutting off The Thoughts of Chairman Steve.

"Urcky… I think."

“Who’s looking after her boys?  Who’s looking after Mum?”

“I don’t know, Marya.  I'm pregnant, aren’t I?” she added.  Older, married, sisters were perpetually pregnant, in my experience.

"Look, I'm going to go to the hospital myself."

"I'm going with Steve in a minute."

“I'm going now."

"OK… if you hang on, Steve can give you a lift.  "

"No.  I'll be quicker on the bus."

I walked out of the station building and stood by the bus stop.  After waiting for a few minutes, I got impatient.  It was only twenty-five minutes on foot from the station to our house, if you went through the park and didn’t dilly-dally, and, twenty-three minutes later, I was squeezing past our car in the drive and unlocking our front door.  For a moment, I stood in the hallway listening.  The house was empty, thank Goodness.  My mother wasn’t here.  My mother hardly ever left this house, except to go to Mass and then only with Dad or one of us.  On another occasion, I would have relished the solitude, but today I rushed upstairs to my room to exchange Urcky’s best jacket, the itchy tights and Sophie’s skirt, for my comfortable jeans and jumper.  I wondered whether I should be taking anything of Dad’s to the hospital, but I noticed that his toiletries and pyjamas were no longer in their usual places.  My oldest sister, Urcky, would have organised that, but she wouldn’t have thought of taking books and Dad would need books more than he needed tests or medicine.  I threw his current library books into the car and set off.

As I approached Chenham General Hospital, I became aware of cars being lined up along the roadside, many of them parked on a tilt, over kerbs and up the hedgerow, but, not knowing quite what else to do, I trundled on, through the hospital gates and in the general direction of the imposing sandstone portico which was the main entrance, noting, by and by, that all the car parks were full.  The bays immediately in front of the entrance were marked out for various hospital officers and all occupied, except one.  “Night Supervisor” read the sign above this space, so, as it was only half past four, I reversed into it.

The main buildings of Chenham General Hospital were in the old fashioned hospital style, heavy wooden doors with fanlights and black and white quarry tiles underfoot.  I went over to the solid, mahogany reception desk and asked which ward Mr Jerzy Wieclawski was in.  I had to repeat his name and spell it twice.  I was not amused.

Dad was in Scott Ward.  He would have liked that, I mused, as, last year, he had read all the Sir Walter Scott’s novels - he would have liked even better to have been on Conrad Ward, had there been one.  Beyond the reception, the hospital buildings became hygienic and utilitarian, a labyrinth of corridors, painted signs on the walls pointing to mysterious initials like “CSSD” and “MAU”, which I negotiated with some difficulty.  When at last I walked through the door of Scott Ward, I collided with the fat bottom of a nurse in royal blue uniform, getting sheets out of a cupboard. 

“Can I help you?” she asked, scrambling to her feet.

“Yes,” I said, without apologising.  It was silly place to put the sheet cupboard, right by the door.  People must bump into the nurses all the time.  “I’ve come to see Mr Wieclawski.  I'm his daughter.”

“Mr W?” she replied.  “He’s in radiography.  Would you like to take a seat?”  She pointed to some hard chairs with plastic-coated cushions, ideal for incontinent patients.

“Mr Wieclawski,” I muttered, enunciating every syllable and glaring at her back as she walked away carrying her sheets.

“Marya,” called Lynn’s voice.

I spun round to see her sitting in a more comfortable armchair, in an alcove round a corner.  “Hello.  How did you get here so quick?”

“Steve brought me.  Like I said.”

“Oh.  Where’s Steve now?”

“He had to go and see his mother.”

I bet he did, I thought.  “Have you seen Dad?”

“No.”

“How long will he be?”

Lynn shrugged, lifting the many folds of her voluminous maternity dress.  “Do you ever stop asking questions?”

“No.  Where’s Urcky?  Where’s Mum?”

“Urcky’s taken Mum to Mass.”

“Has she actually been… here on the ward?”

“Yep.  Mum and Urcky were standing outside the ward when I arrived a few minutes ago.  She was… er… in a bit of a state.  Sister asked Urcky to take her out.”

“Shit!” 

“By the way,” said Lynn, reaching into her handbag, “this arrived for you yesterday.” 

She handed me a letter, postmarked Krakow.  “Magda.”  I slit it open with my forefinger.  “Thank you.  It’s bloody ridiculous that I have to receive letters from my own aunt at your address.” 

“You know what Mum’s like.  She doesn’t speak to either of her sisters now.”

“Well, quite frankly, I don’t care if I never set eyes on Auntie Elzbieta again.  She was pretty pathetic when Sophie and I were at her house in Chicago last summer.  And Uncle Bernard was really annoying, and our cousins, those two “all American boys”.”   I held up my fingers to do the quote marks.  “I'm off Yanks at the moment!”

Lynn’s eyes narrowed.  “Do you think Elzbieta knows where Sophie is?”

“I doubt it, because Sophie couldn’t stand Elzbieta.” 

“I think about Sophie every day.”

“You think I don’t?  Sophie was my best friend.  There’re only 18 months between us and now we don’t know where she is.  We just get these post cards with American post marks every month or so, saying she’s “OK.”  I could never… not speak… to my sisters, you and Urcky, the way Mum has.” 

Lynn squeezed my hand.  She improved when Steve wasn’t around, when she had been away from him for a while and his aura had faded. “We Wielclawski girls stick together.  That’s what Urcky says.  And, right now, we need to, what with Mum and Sophie and everything.”

“And now Dad.  I'm so worried, Lynn.  I keep thinking it might be…”

“No, no.  You lose weight with that, don’t you?”

He had, a bit.  There were all these foods Dad couldn’t eat, his indigestion and his Bisodol.  “I don’t know why Mum quarrelled with Magda in Poland.  She’s great,” I said, changing the subject.

“No.”  Lynn shifted her pregnant weight.  “Hasn’t Magda got sons too?”

“One.  Zbigniew.  He’s a bit older than Sophie.”

“Good-looking?”

“He’s got a girlfriend.  Ewa.  Magda talks about them in her letters.”

“What do you and Magda write about all the time?  You write every month.”

“This and that…  You know what, Lynn?  Dad, he just gets so much shit from Mum.  I know she’s ill.  I know she can’t help it, but, Dad, he gets it all the time.  He’s had enough.  That’s why he’s got stomach pains.”