Cam fought down panic. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘I’m not going back tomorrow. I won’t put up with it.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I feel like a criminal.’
‘Why, what did they do?’
At last she looked directly at him. ‘Do you believe I’m just using you to get to America?’
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Then why did they ask me that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does the question have anything to do with national security?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘They accused me of lying.’
‘Did you lie?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t tell them everything. I’m not a nun, I’ve had lovers. I left one or two out – but your horrible CIA knew! They must have gone to my old school!’
‘I know you’ve had lovers, I have too.’ Though not many, Cam thought, but he did not say it. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘They made me feel like a prostitute.’
‘I’m sorry. But it really doesn’t matter what they think of us, so long as they give you a security clearance.’
‘They’re going to tell you a lot of nasty stories about me. Things they’ve been told by people who hate me – girls who are jealous, and boys I wouldn’t sleep with.’
‘I won’t believe them.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
She sat on his lap. ‘I’m sorry I was grouchy.’
‘I forgive you.’
‘I love you, Cam.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘I feel better now.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you want me to make you feel better?’
This kind of talk made Cam’s mouth dry. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Okay.’ She stood up. ‘You just lie back and relax, baby,’ she said.
*
Dave Williams flew to Warsaw with his wife, Beep, and their son, John Lee, for the marriage of his brother-in-law, Cam Dewar.
John Lee could not read, although he was an intelligent eight-year-old and went to a fine school. Dave and Beep had taken him to an educational psychologist, and had learned that the boy suffered from a common condition called dyslexia, or word-blindness. John Lee would learn to read, but he would need special help and he would have to work extra hard at it. Dyslexia ran in families and afflicted boys more than girls.
That was when Dave realized what his own problem was.
‘I believed I was dumb, all through school,’ he told Beep that evening, in the pine kitchen of Daisy Farm, after they had put John Lee to bed. ‘The teachers said the same. My parents knew I wasn’t dumb, so they assumed I must be lazy.’
‘You’re not lazy,’ she said. ‘You’re the hardest-working person I know.’
‘Something was wrong with me, but we didn’t know what it was. Now we do.’
‘And we’ll be able to make sure John Lee doesn’t suffer the way you did.’
Dave’s lifelong struggle with writing and reading was explained. It had not oppressed him for many years, not since he had become a songwriter whose lyrics were on the lips of millions. All the same he felt enormously relieved. A mystery had been unravelled, a cruel disability accounted for. Most important of all, he knew how to make sure it did not afflict the next generation.
‘And you know what else?’ Beep had said, pouring a glass of Daisy Farm cabernet sauvignon.
‘Yeah,’ said Dave. ‘He’s probably mine.’
Beep had never been sure whether Dave or Walli was the father of John Lee. As the boy grew and changed and looked more and more like Dave, neither of them had known whether the likenesses were inherited or acquired: hand gestures, turns of phrase, enthusiasms, all could have been learned by a boy who adored his daddy. But dyslexia could not be learned. ‘It’s not conclusive,’ Beep said. ‘But it’s strong evidence.’
‘And anyway, we don’t care,’ said Dave.
However, they had vowed never to speak of this doubt to anyone else, including John Lee himself.
Cam’s wedding took place at a modern Catholic church in the small town of Otwock, on the outskirts of Warsaw. Cam had embraced Catholicism. Dave had no doubt the conversion was entirely cynical.
The bride wore a white dress that her mother had got married in: Polish people had to recycle clothing.
Lidka was slim and attractive, Dave thought, with long legs and a nice bust, but there was something about her mouth that suggested ruthlessness to him. Perhaps he was being harsh: fifteen years as a rock star had made him cynical about girls. They went to bed with men to seek some advantage for themselves more often than most people thought, in his experience.
The three bridesmaids had made themselves short summery dresses in bright pink cotton.
The reception was held at the American Embassy. Woody Dewar paid for it, but the embassy was able to secure plentiful supplies of food, and something other than vodka to drink.
Lidka’s father told a joke, half in Polish and half in English. A man walks into a government-owned butcher’s shop and asks for a pound of beef.
‘Nie ma – we don’t have any.’
‘Pork, then.’
‘Nie ma.’
‘Veal?’
‘Nie ma.’
‘Chicken.’
‘Nie ma.’
The customer leaves. The butcher’s wife says: ‘The guy is crazy.’
‘Of course,’ says the butcher. ‘But what a memory!’
The Americans looked awkward, but the Poles laughed heartily.
Dave had asked Cam not to tell anyone that his brother-in-law was in Plum Nellie, but the news had got out, as it usually did, and Dave was besieged by Lidka’s friends. The bridesmaids made a big fuss of him, and it was clear that Dave could go to bed with any of them, or even – one hinted – with all three at the same time, if he was so inclined.
‘You should meet my bass player,’ Dave said.
While Cam and Lidka were doing their first dance, Beep said quietly to Dave: ‘I know he’s a creep, but he’s my brother, and I can’t help feeling pleased he’s found someone at last.’
Dave said: ‘Are you sure Lidka isn’t a gold-digger who just wants an American passport?’
‘That’s what my parents are afraid of. But Cam’s thirty-four and single.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Dave said. ‘What has he got to lose?’
*
Tania Dvorkin was full of fear when she attended Solidarity’s first national convention in September 1981.
The proceedings began in the cathedral at Oliwa, a northern suburb of Gdansk. Two sharp stiletto towers menacingly flanked a low baroque portal through which the delegates entered the church. Tania sat with Danuta Gorski, her Warsaw neighbour, the journalist and Solidarity organizer. Like Tania, Danuta wrote blandly orthodox reports for the official press while privately pursuing her own agenda.
The archbishop gave a don’t-make-trouble sermon about peace and love of the Fatherland. Although the Pope was gung-ho, the Polish clergy were conflicted about Solidarity. They hated Communism, but they were natural authoritarians, hostile to democracy. Some priests were heroically brave in defying the regime, but what the Church hierarchy wanted was to replace a godless tyranny with a Christian tyranny.
However, it was not the Church that bothered Tania, nor any of the other forces tending to divide the movement. Much more ominous were the threatening manoeuvres by the Soviet Navy in the Gulf of Gdansk, together with ‘land exercises’ by 100,000 Red Army troops on Poland’s eastern border. According to the article by Danuta in today’s Trybuna Ludu, this military muscle-flexing was a response to increased American aggression. No one was fooled. The Soviet Union wanted to tell everyone that it was poised to invade if Solidarity made the wrong noises.
After the service the nine hundred delegates moved in buses to the campus of the University of Gdansk, where the convention was to be held in the massive Olivia Sports Hall.