Another Kind of Loving

PROLOGUE

Extracts from guidebooks on former Yugoslavia in the 1980s: Yugoslavia is one country with two alphabets, three religions, four languages, five (main) nationalities, six republics, seven frontiers….

If ever East meets West it is here among the magnificent mineral-rich mountains of (its) central republic Bosnia-Hercegovina. And nowhere is this more true than in its capital Sarajevo, where buses and trams rumble past mosques, bazaars and supermarkets, and minarets share the skyline with Orthodox towers and domes and Roman Catholic spires.

In 1991, first Slovenia, then Croatia, declared their independence, deaf to foreign warnings and threats of retribution from Serbia on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs living within Croatia’s boundaries.

By early 1992, a six-month civil war had left over 6000 dead and uprooted a million people. Unrest grew in Bosnia and Macedonia.

On March 1st 1992, following an overwhelming vote (boycotted by Bosnian Serbs) in favour of Bosnian independence, Serb snipers opened fire on civilians in Sarajevo

SARAJEVO - MAY 1992 - Extracts from the personal diary of a Bosnian Serb during the early days of the siege

‘ When we heard that the younger part of the family was safe and sound – telephone connections were still operative – my wife and I were greatly relieved. We could go back to patching up our broken dreams of living together in a multi-cultural society. This was helped by our mixed neighbourhood, the bonds of horrors and suffering and, finally, shared awareness of the inevitable self-destruction of at least two of the major participants, Moslems and Serbs, in a lunatic outbreak of violence.

‘Some days later: …. heavy bombardment, most telephone lines destroyed, public transport, trams and buses systematically shelled, and hundreds of apartments hit … more and more paramilitary looting and beating up of people on national grounds; … growing hatred on all sides; family quarrels on national and political grounds; and yet enormous solidarity in small, everyday matters, in sharing food, gas, coal, wood….

‘27th May…. We go to the market, buy a jar of beetroot for a thousand million dinars; the price of matches has gone down so we buy three boxes. And some toothpaste. We meet two elderly, in fact very old friends, Austro Hungarian style (and probably origin, both professional people who retired years ago). The old gentleman proudly informs us … they had seen a man setting up scales on a counter, rushed up before any goods were in sight. And what appeared: spinach! Only a thousand million dinars a kilo! ….

‘29th May ….After the ‘breadline massacre’ yesterday, tonight the shelling horrors start on a larger scale. We are in the cellar, from eight o’clock in the evening until two in the morning; mortars, heavy artillery, multiple rocket launcher, horrifying destruction of many parts of Sarajevo…. I could feel horror and fear creeping into my bones, and I remained there throughout the next day.’

MIKE – October 1992

The steep narrow lane was strewn with debris: bricks, shards of glass, a table with three legs, a T-shirt abandoned in the gutter. Mike Hennessey bent to retrieve it. A jagged tear across the front of it severed the slogan I love Sarajevo in English across a blood-red heart. Christ, there was even symbolism in the gutters of this benighted city. He dropped the T-shirt thinking well at least the children’s home is on the right side of town: the side least vulnerable to the barrage of death pounding out from the encircling Serb artillery.

Instinctively he drew into the relative shelter of a doorway, then saw it opened into the shell of a house. But the view was magnificent over the city, late autumn sun slanting on to minarets and spires and towers too distant to reveal their scars; and the steep slopes beyond still too densely forested to hint at what they concealed.

"It’s unreal," he had said quietly, those fifteen, sixteen years ago when it had still been Yugoslavia and the world mostly remembered Sarajevo – if it remembered it at all – as the place where that chap shot an Archduke and started the First World War. Or something like that.

He was on holiday then, had fallen in love with the city, and with a girl called Marija with smooth high cheekbones and green eyes. Sarajevo has always welcomed persecuted people, Marija had said. People with different blood feelings from ours. She meant blood ties, but back then Mike thought her expression got it about right.

God help ’em.

He had looked for her of course, but in this mayhem it was a forlorn hope, even supposing she still lived here and had survived. She had stopped answering his letters quite soon after his return to England. Or had he stopped writing first, caught up in the self-important busy-ness of his first reporting job? He couldn’t even remember her full name and anyway she would be married by now. As he was. He pictured Sara briefly, the stable constant in his life for eleven years: at home in the rural, well-ordered quiet of Middle England. And longed to be there.

Get a story about how the kids are coping, was the latest instruction from Canary Wharf.

He had sent a message to the director of the orphanage the previous day and she was waiting for him. Her name was Jovanka and she looked exhausted. But she smiled as she said, I wondered if you would come. The shelling was bad last night.

She led him down a long corridor that was very cold and smelt of institution. We have no heating, she said. Little food or water, and light for only two hours. Some days. Soon we will have no candles.

I’ll get you some.

She raised her eyebrows politely. And most of the staff have gone: to safety, or to fight, or to take care of their families.

There were about 50 small children. They had been collected into one large dormitory to make the most of whatever warmth and light were available. Most were in bed but some of the smallest had clambered out and were squatting on the floor, sucking their thumbs, rocking to and fro. But noiselessly. It was the silence of so many children in one place that was unnerving: a kind of resignation more suited to a home for the elderly.

Jovanka spoke sharply in Serbo-Croat to a girl standing in the middle of the room. Her head was down, her face concealed by a dark lank curtain of hair and she clutched a book. Jovanka sighed. She is supposed to be helping me, that one. I ask her to make sure they stay in bed where it is warm now that it is dangerous to play outside. But... She shrugged.

Mike went over to the child, crouching down beside her. Instinctively he pushed back the curtain of hair. She flinched but did not draw away until he tried to look at her book when she stepped back, clutching it harder and glared ferociously at him. She had dark eyes, a sallow unhealthy complexion and he saw then that she was older than he had first thought – perhaps eleven, twelve? Then he noticed with surprise the title of the book: Winnie the Pooh.

It was in a parcel from your country, Jovanka said.

"And what’s her story?"

Her father was killed by a sniper; Branka, her mother is now very sick. She is an old friend, from long ago and asked if Jasminka should come here. To be safer. To help me…. She paused. Branka is a Serb. Jasminka’s father Ismet was a Bosniak, a Moslem. She was playing outside and he had gone to fetch her. She was holding his hand when he was shot. She shrugged. I forget to make allowances. But when tragedy is the norm …

But tragedy wasn’t the norm in Mike’s life, and he ached with compassion for the girl with unkempt hair. As he followed Jovanka out of the room, he looked back and saw the child was still glaring after him.

I’ll get those candles, he repeated later as he took his leave of Jovanka. The shelling had started again and, across the valley, fresh puffs of smoke and dust rose where missiles struck with distant, gentle, harmless-sounding thuds. And some things for the children. I’ll come back in a few days.

He did return, but he never intended to get so involved with the girl with the uncombed hair.

SARA – October 1992

Sara Hennessey was just finishing her editorial for the village magazine when Mike’s call came through that October Saturday morning. It had been a particularly tiresome issue. The Parish Council had turned down an application for a nature reserve in favour of plans for new housing - ‘executive’ so-called - on a piece of local wasteland owned by them. The Postbag was seething with outpourings from protagonists on both sides. Editing out the vitriol without losing some often very valid arguments had taken most of the morning; likewise concealing her own preferences (for the reserve), though she had allowed herself to slide off the fence in her editorial.

Her computer, an extremely new toy, had crashed twice that week– thankfully without the loss of anything vital – and the duplicator on which 950 copies of the magazine were about to be reproduced was beginning to show its age. OK so the Daerley Green Chronicle was hardly the Times or the Washington Post, but to a sizeable number of Daerlians it was the voice of the community. It also these days occupied a substantial portion of her, Sara’s, life. With Mike away so much, she welcomed this. Everyone said she did a great job, no doubt largely because no one else was willing to take it on. Still, she was prepared to accept that under her stewardship the Chronicle had become an ever more important repository for all things Daerlian.

Though don’t let it take you over completely, dear girl, Justin said quite regularly, usually when he delivered his copy as Clubs Editor. Sara grinned as her eye caught a sheaf of papers bearing his sprawling scrawl. At 78, Justin could get away with calling a 35-year-old ‘dear girl’ and would almost certainly achieve his stated goal of being the ultimate dinosaur to die uncontaminated by either computer or mobile phone. She was very fond of him.

The thought of Justin lightened her mood and was reflected in her flip Hello World, as she answered the telephone’s second ring.

Hi Darling, crackled Mike’s voice across an appalling line. That’s the most cheerful sound I’ve heard in days in this God forsaken place.

Just put the adjectival magazine to bed. Total euphoria, Sara said. And then registered what he’d said and where he was. Sorry, lover. You sound bushed.

He started to tell her about a children’s home. She pictured his face, squarish, serious: mostly serious except when his delicious sense of humour triggered a network of crinkles that make him look distinctly puckish. And very attractive. She hauled her attention back to what he was saying: something about a girl and what sounded like Winnie the Pooh, but the line kept breaking up and she must have mis-heard. Then for a few seconds the line cleared and his voice, as clear as if he were in the next room, said … so many tragic stories. In the end you feel desperate to do something. Anything. I thought … well, just may be she could come and live with us for a while.

In a lengthening silence Sara’s mind scrabbled to interpret these words.

Darling are you there?

There was only one possible interpretation. Sara took a deep breath. Yes, but I don’t think I heard … The line began crackling again.

Be home next week with luck. We’ll talk about it …. The line broke up altogether.

Sara went on staring at the white receiver in her hand, as though staring at it long enough would make everything clear. Then she put it back on its cradle.

Don’t start jumping up and down, she said aloud. Mike’s not a fool. No, but he was a compulsive collector of strays. He’d also been under a lot of pressure lately - that was blindingly obvious from his calls and from his reports in the paper.

And he’d always wanted a child. No doubt to compensate for his own disordered upbringing, as he’d implied more than once.

She snapped her mind shut. It was a reflex she had developed when faced by uncertainty and she had become good at it. With a conscious straightening of shoulders, she slipped the master copy of the Daerley Green Chronicle into a plastic folder and headed across the market place to the church hall. Amanda Heyforth was already there, heaving reams of paper from a cupboard to a trestle table. Over three years they had fine-tuned the routine to a wordless procedure as they wheeled the duplicator out from its alcove, fed it with paper, ran a couple of test pages. But Amanda was not a great one for long silences, even those disguised by the rhythmic clank of the duplicator. It was not long before she said: So what’s up then? And don’t say ‘nothing’ because you’re looking distinctly broody.

Sara chose her words carefully Oh Mike just rang. Sounded sort of hyped up.

"For God’s sake, he’s entitled to sound hyped up isn’t he – assuming he’s still in that horrendous place? Well, you know what I think."

Amanda was deputy head at a local Prep School and, yes, Sara was well aware of her views: Can’t think why we don’t just leave them all to kill each other off until they’ve run out of puff – or people. Amanda was an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ person, whether it was Northern Ireland, the Middle East, any one of half a dozen African states, the Balkans - and without too much regard for causes and effects as Mike was keen to point out. With a good friendship at stake, they’d given up arguing about it a while ago. This suited Sara who loathed confrontation of any kind. It wasn’t that she held strong views on the international scene, but she certainly did not want Mike’s challenged, least of all on the Balkans, which had long been his special patch.

So Not that sort of hyped-up – I can’t really put my finger on it, was all Sara said. Then Here comes Justin for his caffeine fix. I’ll put the kettle on.

It had become a ritual on what they grandly called Press Day for Justin to look in and usually stay, ostensibly to help patting the untidy sheaves of duplicated pages into regimented piles ready for collation. The proceedings were well laced with the latest village gossip and Sara had never felt more grateful for this welcome diversion of the surface of her mind. That afternoon discussions mostly centred on the P.C.’s latest decision.

Good editorial dear girl, Justin said. Though in this case I think you’re wrong. The P.C. should, must, put people first. Even above feathered and little furry things.

People yes, Sara said firmly. It’s not people being considered here; it’s the unadulterated lure of more dosh. Now if it had been low-cost housing to keep the younger generation from moving out, that would have been something else. But executive houses – I ask you!

Executives – business – more work opportunities – more customers for local shops…? suggested Amanda.

Rubbish – they’ll all commute like mad to Banbury or Oxford. Even London. And clutter up the market place with their cars because they won’t be bothered to walk the half-mile to the shops. That’s if they’re not piling out to the supermarkets.

They wrangled amiably for a while, moved on to the imminent retirement of the vicar and the usual chaotic plans for the annual Christmas fair. It was well into dusk by the time a couple of paper jams had been cleared, the duplicating completed and more trestles set out with pages stacked in the right order, ready for the collating team on Monday morning.

Time for a jar at The Trumpet? Justin suggested, as he always did at the end of Press Day. Amanda had already rushed off to catch some esoteric TV analysis of the current art scene.

Better not tonight, Justin Sara said. A few things I need to check in the shop –Polly’s been stuck there on her own all day. Also by now she was really beginning to need headspace.

They locked up the hall and he followed her across the market place, quiet in this early evening period with the commuters’ cars gone, the three pubs not yet busy, most Daerlians at home preparing meals, watching the news, doing homework. Though these days it was a market place in name only, Sara loved this small hub of her universe: the jumble of 18th and 19th century houses and shops round it, the triangle of green with the chestnut tree in the middle. The lights were out in the small dress shop and adjoining florist. The estate agents were just locking up, but some one was still glued to a computer screen in DG Publishing which had recently taken over from the greengrocers (bloody supermarkets, Sara had ranted at the time). The village store was still open and would be for another couple of hours and, straight ahead, she could see Polly’s fluffy fair head bent over a book, at the back of Sara’s Collectibles, her own contribution to the local economy.

Not a bad place to end your days, Justin said, his thoughts obviously running along a parallel track Not, of course, that you’re anywhere near the end of yours. Though I do worry about you. All these village involvements, the shop, Mike away so much ... Time he came home to look after you. How is he by the way?

Not the time to voice nameless concerns. Just heard he’ll be home in a week. Can’t wait. It’s been a particularly long stint, but the poor love doesn’t have much choice. She raised a hand in farewell as she pushed open the door into Sara’s and clicked her attention from Mike-unknown-orphans-the-Chronicle-Justin-Parish-affairs to young Polly Cuttle. Who was looking exceedingly pallid, as well she might four months into her first pregnancy and still coping with morning sickness.

Sara felt a twinge of contrition. Home Polly, she ordered. Immediately.

I’m fine, really. Polly pushed the book into her bag and stood up. Despite the baggy fisherman’s smock, the baby was definitely apparent now. You know I love working here with all these nice things. She paused, surveying the imaginative display of locally produced arts and crafts that Sara had made her speciality. Anyway, all this creative stuff – I reckon it’s bound to rub off on junior….

Yuck. Fond though Sara was of young Polly, this mother-in-bloom stuff was getting a bit much. She pushed her gently towards the door. Out! she said firmly.

She closed up after her. Whatever needed doing could damned well wait till the morning. Suddenly Sara felt weary to the marrow – literally as though, with very little encouragement, her bones would simply disintegrate right here in view of the evening patrons beginning to trickle passed the window towards The Trumpet. If she were going to melt into a pile of mush, it might as well be in the privacy of her own living room. After a quick final check, Sara locked up and turned away from the Market Place, down a lane, into an alleyway. It had been Mike’s idea to call the house Abel’s Yard after the earliest recorded occupant. He’d always had a great sense of order had Mike – perhaps partly due to his own disrupted upbringing. It had offended him that so many changes had completely altered the original 17th century character of the house: walls knocked down to make larger rooms, small leaded windows replaced by modern panes in the days before stricter planning regulations might have obstructed such sacrilege. Sara, appreciative of greater space and more light, didn’t share his views, but compromised by conceding to the odd name which, Mike said, would go a little way towards restoring the place’s psyche. After all, she’d always been good at compromise, and it didn’t do any harm.

The house felt unexpectedly chilly. Or perhaps it was her mood. Sara flicked the central-heating switch on, flung her coat over a chair, got some ice from the fridge, poured herself a stiff malt. She stood for a moment in the middle of the living room and listened. Distant village sounds, immediate quietness. A waiting sort of feeling. Mike had this weird theory that houses could reflect circumstances.

She curled herself into a corner of the sofa and felt the first sip of malt head straight for the solar plexus, then diffuse into a blessed release of tension. It was followed by a surge of the anxiety that had been lurking in the shadows of her mind all day. In one bound the potential enormity of what she thought Mike had said leapfrogged every intervening scrap of the day’s minutiae: " … just may be she could come and live with us for a while …"

She? Who? What the hell’s going on, Mike?

Something about a child in an orphanage and Winnie the Pooh. A newsreel began to unwind through Sara’s head of refugees, sad, unkempt, weeping, and landscapes spattered with gutted houses: scenes distant and quite unconnected with the quiet ebb and flow of Daerley Green’s seasons. Unconnected enough at any rate to allow her the luxury of compassion without involvement. Until now.

Was it a bit of this that Mike wanted to transplant to Daerley Green?

Why?

The effect of the malt was hugely comforting, helped her to think, brought clarity. She noticed the glass was empty, poured another, went off to get more ice from the fridge.

Her mind probed back, reconstructing the conversation. It had been such a lousy line there was frustratingly little to reconstruct. Something about so many tragic stories and feeling desperate. Did all the correspondents in Sarajevo feel the same desperation, have a need to bring home an orphan?

It was then, sipping at her malt, that Sara saw with a new insight close to revelation that the whole shebang was nothing to do with correspondents and Sarajevo, but with the complex psyche of this particular correspondent

For some time now her mind had been tiptoeing round a deepening unease; this morning’s phone call and a little alcoholic assistance had merely brought it into sharper focus. So how did you bridge a sense of apartness so subtly insinuating you had barely noticed its coming? It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Mike was a first class journalist and other people’s dramas were his stock in trade. Sara’s Collectibles and a growing involvement in Daerley Green’s affairs had become hers. Being useful, needed, important in a large-fish-in-small-pond way could be heady stuff she had discovered. In the process she had evolved into one of what Mike teasingly referred to as Daerley’s Great and Good.

With a few exceptions, she knew he did not feel at ease with them. This safe, comfortable, attractive corner of middle England must seem a galaxy away from the fear and tragedy that were currently daily features of his life. When he came home she tried, she really did, to bridge that yawning space between the two; equally she tried to suppress a niggling resentment that such efforts appeared to be one-sided. After all, community commitments were commitments. They had become as important to her as Mike’s were to him. It was hard to imagine life without them.

Perhaps if they’d had children….

Ah, children.

Which brought her to that other even more deeply suppressed source of concern: the remembered flicker of raw envy on Mike’s face when he first heard the news of Polly’s pregnancy.

OK for a couple of kids? he had said long ago.

Of course she’d said it was OK. They were deeply in love and kids were an OK idea. Some time in the future. Say three, five years.

After three years she’d stopped taking the pill. It’s supposed not to be good to get anxious about it, Mike reassured her when she began to mutter on nature’s tardiness. She hadn’t explained that the anxiety was more on his behalf than hers.

It was around that time he had started getting heavily involved in other people’s wars. Occasionally they had talked of checking things out, maybe giving nature a helping hand. Somehow they had never got around to it.

Mike had been in some unpronounceable part of East Europe when she’d had that routine appointment for a cervical smear. Almost in passing she’d mentioned to the doctor that she didn’t seem to be very good at conceiving. How long had they been trying? Well, it wasn’t so much they had been trying as they hadn’t been not-trying. And they’d been married then seven years. They said they’d do some tests.

She hadn’t mentioned it to Mike at that stage; not much point when there was nothing to report, and anyway he was up to his eyeballs in collapsing Iron Curtains. In any case she hadn’t been that concerned. She still remembered how casually pleased she’d been when the appointment at Gynae came through, thinking how nicely it would fit in after an earlyish morning shop at Sainsbury’s; and how great it would be if the medicos could speed the creative process up a bit. Motherhood still wasn’t that high on her agenda, but she could probably get used to the idea. And time was getting on.

After a preliminary shuffling of papers the young Registrar looked up and said, The problem is there seems to have been some damage to your fallopian tubes, Mrs Hennessey.

She had looked at him expectantly, said So what can be done about that?

I’m afraid it’s not that simple. He pulled a sheet of paper across and began drawing on it, curves and squiggles merging into each other. You see… He pointed with his pencil the damage is just here, preventing the eggs travelling from the ovaries to the uterus. Under some circumstances we could try microsurgery, but in this case I’m afraid it’s not appropriate …

At that point Sara had switched off. She had gone on staring at the squiggles and at the Registrar’s pencil wavering over it, but the only thought in her head was so that’s that. I’m barren. How on earth am I going to tell Mike? What on earth is the point of someone like me? The thought jangled on and on and on, meaningless, without beginning nor end, until she interrupted You’re sure there’s nothing that can be done?

He’d said So sorry Mrs Hennessey, which she had taken to mean no, and she stood up and walked away.

She had driven home on auto pilot, put away the shopping, stuffed some washing into the machine, cleaned out the fridge and was in the middle of hauling out the vacuum cleaner when she registered what she was doing. She put the cleaner away again, put on a coat and walking shoes and headed for the short cut across the fields that led to Whirling Wood. It was where she always headed when she needed to think: a rare piece of surviving native woodland bordered by a sinuous minor tributary to the Thames.

It was the finality that was so shocking: the abrupt confrontation with a life-altering circumstance over which she had absolutely no control. And not only life-altering for her.

She had no idea how long she walked and did not remember stopping. Then "Malva sylvestris, a voice had said from somewhere above and behind her. A much prettier name than common mallow I always think. But then the Latin names have a resonance which appeals to me."

Bemused, Sara glanced up at the bulky figure towering above her, and then down at the pink flowers strewn over her lap. What on earth was she doing on her knees in a hedgerow with pink flowers in her lap?

If you’d prefer me to go away, just say.

She shook her head, remembered now seeing him in the Post Office. Recently moved into Daerley Green. A retired civil servant someone said.

Apparently the Romans ate it, both as nourishment and as preventative medicine – the whole lot: flowers, leaves, seeds. According to old Pliny a daily dose would keep all ills at bay. Sort of ‘apple-a-day’ panacea.

Sara got to her feet. I’m not very good on plants, I’m afraid. She brushed herself down. I’m Sara Hennessey by the way.

Yes, I know. She saw now that he had nice twinkly blue eyes and an amazing amount of quite long silvery hair that curled up at the edges. I’ve made purchases in your excellent shop – you have an exceptional flair if I may say so. A charming idea to display your wares in the form of an art nouveau drawing room – exceedingly seductive for this oldie anyway.

Sara said