Born Guilty. Reginald Hill
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the impression this was a question needing serious consideration before he nodded his head. It was a fine head with a strong-featured, deep-lined face beneath a crown of unruly white hair. His daughter had inherited his shrewd watchful eyes, but while her gaze had the unselfish wariness of a mother concerned for her daughter, the old man’s had more of the suspicious cornered animal in it …
Steady, boy, thought Joe, uneasy at this sudden flight of imagination. You’ll be writing poetry next.
‘Must’ve been hard, settling down in a new country like that, Mr Kovalko,’ he said.
‘You say so? How did you find it?’
The overlay of Lancashire on his native accent gave a rather comic effect, but it would have taken a braver as well as a ruder man than Joe to show amusement.
‘I was born here in Luton,’ explained Joe. He’d already told the daughter this and the old man had been listening keenly. So was his reply an attempt at diversion?
He said, ‘You ever go back home? To the Ukraine, I mean? Vinnitsa, isn’t it?’
The mention of the city brought the eyes into direct contact with his for a moment, then they dropped to the half empty spirit glass before him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for me there. No family, no friends. My life is here now. Has been here for nearly fifty years. I am an Englishman now. Like you.’
He tossed back the rest of his drink and put the glass on the table with an emphatic bang.
‘English he might be but he still likes the old firewater, isn’t that right, Taras?’ laughed George Hacker. He picked up the glass and headed for the bar.
Joe said, ‘You still come here though, to the Uke.’
Kovalko shrugged.
‘Old parents need a place to go so they are not always under their children’s feet. This is as good as any other place.’
‘Must bring back memories, all the same,’ said Joe. ‘Just hearing the old language for instance.’
Kovalko said, ‘Look around, Mr Sixsmith. How many here speak the old language, do you think?’
‘How many’s it take to have a conversation?’ said Joe. ‘In any case, aren’t there more people coming now from the old country, especially since it got its independence back?’
‘Independence? From what? They lose one yoke, they will rush to put on another,’ said Kovalko cynically. ‘Pray to God they can do it without finding an excuse to fight each other.’
‘I didn’t know there was any chance of that in the Ukraine,’ said Joe.
‘We are talking about human beings. Violence is always a possibility. All that the good society can do is minimize opportunity, either to perform it or provoke it. But absolute control is impossible. There must be streets and pubs even in Luton that you will not visit alone after dark, Mr Sixsmith.’
‘Because I’m black, you mean?’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, well, maybe …’
I’m being diverted again, he thought.
He said, ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t run for cover if the Nazis ever took over here. But doesn’t history show that in the end they always get beaten because there’s more inside most people that wants to live in peace with other people than wants to fight them? Shoot, you must know this better than anybody. Must have been times when the Nazis took over your country and started shipping off the Jews to the extermination camps and folk like yourself to the forced labour camps that you felt this was it, the end, nowhere else for the human race to go. But we won, and you’re here, and you’ve got your family, so the best is always possible as well as the worst. Nothing for you to feel guilty about.’
‘Guilty? What do you mean, guilty?’ demanded Kovalko, the hand on the table clenching into a fist.
‘Hey, it’s all right. All I meant was, people can get to feel guilty ’cos they made it through bad times while a lot of other folk didn’t. But it’s OK. What you’ve got here, you got for all those others too. They didn’t make it, sure, but the Nazis didn’t make it either. You’re here. The guys who ran the death camps aren’t. They’re long gone.’
This was pushing it, but there might not be another chance to push so hard and test a reaction. There was none, unless absolute stillness, almost to the point of catalepsy, counted. Then George came back with the drink which he put down in front of his father-in-law with a cheery, ‘There you go, Taras.’
The clenched fingers uncoiled, seized the glass and tossed the drink down in a single movement.
‘Hey, you must really have needed that,’ said George. ‘You in one of them moods, we’d better buy you a bottle!’
A sudden explosion of microphone static removed the need for Taras to reply. A small man in a plum-coloured jacket had appeared on a dais alongside the door to the kitchen. When finally he got the relationship between his mouth and the mike right, he said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, nice to see so many of our members here with their families and friends. As you know, tonight’s the night when we entertain ourselves and hopefully each other. Everyone will get a chance, but to start with we have a very old favourite of us all with a song from the old country, your friend and mine, Yulia Vansovich!’
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