The Doomsday Testament(13)
Other dog-eared pages contained information on Matthew’s pay and allowances, deductions, training received and courses taken (rifle shooting/rated sniper) and his commission with the rank of lieutenant in September 1939. But the most interesting was ‘Record of Specialist Employment Whilst Serving’. Here was revealed the mystery of the awards he’d found in the metal box. The African Star and clasp, the France and Germany Star, the 1939–45 Star, the Defence Medal and the War Medal, all dated and initialled by his commanding officers. And finally, the Military Cross for ‘acts of gallantry in the area of Augsburg, south Germany’.
But who was the man behind the medals?
Only now did he feel able to pick up the journal and work with his fingers at the knot holding it closed. He opened the book at the first page. Each entry was preceded by a date and laid out in the neat copper-plate writing he remembered from the few letters and cards he had received from his grandfather while at university. Some of the wording and phraseology seemed quaint to him, as if it had been written in Victorian times. The first few entries were dated in the days just after Matthew’s promotion, when war was declared in the late summer of 1939, and reflected the gung-ho enthusiasm of a young man on the brink of his greatest challenge; along with a frankly stated unease about letting ‘the men’ down. How would he be affected by fear? Matthew was reticent about his horror of being maimed, but death appeared to hold no terrors for him. There was also a tacit acknowledgement that keeping such a journal was frowned upon and that the writer would have to suspend it when he went overseas, which seemed imminent. But it quickly became clear that Matthew Sinclair had become so involved in recording his thoughts that he had ignored the restriction, risking reprimand or even court martial, an act of rebellion that revealed something else Jamie hadn’t known about his grandfather.
The phone rang at the other end of the desk and Gail, his secretary, answered. ‘Saintclair Fine Arts, may I help you?’ She listened for a few seconds, before placing her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘A call from a hospital in the Midlands. Can you take it?’
Reluctantly, he laid the journal aside and accepted the phone. ‘Jamie Saintclair.’
‘Is this the grandson of the late Reverend Matthew Sinclair?’ a serious female voice demanded.
‘That’s correct.’
‘Only the names confused me.’
‘They often do.’ Jamie smiled wryly. ‘How can I help you?’
‘My name is Carol O’Connor. I’m a nurse at the St Cross Hospital in Rugby. I’m sorry to bother you, but one of our long-term patients says he knew your grandfather and is very keen to talk to you.’
Jamie raised his eyebrows and Gail smiled. ‘I’m pretty busy at the moment. But put him on the line. It’s always nice to speak to one of my grandfather’s former parishioners.’
Carol O’Connor’s tone turned apologetic. ‘I’m afraid that, like many of our elderly clients, Stan is very strong-willed. He will only talk to you face to face.’
Jamie sighed. ‘I don’t think—’
‘And he isn’t one of your grandfather’s parishioners. He says he served with a Matthew Sinclair during the war.’
Jamie’s heart gave a little flutter. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Stan. Stanislaus Kozlowski.’
* * *
‘I read ’bout Matthew Sinclair’s det in The Times newspaper and I tink, maybe this is same Matt Sinclair from vor. Carol she a good girl, do anytink for us inmates. She check wit’ undertaker and now you are here.’ Sixty-eight years in Britain had failed to take the edge off Stan Kozlowski’s Polish accent; indeed it had added a nasal West Midlands twang that made his words barely comprehensible at first hearing. Jamie suspected it was an old man’s indulgence and about as authentic as Stan’s hair, which swept back from a wide brow, an unlikely crow-black helmet that gleamed like a guardsman’s toecap. Shrunken and plainly exhausted, the old man lay back in the tentacled embrace of a kidney dialysis machine, surrounded by coils of tubing which pulsed to the rhythm of a beeping monitor. The Pole saw Jamie’s look. ‘Four hour a day. Real pain in de ass, eh? But worth it. You comes back later, maybe Stan take you dancing?’ A shaking hand reached into the top pocket of his pyjamas and pulled out a faded black-and-white photograph. ‘See, me and Matt. Late ’forty-four. Maybe ’forty-five?’ Jamie accepted the picture. Two soldiers in camouflage jump smocks standing beside a jeep. Stan was instantly recognizable as the bare-headed young man on the right: short, dark and with a fierce scowl on his pinched, unshaven face. The tall, rangy lieutenant in the paratrooper’s pot helmet could have been Jamie’s twin brother. ‘Me and Matt, ve lose touch after ve comes back from vor, but Matt, he tells me had enough of fighting. He go into Church.’ The old man laughed. ‘Me, I can’t go back Poland cos Reds vill shoot me, so I go into car factory in Solihull. One minute officer and gentleman and genuine heroic Polish ally, next minute job-stealing Polish bastard, eh?’