Someone Else's Conflict by Alison Layland Page A

over to the sideboard.
    â€˜Is he the reason why there are no pictures of my father?’
    Anja nodded. ‘Shall I show you the letter your mother sent?’ she asked as if by way of apology.
    She disappeared upstairs and he heard the shuffling of things being moved. She returned with a yellowing envelope, the 52 Fairview Terrace address in hurried scrawl across the front and a German stamp and postmark. She removed the letter carefully and passed it to him. It was in the same hastily scribbled hand, apologising that his father had never written; he’d always intended to, and to visit them when the war was over. His mother told of their marriage, and how sorry she was to inform them of Ivan’s death soon after in the fighting. She told them she’d fled to Germany with the help of a neighbour and would write again when the baby was born. It seemed she never had, and he wondered what Anja had thought for the last seventeen years. He was surprised to find his hand trembling and glanced at his grandmother. She was staring at the letter she must know by heart, shaking her head slowly.
    â€˜If only he’d never gone.’
    Vinko shifted uneasily. ‘Are those photos?’
    She handed two pictures to him. A copy of one his mother had shown him many times, the two of them on their wedding day. His father in combat gear, his mother in a pretty flowered dress. Circumstances hadn’t allowed a traditional wedding. He looked long at them, his father’s expression one of joyful pride and his mother staring at the camera as if resenting having to take her eyes off her new husband. The other was also a copy of one his mother had treasured; he remembered her crying when she lost it. She used to cry a lot. The photo showed his father ‘looking like a real hero’ as she’d said, together with his closest friend, grinning and posing for the camera. He stared hard at the two young men, dragging his eyes away from his father to the other. As he looked, Vinko realised why the busker in Holdwick had held his attention so strongly.
    â€˜That one particularly irritated Boris,’ Anja was saying. ‘Though I know my Ivan would have loved me to see the two of them looking so happy.’
    â€˜You knew Å ojka?’
    Anja frowned momentarily then smiled. ‘So that’s what they called him, is it? Yes; they were at school together. You heard about him, then?’
    â€˜A little. I found it amazing that a foreigner fought for us in the war. He must have been special.’
    â€˜That’s not what your grandfather would say.’ She glanced towards the window. ‘Not what he said when he turned up on our doorstep last year, either.’
    â€˜Å ojka was here? He’s alive? Can you introduce me to him?’
    She shook her head. ‘We don’t know where he is now, though I’m fairly sure he doesn’t live locally. In any case, Boris told him never to darken our door again.’ She took Vinko’s hand, gripped it tightly. ‘I don’t think he knew about you or he’d have asked after you. I never got a chance to ask him about your mother either, with all Boris’s cursing and threats.’
    She sighed again and gazed over towards the family photographs, seeing ones that should have been there. ‘I always liked him, even though Ivan might not have gone, might not have listened so hard to my sister’s obsessions, if they hadn’t encouraged each other. But whatever his faults, I wish he’d stood up to Boris last year and stayed. Maybe he could see I still partly blamed him.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’ll come back one day, though I doubt it.’
    Vinko stared at the cooling cup of tea and uneaten buns. He reached out and took one, heedless of the crumbs he dropped on her sofa as he ate. An echo drifted into his head of a tune he’d heard the previous Saturday, like one of the songs his mother had sung to light