He nodded. “She couldn’t go back to the blockhouse where she was living. There’s too much bad feeling from the other DPs. She came to me yesterday, begging for help. She wanted the baby baptized before it was taken away.”
“Taken where?”
“I don’t know. Someone in the camp arranged it.” He shook his head. “There’s a black market in babies. Childless couples will pay for a baby fathered by a German.”
“She’s going to sell her baby?”
“That was her plan. She was going to use the money to start a new life somewhere.” He spread his hands, the movement making the heavy fabric of his outer garment rustle. “I could see it wasn’t what she wanted. So, I offered her a place to hide while she worked out what to do.”
“Will you wait here while I fetch Mrs. Radford?” Kitty said. “She’s running the camp now. I’m sure she’ll come up with a solution. I’m sorry, I . . .” She hesitated. “May I know your name?”
“I’m Josef,” he replied.
“And the name of the mother?” She looked again at the woman, who was stroking the baby’s head.
“Bo?ena.”
“You won’t leave her, will you?”
“No.” His lips turned up at the edges. It was almost a smile—as if his mouth were too weary to do what he wanted it to do. Kitty wondered if he’d been in the chapel all night, guarding Bo?ena and her baby.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.
CHAPTER 4
Delphine crept out of the bedroom and shut the door as silently as she could. Mother and baby were both asleep and would, hopefully, remain so until everyone else in the house had had a chance to get something to eat.
“Is the baby okay?” Kitty looked up from the table as Delphine came to join them.
“She’s perfect,” Delphine replied. “Does she have a name?”
“I don’t know,” Kitty replied. “Bo?ena didn’t say. I’m not sure she trusts us, not yet.” She looked at the priest, who was sharing the meal of cabbage soup, bread, and sausages. “Did she tell you, Josef? Sorry—Father Josef.”
He looked different without the clerical robes. His corduroy jacket was patched at the elbows and had moth holes in the collar. “Bo?ena didn’t want to give the baby a name,” he said. “I think she was afraid to because she couldn’t see a way of keeping her. But you can’t baptize a child without a name, so she asked me to pick one. I called her Anny—after the saint our chapel is dedicated to.”
“What about the others?” Delphine turned to Martha. “There are three other newborns in the hospital and two mothers due any day. The surgeon’s working flat out with hardly any help because the DPs refuse to have anything to do with these women.”
“We need to accommodate them in a separate section of the camp, away from the blockhouses,” Martha said. “I suggest turning the cabins on either side of this one into mother-and-baby units. Bo?ena and her little girl can move next door tomorrow and we’ll bring the other new mothers to join her when they’re well enough to leave the hospital.” She glanced at Kitty, then back at Delphine. “It’ll mean the three of us sharing in here for a while. I hope you won’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Kitty said.
“I think it’s a good idea.” Delphine nodded.
“They’ll be safe up here.” The priest laid down his spoon and dipped a chunk of bread into his soup. “But I think it will only work in the short term. There’s no future for them in a place where everyone knows their past.”
“That’s true,” Martha replied. “I wonder if it would be possible to get them transferred to other camps? In a different zone if necessary—somewhere they can make a fresh start.”
“It makes me shudder to think of that little soul asleep up there being traded like a piece of meat,” Delphine said.
The priest shook his head. “In a place like this, you learn quickly that everything has a price. But you also have to remember that life has been hard—very hard—for these people. And it still is.”
I know. Delphine didn’t say the words out loud. It would have sounded like a competition in hardship if she’d launched into a description of what had happened to Claude and Philippe.
“It’s so important for us to be able to understand,” Martha said. “Our problem is that only Kitty speaks Polish. We need people to work as translators—that’s why I asked her to find you. But it seems you’ve got more than enough to deal with already.”