The Rainbow

by Carly Schabowski

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

There, on the dusty floorboards, was a piece of paper, folded neatly. A newspaper article, written in German, alongside a faded picture of two men in Nazi uniforms staring at the camera. I was about to place it back in the box of forgotten things when something in the text jumped out at me. My breath caught in my chest. I know that name.

London, present day. Isla has grown up hearing her beloved grandad’s stories about his life as a child in pre-war Poland and as a young soldier bravely fighting the Germans to protect his people. So she is shocked and heartbroken to find, while collecting photos for his 95th birthday celebration, a picture of her dear grandfather wearing a Nazi uniform. Is everything she thought she knew about him a lie?

Unable to question him due to his advanced dementia, Isla wraps herself in her rainbow-coloured scarf, a memento of his from the war, and begins to hunt for the truth behind the photograph. What she uncovers is more shocking than she could have ever anticipated – a tale of childhood sweethearts torn apart by family duty, and how one young man risked his life, his love and the respect of his own people, to secretly fight for justice from inside the heart of the enemy itself…

An heartbreaking novel of love, betrayal and a secret passed down through a family. Inspired by an incredible true story. Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones and The Alice Network.

What readers are saying about Carly Schabowski:

‘Beautiful and heartbreaking… pulls at the heartstrings… breath-taking in its beauty… Nothing I can say in my review can possibly do the justice this book deserves. I can only say to grab yourself a copy and experience it for yourself.A definite 5 star read.’ Confessions of a Bookaholic, 5 stars

‘Affecting, heart-breaking and powerful tale… haunting, atmospheric and intensely dramatic tale that will shock, devastate, enthral and captivate readers… a superb novel I won’t forget in a hurry.’ Bookish Jottings

‘A book that put me through the emotional wringer… a beautiful and emotional read, a powerful story that begs to be read… so thought-provoking that it lingers after you have put it down.’ Sharon Beyond the Books

‘I haven't read anything as touching or heartfelt in years… incredible… made me smile & shed happy tears.’ @bookworm.britt

‘Powerful… an epic, moving story… a must-read. You’ll find yourself grabbing tissues in this atmospheric tearjerker and wishing the last page was chapters and chapters away…

Release date: July 28, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

This is Poland.

I sit on the bank of the river, my feet in the cold water, watching the ripples they make against the flow. There is a field behind the river that holds the ruins of an ancient gypsy caravan and a rusting tractor. The paint is almost gone now from the rotting wood, but flecks of it hold on, showing that it was once painted in bright blues, reds and greens. Its wind chime still hangs from the roof, tinkling and singing in the almost still evening air.

It is getting late in the day now; the last rays of sun dance upon the water and a breeze blows through the trees, making the leaves whisper to each other. I wrap my scarf around my neck – a scarf made of the thinnest, finest silk; stripy, like the colours of the rainbow. It was my grandfather’s scarf, once, here, long ago.

There is a diary beside me, and it is falling apart. The binding has let go of the pages, so the insides spill messily. There’s a sudden breeze which lifts the edges of the pages and they begin to flap like a baby bird’s wings – testing to see if they can take flight. On top sits a medal, dull and uncared for, but it weighs down the cover, keeping the stories inside.

The diary’s curling yellowed pages are filled with neat lines of the writing of a young man who is keen not to forget, and careful drawings of people, of cities – Kraków, London, Paris; then of men with guns, of barbed wire, of trenches. Then the diary stops. The young man disappears from the pages never to return, never to explain who he once was or who he would become.

Yet, there are stories that I sit here and remember, told to me as a child by my grandfather, of horses, caravans, and a man wearing a scarf, whose hair is blown by the wind; of a boy who spent a childhood running through green fields, stealing apples from orchards and swinging from branches of trees with his friends. And I sit and wonder if this boy could truly grow up to be the man in these diaries, the man with this dull medal for bravery, a medal that is the wrong type, coming from the wrong side.

It’s hard to know where the story truly begins. But then, of course, the only place to start is at the very beginning, when the past intruded into my life on a cold January day, finally taking me back here, to the banks of this very river, in this very field, to meet someone I had always thought I knew.

Sheep-freckled fields greeted me as I drove through the narrow village lanes towards my grandparents’ house, lifting my spirits from the drabness of London, the endless grey buildings and exhaust fumes. I opened the window, letting the icy bite of January air into the car, breathing it in and welcoming the cool catch of it at the back of my throat. In almost every village, church spires grasped their way towards the heavens, and gravestones leaned into sunken soil; the engraved tributes to their dead, covered with moss and smoothed from years of unpredictable English weather. It was quieter here. No swish, swish of tyres like the city, no honking from irate drivers, only the sweet trill of birds as they flew, landed, then hopped from branch to branch, their eyes keenly scouting the cold ground for food.

The sun peeked out from behind powder-puff clouds as I turned into their driveway, where their house sat back, alone, old and frail as the two of them. Once a stone farmhouse with tended gardens and fields that travelled in every direction, it was now crumbling with the ivy that grew through the cracks in the brick cement, the garden overgrown and encroaching upon the house, the fields empty and barren, with thick, muddy tracks where hikers clomped through them on their way to the Thames.

I waited a moment before knocking on the door, feeling guilty as I looked at the faded, peeling cornflower-blue paint on the windowsills and the few tiles on the roof that were promising to fall away with the next strong gust of wind. We needed to help more. Me, Dad and Mum. We had to get the house in better shape for them.

Suddenly, the door flew open, revealing Gran with her hair in hot-pink rollers.

‘Isla!’ She grabbed me and drew me close. ‘Happy birthday!’

I kissed her papery cheek, smelling her rose-scented face cream. ‘It was last week,’ I said. ‘I got your card and the bottle of wine, though.’

She ushered me in, closing the door against the chill, which, quite frankly was pointless as the house felt colder and damper than the outside.

‘Doesn’t matter. We’re celebrating it today. I made a cake and put my hair in these things so it would be all special for you.’ She patted the rollers, which were threatening to come loose at any moment.

‘Thanks, Gran.’ I wrapped my arm around her tiny frame. ‘You’re the best, you know that?’

‘Oh, I know! Of course I am.’ She shuffled away from me into the kitchen where a pot bubbled furiously on the stove. ‘Don’t touch that!’ she yelled at me as my hand hovered over the pot lid, ready to let the air escape.

‘It’s going to boil over,’ I said.

‘No, it won’t.’ She pushed me aside towards the rocking chair she kept close to the oven. ‘Sit down and warm yourself up.’

I did as I was told, thankful for the heat. ‘Why isn’t the heating on?’

‘No need for it in here. I’ve got the fire on in the living room for your grandad. That’s enough. You young people have no tolerance. When I was young, we didn’t have central heating, just put a cardigan on and that was that. Besides’ – she eyed me closely – ‘didn’t you know that there’s global warming? I heard about it on the news,’ she said conspiratorially.

‘I had heard, yes.’ I grinned at her.

‘So you see then, I’m just doing my part.’ She walked to the kettle, pulling at the rollers, finally freeing her wiry hair.

‘How is he?’ I asked, nodding towards the closed living room door.

‘Not bad. He knew what day it was and remembered what he had for breakfast, so I think today is a good day.’ She turned and winked at me.

‘I’m just going to go and say hello,’ I told her.

‘Good, good, ask him if he wants a cup of tea. I’ll bring the cake in, in a minute.’

The living room was stuffed with antique bookshelves that threatened to spill their contents out onto the thick blue carpet. Grandad was sitting next to one, a book on his blanketed lap, but his eyes were not focused on it. Instead, he stared at the fire as the flames leaped and licked at the burning logs.

For a moment he didn’t notice I was there, and it gave me a second or two to see how he had aged again in only a month. Once tall and proud with a crop of snow-white hair, he was shrunken, his hair thinning and his skin sunken into his cheeks. Even his hands seemed to have changed again, thinner, bonier, as if he were morphing into someone else, or rather, disappearing altogether.

‘Ah! Birthday girl!’ He finally saw me and, grinning, held his arms out for me to give him a hug. ‘You see, I remember,’ he whispered into my ear as we embraced. ‘I say to your gran that I can still remember things, but she thinks maybe not.’

I pulled away; a small lump had caught in my throat after feeling how frail he was in my arms. ‘Yes, Grandad, you remembered,’ I told him, sitting across from him on the purple sofa.

‘I remember all sorts of things, you know. Just this morning I say to your gran, “Look outside, Jack Frost has been!’ His English was still muddled after all these years, his Polish accent still thick on his tongue.

‘It’s just frost, Grandad, there’s no Jack Frost!’

He shook his head. ‘I tell you, one time I look in the garden, many, many years ago, and I see a little man, looking cold and blue and running around making the frost on the ground. I know it was him, Jack Frost.’

I nodded, indulging him in his make-believe, remembering how he always told me he used to be friends with a magician, a man who could make a rainbow appear in the sky.

‘It’s your birthday next,’ I told him, as Gran carefully made her way into the room, her hands holding a tray filled with a pot of tea and slices of cake.

I stood and took it from her, placing it on the large walnut coffee table that dominated the centre of the room.

‘Not for six months,’ Gran said, handing him some cake, then sitting down next to me. ‘His ninety-fifth.’

‘We ought to do something special, Grandad. Something big,’ I said.

He was concentrating on the piece of strawberry cake, shovelling it into his mouth and spilling crumbs all over himself. He looked at me, confusion in his eyes for a moment, then asked, ‘Isla, when is your birthday?’

‘It’s today, love.’ Gran spoke for me. ‘It’s today.’

‘Ah, happy birthday!’ he said, then returned to his cake.

I looked at Gran; she had said that today was a good day. Of course I knew that even on a good day his dementia could take him away from us for moments, minutes, even hours at a time, but it still caught me off guard.

She patted my hand. ‘No point telling him it already happened,’ she said quietly. ‘Keep things current, it’s easier for him.’

‘What have the doctors said?’ I asked.

‘He’s all right for now.’ She looked at the plate on her own lap and picked up a small piece of cake between her fingers, squishing it. ‘He’s all right for now.’

Grandad had leaned back in his chair, the cake gone. He was ready for a nap, and his lids drooped heavily over his eyes.

‘So, a big birthday for him, you said?’ Gran bustled about, taking the plate from him, pulling the blanket over his lap and dusting away the crumbs. ‘I like that idea.’

‘You don’t think it will be too much for him?’

‘No,’ she said quietly, as she tucked a piece of stray hair behind his ear. ‘It might be his last one.’

As soon as she said that, I was in tears. She ushered me out of the living room and back into the kitchen, soothing me as if I were a baby again.

‘Shhh, it’s all right,’ she said, rubbing my shoulder. ‘You must have thought it too.’

I nodded. I had thought it might be his last birthday with us, but I had put it into a dusty corner of my mind.

‘Come on. Hush now. Let’s think about what we can do for him for his birthday. That’ll give us both something to concentrate on.’

I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve, feeling foolish that at thirty-six I still needed my gran to make me feel better.

‘What about his brother?’ I finally asked when I had composed myself, remembering the birthday and Christmas cards that came from Poland like clockwork, always signed ‘Andrzej’.

‘What, you want him to come here?’ she asked, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘I doubt he will.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh gosh, Isla, they’ve barely spoken in decades, you know that. Some falling out over something or other.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But what if this is their last chance to see each other? Does Andrzej even know how sick he is?’

Gran shook her head. ‘You can let him know if you want to, but I doubt you’ll hear from him.’

‘I can try,’ I said. ‘It might help him, you know, seeing his brother, remembering his past – he might be able to remember more.’

‘Like I said, you can try, but don’t expect much. His cards are in a box somewhere. Probably in the attic with all the Christmas stuff. I’m sure there was a return address on it. Go and have a look, and I’ll make us some more tea.’ She pushed herself up to standing, then waited a moment before moving.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine, fine. Just got to get the blood moving before I set off,’ she said, ignoring my concern and made her way to the kettle.

I was halfway up the attic stairs when she shouted to me, ‘Isla, see if you can find the photo albums too. They’re in there somewhere. Get them out, would you?’

‘Yes, Gran.’

‘Oh, and if you do see it – but only if you see it, mind you – I had a big winter coat up there, black, woollen. I can’t find it for the life of me.’

‘Yep, anything else?’ I shouted back.

‘I’ll let you know.’

I finished my ascent into the dusty attic space, which was jammed with boxes, old clothes, suitcases and furniture. The bare bulb that hung in the middle of the room did little to illuminate the space. In boxes, she said – which box? There were dozens of them, each spilling out their contents; here was a shoe with a heel that their dog had chewed when I was little. I picked it up. Why would she keep this? Then, another box half ripped with old bills spilling out, some of them nibbled at by the attic’s inhabitants. I shuddered. Mice.

The thought of the rodents made me move quicker, inspecting each box briefly, not daring to shove in my hand in case a furry friend was sleeping at the bottom.

I soon found the coat she was talking about. The buttons were missing, hence its banishment into the attic. I placed it to one side and stepped over two brown leather suitcases that had fading tickets on them – Egypt, America, France.

The next box yielded some treasure. First, Christmas cards from family and friends over the years – again, why had she kept them all? Then, in amongst them, a few from my great-uncle, a man who I had never met, and who had never wanted to meet me.

The most recent card came in an envelope from five years ago. I scrabbled about trying to find one from last year, or the year before, but couldn’t. His address was written on the reverse in neat cursive, an address in a place that I recognised the name of – Zakopane. That was where Grandad had said he’d spent a summer holiday, at a lake house his uncle owned. I shoved the card into my jeans pocket and began to search for the elusive photo albums.

A box revealed one photo album, its cover a faded green; inside were photos of my grandparents at their wedding, summer holidays at the beach, and a few pictures of my dad in his pram. I smiled at each picture as I flicked through them, wondering if I could maybe scan them into the computer and do a slideshow or something on Grandad’s birthday.

Just as I decided my search was complete, something at the bottom of the box caught my eye. A red, green, yellow and blue material was neatly folded as if it contained a present within. I picked it up and as I did, it unfolded, revealing itself to be a silk scarf. I ran it through my fingers, noticing as I did a few dark splotches staining it, and a few tiny holes from years of use. I couldn’t remember Gran or Grandad wearing it. Perhaps Dad?

I wrapped it around my neck and placed my palm on the dusty floorboards to push myself up. When I did, I felt something under my hand; a piece of paper, again neatly folded. Had it fallen from the scarf when it unravelled?

I opened it to reveal a newspaper article written in German, a faded picture of two men in German army uniforms staring at the camera. It meant little to me, and I was about to fold it up and place it back in the box of forgotten things when a name jumped out at me in the text: Tomasz Jasieński.

I knew that name.

It was Grandad’s.

Suddenly, my mind could not focus properly. Grandad in a picture wearing a German uniform, in a German newspaper. But Grandad was Polish. He had fought for the British when he came here; I had seen his medals and photographs. Why was he in this picture? What did it mean? Was Grandad a Nazi?

It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, I decided. It was just another man with the same name. But why had he kept it?

‘Isla!’ Gran’s voice rang out. ‘Are you still up there? Are you OK? Did you find the coat?’

I nodded as if she could see me, then realising she couldn’t, shouted back, ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

I stood, putting the newspaper clipping in my pocket, collected the photo album and coat and headed back downstairs.

‘You all right, love?’ Gran asked as I walked into the kitchen. ‘You look a bit pale. Did you see a mouse? They won’t hurt you, you know, tiny little things they are. More scared of you than you are of them.’

I sat in the rocking chair, the picture in my pocket begging to be let out and looked at again.

‘Where’d you get that?’ Gran was looking at my neck.

‘This?’ I’d forgotten I even had it. ‘I found it in a box.’

She stepped towards me and reached out her hand as if she were going to touch the scarf, then suddenly drew her hand back as if it had scolded her.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Should I put it back?’

‘No, no. It’s fine.’ She opened a cupboard door. ‘Now, what shall I make for dinner?’

‘Gran, what is it?’ I pushed. ‘Whose scarf is it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, but she wouldn’t look at me. ‘It’s fine. Keep it.’

‘Gran,’ I said, pulling the newspaper clipping from my pocket. ‘There’s something else I found.’

Again, she would not look at me, and concentrated on taking tins of beans and soup out of the cupboard.

‘Gosh, this cupboard is a mess. Needs sorting. How am I supposed to know what to cook if I can’t find what I need?’

‘Gran, please.’ I stood and showed her the picture. ‘Is this Grandad? What does it mean?’

Her eyes barely glanced at the picture. ‘Oh, don’t be daft. That’s not your grandfather.’

‘But it’s his name.’

‘Lots of people have that name.’ She now took a tin of tomato soup and inspected the label. ‘Look here, it says three hundred calories. That can’t be good, can it?’

‘Gran!’ I exclaimed, desperate for her attention.

‘What, Isla?’ She turned now to look at me, her eyes narrowed behind her thick glasses. ‘What? I’ve told you that’s not him. I don’t know why it was up there. Perhaps your grandad thought it was funny that there was another man with the same name. What do I know? And no, before you ask, you cannot ask him.’

Her voice had taken on an edge to it that I had never heard before, and for a moment, I didn’t recognise her. Then, as if nothing had happened, she grabbed the tea caddy and asked, ‘Cup of tea then, before you get going?’ her voice sweet and innocent, confusing me, silencing me and making me wish I had never said a thing.

The weather turned that evening. The rain splotched against the windows like thick tears, whilst birch trees clattered their empty branches against one another in the wind. My second-floor flat looked out onto a communal garden where tarnished winter leaves gathered in clumps, rotting away into the flower beds. I was sitting with my legs folded under me, a blanket on my lap, watching one of the raindrops tracking its way down the pane, distorting the wintery image outside, when the phone rang, then immediately went to voicemail.

‘It isn’t him.’ Gran’s voice filled my flat. There was a pause as her raspy voice caught on the words – she wanted to cry. ‘Please don’t say any more about it…’ She stopped, then a slight cough as if she was readying herself to say more. Instead, she hung up.

I felt guilty that I had pushed her on the picture I had found, but her reaction to it, and the scarf, was so strange, so uncomfortable, that I knew she was hiding something. But whatever it was, she wasn’t going to tell me.

I looked again at the picture. Grainy black and white, two German soldiers standing side by side; one smiling, the other not. I knew one of the men, no matter what Gran said – that dimple in his cheek, that deep crease in his forehead. It was Tomasz Jasieński – my grandfather.

With the help of the internet, I managed to translate most of the article, which told the story of a brave Polish man who had joined the German army in the fight for the Fatherland, and upon doing so, earned himself the golden German Cross for acts of bravery which had involved the killing of partisans in the Ukraine.

Tomasz Jasieński. Tomasz Jasieński who I knew as my lovable grandfather, who taught me to ride a bike, who told me stories as I sat on his lap, who talked to his plants and saved bumblebees when they were baffled in the summer’s heat. But he was also a man who had killed people. A man who had fought for the German army. A man I did not know at all.

I stood and poured myself a large gin and tonic, the ice rattling in the glass as I sat back into the sofa. I drank deeply and quickly, the gin disappearing within seconds. I poured myself another, then another, feeling the warmth of the alcohol numb my lips, my face and finally my brain, sending me into a fitful sleep where I dreamed that my grandfather was chasing me, a rainbow-coloured scarf around his neck, a gun in his hands.

The following morning, I walked through the park to try and clear my muggy head. I rarely walked to work and rarely walked in the park either, so that morning I stopped a few times to look around me. It felt as if I had never seen winter before – the sky was unusually clear and planes flew low, streaking the sky with a criss-cross of white lines; the air was crisp and squirrels darted through, over and up branches, rustling the papery leaves so that they crackled above me. The trees had shed their rust and red costumes, and the fallen rotting leaves were scattered over pathways and settled on the muddy banks of the lake.

I took a few wrong turns, forgetting that I was meant to be on my way to work, and walked over the jewelled grass, smiling as I watched packs of dogs play and chase balls, whilst their owners shouted their names.

At another turn, I found myself at a part of the lake that seemed cut off from the rest. Bare branches of weeping willows skimmed the water and thick winter pines filled out the banks. I made my way towards a bench that overlooked the scene, but before I sat, I noticed a plaque affixed to the wood. I brushed away the thin coating of iciness that clung onto the brass and read: To my Mary – in memory of memories.

My hand stroked the tassels of the silky rainbow-striped scarf, and I thought again of Grandad. I couldn’t forget what I had learned about him. He was stuck in the limbo of dementia, so I couldn’t ask him what had happened – it would be too cruel. I didn’t know what to do, how to move forward, how to understand.

A name suddenly popped into my head. Andrzej. Of course, his brother. He could tell me what my grandparents could not. He would tell me that I was wrong, that it was all a mistake, that I could still love the man I had always loved because he was exactly who I thought he was.

As soon as I reached my office, I wrote to Andrzej at the address from the envelope and asked my legal secretary to send it, marked urgent. Then, I spent an uncomfortable week with nerves frayed, and strange dreams until he finally replied.

I noticed the letter on the door mat in the morning before I left for work. It was hidden beneath a pile of bills and cheap pizza menus, which I threw onto the kitchen table before buttoning my coat. I grabbed my keys and looked at the letter more closely, noticing the stamp on the corner of the neatly handwritten envelope. I placed it into my pocket and decided to walk once more through the park.

I found the bench by the lake and pulled the letter from my pocket, pressing on the stamp with my thumb, breathing a little heavier. Did I really want to know what was inside?

I looked across the water, took a deep breath and ripped open the envelope.

If you want to know, you’ll have to come and see me. I am old.

Yours,

Andrzej

Smoothing it out with the palm of my hand, I read the words again. Suddenly, I grew irritated – come and see me. Where had he been all these years? Why hadn’t he visited his brother?

Could it be because the man I thought of as my sweet grandfather was, in fact, a Nazi? Was Andrzej ashamed of him? Or could Andrzej have been a Nazi too?

I read and re-read the letter. Come and see me. Come and see me. That was all there was. I crammed the letter back in my bag. Come and see me. He must be mad.

Yet, despite my irritation, I searched for flights to Poland when I got to work. The stacks of contracts to be reviewed were banished to the corner of my desk as I searched for Andrzej’s address – a retirement home in Zakopane a place I knew the name of, a place where Grandad had said he’d spent summer holidays. A quick internet search told me that this was a town at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, just over sixty miles from Kraków. The next search was for flights to Kraków, which were cheap – too cheap and too frequent. I could be there and back in a day. I chewed at a ragged thumbnail and tore it decisively away. It was one day. Just one. Then I’d know the truth.

The bus from Kraków airport to Zakopane was cramped, and I sat next to a backpacker who held her bag tightly against her chest, as if at any moment someone would try to steal it. She was no more than twenty, I guessed. I smiled at her when I sat down, but she did not return it.

I stared down the aisle at the large windscreen, watching as we wound our way out of the city. The bus turned sharply, and I bumped into the girl. I could feel the nausea rising – motion sickness – and I stared hard at the window, focusing on the road ahead as it stretched on to the motorway. After an hour or so, it gave way to winding mountain roads. Soon, I saw snow-tipped mountains, the dusting of white reminding me of icing sugar, and my nausea seemed to disappear as my brain took in the beauty of the scenery. Pint-sized wooden houses on stilts dotted the landscape. Down below in the valley, the houses were more densely packed, surrounding a lake that looked made of glass.

As I stepped off the bus, I stood for a moment taking in the stunning view of the snowy peaks of the Tatra Mounta. . .