Miriam (ebook)

Argumento de Miriam (ebook)

A brilliantly researched and exquisitely told tale of love, death, and heartbreak which explores some of the most important and devastating events of twentieth-century Europe.

Miriam Rabin, a bright, headstrong young woman, grows up in North Wales in the early years of the twentieth century determined to make the most of her life. Her ambitions are thwarted after her mother?s death and she seems destined to live out her days as the obscure wife of a hill farmer, although her political beliefs provide her with some respite. In her early thirties, though, a major tragedy changes her life forever. Suddenly Miriam ? alongside her equally headstrong sister Esther ? finds herself fighting against Franco?s forces in the Spanish Civil War. Circumstances then lead her to Russia at the turn of World War II, where she becomes an officer in Stalin?s feared secret police, the NKVD ?

Miriam?s fervour, passions, heartbreak, and determination lead her along a risky path through the most troubled times of the last hundred years. And, when the future looks ever more uncertain, what becomes of the loved ones she left behind?

I have worked in the aircraft industry and in engineering for twenty-nine years and taught in secondary schools for twenty years. I gained a BA Hons. with the Open University and an MA from the University of Kent at Canterbury. In this novel I draw on my grandfather?s recollections of stories relayed to him by his father who lived through the Ukrainian expulsions as his family fled tsarist persecution and of my aunt, his daughter, who had been a schoolteacher in a pit village in North Wales. I also draw on conversations and recollections of two men from the town of Wrexham where I grew up who fought in Spain in the Civil War and also on first hand accounts and hearsay of the Gresford pit disaster.

I have three children and four grandchildren.

Wrexham, North Wales, June 1957

It is early one June morning in 1957, not long after opening time for the market at Manchester Square, when a young man and a woman meet for the first time in the market café. The man, tall and not yet twenty, unwinds his college scarf and drapes it over the back of his chair before sitting down. Running his hand nervously through his fair curly hair he orders a pot of tea for two. The woman sits with her hands clasped. She is in her late fifties, though she looks younger, maybe because she is so slim, and her dark hair shows little sign of greying.

They watch in polite silence as the waitress sets out the tea things from a tray: a chrome teapot, a matching sugar bowl, and a milk jug all looking as outdated on the bare Formica surface of the spindly-legged table as her black dress and starched white apron. She places a small plate of rich tea biscuits before them and leaves.

Nikolai, isnt it?

Nicholas, my name is Nicholas. Nicholas Wilder.

Thrusting her hand into her jacket pocket she looks at him intently. Pulling out a box of matches she tosses it on the table with a red and black packet of Craven A cigarettes.

He shakes his head as she offers the pack. It feels strange to be called Nikolai. Ive always been Nicholas although Ive known for a short while thats how I was named.

Lighting up and turning her head slightly she exhales through the corner of her mouth. As he watches her closely her eyes narrow guardedly. How much does he know, this young man seeking her out like this? She holds his gaze. How much should she tell him? Why the hell did she agree to meet him in the first place? She could have dismissed the idea of meeting, made excuses, or simply ignored his letter. That was the sensible thing to have done. Yes, yes, shed been through this many times before. It always came back to that unrelenting desire to see him. To find out about him, what he was doing and how hed turned out. Perhaps to put to rest that question, did she do the right thing?0