Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

The thought reminds her that she’s had some practice keeping secrets from Arthur. But also of the secrets her mother might have passed on to her, had she the time. All Esther has now are scattered memories. A freckled arm flashing in and out of a beam of sunlight as her mother churned butter, or tipping an old beer bottle filled with milk for a slavering calf. Once they found a lamb snagged on the wire of the fence, it’s mother bleating fiercely at a crow that had settled itself on a nearby wall waiting for the lamb to tire. The bird had already pecked out one of the lamb’s eyes. The crow had been insolent, flashing it’s oily black wings at them, until a resounding clap from Esther’s mother saw it off. Esther, with her small fingers, had had to tease the lamb’s short, soft coat off the barb — although she quailed from the ruined socket — and she recalls her mother’s stern “Go on, Ess!” and cluck of approval when the fleece came free.

Esther still sees the lamb, now a full-grown ewe, among the flock. The animal stands out, her head cocked to one side, her good eye looking forward. She turned four that spring, “broken-mouthed,” as they called the older ewes, an age when she might not survive a winter or reliably bear a lamb, but Esther had already persuaded Arthur to keep her another season. “She’s a survivor,” she told him, and he nodded.

She thinks of the ewe now as the pub comes in sight. With one hand she grips the scissors in her pocket, presses her thumb to it’s point. With the other she takes her father’s hand and squeezes it.

“What’s that for, then,” he asks, flustered.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Just be kind to the boy. For me?”

In reply, he flicks his cigarette into the lane ahead, grinds it out without breaking stride.

IT FEELS LIKE a reprieve when she looks into the pub and there’s no sign of the sappers. But it’s early yet. Many of them don’t get off duty until nine. The lounge is quiet, just the BBC gang (Harry putting on a brave face, despite looking a little the worse for wear), but the public bar, where she sees Arthur forging through the crowd, is seething with resentful locals.

“PO bloody Ws,” Bertie Prosser is fulminating. “It’s an insult, is what it is.”

“All right, luv?” Mary asks over her gin and tonic. “You look like you could use one of these. Put a little rose in your cheeks.”

“What?” Esther is staring past her, towards the frosted glass doors.

“She’s just a bit anxious, ain’t you, girl,” Harry chips in, and for once she’s almost glad for his interruption. He raises his voice to carry down the passage. “No need to be scared of POWs. They’re all innocent men, after all, locked up for something they didn’t do.” He pops his eyes. “Didn’t run away fast enough!”

“We’re not bloody scared of them!” Bertie hoots, craning over Jack’s bar to jab a stubby finger at Harry.

“Maybe you ought to be,” Harry says moodily into his drink. Esther wonders if he’s thinking of his wife. But Bertie doesn’t hear him.

“We don’t give a toss about no Germans. It’s bloody English liars we’re on about here. I swear, Jack, I don’t know why you’re even serving these English.”

Jack shrugs; Harry has deep pockets.

“And just whom, my good man, are you calling English?” Harry cries, rallying.

“Well, what is you if you ain’t?” Bertie wants to know.

“Why,” Harry says, dropping into brogue, “I’m your Celtic cousin, to be sure be sure. Isn’t that so, our Mary Kate?”

“Aye and begorra.” Mary crosses herself. “Irish as stew!”

“Codswallop!”

“Och! But we’ve a wee doubting Thomas here, lassie!”

“Fair dinkum, ocker,” Mary agrees, slapping the bar.

They’re all laughing now, except for Arthur, who sips his pint. Even Esther smiles, and Harry leans in and confides, “Can’t be the butt of a joke if they don’t know where you’re from, see. Only your straight man has a country; patriots got no sense of humor.”

“Very bloody funny,” Bertie calls, shaking his head. “All right! The League of blooming Nations can stay.” He slips into Welsh. “I’m serious, though, Jack. You shouldn’t let those bloody sappers in here again.”

There are murmurs of agreement and Esther looks over at Jack, sees him weighing it: the cost of breakages if there’s a bar fight, against the thirsty business of outrage.

“They’ll not be here long enough for another payday,” Esther offers, dropping into Welsh herself, but when Jack glances over, she goes back to drawing her pint. “So they say.”

“Oh, what the heck,” Jack says finally. “Let ’em go to the Prince of Wales. They’re banned!” And Esther feels herself go weak with relief, clings to the beer pump.

Bertie leads a little cheer, thrusts his chin out. “Enough of the English buggers.”

“Not to mention a few Welsh fools,” Arthur calls dryly.

Bertie whips around like a dog after it’s own tail. “Well, Arthur Evans,” he sneers, “I’m surprised at you taking their part.”

“I’m just saying they never actually told you what that base was for.”

“They led us on, man! They led us up the bloody garden path.”

“They might have left the gate open,” Arthur tells him. “But I’d say you strayed through it yourself, Bertie.” There’s some laughter at Bertie’s expense and he colors, and Esther feels a twinge of pity for the old windbag. Arthur turns to the room at large. “I thought we should have learned our lesson by now. This is what comes of trusting the English!” He sees Esther staring, gives her a thin smile of triumph, but she turns away.

“What’re they on about now?” Harry wants to know.

“They’re feeling cheated,” Esther mumbles.

“Cheated! Ha! That’s a good one. Hey, hey,” he calls gleefully, “don’t tell me you lot are feeling welshed on?”

“Welshed on!” Arthur thunders from the other bar. It’s one expression in English he’s always quick to pick up on. He looks furious, but Esther can see he’s relishing this. Harry, without realizing it, has ended up as her father’s straight man, setting up one of his favorite speeches.

“Do you think he even knows where that perfidious phrase comes from?” Arthur asks the rest of them in Welsh, dismissing Harry, who sits back and flaps his fingers and thumb together at Mary like a gabbing mouth. It’s true, though, Esther thinks; her father, so taciturn in English, is a different man in Welsh, especially with an audience.

“You won’t find it in the dictionary,” Arthur is saying. “Not even your Oxford English Dictionary. ” He says the last in English, rolling the r, drawing it out to four mocking syllables so it sounds like Dick-shun-Harry. And in fact, Esther knows this to be true. She asked in class once where the phrase came from, and Mrs. Roberts went to the huge volume she kept on her desk like the Bible, poring over it for long moments, until she had to admit, blushing even, that the derivation was obscure. It was the first time Esther had ever seen her teacher stumped, the first time she’d glimpsed that there might be a limit to what was known, not just by her, but by adults, and it worried her. She brought it up with Arthur and he grimaced. “Typical! Stands to reason your English dictionary don’t explain it.” “But—” she began, and he clapped his hands together under her nose. “It’s their language,” he said. “Theirs, see!” He has his own theory, of course, which is what he’s regaling them with in the bar.

It goes back to the last century, Arthur explains, when the use of Welsh was forbidden in schools by the English authorities. The rule then was that if a boy was caught speaking Welsh, a placard would be hung around his neck saying, “Spoke Welsh”—“bit like a dunce’s cap”—and at the end of the day the headmaster would strap him. The real devilishness, though, was that if the boy caught another lad speaking Welsh, and informed on him, he could hand the sign on. The placard would be passed from Welsh speaker to Welsh speaker, the one betraying the next, until a last unfortunate was left wearing it at the final school bell. “So, your bloody English, see here,” Arthur concludes, “they call us welshers, cheaters, deceivers, make like the very word ‘Welsh’ means to lie, to betray, when all along they was the ones, with their vicious rule, made our boys act like that.”