Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

At any rate, she determines to bake Jim one of his favorites, a curd cake, for tonight, though for some reason the thought of the sweet, gelatinous dessert makes her momentarily queasy.

She’s still at the door when she spies Jim below her, cycling up from the village. Even through the hawthorns that line the lane, she can see he’s laboring up the slope, standing on the pedals, doggedly refusing to dismount and push the bike, though it would probably be faster. He only left for school, feet up on the handlebars, fifteen minutes ago. He must have forgotten something. She tries to picture the bully-beef sandwich she made him, still sitting on the kitchen table in it’s grease-proof paper; but no, she remembers giving it to him. A book, then — he hates lugging the Dickens tome around — or maybe some new treasure he wants to show the others. Whatever it is, she thinks, ducking back inside, he’ll need help finding it if he’s not going to be even later for school — a thought that makes her flush with annoyance.

But when he swoops into the yard, scattering hens, dropping the bike with a clank on the cobbles, he runs past her, past the house, heading for the gate to the meadow.

“Jim!” she calls, “Jim!” and he stops on the last bar, glances back at her briefly, and then ahead up the hill, where she spies half a dozen boys racing through the long grass. More are cutting across the field behind the barn, a flock of starlings rising before them.

What mischief are they up to now? she wonders. Jim has finally given up his bandage, but only because it’s served it’s purpose. He’s become more popular in the last fortnight, a bit of a hero even to the Welsh lads. And all because he’s been struck by an Englishman. But now he has something to live up to. Just last week, when there was a spate of shoplifting, he got caught trying to smuggle a marrow out of Thomas’s under his jumper. “Looked like he was in the family way!” the grocer told her, too amused to be angry, although he added ruefully that some other lads had made off with five pounds of strawberries. Esther suspects Jim was a decoy, but she hasn’t pressed him on the other boys involved. What she fears is that the incident at the camp has taught him something — that getting caught and keeping your mouth shut are how you prove yourself.

“Come back here!” She takes a step towards him, trying to smile despite her raised voice.

He’s red-faced, gulping for air, and waves her off until he catches his breath.

“Nasties!” he finally yells. “The nasties are here!”

“What?” She shakes her head. “What did you say?” But he’s already dropping down into the meadow on the other side of the gate, charging off through the bracken after the rest, his satchel bouncing wildly on his back.

It strikes her that he’s making for the camp by the shortest route, over the ridge, and she’s suddenly fearful. Didn’t he get enough of a fright the last time he was there? For her own part, she’s not ventured anywhere near it in two weeks. She just knows he’s going to get in more trouble. He’s already clambering over the mountain wall, halfway to the ridge. The boys are far ahead, and she feels a flash of irrational anger at them for not waiting for him. But then she sees they’re not alone on the hillside. Several small knots of people are working their way up the slope from different angles, and on the brow above she can make out other figures now, too large for children, silhouetted against the white clouds. And then it comes to her, what he shouted from the gate, and she sags back against the door-jamb.

At last, she thinks. They’re here.

It means the sappers must be finished. It means Colin must be leaving.

SHE ONLY COMES BACK to herself when one of the hens struts over and starts pecking at her feet, expecting to be fed. She kicks it away impatiently, watches it totter off haughtily, as if on high heels. She focuses again on the figures climbing the hillside. She should tell her father: the flock is in the summer pasture over the ridge, and he’ll be worried about the new lambs. They can be sensitive creatures; a bad scare can stunt the newborns, make the ewes dry for a season. The flock has been dangerously reduced over the past few years — the combination of a cold snap during the last lambing and a particularly vicious fox abroad this spring — and they can hardly afford more losses.

She finds Arthur in the barn, grinding a pair of shears on the whetstone. He always likes to put away his tools in good order. As a child she sometimes thought he loved them more than her, even his father’s old quarry chisels, which he oils every year.

“Hallo, luv,” he calls, as her eyes adjust to the gloom. The only light in the barn is the sun coming through the door and the gaps in the plank walls. “Can’t understand how these lost their edge,” he says, running a finger down one blade. Esther’s overheard Parry down the pub saying the boys snipped through the wire fence at the camp with shears, but she keeps her mouth shut.

“So, what’s the palaver?”

“Better come see. The upper pasture’s turning into a grandstand.”

“No!”

She nods, and behind him she hears more running, sees the shadows of hurrying figures flowing along the back wall of the barn, flickering through the chinks in the wood.

“Bugger,” Arthur swears — in English, as is his habit. He rises from the shearing bench he’s been straddling, yanks his cap off the nail behind him, and calls for the dogs. They’ll be in the hay somewhere, napping in the heat, and sure enough, a moment later they trot into the yard, yawning pinkly. Arthur is already past the gate when he turns and looks for Esther, who is hanging back. “Come on, then.” It’s the same brusque tone he uses on the dogs, and she finds herself following automatically. He sets a fast pace, making a beeline for the ridge, kicking up sparks of dew. Esther weaves a less direct path behind him, picking her way around the rough ground. Mott, the older dog, stays close to her, leaping from tussock to tussock, while Mick, the youngster, scurries ahead of Arthur, glancing back anxiously. This is how they work — one dog to push the sheep, one to steer them. She can feel Mott trying to press her on, tacking back and forth behind her, but she’s in no hurry, only putting one foot in front of the other out of alarm for Jim, the mischief he might get into.

She wonders whether she’ll see Colin, what it’ll be like. He’s become almost an abstraction to her lately. She can barely recall his face, but then the moist brush of his tongue comes back to her — not his lips, not the prickliness of his mustache, just his flickering, probing tongue filling her mouth. She has seen a few of his mates in the street, sappers she recognizes from the pub, and felt their eyes, heavy, on her. He’s talked, she’s sure, but she’s less certain what he might have said. Not the truth, she thinks. Something more colorful, boastful. And if he’s told his friends, she wonders how long before someone in the village hears something. It’s this she fears more than anything, dimly sensing that what he did to her can’t in the end be rape if no one else knows. She suspects that what kills the poor girls raped in films and books, finally, is shame. All those hands over mouths, all those horrified looks. But the sappers will leave soon — today, tonight. Everything will be in the past then, able to be forgotten, provided no one else knows.

Above her, she makes out Jack by his limp, picking his patient way along the crest and then gone, down the other side. A moment later Arthur crosses the ridge. There’s a sharp gust from the valley below, and she sees his jacket billow like black wings, hears the cloth snap, and then he, too, is down off the edge and out of sight until she crests it herself, minutes later, hair flying in her face. The wind has blown the sky clear, and from this height she can see the Llyn Peninsula angling away all the way to Caernarvon, the old castle walls shining palely in the sunlight. But then another gust batters her legs, pressing her light summer dress against her. She feels a sudden ache in her breasts and pulls her cardigan, an old one of her mother’s, tighter around her as she descends.