Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

Half the village seems to be scattered below — everyone from butcher Williams, still in his starched white coat, to Blodwyn Parry, the constable’s dowdy daughter (“Blod Plod” to the local boys), even the Reverend Morris, who must be wondering what he has to do to get this kind of turnout of a Sunday. Esther notices her father slowing as he reaches the crowd, reassured to see the flock farther down the slope, perfectly content, drifting over the lower pasture. Arthur nods to some on the fringe of the crowd, shakes hands with others. People move out of his way — it’s his land, after all — and his progress reminds Esther of how the dogs part a flock. Sheepish, she thinks. The villagers feel sheepish. The word appears before her in her own flowing copperplate. She’s been having these spells lately when words, English words, seem newly coined, as if they’re speaking to her alone, as if she’s seeing the meanings behind them. She’s conscious of her lips, her tongue, forming them. It makes her feel like a child again, learning the words for the first time.

Entering the crowd herself, she finds it still, quiet. The villagers stand around, the men smoking, the women with their arms folded on their aproned chests, some of them still breathing heavily from the climb, and the children nudging each other as if at chapel — everyone looking, but no one pointing, downhill, beyond the quietly grazing flock, to the men behind the fence.

It is the first time any of them have seen the enemy.

The Germans — the very word means something different now, something more, Esther thinks — are standing in loose ranks. The only ones she’s seen before have been at the pictures, in newsreels — the famous ones, like Hitler and Goring, Goebbels and Hess, and then the others, marching by like so many extras. The makeshift parade ground where they’re gathered fifty yards below includes the former holiday camp’s playing fields, and from the hillside the touchlines of the old football pitch are still faintly visible, like scars. To Esther the fences around the camp look like the markings for some new game.

A Union Jack — twin to the tiny one flickering from the turret of the distant castle — crackles from the blazing new flagpole rising above the camp, like one of the pins in Jim’s map.

Beneath it a British officer, the light flashing off his glasses like a semaphore, is standing on a box calling names from a list—“Schiller. Schilling. Schmidt, Dieter. Schmidt, Hans. Schneider”—and the Germans are barking “ Ja, ” one by one, the words, clear but distant, carried up the hillside by the crisp breeze. Ja, she whispers to herself experimentally. Once in a while one of the Germans will repeat his name, and she realizes with a little start that they’re correcting the pronunciation.

“Weber?”

“ Veber! Ja! ”

She glances at the new soldiers, the guards. They have the black-and-white armbands of MPs, and their officers wear smart red bands around their caps that distinguish them from the sappers. A group are walking the perimeter fence, checking the wire, pulling on the posts with all their strength. She sees them stop at one point for several minutes, and a stocky private throw himself against the fence, bounce off, throw himself again. To her left and lower down, some of the lads are pointing to the MPs. This must be where they cut through the wire, she thinks; the MPs are inspecting the repairs. She sees Jim in the knot of boys and starts to make her way down to him. He’s standing next to one of the ringleaders, Stan Robinson, one of the few evacuees to hold his own among the locals and a nasty piece of work, though he’s not much to look at. A skinny albino who goes by the nickname Pinkie, he seems as breakable as china, and Esther wonders whether this is why boys submit to his bullying without fighting back.

Jim is rapt when she stops beside him, his eyes wide as if they can’t take enough in. “Come on,” she tells him quietly. “Come and see Mott.” The dog, curled up and panting at Arthur’s feet, is a favorite of the boy’s, although her father doesn’t like him making a fuss over a working dog. But Jim doesn’t even turn to her, just nods downhill and whispers, “Nasties.” He must have picked up the pronunciation from her father.

Pinkie makes a sharp gesture. “Na zis ,” he hisses, and there’s such roughness to his voice that the smile dies on Esther’s face.

“Don’t talk to him like that.” But Pinkie just pushes past with his cronies, and after a glare at her, Jim follows. She hears him muttering, “Nat-sees, nat-sees, nat-sees,” with precisely the same air of impatience.

The boys drift down the hillside, hanging around the lower fringe of the crowd, then are led away by Pinkie until they form a little island of their own below the adults. To get to Jim now, Esther sees she’d have to cover open ground, and she moves back towards her father.

She looks into her neighbors’ faces as she slips by them, wonders how they’re feeling. The Lewises have a son, Denny-Jon, in the desert, and their expressions are flinty. Lona Lewis claws the air, swiping at a fly. But in the eyes of others Esther sees something else. Mrs. Roberts, for instance, who waves her over.

“I can’t help thinking,” she whispers. “Perhaps these fellows were captured by my Rhys, do you reckon?”

“You’ve heard from him, then? He’s over there?”

She shakes her head in disappointment, just like in class. “Not a word. But he must be over there, don’t you think? Where else would they send him? He couldn’t tell me even if he did write, but I’d still like to know if he’s looking after himself, getting enough food, if it’s cold.”

“I’m sure it’s summer there too,” Esther says, confused.

“Oh, I know, I know. Only I was thinking of knitting him a scarf and gloves, and I should make a start now if he’s going to have them by the autumn, allowing for the pace of the mails over there.” She says this last with a hint of disdain. They stand side by side, staring silently at the Germans. “I bet they know,” Mrs. Roberts says after a second, and Esther could swear she’d like to go down and quiz them.

The older woman sighs heavily.

“And they call it the fatherland,” she says, as if to herself. “I wonder how the mothers feel about that. How did they ever let the men get away with that one?” She laughs wryly, turns to Esther. “You know, when I watch the newsreels, I keep thinking I’ll catch sight of Rhys in a parade or something. Wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books. Our Rhys on the silver screen.” She grins at Esther. “You’d like that, I bet. He was always saying what a film fanatic you are.”

Esther keeps her eyes on the Germans. There’s a trace of disapproval in the older woman’s voice, but whether it’s to do with Esther and Rhys, or whether it’s just that Mrs. Roberts thinks Esther should be reading more and going to the pictures less, she can’t be sure. She still has the copy of Tess that Mrs. R loaned her when she left school. Esther was supposed to borrow a book every few weeks, to keep up her reading, but she’d never finished Tess, sensing within twenty pages that it’s tale of rural poverty would grate on her, and Mrs. R eventually stopped asking about it. Since then, all Esther’s read is Margaret Mitchell and Daphne du Maurier. “Escapism!” Mrs. R would say.

“I should get back to my father,” Esther says after a pause, and Mrs. R nods absently.

When Rhys proposed and Esther said no, he’d looked nonplused for a long, slack moment. “Mam would love it,” he tried, and she’d snapped, “You’ve never told her!” He shook his head mournfully. “Wanted to surprise her.” Esther forced herself to maintain a stony silence until he added, “Everyone else already thinks we’re walking out together.” As if that were an argument! Wishful thinking, more like. Besides, she’d told him, she didn’t care what everyone thought, though now she wonders, did she really say that?