Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

She finds Arthur at last, waits beside him for the roll call in the camp to stutter to it’s end. A clipped English voice calls, “Dis-missed,” followed by a sharp command in German, and the ranks, so orderly a moment before, dissolve. There’s a rush towards what Esther guesses is a mess hut, where a queue begins to form. She studies the Germans — a crew of submariners captured in port, if the rumors are to be believed. They’re not what she’s imagined; many are young, as far as she can see, some so fair they seem to gleam in the sun. Mostly, though, they look thin and a little tatty, their uniforms the color of wet sky.

“A sorry shower,” Arthur sighs.

It’s odd, she thinks, to see the enemy like this after years of hearing their planes droning high overhead. She’s seen the concrete blockhouses built as shore defenses. She’s seen the ribbed wreckage of one of their bombers on the beach like a dead whale. But it wasn’t like when the training aircraft from the local base went down last year and she cried for the three young crewmen burned to death who had drunk at the pub. She hadn’t been able to imagine the men who’d died in the German plane. Even after Eric’s death she couldn’t feel anything towards the pilots who dropped the bombs; they seemed so far above her, beyond the range of her emotions. She tries to decide how she feels about Germans now. It seems important. She ought to hate them, she thinks, and she supposes she does, but she can’t quite muster the heat of anger. She doesn’t know them, after all; whatever they’ve done, it doesn’t feel like they’ve done it to her.

She catches sight of Colin suddenly. He’s coming along the lane, kit bag over his shoulder. She’s actually surprised she still recognizes him, that he hasn’t grown a beard or gone gray, that he looks the same. She watches him join another of the sappers she knows from the pub — Sid, she thinks his name is. The two of them carry their bags out of the gates, toss them up into a waiting lorry. They loiter, chatting, Colin throwing a glance, then another, up the slope before they set off, strolling along the wire, peering in at the men they’ve built the camp for. She feels an almost overpowering urge to spit, the tiny ball of saliva fizzing and bubbling on her tongue, forces herself to swallow it. Whatever she feels about the Germans, she realizes, seems pale compared to what she feels about Colin.

A thin blue cloud of cigarette smoke rises above him, and Sid dips his head to take a light. A group of Germans waiting in the breakfast queue notice them and the straggly line drifts towards the fence. She sees Colin and Sid pause; one of the Germans calls something, but she can’t make it out. Colin plucks the cigarette from his mouth, seems to wave it for a second, twirling his wrist like Basil Rathbone, then tosses it over the fence. There’s an almighty scramble among the prisoners before a stocky man leaps out of the pack. He holds his prize aloft, like a salute, before pulling it down for a deep drag. Sid flips his fag over the fence too, snapping it off his fingertips, and the same thing happens. The unlucky Germans start shouting and gesturing, and after a moment Colin and Sid light up again, take a puff, and flick another pair of cigs over the top.

“Like feeding ducks,” Bertie Prosser cries from somewhere in the crowd, and there’s laughter. The joke passes down the hillside until the boys pick it up and start quacking. Esther sees Jim flapping his elbows and then hurrying after Pinkie and the rest as they creep downhill, through the starved-looking newly shorn sheep, into the copse of trees across the lane from the camp. Their laughter and shouts of encouragement begin to mingle with those of Colin and Sid. Don’t! she wants to call to Jim, but she knows it wouldn’t do any good. The crowd of scurrying, diving prisoners has swelled now, but the whole affair is brought to an abrupt end by a tall fellow who comes flailing into the scrum of prisoners, knocking them down, shoving them out of the way. He’s shouting something, and Esther sees him raise his arms, waving the others back, smacking the cigarette from one man’s happy face, stamping it into the soft mud.

“Come on,” she hears. It’s Colin’s voice, suddenly quite clear. “Play the game.” Perhaps it’s the breeze carrying his voice — the appeal in it, whiny, demanding — that chills her, makes her hug herself.

The boys are at the fence now too, forming a loose circle behind the sappers, and they take up Colin’s cry until the lanky German turns and begins to stride towards them as if the fence weren’t there. Colin lights another cigarette, holds it out to him as he advances, then throws it over the wire, but whether as a peace offering or a taunt, Esther can’t tell. She sees the boys fall back a yard. Arms are pointing from the nearest tower, a whistle blows, and then she sees, trotting from between the huts on the other side of the compound, a group of MPs in two short columns, their white truncheons drawn, pulled along it seems by a pair of huge dogs at their head.

At the last second, the big man bends and scoops up one of the cigarettes, flings it back over the fence in a wobbly arc. But before it lands, he’s surrounded by MPs and prodded back with truncheons, the dogs snapping and leaping against their leashes whenever he raises his arms to gesticulate towards the fence. Colin and Sid, she sees, have made themselves scarce, but the boys are still there, scrabbling for the cigarette thrown back their way. She sees Jim squirm his way clear and run off down the wire, whooping, holding up the still-smoking fag like the Olympic torch.

Within the fence, the faces of Germans and MPs turn up the slope to where the villagers stand. Hands are angled to shield eyes against the sun; arms are lifted, pointing. Esther finds herself blushing, embarrassed to be caught staring, but even as she turns away, Mott, at her feet, lifts his head and offers a long howl of reply to the snapping dogs below.

MPs are hustling down the lane toward the gang of boys, and the crowd starts to melt away, the villagers — the reverend, Bertie Prosser — not running, exactly, but drifting off over the ridge towards the village, as if on some just remembered business. Even Mrs. Roberts is beating a retreat back to her post office counter. Esther looks at Arthur, but her father has his feet planted. It’s his land, and he’ll be damned if he’s chased off it, but he does send Mick and Mott down to move the sheep, whistling and calling commands, as if this has been his intention all along. She’s conscious of the men in the camp watching the dogs’ work with interest. The boys are scattering before the soldiers, and she looks anxiously for Jim, runs down a little way until she spots him, heading uphill.

She waves and waits as he hurries towards her, beaming, while behind him the guards pull up and return to the camp. “Did you see?” he says breathlessly when he reaches her. “Did you see?” He brandishes the smoldering cigarette, puckers his lips around it for a moment, and pulls it away with a smack, and Esther, before she can think to stop herself, gives him a wallop that sends the glowing butt flying and makes him stumble to one knee. “Haven’t you got into enough mischief down that camp?” she begins, but then she stops. There’s a faint cheer — from the other boys, she thinks — but when she looks round wildly, she sees it’s from the men below.

When she turns back, Jim is staring at her, clutching his cheek and ear.

“Well, you deserved it,” she says, but more gently, offering her hand. It’s still warm from the blow, and as she opens it she expects it to be red, as if she’s the one who’s been struck. “Oh, come on.” She hadn’t hit him that hard, had she? “Look at it this way. You’ll be able to wear your bandage for another week.” But he shakes her off, pushes past her. “Not funny!” She feels his hand on her hip, moving her. “Broody cow,” he breathes, and then he’s past. “And you can keep your bloody bike, too,” he shouts from above her. The cry rolls down the hillside. She sees the sheep stir. And for a long moment she freezes, unable to move, to look up. Her dress, she sees, is muddy where he’s touched her.