Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

It’ll be the last time they see him in the Arms. “Drunk us dry,” Jack laments when he hears the major’s taken to frequenting the Prince. By the end of the week, the story has gone the rounds and is already a local legend. Esther even sees Jim marching around the yard with a sawn-off broomstick under his arm.

“Good riddance. Bloody Black and Tans,” Bertie grumbles.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Harry twinkles. “He seemed ’armless enough.”

The major’s absence is a boon for business at least, since his men make it a point to steer clear of their officers when drinking. They’re all right, Esther supposes, but it’s odd to have the pub full of strangers again, to hear so many English voices drowning out the Welsh. She serves them with lowered eyes. They seem to press upon her, arms stretching for their pints or proffering their money (she prefers them to leave it on the counter rather than have their fingers paddling in her palm). The lacquered oak bar seems suddenly flimsy — she can even smell them across it, the pong of Brylcreem — and the passage behind it feels narrow as a pen. At least on the walk to and from the pub she still has the reassuring weight of the scissors bumping against her hip, though the point has worn a hole in the lining of her coat pocket. She takes to standing behind the pumps, or near Mary when she’s around, even if that means spending time with Harry, too.

Actually, she’s been grateful for his blowzy presence on a couple of occasions. She’s become uncharacteristically clumsy of late, slopping drinks, letting the pumps overflow, fumbling with glasses, twice in one night letting full pint mugs slip through her fingers, shattering on the slate flagstones behind the bar. What she hates is the moment of stillness after the smash when everyone turns to her, the stares of the men, and then the outbreak of catcalls and whistles. But Harry somehow makes it all right, turning it into a joke, raising a long stiff arm (she thinks for a second it’s a Heil Hitler salute, until he puts a curled fist to his lips), pretending there’s a bottle hidden behind it. The idea is she’s sneaking a few in the back, but at least everyone turns to look at Harry. Except Mary, who’s probably seen the act a thousand times. Mary, in fact, is the one she’s most afraid of, Mary raising her plucked eyebrows quizzically.

“What’s up, luv?” she asks one night in late July, when Harry’s in the gents. “You can tell your Auntie Mary.”

And in truth Esther has thought of telling Mary — she’s a woman of the world, after all, she won’t be shocked — but there’s never a chance with Harry around. Esther sits up Monday nights listening to the radio for the opening bars of “There’ll Always Be an England,” the signature tune of their show, The Finest Half Hour. They have a recurring skit, a bawdy little routine called “Lil and Bill,” in which Bill keeps pursuing Lil and she keeps fending him off. When Bill brags about his manhood or his romantic exploits, Lil drops into a Churchillian growl: “Nev-ah have so many heard so much about so lit-tle!” Bill even told her once “to think of England,” and, holding her breath, Esther heard Lil come back, “I am, I am. No surrender!” It made her yearn to tell Mary about Colin, blurt it out, but now, facing her, something about the way Mary leans a little drunkenly across the bar makes Esther stop, fearful of being laughed at: You what, luv? With who? Col-in-out-shake-it-all-about!

Mary sees her hesitation now, wags a long finger. “That’s no way to keep a secret!”

“Secret?” Harry asks, coming back. He always has a banty little bounce to his stride after going to the gents, ready for action again. “What secret’s that, then?”

Esther holds her breath, but Mary gives her a wink.

“Yours,” she tells Harry. “Esther was just asking where you’re really from.”

“Where I’m from?” Harry splutters. “You know, I think I’ve forgotten. Twenty years on the music-hall circuit will do that for you. Anyway, best way to keep a secret is that. Forget it! Besides,” he says, leaning closer, “my big secret is the Secret of Comedy.” He looks left and right. “Be honored to share that with you. You just have to ask. Go on!”

“All right,” Esther says gamely. “What’s the secret of—”

“ Timing! ” Harry bawls in her face, and starts laughing so hard he begins to cough. The punch line smells of hops.

“Sorry, luv.” Mary pats her hand. “Let you walk into that one. But how else you gonna learn? Listen,” she whispers when Harry’s distracted again. “The only way to keep a secret is not to let on you’ve got one, see. Soon as someone knows you’ve got one, pretty thing like you, they’ll come up with all kinds of ideas! Like about you and that nice young Rhys.” Esther flinches, and Mary laughs. “And the moral is, choose your secrets carefully.”

Mention of Rhys makes her think of Mrs. R. It’s been almost two months since she’s heard anything from her son, and at the post office she tosses others’ letters back and forth across the counter brusquely, as if touching them offends her. For her own part, Esther has noticed couples fall silent when she joins the end of the queue for the cinema. It infuriates her. Rhys is just failing again, she thinks, the way he failed all through school. He should be ashamed of himself. But all the same, she stops Jim from asking Mrs. R about him at every chance.

Rhys’s silence may be why Jack has been so decent about Esther’s clumsiness in the bar, all the breakages. he’d be within his rights to dock her wages, but he’s patient for the first couple of weeks, happy to see the pub full again.

“Chalk it up to busyness,” he tells her when another glass slips through her hand, and Harry roars, “Bombs away!” Jack bends down to help her pick up the pieces, plucking the shards out of the foam as she stammers an apology. She smiles then, and he tells her, “There’s a sight hasn’t been seen around these parts for a while.” He winks and inclines his head towards the bar. “And I know a few other folks wouldn’t mind seeing it, I bet. Smile never hurt in this business.”

She knows then she’s been letting him down, and she stands up, tucks the hank of hair that has fallen forward behind her ear, and decides to make an effort.

There’s been a young, hangdog American flyer nursing a beer at the corner of the bar all night, chewing gum between drinks, his jaw working away as if in angry conversation with himself. When he orders another, she sees his hands shaking and he makes a wretched face. “Steady as a crock.”

She sets the beer before him gently, and asks him about himself. He’s a belly gunner in a B-something-or-other, waiting to fly on to a base in East Anglia. What’s that like? she wants to know, and he tells her morosely, “You know what they say about not looking down when you’re scared of heights? Well, I can only look down.”

“A flyboy afraid of heights!” She laughs, and he mumbles glumly, “Among other things.”

She asks him why he’s there alone, and he explains that his crew aren’t much interested in him. “There’s no percentage in it. Belly gunner’s average life expectancy is two and a half missions.”

She thinks he’s joking. “You can’t have half a mission, silly,” and then he looks over and it dawns on her. “Oh.” She’s been hanging around Harry and Mary too long, she thinks. Everything seems like a gag.

It touches her, his loneliness, and to change the subject she asks where he’s from, and he says, “Rhode Island,” and she leaps on this. “Where the chickens come from!” she cries, excited to recognize the name. They have a half dozen of the rusty pullets with their rumpled feathers at the farm. But Harry, beside her, bursts into laughter—“Oh, you’re learning, girl!”—and the airman grimaces: “Funny.” She’s instantly sorry, the more so because Harry has started clucking and crowing on his stool, and the guards, jealous she’s never given them the time of day, are laughing uproariously.