Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

“FRITZ!” the other boys chorus.

Esther shakes her head. She looks at the guard in his tower, but he’s hanging over the railing watching the game, his back to the dark drum of the searchlight.

It’s a warm night, pleasant in the shadow of the trees, and she finds a dry spot, dusts it of leaves, and sits, hugging her knees to her chin. One team has taken their shirts off, or knotted the arms of their overalls at their waists, their chests glowing pale in the dusk beneath tanned faces and necks. She watches one fellow — fair-haired, so different from the dark-haired local boys — barge another off the ball, then dribble it away. He’s a strapping lad, but his flying hair makes him look delicate somehow.

After the roughness of the collision, he’s surprisingly graceful with the ball at his feet. It looks to her as if he’s dancing with a partner. She pictures each step-over and turn as if it were printed on a sheet from Arthur Murray. And then he shoots, destroying the illusion, and the ball flies wide of the goal, skidding off the hard earth and rolling up against the fence. He stands with his hands on his hips for a moment, then trots towards it, pausing at a thin line of wire a few yards inside the fence and glancing up at the guard tower. “Yes, yes,” someone calls impatiently, and the German steps over the wire, gathers the ball, and kicks it back into play. He stops at a water bucket on the sideline on his way back, drinking from a tin cup, pouring the dregs over his head until his hair darkens. A breeze steals up the slope from the camp, ruffling Mott’s coat as he dozes, and Esther strokes the dog as she watches the men run back and forth.

She doesn’t know where the time goes — the ball runs up against the fence over and over — but suddenly it’s nine, the men turning towards their barracks. She waits for the boys to leave first, so that at home Jim gets to ask where she’s been. “Never mind me,” she says, slamming a cold plate of food in front of him. “You’ve been at that camp.” He begins to deny it, and she tells him, “Don’t lie. You’ve been bothering those prisoners.” And he tells her scornfully, “They are the enemy, you know.”

THE MAJOR, the constable announces to the pub, has complained about the boys’ shenanigans, threatened to send his men after them. Esther feels a fleeting fear for Jim, and yet some part of her thinks he might deserve to be caught this time. By the end of the week, the constable has extended his own rounds to include the camp. “The major appreciates the benefits of greater cooperation between the military and civil authorities.”

“Means it’s beneath our dignity chasing kids,” one of the guards mutters.

Parry just shrugs. He has no intention of driving the boys off himself. “They’ll only be back in the village making mischief,” Esther hears him confide to Jack. “No, I’ve got other fish to fry.” He means the Germans. He reckons they’ll think twice about escaping now they’ve seen him on his rounds.

“Escaping!” another guard scoffs. “This lot? Not likely.” He waves his white hankie. “Don’t have the balls, do they?”

“Ladies present,” Parry coughs, and Esther lowers her eyes.

“Wouldn’t have surrendered if they did.” The guard sets his elbows on the bar. “You only have to look at them — one half thanking their lucky stars, the other too ashamed to look you in the face. Hardly know which to pity more.”

Still, the constable’s not to be put off. He makes a point of conducting his rounds promptly each night, proud of his punctuality, as if it shows backbone. “I might not know German, see, but I’m speaking their language. Look at their trains, man.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “He’s just jealous. There the army is with five hundred prisoners, and what’s he got? One little cell, not much bigger than a pantry, and all he’s ever locked up in there is taters.”

“It’s me duty, I reckon,” Parry tells them pompously. “Protecting the local citizenry.” There’s been talk of the Germans working on local farms, like prisoners in the last war, he confides. “And if that’s so, I want ’em to know I’ll be keeping my eye on them.”

Esther can hardly imagine the idle men she saw the other night working.

“Work!” Harry says grimly. “Shooting’s too good for them.” And there’s an odd silence while they wait for a punch line. (Esther doesn’t hear it until the next radio show: “Saw Heinz herding cows, and I says to him, ‘Were you a farmer back home, then?’ and he goes, ‘Nein, but it’s easy for a German soldier to herd cattle. I’m just following udders!’”)

ON HER NEXT NIGHT OFF Esther tells Arthur she’s going to the pictures, cycles to the bottom of the lane, then doubles back on foot, up the slope. She tells herself it’s to catch Jim, to make sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble, but she crouches behind a tree when she hears the metallic grind and rattle of the constable’s bike and sees Parry ride into view. Seven o’clock, she thinks; he’ll be off home soon for the tea Blodwyn’s making him. She watches him cycle by slowly, his eyes on the camp. A couple of the Germans give him a wave, but Parry just glares at them.

Before he’s even out of sight down the lane, Esther sees the boys, Pinkie leading them, saunter out of the trees below her. On another of their “recce missions,” as they call them. Jim brings up the rear, swinging from trunk to trunk as he hurries down the steep slope, yodeling like Tarzan.

Most of the men ignore them as before, but she sees a small knot — three or four of the younger Germans — advancing on the fence and finds herself standing, as if to run. Pinkie has his fists up and is bouncing around, throwing out shadow punches. “Wanna fight?” he calls. “You don’t look so tough.” He jabs the air in front of him, his stark white fists shining in the dusk.

Little coward, she thinks. She hears Jim’s thin voice: “Seconds out. Ding ding. ” And then one of the Germans, a stocky fellow, marches up to the wire, shrugging off his shirt, and the boys fall back a step. He grins, pops his muscles, warms up with a few swift combinations, bobbing his head and shuffling his feet, then drops into a stance, fists raised. He beckons impatiently, and Pinkie, after a second, takes a tentative swing, but the prisoner just slaps at his cheek like he’s been bitten by a flea, shakes his head.

There’s a burst of laughter from his friends, and she can see Pinkie blushing from here. He starts to windmill his arm, winding up for a haymaker, but the German’s lost interest in him. He walks along the wire, feinting at the boys, making some of them jump, and stops in front of Jim, the smallest, and crooks a finger. The boy looks down the line at the others, some of whom are waving him on, and she sees him throw out a small fist. The German reels, falling back into the arms of his comrades, who hoist him up, push him forward. Esther watches, perplexed by the performance, and then it occurs to her that they’re humoring the boys, playing with them. Jim seems puzzled himself, but throws out a combination to the gut, and the big man doubles over, sags to his knees, amid laughter from both sides of the fence. One of the boys holds Jim’s hand up. The winner.

The light is fading, but the evening is still warm, the slate hillsides radiating the heat they’ve been absorbing all day. A wasp brushes her ear, it’s loud buzz making her flinch, and she shakes her hair violently. She leans against a trunk, it’s cool and rough against her neck and cheek, and studies the boys. They’re trying to talk to the Germans now, Pinkie thrusting himself close to the wire, pointing at himself, then the Germans. She slips a little lower through the trees, trying to make him out. He seems to be hurling curses at the fence, but as she listens more closely she hears a grotesque kind of English lesson taking place.