Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

He learned after that to recognize a slight change in her tone when she talked to these couples. He could be sitting in their cramped kitchen and hear her welcoming guests in the hall, and even without seeing them — their stiff faces with the twitchy smiles they gave each other when they thought they were unwatched — he’d know, just from the way his mother said “Wilkommen, Herr und Fran.” There was a hollowness to it, a kind of resignation — not a welcome, truly, just a weary acknowledgment. Every time such a couple checked in, more so even than the married couples, the families with children, he thought of his father. He missed him for himself, of course, though he could hardly remember him, thought of his father more as a role, an empty place at the head of the table, than as a person. But those were the moments when he felt his mother’s loss most keenly.

Perhaps that, he thinks, is why they never talked about love. Why, even when there had been girls — respectable girls, local girls, German girls (and he’d had his share of crushes) — he hadn’t spoken of them to her. On his last night before the army took him, he’d made a plan to meet a girl — Eva. She was a little older than he, twenty maybe, a rosy, round-faced thing with plump little hands. He’d watched her from afar for years, it seemed, always on the arm of some fellow in uniform, but he’d only had the nerve to ask her out, to the cinema, after he’d joined up. It was the bravest thing he’d ever done, he thought at the time. He stared into her dark pupils while she thought about her answer, and then he’d told her, “I’m shipping out tomorrow,” and she’d pursed her lips and said, “Well, then.” She called him a patriot. She said that there was no higher love than the love of one’s country, and he nodded mutely. Her own patriotism was well known among the local boys, who called her the Recruiter. Karsten had laughed along with the rest, thought her a gullible romantic at best, at worst a slut for the swastika, but now he saw what she felt most was pity. Knowing it, he still planned to use it against her, pitiless himself. But as he’d gone downstairs that evening, he’d found his mother alone in their cramped kitchen and he knew she’d been crying, and so he’d stayed with her. Perhaps, he’d thought, squeezing her hand, there was no distinction between pity and love. That’s when she’d told him his father would be proud of him. She squeezed Karsten’s hand. “Don’t disgrace us,” she said, and he’d nodded and sworn.

He wonders now if his mother still thinks him a virgin — the very worst thing a soldier can be, other than a coward, he thinks bleakly. And yet he finds himself, despite himself, hoping she does.

As for Eva, he’d written to her to apologize, but of course she’d never written back.

KARSTEN CONSOLES himself that the Welsh girl’s fleeting appearance at the wire at least scared the boys away, but before long they’re back, and to his surprise he’s actually pleased to see them. He recognizes the one she grabbed, asks his name, but the boy ignores him. Ignores him yet lingers, as if fascinated by Karsten’s English, as if the language issuing from him were as improbable as a talking sheep or dog. The boy is slightly built, with a watchful look about him, and seems always on the fringe of the crowd. A follower, Karsten intuits, a tagger-along, tolerated by the others, perhaps bullied by them.

“Where’s your sister?” Karsten tries again the next night, but the boy bristles.

“She’s not my sister! I’m an evacuee. My dad’s in the navy!”

He sticks his chest out as if for a medal. There’s a challenge in his voice, but Karsten doesn’t want a fight.

“You must miss him,” he says kindly, but it’s a mistake. The boy’s face clouds, and Karsten sees too late how he’s trapped him. The boy can’t admit he misses his father in front of the others, can’t say he doesn’t for fear of seeming disloyal.

“Shut up!” is all he can cry, and his shrill belligerence only makes the older boys laugh.

The gang as a whole is losing interest in the camp. Fewer boys come each night, and when they do, they chat amongst themselves, bored by the prisoners. No longer afraid of us, Karsten thinks.

He’s reduced to entertaining them to maintain their interest. When he sees one of the older toughs, an albino by the look of him, lighting a cigarette, he brings two fingers to his own mouth, raises his eyebrows.

“You must be joking, sunshine.”

“Not to smoke.” Karsten struggles for the word. “For a… trick, you know. Magic.” He cuts his eyes towards the slight boy, the one he’s really doing this for.

The tough frowns, but Karsten can see he’s intrigued, and in his own good time he strolls over, offers a cigarette jutting from his pack. “You’re really not going to smoke it?”

“No matches,” Karsten tells him, pulling his pockets inside out.

“Fair enough. I’ll go along.”

The albino waves the others over like an impresario, and they stand before Karsten as he twirls the cigarette in his fingers. He has a modest repertoire of sleight of hand, with which he used to entertain his mother’s guests as a boy, but he’s rusty, his knuckles stiff, and on his first attempt the cigarette slips through his grasp. He has to fumble to catch it.

“Oooohh!” The older boy rolls his eyes. “You’re good, you are. Know any others?”

Karsten ignores him, trying to still the sudden panic he feels. He used to have a line of patter to distract his audience, but he’s so gripped with stage fright he can’t think to translate it. He pushes his sleeves up, concentrates on his next pass, one hand slipping over the other, and to his own mild surprise the cigarette vanishes. He turns his hands back and forth before them, smiling in triumph.

Even the albino is impressed. As for the little lad, his eyes are huge. He’s surely never seen anything like it before.

“Where is it?” he asks in hushed tones, looking at the albino as if he might know.

“Gone,” Karsten says. He puts his two empty fingers to his lips in a suave smoking gesture. “Unvisible!”

“ In visible,” the tough snorts, but the little one, enraptured by the trick, breathes, “Unvisible,” as if it’s the magic word.

Instinctively, Karsten reaches out to him with a twirl of the wrist. He means to produce the cigarette from behind the boy’s ear, but for once he’s forgotten the wire and has to let his hand fall quickly to hide the cigarette.

“Come on,” the tough says, suddenly suspicious, as if Karsten intends to keep the cigarette. “Where is it?”

Karsten mimes forgetfulness, rubs his face thoughtfully, and then draws the cigarette from his nostril, to the delight of the younger boys.

“Oi!” the albino cries. “That’s disgusting.” Karsten holds out the cigarette but the other shakes his head. “I ain’t putting that in my mouth!”

“You can’t always believe your eyes,” Karsten says, smiling.

He holds it out again, but the boy isn’t having any of it.

Besides, the others are clamoring for him to do it again, and Karsten obliges, running through the routine twice more, three times, balancing the smoke on the back of his hand, making it vanish with a clap, then pulling it from thin air with a flourish as he gets his feel back.

He slips the cigarette between his lips as he saunters back to the barracks that night, wondering if the boy will tell her about the trick, if she’ll believe him. And abruptly he hopes not. That she’ll want to see it for herself.

But the next night brings only the boys again, and by the end of the evening they’ve seen all his tricks a dozen times.

He’d feared the little one would vanish with the rest, when they lost interest, and yet there he is, one day all by himself, looking around as if for company. Perhaps the others haven’t deigned to tell him of a new meeting place.