Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

“Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

She nods, satisfied, but then she can’t resist. “What’s his name, anyway?”

“Hans.”

“Hans,” she begins, and then Jim cracks up, “ Hans up! Get it?” She recognizes it as one of Harry’s gags.

She drifts off that night wondering about him, the German, wondering what he misses most in his captivity. He’ll miss that square of shirt come winter. She wonders where it’s from. The small of his back? Under his arm? She leans in to study it. I could patch that. Suddenly a finger pokes through, crooks as if beckoning.

She looks for the bottle the next day when she’s making Jim’s bed, marvels at the workmanship. The rigging, which she’d taken for button thread at a glance, is too fine. Hair, she thinks. His? And there, at the prow, the curve of the anchor, a pared crescent of fingernail. There’s even a figure, face pinched out of candle wax, in the little wheelhouse. When she looks down the neck — wrinkling her nose at a meaty reek of fat, the glue perhaps, lingering beneath the old beer stink — she’s amazed how much smaller the ship is when not magnified by the glass. In the miniature cabin, the tiny wheel rocks back and forth. It startles her somehow, the shrunken enclosed world, and she lowers the bottle, rests it in her lap. She wonders how the German made it, wishes she could ask him.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, when she’s alone, she hard-boils a couple of eggs — all that won’t be missed. Fresh eggs would be too risky, she’s decided, too easily broken. She listens to them knocking in the pan, looking over her shoulder the whole time, then picks them up, still hot, and juggles them into her coat pockets for later. She thinks of them there, cooling, the whole time she’s preparing lunch.

She tells herself she’s just being magnanimous. The latest news from France is good. Jim needs more pins for his map. Cherbourg has fallen, Caen, the Allies have pushed twenty, thirty, fifty miles inland. Orléans is next, Paris in sight.

And then abruptly the news is bad. Mrs. Roberts comes by the house, interrupting the three of them at lunch, red-faced and flustered, a telegram gripped in her hand. Who could be sending them a telegram? For a clenched second, Esther thinks it’s from Colin, or from one of his mates about him. That her wish has come true.

“I just left,” Mrs. Roberts says, sinking onto the settle. “Didn’t even lock the door. There’s terrible, I am. Left my post. But I couldn’t think what else to do. You were so good, Arthur, when I lost Mervyn.” She looks from Arthur to Esther, and takes her hand. “And you deserve to know too, love.” She holds out the telegram, and when she sees Esther hesitate, she flaps it impatiently.

“Go on!” Jim hisses.

She scans it silently— I am directed to inform you, with regret … notification has been received … — offers it quickly to Arthur, who bats it aside. “What’s it say?” he hisses, and she tells him softly, “It’s from the War Office. Casualty branch. Rhys is… missing.” She can’t take her eyes off the word — missing — runs her finger over the ridges of the heavy black type where it’s pressed into the onionskin. She thinks of her contempt for Rhys, her dull fury at him for failing to write, and she almost gags.

“There it is.” Mrs. Roberts nods, for all the world as if Esther has just given the right answer in class. Arthur stares at his former neighbor for a long moment and then sits beside her, grasps her hands in his—“Vivian”—and to Esther, stunned, it seems weirdly as though Rhys has got his old childhood wish, uniting them at last. “I’d just finished knitting him a nice scarf,” Mrs. Roberts begins, and somehow the thought of this breaks her. She sobs against Arthur while Esther and Jim look on. The scene reminds Esther vividly of her own mother’s funeral.

“Missing?” Jim whispers to Esther. “What’s that mean?”

“Missing in action,” she tells him weakly, but she can see he doesn’t understand the gravity. She suddenly can’t bear his innocence, and she bends towards him, whispers, “Presumed dead.”

“He can’t be.” The boy recoils. “He can’t be, Mrs. R. Not Rhys.”

They’re all staring at him now, and he looks from one to the other.

“It’s not true,” he says, and Arthur motions Esther to take Jim out, almost as if he doesn’t want to parade a child in front of the bereaved woman.

“You don’t think so?” Jim asks her outside, and Esther looks at him. They’ve been so distant these past few weeks. She wishes she could tell him something. In the hedge nearby a thrush is singing, the same two notes, over and over.

“He could be on a mission,” Jim says with desperate enthusiasm. “Something top secret.”

She shakes her head, more in wonder than denial, but she sees the hope drain from his face and something else take it’s place.

“Bastards,” he says. “Those German bastards!”

And before she can reach out to stop him, he’s gone, haring up the slope. She would go after him but Arthur’s at the door, motioning her inside. “She keeps asking after you. Come and see what you can do with her, eh? I’ve to go and see about locking up the post office.” He shakes his head. “Says she won’t have a moment’s peace until she knows it’s done.” Esther casts one more glance after Jim, yearns to outrun him, and then Arthur touches her arm. She looks at his hand on her sleeve, nods mutely, and goes in to Mrs. Roberts.

“Oh, my dear,” the older woman calls, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you, too.” And hesitantly, Esther takes her hand. It’s not the time to debate how much she felt for Rhys, certainly not to say that she’s turned him down, and even as she thinks of it, thinks of him gone, she feels the tears coming, though whether for him or herself she doesn’t know, and the doubt suddenly stills them. Her eyes prickle but the tears draw back. To where? she wonders, blinking.

“Second of August,” Mrs. Roberts is saying shakily. “That’s when they say it happened, more than a week ago. I can’t get it out of my head, what was I doing then? I can’t remember for the life of me. Nothing, probably, nothing special at any rate. And all the days since then. Just living. It’s really true what they say, isn’t it? Ignorance is bliss.” She claps a hand tight to her mouth, as if to trap the words, and Esther wraps an arm around her, holds her, shyly at first and then more firmly as she shudders.

“You know,” Mrs. Roberts tells her when she’s calmer, “I always thought you’d be the one to go places. Even after you left school, I told myself: When the war ends she’ll do some things.” Her voice wavers. “So I knew my boy doted on you, but I discouraged it, you see, warned him you were meant for better. There’s a terrible mother, I am, but I had such hopes for you. I didn’t want to see his heart broken.” She pinches her lips together. “I thought we’d be reading your letters from London or someplace like that.” She fumbles for Esther’s hand. “But I’m awfully glad you’re here now.”

Esther can only nod, over and over.

“There’s still some hope,” she says at last, and after a watchful moment Mrs. Roberts pats her hand and tells her, “Of course there is.” And Esther thinks, Neither of us believes it. For his mother, she sees, the news is the confirmation of her worst fears, built up these months. She almost seems relieved, vindicated. And for me? Esther wonders. It feels like a punishment, for doubting him, for thinking the greatest danger he faced was his mother’s angry impatience for a letter. Yet even now there’s a part of Esther that grates at the fool for getting himself killed. It’s as if he’s vanished into the dark gap between his two front teeth.