Peter Davies: The Welsh Girl

Just before her death, she told him how she’d been spat on in the streets of Berlin in 1919. “After Versailles,” she said. “Because I was Canadian. That’s what your grandparents could never forgive. I was a reminder of the enemy who’d killed their son. I wasn’t German enough for them, you see?”

Among her possessions, after her funeral, he’d found a photograph of his father he’d never seen before. It must have been taken on that last leave because he looked gaunt, his tunic loose on his frame, his features sharpened almost to caricature, no longer the smiling, slightly plump figure in a close-fitting uniform that Rotheram had seen in earlier poses. This was his father, he thought, and the figure had seemed to rebuke him.

And yet the following week he’d gone ahead and Anglicized his name.

HE LOOKED AT his watch — not quite one A.M. — and decided to try the CO. Hawkins was an insomniac — his own sleep ruined by so many round-the-clock interrogations — and often spent nights at his desk catching up on paperwork. Sure enough, he picked up on the second ring, sounding more alert than the sleepy operator who put Rotheram’s call through.

Barefoot, greatcoat over his pajamas, Rotheram huddled over the phone in the drafty hall and said he was ready to head back to London.

“You’ve made up your mind about Hess? That was quick.”

Rotheram hesitated, stared at some movement down the hall, realized it was his own reflection in a mirror.

“Not really.”

“What? Speak up.”

“No, sir,” Rotheram enunciated. He cupped his hand around the mouthpiece, conscious of the stillness of the house around him. “I’m just not sure I’ll be able to, under the circumstances.”

“So spend some more time. Take another run at him.”

“I don’t think that’ll do any good,” Rotheram offered.

“But why, for heaven’s sake?” Hawkins seemed to be shouting in the quiet of the hallway.

And Rotheram was forced to admit that he was reluctant to find Hess sane because the thought of confirming Redgrave and Mills’s assumptions rankled.

“Let me get this straight,” the CO said. “You believe you can judge Hess fairly, but you’re concerned that others won’t see that judgment as impartial because they think you’re Jewish. Those are the horns of your dilemma?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, but do you ever think you might not be so impartial after all?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Rotheram said tightly. “Even if I were Jewish, I’m not sure why it should make me any less impartial than a Frenchman or a Russian.”

He heard Hawkins take a sip of something, and then another. Finally he asked, “Tell me, my boy, honestly now, don’t you ever think about your family? Your grandparents made for Paris, you say. Don’t you wonder where they are, what’s become of them?”

Rotheram was momentarily taken aback. He began to say no and stopped, unsure. Hawkins had taught him to recognize the pause before answering as a lie. It came to Rotheram that whatever he said now would seem false. So he was silent, which as Hawkins had taught him might mean a man was holding something back, or simply that he didn’t know.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he whispered now. “You’ll have my report Monday morning.”

There was a long sigh at the other end of the line, and Rotheram felt how he’d failed Hawkins. But when the CO spoke again he sounded brusquely hearty.

“No need to hurry back, my boy. There’ve been some new orders, as a matter of fact. The POW department want someone to visit their camps up in North Wales. Something to do with screening and the reeducation program. Denazification and all that. Thought you’d be just the fellow to liaise. Anyhow, the orders should catch up with you there later today, or tomorrow at the latest.”

“What—?” Rotheram began, and stopped, silenced by the sound of his own cry in the still house as much as by Hawkins’s steely jocularity.

Gripping the receiver, Rotheram told him stiffly that he understood, and he did, although dully, as if his head were still ringing from the blow. The CO had been flattering him with this mission, he realized; more than that, it was a consolation prize. The decision had already been made, but not by Rotheram. Hess would be going to the trial, but Rotheram wouldn’t. The closest he’d come to Germany, any time soon, was the image on the screen.

“You will be missed,” Hawkins said. He was the one whispering now. “It’s just that there’s a sense that Jews ought not to be a big part of the process. To keep everything aboveboard, so to speak. To avoid it’s looking like revenge. Can’t stick a thumb on the scales of justice and all that. And really, that stunt at Dover.” He laughed ruefully. “That’s what you get for playing silly buggers.”

Rotheram was silent and the CO filled the pause by asking, “By the way, how is Rudi, the old bastard?”

“Probably as sane as you or I,” Rotheram said, and Hawkins laughed again.

“Well, that’s not saying much, dear boy. That’s not saying very much at all.”

ROTHERAM HELD the receiver long after it had gone dead, reassured by the weight in his hand, until he heard a floorboard creak overhead, and finally set it gently back in it’s cradle. He wondered who else might be awake, whom he might have woken. Hess’s room was on the second floor, and suddenly he hoped the Nazi might appear, escaping, any excuse for Rotheram to take him by the throat. On the landing, he peered down the corridor. There was Hess’s guard, the corporal who’d served them Scotch, slumped in his chair, giving off a series of soft, flaring snores. Rotheram only meant to wake him, but as he stood before the guard, it seemed as easy to step over his outstretched legs and lay an ear to the door.

Nothing. Rotheram wondered if he was listening to an empty room, if Hess had already fled (but no, the key was still in the lock) or thrown himself from his window (surely it was barred). Still nothing, except Rotheram’s own pulse, like a wingbeat in his ears. Perhaps all he’d heard before was a particularly stentorian snore from the corporal. And yet he couldn’t quite shake the conviction that the room was empty — not as if Hess had left it, precisely, but as if he’d never been there. Rotheram must have leaned closer, shifted his weight, for the floor beneath him gave a dry groan. He stifled his breath, counted the seconds. Nothing stirred, and yet the silence seemed subtly altered now, the silence of another listener, as if Hess were behind the door or under the covers or crouched in a corner listening to him, Rotheram, wondering about his intentions.

Rotheram felt his legs start to tremble, as if a chill had risen from the cold floor through his bare feet, and he stepped away. He was halfway to the stairs before he thought to turn back and aim a kick at the sleeping corporal.

IT’S A CLOSE June night in the Welsh hills, taut with the threat of thunder, and the radios of the village cough with static. The Quarryman’s Arms, with the tallest aerial for miles around, is a scrum of bodies, all waiting to hear Churchill’s broadcast.

There’s a flurry of shouted orders leading up to the news at six. Esther, behind the lounge bar, pulls pint after pint, leaning back against the pumps so that the beer froths in the glass. She sets the shaker out for those who want to salt their drinks to melt the foam. Round the corner to her right, her boss, Jack Jones, has his hands full with the regulars in the public bar. At five to six by the scarred grandfather clock in the corner, he calls across for Esther to “warm ’er up.” She tops off the pint she’s pouring, steps back from the counter and up onto the pop crate beneath the till. She has to stretch for the knob on the wireless, one foot lifting off the crate. Behind her, over the calls for service, she hears a few low whistles before the machine clicks into life, first with a scratchy hum, then a whistle of it’s own, finally, as if from afar, the signature tune of the program. The dial lights up like a sunset, and the noise around her subsides at once. Turning, the girl looks down into the crowd of faces staring up at the glowing radio, and it seems to her for a moment as if she has stilled them.