Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

For a second she starts to smile — still dreaming, she reckons, still drowsing in bed — and then a hand covers her mouth.

She thinks of Colin, suddenly, thrashes wildly and feels the grip tighten on her jaw, hears a voice in her ear: “Don’t cry.” And strangely something about the heavy accent calms her. Not Colin, of course, but a German.

He drags her back into the shadow of the barn, so swiftly that she feels one of her boots slip free. The cold air on her bare foot reminds her of the danger she’s in, but the thought comes to her less with fear or anger than weary recognition. This. Again.

It’s only his poor English that helps her keep her head, gives her a sense of superiority even as he holds her. “Cry out, ” she wants to correct him; she isn’t about to cry. But she settles for nodding emphatically, her chin working against his cupping hand. His fingers smell of raw egg. He hesitates a moment, but she can feel his grip relax and she opens her lips to speak. For a second she can feel his finger against her teeth, and then he releases her, as if afraid she’ll bite.

It’s their first proper look at each other, and her immediate response is relief — it’s him, the German from the fence. She remembers how embarrassed he’d been then, how he’d blushed at the bad language, and momentarily she’s actually pleased to see him instead of some other, some stranger.

He smiles slightly himself, then recovers, whispers tersely, “I have a gun,” a hand jammed in his pocket like a gangster at the pictures. He’s lying, she’s almost certain (she’s heard of no one missing a gun, no pistol to be sure), pretending as if it were some kid’s game. Yet when she looks down, she finds her hands tensed over her stomach. It takes an effort of will to unlace her fingers.

From the back of the barn, the cow bellows again, tosses her head. She’s terrified, and Esther, trained all these years to treat the beast as well as a person — better — starts toward her.

“Don’t move, please.” He jabs the ridiculous “gun” at her again, and she almost dares him to show it. Still, she has an instinct she might be safer if he thinks she believes him.

“She needs to be milked.” She meets his eyes. “If not, she’ll keep that up until she brings someone else.”

He’s silent then, and she moves past him, limping without her boot, pulls up the three-legged stool, and presses her head to the beast’s flank. The cow stamps once, twice, snorts wetly, finally stills, and now the only sound is the drumming of milk in the tin bucket.

She feels him hovering behind her, then bending close, and she tenses, but when he rises, she sees he’s only set her boot beside her. She wiggles her foot inside.

“Thank you,” she calls, but he’s silent.

All Esther can see of him from this angle is his feet in the straw. She watches him edge his way around the animal, perhaps looking for a way out of the barn on the other side of the stall, or trying to put the beast between him and the main door, so it’s bulk shields him. When he strays too close to the hind legs, she snaps, “I wouldn’t. She’ll kick.” He’s still then, and she stares at his scuffed boots, his muddy trouser cuffs, as the patter of milk in the pail changes to a long hiss as it fills.

The milking will be done soon. And then what? She wonders if she can outrun him to the house, raise the alarm, fetch Arthur. She doubts it. She might scream, yet somehow having waited this long… how to explain why she waited? For the sake of a cow? It made perfect sense to her a moment before, but now it seems foolish. She imagines trying to explain it to Arthur, to Constable Parry, imagines Harry getting wind of it: “Pull the udder one!” She doesn’t want to attract any attention, after all, any laughter.

She lifts the pail, backs out of the stall, and he gingerly eases the cow aside to follow her.

“Please?” he calls softly.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she hisses, “if you go now.”

He studies her for a beat.

“My father will be up soon.”

He still has his hand thrust in his pocket. Any harder, she thinks, and he’ll wear a hole in it. And then he smiles. “Thank you… Esther.”

Jim! She flushes. The little liar.

“It is Esther?” he asks. “Like the swimming actress?”

She nods slowly, more shocked that he knows Esther Williams’s name than her own.

“And what do they call you?”

Hans? she dreads. But he tells her, “Karsten.”

“Karsten?” The name feels dry in her mouth, and she wets her lips, looks up to see him doing the same.

“Please?” he says again, and it dawns on her that he’s eyeing the bucket in her hand.

She stares at him a moment more, then reaches for an old china teacup, it’s handle snapped, that Arthur keeps on the shelf for when he wants a drink of water from the pump. The German dips it into the pail, puts it to his mouth, rears back slightly.

“Warm?” he says in surprise, and she nods solemnly.

He drinks a long draft, his throat throbbing, then another. He’s scruffier than she recalls from the camp, his dark blond hair sticking up on his head, but he seems bigger too, as if he’d been stooping behind the wire.

When he’s finished he holds out the cup and she sees a thin white line below his nose, and despite herself she starts to smile.

He tenses.

“You’ve—” She swipes a finger before her own face, and he rubs the residue away with the back of his hand. Only when it’s gone does she see that it’s the hand from his pocket.

They stare at each other and then she snatches up the pail and hurries towards the house, fast as she can without spilling, as if it were blood. She’d so nearly burst out laughing, but inside, with her back to the door, she finds she’s already swallowed the laugh. Instead, she fumbles with the bolt — she can’t recall the last time they actually locked their door — skins her knuckles shoving it home. She crouches at the window, sucking the scrape, but there’s no sign of him.

She should tell her father, but at his door, her hand raised to knock, the thought of him charging out of the house with the shotgun again gives her pause. He’ll not catch the German, and then they’ll have soldiers and dogs crawling all over the farm again. And for what? Her breathing slows to match the steady tidal draw of Arthur’s snoring. Her fist falls. He’ll be long gone by then, this Karsten.

In the kitchen, she slowly drags back the bolt.

SHE LETS JIM sleep in until he’s almost late for school, then hurries him out of bed and through his breakfast, watches him run down the lane. When she goes back into the kitchen Arthur is up, drawing on his boots between slurps of tea. She holds her breath while he stamps across the yard to the privy, but there’s no cry, no shout, though when he unchains the dogs on his way back and they hare around like they’ve caught a scent, he yells after them, “Silly buggers.” She hurries out to sweep the yard, setting them sneezing, and then busies herself strewing fresh straw in the barn, gathering eggs and broken shells from the coop, until she sees Arthur stalking off uphill to inspect the flock, with the dogs in attendance.

Only after she’s satisfied that she’s covered any traces, leaning breathless on the broom, does she search herself for remorse. What if the German hurts someone, kills someone? Wouldn’t she be partly to blame? Yet somehow she can’t believe it. He seemed so… polite, so contrite. Besides, couldn’t he have hurt her, killed her, if he had a mind to? She’s put no one else at any more risk than herself. And if he wouldn’t attack her, whom would he attack? Frankly, she’d be more worried about him if he ran into anyone else; she recalls the glinting collection of pitchforks and scythes propped against the chapel wall after the service on Sunday. No, she tells herself, she has too many regrets already. She refuses to take on another. Besides, the whole country’s against him; why should she make one more. She hopes he leads the guards a merry dance.