Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

Beside her, Esther stares out at the ruins around her, the ruins Arthur is so eager to rebuild. She’s seen the newsreel footage of the Blitz, the burning buildings and the littered streets looking as rocky as the slopes around the quarry. But it has never been quite real to her. Now she begins to understand. A single gutted house still stands at the end of one flattened terrace like an exclamation mark, and she suddenly sees the streets as sentences in a vast book, sentences that have had their nouns and verbs scored through, rubbed out, until they no longer make any sense. All those buildings, she thinks, I’ll never see. The boarding houses she’ll never sleep in, the cinemas she’ll never sit in, the cafés she’ll never eat in. And not just here, but in London, in Paris. She has so much wanted to see the world, and now, before she’s got any farther than Liverpool, she’s beginning to see how much of it is already gone.

Mrs. R’s map, which she’s taken out to follow their route, lies across her lap, but when she goes to close it, she can’t seem to work out how to fold it flat however hard she tries.

“There, now.” Mary throws an arm around her. “There. It’ll be okay.”

She has the cab drop them at the Queen Anne Hospital, and she goes in and asks for Dr. Trotter. “Doc Rotter, we used to call him,” she whispers to Esther. “Just a joke! He started out looking after one of our leading men with the clap — only applause he never wanted, let me tell you! — and then moved up, or down, I suppose.” The doctor looks surprisingly old when he comes out — silvery at the temples — but when he gets closer, Esther sees he’s not as old as she thought, just haggard, his tall frame bent over. She can see the outline of his knuckles where his fists are thrust deep into the sagging pockets of his crumpled white coat. It’s as if they’re holding him up, those straining pockets, and she concentrates on them, unable to look him in the eye.

“Yes?” he says impatiently, and then he sees Mary and his pale face reddens in blotches. Without another word, he strips off his coat and throws it in a wicker hamper by the door, ushers them across the street into a dank pub.

It seems perfectly fitting to Esther that on this strangest of days someone should be ordering her a drink from a barmaid.

“Thank you,” she says shyly when he sets a Guinness in front of her.

He shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says. “It’s medicinal. And don’t even ask,” he tells Mary. “If I’d got your telegram sooner, I’d have sent back you were wasting your time. I’m not in that line anymore.”

“Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see me,” Mary says with a little pout, but he’s not having any of it.

“I’m not doing it, Mary. It’s no use.”

She stares at him, and he leans across the table.

“You’re thinking you can blackmail me, perhaps, but in the first place I don’t care, and in the second place no one else will either. You know what I have in there? A ward of blokes just brought in on a hospital ship. Pulled out of the North Atlantic. Torpedoed. Know how cold those waters are? Man’s lucky to live ten minutes. Know what kept them alive? All the oil burning on the surface. I’ve fellows in there with the hair scalded off their heads, and frostbitten toes. You think they give a toss what I’ve done in the past?”

He glares back at Mary across the table, and she takes a sip of her drink.

“Please,” Esther says, but softly, as if she’s talking to one of those poor torpedoed men.

“Not a chance, miss. I’m sorry for you, but…” He drinks, sets his glass down with a knock. “I lost four patients overnight. Four.” He’s studying her, but she can’t take her eyes off his hands, the long fingers curled around his pint. “They’re the ones I pity. Someone’s got to. Lord knows the enemy doesn’t. Those U-boat bastards never stop for survivors.”

“The enemy!” she starts, but then has no idea what she means to say. Something about his being as pitiless as the Germans, but then it comes to her that they’re not all without pity.

The doctor waits, frowns, then adds more softly, “If you want my advice, you just won’t, all right?” He turns to Mary. “And you won’t let her, if you’re her friend. Just look at her. She’s a slip, anemic for sure. Undernourished and overworked, I’d say.”

He finishes his beer in two more swallows and rises to his feet. Mary stands quickly and Esther sees her open her mouth, close it, then take his hand in hers. He flinches slightly, but she holds on.

“Look after yourself, all right, Doc?” she whispers, and stretches to give him a peck on the lips.

He seems to stand a little straighter after that, and as his features relax, Esther sees how handsome he is. But then he gives an impatient hitch of the shoulders and leaves the pub.

When she sits down, Mary points at Esther’s drink and tells her weakly, “Bottoms up, darling.”

“He’s a grumpy bastard, I know, but he’s a good doctor,” Mary says after a couple more sips. “If he says it isn’t safe, it isn’t safe.”

Esther stares at her. “Have you ever…?” she begins, and Mary says, “How do you think he got into the game?” She takes a swift drink. “He was married then. She’s dead now. Wouldn’t leave her. Couldn’t, he said. So I told him I couldn’t have it, or I’d scream blue murder and make a scandal. And so we… unmade it. And a couple of times since, I’ve brought other girls to him, for his sins. I’m sorry. I suppose the war’s changed him. For the better, mayhap.”

She frowns, and after a second Esther asks in a scared voice, “Did you ever have children, Mary?”

She shakes her head. “And I’m a bit long in the tooth for all that now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’ve enough to worry about, dear.” Mary pats her hand.

“But if his wife’s died—”

Mary cuts her off. “In the war, luv. In the bombing. I couldn’t very well… It’d have felt like taking advantage. Profiteering, almost.”

Esther studies her drink. She’s not sure. It seems neat to her — Mary, the doctor — a tying up of loose ends. She wants something to come out of this trip.

“Besides,” Mary says, “we’ve a lot of water under the bridge, I just told you.”

“But if you were in love…”

“Hearken to her about love,” Mary cries, but when she sees Esther’s face fall, she softens. “You need to save some of that hope for yourself, sweetheart. Not to mention, I think Harry would have something to say if I ran back to the doc.”

“He could find another partner,” Esther begins, and then she stops herself, conscious of Mary watching with that same patient stillness as when she’s waiting for a punch line to sink in.

“Don’t look so shocked,” she says, nodding. “You’re not the only one has secrets. He’s not so bad, really. When he’s not drinking or telling jokes, he’s actually quite the darling.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Why do you think he kept stum about this whole trip?”

“He knows?”

“He knows to keep stum.” She studies Esther’s face over the rim of her glass. “I’m sorry, luv, I had to tell him. It’s all right. Not everything’s a joke to him, you know.”

It feels like such an intrusion to Esther. The thing she’s most feared. She imagines Harry’s hearty voice announcing her, her name flying through the air, invisible in the night, slipping out through the radios of the village.

“Tell me something, then,” Esther says fiercely.

“What?”

“Harry’s secret. Where’s he from?”

“From?” Mary looks at her carefully and decides. “He’s from Golders Green, luv.”