Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

“But why’s it such a big secret?”

“Because he’s a Jew, you little idiot. Harry’s Jewish.”

THEY WAIT OUTSIDE the pub, opposite the hospital, for another cab, watching the ambulances pull up. Uniformed men are carried in, and two come out, one on crutches, one with a huge white bandage wrapped around his jaw, as if for a toothache. Mary treats her to cream tea at Lyons, and sitting there amid the tinkling din of china and silver, Esther realizes she’s going to have the baby. And that she’ll have to tell Arthur. There’s not much chance of concealing it from him any longer, a man whose business is pregnancy.

In the train on the way back, they don’t talk much. Once Esther asks, “But about Harry. How can he make jokes all the time? Jokes about the war?” And Mary shrugs. “Hardly know myself sometimes. He says it’s how he knows he’s still breathing. Life has to go on, I suppose, luv.” Esther leans against the window frame and watches the country flicker past in the long evening like a film strip. When they enter the string of tunnels along the northern shore, it comes to her why so many of the films she’s seen show trains racing through tunnels at romantic moments, and she flushes — not at the crudity of the imagery, but at her own denseness for not getting it. She sinks back in her seat and braces herself for each thundering entry, the rushing, pounding darkness of the tunnels. In between, she watches the coast slide past, the sun setting on the shining sand flats, a lone child toddling across the wetness with a bucket and spade in hand.

As dusk falls and she begins to recognize the landscape around them, she stands and begins to undress.

“You can have those,” Mary says. “Really, luv. They look so much better on you.”

But Esther shakes her head. “When would I wear them?” She smoothes and folds them perfectly and lays them back in the case.

The train begins to brake, a feeling like falling in the pit of her chest, and instinctively she clutches herself, her hands spanning her stomach, cradling it, she thinks.

She looks up to see the flags fluttering from Caernarvon Castle, black against the sunset. “They say it’s well preserved,” Mary says absently. “Is that so? Impregnable? Like our modern shore defenses, thank goodness.”

Esther nods, doesn’t bother to correct her. She herself had thought the castle, jutting into the straits, was an ancient version of the squat concrete pillboxes along the coast, until her father disabused her of the notion. “That ain’t why they built it. It’s for the English garrison, stationed there to put down any Welsh rebellion. Defense against invasion, indeed! We’d already been invaded. That was the first outpost of their empire.” But so what if Wales was the first colony, Esther thinks now. It’s still home, still ours.

Harry is waiting at the station, and he offers Esther a ride, and she accepts, eager to get home, to get it over with. They don’t say much on the drive — Mary next to Esther in the back, Harry up front like a chauffeur — but the silence is companionable. Esther studies the back of Harry’s head, his face in the mirror, but it looks no different.

“Did we miss anything?” Mary asks, and Harry shakes his head, then stops himself. “Actually, yeah,” he says. “I ran into a soldier while I was waiting for you at the station bar. Captain who came into the Arms, Esther, one night when you weren’t on, a week or so back. You remember, Mary. This was when the other guards were all off hunting Jerry, and this one soldier comes in and gets into it with the Welshies?”

“Oh, him,” Mary says. “Took offense at their calling him English or something, and then made some joke about how he might as well be German.”

“That’s the one. Took himself off in a huff. Anyhow, I was sitting at the bar and this captain comes in and we both sort of looked at each other in the way you do when you recognize a fellow but can’t quite place him. Anyhow, we got to talking and it turns out he was sent up here to investigate the escape, see.”

Esther leans forward in the back seat.

“Well, seems he was interrogating the prisoner after they brought him in, asking him where he hid and that, when the top Jerries in the camp made a stink and demanded to see their man. Something about making sure he hadn’t been ill-treated. Only — and here’s the part — after they were done with him, his own people, mind, that’s when he had his leg broken.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was them that did it! His own men, not the guards. Those arseholes were just having us on, boasting and that.”

“His own fellows. But why?”

“Exactly,” Harry cried. “That’s what I asked this captain, and what he asked the Jerry himself.”

“And what did he say?”

“Just that they wanted to know what he’d been up to, same as the interrogator, and he wouldn’t tell them.”

“Why not?” Esther asks.

“Well, now,” Harry says, warming to it. “Listen to this. He told the captain he valued his privacy! How about that? Valued his bleeding privacy! Actually, the captain reckoned the bloke only escaped for a bit of solitude in the first place — seems it’s not unusual. I asked him if he got anything more out of the fellow, but all he said was ‘What was I going to do, break his other leg?’ Fellow wouldn’t even say which ones had done it to him, apparently, and they all claim he slipped.”

Mary shakes her head, and Esther sinks back into the upholstery.

“Funny thing is,” Harry chatters on, “I used to fancy myself an interrogator.”

“Pull the other one.”

“No, really. I thought about it. Back in ’39. I was too old to fight, but I speak a little Deutsch and I wanted to do my bit. Besides, what’s a comic do but ask a lot of questions. ‘What do you call a…? What’s the difference between a…?’”

“All right.” Mary laughs. “I’ll bite. What happened? You volunteer?”

“Never went through with it. It come to me, see, that comics always answer their own questions. That’s what makes it a joke, after all, the way we let the audience off the hook. For just a second they think it’s serious, a test, and they don’t know the answer. And then we let ’em off, and they laugh out of relief as much as anything.” He shakes his head dolefully. “I’d have had my prisoners in stitches before I learned anything.”

Mary sighs. “Talk about your Secret of Comedy.”

“Which reminds me.” Harry brightens. “Get this. The captain also spilled the beans about that major, how he keeps his swagger stick in place.”

“How’s that, then?”

“Turns out he has his batman sew a little loop under there, like a sling, see. Batman says he’s got a wooden hand and all, but he prefers not to wear it, apparently.”

“What do you know,” Mary says dreamily.

Harry shrugs. “Everyone’s got their little secret.” He gives a little wince. “Sorry girl.”

Mary squeezes Esther’s hand as the girl weeps silently. “You’ll be fine, luv. You’re a trooper!”

At the farmhouse, Harry leans out his window and tells Esther to listen to the show that night, and she nods absently, stands at the gate while they turn, and watches the car’s headlights glide downhill. A trouper, she realizes belatedly.

Liverpool, she thinks. A train, a car. A Jew. She can’t believe it’s been just one day, she feels so changed. The air is filled with the heavy scent of freshly cut grass. Arthur’s been busy. She leans over the stone wall that divides the farmyard from the fields, stretching up the mountains behind the cottage, and takes a deep breath of the familiar perfume. She can just make out in the darkness the humped grey backs of the flock speckling the near slope. A couple of the closest sheep, a ewe and a lamb, roused by her presence, clamber stiffly to their feet and move off a few yards before kneeling again.