Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

Esther’s tired mind can barely make sense of the parallels. Has she deceived, or been deceived? Is she the lamb, the ewe, the shepherd? Perhaps all three. All she knows is that having lied about who the father is, the baby feels finally, firmly hers now, hers alone.

Thoughts of the flock make her think again of cynefin. That knowledge, the sense of place, passed from mothers to daughters, without which their very lives on the farm would be impossible. It’s what keeps the sheep on the land, and the sheep, she thinks, are what keep the people here, so perhaps they all have it. There are those who’d call her a traitor for carrying an Englishman’s child, a betrayer of her father, of Mrs. R, of Rhys. But it comes to her now that cynefin is the essential nationalism, not her father’s windy brand, but this secret bond between mothers and daughters, described by a word the English have no equivalent for.

She leans the bike against the wall to open the gate, pushes it through.

A boy? she wonders. When she recalls Jim’s question, she realizes it had caught her off-guard because she’d never really considered the possibility of the baby’s being anything other than a girl. Even now it seems simply outlandish to imagine a boy inside her, a boy coming from her body. All her old fears of having the baby, of dying in labor, come rushing back when she thinks of it’s being a boy. Clasping her hands to her stomach, she’s somehow sure it won’t be, can’t be. And if it is a girl, she knows the name already. Eunice. After her mother.

She wheels the bike into the barn, lingers there a moment, thinking of the German. He’d asked her once about patriotism. Fatherland-love. Why fatherland and not motherland? she’d wondered. But now she thinks: Why should the love of fathers or mothers be equated with love of country? Couldn’t you love your country by loving your children? Weren’t they your nation, at the last? Your childland, then. Your child-country. It sounds about as awkward in Welsh, but then it occurs to her to wonder if there’s a better word in German.

She’ll look for him again tomorrow, or the next day, and ask. He’ll know what she means, she’s sure. It reminds her of the renewed talk of prisoners working on local farms, like the Italians elsewhere. Harry’s just done a skit on it: “You’ve heard of ‘Lend a hand on the land.’ Now they’re lending Huns!” She must remember to tell Arthur. They’ll need some extra help about the place when she’s laid up.

She props the bike next to the spindly question mark of Arthur’s crook. The Lord is my shepherd. How many times has she heard that text in chapel? So often her mother used to joke that there were “those hereabouts who’d like to think shepherding is next to godliness.” The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The flock is sleeping, ghostly forms dotting the dark grass, and she finds herself creeping across the yard.

WHEN SHE GETS IN, she sees it’s still not quite eleven, and she twiddles with the radio knobs. She’s forgotten all about Harry’s tip to listen tonight, but she might just catch the end of the show. The wind must be buffeting the transmitter, because the reception flutters, but through the whoops and whistles of static she can just make him out, signing off, and she sits back disappointed, wondering what she missed. And then, as she arches her back against the settle, she hears it, faintly at first, the opening bars of “Land of My Fathers.” Harry must have switched it for “There’ll Always Be an England.” It’s a nod of respect, she supposes, though typically for Harry, not without it’s sly mockery. But for once she feels herself inside the joke, finds herself smiling wryly, even as she sits up, stiff-backed, as if at attention, until the last notes fade out in the wind.

ROTHERAM WILL SEE HESS only once more. In mid-May of ’45, the war in Europe over at last, Hess asks for him again. It’s the eleventh hour. He’s about to leave the Welsh safe house for London and a plane back to Germany. The powers that be — Colonel Hawkins, Rotheram suspects — grant the request in the hope of some last revelation. The orders catch up with Rotheram almost too late — he’s been on the road between one camp and the next — and though he drives through the night, he arrives to find the house packed up, furniture shrouded in dust sheets, Hess sunning himself, perched on a tea chest in the drive like so much luggage. They nod to each other. Hurrying inside, stepping between two empty metal filing cabinets that flank the door like suits of armor, Rotheram reports to Major Redgrave, who tells him, studying his watch, that the only way to talk to Hess now is if he travels with him to London. “Baker’s around here someplace. He’ll drive you.”

“You and Lieutenant Mills won’t be traveling with us?”

“ Captain Mills has gone ahead to brief the prosecutors, sit in on the interrogations. Hess isn’t half as exciting as Göring now, you know.” Rotheram searches himself for a flicker of jealousy. “And as for me,” the major adds, “if he wanted to talk to me, he’d have done it by now, I think. No, he’s asked for you. Seems you made an impression last time through. Honestly, I doubt he’s much to offer, but if you fancy a trip to town, I can authorize you to go up.”

Rotheram hesitates — he has reports to file, men to interview — and Redgrave tells him impatiently, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Most men would jump at the chance of forty-eight in town, especially this weekend.”

It takes Rotheram a slow moment. It’s the weekend after V-E Day; he’s seen the pictures of celebrating crowds in the paper. Though he can’t quite share the abandon of those open, shining faces, he’s stared at them, fascinated. He’s not been back to London for more than six months, has tried to persuade himself that he doesn’t miss it, but now the thought of being there grips him.

“That’s settled, then,” Redgrave tells him. “Hand him over at London Cage by this evening and they’ll debrief you there.”

Hawkins, Rotheram thinks. And for all the anger he’s felt towards his former CO, he just nods. It feels fated somehow to see him again.

Rotheram finds Baker in the billiards room, peeling safety tape off the windows, hauling it down in long ribbons, which he leaves dangling like so much bunting, when Rotheram asks if he’s ready to go.

HESS IS SILENT for the first few miles, cradling his sides. “Stomach cramps,” he explains. But when they reach the main road, he leans over to Rotheram.

“I thought of you,” he says. “When I saw those new films. You know the ones I mean?”

Rotheram nods. Hess is referring to the newsreels of the liberation of Belsen. Rotheram, as part of the denazification effort, has spent the last fortnight overseeing their screening at several POW camps. Eventually, all the prisoners will be made to watch them.

“I wanted to ask you,” Hess said softly, “if they were true.”

Rotheram is silent at first, almost chagrined that Hess’s question is no different from that of the humblest German private.

“You think they’re propaganda,” he says.

“I hope so.” Hess smiles ruefully. “At least ours was beautiful.”

“Why ask me?” Rotheram wonders, but Hess just looks at him, as if the answer is obvious, and after a beat Rotheram says simply, “Yes.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me?”

“Don’t you know? ” Rotheram asks a little roughly. “You, of all people?”

Hess draws back. “I know nothing about all that,” he says hurriedly. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“Surely you don’t remember what you had to do with or not.”