Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

In fact, though, it was Karsten’s despair that had persuaded him. He’d seen the newsreels recently, like the rest. “To be fighting for that,” he shuddered. “And I was ashamed of surrendering. ” Rotheram had been moved to see him imprisoned again by shame. He’d hoped that the work on the open hillsides might be good for him. His own transfer came through shortly thereafter — he’d finally taken a posting to Nuremberg when offered by someone other than Hawkins — but he made a point of requesting at least one report from the new commandant, and heard that Karsten had been a great help on a local farm in the bitter winter of ’46, digging sheep out of the snow.

He’d not given him much thought beyond that, but in late ’47 he’d been back in Wales a final time. Rotheram hadn’t lasted long in Nuremberg: he couldn’t stand the stink of damp, charred wood which seemed to cling to everything still. But he had been lucky enough to make some contacts among the French delegation and get seconded to a unit in Paris assigned to sift through captured documents in order to build more war crimes cases. It was grim work, but at least the city was whole, and he stuck with it for almost a year until he found a pair of names he knew. All this time he thought he’d been hunting for evidence against the Nazis, and really he’d been looking for his grandparents. He’d submitted his last transfer request that day, and since Paris was an attractive posting, he’d been replaced and on the ferry back to Britain within a week. His own demobilization wouldn’t be far off, he knew — he’d already outlasted Hawkins, who’d retired to the south coast for the bird watching — but he had no idea what to do with himself after the army. In the meantime, he toured the remaining work camps and wrote reports that he was convinced no one but historians would read. There were no interrogations, of course, no investigations, but from time to time he was called in to assess the cases of men who had petitioned to stay in Britain permanently. Several he interviewed had met women, and wanted to marry.

One such case brought him back to Snowdonia that autumn. The Welsh village’s name, that jumble of consonants, hadn’t rung any bells, but he recalled the pub as he drove past it, and recognized the constable in whose “station”—the parlor of his little house — he conducted the interview.

The constable offered him tea, and they reminisced about the escape. “Always wished I’d caught the blighter myself,” the policeman said. “You know, done my bit, so to speak. Too young for the first war, too old for the last one. Story of my life.”

Rotheram thought doing one’s bit was overrated, but he nodded, asked about the couple. “Girl know what she’s doing?”

“Reckon so,” the constable said mournfully. “Won’t be talked out of it at any rate.”

“And the fellow—?” But they were interrupted by a bustling in the hallway, and the constable jumped to his feet with a whispered, “You tell me.”

Rotheram had half expected to recognize the prisoner when he met the applicants, but the man was a stranger to him: a brawny, thick-necked Thuringian, marrying a roly-poly called Blodwyn. Rotheram had no illusions about the role of love in these unions — they owed more to desperation and loneliness — but he was inclined to approve them anyway — he couldn’t quite say “bless” them — provided they seemed founded in equal need. Why not after all? Who was he to judge? If he couldn’t be sure who was lying, how was he to know who was in love?

The Thuringian and his Blod weren’t much different from the rest he’d vetted. He saw them separately and then together, and they sat on the polished wooden bench in the policeman’s hall and clutched each other’s fat little hands. “Oh, thank you, sir,” they’d chorused when he’d signed the paperwork. He asked the Thuringian if he didn’t miss home, and the other frowned and told him, “Yes, sir. Only it’s not there anymore, is it?” And Rotheram nodded. “If I’m going to start all over, might as well begin here as there,” the big man added, warming to his theme. “You love him?” Rotheram had asked the girl, and she’d blushed deeply, which he took for a yes. Afterwards he heard the pair of them chattering away in a language he didn’t understand — Welsh, it dawned on him at last.

Only when he handed over the paperwork did he realize that the constable and the girl shared the same name.

“Your daughter?”

The other gave a slight nod. “When they started working, I wanted to keep an eye on them, stand guard, in a manner of speaking, and she used to bring me my lunches.” He shook his head. “Looks like we caught a Jerry after all.”

Rotheram offered a cigarette, and they smoked in silence for a while.

“He’s all right.”

“Better bloody be, if he knows what’s good for him.”

Rotheram left him then. He’d parked outside the pub, and he walked that way now with a thought of getting a drink, but when he reached the door, he found it was closed. Not yet opening time. He asked around instead for the farm he’d heard Karsten had been assigned to, the same one he’d been captured on. Cilgwyn. The name had stayed with him. It meant “white hill,” apparently, though to Rotheram’s eye it seemed as green as the rest. Still, it had struck him as an appropriate spot for surrender.

There’d been a girl there too, Rotheram thought, but when he knocked on the door, an old woman answered and told him the German was “gone home.” Not surprising, really, he told himself. Most of the prisoners had been repatriated by then, but still, it disappointed him somehow.

There was a small child staring at him from the barn when he turned around, and he smiled and gave her a little wave. She took an uncertain step forward and he called, “Hello there!” which only made her run back into the shadows. He was deciding whether he should follow when a woman — it was immediately apparent she was the mother — emerged from the barn, one hand raised against the light, to squint at him.

Rotheram began to apologize for startling the child, but she told him it wasn’t his fault.

“She thought you were someone else at first.”

The woman was wearing an embroidered blouse, tucked into men’s trousers, cinched at the waist with a broad belt, a combination that seemed to accentuate her figure.

“Can I help you?”

“You had a German prisoner here,” he said. “I wonder if you have an address for him?”

“You knew him?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She searched his face, took in the uniform. “Do you have an address?”

“Why do you want it?”

“I’m going over there,” Rotheram told her, and as he said it, he thought, Why yes. That’s what he must do next. “To help with the reconstruction. I thought I might have a job for him. Heard he was a good worker.”

“Oh, he is!” And she recited the address there and then, her accent flawless. “His mother’s place. I’m not sure it’ll do you any good, though,” she said sadly. “He’s not replied to anything we’ve sent.”

It was the East, he knew. Soviet control.

“I’ll make some inquiries.”

She nodded.

“Well…” He shifted his weight.

“If you do contact him…”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell him, Esther said… that the flock’s well.”

“The flock?”

“Only, he put his heart into saving them. After that winter we had. We lost a lot, too many, really, to keep going. But he told us to beg and borrow stock from other farms — pastured them in return for the lambs — and then he stayed with them on the mountain. They’d have strayed, new sheep, if someone didn’t go up”—she jerked a finger over her shoulder to the jagged hilltop—“and shepherd them. And he did that, almost eighteen months, in all weathers, until the new ones knew their place.” Her voice wavered slightly, and Rotheram didn’t know what to say.