Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

Harry looks at Colin’s hand for a long moment and then says flatly: “Did you hear this one, mate? Do you know it? About the Welsh girl? Her boyfriend gave her a watch case? Tell me if you’ve heard it before, won’t you?”

Colin sighs. “I haven’t. And I don’t care to.”

“Really? You might learn something. She was right chuffed with that present, she was. I asked her why. A watch case? Know what she told me? ‘He’s promised me the works tonight.’”

Colin shakes his head, puts down his pint. Esther sees his mustache is flecked with foam.

“Colin,” she says softly.

“The works, sunshine. D’you get it? Penny dropped, ’as it? Tickety-tock. I can wait. All night, I promise you.”

“You’re asking for it, you are.”

“All we’re doing is telling a few jokes. Asking for it? I don’t think I know that one. Is there a punch line to it? Is there?”

Jack is there (limp or no, he’s quick down the length of a bar), his huge arms reaching over to clamp round Colin before he can swing, but somehow Harry still ends up on the threadbare carpet. He leans back on the stool, trying to anticipate the blow, and he’s gone, spilling backwards. It’s a pratfall, and after a second the bar dissolves in laughter again. Jack squeezes Colin once, hard enough to drive the breath out of him. Esther hears him say “Not here, lad, nargois, ” and then he releases him. Colin rolls his shoulders and takes a gulp of air. He gives Esther a questioning glance, and when she shrugs, joins in the general laughter.

Harry is helped up by Mary and Tony, one of the sound engineers. “Up you come,” Mary tells him. “And they say you can’t do slapstick. You’re wasted on radio, you are.”

“Always told you Scotch was my favorite topple,” Harry mutters.

Mary leans across to Esther and says softly, “Sorry, darling. They don’t let him do that blue stuff on air, and it just sort of builds up in him like spit.” For the rest of the bar, she adds more loudly, “Never mind, luv. All you need to know about Englishmen, Welshmen, or Germans, for that matter, is they’re all men. And you know what they say about men: one thing on their minds… and one hand on their things.” There’s a round of whistles from the crowd. She grins at Esther. “Always leave ’em laughing.” Tony turns Harry towards the exit, but at the door he wheels round and lunges over, almost taking Tony and Mary down in a drunken bow.

“Ladies and gentlement, I thank you.” There’s a smattering of sarcastic applause, and when it dies out only Colin is clapping, slowly.

“Piss off,” he calls. Esther wishes he’d drop it now. In his own clumsy way, he’s trying to be chivalrous, she knows, but there’s an edge of bullying to it.

Harry tries to shake himself loose, but Mary and Tony cling on. “I did see a bloke in here once,” he says, “with a terrible black eye.”

“Looking in the mirror, was you?” Colin shouts.

“Told me he’d been fighting for his girlfriend’s honor. Know what I said to him?”

“Bloody hell!”

“I said,” Harry bawls over him, “it looked like she wanted to keep it.”

He’s red-faced and suddenly exhausted, and Mary and Tony take their chance to frog-march him out. Over Mary’s shoulder he gives the room a limp V-for-victory sign, and over Tony’s arm he flashes a quick two fingers at Colin. And then he’s gone, dragged out into the darkness.

“Sorry about that,” Colin says, and Esther tells him quickly it’s fine. She needs the job. When Jack hired her, he told her not to take any nonsense: “In this business, the customer isn’t so often right, as tight.” But she doesn’t need them fighting over her. Her English is supposed to be good enough to talk her way out of situations.

“You shouldn’t have to put up with it,” Colin goes on, but she shrugs. Jack’s still keeping an eye out. It’s a small village. She doesn’t want talk.

“Anyhow,” she says, “thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it, miss,” he tells her, getting it finally, but still a little peeved.

She wipes down the bar, drops Harry’s dirty glasses in the sink. She finds herself feeling a little sorry for the old soak. Mary has told her he’s lost his wife. “Songbird, she was. Big, warm voice. They met on the circuit, but you could see she was always going to be a star. Got her first top billing for a tour of the Continent in ’39, but then the war come and she never made it back. You wouldn’t think to look at him, but it was true love.” It makes Esther wonder. She’s heard Harry telling jokes about his wife on the show: the missus; ’er indoors; the trouble-and-strife. “Show biz!” Mary told her with a grim, exaggerated brightness. “The show must go on and all that.”

The clock strikes ten-thirty. “ Amser, boneddigion. Amser, diolch yn fawr, ” Jack cries, clanging the bell, and Esther chimes in, “Time, gents. Last orders, please.”

SHE RINSES GLASSES while Jack locks up, pouring the dregs away, twisting each glass once around the bristly scrub brush. They come out of the water with a little belch and she sets them on the rack. Normally she’d stay to dry and polish them, but Jack says it’s enough. “Only gonna get dirty again tomorrow.” He reaches over her to switch off the radio, and she realizes with a little flush that she’s been swaying to the muted band music.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I’ll see to these.” But he takes the towel from her and nods at the door. She wonders if he knows.

In the porch, she pauses to check her reflection in the leaded panes, pats the curls that have loosened in the damp air of the pub, reties her scarf around her neck. Colin likes to tease her about the national dress, the scarlet shawl and tall black hat that Welsh women wear on all the postcards. “Where’s your topper?” he asks. “Why don’t you put on that nice red cloak, give us a twirl?” She likes the attention, but she wouldn’t be caught dead in such an outfit — the women on the cards look like severe dolls to her, part Red Riding Hood, part Puritan. As a girl she’d asked her father with shy earnestness what the men’s national dress was, and he’d snapped there wasn’t one. The asymmetry still bothers her obscurely.

She catches herself frowning in the glass, forces a smile, and immediately relaxes it. They called her “big mouth” at school, mostly for speaking up, she knows, but she’s always been self-conscious about her strong jaw and too wide grin. She once begged Mary to show her how to use makeup, but the actress shook her head gently. “Not with the bloom on you, luv.” It had made Esther blush more than any compliment from Colin or Rhys, and she clings to it now for confidence as she plucks the color into her cheeks before leaving the porch.

Outside, the threatened storm has blown out over the Irish Sea, and the night is clear, blue-black and speckled with stars above the denser dark of the mountains.

Colin is waiting for her round the corner.

“Eh up!” he calls softly, appearing from the shadows of the hedge and pulling her to him.

He’d been waiting for her here one night last month, when they’d kissed for the first time. He’d lit a cigarette when she’d appeared, his face blooming in the darkness. She started towards him, towards the redness of his cigarette. “Give us one, then,” she asked, and he offered the pack, pulled back when she reached for it, held it out again, then lifted it almost beyond reach so that she had to jump a little to snatch it from his hand. They’d smoked together in silence then, watching each other’s pursed lips flushing and fading as they breathed in and out. She’d been glad of the grown-up feel of the cigarette’s light, fragile cylinder between her fingers, and then all too quickly he’d finished his, flicking the glowing stub over his shoulder, and she’d drawn on hers hurriedly, sucking herself into a coughing fit until he had to pat her back. She could still feel the imprint of his hand, the ringing shudder of his slaps. There’d been an awkward moment when he could have offered her another but didn’t, and then they’d been kissing. He tasted exactly like the cigarette, except for his mustache, which smelled damp, muddy even. But she’d liked it. They’ve met here every night since. Tonight she’s promised to go somewhere more private with him.