The Welsh Girl (5 page)

And the sappers listen to all this speculation looking like the cat who ate the canary. Jack is hoping for Yanks and their ready cash.

American flyers, waiting to move on to their bases in East Anglia, do occasionally drop in for a drink. But they're always faintly disappointing. Each time they're spotted sauntering around Caernarvon, getting their photos taken under the Eagle Tower, rumours start that it's James Stewart or Tyrone Power, one of those gallant film stars. But it never is. For the

most part the Yanks are gangly, freckle-faced farm boys, good for gum but insufferably polite (in the opinion of the local lads), with their suck-up 'sirs' and 'ma'ams', and ineffably ignorant, calling the locals 'limeys' and thinking Welsh just a particularly impenetrable dialect of English. Once, though, one of them, a navigator from 'Virginny', pressed a clumsily wrapped parcel of brown paper and string on Esther, and when she opened it she saw it was a torn parachute. There was enough silk for a petticoat and two slips. He'd been drinking shyly in a corner

for hours, summoning up his courage. She was worried he'd get into trouble, tried to give the bundle back, but he spread his hands, backed away. "Ma'am," he told her, and he said it with such drunken earnestness, she pulled the parcel back, held it to her chest. He seemed to be hunting for the words. "You..." he began. "Why, you're what we're fighting for!" She's dreamed of him since, getting shot down, bailing out, hanging in the night sky, sliding silently to earth under a canopy of petticoats.

But soon now, she thinks, setting her stack of glasses down just before it topples, they might all leave--the soldiers, the evacuees, the BBC--and suddenly she can hardly bear the thought of it. Of being left behind.

She wonders what it is Colin wants to tell her so much. For a second she lets herself dream...of a ring, of him on bended knee, asking her to marry him, carrying her off to his home in the East End, to wait for him inhere in the bosom of his family...his sister who'll be her best friend...his mother who'll be like a mother to her...waiting for the end of the war as if for some decent period of courtship.

It's not so far fetched, she tells herself. Hasn't she already had one proposal this spring, albeit from moony Rhys, one wet Sunday after chapel? She'd been mute, not knowing where to begin. She and Rhys had known each other their whole lives, grown up next door. His mother, now the village postmistress, had formerly been Esther's teacher. But marry! We've never even kissed, she wanted to cry. Oh, she'd allowed Rhys to take her to the pictures, even let him spend the modest wagelier father paid him on her tickets, but they never once sat in the back row together. Rhys had pressed on, pointing out how good he was with the flock, how this would keep the farm in the family. She'd had a sudden recollection of him reading in chapel, intoning the passage about the Good Shepherd as if he were interviewing for a job,

and asked pertly, "Who are you proposing to, me or the sheep?"

The next month, the day after his birthday, he'd caught the bus to Caernarvon and signed up. She might have felt bad if he hadn't had the gall to ask if she'd wait for him.

She looks for Colin now, finds him leaning into one of his fellows, cocking his head as the other whispers something in his ear. Colin smirks beneath his moustache like Clark Gable, taps the side of his nose. She could have easily got him to tell her what the camp is for, she thinks proudly, but she hasn't.

He's even dared her to ask, tempted her with the big secret. But she wouldn't take advantage of their love like that.

Besides, everyone knows it would be unpatriotic to' ask the sappers what they're building: disloyal to Britain (they all know the slogans--loose lips, etc.), but also, more obscurely, disloyal to Wales. It wouldn't do to give the English an excuse to call the Welsh unpatriotic. But whatever the purpose of the new camp, with its long, low barracks and staunch wire fences, there's been a swelling, puffed-up sense in the village over the last month of being part of something (although it's strange, she thinks, that here's the invasion itself, and the camp not occupied). "We used to burn their bases," Arthur has lamented. "Now we're pleased as punch just to have the buggers about, banging in a few nails."

And it occurs to her suddenly:
Colin and I will have to elope!
A word she's only ever heard at the pictures. And terrible as it is, it sounds so glamorous.
Elope
, she mouths, tasting the odd English word on her tongue. For a second she imagines she and Colin
loping
into the sunset, almost giggles. She's not even sure if there's an equivalent in Welsh, if the Welsh ever elope.

Colin, propped against one of the stained wood beams, is still chatting with'his mates. The dark cropped hair at the nape of his neck shows almost velvety below his cap. He laughs at

something and throws a glance over his shoulder to see if she's heard, and they grin at each other. Heads turn towards her, and she looks away quickly. She is wearing one of her parachute-silk slips tonight beneath her long skirt; she likes the feel of it against her legs, the way it slides when she stretches for a glass, while her soldier is watching.

The moment is interrupted by Harry Hitch. "Girlie?" he croons. "Mother round, eh? There's a good girl." He's trying to wind her up, and she ignores him as she pours. Harry's with the BBC. He's a star, if you can believe it, a comic with the Light Programme. "Auntie," as she's learned to call the corporation from Harry and the others, has a transmitter tower on the hillside above the quarry; the radio technicians discovered the Arms when they were building it, and they've been coming up of an evening with their 'chums' ever since, six or seven of them squeezed into a muddy Austin Princess.

Harry watches her set a Scotch before him and then a pint, what he calls a 'little and large', the glasses sitting side by side like a double act. "Cheers, big ears," he tells her dutifully, his catchphrase. "Nice atmosphere tonight, eh? Lovely ambulance."

It's a joke of some kind, Esther knows; when no one laughs, Harry chuckles anyway. "I kill meself." He's already half gone, she sees, must have had a skinful before he arrived. Esther has listened to Harry on the radio, laughed at his skits, but in the flesh he's a disappointment, a miserable, moody drunk, skinny and pinched looking, not the broad, avuncular bloke

she imagined from his voice.

"Ta," he tells her, raising his glass. "See your lot are celebrating tonight too."

"My lot?" she asks absently, distracted by a smirk from Colin.

"The Welsh," he slurs. "The Taffs, the Taffies, the boyos!" He gets louder with each word, not shouting just projecting,

and as soon as he has an audience he's off, as if on cue "'Ere, you know the English have trouble with your spelling.

All them
l
's and
y
's. But did you hear the one about Taffy who

joined the RAF? Meant to join the NAAFI, but his spelling let him down." Esther barely smiles, but there's a smattering of laughter at the bar. Harry half turns on his stool, rocking slightly, to take in the soldiers, their shining faces. "You like that one, eh? On his first day the quartermaster hands him his parachute and Taff wants to know what happens if it don't open, and the quartermaster, he tells him, 'That's what's called jumping to a conclusion'."

More laughter, not much, but enough, Esther sees with a sinking feeling, for a few more heads to turn. She catches the eye of Mary Munro, the actress. "Here we go," Mary mouths, rolling her eyes. Mary's thing is accents; she can do dozens of them. Once she did Esther's, just for a laugh, and listening at home, the girl had blushed to the tips of her ears, more flattered than embarrassed.

"Oh, but they're brave, the Taffs," Harry goes on. "Oh, yes. Did you hear about that Welsh kamikaze, though? Got the VC for twenty successful missions. But he's worried, you know.

His luck can't hold. Sure he'll cop it one day, so he goes to the chaplain and tells him what he wants on his headstone." He slips into the nasal North Walian twang.

"'Here lies an honest man and a Welshman.' And the chaplain says he doesn't know what it's like in Wales, but in England it's one bloke to an 'ole."

The men are all laughing now, stopping their conversations to listen. The snooker players straighten up from the table, lean on their cues like shepherds on crooks.

"Come on, 'Arry," Mary calls, "it's supposed to be our night off." But she's booed down by the soldiers and Harry rolls on unfazed.

"Reminds me of the Tomb of the Welsh Unknown Soldier.

Didn't know there was a Welsh unknown soldier, did ya?" He winks at Esther. "Nice inscription on that one an' all: Here lies Taff So-and-So, well known as a drunk, unknown as a soldier."

"Takes one to know one," someone heckles from the public bar, but the delivery is halting, the accent broad and blunt. It's water off a duck's back to Harry.

"That reminds me," he cries happily, and gestures for Esther to refill his Scotch.

"Haven't you had enough?" She's aware of the silence behind her, the listening locals.

"As the sheep said to the Welshman?" "Very funny," she tells him.

"Oh, you Welsh girls," he says, wagging his finger. "You know what they say about Welsh girls, dontcha, girlie?"

"No," she says, suddenly abashed.

"Give over, Harry." It's Mary again, her voice lower this time, warning.

"'S only a bit of fun. And she wants to know, don't she? You want to know?"

Esther is silent.

"Well, what they say is, you can't kiss a Welsh girl unexpectedly." He pauses for a second to sip his pint. When he looks up his lips are wet. "Only sooner than she thought!" There's a stillness in the bar. Harry shoots his cuffs, studies his watch theatrically. "I can wait."

He looks up and Esther throws his Scotch in his face.

There's a second of shock, and then Harry licks his lips with his big pink tongue, crosses his eyes, and the laughter goes off like a gun. A cheer rises from the public bar, and she's suddenly conscious of Jack standing in the passage behind her.

"Steady on," Colin is shouting over the din. He's shouldered his way to the bar. "You all right?" he asks, and Esther nods.

"No hard feelings," Harry is telling her. "Just a bit of wordplay. Don't mean nothing." He holds out his hand for a shake, but when she reaches for it, he raises his empty glass and tells her, "Cheers, big ears! I'd love one."

"Come on, mate," Colin says. "Leave it out now." He lays a broad palm on the dented brass bar rail in front of Esther.

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 moustache 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 favourite 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 honour. Know what I said to him?"

"Bloody hell!"

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

He's redfaced and suddenly exhausted, and Mary and Tony take their chance to frogmarch 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.