The Welsh Girl (22 page)

anything about the kind of soldiers or sailors they might make from the way they dribble the ball, slide in for a tackle, but all she can think of is how young they look. The thudding of their boots on the hard earth as they chase the ball carries to her clearly.

Below her, Pinkie starts up in a hoarse stage whisper, like a commentator on the radio: "Fritz now, playing the ball forward to Fritz on the wing, he cuts inside, crosses to the big centre forward, Fritz, who sends a header into the arms of the keeper--"

"FRITZ!" the other boys chorus.

Esther shakes her head. She looks at the guard in his tower, but he's hanging over the railing watching the game, his back to the dark drum of the searchlight.

It's a warm night, pleasant in the shadow of the trees, and she finds a dry spot, dusts it of leaves, and sits, hugging her knees to her chin. One team has taken their shirts off, or knotted the arms of their overalls at their waists, their chests glowing pale in the dusk beneath tanned faces and necks.

She watches one fellow--fair-haired, so different from the

dark-haired local boys--barge another off the ball, then dribble it away. He's a strapping lad, but his flying hair makes him look delicate somehow.

After the roughness of the collision, he's surprisingly graceful with the ball at his feet. It looks to her as if he's dancing with a partner. She pictures each step-over and turn as if it were printed on a sheet from Arthur Murray. And then he shoots, destroying the illusion, and the ball flies wide of the goal, skidding off the hard earth and rolling up against the fence. He stands with his hands on his hips for a moment,

then trots towards it, pausing at a thin line of wire a few yards inside the fence and glancing up at the guard tower. "Yes, yes," someone calls impatiently, and the German steps over the wire, gathers the ball, and kicks it back into play. He stops

at a water bucket on the sideline on his way back, drinking from a tin cup, pouring the dregs over his head until his hair darkens. A breeze steals up the slope from the camp, ruffling Mott's coat as he dozes, and Esther strokes the dog as she watches the men run back and forth.

She doesn't know where the time goes--the ball runs up against the fence over and over--but suddenly it's nine, the men turning towards their barracks. She waits for the boys to leave first, so that at home Jim gets to ask where
she
's been. "Never mind me," she says, slamming a cold plate of food in front of him. "You've been at that camp." He begins to deny it, and she tells him, "Don't lie. You've been bothering those prisoners." And he tells her scornfully, "They
are
the enemy, you know."

The major, the constable announces to the pub, has complained about the boys' shenanigans, threatened to send his men after them. Esther feels a fleeting fear for Jim, and yet some part of her thinks he might deserve to be caught this time. By the end of the week, the constable has extended his own rounds to include the camp. "The major appreciates the benefits of greater cooperation between the military and civil authorities."

"Means it's beneath our dignity chasing kids," one of the guards mutters.

Parry just shrugs. He has no intention of driving the boys off himself. "They'll only be back in the village making mischief," Esther hears him confide to Jack. "No, I've got other fish to fry." He means the Germans. He reckons they'll think twice about escaping now they've seen him on his rounds.

"Escaping!" another guard scoffs. "This lot? Not likely." He waves his white hanky. "Don't have the balls, do they?"

"Ladies present," Parry coughs, and Esther lowers her eyes.

"Wouldn't have surrendered if they did." The guard sets his elbows on the bar. "You only have to look at them--one half thanking their lucky stars, the other too ashamed to look you in the face. Hardly know which to pity more."

Still, the constable's not to be put off. He makes a point of conducting his rounds promptly each night, proud of his punctuality, as if it shows backbone. "I might not know German, see, but I'm speaking their language. Look at their trains, man."

Arthur rolls his eyes. "He's just jealous. There the army is with five hundred prisoners, and what's he got? One little cell, not much bigger than a pantry, and all he's ever locked up in there is raters."

"It's me duty, I reckon," Parry tells them pompously. "Protecting the local citizenry." There's been talk of the Germans working on local farms, like prisoners in the last war, he confides. "And if that's so, I want 'em to know I'll be keeping my eye on them."

Esther can hardly imagine the idle men she saw the other night working.

"Work!" Harry says grimly. "Shooting's too good for them." And there's an odd silence while they wait for a punchline. (Esther doesn't hear it until the next radio show: "Saw Heinz herding cows, and I says to him, 'Were you a farmer back home, then?' and he goes, '
Nein
, but it's easy for a German soldier to herd cattle. I'm just following udders!'")

On her next night off Esther tells Arthur she's going to the pictures, cycles to the bottom of the lane, then doubles back on foot, up the slope. She tells herself it's to catch Jim, to make sure he doesn't get into any more trouble, but she crouches behind a tree when she hears the metallic grind and rattle of the constable's bike and sees Parry ride into view.

Seven o'clock, she thinks; he'll be off home soon for the tea

Blodwyn's making him. She watches him cycle by slowly, his eyes on the camp. A couple of the Germans give him a wave, but Parry just glares at them. Before he's even out of sight down the lane, Esther sees the boys, Pinkie leading them, saunter out of the trees below her. On another of their 'recce missions', as they call them. Jim brings up the rear, swinging from trunk to trunk as he hurries down the steep slope, yodelling like Tarzan.

Most of the men ignore them as before, but she sees a small knot--three or four of the younger Germans--advancing on the fence and finds herself standing, as if to run. Pinkie has his fists up and is bouncing around, throwing out shadow punches. "Wanna fight?" he calls. "You don't look so tough." He jabs the air in front of him, his stark white fists shining, in the dusk.

Little coward
, she thinks. She hears Jim's thin voice: "Seconds out.
Ding ding
." And then one of the Germans, a stocky fellow, marches up to the wire, shrugging off his shirt, and the boys fall back a step. He grins, pops his muscles,

warms up with a few swift combinations, bobbing his head

and shuffling his feet, then drops into a stance, fists raised. He beckons impatiently, and Pinkie, after a second, takes a tentative swing, but the prisoner just slaps at his cheek like he's been bitten by a flea, shakes his head.

There's a burst of laughter from his friends, and she can see Pinkie blushing from here. He starts to windmill his arm, winding up for a haymaker, but the German's lost interest in him. He walks along the wire, feinting at the boys, making some of them jump, and stops in front of Jim, the smallest,

and crooks a finger. The boy looks down the line at the others, some of whom are waving him on, and she sees him throw out a small fist. The German reels, falling back into the arms of his comrades, who hoist him up, push him forward. Esther watches, perplexed by the performance, and then it occurs to

her that they're humouring the boys,
playing with them
. Jim seems puzzled himself, but throws out a combination to the gut, and the big man doubles over, sags to his knees, amid laughter from both sides of the fence. One of the boys holds Jim's hand up. The winner.

The light is fading, but the evening is still warm, the slate hillsides radiating the heat they've been absorbing all day. A wasp brushes her ear, its loud buzz making her flinch, and she shakes her hair violently. She leans against a trunk, it's cool and rough against her neck and cheek, and studies the boys. They're trying to talk to the Germans now, Pinkie thrusting himself close to the wire, pointing at himself, then the Germans. She slips a little lower through the trees, trying to make him out. He seems to be hurling curses at the fence, but as she listens more closely she hears a grotesque kind of English lesson taking place.

"This'll help you talk to the guards," Pinkie is saying, but all the words offered for simple greetings are obscenities. "Alfweed-er-sane," Pinkie enunciates, waving goodbye, "means 'Bugger off!"

"A man's voice repeats the words slowly after him, to the accompaniment of giggles. "And when you meet someone, you say, 'Pleased to fuck you!'" Pinkie says cheerily. Esther feels herself redden, with embarrassment then anger, and swats at the wasp, which has found her again. Another man, she sees, is urgently miming eating. "Oh," Pinkie says. "What do we say when we're hungry?" He grins at the others. "What you ask is, "May I have some cock, please?" Go on, try it. "More cock, please!"

The German repeats it and the boys howl with laughter. It's suddenly too much for Esther. She can't bear to see it go on, and she finds herself pushing through the undergrowth, the brambles pulling at her legs.

"Stop it!" she shouts, stumbling into the midst of them,

arms raised, and they scatter like sheep. For a moment she has Jim's arm, and then he breaks free and she chases them into the trees, listens to them crashing through the brush.

"Hey," she hears Pinkie call in the darkness. "Was that your mam, Bedwetter?" And Jim howling, "No!"

She stares after them, stung by their laughter, but when she turns, the men at the wire are watching her silently, their eyes wide. Somehow she imagined that they'd bolt too. They're not laughing at least, but after a second this makes her more, not less, uncomfortable.

She looks from one to another, quickly turns.

"Don't go," someone blurts in accented English, and she stops for a second as if she can't quite believe it, as if it's some trick. She searches their faces in the gloom, then starts to back away once more.

"Thank you," the voice calls, and this time she sees it's the tall, sandy-haired one at the edge of the group who has spoken. She thinks she might have seen him playing football.

"You're welcome," she responds automatically.

There's a hurried exchange in German, and she looks from man to man until the tall one raises a hand like a boy at school. She nods, curious about what he could want to ask her.

"What's your name?"

She stares at him open mouthed, finally shakes her head, staggers back into the trees, stands there for a long moment in the deep shade. She's out of sight, but the men stay where they are, searching the shadows, and she keeps still, her breathing shallow.

"Come back," the tall one calls, and she looks at his beseeching face, marvelling at it. One of his comrades tries to pull him away, and as he turns something occurs to her, and she calls softly, "If you know so much English, why don't you tell your friends they're not learning what they think they're

learning!"

"I will," he says quickly, nodding towards her voice. "I will. We were just playing with the boys. I'm sorry for any offence."

And he
is
sorry, she sees, with a kind of wonder--he

actually blushes--and what's more, he's afraid of her leaving. She sees the fear on his face, the disappointment as she stays silent, sees his hand on the wire, and she thinks,
He can't touch me
. And the thought warms her through.

is conversation with the girl--his
tete-a-tete
, as the others start to call it in coarse French accents, his
rendez-vous
--

brings Karsten a new notoriety in the camp. A better one, he supposes. At least the men are talking to him again. They all want to know what she said to him there at the fence, what he said to her, and when he hesitates--he knows the truth will disappoint them, and besides, he's embarrassed, ashamed to admit he kept silent while the boys mocked them--they tease him, call her his 'Welsh girl' and him her 'lover-boy'.

Karsten denies it all, of course, knowing as he does so that this is part of the game, part of being a good sport. He recognises this taunting--they're the same ribald jokes he endured about Francoise--knows his role.

"You're learning," Schiller tells him with a little nod.

Karsten stands at the fence the next evening, hoping for a glimpse of her. Pure foolishness, he knows. It was hardly a romantic encounter, nor is the girl precisely a prize. She'd not even been wearing a dress, but rather breeches and a bulky sweater; the guards had probably mistaken her for one of the boys. A tomboy, and young, too, seventeen or eighteen.

Francoise had been seventeen, or so she'd told him over dinner, but he'd never believed her. In her make-up and experience she seemed so much older. And yet there was something about this girl. The way she'd looked at him, with anger, contempt, pity even, but also as if she expected something better of him.

It's the first time in almost two months that he hasn't cursed

his knowledge of English, wished in fact that it were better, quicker.

Still hoping forlornly for her to appear again, he hears a rustle in the trees on the last day of July, and as he watches, a stray sheep emerges from the undergrowth, daintily leaping across the ditch. She ambles across the lane and begins nosing in the sweet, lush grass on the other side of the fence. A crowd of men gradually gather beside Karsten to watch, drifting along with her as she crops her way back and forth.

For the first time in a fortnight or more, they actually respect the warning wire, line up along it, not wanting to scare the animal, as if they are watching in a zoo.

Karsten ignores the whispered jokes about his 'girlfriend'.

Someone runs to the mess, comes back with a handful of furred carrots, a greenish potato.

"It's not a goat," Karsten hisses. But he creeps towards the fence, proffering the vegetables as if they are a peace offering. The ewe wisely ignores him and the food, nibbling at the grass. The tearing sound of her teeth is so loud it makes Karsten flinch. He reaches out a slow hand, touches the wire, and then stretches through to stroke her back, and for a moment she submits to it. The wool is tightly sprung and, as he pushes his fingers into it, greasy with lanolin. But what astonishes him is how warm it is. He looks back at the others with a smile of wonder, but that sets the men hopping over the wire, and the sudden movement makes the ewe shrug him off and jump away, breaking into a loping trot.