by Iris Gower
‘We’ve got to go, Stephen, it’s cold enough out here on this hill to freeze the backside off me.’
Stephen was awake in an instant. ‘And the balls off me! Sorry, pet, it’s not right to swear in the company of a lady.’
Kate was touched by his humility. She kissed him and his response was immediate and unexpected. ‘Let me, Kate, let me.’ He rolled over until he was on top of her, she could feel his hardness against her belly and then he was kissing her, drowning her in kisses. He pushed her skirt up and slid his hand to her thigh. The most absurd thought that her stockings would be torn flitted through her mind and then he pulled her knickers aside and he was against her, flesh on flesh, he, hard and yearning, and Kate bewildered—did she want this? Was it wrong to give comfort to a man going to war in the skies? But he was pushing against her, tearing her underclothes in his eagerness.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ he gasped and Kate gave in and took him in her hand and guided him to her. She almost screamed when he came into her, he was so big, but then perhaps all men were the same. She’d heard some of the more racy girls in the factory talk about it and the giggle always came at the end and the phrase ‘bigger is better’.
It didn’t seem so to Kate; it hurt, by Mary and all the angels it hurt, but she bit her lip and let him have his way. It was all over in a few minutes and he lay on her gasping. Kate felt only relief.
He adjusted his dress and then led her back to the road, thanking her with his dark puppy eyes, looking down at her with something like awe. ‘I love you, Kate,’ he said softly and, at that moment, she knew he meant it.
Five
‘This girl’s got a head full of nits!’ Mrs Dixon pushed me away and stared at me as though I had the plague. She fetched the scissors from a drawer and began to chop at my hair without minding what she was doing.
‘I didn’t have them when I came here,’ I said with venom. ‘I probably got them from your precious Georgie Porgy—he’s always sitting by a scruffy girl at school.’
I’d come to hate Fat George with every bit of me. When I first set eyes on him I nearly burst out laughing; he had queer trousers that were tucked into his socks and pouched out around his legs like big bloomers. He also wore a cap on his scraggy hair and he talked so funny I could hardly understand him. He was two years older then me but he acted like a child. Even after all these months I hadn’t got used to him. He reminded me of Podgy the pig in one of my Christmas annuals.
‘Ow, you’re hurting me!’ I pulled away from Mrs Dixon and slapped her hand so hard that the scissors fell on to the floor. In retaliation, she slapped my legs, a stinging slap that had me hopping about like a wounded chicken. Georgie laughed and, forgetting the pain in my leg, I ran to him and pushed him hard. Taken by surprise, he fell on to his fat backside and stared up at me mouth open. I’d never seen such an ugly sight.
I couldn’t help it, I just had to say it: ‘You look just like one of them pigs you’re so fond of—all bristly and red and ugly. I hate you George and your mother’s a cruel witch!’
‘That’s it. You’re no longer welcome in my house.’ Mrs Dixon took me by the shoulders and shook me until my head buzzed. ‘You’re a horrible, no-manners town girl and I knew you were trouble the moment I set eyes on you. I’ve tried to tame you but I give up, you’re a wicked, wicked girl.’
When she let me go I flew out the door and began to run. I had no idea where I was going but I wanted to put as much distance between me and the horrible Dixon family as I could.
I ran until I was breathless and then sat down on a flat stone at the side of the road and wondered what to do. There were fields all around, winter-bare, hedged and looking just the same as the next lot of fields. Without houses and bus stops and shops and all the things I was used to I had no focus, no way of finding out where I was. Still, I wasn’t completely stupid, it was obvious Mrs Dixon would tell someone about me, the police most probably or whoever it was who arranged places for the evacuees in the first place. They’d learn a thing or two about Mrs Dixon if I had anything to do with it.
I couldn’t sit here all day though, the road was narrow without a signpost in sight. I’d been sent to somewhere called Carmarthen; what I needed was to find a big road leading towards Swansea where I could be picked up easily.
I found a hill—there were plenty of them—and I stood up as high as I could to look around. Over to my left, I saw a farm cart, the big horse plodding along head down. This, as far as I could see, was the only traffic I would find.
I began to cross the field towards the other road and halfway over the cold ground the cart came swinging towards me. There was a man on the cart who looked older than me—about the same age as my sister Hari. He drew the big horse to a halt as near to me as he could get, which wasn’t very close because I kept edging away from the great creature whose loose mouth, filled with huge teeth, was a bit too near for comfort.
‘What you doing here?’
‘What does it look like?’ I wrapped my arms around my skinny body realizing my jersey wasn’t doing much to keep me warm.
The man leaned forward, his big-booted foot resting on the edge of the cart. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to tell me.’
‘You’re a foreigner.’ He had the faintest accent and it wasn’t Welsh.
‘Very quick of you. Come on, what you doing out here on your own? Where have you appeared from—you’re not a mirage are you?’
‘I’m running away. In any case they only get mirages in the desert, haven’t you ever been to school?’
He smiled. You don’t look like you’re running away. I thought real runaways had a stick over their shoulder with a lump of old clothes tied to it. Where’s your stick?’
I had to laugh then. ‘You’re not so bad for a grown up,’ I conceded.
He looked at me for a long time. ‘Get on the cart,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave you here, can I?’
‘Why not? And what if I don’t want to get up on to your scruffy cart?’
‘So many questions.’ He raised his eyes to the sky as if he was looking for planes. ‘Well, let’s consider,’ he said, looking at me again. ‘The cows will be down here soon from the top field, they’ll need milking and they come down very quickly when they need milking, don’t care who they trample the old cows don’t.’
‘Bit like Mrs Dixon,’ I mumbled. Then what he’d just said sunk in and a field full of huge dirty cows coming for me was frightening. I scrambled up on to the cart.
‘I’m Michael,’ he said.
‘So what? Want a medal or something?’
‘Just being polite, even townspeople are polite, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose so. I’m Meryl Jones.’ I could have bitten out my tongue; I’d fallen right into his trap. Now he knew my name anything could happen. Then I brightened up—anything, like being taken home to Hari. My sister wrote to me every week; she hadn’t yet made it down to the country to see me but then she was very busy looking for a new home for us. I was going home to Swansea soon, I was determined on it.
Michael stopped the big horse outside a farmhouse. It was big and scruffy inside even though from the outside it was posh: big windows, tall walls and a weather cock on the roof among all the chimneys. It was a bit different from the rows of terraced houses near where I lived. It was full of old, stuffed, splitting furniture and loads of books and papers that littered the floors.
A big lady led me into the kitchen without any show of surprise. ‘Another one of those evacuees run away is it?’
‘Aye,’ Michael said, ‘the third this year.’
‘A lot of kids been staying with Mrs Dixon then have they?’ I sounded brazen but I didn’t care and if I wasn’t mistaken Michael stifled a laugh and shut up only when the big woman stared at him.
‘We’ll have to deal with it,’ she said, looking me over carefully, ‘awful haircut—new fashion is it?’
‘Mrs Dixon said I had nits—’ I knew my tone was indignant—
‘she cut my hair all off and it’s not even cut straight. She slapped my legs hard.’ I pulled aside my skirt and, satisfyingly, a big red mark bore out the truth of my statement.
‘Humph.’
‘Are you Michael’s Mam?’
She avoided my question. ‘You can call me Aunt Jessie for now, until we get you sorted.’
‘I don’t like the sound of “sorted”.’ I felt like crying.
Michael went out and he seemed to be gone a long time. I followed Aunt Jessie around the house while she made some food for the evening meal. I could see bits of chicken in a pot surrounded by vegetables and I watched fascinated as the big lady took a handful of dry things from a jar and put them in the pot with the chicken. The things began to unfold and the smell of onions filled the kitchen and my mouth watered.
Then I stood and watched as the big woman sat in a chair, pushed off her slippers and held her feet out to the fire. I was reminded then of old Mrs Evans, her big toe hanging out of her slipper, and I began to cry.
All at once, the big lady became Aunt Jessie as she scooped me up and cuddled me to her bigness. ‘There there, it’s hard on you little ones leaving your mother and all.’
‘I haven’t got a mother,’ I moaned, ‘and my dad’s away fighting the Hun!’
‘Shush, don’t say that too loud some person might be hurt by it.’ She brushed my hair away from my forehead. ‘Look, about Michael, his father… well… his father was a German gentleman—’ she hesitated—‘well, now Michael is with me and he’s real Welsh, speaks Welsh and everything. I knew she wasn’t telling me the whole truth because of my age. I came across a lot of that from so-called adults.
‘Well, when the war started,’ Aunt Jessie went on, ‘Michael was too young to join up; in any case, he reckoned he would do more good helping me on the farm so he stayed here.’ She smiled a lovely smile. ‘The dear boy didn’t want to leave poor Jessie alone.’
She looked serious then. ‘You mustn’t mention a word of this mind, not to anyone.’
I nodded, but I knew I would tell Hari as soon as I saw her.
‘If he’s a German, he might kill you in the night and run away with all your money,’ I suggested.
‘Bless you, I haven’t got any money to speak of. In any case, how could he run away? You found it hard enough making your way here and if Michael hadn’t picked you up you could wander over the fields for the rest of your days without finding anyone to help you.’
‘But Germans are fiendishly clever.’ I’d heard the words somewhere and they sounded good. ‘He could fly in a plane.’
‘Maybe, if he could find a plane and if he could, he might get shot. And why would he want to run away when he’s been here since he was ten. Think about it.’
I thought about it. ‘You’re right,’ I said.
‘Glad you agree.’
When Michael came back he had a stern-looking man and a kindly looking lady with him. The lady smiled and I smiled back feeling like a grinning ape. Still, I knew it was important to be pleasant and well mannered to people who were clearly from the ‘authorities’.
‘Well, young lady,’ the man said, ‘what’s the story then? Why have you run away from Mrs Dixon’s house?’
My mouth fell open. ‘That was quick! You told them everything, Michael.’
‘I didn’t have to. Mrs Dixon had already reported you as a runaway.’
‘Please sir—’ I used my best wheedling tone—‘can’t I just go home?’ His mouth became a straight line of disapproval. I turned to the lady, looking for sympathy. ‘See how she chopped off my hair? And she slapped me, hard.’
‘You attacked her son.’ The lady had a hard voice in spite of her kind face and her expression didn’t change even as her voice condemned me.
‘He was ’orrible to me ever since I came. Look, I won’t be any trouble if I can just go home.’
‘Get that thought out of your head at once, young lady.’ The woman spat out words like the hard glittering pieces of anthracite coal we put in the stove at home. ‘You are here for your own safety. Whatever happens, you are not going home.’
My heart sank to my boots; I knew when I was beaten. I was in Carmarthen to stay—for the whole of the buggering war.
Six
Hari folded the letter and stuck a stamp on it wondering how Meryl was enduring her life in the countryside. Her young sister’s letters were chatty enough but there was an underlying sadness in her words.
Hari looked around. ‘Home’ was a bedroom and a tiny sitting room. The bathroom and kitchen were shared with Mrs Cooper, the owner of the house, a tiny lady who dominated her huge husband. Together the Coopers ran a public bar that was little more than a room at the front of the house.
At first, Mrs Cooper told her proudly, they’d only had an opening into the narrow street of terraced houses, serving beer by the glass from a window. Slowly it had evolved into a sitting room bar with solid benches around the walls and sawdust on the floor. ‘Now it’s a real public house,’ Mrs Cooper said, waving her hand to encompass the tiny space.
The small, yellowed room was always thick with pipe smoke and beer fumes but it was a hub of much-needed humour for the men, too old for war, left at home.
Dai Cooper sometimes played the accordion, his still-adept hands sweeping over the keys, the gasp of the instrument sounding like lungs in torture.
From her room Hari could hear the sounds from the bar room; sometimes she peeped in when she passed the front room door and was struck that there were never any women there—the spurious emancipation war brought to women hadn’t penetrated this far into Swansea.
But Hari had plans and she was saving her wages from the Bridgend munitions works. It was a little way out of Swansea but the wages were good and she’d got a good position in the tiny signals room there. Soon, she would buy a house, her own place on the outskirts of Swansea, away from the centre of the bombing.
At the moment the houses were cheap enough but no one knew if they would still be there in the morning.
Now she sat on her bed and picked up a book, listening to the wash of voices downstairs. Hari was lonely and wished Kate was here or even Meryl with her endless chatter. Hari’s troubled thoughts dwelt again on her sister, stuck in the country with cows and sheep and creatures she detested.
Meryl was a town girl. She loved the lights, the shops, the little Italian cafés; she loved the beach front with its swings and ice cream stalls. Hari knew in her heart that, however much she didn’t want to believe it, Meryl was unhappy in the country. It was only a matter of time before trouble erupted in the peaceful valleys of West Wales.
Meryl was a bundle of energy, sometimes it was difficult to harness the fire—that spirit—that made Meryl a personality even at a young age. Meryl was one of life’s reporters, seeking, eager for a story, quick to condemn but just as quick to shed tears of pity. But above all, Meryl found trouble wherever she went.
In the morning Hari was proved right. An official-looking letter came for her with the early morning post. Mrs Cooper looked at it suspiciously as she handed it over. ‘I know you’re on your way to get your breakfast, my cariad, but this ’as come for you, and trouble it is if you ask me.’
Hari took the letter, refraining from telling Mrs Cooper that she wasn’t her sweetheart, she wasn’t her anything except a lodger and she didn’t appreciate Mrs Cooper scrutinizing and anticipating the contents of her mail.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m late. I’ll have something to eat at work.’
She grabbed her coat from the overloaded hallstand in the little hallway that was reeking with the smell of stale ale and hurried outside. A light rain was falling, the air seemed misty, unreal, heavy, yet nothing deterred the German bombers, they would be back whatever the weather. She stopped at the bus stop fingering the letter, knowing instinctively it concerned her sister.
The bus lumbered into sight and with a sigh of relief Hari climbed aboard the metal platform, clingi
ng to the rail as the bus, hardly stopping, chugged on its way towards town. She went upstairs where she would meet Kate at the next stop.
Hari slit open the letter and read it quickly. A smile quirked her lips as she read about the contretemps between the Dixon boy and Meryl, she’d apparently called him an ugly pig and Meryl was nothing if not observant. The smile vanished when she read that the authorities were uncertain what to do with Meryl.
Hari looked up as Kate breathlessly slumped into the seat beside her. ‘Nearly missed the bus so I did!’—Kate was out of breath—‘again’.
Hari looked out of the window in surprise. ‘You should have got on at the last stop,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you doing here in Oxford Street?’
Kate looked defiant. ‘I stayed over with Eddie,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, his sister was there and his mother.’ She paused and a glimmer of a smile touched her lips. ‘Eddie’s lovely, Hari.’
‘Kate! How many is that and when are you going to stop all this nonsense?’
‘It’s all right, this time I’m in love.’ Kate’s face was awash with happiness. ‘The others were airmen, off on a mission, fighting back the Luftwaffe. Since those three nights of Swansea bashing the bombers have laid off a bit but our poor boys are still doin’ their bit, some still dying for it.’
‘Quite a speech, sure you believe it?’ Hari’s voice was dry. She felt a bit like her little sister, blunt and a not a little sarcastic.
‘Oh, read this.’ She hastily handed Kate the letter. Kate gave her a funny look but took it anyway.
‘Aw, Jesus, Mary and Joseph that Meryl of yours is the limit! She can even go to the countryside and find trouble.’
