by Iris Gower
‘Huh! As if I would be so unmanly.’ He was scarlet.
Kate picked up her coat. ‘And most of all you had tears, you cried in my arms like a baby. I did what I could to help you. Good night, Stephen, and good luck.’
She walked out into the dark night and made her way towards home, glad of the evening breeze on her cheeks. She’d only gone as far as the middle of town when the air-raid siren scorched her ears. She stood still for a moment, frozen with fear.
Bombers droned overhead, searchlights raked the sky. She saw them descend, the beautiful deathly candles of light, and then she began to run to the cover of the nearest shelter and cowered inside, huddled against other frightened people drawn close by the twin feelings of anger and fear for what was happening to them and to their beloved Swansea.
Eleven
Hari looked up as Colonel Edwards stopped at her desk. He smiled down at her, a lined man big and bluff who had served valorously in the war of 1914–18. He walked with a stick now but she’d found that his brain was strong and active, and his eyes gleamed with intelligence.
He sat opposite her, his injured leg jutting out awkwardly before him. ‘You like your work Miss Jones, you have no desire to join the armed forces?’
She looked at him in surprise. I think I’m happy to serve my country in any way I’m needed, sir.’ She wondered if it was a rebuke.
‘So you are happy to do your war work here in Bridgend?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. ‘You are quick to learn, articulate and clever. You are a well-educated young lady I understand?’
‘I did well at my school.’
‘No need of false humility,’ he said almost abruptly. ‘As you already know, the work you do is secret, I don’t want to be mysterious but signals are passed all over the country, bomber pilot to bomber pilot, among other things. Most reach Bletchley Park but it’s also my job to pick them up and decipher them, yours too if you have an aptitude for it.’
He handed her a page of writing. ‘It’s given to some intelligent civilians like you to do this work. Now this is the fairly easy code I use, it’s a peculiar shorthand of my own. I make notes of what comes my way, it’s all above board, government work, you understand? In the event of systems failing somewhere along the line, at least we here have some of the, possibly vital, pieces of information.’
Hari wondered what he was getting at. He read her mind. ‘As I said, I want to teach you to share my job. Anything could happen to me; I’m getting older and slower. Two heads, I feel, are better than one and your head is a young eager one.’
Hari was doubtful. ‘I’m honoured at your confidence, sir, but am I up to this sort of work?’
‘Well, before we go on to the difficult work,’ he said, smiling, ‘I want you to do a spot of work on this machine here. It’s a new listening radio I bought, or rather the government bought it. It’s almost like a regular wireless but you listen out for Morse messages. You understand Morse, don’t you? Learned it in girl guides like most other kiddies I expect.’
Hari nodded doubtfully. ‘Only the basics, sir.’
‘Well, you’ll soon get the hang of it. We’ve found that some of the German operators get careless and make it easier for us to work out the message.’
‘You think I’ll be any good at this sir?’
He stood up, ignoring her question. ‘The messages will be in Morse but they will be coded, as I said. Just play with the damn thing, I’ll come back and see you later.’
Oh, there’s a kettle over there on the stove and tea stuff. You can’t get up and go for lunch if there’s an important message coming through, you understand?’
‘Yes sir.’
He left her then and Hari began to panic. However much she tried to concentrate, she could make little sense of the machine. Life had been easier handling simple calls in the bigger office. She couldn’t do this, she just didn’t have the ability. She rubbed her eyes and then stared at the piece of paper the colonel had given her. She would just have to try her best, but first she would make herself a much-needed cup of tea.
Hari persevered throughout the day not even stopping to eat the sandwiches she’d brought with her. She drank a lot of tea and stared at the strange codes until at last they began to make something resembling sense.
The radio buzzed into life and Hari panicked. She listened to the tapping sounds that rose and fell as if coming from a distance. She hastily scribbled the letters represented by the long and short signals; she would try to work out their pattern later.
‘How are you doing, Miss Jones?’ Colonel Edwards’ voice startled her. She looked up and put her arms over the papers she was attempting to work on and then realized how foolish she must seem. This man, this intelligent man, was well used to deciphering messages from the wireless.
He smiled. ‘Well done, I see you’ll be discretion itself. Now, how are you getting along?’
‘I don’t think I’m getting very far, sir,’ she said, ‘though some of the words are beginning to make sense.’
‘Anything important come through?’
She was taken aback. ‘I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry, I wasn’t taking notes I was so busy trying to understand how it works.’
He held up his hand. ‘No problem, just keep trying. I’ll give you a few lessons tomorrow. Go home now, I don’t want you to miss your bus to the station.’
Hari felt weariness drape over her like a fog; going home on the bus, then on to the train, darkness pressed against the windows, drowning her. She closed her eyes for a moment. Kate sitting beside her, touched her arm. ‘You all right?’
‘Just tired. You?’ Kate nodded.
‘Right as I’ll ever be.’ She took Hari’s arm and leaned against her. ‘Last night, I went out, only for an ice cream and the men there, they were horrible, taunting me, telling anyone who’d listen what I’d been up to with them. I was shamed so I was and furious at their cheek. I put them in their place so I did, telling on them crying, begging me to cuddle them before they went out to face the Hun. The cat got their tongues then and I left the ice cream parlour head in the air.’
Hari felt pity tug at her. Poor, misguided Kate, she thought she was helping the young men who were about to die and gave them everything but some of them lived to tell a spiteful tale. As the train shuddered to a halt at Swansea station, she pressed her cheek against Kate’s. ‘See you in the morning and try not to let them get you down.’
The busyness of the station gave way to silent streets and Hari breathed a sigh of relief as she turned into her road where their old, big family house was little more than a hole in the ground. A few doors down was her house.
A few weeks ago, Mr Paster, one of the neighbours, had approached her to buy the house; it was small, terraced, but it was a home of her own.
She had grown tired of the public house, the noise, the smell of beer. She had been saving for months now and she had raised enough for the small deposit and so now she was a property owner—well, she and the local bank.
As she approached the house she looked at it with pride; small it might be but it was hers, hers and Meryl’s and Father’s if he came home from the war safely.
It was dark in the house, so dark with the blackout curtains and the fire unlit in the grate. Hari sighed and sat on one of the chairs in the parlour feeling too tired to do anything but go to bed. Still, she had chores, some washing and cleaning up.
She made sure the blackout curtains were in place and switched on the lights. She was lucky the house had been modernized; she had electric while some of the houses in the area still had gas lighting.
She turned on the gas stove. She would heat a tin of soup, have some of the stale sandwich from morning and as soon as she washed out her stockings and underwear she could go up to bed.
She ate the soup with little interest but it was hot and warmed her stomach. The heat from the stove had taken the chill from the air and she began to doz
e. Suddenly, before her eyes were the long and short symbols of the Morse code. They untangled, became clear as the normal written word and she sat up with a start as her memories from childhood came back, the days she’d struggled to send messages by tapping on an old tin to the other girl guides. Quickly, she took the paper out of her bag and unfolded it. She was beginning to see the pattern; letters were transposed in complicated forms but, slowly, she would make sense of it all.
She did her chores mechanically and stumbled upstairs. Once in bed she tucked the blankets up to her chin as the bedroom was freezing. She was so excited she wanted to go back to work at once, turn on her machine and really understand what it was all about. That would take some time but she was prepared for that.
She would never sleep. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until an air-raid warning wailed into the night. She stumbled out of bed, pulled on a coat and shoes and followed all the other sleepy people on the road into the nearest shelter.
Twelve
So I was settled with Aunt Jessie and my dear Michael. I thought of him cuddling me in the barn and sometimes I felt shy of him. He had no such feelings, he seemed to have forgotten all about that night, but he talked and talked about Hari until I was sick of the sound of her name. One night at supper, over the pristine white cloth on the table in the dining room, the one place that was tidy in the whole house, he handed me a sheet of lined paper.
‘What’s this for?’
‘I want you to write your full name and your address,’ Michael said.
‘Hang on, Hari only gave it to me when she came down to see me. She’s bought a house, it’s a new address to me,’ I said hesitantly, ‘but I’ll fetch it later if you really want it.’
I knew what he was up to; he was going to write to my sister. It felt like ice was rubbing against my belly and my heart.
‘OK,’ he said carelessly and I held my breath.
‘Anyway—’ I knew I sounded aggressive—‘what do you want it for, do you think they’re going to shove me out of here any time soon and you want to know where I’ll be?’ If only.
Michael looked confused and then he lied to me. ‘Ah, something like that.’ He smiled his lovely smile and I didn’t know how to deal with what was happening. My Michael was falling for my sister and the pain was gut-wrenching. Jealousy was a fire inside my belly, worse than seeing John Adams with my friend Sally, much, much worse.
Later when Michael was gone to work in the fields milking the cows, planting things or whatever he did on the farm, I sat in the kitchen hunched over the fire. Aunt Jessie made me a cup of tea and sat opposite me. There was some kind of lecture coming.
‘About your sister—’
‘Hari? What about her, Aunt Jessie?’ For a minute I felt a pang of fear. ‘She’s all right, is she?’
‘Aye, she’s all right. She’s a lovely girl, a town girl, she’d never be happy in the country.’
‘Well, she doesn’t live in the country and never will.’ Then I saw what Aunt Jessie was getting at and thought it over for a few minutes.
‘At a certain age young folk get fancies but that’s all they are, fancies. Oppose them and they get stubborn, pretend to go with these silly, passing fancies and that’s it, they’ll pass and be forgotten.’
I ran to her and flung my arms around her neck. ‘Do you think I’d make a good country girl, Auntie?’
‘Maybe, maybe not, but you’ll probably have a lot of fancies yourself before you need to decide.’
I knew I wouldn’t have any fancies. Michael was my man for good and ever but Aunt Jessie talked a lot of, well, sort of hidden sense; she spoke like the Sunday School teacher, in sort of parables, but I knew what she meant all right.
‘Now, to something rather unpleasant—I want you to go to school this afternoon. Your teacher agreed to you having the morning off but this afternoon she wants you there to read the part of Titania in the school play; you’re the only one to learn the lines properly, so she says. It’s a good way for you to settle back in, Meryl.’ She smiled. ‘It’s the best offer you’re going to get, so my advice is take it.’
I adjusted my thought to school, to getting ready, putting on my skirt and my long socks, polishing my shoes, going back to meet up with George Dixon.
‘I don’t know why Miss Grist picked me, Titania was supposed to have lovely red hair, wasn’t she?’ We were back to Hari again.
‘Don’t ask me, I haven’t got time to read that stuff.’
I tried not to laugh. ‘Well, I suppose it’s better than going back to double sums or English.’ I loved both those subjects but I felt I had to give in with good grace, at least taking part in a play might be fun. I gave in. ‘It’s a long walk though and my leg still hurts a bit where George kicked me.’
‘I thought it might,’ Aunt Jessie said dryly, ‘I’ll take you in the pony and trap.’
School wasn’t as bad as I thought. Some of the kids crowded round me and asked what George had done to me. They all seemed to have garbled ideas about the attack.
‘Will you have a baby?’ Mattie Beynon whispered in my ear. I stared at her in astonishment.
‘How would I manage that?’
‘Well,’ she faltered, ‘when George attacked you did he put his thing inside you?’
‘No he did not!’ I pushed her away. ‘Look, that rat George Dixon didn’t get anywhere near my knickers so don’t go making up silly stories any of you.’
‘That’s enough of that.’ Miss Grist’s voice held a touch of laughter but her face was stern. ‘There’s no need of that sort of low talk, Meryl. Now, into the hall, all of you, and we’ll get on with the play.’
So I was Titania, Queen of the Fairies. I was to meet Oberon in a fairy glade or wood or something. Oberon was Roy Clark; he was thin and had glasses but then he had a lovely smile, and his voice was good and clear.
‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’ His voice carried across the hall. Challenged, I put heart into my response.
‘What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence.’ I knew about jealousy now. I waved my hand commandingly to my invisible fairies and then, thank goodness, it was time for a break.
‘Hey—’ Roy caught my arm as I was about to run to the yard for the lavatory—‘you’re not half bad, you’d make a good actress.’
‘Not interested.’ I pulled my arm away and hurried out into the warm air. Roy wasn’t bad-looking, better than John Adams really but the only man I was interested in was Michael, he had held me in his arms, cuddled me close until I could feel his heart beat and I would never want another man in place of him.
That night, at supper, I meekly handed over the address Hari had given me and as I met Aunt Jessie’s eyes, she winked at me. I smiled; we were conspirators and, Michael, being a man, had no idea.
Thirteen
Hari drove to the farm in the jeep Colonel Edwards had lent her. She was a good driver even though she’d been shown only the most fundamentals of handling the gears and steering. By the time she reached Carmarthen, she was well used to the vehicle.
She saw Michael’s large shape standing in the sunlight at the gate. He swung it open for her as she neared the farm. She pulled on the handbrake and stared at him for a moment and an unaccountable flutter stirred her heart.
‘Meryl’s still in school.’ He took her hand and helped her down. ‘Jessie is having a doze though she always denies it, says she’s “just resting her eyes”.’ He was still holding her hand.
‘Let’s walk,’ she said, and he nodded, slipping her hand through his arm. He felt solid, masculine, he smelt of grass and sunshine and an unfamiliar sensation tingled inside her.
‘Tell me about yourself.’ She looked up at him; it was a long way to look as he must have been at least six foot four she decided.
He smiled, his teeth were clean, straight and even—all in all he was too good to be true.
‘Meryl said you are half German.’
‘I was born in Germany,’ he
said, ‘lived there until I was ten.’ He paused. ‘Then I came here to live with Jessie to help on the farm.’ He didn’t seem inclined to divulge anything more and Hari was too polite to push any more personal questions at him.
‘How’s Meryl?’
‘She’s all right. I took hold of George Dixon one day after school and shook him till his teeth rattled. I don’t think he’ll touch her again.’ He glanced at her. ‘Mrs Dixon is another matter, she’s a bad enemy to have.’
Hari wondered if the authorities knew of his German ancestry, if not Mrs Dixon could be a really bad enemy.
They stopped on the top of a hill, breathless and still linked together. The sky was large above them, the soft clouds floating across the horizon like a granddad puffing on his pipe. Hari turned to look up at Michael; at the same time he bent his head and his lips were on hers. Hari drew away startled.
‘Sorry,’ Michael said, holding up his hands, ‘you look so beautiful with your face all shiny from the walk and your lovely hair like golden, red-touched clouds drifting around your perfect neck.’
Hari felt foolish yet touched, and suddenly very happy. They stared at each other for a long time and then Hari boldly held out her arms. ‘No harm in a hug, is there?’
When he was close, she could feel his arousal and suddenly her lower stomach was full of heat. She’d never felt like this before; she wanted Michael, she wanted his body but she wanted his soul as well. She drew away abruptly, this was all too sudden, too dangerous.
Aunt Jessie was awake, very much so when Hari followed Michael into the heat of the farmhouse kitchen. The tantalizing smell of roasting meat made her realize she was hungry. All her senses were alert, on guard so to speak, she thought wryly. Aunt Jessie looked at them suspiciously.
‘When did you arrive, Hari?’ She was almost stern.
‘Not long ago.’ Hari didn’t understand why she lied. Yes she did—Aunt Jessie wouldn’t approve of a dalliance between her and Michael. Only it wouldn’t be a dalliance, it would be much, much more than that. It was impossible.
