The Welsh Girl

by Peter Ho Davies

  “Mmm!” Colin says now as they separate. “There’s a girl. You just hold that pretty thought.” He puts a cigarette between his lips, lights it, and passes it to her. “So’s I can find you in the dark,” he tells her, stepping back into the gloom.

  “Colin?” she whispers.

  He leans his face back into the faint light of the cigarette. “Hang on a sec, luv. Got to fetch the magic carpet if I’m going to whisk you away from all this, ain’t I?”

  She puffs on her cigarette, imagining she can taste him, exhales. The local girls have started calling her “the youngest old maid” behind her back, but she’s suddenly relieved she’s never had much to do with the village boys. The ones her age are mostly off now, joined up or making good money in factories or in the coal mines down south. Even before they left, though, her mother’s death had isolated her from the other young folk in the village. She’d had to leave school to help her father—over the pleas of her teachers, who’d always told her she was destined for better things, secretarial college perhaps—and made up for the loss of her childhood by priding herself on being grown up, an air the other girls had been quick to pick up on and resent. In truth, though, she’d never been much drawn to the local boys—her one youthful dalliance had been with Eric, their first evacuee—even when they’d been interested in her. Rhys Roberts was a case in point.

  He and Esther had been born within a month of each other, and their mothers had become fast friends, though Arthur viewed Rhys’s father, Mervyn, a rockman at the quarry, with a mixture of jealousy and suspicion. The two women had both worked in service in Liverpool during their youths. “Though Viv was an upstairs maid, on account of her fine English,” Esther’s mother always acknowledged (her own pronunciation being marred by occasional slips—umberella for umbrella, filum for film).

  When Mervyn had died in a quarry accident ten years earlier, the families had become even closer, Arthur going out of his way to help the widow of the man he’d snubbed, until Mrs. Roberts was able to find work at the school. Rhys’s mother had always been grateful for the help—Esther was sure it was one reason the famously fierce teacher had favored her. And Rhys, too, had apparently felt in her debt, protecting her from the taunts of the other children who called her a teacher’s pet, even when he was the one, the slow son of the schoolmistress, who suffered worst in comparison. After Esther’s mother’s death, Mrs. Roberts had been at Cilgwyn every day for a week, quietly seeing to their meals and keeping the place going. Rhys had been solicitous too, in his clumsy way, as if he thought the loss of a parent connected them more. But Esther had resented the way he talked about Arthur, saying the words “your father” reverently, as if in a prayer (“Your father who art in sheep pen,” she used to whisper to herself), and he was always on about his mother, my mam this and my mam that, as if he were dangling Mrs. Roberts before her like a carrot. The fact that Esther was fond of her teacher, thrilled by her approval, only made Rhys’s insistence, with it’s reminder of the lingering girlish crush she had on his mother, the more embarrassing. Once, Rhys asked her if she thought his mother and her father might marry, a suggestion she recoiled from, even more so than she recoiled from his more recent plan to unite their families.

  The ratcheting tring of a bell announces the return of Colin, wheeling a bicycle before him. “Your carriage awaits!” She’d been hoping for a jeep, but he is only a corporal. “Better than shank’s pony,” he tells her with a grin, clambering onto the saddle and wrestling the bike around for her to perch on the handlebars. She feels self-conscious raising her bum onto the frame, aware of him watching, but then they’re off.

  Colin pedals firmly. She can feel the bike vibrating with his effort as they near the brow of the hill behind the pub, and then her stomach turns over as they start to coast down the far side. Soon they’re flying, laughing in the darkness. The wind presses her skirt to her legs, then catches it, flipping the hem up against her waist. Her slip slides up her legs, billows in the breeze as if remembering it’s past life as a parachute, and her knees and then one white thigh flash in the starlight. She wants to lean down to fix it, but Colin has her hands pressed under his on the handlebars, and when she wriggles he tells her, “Hold still, luv. I’ve got you.”

  She has never been to Sunnyvale, the old holiday camp, but she remembers, as a child before the war, seeing posters showing all the fun to be had there: pictures of cheerful tots and bathing beauties by the pool. Arthur recalls when the camp was the site of finishing sheds for the quarried slate, when the lane leading to it was a track for freight wagons bringing the great slabs off the mountain. The rails had still been visible farther up, beyond the camp, until ’39, when they’d been hauled away for scrap. They’re probably part of a tank now, Esther thinks, or a battleship, miles away from where they started. The camp itself had opened in the twenties as a hiking base—a favorite pastime in these parts since the Ladies of Llangollen popularized it in their diary—and enjoyed a brief boom after Mallory stayed there while training in Snowdonia. But his disappearance on Everest, coupled with the Depression, had ended the camp’s first period of prosperity, and the war had put paid to it’s second, after it reopened in the late thirties with much-trumpeted improvements, like a children’s playground and the swimming pool.

  On hot summer days, gathering the flock from the hillside above, running to keep up with her father’s long, loose stride, Esther would steal glances at the faceted blue gem of water below her and imagine it’s coolness. But such places aren’t for locals. Even in better days, the most her father could afford was the odd day trip on a growling charabanc to Rhyl or Llandudno. Besides, as he used to tell her, “Who needs a pool when there’s the ocean for free?” But she hates the sea, the sharp salt taste, the clammy clumps of seaweed. She’s only ever seen swimming pools at the pictures, but for her that other Esther, Esther Williams, is the most beautiful woman in the world (Welsh to boot, judging by her name). She’d seen Bathing Beauty three times that spring.

  So as soon as Colin coasts through the back gates of the old camp, she asks him to show her the pool. He looks a little surprised—probably has one of the empty, mildewed chalets in mind—but something in her voice, her eagerness, convinces him. He props the bike in the shadows behind a dark hut and leads her through the kids’ playground. She clambers up the slide and swishes down on her backside, arms outstretched.

  He studies her from the roundabout, circling slowly. There’s a watchful quality in him, as if he’s waiting for something, the right moment, and the thought is delicious to her. When she bats at the swings, he calls softly, “Want a push?” and she tells him throatily, “Yeah.”

  She settles herself, and he puts his hands in the small of her back and shoves firmly to set her off, and then as she swings he touches her lightly, his fingers spread across her hips, each time she passes. “Go on!” she calls, and he pushes her harder and harder, until she sees her shiny toe tops rising over the indigo silhouette of the encircling mountains. When she finally comes to a stop, the strands of dark hair that have flown loose fall back and cover her face. She tucks them away, all but one, which sticks to her cheek and throat, an inky curve. He reaches for it and traces it, and she takes his hand for a second, then pushes it away. He’s on the verge of something, but she doesn’t want him to come out with it just yet, not until it’s perfect.

  “I saw the pool from up there,” she tells him breathlessly and she pulls him towards it. She can see the water, the choppy surface, and she wants, just once, to recline beside it and run her hand through it. But when she gets close and bends down, she sees that what she has taken for the surface of the water is an old tarpaulin stretched over the mouth of the pool. She strikes at it bad-temperedly, as if it spoils everything.

  “For leaves and that,” Colin says, catching up. “So it doesn’t get all mucky.”

  “But what about the water?”

  “Suppose they drained it.”

  He can see her disappointment, but h
e isn’t discouraged. He looks like he’d relish making it up to her.

  “Come ’ere,” he says, taking her hand and pulling her along to the metal steps that drop into the pool.

  He kneels and unfastens the cloth where it’s tied to the edge by guy ropes. “Follow me.” He climbs down, his feet, his legs, his torso disappearing until she can see only the top of his head. She notices a tiny, sunburned bald spot just as he looks up, and she realizes he can see up her skirt. She hops back, snapping her heels together, and he grins and vanishes.

  “Colin,” she calls softly, suddenly alone.

  There’s no answer.

  She crouches closer to the flapping gap of cloth, like a diver about to plunge forward. “Colin?”

  Nothing.

  Then she sees a ridge in the cloth, like the fin of a shark moving away from her, circling, coming back. “What’s that?” she says, and, as if from a long way off, comes the cry “Me manhood.”

  Despite herself she laughs, and in that moment grabs the railing of the steps and ducks below the cover.

  It’s surprisingly light in the empty pool. The tarpaulin is a thin blue oilcloth, and the starlight seeps through it unevenly as if through a cloudy sky. The pool is bathed in a pale, blotchy light, and the illusion of being underwater is accentuated by the design of shells printed on the tiles of the bottom. Overhead the breeze snaps the tarp like a sail. She can just make out Colin, like a murky beast at the far end of the pool, the deep end. She takes a step forward, the world sloping away beneath her suddenly, almost falls, stumbles down towards him.

  When she gets closer, she finds him walking around in circles with exaggerated slowness, making giant O shapes with his mouth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m a fish,” he says. “Glub glub, get it?” And she joins him, giggling, snaking her arms ahead of her in a languid breast-stroke.

  He weaves back and forth around her. “Glub glub glub!”

  “Now what are you doing?” she asks, as he steps sideways and bumps her. “Hey!”

  “I’m a crab,” he says, sidling off, scuttling back, bumping her again.

  She feels his hand on her arse.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry!” He shrugs, holds up his hands. “Sharp pincers.”

  “That hurt,” she says, pulling away. She starts to backpedal towards the shallow end, windmilling her arms. “Backstroke!” she cries, clenching her teeth in an Esther Williams smile. But he catches her, wraps her in a hug.

  “Mr. Octopus,” he whispers, “has got you.”

  She can hear his heart beating.

  “’Ere,” he says. “Want to know a secret?”

  And she nods firmly, composing herself.

  “Pee,” he whispers. “Oh.” He grins. “Doubleyas!” It takes her a moment to decipher him. “POWs!” he repeats, like it’s a punch line, and slowly, queasily, she begins to smile. “That’s who it’s for! And your lot thinking they was part of the war effort.” He laughs, and she sees that this is what he’s been holding in all this time—laughter, a bellyful of it. But after a second she joins him anyway, hoping that if they can share this joke, then he won’t think her one of them, will see her on his side.

  He’s still chuckling when she takes his head in her hands and kisses him until the laughter is stifled and he starts to respond. She’s put all her strength into the kiss, but when he kisses back it’s with even greater force, this soldier she’s only known for a fortnight. He turns her in his arms, as if dancing, and she tries to move her feet with him, but he’s holding too tight, simply swinging her around. She feels dizzy. Her shoes scuff the tiles, and she thinks, I just polished them. The pressure of his arms makes it hard to breathe. She moans softly, her mouth under his mouth, his tongue against hers. When they finally stop spinning, she finds herself pressed against the cold tile wall of the pool. Up close it stinks of dank, chlorine, and rotting leaves.

  “I’ll be leaving soon,” he whispers hoarsely. “Will you miss me?”

  She nods in his arms, although what she feels most sharply is not his loss, but jealous of his leaving. She presses her head against his chest, away from the hard wall. Take me with you, she prays.

  “I’ll miss you,” he tells her, his lips to her ear. “We could be at the front this time next month. I wish I had something to remember you by. Something to keep up me fighting spirits.”

  She feels him picking at her blouse, the buttons. She feels a hand on her knee, fluttering at her hem, under her skirt—“Mermaid!” he croons—sliding against the silk of her slip.

  “Nice,” Colin breathes. “Who says you Welsh girls don’t know your duty? Proper patriot, you are. Thinking of England.” Her head is still bent towards him, but now she is straining her neck against his weight. She can feel the bony crook of his elbow pressing against her side, and across her belly the tense muscles of his forearm, twitching.

  “Nargois,” she tells him, but he doesn’t understand. “Nargois!”

  “Fuck,” he whispers, as if correcting her. “Say ‘fuck.’”

  There’s pressure, then pain. Colin grunts into her hair, short, hot puffs of breath. She wonders if she dares scream, who would hear her, who might come, wonders if she’s more afraid of being caught than of what he’s doing to her. And then he’s covering her mouth anyway, his tongue opening her lips, thrusting against her tongue, entering her mouth, even as she feels him, with a darting suddenness, enter her below. It drives the air out of her like a blow, breaking the kiss. She clenches her teeth, but his face is in her hair now, his neck arched as if to spit. She twists her head against the coarse wool on his chest, trying to shake it, and he says, “Almost, almost,” and bucks against her. Something jumps inside her, and she lifts her head sharply, catches him under the chin with a crack.

  He cries out, stepping back, clutching his jaw, his tongue tipped with blood.

  “Oh! Are you all right?” She starts to reach for him.

  “Cunt!” he says, snatching at her wrist. She doesn’t know the word, it’s not in her schoolbooks, but she knows the tone, pulls away, curses him back in Welsh.

  “Speak English, will you?” he tells her, turning her loose.

  She leaves him there, then, wiping the blood from his lips with his sleeve. She recalls a flirty argument they had over the bar one night last week. He’d wanted her to teach him some Welsh, but she’d laughed at his pronunciation and he’d got mock mad. “Ah, what’s the point?” he said. “Why don’t you just give it up and speak English like the rest of us?” She’d turned a little stern then, mouthed the nationalist arguments about saving the language, preserving the tongue.

  “Oh, come on,” he hisses after her now. “Play the game. I didn’t mean it. Come back, eh? We’ll do it proper. Comfy like. Get a mattress from a chalet, have a lie down.”

  But she keeps going, slipping a little on the tiles, tugging her skirt down, shoving her blouse back in, and she hears him start to chuckle again, the laughter ringing off the tile walls. There’s a last shout from the deep. “Who were you saving it for, eh? Who you saving it for, you Welsh bitch?” He spits wetly.

  She expects him to come after her then, feels her back tense against his touch, won’t run for fear he’ll give chase. But before she reaches the opening, she hears shouts, a harsh scrape of feet on the concrete above. It’s as if she’s willed her own rescue into being, and yet she cowers from it. Torch lights dance over the cover of the pool. Despite herself, she turns to Colin with a beseeching look—to be found like this!—but he’s already past her, his head in the shelter of the tarpaulin, peering out. She tries to button her blouse, fingers fumbling. “Shite,” Colin breathes, but the lights and the footsteps are already receding and she slumps against the wall, her heart hammering. The thought of being discovered, the near miss, makes her stomach clench. Her throat feels raw. She looks back at Colin, wanting to share their escape, but he’s scrambling up the ladder, and a second later, he’s gone.

  A
clean pair of heels, she thinks; the English phrase so suddenly vivid it’s blinding.

  She’s soaking, she realizes: blouse stuck to her back, hair plastered against her neck, a sliding wetness dragging down her legs. Her body feels heavy, waterlogged, her arms shaky, too weak to pull her up the metal ladder, and she clings to the cold rail as if she might drown. It’s a few moments before she can climb out of the pool. There are shouts at the other side of the camp, where the barracks have been built, but she hurries the other way, back over the playground, the tarpaulin ruffling behind her. The seesaw and roundabout are still, the swings rocking gently in the breeze. She finds the bike where he left it, propped behind a chalet, and climbs on, noticing as she hitches up her skirt that the seam of her slip is torn. Catch-stitched, just as her mother taught her. It will take five minutes to mend with a needle and thread, but she suddenly feels like weeping.

  She pushes off, pedaling hard, although she finds it makes her wince to ride. She doesn’t care that she’s stealing his bike. She’ll throw it into the hedge outside the village. He’ll never ask about it, and if he does, she decides, staring at her pale knuckles on the handlebars where his fingers have curled, she’ll pretend she’s forgotten her English.

  Three

  IT’S DUSK, THE SUMMER SKY still light, but the sand at their feet in shadow. It slides away as they descend the dune, and ahead of him Karsten sees old man Schiller stumble, struggling to keep his balance with his hands up.