The Welsh Girl

by Peter Ho Davies

  “How do you do?” he asked, and the rifle barrels trained on him began to bob and weave, and he saw the men were laughing, shaking with it.

  “Oh, that’s a good one, Jerry! That’s priceless, that is. How do you fucking do yourself?”

  He had to lean back into the entry, clinging to the scorched camouflage netting, to call the others out. Schiller fairly ran to him, but Karsten had to order Heino out when he hung back—ashamed of having shat himself, Karsten thought. The boy appeared at last with his hands up, his right raw and bleeding. He’d tried to beat out the flames on Willi’s head.

  IT’S LIGHTENING faintly on the beach, the posts of the stockade becoming visible against the sky, and Karsten thinks it must be dawn. Nearby, he hears the rasp of a match and a guard’s face flares in the gloom, then vanishes as if blown out, the light shrinking to the smoldering tip of the cigarette. Enough to draw a bead on in the darkness, though, and Karsten finds himself holding his breath, waiting for a shot. But there’s nothing. When he looks back at the sky, he realizes the red glow to the east is fire.

  In the immediate aftermath of their capture, after they’d seen to Heino’s hand, one of the Tommies had offered a cigarette, holding it under Schiller’s nose, and when Schiller reached for it, closing his fist and yanking it away.

  “What’s he want?” Schiller muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  They were squatting, fingers laced behind their heads.

  The Tommy proffered his hand again, whispered something then, pointed at Schiller.

  “What’s he saying?” Schiller hissed, almost losing his balance. “What the fuck’s he saying?”

  “Trade,” Karsten told him dully. “He wants to trade you for the cigarette.”

  “Trade what?”

  “Your cap.”

  “My cap?”

  “He wants it for a souvenir,” Karsten said, looking at his feet. “To remember this by.” You’re going to get a medal, he wanted to shout in the Tommy’s face, stabbed with sudden envy.

  Schiller was already pulling out the cap folded under his epaulet and handing it over.

  He offered to share the cigarette. “Go on. That was a good deal. A souvenir! Who’d want to remember this shambles?”

  The victors, Karsten thought, but after a second he took the cigarette and then held it out to Heino. “Take it,” he barked when the other hesitated. “You don’t know when you’ll see another.” And the boy had reached out his good hand.

  Throughout the night, they’re visited by more souvenir hunters. Heino gives up his prized pack of dirty playing cards for a couple of squares of chocolate, which he gobbles down at once. Karsten trades his lighter for a cigarette and then waits stonily for the Tommy to light it through the fence for him. Karsten assumes they’ll run out of things to offer before long. But he’s wrong. The Tommies want everything and anything—epaulets, belts, even buttons—and when the prisoners shake their heads, the Tommies stop asking, stop bartering, start demanding at gunpoint.

  Faced with the muzzle of a gun, Schiller gives up his watch, dangling by it’s strap like a fish by the tail.

  “Spoils of war,” he says, shrugging.

  “It was your father’s,” Karsten says. He has almost nothing of his own father’s, everything having been sold after his death to raise the money to move.

  “Should have buried it in the sand,” Heino says.

  “And ruined it!”

  “At least the Tommies wouldn’t have got it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, you little shit,” Schiller hisses. “All you’ve got to lose is your fucking virginity.”

  “Enough,” Karsten tells them, though privately he agrees with Schiller. The boy’s bravado rankles.

  But Heino does have something more to lose, it turns out. Later, when they’re told to turn out their pockets by yet another “collector,” the boy balks at undoing the button on his breast pocket. The Tommy stands over him, nudging him first with the flat of his bayonet, and when the boy bats it away, with the point, pressing it to his chest until Heino gradually lies back in the sand under the force. Karsten waits until he sees the boy holding his breath, nostrils flared, eyes staring, before he reaches across him gently. The bayonet point picks at the brass button, then withdraws with a scrape, and Karsten undoes it, pulls out a couple of sheets of folded paper, hands them up.

  “A letter,” Schiller says afterwards, shaking his head.

  “It was to my mother!”

  “And that’s worth dying for? How many times do you want us to save your life today?”

  “Don’t use me as an excuse!” He pulls away from them, shoulders hunched and shaking.

  Schiller rolls his eyes, but Karsten lets the boy cry, and only when he is quiet, goes over and lays a hand on his shoulder.

  “I just never thought I’d surrender,” the boy murmurs. “Killed maybe, wounded, but never that I’d surrender. I wasn’t even afraid of that.”

  “Well, you didn’t, did you?” Karsten takes a deep breath. “You were just following orders.” It seems to him as if it’s the only order he’s given since his promotion.

  The boy glances over quickly, then away, but nods to himself.

  A little later, he looks up at the guards beyond the stockade.

  “You don’t think they know German, do you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Only,” he whispers, “there was some, you know, soppy stuff in my letter. I wouldn’t like them to laugh at it.”

  “They won’t.”

  “We killed loads of them, didn’t we?” the boy asks, brightening. “How many do you think?”

  But Karsten is thinking of his own letters from home, the bundle of them tied together in his locker at the barracks. She’s proud of him, his mother has written. The first time she’s ever said so, he thinks. No matter how helpful he’d been around the pension, she thought it women’s work, beneath him. Even his labors for hunters and hikers were tainted by an air of servitude. “I used to stay in hotels when I was a girl,” she told him once. But now she boasts to the neighbors about his prowess on the range. She’s nagged him for photos, and when he sends them, she tells him how smart he looks, how handsome. She has them all lined up along the mantel, as if on parade. Good for business, she’s written, if there were any business. She’s just written to him about his promotion. If only the war lasts long enough, perhaps you’ll make leutnant. It was his father’s rank during the last war, his highest station in life, and achieving it, Karsten knew, would be a kind of redemption in her eyes. She was the daughter of a vizeadmiral herself, had traveled the world with him as a child. She’d met Karsten’s father at a navy ball in 1914 and married him a year later. He was from an old naval family too, and although only a junior officer, already making a name for himself in the new submarine service. “He’d have made kapitan,” she told him once, “if he hadn’t got in trouble in 1917. He didn’t agree with the order to attack passenger ships.” She shook her head. “They wanted to court-martial him, except my father pulled some strings, had him reassigned to the surface fleet.” They’d both been at Scapa Flow in 1919 when the interned fleet scuttled itself. Karsten’s grandfather had gone down with his vessel, and his father had spent almost a year as a prisoner of war.

  Karsten wonders how she’ll feel when she hears he’s a prisoner himself, what she’ll tell the neighbors. And then he wonders when she’ll be notified, and he quails at the thought of what she’ll think in the meantime.

  His own turn to get fleeced comes a little later. He’d already given up his folded postcard of Torfhaus and the scallop-edged photo of the French whore, Françoise, the men liked to say he was in love with. “Who’s this fräulein, then?” the sergeant who’d taken it had asked. “Look forward to making her acquaintance, I will.” But Karsten had kept his head, not rising to the bait, submitting to it all calmly, with dignity he hoped, locking his eyes on Heino’s, showing he could take it.

  But then the sergeant r
eturns, moving among them by the flame of a cigarette lighter, until he finds Karsten, pulls him to his feet, makes him stand at attention while he picks at the stitches of his corporal’s stripe with a bayonet.

  “A sergeant wanting corporal’s stripes,” Heino says, shaking his head.

  It comes to Karsten slowly that their surrender wasn’t that one moment already past, at the mouth of the bunker, but somehow will go on and on. He wonders what more they’ll have to give up before it’s over. Everything but their lives, probably.

  THEY’RE SILENT after that, the three of them, pretending to sleep in the darkness, though Karsten knows none of them are. They’re still, but it’s not the stillness of sleepers—he’s come to recognize the slow, flaring sighs of sleeping men after four months in barracks—but of listeners, their breaths shallow, punctuated by sniffs. The stillness of sentries, he thinks bitterly. He wonders what they’re waiting for, what they’re hoping to hear. He listens with them, straining to catch the sounds of battle, of a counterattack, but as far as he can tell the rattle and crump of the fighting is growing more distant, faint beneath the lap and suck of the tide. What he hears instead are the sounds the sand makes—the creaking near the waterline where it’s densest, the soft patter of the dunes where it’s finest—and the heavy breathing of the columns of men slogging through it, their occasional scuffs and curses. Even now, every few minutes he’ll hear the dull clout and scrape of a landing craft’s door slamming the wet sand, catch the hooded green glow of muster lamps. If he listens hard enough he can make out the slight sleigh-bell jingling of dog tags, of pack straps, of belt buckles.

  He wonders if the others hear it too, or if perhaps they’re just attending to the faint sounds of themselves, their hearts, their stomachs, their throats, listening to their own breaths and feeling grateful for them.

  And then, in the watery half-light of dawn, with the salt rime already beginning to crust their uniforms, they see what they’ve been waiting for all along: a line of men, mostly regular infantry by the look of them, hands raised, coming towards them over the flattened dune grass. They hurry to the fence, straining to recognize faces from their own unit. There’s a sense of safety, if not strength, in numbers, Karsten supposes, and despite himself he feels his spirits rise. It’s as if they’ve been marooned, the three of them, and now glimpse a sail in the distance. Even another wreck is to be welcomed, apparently. But as he watches, the line keeps coming and he begins to wonder how far back it stretches. It seems a skinny, ragged parody of the British column moving the other way.

  Heino starts to wave his bandaged hand, but Karsten pulls it down. There are no familiar faces that he can see, and beyond that gnawing disappointment, he’s suddenly wary of these strangers, the way they eye him stonily as they file in—thirty or more in the end—and gather at the far side of the stockade. Several of them fall to the sand, exhausted. The British pass in canteens, but no food, and Karsten and the others sling them over their shoulders, hand them out among the new men.

  “It’s not so bad, mates,” Schiller tells them.

  “That so?” A burly figure detaches himself from the crowd and faces them. “Maybe we wouldn’t be here at all if not for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Heino asks, a little shrilly.

  “Leave it,” Karsten whispers, taking his arm. There are no officers, he realizes—the British must be holding them separately—and the group has the desultory surliness of enlisted men when no higher ranks are present.

  “It means,” the fellow says, setting himself, “if you hadn’t saved your own skins, we’d have had a better chance.”

  The boy makes to lunge at the man, but Karsten holds him.

  “Leave it!” he repeats, and then more loudly: “These will be answering the same question soon enough to the next bunch.”

  “Defeatist!” the burly man snaps. “That’s the kind of talk put us all here.”

  Karsten feels sand grind between his molars, tastes salt. He wants to spit, but doesn’t. Instead, he and Schiller pull the struggling boy away, the man’s voice following them, taunting: “How much ammunition did you have left, you shits? How many bullets, how many grenades?”

  “Let me go!” Heino snarls, and when at last they do, he jerks away, glares at them as if he’d strike out, but finally throws himself on the sand.

  Karsten feels the burden settling over them. This is what it is to be the first; all the rest can blame them. And they, in turn, can blame him, who led them in surrender. Schiller won’t meet his eye, and Karsten sees Heino edging away in the sand. He hisses the boy’s name but Heino won’t look at him, and eventually Karsten stops, not sure who is more ashamed, he or the boy.

  Over and over he pushes his hands into the sand, clenching them and pulling them out, watching the sand drain from them however hard he squeezes.

  Finally, at full dawn, Karsten notices the guard being changed, and jumping to his feet, he hurries along the fence after a lieutenant and his sergeant, his boots sinking in the light sand. “Excuse me. Excuse me.”

  Without breaking stride, the ruddy-faced lieutenant looks over at his sergeant wearily. “What’s he want, Sergeant?”

  “What do you want?”

  “The men could use some food,” Karsten tells him uncertainly, adding a “sir” in the direction of the lieutenant. “Some of us haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.”

  “Jerry’s a mite peckish, sir.”

  “Really.” The lieutenant looks thoughtful. “And what does Jerry eat, do you think? What do you think he’d fancy, Sergeant? Humble pie?”

  “Or a nice bit of crow, sir.”

  Karsten pulls up and watches them go, kicking up sand.

  When he slumps down beside Schiller, the other tells him, “I don’t have any English, my friend, but if you want to talk to their officers, do me a favor. Do it far away from me.”

  Karsten turns to stare at him, and Schiller glances away over his shoulder. Karsten waits until he looks at him again.

  “You were happy enough I spoke English when it saved your neck,” he says tightly.

  “I’m still thinking of my neck,” Schiller tells him.

  KARSTEN KEEPS to himself after that, though in truth none of them talk much that morning, just watch the long columns of Allied troops march past them, the second and third waves of the invasion. The enemy are so many, Karsten thinks, through the night and now the morning, still marching out of the sweeping surf. The prisoners drowse and wake and drowse and wake, and no matter when they awaken, no matter how many hours have passed, there is the enemy column moving up the beach. And offshore the smoke of countless ships; overhead, hour after hour, the drone of planes. It’s astonishing, Karsten thinks, a staggering sight, the kind of manpower that built the pyramids or the Great Wall, the wonders of the world.

  All these men, he thinks, and yet if he could, if he’d had the ammunition, if the pillbox could have held out, he’d have slaughtered them all, wouldn’t he? Hundreds, thousands. For as long as they’d have kept coming. Until their bones covered the beach like rocks. The thought makes him sway with exhaustion, and for the first time he feels a flicker of relief to have been captured, shudders as if to shake it off.

  Yet another landing craft disgorges it’s men. His eyes follow them up the beach, past the stockade, towards the dunes, and he feels an odd pull, a tug towards the horizon. All those men flowing in one direction. He yearns to look over the dunes, as if he has no idea, no recollection, of what’s there. It comes to him that he’s behind enemy lines, but the shifting geography seems unreal, as if the earth has turned under his very feet. This was German territory and now it’s British, but he can’t see how it has changed. He pictures the maps he’s seen, imagines the fields beyond the dunes tinged the faint dawning pink of empire. And he wishes he could follow that column of men, feels powerfully as if he’s falling behind, he who could march faster and farther than anyone.

  Four

  HER FATHER�
�S ACREAGE includes the steep slope above the camp, but by bike it’s a long ride round the mountain and through the village to the farmhouse. Esther pedals hard for the first mile, keen to put the camp behind her, but before long she’s laboring. She makes it up the slope to the pub, her breath coming in short, hard pants, but leans over the handlebars, spent, to coast through the quiet village. At the foot of the last long hill home, she squeezes the brakes in defeat, steps down, and wheels the bike. It’s spokes tick quietly beside her, holding the rushing silence of the night at bay. Her father turns in early, but tonight she wants to be sure he’s asleep. She doesn’t want to face him, to answer any questions, at least not until he comes stumping into the kitchen with the morning’s pail of milk and she can put his breakfast, two thick “doorstep” slices of bread and butter, in front of him.

  She tries to think about Colin, to order her thoughts, make sense of what’s happened, but finds each time her mind darting off, turning instead to Eric, their first evacuee. He’d just turned fourteen when he arrived in 1940, a year older than she, but a townie, so clueless in the ways of the country (the first time he watched the milking, he blanched, asked her shakily, “Milk is cow’s piss?”) that she felt his equal. An only child, she’d been thrilled at the prospect of another youngster about the place—even a boy, as her father insisted it must be, “so he can earn his keep.” She pulled on her mother’s arm all the way down to the station, only to grow shy when they entered the waiting room, where the new arrivals were lined up as if for inspection.

  Her mother nudged her ahead, but she was too nervous to look at any of the strange boys in their brown blazers and corduroy shorts. She hurried down one row after another and only halted when a boy knelt down in front of her to tie his shoelace. She stopped and waited, and he whispered, “Pick me,” so softly she thought he was talking to his shoe. “Pick me,” he said again, looking up and meeting her gaze. He reached out and grasped her hand, and when he released it, left a balled-up stocking in her palm. She turned crimson when the crumpled nylon began to spring open like a grey flower and she saw what she was holding.