“Aren’t you scared?” Mildred said.
“Aye,” Billy admitted. “I am, a bit.”
He could talk to Mildred. She seemed to know all about him anyway. She had been living with his sister for a couple of years, and women always told each other everything. However, there was something else about Mildred that made him feel comfortable. Aberowen girls were always trying to impress boys, saying things for effect and checking their appearance in mirrors, but Mildred was just herself. She said outrageous things sometimes, and made Billy laugh. He felt he could tell her anything.
He was almost overwhelmed by how attractive she was. It was not her fair curly hair or her blue eyes, but her devil-may-care attitude that mesmerized him. Then there was the age difference. She was twenty-three, and he was still not quite eighteen. She seemed very worldly-wise, yet she was frankly interested in him, and that was highly flattering. He looked longingly at her across the room, hoping he would get a chance to talk to her alone, wondering if he would dare to touch her hand, put his arm around her, and kiss her.
They were sitting around the square table in Ethel’s kitchen: Billy, Tommy, Ethel, and Mildred. It was a warm evening, and the door was open to the backyard. On the flagstone floor Mildred’s two little girls were playing with Lloyd. Enid and Lillian were three and four years old, but Billy had not yet worked out which was which. Because of the children, the women had not wanted to go out, so Billy and Tommy had fetched some bottles of beer from the pub.
“You’ll be all right,” Mildred said to Billy. “You’ve been trained.”
“Aye.” The training had not done much for Billy’s confidence. There had been a lot of marching up and down, saluting, and doing bayonet drills. He did not feel he had been taught how to survive.
Tommy said: “If the Germans all turn out to be stuffed dummies tied to posts, we’ll know how to stick our bayonets in them.”
Mildred said: “You can shoot your guns, can’t you?”
For a while they had trained with rusted and broken rifles stamped “D.P.” for “drill purposes,” which meant they were not on any account to be fired. But eventually each of them had been given a bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle with a detachable magazine holding ten rounds of.303 ammunition. It turned out that Billy could shoot well, being able to empty the magazine in under a minute and still hit a man-size target at three hundred yards. The Lee Enfield was renowned for its rapid rate of fire, the trainees had been told: the world record was thirty-eight rounds a minute.
“The equipment is all right,” Billy said to Mildred. “It’s the officers that worry me. So far I haven’t met one I’d trust in an emergency down the pit.”
“The good ones are all out in France, I expect,” Mildred said optimistically. “They let the wankers stay home and do the training.”
Billy laughed at her choice of words. She had no inhibitions. “I hope you’re right.”
What he was really afraid of was that when the Germans started shooting at him he might turn and run away. That scared him most of all. The humiliation would be worse than a wound, he thought. Sometimes he felt so wrought up about it that he longed for the terrible moment to come, so that he would know, one way or the other.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to shoot those wicked Germans,” Mildred said. “They’re all rapists.”
Tommy said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the Daily Mail. They’d have you think all trade unionists are disloyal. I know that’s not true-most of the members of my union branch have volunteered. So the Germans may not be as bad as the Mail paints them.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Mildred turned back to Billy. “Have you seen The Tramp?”
“Aye, I love Charlie Chaplin.”
Ethel picked up her son. “Say good night to Uncle Billy.” The toddler wriggled in her arms, not wanting to go to bed.
Billy remembered him newborn, and the way he had opened his mouth and wailed. How big and strong he seemed now. “Good night, Lloyd,” he said.
Ethel had named him after Lloyd George. Billy was the only person who knew that he also had a middle name: Fitzherbert. It was on his birth certificate, but Ethel had not told anyone else.
Billy would have liked to get Earl Fitzherbert in the sights of his Lee Enfield.
Ethel said: “He looks like Gramper, doesn’t he?”
Billy could not see the resemblance. “I’ll let you know when he grows a mustache.”
Mildred put her two to bed at the same time. Then the women announced that they wanted supper. Ethel and Tommy went to buy oysters, leaving Billy and Mildred alone.
As soon as they had gone, Billy said: “I really like you, Mildred.”
“I like you, too,” she said; so he moved his chair next to hers and kissed her.
She kissed him back with enthusiasm.
He had done this before. He had kissed several girls in the back row of the Majestic cinema in Cwm Street. They always opened their mouths straightaway, and he did the same now.
Mildred pushed him away gently. “Not so fast,” she said. “Do this.” And she kissed him with her mouth closed, her lips brushing his cheek and his eyelids and his neck, and then his lips. It was strange but he liked it. She said: “Do the same to me.” He followed her instructions. “Now do this,” she said, and he felt the tip of her tongue on his lips, touching them as lightly as possible. Once again he copied her. Then she showed him yet another way to kiss, nibbling his neck and his earlobes. He felt he could do this forever.
When they paused for breath she stroked his cheek and said: “You’re a quick learner.”
“You’re lovely,” he said.
He kissed her again and squeezed her breast. She let him do it for a while, but when he started to breathe heavily she took his hand away. “Don’t get too worked up,” she said. “They’ll be back any minute.”
A moment later he heard the front door. “Oh, dammo,” he said.
“Be patient,” she whispered.
“Patient?” he said. “I’m going to France tomorrow.”
“Well, it ain’t tomorrow yet, is it?”
Billy was still wondering what she meant when Ethel and Tommy came into the room.
They ate their supper and finished the beer. Ethel told them the story of Jayne McCulley, and how Lady Maud had been carried out of the charity office by a policeman. She made it sound like a comedy, but Billy was bursting with pride for his sister and the way she stood up for the rights of poor women. And she was the manager of a newspaper and the friend of Lady Maud! He was determined that one day he, too, would be a champion for ordinary people. It was what he admired about his father. Da was narrow-minded and stubborn, but all his life he had fought for the workingman.
Darkness fell and Ethel announced it was bedtime. She used cushions to improvise beds on the kitchen floor for Billy and Tommy. They all retired.
Billy lay awake, wondering what Mildred had meant by It ain’t tomorrow yet. Perhaps she was just promising to kiss him again in the morning, when he left to catch the train to Southampton. But she had seemed to imply more. Could it really be that she wanted to see him again tonight?
The thought of going to her room inflamed him so much that he could not sleep. She would be wearing a nightdress, and under the sheets her body would be warm to the touch, he thought. He imagined her face on the pillow, and envied the pillowcase because it was touching her cheek.
When Tommy’s breathing seemed regular, Billy slipped out of his sheets.
“Where are you going?” said Tommy, not as fast asleep as Billy had thought.
“Toilet,” Billy whispered. “All that beer.”
Tommy grunted and turned over.
In his underwear, Billy crept up the stairs. There were three doors off the landing. He hesitated. What if he had misinterpreted Mildred? She might scream at the sight of him. How embarrassing that would be.
No, he thought; she’s not the screaming type.
He opened the first door he came to. There was a faint light from the street, and he could see a narrow bed with the blond heads of two little girls on the pillow. He closed the door softly. He felt like a burglar.
He tried the next door. In this room, a candle was burning, and it took him a moment to adjust to its unsteady
