‘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
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.
