The Welsh Girl (12 page)

seen, the books she's read, the whispered stories she's heard at school--no one survives rape. She is still unclear if the sex itself is so violent that it just kills you on the spot, or if the man

has to actually strangle you or shoot you or stab you afterwards, and she had thought in the midst of Colin's roughness, the blunt, searing pressure of him between her legs, that she was about to find out. But then he left her, and she felt such relief. She had survived, clambered out of the pool as if from a grave. And this is how she knows she hasn't been raped. The idea of being forced doesn't enter into it-- hadn't she gone along willingly enough? Besides, what was it to be forced to do something she didn't want to do? She'd been forced all her life by one circumstance or another--by poverty, by her mother's death, by the needs of the flock.

Being forced to do things is such a part of her daily life, and as for this, she'd at least wanted some part of it--the kissing, her hand in his. If she's been raped, she thinks, then she'd wanted it more than most things in her life, although that isn't saying much. And as for the pain, it hadn't been much worse than the time she'd been pinned against the stall wall and the cow had crushed her foot. The blood made her think of a wound, but only a small one, a barked knuckle, a scraped knee.

If she had to call it anything, she thinks now, groping for the word, she'd call it a misunderstanding. He meant one thing, she meant another.

Beside her, Arthur stops for a second, his boots grating in the lane, and when she glances back, she sees him cupping a match to his face, lighting up. In the brief flare his eyes are hooded beneath his cap, and then he shakes the match out. He'd never think to offer her a smoke, reckons it unladylike. As if she were ever going to be a lady! Her, a farmer's daughter. After her mother's death, she'd started to nag him with all manner of questions about the flock. She'd thought Arthur knew everything she'd ever need to know--about lambing, about tupping, all the business of breeding--and she took it in solemnly, not giggling as she might have a year earlier in

school, even as Arthur blushed scarlet to explain it. And then in the midst of all this information, which seemed so male to her, he told her about
cynefin
, the flock's sense of place, of territory.

She'd heard the word before, of course, but the importance of the concept had escaped her as a child. Now Arthur spelled it out. How it would be impossible to farm on the open mountain if the flock didn't know its place. The sheep would scatter to the winds otherwise. It was why farms hereabouts were only ever sold along with their flocks. No one would buy a patch of land alone. What use would it be? You could try to put new livestock on it, but they'd be gone in a season. "They're not as dumb as they're made out, sheep," Arthur likes to joke, but mostly he speaks of
cynefin
with a kind of reverence, with pride even--not least, as he's told her several times, because the English don't have a word for it. As if it's an essentially Welsh quality.

But how, she demanded, did the sheep know where they were supposed to be? "It goes back to olden days," he began (though each subsequent time he tried to explain, it became 'medieval times' or 'the Stone Age', so she knew he wasn't really sure). "Back then, shepherds stayed with their flocks all year--there were more of them or better paid. They even followed the sheep up into the mountains in winter. And those shepherds kept their beasts in a certain patch, until over the years the flocks learned where they belonged."

But how do they
still
know, she asked, and Arthur had

shrugged. "They remember," he said awkwardly (he hated humanising the flock, thought it soft). "They teach each other, I suppose. From generation to generation like. This flock, our sheep, are connected all the way back to those sheep in past times."

She didn't say it, but she knew what that meant. The male lambs, the wethers, were sold off for meat each year; only the

females, the future ewes, were kept. Whatever was passed down, then, however
cynefin
was preserved, it was from mother to daughter.

And the thought of that had been enough to make her, at thirteen, burst into tears. She had to tell the startled Arthur that she was just scared about what it would mean for a flock to be destroyed. He could believe that easily enough--they had both seen, dotted here and there on the hillsides, the shattered empty stone cottages of failed farms--and in his panic at her tears he launched into a bleak tale of the scabies epidemic in '34, how he and several neighbours had helped Dewi Thomas destroy his own flock to stop the spread. "He shot them, one by one, in the head like, and then he burned them with kerosene. The stink hung about for days. But before that, he had us shear them. He wanted to make what he could, so we took their wool. Not that it was much, you know, it being only November. But you could see the beasts knew something was wrong. They shivered so. I'd have preferred to do the shooting."

He'd looked at her expectantly, as if this terrible story were somehow meant to make her feel better. And, in his gruff male way, it was, she thinks now, as they trudge down the lane side by side. He'd been so embarrassed for her tears, ashamed for her really, that he'd told a story that he thought justified them. At least he'd not suspected that she'd been crying for her mother. That very month she had her first period, and she managed to get through it without breathing a word to him. (She did appeal to Mrs Roberts, though only after she'd sworn her to silence.)

The thought reminds her that she's had some practice keeping secrets from Arthur. But also of the secrets her mother might have passed on to her, had she the time. All Esther has now are scattered memories. A freckled arm flashing in and out of a beam of sunlight as her mother

churned butter, or tipping an old beer bottle filled with milk for a slavering calf. Once they found a lamb snagged on the wire of the fence, its mother bleating fiercely at a crow that had settled itself on a nearby wall waiting for the lamb to tire. The bird had already pecked out one of the lamb's eyes. The crow had been insolent, flashing its oily black wings at them, until a resounding clap from Esther's mother saw it off. Esther, with her small fingers, had had to tease the lamb's short, soft coat off the barb--although she quailed from the ruined socket--and she recalls her mother's stern "Go on, Ess!" and cluck of approval when the fleece came free.

Esther still sees the lamb, now a full-grown ewe, among the flock. The animal stands out, her head cocked to one side, her good eye looking forward. She turned four that spring,

'broken-mouthed', as they called the older ewes, an age when she might not survive a winter or reliably bear a lamb, but Esther had already persuaded Arthur to keep her another season. "She's a survivor," she told him, and he nodded.

She thinks of the ewe now as the pub comes into sight. With one hand she grips the scissors in her pocket, presses her thumb to its point. With the other she takes her father's hand and squeezes it.

"What's that for, then," he asks, flustered.

She shrugs. "I don't know. Just be kind to the boy. For me?"

In reply, he flicks his cigarette into the lane ahead, grinds it out without breaking stride.

t feels like a reprieve when she looks into the pub and there's no sign of the sappers. But it's early yet. Many of them don't get off duty until nine. The lounge is quiet, just the BBC gang (Harry putting on a brave face, despite looking a little the worse for wear), but the public bar, where she sees Arthur forging through the crowd, is seething with resentful locals.

"PO bloody Ws," Bertie Prosser is fulminating. "It's an insult, is what it is."

"All right, luv?" Mary asks over her gin and tonic. "You look like you could use one of these. Put a little rose in your cheeks."

"What?" Esther is staring past her, towards the frosted glass doors.

"She's just a bit anxious, ain't you, girl," Harry chips in, and for once she's almost glad for his interruption. He raises his voice to carry down the passage. "No need to be scared of POWs. They're all innocent men, after all, locked up for something they didn't do." He pops his eyes. "Didn't run away fast enough!"

"We're not bloody scared of them!" Bertie hoots, craning over Jack's bar to jab a stubby finger at Harry.

"Maybe you ought to be," Harry says moodily into his drink. Esther wonders if he's thinking of his wife. But Bertie doesn't hear him.

"We don't give a toss about no Germans. It's bloody English liars we're on about here. I swear, Jack, I don't know why you're even serving these English."

Jack shrugs; Harry has deep pockets.

"And just whom, my good man, are you calling English?" Harry cries, rallying.

"Well, what is you if you ain't?" Bertie wants to know. "Why," Harry says, dropping into brogue, "I'm your Celtic

cousin, to be sure be sure. Isn't that so, our Mary Kate?" "Aye and begorra." Mary crosses herself. "Irish as stew!" "Codswallop!"

"Och! But we've a wee doubting Thomas here, lassie!" "Fair dinkum, ocker," Mary agrees, slapping the bar.

They're all laughing now, except for Arthur, who sips his pint.

Even Esther smiles, and Harry leans in and confides, "Can't be the butt of a joke if they don't know where you're from, see. Only your straight man has a country; patriots got no sense of humour."

"Very bloody funny," Bertie calls, shaking his head. "All right! The League of blooming Nations can stay." He slips into Welsh. "I'm serious, though, Jack. You shouldn't let those bloody sappers in here again."

There are murmurs of agreement and Esther looks over at Jack, sees him weighing it: the cost of breakages if there's a bar fight, against the thirsty business of outrage.

"They'll not be here long enough for another payday," Esther offers, dropping into Welsh herself, but when Jack glances over, she goes back to drawing her pint. "So they say."

"Oh, what the heck," Jack says finally. "Let 'em go to the Prince of Wales. They're banned!" And Esther feels herself go weak with relief, clings to the beer pump.

Bertie leads a little cheer, thrusts his chin out. "Enough of the English buggers."

"Not to mention a few Welsh fools," Arthur calls drily. Bertie whips around like a dog after its own tail. "Well,

Arthur Evans," he sneers, "I'm surprised at you taking their

part."

"I'm just saying they never actually told you what that base was for."

"They led us on, man! They led us up the bloody garden path."

"They might have left the gate open," Arthur tells him. "But I'd say you strayed through it yourself, Bertie." There's some laughter at Bertie's expense and he colours, and Esther feels a twinge of pity for the old windbag. Arthur turns to the room at large. "I thought we should have learned our lesson by now.

This is what comes of trusting the English!" He sees Esther staring, gives her a thin smile of triumph, but she turns away.

"What're they on about now?" Harry wants to know. "They're feeling cheated," Esther mumbles. "Cheated! Ha! That's a good one. Hey, hey," he calls

gleefully, "don't tell me you lot are feeling welshed on?" "Welshed on!" Arthur thunders from the other bar. It's one

expression in English he's always quick to pick up on. He looks furious, but Esther can see he's relishing this. Harry, without realising it, has ended up as her father's straight man, setting up one of his favourite speeches.

"Do you think he even knows where that perfidious phrase comes from?" Arthur asks the rest of them in Welsh, dismissing Harry, who sits back and flaps his fingers and thumb together at Mary like a gabbing mouth. It's true, though, Esther thinks; her father, so taciturn in English, is a different man in Welsh, especially with an audience.

"You won't find it in the dictionary," Arthur is saying. "Not even your
Oxford English Dictionary
." He says the last in English, rolling the
r
, drawing it out to four mocking syllables so it sounds like
Dick-shun-Harry
. And in fact, Esther knows this to be true. She asked in class once where the phrase came from, and Mrs Roberts went to the huge volume she kept on her desk like the Bible, poring over it for long

moments, until she had to admit, blushing even, that the derivation was obscure. It was the first time Esther had ever seen her teacher stumped, the first time she'd glimpsed that there might be a limit to what was known, not just by her, but by adults, and it worried her. She brought it up with Arthur and he grimaced. "Typical! Stands to reason your
English
dictionary don't explain it."

"But--" she began, and he clapped his hands together under her nose. "It's
their
language," he said. "Theirs, see!" He has his own theory, of course, which is what he's regaling them with in the bar.

It goes back to the last century, Arthur explains, when the use of Welsh was forbidden in schools by the English authorities. The rule then was that if a boy was caught speaking Welsh, a placard would be hung around his neck saying, "Spoke Welsh"--"bit like a dunce's, cap"--and at the end of the day the headmaster would strap him. The real devilishness, though, was that if the boy caught another lad speaking Welsh, and informed on him, he could hand the sign on. The placard would be passed from Welsh speaker to Welsh speaker, the one betraying the next, until a last unfortunate was left wearing it at the final school bell. "So, your bloody English, see here," Arthur concludes, "they call us welshers, cheaters, deceivers, make like the very word

'Welsh' means to lie, to betray, when all along they was the ones, with their vicious rule, made our boys act like that."

It's an old story, and Esther's sure others know it as well as she, but there's something about Arthur's unveiling of the inexorable English logic that's still compelling. She sees heads nodding along the bar, watches Arthur, satisfied, light a cigarette. He should have been a reverend, she thinks. When he first told her the story, she was doubtful. "Why wouldn't Mrs Roberts know that?" she asked, and he looked at her as if she were a fool. She saw then that Rhys's hope of their parents