Chapter 10
On the day the German prisoners of war were arriving in Bridgend, Cora and Megan walked up Station Road arm in arm.
Cora saw Megan’s father, Idwal, wearing a sandwich board as he waited in the cold wind outside Bridgend railway station.
He had the energy of a man who was filled with passionate expectation.
‘What’s your dad saying?’ she asked Megan.
‘Love thine enemy,’ Megan said, jamming her hat on her dandelion-yellow head because her springy hair had a tendency to take charge and lift it off. She’d inherited her hair from her father.
Luckily, that was all she’d inherited, Cora thought, because Idwal was considered a harmless lunatic, shouting his message of peace to the war-torn world, whereas Megan was always calm and sensible.
Cora saw that his sandwich board had the two messages written on it in black paint, Love thine enemy on one side and Bless them that curse you on the other. They were radical messages in the circumstances, Cora thought.
‘Why is he wearing a sandwich board as well as shouting?’
‘It’s for the hard of hearing,’ Megan explained.
Cora gave her a sympathetic look. As the crowds gathered on the pavements, she watched Idwal jump around frequently like a boy playing hopscotch so that both sides could be seen and his message of hope appreciated.
Now and then the sandwich boards clapped him hard enough to knock the breath out of him, which was a relief.
‘He’s going to wear himself out, doing that,’ she said.
‘Just ignore him,’ Megan said, frowning.
For her sake, Cora tried her best to, but it wasn’t easy because he was making a spectacle of himself.
The crowds were gathering for the arrival of the special train with its large consignment of German prisoners of war. Very hush-hush, it was, and everybody knew about it, so they had come to see the enemy for themselves.
Cora was nervously looking out for her mother.
When she saw her coming up the road in her black felt hat and sensible shoes, with her handbag secure in the crook of her elbow and her lips pressed white with distaste, she couldn’t help thinking there was something to be said for Idwal’s message of peace.
Gladdie came running to join Cora and Megan, and stopped dead when she saw Idwal.
‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink!’ Idwal roared, shaking his fists like an Old Testament prophet.
‘Poor Idwal,’ Gladdie said. ‘Delusions of grandeur.’
Poor Megan, too, Cora thought, but she didn’t say it. Idwal had been a perfectly ordinary farmer right until the Germans started bombing Cardiff in 1940 and he took the blame for it on himself.
No matter how unlikely it sounded, or how loudly people mocked him when he repeated his story, Idwal had got it firmly into his head that he himself was the real reason the Luftwaffe was targeting them and there was no talking him out of it.
It was personal between him and Lord Haw-Haw.
Lord Haw-Haw knew the area. He’d lived there for a while, see, Idwal had explained to Cora earnestly, and he liked a drink.
Idwal’s story was that he had met Lord Haw-Haw, alias William Joyce, in the Red Dragon pub one market day when the man was surrounded by a little group of farmers because he had the type of accent that made his words sound authoritative and worth listening to, and well, you never knew.
That impression wore off the longer he spoke, and the deep scar that curved from the corner of his right cheek to his earlobe looked very much like a sneer, but it was hard to shut out that upper-class voice, and eventually Idwal could take no more of it.
He lost patience and told him he was talking rubbish.
Did a fair impression of him too, he would add modestly in the telling.
Tawking rubbish, old chep. It caused a lot of amusement at the time, which was gratifying, but William Joyce didn’t like it one little bit and he jumped to his feet and threatened Idwal with his pointing finger.
‘I’m not going to forget this, sir, you wait and see! ’
The way he said it, spit flying from his thin lips with the force of his words, Idwal swore it sounded more like a curse than a threat. And sure enough, not long after that, Lord Haw-Haw escalated the disagreement with the help of the Luftwaffe.
Coincidence? Idwal didn’t think so, and no one, not even the minister, could convince him otherwise.
A guilty conscience is a terrible thing to live with and it weighed heavily on Idwal’s shoulders.
He replayed this story over and over to Megan and to anyone else who had the time, inclination, or misfortune to listen, looking for some loophole to his own arrogance so that he could genuinely change the outcome before it was too late.
He deeply regretted going into the Red Dragon that day and losing his patience.
Kneeling in his Anderson shelter one night with his knuckles pressed into his forehead and the bombing disturbing his prayers, he had a sudden spiritual revelation.
God spoke to Idwal in his own voice, the voice of a Welshman, and Idwal made a bargain with God that he would become a pacifist so that God would put an end to the war.
Megan told Cora she hoped the experience might wear off him eventually, like most rash promises made to God in the heat of remorse, but four years ago, that was, and Idwal wasn’t put off by the fact that peace was taking longer than he imagined.
He was content to be patient because the Lord, being eternal, worked on a different timescale from man and quite right too.
While for Idwal all of this made perfect sense, he was generally regarded by those who’d always known him as having gone a bit twp in the head with a touch of shell shock from the bombing, although they agreed he was harmless for the most part.
It wasn’t any consolation to Megan. She worried.
Her father had, on occasion, been beaten up by irate squaddies on account of his message of peace.
Dabbing his face with antiseptic after one of his escapades, she told him she hoped they’d knocked some sense into him, but no, after getting to his feet, Idwal had a habit of chasing after his attackers with the aim of converting them.
And now here Idwal was at Bridgend station in his sandwich board, wanting to make peace with the Germans.
Megan turned to Cora and shrugged helplessly. ‘What can you do? He won’t listen.’
Cora gave Idwal a wave. ‘Shall we go and say hello to him?’
‘No,’ Megan said, pulling her back. ‘Let’s stay here where we are.
I love him, but he’s embarrassing. And he keeps wanting me to stop working in the factory and help him on the farm instead.
He says we’re just making things worse by keeping the war going and retaliating tit for tat.
He thinks we should talk to the Germans and shake hands and be nice. There’s no arguing with him.’
Cora and Gladdie didn’t mind staying on this side of the road at all because to be honest they had a better view of Idwal from here without appearing to stare. All that jumping! Cora huddled deeper into her coat and marvelled at his energy.
‘I wonder what the Germans will make of him when they arrive?’ Gladdie asked with a grin. ‘They’ll think he’s our secret weapon.’
Cora was very nervous about the arrival of the Germans, and a cold wind shuddered through her as if she was about to be indelibly and voluntarily tainted with evil.
She’d come here defiant, her anger smouldering quietly and undetected under the surface like a peat fire.
On a daily basis, she filled those hundreds of large, shiny shells with TNT, and she was efficient about it because, in her imagination, all the enemy soldiers shared one familiar face and one hectoring voice: that of Adolf Hitler, the Implacable and Merciless.
And now she had come to see the enemy for herself. But this was the point that troubled her: the enemy was also going to see her, and she was a coward at heart. ‘I’ve changed my mind about it. Let’s go,’ she said to Gladdie, clutching her sleeve.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Gladdie said irritably, shaking her off. ‘I’m not missing this for anything.’
Across the road Cora’s mother, Jane, had gone to stand near Idwal, preoccupied with her own thoughts. It was only when the train pulled in and Idwal jumped one hundred and eighty degrees with the clack of his boards frightening the life out of her that she was jolted into reacting.
‘Fool!’ her mother said furiously, and all the waiting people jostled to get a good view of what was happening, pushing Idwal to one side.
The first people they saw were the British guards, looking solid and dependable in their uniforms. A cry went up from the crowd: ‘Well done, lads!’
And shortly after that came the moment they had been waiting for and dreading.
The Germans were here.
Smart and fearsome the officers were in their grey and black uniforms and heavy boots, and they kept on coming, hundreds of them, carriage after carriage, lining up in the station yard, shoulders back, and not the slightest bit intimidated by the guards or the watching crowds.
It was their attitude that alarmed Cora most – they looked as straight-backed and proud as victors.
‘Blow me down,’ Gladdie said, leaning heavily on Cora’s shoulder. ‘Look at them! We’ve got no chance.’
‘Swastikas,’ Megan said soberly. ‘Well, good luck to my dad and his peace mission, that’s all I can say.’
‘What exactly does SS stand for?’ Gladdie asked.
‘Brutality.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Why have we brought them here to Wales, of all places?’ Cora asked, chewing her thumbnail. ‘It’s like inviting wolves into the sheepfold.’