Chapter 19 #2
They glared at each other across the room and Temperance turned in appeal to the rest of the group. ‘No need to rush off,’ he pleaded as he accompanied the police officer to the door.
When he came back he could see they weren’t intending to, not after being told their job was to keep alert as if they were children. The cheek of it. They were on permanent alert, anxious, sleepless, nerves jangling, and had been since the start of the war.
Enid got to her feet. ‘Is that it?’
‘We haven’t finished yet,’ Temperance said. ‘I’m not sure you realise the implications of an escape. With your looks, I dread to think what they would do to you if they escaped, Enid, truth be known. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Well, don’t think about it then,’ she said reasonably. ‘And they can’t get out, can they, not with the guards, barbed wire, the dogs, the tommy guns and all that security.’
‘Dogs?’ He pounced on the word. ‘What dogs? They say they’re getting dogs but I haven’t seen any, have you?
Silent dogs, are they now? What security?
They haven’t got searchlights, nor watchtowers.
And how many guards have you seen? They can’t be everywhere at once, can they?
They’re outnumbered by the inmates. And the truth is, the British are not the ones running the camp. You know who’s running it?’
She stared at him. ‘Who?’
‘The Nazis,’ he said.
‘Oh. I’ll put the kettle on,’ Enid said, levitating gracefully from her chair, ankles crossed, without using her hands. She patted her auburn hair into place.
Temperance watched her go with a frown on his face.
Dio had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the whole meeting.
Cora turned to look up at him in concern. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked him.
‘If you ask me, May is a bit of a know-it-all. Condescending, like, and I’m disappointed in myself for saying it, but I think he’s misguided.
Why would they escape? They get fed better than us, they’ve got all the amenities they need and they don’t have to fight any more.
But if they do get out, they’ll be sorry.
I agree with Jane, see. An eye for an eye. ’
‘I hope they do escape,’ Jane backed him up. ‘I can’t wait! All his talk of guard dogs and cordons,’ she said with contempt, her hands jittering in her lap. ‘My shotgun’s ready for them by the back door.’
‘You can’t be too careful,’ Temperance agreed.
Cora looked at Jane’s once motherly face, now turned hard.
She was wearing her black felt hat over her prematurely greying hair and Cora thought of the blow she’d aimed at the defenceless smiling soldier, and the look on the man’s face as he flinched, and the look on Jane’s face, too: vicious and satisfied.
She couldn’t get it out of her mind. She wouldn’t have thought her mother was capable of cruelty – she’d been a good woman, a Methodist. But Cora had the feeling she would shoot the prisoners in the same way that she shot rabbits for the pot.
It alarmed her to think her mother had hidden that side of herself all her life.
Or maybe her ferocity had never been hidden but merely dormant, lying quiet and undisturbed until she called on it.
She’d been so dignified after the loss of Owen that everyone agreed she was an example to them all, and they’d admired her for it.
But it was all surface, like looking into a pond and only seeing the clouds and the sky.
The war was the end of everything good. What had happened to them, gathered here in this cold front room?
The Welsh were renowned for their hospitality, it was the nation’s best characteristic, one that they were proud of, woven into centuries of ancient storytelling.
They were a nation that welcomed guests into their homes and hearts, but now they were all damaged and broken whether they realised it or not, herself included.
It worried her because she’d always seen them as preservers of tradition. She raked her fingers through her green hair and frowned.
‘Love thine enemy,’ Idwal was saying stubbornly, because of his pact with God. ‘There, I’ve said it.’
‘What’s new? You’re always saying it,’ Jane said.
For the first time Cora studied Idwal and wondered whether he still believed it. ‘Is there any point in loving your enemy?’
‘It is a theological question, isn’t it?’ Idwal said. ‘Love conquers all.’
Temperance came back into the room rattling the tray of teacups and Enid handed them around elegantly with a little dip of her knees.
‘It’s all right for May,’ Temperance said.
‘He doesn’t live right next to the camp like we do.
We could all be murdered in our beds by the time he’s got his cordon encircling the area and his dogs at the ready.
We need our own plan, that’s my feeling.
’ He rubbed his jaw, mulling things over.
‘When our boys escaped from Stalag Luft III the Nazis shot fifty of them to set an example. That’s something to bear in mind. ’
‘Steady on, man! We’re not Nazis, are we,’ Idwal said quickly.
‘But if it comes to it we’ll stop them any way we can,’ Dio vowed.
He had wanted to join up, but there was no escape from the colliery for him.
The country needed miners as much as it needed soldiers.
His own father had died at the end of the Great War and Cora knew he wanted to do his bit in his father’s honour.
His belongings, a comb and a pair of dice, had been returned to his mother.
She’d been tight-lipped about the dice – gambling, see. She kept them in the front room in a drawer in the sideboard with a newspaper cutting about his death, and his two service medals and his Death Penny. ‘If it comes to it we shan’t shy away from the fight,’ he concluded.
‘We must protect our women,’ Temperance added, glancing at Enid, who shivered with anticipation.
‘It will be up to our own consciences how we behave,’ Idwal argued, frowning at Jane. He added soberly, ‘We just have to remember we have them.’
Jane snorted her contempt, water off a duck’s back. ‘Why should we have consciences, Idwal, when they don’t?’
It was a good question.
‘This business May mentioned about them singing “Silent Night” as they escape sounds nonsense to me,’ Cora said, balancing her saucer on her knee.
‘It won’t be long until Christmas, and of course they’re going to sing it.
What are we going to do if they start practising it just to be festive?
We’ll never get any sleep if we’re going to keep jumping out of bed to check if they’re out. ’
‘That’s true, Cora. May missed a trick there,’ Temperance said, sipping his tea.
It was November when the German prisoners of war arrived, and with Christmas not far away, Cora felt it would be surprising if they didn’t add ‘Silent Night’ to their repertoire.
It was a bit of a disappointment, if the truth be told, for the beautiful song to be used in that way.
But she understood why it might. It lulled ordinary people into a daze of sentimentality, it did.
Jane repeated her hope that the prisoners of war would escape, just so that they could successfully put their plan into action and pounce, otherwise all this talk would be a waste of time.
Cora glanced at Gladdie. So far, Gladdie had remained sitting on the stool, legs tucked under her, without saying a word, which was a rare event for her.
Suddenly she got to her feet and spoke up passionately out of the blue.
‘You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to take the whole lot of them down to the hospital,’ she said, ‘and lead them from bed to bed to show them the damage they’ve done. Let them hang their heads in shame!’
They fell silent. The mantel clock ticked steadily.
Idwal was the first to speak from his uncomfortable position of crouching on the tapestry footstool.
He rubbed his knees. ‘Exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head, Gladdie.
But I’ve no doubt in return they’d like to do the same to us,’ he said mildly.
‘We’re as bad as each other. Their blood is on our hands too.
We are all stained by the mark of Cain.’
His words put a damper on the evening, took the adventure out of it. They had been like happy children playing in the dirt and now they were suddenly faced with the consequences.
Temperance tried to rally them. ‘May and his ilk can stick to their own devices, and we’ll make our plans, separate and independent like, shotguns at the ready to defend ourselves and our women. I would defend Enid to the death. And I’m sure in your case, Jane, you will defend Dio.’
‘Steady on, man,’ Dio said, hurt by the comment.
‘Sorry, I’m joking, like. It’s May, it is.’
There was a general feeling that May had spoiled the evening by arriving late, going early, and coming up with plans that didn’t involve them.
‘Actually, Temperance, I don’t want you to defend me,’ Enid said, her voice clear pitched and higher than normal, her chin raised in defiance.
‘I want to do my bit and defend myself. I want to work in the munitions factory. And I still don’t actually understand, in the circumstances, why you feel I shouldn’t.
’ That moment, it was a stroke of genius, Cora realised.
They all fell quiet and looked at Temperance curiously as he searched his conscience, and from the expression on his open face it seemed a painful process.
His attitude towards Enid was at odds with his warmongering.
All Temperance’s objections so far had been to do with how Enid’s appearance would be altered, and there, that evening in his own front room sat three young women who were unselfishly putting their country before their looks. What did it say about him?
His emotions flickered across his face and he looked up in agony at the stern portraits of his parents on the wall and then at the enquiring faces of his neighbours.
Last of all, his gaze settled on Enid and his baby face melted with sorrow and love.
He seemed to know what was going to happen to her, but he was powerless to stop it. She was his life, but more important than that to her was her own life.
‘You’re right, of course,’ he answered with a sigh.
Enid smiled at him and blew him a kiss.
But his sigh stayed with Cora. It was, she said afterwards, as if he knew in his heart the disaster that was to come.