Chapter 35
‘Why did you tell him that?’ Cora asked Enid as they walked back along the path, heading home.
‘Because it’s true, that’s what our job is. You fancy him rotten, don’t you?’ Enid asked her, kicking a fallen pinecone from the path into a hedge. ‘You can’t help it, can you?’
‘What difference does it make?’ As she spoke, Cora sensed that if she’d turned around he would still be there by the barbed wire, watching.
‘That’s how I feel about Les,’ Enid said. ‘I can’t help it either, you see.’ She sounded desperately sad. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing, in my case. He’s a German, so it’s pointless, isn’t it?’ She thought about Idwal: Love thine enemy!
Her mind was on Frank, on the state of him, his swollen face misshapen on one side and his eyes puffed up as if he’d been remodelled badly, pressed out of shape.
He should be safe with his comrades but the SS was a species of its own, superior, which meant that everyone else was inferior.
That was the way the world worked, wasn’t it?
There were the bosses and the workers, the rulers and the downtrodden, the house owners and the servants, the victors and the vanquished.
The SS didn’t seem to realise that for now at least, they were the vanquished ones.
For a moment she was proud of her job again. Bomb the hell out of them! she thought furiously. They deserve it! And she thought of Frank again. ‘What’s the harm in being nice to someone?’
‘Being nice? That’s one way of putting it. It’s not as if you can do anything about it in there, is it,’ Enid said as they reached the stile, ‘unless you want to have sex with him through the wire. Like little dogs.’
‘Enid! What is wrong with you?’ They hadn’t been brought up to think like that.
They’d had had strict values which kept them on the straight and narrow by the shame of being talked about.
Shame kept them righteous, not just for their own sake but because of what misbehaviour would do to their parents and their good name.
Cora realised how much Enid had changed in the last few weeks.
Working at the factory had corrupted her.
She was impressed by the English girls, by their lipstick, their perms, their talk, their freedom.
And then there was their daring – at night they went into the dim-out, blue-lit pubs and drank beer, just like men.
They were doing the jobs of men, earning more than men, so why not?
‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, you mean,’ Enid retorted.
‘Fancying the enemy. Just think, Cora, it might be one of your shells that got him caught, that would be funny, wouldn’t it?
A shell you wrote your name on. Boom! Bounced him straight in your lap.
’ She walked on briskly for a few yards and then sat on the stile to let Cora catch up.
In an entirely different voice she asked brightly, ‘Hey. You know what Les said?’
Cora rolled her eyes. ‘No. What did he say?’
‘He wants me to leave Temperance and go and live with him.’ She looked down at Cora with a faint smile, eyebrows raised, inviting a response.
‘That’s ridiculous! How can you? You’re both married,’ Cora said tiredly.
Enid’s smile faded. ‘I know. It’s just a bit of fun. It passes the time, knowing he’s around.’
‘Yeah,’ Cora agreed. She knew the feeling.
Time stood still in there. You’d think working as hard as they did would make it pass quickly but every minute was the same as the last one and the next one.
She climbed over the stile and jumped down the other side.
‘It might be fun but we’re not the only ones who notice things, don’t forget that,’ she said. ‘People talk.’
Enid curled her lip. ‘Who cares? We might all be dead tomorrow and then there will be nobody left to talk, will there? Help me down, will you.’ She held out her hand and Cora steadied her as she jumped.
‘True enough, we might be dead, but what if we’re not?’
‘Hush, you! Anyway, at least he’s Welsh, and not German,’ Enid said. ‘I don’t know how you can even look at a Jerry after what happened to Owen.’
Cora held her breath, or her body held it for her. ‘My “Jerry” didn’t do it though, did he?’
‘How do you know? He might have!’ Enid was irritable now that Cora wasn’t siding with her as she’d hoped.
‘And what do you think Jane and Dio would say if they knew you were hanging around the camp? Jane despises them. I’ve seen her down the fields telling everyone she’s shooting rabbits, but you know what she really does?
She turns her shotgun towards the huts. Stands there every night, aiming it, with this evil look on her face. ’
‘Shut up, Enid,’ Cora said fiercely.
‘Temper!’ She gave a one-sided smile. ‘I’m only saying. Can’t we be friends and stick up for each other? We’re in the same boat, we’ve both got our secrets, haven’t we?’
A couple of nights later, Cora was lying on her bed, looking at the route that Frank had crudely drawn in his cap, tracing her yellow finger slowly through familiar towns.
She knew she cared for him more than she’d wanted to admit. She wanted the best for him, if not for herself. And she came to a decision.
She asked Gladdie and Megan to help her and they chose a chilly evening when the guards were staying inside keeping warm.
In fact, it had drizzled all day that day, and the cold rain spiked their skin and rouged their noses and speckled their coats with damp and blotted out the fields and mountains into a grey smudge.
Despite all this, Frank was waiting for them, a lone figure with a bruised and swollen face standing in the wet clay, holding his spade over his head to keep dry.
They had come prepared. In their pockets they were carrying broken bricks in brown paper bags to aid the cap’s momentum.
Frank came up close to the wire and put down his spade.
‘Here goes,’ Cora said.
Frank watched Cora take a practice swing and move further away.
Megan groaned. ‘Not like that! Give it to me.’
Cora handed Megan the cap.
Megan tucked it under her arm and sorted through the pieces of brick they’d brought with them.
‘Here’s a nice big one for you,’ Gladdie said.
‘That’s too big. We don’t want to break their windows, do we? This is about right.’
‘Can’t we find a long branch and catapult it over to him?’
‘Have faith, Cora,’ Megan said.
Frank was watching them with interest as Megan retreated down the stubble field, and took a long run up. The cap cleared the first barbed wire fence, but got snagged on the second one.
‘Damn!’ Megan said, squinting against the rain, ‘I was sure—’ and just as she said it, the cap and brick dropped by Frank’s feet. They laughed with hysteria and relief.
He gave the cap a quick shake, put it on his head, grinned and saluted them.