Chapter 51
‘I don’t know, it’s hard to explain how our attitudes changed,’ Gladdie said to Elisavet, wiping her paint-streaked hands on her apron.
‘It wasn’t just Dio and Jane. Despite the newspaper headlines about Nazis on the rampage and all that, we knew what really went on.
The truth of that time was whispered along ration queues and in the pubs, not out of shame but with pride.
We all knew that there was kindness shown, in many different ways.
It was a hard winter, see, and we knew what it was like for them trying to live off the land.
We felt for them. We imagined them out there, cold and hungry, trying to get home. ’
‘Idwal left food for them on our windowsill, in case they came by,’ Megan said. ‘It was gone by the morning.’
‘Nancy Thomas made cups of tea for two young men while they waited for the police to come.’
‘Elizabeth Davies from the farm found an exhausted prisoner at her door as she was baking,’ Cora added.
‘He’d followed the smell of her cakes. She was so pleased that he’d found it irresistible that she invited him in for tea, but he couldn’t accept because he said he had two friends outside.
Civilised, see? So she invited them in too.
Germans in her kitchen! Who’d have thought!
She made them a meal while her son cycled to the camp to tell them to come and collect them. ’
The three friends laughed at the memories.
‘There was a rumour that three got back to Germany, so I heard,’ Gladdie said. ‘Unofficial, like.’
Megan agreed it was rumour. She’d heard it, too.
Cora thought of Frank and the ball of dried clay on the mantelpiece. ‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to know that after all those weeks of digging, three of them made it home.’