by K. C. Finn
“Ble mae Mam?” Lewis asked the little girl.
I tried to pick out the English as usual, but this time I couldn’t. Leighton gave me a wide eyed look, scrunching his nose.
“Yn y gegin yn paratoi cinio,” the little girl replied. I marvelled at the complex language falling out of such a tiny mouth.
“Dod â Mam yma!” Lewis added with a flick of his hand.
The little girl scampered away, leaving the door wide open. I would have waited, but Lewis seemed to take that as the invitation to go inside. He wheeled me in over the bumpy threshold of the wide farmhouse door and into a big reception space, adjusting Leighton until he stood up straight beside me. Everything in this part of the house was either black or white. Black tiles lined the cold stone floor. White lacy doilies covered the shelves of an old black dresser in the corner, next to an even older metal coat stand that was ready to fall over with the amount of coats flung upon it.
I looked at the steep, black stairs fearfully. If I was expected to climb them every day and night, I would surely die before I even reached breakfast tomorrow. My joints ached at the very prospect of it.
“Nawr te, who do we have yur then?”
The woman’s accent echoing down the corridor was thankfully much clearer than Lewis’s. She almost sang the words as she appeared from under a white doorway right in front of us. The woman had a rosy face and the same tawny hair as the little girl, though hers was pulled back into a more practical style. She was older than Mum but younger than Granny, with a cooking apron tied over her broad, rounded figure. She had the kindest smile in the world as she approached, rubbing her coarse hands together excitedly.
“Oh aren’t you just lovely, the pair of you!”
She dropped to her knees before us and pulled my shoulder forward for a hug. My chair gave me a little space at least from her lovingly iron grip, but Leighton had no such luck. He was pulled straight into her ample chest where he could hardly breathe from the warmth of her embrace. He emerged red-faced a moment later, stumbling backwards.
“Leighton, Catherine,” Officer Lewis explained, “This is Mrs Gladys Price, your new guardian.”
“Call me Mam if you like,” she added, “Everyone does round yur.”
Mam stayed at eye level with me, crouching on the floor with her warm hand on my knee. She smelled like cakes and biscuits and her voice had a soft melodic note, like there was music in every word she spoke.
“Thank you Mam,” I said and Leighton repeated me. I was embarrassed at how stiff my voice sounded, but Mam didn’t seem to notice.
“Well come in, come in!” she said, yanking herself up to her full height, “You must be starving after that journey!”
The mention of any kind of food had won Leighton over immediately. He bounced on his heels as Mam circled him to take the back of my chair. We said goodbye to Officer Lewis as he doffed his hat, then suddenly we were off at Mam’s brisk pace down a dark corridor until we emerged into a massive kitchen. A huge oval table made of dark wood sat in the centre of the space, already laden with cakes, sandwiches and a big jug of fruit cordial. Leigh’s jaw dropped to the ground.
“Oh sit down love, tuck in,” Mam said to him as she wheeled me up to the near end of the table. I could already see the space where a chair had been moved away to accommodate me.
My little brother wasted no time in heeding her. He took off his cap as he dropped into a wooden chair near me and reached out for a sandwich the size of a doorstop, taking an impossibly large bite compared to the size of his mouth. Mam sat herself down just opposite me and the tiny little girl who had answered the door came running up to her. Scooping her up with warm, wide arms, Mam set the girl on her knee and caught my eye.
“Is this your daughter?” I asked, giving the little girl a grin. She shied away, but she was smiling too.
“Yeah,” Mam nodded proudly, “this is Vanessa. We call her Ness Fach. My little miracle she is!” She cuddled Ness close before setting her down again.
“What do you mean?” asked Leighton with a mouthful of bread and cheese. I made a point of remembering to tell him off for bad manners later.
“Well yur’s me with three grown up children, then suddenly Ness comes along out of the blue! I didn’t even know I was pregnant for a while!”
Mam sat back with a happy sigh, watching Ness Fach, who was eyeing Leighton with interest. She put her nose up to the edge of the kitchen table and stood on tiptoe to look at him.
“Do you speak English?” Leighton asked her.
“Yeah,” she said unsurely. I could see the fascination in her little face. Girls always liked the look of Leighton. It was going to be a problem when he got older, I knew. “How old are you?” Ness mumbled.
“Ten,” Leigh replied, “What about you?”
“Three,” she said more strongly.
“You’re a tall girl for three,” I observed with extra enthusiasm, and she turned and beamed at me. “This is Leighton, and I’m Catherine.” Ness nodded her tiny tawny head. “And my friends call me Kit. If you like, we can be friends, then you can call me Kit as well.”
Ness Fach took a moment to take in the proposition.
“Kit,” she said shyly.
“That’s right,” I replied.
Ness suddenly scampered off again, disappearing out of the kitchen door and back down the dark corridor. Mam watched her go, shaking her head.
“She’ll be getting her Dolly to show you now,” Mam explained, “Everyone has to meet Dolly. You haven’t touched your food yet love.”
I started to fill a small plate with food, feeling my heart settle like it was being laid on a fluffy pillow. The situation could have been so beastly for Leigh and me, but things were definitely on the up. I wanted to be as polite and likeable as possible for Mam, hoping that Leighton’s evident delight in her cooking was enough to ingratiate him for the moment.
“You said you had three other children Mam?” I asked, taking a bite of a cucumber sandwich.
“Oh yes,” she answered with great warmth in her tone, “My two eldest, the boys, they’re with their father in the RAF, learning to fly at Porth Neigwl. It’s a bit of a way from yur, too far to visit like, but it’s nice to know they’re still on Welsh soil, isn’t it?”
“Do you suppose they’ll be training for the war?” I asked, fascinated.
A softness came to Mam’s eyes, her smile faded just slightly before she brushed off her apron. “Oh if they’re as brave as their father, they’ll be out there battering the Germans in no time,” she exclaimed, “He was in the first war you know, my Clive.” She smiled again proudly as I ate. “And,” she continued, “I have a daughter, who is in the house somewhere. I don’t know where she’s got to, actually, I did tell her you were coming.”
Even as she was saying the words there came a clattering sound and a voice answered her: “She’s been all over the house, actually, because her mother gave her a million impossible things to do before lunchtime.”
The young woman who entered the kitchen was carrying a large stack of washing which she dumped onto a counter with a huff. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, with pale skin and blonde curls and sparkling blue eyes. I envied her instantly, most especially her strong, slender legs. I’d have bet any money in the world that she was good at dancing.
“Blodwyn, this is Catherine and Leighton Cavendish,” Mam said in her sing song voice, “They’re just arrived from London.”
“Pleasure,” said Blodwyn without smiling. Her voice didn’t quite have the same melody as her mother’s. “I’d be more welcoming, of course, if someone hadn’t worn me out asking me to do every bloody chore in the house, whilst she set about making a ridiculously big lunch that the five of us couldn’t possibly bloody eat.”
“What’s all this language, Blod?” Mam chided in a shrill tone. She seemed more amused by her daughter’s moaning than annoyed. She turned to me with a knowing look. “I thought she’d grow out of this attitude when
she stopped being a teenager, you know, but she turned twenty last month and there’s been no change.”
The beautiful girl gave a frustrated groan so loud that it startled Leighton, who spilt the cordial he was drinking on his shirt. He looked at the pink stain with a frown.
“Oh dear!” Mam said kindly, “Let’s get that cleaned up quick, come with me love.”
Leighton obeyed, exiting the kitchen by the far door. I saw him take Mam’s hand as they went and I smiled, content that he was going to be well looked after at Ty Gwyn. When they had gone I realised that Blodwyn was watching me. She was leaning her perfect frame against the sink with a thoughtful look clouding her eyes.
“I’d love to be twenty,” I said awkwardly, “I bet you’ve got all kinds of freedom about the village.”
“Not any more,” Blod said, her rosy lips turning to a sneer, “Thanks to your arrival, I might add.” She folded her arms sharply. “Now that you’re here, Mam says I have to pick up the slack, because she’s going to be busy seeing to you all the time.”
I got the distinct impression that she didn’t mean ‘me and Leighton’ when she said ‘you’. She was looking at my wheelchair disdainfully and I felt like I wanted it to fold up and swallow me whole. Blod approached me suddenly, her blonde tresses flowing like some vicious goddess. Her blue eyes hardened as she looked down into my face.
“So don’t go thinking we’ll be like sisters, or friends, or anything like that,” she snarled, “Because all you mean to me is more bloody work.”
She stormed away after that, nearly knocking Ness off her feet as the little girl appeared in the doorway. She groaned that loud groan again in anger. “Out the way, pest!”
Ness stumbled around her so she could continue to parade from the room in fury. The little girl blinked in surprise, but she didn’t seem upset by her sister’s remarks. Instead she caught sight of me and started to smile again, ambling up with her hands behind her back. She bit her lip, then brought her arms around to her front to reveal a little ragdoll with ginger-brown hair the same shade as mine.
“Dolly!” she said proudly.
I tried to smile for her, but it was suddenly difficult again.
I needn’t have worried about where I was going to sleep; it seemed Mam had thought of everything when it came to taking on an evacuee with an illness. She had turned her husband’s sitting room at the back of the house into a bedroom for me so that I would never have the stairs to tackle. There was a fireplace, a wash basin and some basic ablutions to help me stay comfortable and plenty of space around the single bed for my chair to get around the room. I rather thought the bed had come from a hospital, but I didn’t like to ask too many questions on the first day.
Mam left me to change for bed, which I could manage alone most of the time. I hauled myself out of my chair by leaning on the bed frame, then sat on the edge of the bed and shuffled out of my day clothes and into my nightie. My stockings were the hardest thing to get off; I realised sadly that Mum had always been the one to pull them off at the toes. But I managed eventually and I was rather proud of myself when Mam returned and found me wriggling in under the warm white covers.
I knew right away though, that she could see the pain it had caused me to get about half a foot from the chair into the bed. I could feel my cheeks glowing red, my arms aching from putting all my weight on them, but I didn’t like to think about the pain, much less to talk about it. Mam helped me with the last of the covers as I put my head on the pillow. She put a small glass of water and a biscuit on the bedside table.
“My bedroom’s right above yur,” she said softly, “so if you get into trouble you give me a shout.”
“Thank you,” I answered, stifling a yawn.
“You get a good rest love,” she continued, “I had a telephone call tonight. They’re sending a car for you tomorrow to go and meet your new doctor.”
The news was not the kind that encouraged a good night’s sleep. I thanked Mam politely and she put out the light, closing my door with a gentle hand. But when she had gone I shuffled my aching legs restlessly and rubbed my upper arms where they had taken on the strain. I didn’t relish the idea of being prodded and poked by a new physician, it was bad enough being examined once a month by Doctor Baxendale in London and I’d known him since I was twelve when all the pain began. I wondered idly what the new doctor might be like, but the more I wondered, the more I worried, and I decided instead that my mind needed a different occupation tonight.
Aside from Leighton and my mother, I had never been able to use my secret gift to intentionally enter anyone else’s head. I had always supposed it was familiarity that allowed me such easy access into their minds, but I also knew that my psychic ability sometimes had a farther reach. Most especially when I was sleeping, in fact. It had started to happen when I was around eight or nine, but of course for a long time I thought they were dreams. Dreams where I was in someone else’s head, looking through their eyes, hearing them speak and feeling their innermost emotions like they were my own.
Now as I lay in my new bed of my new home, I closed my eyes, hoping that something interesting would come my way as I surrendered my mind to slumber.
***
Generally I didn’t like looking through the eyes of men, and I knew this one was a man as soon as I saw the huge black boots crossed on the desk in front of me. He was clipping the end off of a cigar with two great hairy hands that looked rather old in a pale blue room with expensive-looking paintings on every wall. He lit the cigar and I felt the wave of satisfaction he got from the first long inhale he took. I was grateful at least that my powers did not extend to having to smell the smoke from the beastly thing, and I hoped that they never would.
The smoking man wasn’t alone in his room for long. He turned my viewpoint to a set of doors painted in blue and gold as another man entered the room. My man leapt out of his seat so fast I felt sick from the transition; he was standing upright and saying something to the new chap in a language that I didn’t understand. I saw the new arrival properly then, in his grey-green suit and trousers. No, not a suit. A uniform. His collar had two red rectangles sticking out under his fat chin, each covered in golden leaf patterns. A row of coloured medals adorned the man’s chest and his hat bore the symbol of a bird of prey in flight, with a u-shaped golden laurel thing and what looked like a target in the middle. And under the bird of prey was a symbol I knew. A swastika.
“Generalfeldmarschall,” said the man whose head I occupied. I felt him give some kind of salute; his heart was suddenly pounding in my ears.
Even as I dreamed, I knew I was seeing something I shouldn’t be. I drifted in and out of consciousness as the men began their conversation in what I now knew had to be the German tongue. There was a trick to maintaining focus in my sleep that I had not quite mastered; it was hard to stay alert when I knew that I was actually already unconscious. I noticed that the man whose mind I held also had the grey-green sleeves of the military uniform on. The other more superior man had ordered him to clear his desk, after which he laid out a map for him, and me, to see.
I had never been any good at Geography, even when I was still healthy enough to attend school. The map was a funny looking coastline with all sorts of jagged bits that didn’t make sense, as though someone had taken a knife to the country and cut long deep valleys of water into it, with other valleys jutting off to the sides. If it was a country I knew by name then it wasn’t one I’d ever bothered to look up on a map, but through my man’s eyes I was forced to study it closely and carefully. I could feel his nerves rising the more his superior talked at him, until the high ranking man slammed a strong, old finger down on the map at a space on the coast.
Oslo.
I knew the city’s name, but the country was still lost on me. As I tried to pull the information from my conscious memory I felt the familiar cold shiver start to creep up my spine. I tried to resist, tried to stay with the mind I had found, but I knew really that it was too l
ate. The connection was fading. I was falling into a proper sleep.
***
I awoke the next morning to the sound of birds outside the window, which alarmed me at first. The only birds to ever wake me in London were the pigeons, and whatever was outside in the farmland right now was much louder and less considerate than they were. As I lay flat looking up at the black beams of the ceiling my mind drifted back to the German viewpoint I had discovered the night before. It was such a fabulous possibility, to be able to see right into the war. I sighed heavily, knowing that it would be pure luck to ever get back to it again.
I jolted my spine as I heard my door starting to open, but I was relieved to find it was only Leighton stumbling in. The sight of him in his stripy red and white pyjamas made me ache for Mum and home suddenly. He had a sad look on his usually cheeky face that made me suspect he was feeling the same way. Leigh said nothing as he rounded my bed and clambered in, taking the biscuit Mam had left me the night before and starting to munch. He cuddled up next to me very slowly; he knew how difficult my morning stiffness was. It hurt to bring my arm down and put it around him, but I did it anyway.