Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

  In my free time I attend as many of the classes my fellow inmates have organised as I can. I’m learning languages. It’s quite a little United Nations here between the Canadians, Australians, South Africans, French, Poles, Dutch XXXXXXXXXXXX and ourselves. We have a choir, but when I tried to join, the conductor unkindly diagnosed me as tone deaf. On that point, my love, he agrees with you. The drama group I wrote you about goes from strength to strength and they’ve finished building the theatre at the back of the church. We have a reading club (which would greatly appreciate any spare books no matter how old or decrepit) an art group, and even I’ve been roped in to run first aid classes. I’ve also taken up carpentry in the hope that it will help me with those odd jobs you keep threatening me with. So you see, I am busy if not happy. But then I could never be that again without you and the children.

  I realise that you are facing problems too, my love, and from my father’s last letter I also know you’re working as many hours as there are in a day and night. He said that he and Doctor Evans couldn’t manage without you. I feel so bloody useless locked up in this cage. All I want is to be home with you, working, helping, living but most of all loving. I really can’t see that keeping thousands of men penned up in compounds all over Germany is contributing to the war effort of either side.

  There I go, moaning again. Please, whatever else you do, don’t worry about me. Food is no longer a problem since the Red Cross parcels started coming in regularly, and we are supplementing those by cultivating vegetable gardens between the huts. My swedes, cabbages and turnips have to be seen to be believed, Rachel could probably play with them in her dolls’ house, but they are growing every day. I only hope that none of us will be here in the autumn to harvest our crop. Our hopes have risen since the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX you see – news gets through even to us. Some of the gamblers are even taking bets as to when the first Yank will arrive.

  Bethan smiled as she wondered at the censor’s command of English, didn’t he know the English nickname for Americans?

  Thank you for the photographs of the children. You can have no idea how much they mean to me. I have pinned them alongside my bunk, starting with the one of you and Rachel I had in my wallet when I was captured, and carrying on with the ones you have sent every month since.

  I have missed out on their entire babyhood and all of your pregnancy with Eddie, years that I will never be able to recapture. I only hope that when we are finally together again, there will be other children. What do you think? Could you give up caring for half the town after the peace treaties have been signed and settle for just our family and me?

  I love you, Beth, and miss you every waking moment. I look forward to the night when I can close my eyes, because then you are with me. You haunt my dreams. Do you ever think of those magical, peaceful hours we used to spend alone together in our bedroom before going to bed? I do, constantly. I will be with you again the moment the war is over, I promise. Take care of yourself and the children until we can be together again.

  All my love

  your Andrew

  PS: I’m sure you know, but just in case you didn’t, Mother and Father write regularly. I am so glad you seem to be getting on better with both of them.

  Bethan found it difficult to set aside her irritation at Andrew’s habit of always finishing his letters with a PS about his parents. And as if that wasn’t enough, there were the plans he was making for both of them after the war. Plans centred around a third pregnancy and her return to domesticity.

  Knowing she was being unfair didn’t quell the ugly thought that he intended to make up for missing out on Eddie’s babyhood by replacing him with another child. He loved her and missed her and the children, but then he had nothing else to think about. Would he miss them as much, or write as often, if he’d been incarcerated somewhere more interesting than a wooden hut in an all-male prison camp in northern Germany?

  Two and a half years was a long time. She knew she had changed. Become confident and assured enough to confront Mrs Llewellyn-Jones – and win. The woman she was now bore little resemblance to the shy, uncertain, newly qualified nurse Andrew had courted and married. Would he recognise her, or more to the point want her, once he became acquainted with her new independent personality? Could she make room for him in her life again? Did she still love him?

  She hated herself for daring even to think otherwise. But their life together seemed such a long time ago. Almost as though it had been lived by someone else. Why couldn’t she concentrate on the happy times and weave those memories into their future instead of the problems they might or might not encounter if they were ever reunited?

  Doubts crowded in on her as she set aside the letter and spooned cocoa into a cup. There were so many things she couldn’t forget, no matter how hard she tried. The death of their first child a few months after his birth, a tragedy that had almost destroyed her and their marriage. Andrew’s selfishness that she had always attributed to his mother’s doting upbringing; never deliberate, always thoughtless, but as capable of wounding as if it had been.

  Gingerly touching the side of the kettle and deciding it was hot enough, she poured water on to the cocoa powder. Returning to the rocking chair, she began to read again, this time trying to imagine Andrew as he had been when he’d written the letter. He had changed too. Just as increased responsibilities had lent her confidence, being imprisoned had sapped his. He would never have committed thoughts like these to paper before the war. Then, his emotions had been something to joke about, not reflect on in a letter.

  He so obviously needed to believe that nothing had changed. That everything would be exactly the same as when he’d left, including her, frozen in time to the extent that she’d be wearing the same dress, hairstyle and perfume. Was he secretly afraid, like her, that their marriage wouldn’t stand the test of years of separation?

  Lifting the cup she glanced up, and almost dropped it in surprise when she saw David Ford standing in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I assumed everyone was in bed.’

  ‘I’ve just finished some paperwork.’

  ‘They make civilians do that too?’ His tone was dry, but there was a spark of humour in his eyes that she hadn’t noticed when they’d spoken earlier.

  She held up her cup. ‘Would you like some cocoa?’

  He pulled a tin from his pocket. ‘I’ve brought my own coffee.’

  ‘The water’s hot but not boiling.’ Returning to the stove, she set the kettle back on the hob.

  ‘I don’t want to keep you up.’

  ‘You’re not.’ She pushed Andrew’s letter into her pocket, but not before he saw it.

  ‘From your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He handed her his tin as she took another cup from the shelf. ‘He’s a lucky man.’

  ‘To be in a German prison camp?’

  ‘To be alive and have you and your children to come home to.’

  ‘It would be nice to know when that’s likely to be.’

  ‘As long as it takes us to get organised, over there and destroy the German army.’

  ‘My father thinks that they are going to take some beating, even with Russian and American help.’

  ‘Your father is right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Please, sit down.’

  Leaving her the rocking chair, he sat on the end of one of the benches placed either side of the scrub-down table.

  ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, Mrs John, but have you considered that your husband could be home before the end of the war? There are prisoner exchanges and there’s always the chance of escape.’

  ‘Not for Andrew. He’s a doctor, and from what little in the way of details the censor allows through in his letters, I think the only one in his camp.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t leave the men unattended?’

  ‘He has a strong sense of duty.’ She tried to make it sound like
a compliment. ‘When he drew the short straw at Dunkirk a medical officer who wasn’t married offered to take his place. Andrew wouldn’t hear of it. He stayed with the wounded in a field hospital. I didn’t know for three months whether he’d been captured, wounded or killed.’

  ‘Then it must be a relief to know he’s safe now.’

  ‘Safe? With the RAF dropping bombs all over Germany? Surrounded by armed guards who might shoot him at any moment … I’m sorry.’ She picked up the kettle and poured water on to the coffee essence. ‘I’m not usually like this. It’s been a long day. Would you like milk and sugar?’

  ‘Milk please, if you can spare it.’

  Taking the jug from the pantry she ventured a personal question. ‘Are you married, Colonel Ford?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t lose my wife in the funeral sense. She divorced me.’

  Bethan stared at the cup not quite knowing what to say.

  ‘By the time the papers came through it was no longer a catastrophe for either of us. I hope I haven’t shocked you. I’ve heard that divorce is more common in the States than here.’

  ‘Not many women in Pontypridd can afford to leave their husbands.’

  ‘My wife had independent means.’

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘A son. He’s sixteen now. You want the war to end so your husband can come home; I want it to end so Elliot won’t have to fight.’

  ‘Surely it can’t last another two years?’

  ‘Let’s hope not, Nurse John.’ He lifted his cup. ‘To victory.’

  ‘A quick victory,’ she echoed, her imagination painting a future as bleak and lonely as the years that lay behind her.

  ‘I could come in with you.’

  ‘Civilians aren’t allowed into military billets.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I can’t allow you, Miss Llewellyn-Jones.’ Kurt’s voice was firm. ‘And what goes for civilians goes double for pretty girls,’ he added in an attempt to mollify her. Leaving the Jeep, he switched on the torch he was carrying, pointed the beam at his feet and gingerly negotiated the steps that led down to the basement of Penuel Chapel.

  The cry, ‘Watch the blackout!’ greeted him as he pushed open the door. Fighting his way through the curtain, he saluted two senior officers who were inspecting the neat rows of army cots that had been set around the perimeter of the low-ceilinged, damp and freezing vault.

  ‘Not like you to be working at this time of night, Schaffer.’ Major Reynolds turned back to his list.

  ‘With the men coming in tomorrow I thought someone should check everything was ready.’

  ‘We already have. I hear you’ve sorted yourself a more comfortable billet than this,’ Captain Reide needled him humourlessly.

  ‘That depends on your notion of comfort, sir.’

  ‘Women to do your cooking and cleaning?’

  ‘One of you want to swap?’ Kurt asked hopefully.

  ‘For you to make an offer like that, there has to be something seriously wrong.’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve got the lot. My own bedroom with a gas fire, carpet and comfortable feather bed. Full maid service, meals with the family, offers to do my laundry …’

  ‘What’s up?’ Richard Reide pressed.

  Kurt glanced over his shoulder before whispering, ‘The daughter.’

  ‘She’s too young, old or ugly to seduce?’

  ‘Not at all. Quite passable in fact.’

  ‘She’s a nun?’

  ‘Or a lunatic?’

  ‘Quit joking, you two. I had a lecture from the old man this morning on keeping my nest clean.’

  ‘Quite right too. So, you leave her alone: what’s the problem?’ Charles Reynolds counted the number of cots and ticked off the last item on his inventory.

  ‘She won’t leave me alone. You’ve no idea …’ Before he could finish the sentence, a ‘Coo-ee’ echoed down the steps.

  ‘Coo-ee? Lieutenant Schaffer?’ Anthea pushed aside the blackout.

  ‘Watch the blackout, Miss …’

  ‘Llewellyn-Jones, Anthea Llewellyn-Jones.’ She posed self-consciously on the step, smiling coquettishly at all three men. Richard Reide winked slyly at Kurt before holding out his arm.

  ‘Please join us, Miss Llewellyn-Jones. Now that we’ve finished here, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to show us where a man can get a drink in this town?’

  Chapter Four

  ‘We won’t go unless you come with us, and that’s our final word.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Alma frowned in exasperation as Bethan sank down on to one of the easy chairs. ‘You’re going to crease that velvet,’ she warned as Bethan folded the long skirt of her pre-war, midnight-blue evening gown around her ankles.

  ‘No matter. There’s no one to see it here.’

  ‘Jane, talk to her?’ Alma appealed to Bethan’s sister-in-law. ‘Just about everyone you two know will be there.’

  ‘Except you.’ More careful of her dress than Bethan, Jane perched on the arm of Bethan’s chair.

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘What do you think Charlie would say if he could see you sitting here, moping alone night after night?’

  ‘Probably that I should have got used to living without him in the last year and a half’ Alma smiled in a vain attempt to disguise her tears.

  ‘I haven’t become accustomed to living without Andrew in two and a half,’ Bethan warned, her voice tinged with bitterness.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about him. Wondering if he’s in hiding, or locked up in a German prison unable to tell anyone his real identity. Everyone knows that soldiers out of uniform are shot as spies.’

  ‘You’re that sure he’s still alive?’ Bethan probed gently.

  ‘That sure.’ There was no anger in Alma’s voice at the intimation that Charlie could be dead. ‘He’s alive. I’m certain of it. I’d know if he’d been killed. I’d feel it, but just as I’m certain he’s alive, I also know that he’s suffering. How can I go to a party, knowing he is pain?’ Her eyes were dark, anguished.

  ‘Because if you don’t, you’ll go mad sitting here thinking about him. Come on, Alma, Mary’s been working for you for over a month now. Theo loves her, she’s every bit as capable of looking after him as you are, and it’s not as though we’re going to the ends of the earth. The New Inn is less than five minutes’ walk away. If he wakes she can telephone reception, they’ll pass on a message.’

  ‘I know.’ Alma glanced at her husband’s photograph on the mantelpiece. His presence was with her, so real, so tangible, she felt as though he were in the room with them. She could even smell the soap he used, the cologne he brushed through his thick white-blond hair …

  ‘Then why don’t you get ready?’

  ‘Because-’

  ‘We’re all in the same boat, Alma,’ Jane asserted forcefully. ‘Bethan might know that Andrew is alive, but he’s still locked away for the duration, however long that will be. And although I know where Haydn is, most of the time,’ she qualified drily, ‘he’s only managed one three day leave in the last year and I have absolutely no idea when he’ll be home again. If we live like nuns until the end of the war we’ll go crazy, or even worse, forget how to have a good time and become as dull as ditchwater. We can’t stop living just because our husbands are away, and no one with any sense will think any the worse of us for going to a dance.’

  ‘You really won’t take no for an answer, will you?’

  Bethan shook her head.

  ‘I’ve ironed Mrs Raschenko’s green dress, Mrs John.’ Mary stood in the doorway, the long skirt of Alma’s one and only evening dress draped over her arm. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘Lay it on Mrs Raschenko’s bed, Mary. You don’t mind staying here on your own?’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs John.’

  ‘And you’ll telephone the New Inn the minute Theo wakes?’

  ‘
Yes, Mrs Raschenko, but you know he never does.’

  Jane looked at Alma. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Have you heard about the new brand of knickers the Americans brought with them?’ Judy shrieked into Jenny’s ear as they stood back, buffet plates in hand watching the American forces’ band take their places on the podium. ‘One Yank and they’re down.’

  ‘Did you make that up?’

  ‘Overheard Alexander Forbes telling it to Ronnie in the café.’

  ‘He would,’ Jenny murmured caustically. Alexander had watched her like a hawk for the last month. She had no doubt that he would have been standing behind her now if he had been able to get a ticket, but the invitations Lieutenant Schaffer had sent to the pits had been snapped up by the Pontypridd-born and -bred miners; none had found their way into the pockets of the conscientious objectors who’d been conscripted in from outside.

  She glanced around the room. The New Inn’s blue and silver ballroom was brighter and more crowded than she’d seen it since before the war. All the lamps had been lit in defiance of energy-saving directives, the walls were decked out in bunting and miniature Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes. The buffet table that stretched down the entire length of one wall groaned with mounds of delicacies that had long since disappeared from the shops in the town: iced cakes, jellies, sugared buns, buttered beef and ham sandwiches, cheese straws, as well as peculiar American dishes and punch bowls liberally decorated with fresh fruit, most of it out of season.

  All the town’s councillors had turned out, a fair number of businessmen, and a few, mostly female few, munitions workers. Also just about every attractive girl in Pontypridd. Marriage had been no barrier to getting on to the ticket list, but an absent husband had certainly helped. She wondered just how many girls had been left for the enlisted men’s dance in the Coronation ballroom which presumably had been organised on a less lavish scale than this affair.

  ‘Ladies?’ Kurt Schaffer greeted them. ‘Can I help you to some punch?’

  ‘You can help me to whatever you like,’ Judy giggled, already tipsy after a couple of double gins in the White Hart. Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek, smearing his face with lipstick.