The Welsh Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the twenties and thirties, reminding them of what they had in common, their Celtic race, reminding them of their common enemy, the English.
    Dragoons were stationed here to keep order during the strike, and in the public bar the sappers are still called occupiers by some. It's half in jest, but only half. The nationalist view of the war is that it's an English war, imperialist, capitalist, like the Great War that Jack fought in and from which he still carries a limp (not that you'd know it to see him behind the bar; he's never spilled a drop).
    Arthur, a staunch nationalist, still speaks bitterly about his one and only trip to England, to a rally in Hyde Park in '37 to protest the conviction at the Old Bailey of 'The Three', the nationalists who set fire to the RAF bombing school at Penrhos. "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," he's fond of quoting the reverend who addressed the rally, "and unto Wales the things which are Welsh!" Esther heard her father give the speech most recently to Rhys Roberts, the gap-toothed lad who helped out, at Cilgwyn the
    past two summers. Rhys turned seventeen in the spring and promptly joined up, much to Arthur's disgust (his work on their farm would have qualified him for reserve status), though Esther is relieved he won't be around pining for her any longer.
    Tonight, however, the success of the invasion has stilled such nationalist talk. The few Plaid sympathisers who remain nurse their beers, suck their pipes and steal glances down the passage to where Esther is serving. She takes a fickle pleasure in standing between the two groups of men, listening to their talk about each other. For she knows the soldiers, clustered round the small slate tables, crammed shoulder to shoulder into the narrow wooden settles, talk about the Welsh, too: complain about the weather, joke about the language, whisper about the girls. Tonight they lounge around, legs splayed, collars open, like so many conquerors.
    She tells herself that most of the locals are as filled with excitement as she is, even if they're reluctant to admit it. She yearns to be British, tonight of all nights. She's proud of her Welshness, of course, in the same half-conscious way she's shyly proud of her looks, but she's impatient with all the talk of the past, bored by the history. Somewhere inside her she knows that nationalism is part and parcel of provincialism.
    She has her own dreams of escape, modest ones mostly--of a spell in service in Liverpool like her mother before her, eating cream horns at Lyons Corner House on her days off-- and occasionally more thrilling ones, fuelled by the pictures she sees at the Gaumont in Penygroes.
    This corner of North Wales feels such a long way from the centre of life, from London or Liverpool or, heavens, America. But nationalism, she senses, is a way of putting it back in the centre, of saying that what's here is important enough. And this really is what Esther wants, what she dimly suspects they all want. To be important, to be the centre of attention. Which is why she's so excited as she moves through the crowd--
    "'Cuse me!"--collecting empties, stacking them up, glass on teetering glass, by the presence of the soldiers, by the arrival of the BBC
    Light Programme a few years ago, by the museum treasures that are stored in the old quarry workings, even by the school-age evacuees like Jim. They're refugees from the Blitz, most of them, but she doesn't care. If she can't see the world, she'll settle for the world coming to her.
    She's sure others in the village feel this. The sappers are a case in point. No one quite knows what the base they're hammering together is for, but speculation is rife. The village boys, Jim among them, who haunt the camp, watching the sappers from the tree line and sneaking down to explore the building at dusk, are praying for the glamour of commandos. There's whispered talk of Free French, Poles, even alpine troops training in the mountains for the