Their Finest Hour and a Half Read Online Free PDF Page A

Vale, two and a half years ago. She’d served him pilchards on toast and a cup of coffee, and had blushed scarlet when he’d caught her staring over his shoulder at the sketch-pad, at the bold, economical drawings.
    â€˜They’re ever so good,’ she’d said, shyly. ‘It’s the steel-works, isn’t it?’ and he’d nodded.
    He was staying in Ebbw Vale for a fortnight, he said, making sketches.
    And he was an artist, a proper artist, fourteen years older than herself, and he’d just come back, injured, from the civil war in Spain, and that evening he met her out of the café and kissed her in a doorway opposite the cinema and until that moment, she’d been hoping that a certificate in shorthand and typing from an evening course in Merthyr might be her ticket out of 12 Barram Terrace and away from a recently acquired stepmother, who was making it unpleasantly clear that there was room for only one woman in the house. She’d imagined a future in a place as far away as Swansea – a job in a typing pool, perhaps, a bed in a hostel for single girls – but when Ellis had left for London, ten days later, he’d said ‘come with me if you want’ and she’d done just that, she’d run off with him, and, oh, the daring of it.
    â€˜And I’ll be useful,’ she’d promised Ellis. ‘I’ll look after you ever so well.’ Though, despite her best efforts, she wasn’t much of a cook, and she could never seem to iron a shirt without leaving triangular scorch marks, and since she had never finished the shorthand part of her course, it had been hard, at first, finding a job that could make a decent contribution towards the rents for both studio and flat. She’d been lucky to find Mr Caradoc, who was deeply sentimental about his childhood in Wales, and who didn’t mind a few errors.
    Ebbw steelwks
    Gouts of steam, evry single surfce black.
    Filth & metallic purity, dkness & blinding lght, hvn & hell. Blake
    Saw sheep looking thro yard railings. Unexpectedly white.
    There was no mention of herself in the notes; it wasn’t that type of diary, of course.
    The last set of shutters slammed down and for a few seconds there was pitch darkness before the lights sprang on. Perry, over by the switch, shouted, ‘Any chinks?’ and there was an answering ‘no’ from the rooftop, and half a minute later Ellis squeezed between the double doors.
    Catrin waved. ‘I’ve brought you something to eat,’ she called, and the two men strolled across, talking, and Ellis curled an arm around her waist and caught her close. ‘You’ll never guess—’ she began.
    â€˜I wouldn’t mind so much,’ said Perry, continuing the conversation, ‘if it weren’t for the fact that most of the stuff – present company excepted, of course – that most of the stuff being bought by the Committee is so bloody anodyne, kiddies’ nurseries, and bank clerks in tin hats, and pretty vapour trails over fields of barley and even when there’s a chance to show war, actual war , who do they pick to send to France with the BEF? Bloody illustrators , that’s who they pick. And who do they turn down, even though he offered his services? Only Bomberg , poor old sod.’
    â€˜They think he’s too leftish,’ said Ellis. ‘Goes for those of us who went to Spain, as well.’
    â€˜They turned down Bomberg!’ repeated Perry, incredulously.
    â€˜I’ve got some news,’ said Catrin.
    â€˜And when the bombing starts in London,’ added Perry, reaching for a chip, ‘when there’s death on every doorstep, who will they get to paint the devastation?’ He paused, dramatically. ‘Bloody illustrators , that’s who. Bet they’re kicking themselves Beatrix Potter’s not available.’
    Ellis shook his head. ‘It’ll change. New forms of war require