Free Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby Page B

full of self-righteous, Godbothering hypocrites. So don’t do it.’
    ‘No, Uncle Jack. Sorry, Uncle Jack.’
    ‘I know they’re a lot of Bible-punching Tories, but try to make friends with ’em. We’re fighting the Germans, not each other.’

C hapter S ix
    Quiet but intense excitement in the Phillips household. Gwyn, their younger son, was coming home on leave. He was training somewhere. When he was called up he managed to get into the Royal Welch Fusiliers like his father. The Welch, with its archaic spelling, was a top regiment. Uncle Jack must have been pleased in that schizophrenic way he had of both hating the military and being proud of being Welsh. Tories, staff officers, authority in general, mine owners in particular, shareholders (‘vested interests’ was the phrase then) and religion were all his targets but he was patriotic. Auntie Rose’s political views were simple: she distrusted anything or anyone that put her loved ones in jeopardy. She had suffered the First World War with Uncle Jack being at the front and invalided out. She didn’t need any of that again, and Gwyn was her youngest and most vulnerable. Her daughter, Rose, was relatively safe in Barry, South Wales. Older son Len, Leonard Llewellyn, was ground crew in the RAF, which seemed as good as she could hope for. Both of them were married, something which gave a feeling of danger shared, of security, no matter how false. But Gwyn was single, all hers, and anything could happen to him. He was already a corporal, another source of unspoken pride for Uncle Jack but of no comfort to Auntie Rose.
    She was on the platform to meet the train; Uncle Jack was working on the line in the valley; Jack and I swung on the wire fence behind the wash-house and looked down on the station. The train blocked our view at first but as it pulled away we saw Auntie Rose in the arms of a soldier, his back to us, her head buried in his shoulder, then raised to look into his eyes; we could see hers shining from fifty yards away. He was dark, not very tall, had a kitbag and rifle. Instead of taking the usual route, walking to our end of the platform, crossing the line (illegally) and climbing the little track that many feet had worn, then ducking through the wires, they walked away from us, the long way round, down the platform to greet the porter and Mr Rawlings the stationmaster, over the bridge, up the road and down the Court. I think she wanted to show him off to anyone who was about.
    We soon discovered that Gwyn was extrovert, carefree and seemed to like the world as much as we quickly grew to worship him. When I say carefree, his humour had a black, graveyard edge to it, always visible, like Uncle Jack’s. He never stopped singing, a nice tenor or light baritone, I am not sure which. The reason for his musical leaning was not just the cliché of being Welsh. Uncle Jack had encouraged it, trained it since Gwyn’s treble days, as a possible escape from a life of drudgery down the mines, on the railway, or in some factory. He had seen a way to help his son to escape from what had been his life. He had the right pupil, with a ready unselfconscious voice and easy invention. Every popular hymn and Welsh song was sung to us in snatches with Gwyn’s (and other soldiers’) subversive or filthy lyrics.
    ‘How did you become a corporal, Gwyn?’
    ‘I kissed the sergeant major.’ He cleaned up the usual saying for us, although kissing the sergeant major face to face seemed more shocking than kissing his arse.
    ‘Are you going to fight the Germans, Gwyn?’ I asked him when his leave was drawing to a close.
    ‘No. More training in the mountains, boy. Bloody cold. The Brecon Beacons. It’s not much fun but it’s better than getting killed. They’re saving us Welsh. In reserve. After the Germans have wiped out all you English we’ll go in and sing ’em to death.’ And he let out a burst of a Welsh patriotic tune with very unofficial English lyrics.
    The