Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby

put your feet on as shivering you scrambled in to snuggle down into a billowy mattress, pillows, blankets and eiderdown. In the morning the windows were an etched miracle of frost patterns, often with the ice on the inside, condensation from our night-time breathing, which you could pick at or draw on with your fingernail before reluctantly getting out and diving into clothes that Auntie Rose had left warming by the range all night.
    The children arranged a mass snowball fight one dinner break; vackies versus village kids. It included every child in the district between the ages of five and fifteen and got utterly out of hand – not that it was ever in it. Waves of schoolchildren surged up and down the road between the village school and the Methodist chapel hurling ice and snow or just shouting. When the bells sounded, while some law-abiding souls went in to school, the rest of us spilled over into fields and chased each other to Duloe Bridge. The climax was a snowball shoot-out as the wan winter daylight faded. We swaggered back into class in front of the admiring looks of the more timid kids to have the smirks wiped off our faces by Mrs Langdon, our Junior Vackies mistress, normally the kindest of women, and Miss Shepherd of the village school, a tiny, bird-like creature, who laid their rulers mercilessly across our chapped and tingling fingers.
    And once, when Mr Evans, the elderly village-school headmaster, was absent, tiny Miss Shepherd was forced to bring out their school cane and wield it on several of the bigger boys – vackies and village kids – for a group transgression: chanting blasphemous versions of Hymns Ancient and Modern in public. Miss Shepherd was halfway down the row of proffered backsides when the cane, groaning under its excessive burden, gave up the ghost and snapped in two. Miss Shepherd burst into tears and the row of unyielding bottoms returned to their seats.
     

     
    A weekly ordeal was the letter home. Auntie Rose was adamant. We were never allowed to miss. I regarded it as a chore to be endured; it must have been torture for Jack. One winter evening I sat at the table chewing a pencil while Auntie Rose mended socks with a letter from Gwyn on her lap. She was upset and not inclined to be indulgent to my whinges.
    ‘I can’t think of anything to write.’
    ‘You say that every week.’
    I was as foolish as ever. Walking in where I should never go. ‘You’ve read that letter from Gwyn hundreds of times.’
    ‘And I shall probably read it hundreds more.’ I froze at the tone in her voice. ‘They said he was only going training back home in Wales. Now they’ve sent him abroad. Abroad. Where? Haven’t they ever heard of embarkation leave?’ Her voice had risen to a querulous high and she stared at me as though it were my fault and I had the answer.
    Intimidated, I offered, ‘Uncle Jack said they didn’t give them leave because they didn’t want to warn the German submarines. Careless talk costs lives.’ This was a wartime slogan which I piously trotted out.
    ‘What does he know about it?’ she growled.
    ‘That means the army were protecting our soldiers,’ I tried.
    ‘The army? Protecting our soldiers?’ She raised her head from her mending. Her eyes were hollow black bottomless holes as she looked at me. Her voice slashed across the room. ‘When did that ever enter their heads?’ I stared at this apparition, a moment ago sober, comforting Auntie Rose, now someone looking out of hell. I think she must have seen my dismay because her eyes and voice returned to normal. To my relief she went on. ‘ “Address, care of the War Office”. Care of . Huh.’ She changed again, lost in her own world; I wasn’t there. ‘Like they took care of the boys from Jack’s pit in the last lot.’
    I was too curious to keep silent. ‘What’s the last lot, Auntie Rose?’
    She was still lost. ‘The last war. Jack was the only one who came back alive to our village in Wales. The only one.