MORNING SERIAL
NORTH Road railway station was quiet. He had a long time to wait for the next train to Bristol.
It was mid-summer and warm. Plymouth had been reduced to rubble by some of the most ferocious bombing raids of the war.
The roads were now all passable and many of the bombed sites cleared by German prisoners of war who had been detained to help clear up the mess.
Many of the sites that had not yet been cleared had become beautiful rock gardens, each one an exquisite, delicate-scented eiderdown, hiding the shattered brickwork and rusting steel. The rock-rose, with its downy white leaves and bright yellow flowers, thrived among the ruins while dandelions, bold dark yellow, spread across the disturbed ground.
He remembered the girls in school had insisted if you picked one, you would pee the bed.
He dozed in the summer evening. It was gone midnight by the time the train pulled into Bristol. The station café was open.
The next train on to Cardiff was due at five in the morning. He sat in the café and ordered a cup of tea. A few other soldiers were hunched over the tables. In the army you got used to waiting.
The early morning sun was just above the Cardiff rooftops as the station announcer informed them that the Paddington Fishguard express was approaching platform two. It would be stopping at Bridgend, Port Talbot, Neath, Swansea, Llanelli, Burry Port, Carmarthen. He knew the names well.
At home they would be wondering what had happened to him. He was expected back on Friday night, at midnight, on the last bus.
He knew the routine of the weekend well. On Saturday morning he would wait for the clatter of the letter box when he would rush out to meet Peggy.
The risk of buggering off without permission was worth it for that first sight of her. Emerald green eyes, a spotlessly fair complexion from her Irish and Welsh genes and a smile that, if she had wanted to, could have persuaded him to do anything, even rob banks.