On an evening in early October, 1941, John Lawrence drove the three land girls home from the station.
It was unusually cold for the time of year. There had been a hard frost that morning which had not melted all day. Frozen puddles spat at the wheels of his cumbersome old Wolseley. He could hear the angry hiss and crackle as the ice splintered. The noise reminded him of those small fireworks that he had waved round in his hand, on bonfire night, to please Joe when he was a child. He kept his eyes on the road.
There were two girls in the back, one by his side. Faith had told him their names several times, but he remembered none of them. At the station, he hadn’t liked to ask. He had shaken hands, introduced himself, and picked up their suitcases before they could protest. They looked a nice enough lot, far as he could tell. The district commissioner had guaranteed she would send some good ones.
But good or not, Mr Lawrence was unhappy about the arrangement. He knew nothing about girls, didn’t much like what he’d heard. He and Faith had married at eighteen, two months before the 1914 war was declared. Faith had managed on her own, somehow, for the four years he was away. She had never complained, in her wonderful letters, about the cold and meagre cottage, the poverty, the giving birth to Joe alone by a small fire. When Mr Lawrence came back alive, unwounded, she said they must never part again. They never had: they never would. She was the only woman in his life. He could not imagine another one. He was glad they had no daughters.
It had taken him some time to be persuaded about this land girl business. But his two farmhands had been called up within weeks of the outbreak of the new war, and it was clear he and Joe could not physically cope with the farm on their own. They worked a sixteen-hour day and still things were left undone. Why not try this Land Army plan, Faith had said, as one who read every word of the newspaper on the days someone brought one to the house, and knew all about the scheme. If it didn’t work, she said, they could think again. With an acute shortage of men in the whole neighbourhood, Mr Lawrence was forced to agree there was no alternative. He had conceded with reluctance.
Now, here they were, the three of them, in his car. Very quiet, not a word between them. Mr Lawrence sniffed. The pungent smell of wet collie, which had eaten its way into the fabric of the car years ago, was pierced by a new, high-pitched feminine smell, the kind of thing Faith would call exotic. Disgusting, in his opinion. Already an invasion into his car, where he liked to be alone with his dogs and their rightful smell. He rubbed his nose in protest. The girl beside him stiffened. He could see from the corner of his eye that she had turned her head to look out of the side window. Slowing down, he took this opportunity to glance at other parts of her: prim little gloved hands folded on her lap, skirt made of a pinkish fuzzy stuff. Her legs were crossed, just one knee visible. The small, square plane of knee bone strained against the bronzish fibre of a stocking. As Mr Lawrence looked, fascinated, a streak of light broke through the grey cloud, flared through the windscreen. For an infinitesimal moment the knee bone dazzled like a jewel. Mr Lawrence withdrew his eyes. Rayon stockings! That was it. Faith only had one pair, for church. Well, this young lady would soon learn there was little time or place for rayon stockings on the farm. Already he could not like her. She’d be all over the house with her blessed stockings, hanging them up in the bathroom to dry if he wasn’t careful – he could see it all. Total invasion.
‘And what’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Stella.’
Stella! Christ. He might have known she’d have a fancy name. He determined not to ask the others. The names would come to him in time. If he gave them time, that was.
He adjusted the mirror, glanced at the passengers in the back seat. Two blurred little faces, spotted and clouded by the imperfections of the glass. One of them had a long pale fringe that covered most of her strange-looking cat’s eyes, greenish as far as Mr Lawrence could tell. She wore more lipstick than Clara Bow. Obviously saw herself as a film star: he’d enjoy seeing her scrape the shit off a cow’s backside, he would. The thought made him smile. The other one struck him as more schoolmistressy, prim. Dark bobbed hair, pale skin, nothing on her lips. What a trio, he thought. With them in the house … still, he’d give them a chance. He was a fair man. He could be wrong.
‘Just half a mile to go, now,’ he said. He felt a general shifting in the car. ‘This is where my land starts, on the left. You’ll be working the fields up here.’
A turning of heads. A swing of blonde curls reflected in the freckled mirror. Curious widening of green eyes. He wondered how they saw his neatly trimmed hedges – a master hedger himself, they would never believe how many man hours the job took him, and what satisfaction it gave him. He wondered how they saw his nicely harvested fields, the yellowing woods on the rising distant land. Did it seem wild to them? Alarming? Faith had said none of them was a country girl. Somewhere as remote as Hallows Farm would seem very strange.
He swung the huge steering wheel. The Wolseley lurched through an open gate, throwing the dark girl up against the fair one. Slight nervous giggles. Apologies. He slowed down through the farmyard, came to a halt near the house. When he had switched off the engine, he returned his hands to the steering wheel. It crossed his mind that he should attempt a smile and say, Well, here we are, girls, in a voice of welcome. But he decided against it. He was not a man accustomed to stating the obvious, and lack of histrionic talent meant he could not disguise the foreboding he felt. On the other hand, he had no wish to be unfriendly, and the girls must be puzzled by his long silence.
‘This is it,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll hand you over to my wife, Faith.’
God, how he longed to hand them over.
The girls clambered out of the car. Mr Lawrence saw them scanning the ground, each one silently planning her route through seams of mud that had spilt through the frost. While he unloaded their cases from the boot, he watched them skitter from patch to patch of hard, silvered gravel, protecting their fine little shoes from the spewing mud. The tallest one, the dark one, seemed to be the most skilful on her feet. The pink skirt was hesitant, delicate; the film star teetered and giggled and almost fell. They looked like an unrehearsed chorus line, Mr Lawrence thought: bright banners of colour – pink, green, pale blue, so odd against the dour stone façade of the house. They reminded him of flowers.
One of Faith’s neurotic birds came squawking round the corner.
‘Look! Have you ever seen such a small chicken?’ squealed the film star in a broad northern accent.
The tall dark girl bent down over the bird, as if to stroke its frantic head. ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bantam,’ she said.
Faith appeared in the doorway of the porch. Her eyes met her husband’s, then sped from pink to green to blue, uncritical.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘You must be ravenous and tired. Come in, come in.’
Mr Lawrence watched the coloured banners march through the dark doorway to begin their invasion.
The girls followed Mrs Lawrence into the kitchen. Prue was last in the line, silently smarting at the snub by the snooty dark girl. How was she supposed to know a bloody bantam from a hen? There had been no instruction on the subject of poultry at the training course, and the only birds she saw in Manchester were hanging upside down and naked at the butcher’s.
The kitchen was large, dim, steamy, billowing with a warm mushy smell of cooking, a smell Prue could not quite place. The pale flagstone floor was worn into dimples in front of the enamel sink. On the huge spaces of the dun-coloured walls, scarred with flaking paint, the only decoration was a calendar, dated 1914. Its faded picture was of a young soldier kissing a girl in front of a pretty cottage. Farewell was the caption, in copperplate of ghostly sepia. Prue felt her eyes scorch with tears. She longed for the small box of a kitchen at home, the shining white walls and smell of Jeyes Fluid, and the shelf of brightly coloured biscuit tins her mother had collected from seaside towns. This place was so horribly old-fashioned, gloomy, dingy. And the two collies lying on a rag rug in front of the stove looked dangerous. Prue hated dogs. She turned to look out of the window so that the others should not see her tears. But the view was smeared with condensation. All she could see was the indistinct hulk of a barn or outbuilding, and the slash of darkening sky.
The characteristics of a hard-working farm kitchen that so distressed Prue left Stella unmoved. In her dreamy state, having left Philip only twenty-four hours ago (Philip whom she loved with her whole being, Philip for whom she trembled and sighed and longed with a pain like hot wire that strangled her gizzards – the simile had come to her in the train), she was indifferent to all external things. She knew that in automatic response to her disciplined childhood, and the four weeks’ training course she had enjoyed, a sense of duty would ensure she worked efficiently. She would not let her mother down, and would willingly do whatever was required. On the other hand, she would not be there. Her soul would be with Philip as he boarded ship at Plymouth, so meltingly beautiful in his uniform that the very thought of that stiff collar cutting into his neck filled her with glorious weakness. And in the impatient weeks waiting for his first letter her mind would feed on the memories she had of him, rerunning the pictures over and over again. She would never tire of them. The best, of course, was Philip at her birthday party, removing his jacket, despite her father’s disapproving look. It was too hot to waltz in comfort, he had said. That waltz! Their skill at dancing had been hampered by their mutual need to be joined at the hip bones. Exactly the same height, they had found the need increased – breast bones, chins, a scraping of cheeks, a clash of racing hearts becoming clamped together. By the time the music had slowed they weren’t dancing at all, merely rocking gently, oblivious to everything but their extraordinary desire.
‘Jellies are now served in the dining-room,’ her mother had shrieked, ‘and there’s plenty more fruit cup.’
Stella and Philip had not wanted jellies: they’d wanted each other. They’d slid from the room and raced upstairs towards the old nursery. It housed a large and comfortable sofa, useful to Stella on several passionate occasions in the past. She had shut the door behind them. Blackout was nailed to the window frames, the darkness unchipped by any glimmer of light. Stella had taken Philip’s hand and guided him past the rocking horse, giving it a wide berth: one of her suitors had bruised his leg so badly that kisses had been interrupted by howls of passion-quelling pain. They reached the sofa. Blindness added to the excitement. She had felt him sit next to her and wondered impatiently why he was fiddling with his sleeve.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking out my cufflinks.’
‘Why are you taking out your cufflinks?’
‘I want to roll up my sleeves.’
‘Why do you want to roll up your sleeves?’
‘I always roll up my sleeves, that’s why.’
‘Rather as if you were getting down to gardening, or something?’ Stella giggled.
‘That sort of thing.’ It didn’t sound as if he was smiling.
Philip had pushed her back on to the sofa. As his mouth splodged down on to hers (in the blackness she suddenly forgot what it looked like, but tasted sausage roll and beer) she felt him expertly flick up the skirt of the sophisticated dress that old Mrs Martin had made from a Vogue pattern. As Philip’s finger had run up the back of her leg, following the line of her stocking seam till he reached the stocking top, Stella realized Mrs Martin was the only person she actually knew who had been killed by a bomb. The finger continued its journey over the small bumps of suspender – not to object to a man’s acquaintance with her suspenders was surely a sign of real love, she thought – and by the time he had reached the leg of her knickers, all sympathy for Mrs Martin had fled. Stella had heard herself moaning, and felt herself squirming in a way which could have been embarrassing had she been visible, but in such utter darkness anything seemed permissible. Then, as Philip employed a second efficient finger to part the way, the warning siren had wailed through the room. They disentangled themselves, made their way back through the blackness, whispers lost in the siren’s moan. The music had stopped. Shouts of instruction came from downstairs. Stella remembered feeling very cold.
If it hadn’t been for the siren, what might they have done?
Crowded into the wine cellar with the other guests, Stella had watched Philip roll down his shirtsleeves and put back his cufflinks. He’d whispered to her that it had been a damn shame, the interruption.
‘But my first shore leave, I promise …’
‘Promise what?’
‘You know what. We must be patient.’
Stella had felt the tremor of his impatient sigh. They’d held hot hands.
‘How can we be patient?’
‘We can’t. But I love you. What a place to have to tell a girl.’ He looked terribly sad. Stella took his other hand.
‘Say it again and again and again so I believe it.’
‘I love you.’
‘Well, I love you too. Listen: that’s the all clear.’
‘That was quick. Thank God no bombs.’
The guests had shuffled back upstairs, but the party was clearly over. Philip had kissed Stella goodbye at the front door. Then he’d left her in such a deliquescent state of love that today’s journey had brushed past her like ribbons. She’d had the sensation of not moving, though finding herself in trains, in cars, landscape flowing by her.
But she was standing still at last. Things had stopped rocking and swaying. Reality imposed itself more sharply. She could focus again, focus on the large expanse of scratched but clean blue oilcloth that covered the kitchen table, the four white mugs fit for a giant’s kitchen, a mahogany-coloured teapot big enough to house several Mad Hatters, the matching jug filled with creamy milk that frothed like cow parsley.
Stella raised her eyes to her new employer’s wife and wondered if Mrs Lawrence could see the state of her tangible love. Mrs Lawrence gave the slightest nod, and bent to wipe the immaculate oilcloth with a clump of grey rag. This small acknowledgement was enough for Stella. She was instantly drawn to the gaunt, bony woman with her cross-over apron, sinewy forearms, ugly hands, and grey hair rolled so high round the back of her neck the vulnerable hollows between the tendons were cruelly revealed. Stella liked her flint-head face, its slightly protruding jaw, sharp nose, wrinkled lids over dark brown eyes. She admired the beige flesh scored by years of hard physical labour. She looked down at her own unsullied hands, nails buffed to a luminescence that was apparent even in the dusk-grained light of the room. She felt a sense of guilt at her own easy life.
Mrs Lawrence was pouring thick noisy tea into the first mug.
‘I must get you straight,’ she was saying. ‘Which of you is …?’ She glanced at Stella, who felt the honour of being chosen first to reveal herself.
‘I’m Stella Sherwood.’ The breathiness of her voice was a private message to Mrs Lawrence.
‘And you?’
‘Prue Lumley.’
‘Prue. So you must be Agatha?’
‘Yes, but please call me Ag. Everybody does. Nobody calls me Agatha.’
‘I wouldn’t think they would, would they?’ said Prue, still smarting from the incident of the bantam.
Mrs Lawrence handed the girls the mugs of dark tea, told them to help themselves to bread and butter: she had arranged thick slices on a plate. Prue, suffering withdrawal symptoms on her first day for years without a chocolate biscuit, scanned the dresser. All she could see was a rusty old bread bin. She thought Mrs Lawrence was pretty odd, not offering them biscuits after their long journeys.
‘When we eat this evening my husband will explain the plan of duties,’ Mrs Lawrence said. ‘We eat at six thirty. I’ll take you upstairs, let you unpack, settle in.’ She paused, gathered herself to break difficult news. ‘I hope you don’t mind all sharing a room. We only have two small spare rooms, so one of you would have had to board in the village. I thought you’d rather be together … so I set to work on our attic, a lot of unused space. It’s nothing very luxurious, but it’s clean and comfortable. In the evening you’re at liberty to sit in the front room with us, of course. We have the wireless on, and the wood fire. It can get quite snug in there.’ She paused again, braced herself for another difficult announcement. ‘All I would ask is that you don’t try to engage my husband in conversation in the evening. He’s exhausted after his day. He likes to listen to the news with his eyes shut … You could always bring down your darning, the light’s better than in the attic.’
Darning? Stella and Ag looked from Prue’s appalled face to one another.
Their mugs of tea finished – in Stella’s case only half finished – the girls followed Mrs Lawrence. The stairs were covered in antique linoleum, and led to a single passage with walls of stained wood. Its old floorboards, spongy beneath their feet, hollowed as if they had been carved, were covered by a strip of carpet worn to its ribs of fibre. The passage led to a bathroom similar to Prue’s in Manchester only in its small size. As she gazed at cracked tiles, the tail of rust from taps to plug in the bath, the scant mat on the linoleum floor, Prue was overwhelmed by the memory of fluffy pink bath towels and the crocheted hat which covered the lavatory paper at home. She felt tears rising again.
‘We all have to share this,’ said Mrs Lawrence, ‘but it can be done. Two baths a week, evening if you don’t mind, and easy on the water. Three inches, my husband says. Four if you cut it down to one a week. And please remember to clean the bath before you leave, and keep your towels upstairs. We’ll be through by four forty-five, so you can fight to wash your faces after that.’
Four forty-five a.m.? In her astonishment, the comforting thought of the pinks of home faded from Prue’s mind. Mrs Lawrence, sinewy arms folded under a flat chest, led them up a steeper, narrower staircase to the low door of the attic room.
It stretched the length of the house, a sloping roof on one side, with three dormer windows. The exposed beams had recently been limewashed: there were spots of white on the scrubbed floorboards and the few old rugs. Ag, with her observing eye, immediately appreciated how hard Mrs Lawrence must have worked to achieve such sparkling cleanness. As one who had spent five years in spartan boarding schools, it was all wonderfully familiar to her: the narrow iron bedsteads with their concave mattresses and cotton bed-spreads – these, Ag guessed, must have begun their days as dustsheets. She took in the marble-topped washstand with its severe white china bowl and jug, the two battered chests of drawers, the lights with their pleated paper shades. Each bed had a wooden chair at its side – at school there was an inspection of these bedside chairs every night. If clothes were not folded neatly upon them, there would be a black mark. Ag wondered how neat her companions would be. The room did not dispirit her. She liked it already. By the time each one of them had arranged her things, stamped her own corner with ornaments and books, and arranged photographs, it would be very agreeable as dormitories go.
What Ag would miss, she knew, was privacy. In her three years at Cambridge, her greatest delight had been in retreating into the solitude of her small, bare, cold room. Here, there would be nowhere to be alone. That, for her, would mean great deprivation. Somehow she would have to find an hour a day on her own – a walk, perhaps. She did not know the West Country but she had read her Hardy and was eager to discover it. The east coast was home. The house in which she had been brought up was almost unprotected in a plain of flat fields. She liked it best when the fields were planted with cabbages: she liked the way they clicked and chinked as you walked through the sharp frills of their stiff, silver-purple leaves. She had never understood why painters did not find cabbages as beautiful as flowers. Ag glanced out of one of the small windows. She would miss the Norfolk skies, too, and the nearness of the sea. All the same, she saw the job as an adventure, a chance she had eagerly accepted. One day, should she survive the war, she would enjoy telling her grandchildren what it was like to be part of the Women’s Land Army. ‘That first evening I wished there had been a bookshelf,’ she said to herself, as she took a pile of Penguins from her bag. Ag often found herself dictating her memoirs even as she led her life.
When Mrs Lawrence left the room, Prue picked up her case and dumped it on one of the two beds that stood side by side. The third bed was at the far end of the room, by a window.
‘If you don’t mind, you two, I’d rather be next to someone,’ she said.
‘I don’t mind where I am,’ said Stella. Wherever she was, she would be alone with Philip, so to her it didn’t matter. In her state of all-consuming love there was no such thing as physical hardship, only the pain of waiting.
‘Then I’ll go over there, if that’s all right.’ Ag sounded relieved. The extra distance from the other two would be some small measure of privacy.
Prue was pleased by this decision, too: she was not a one to bear a grudge, but it would be some time before she would get over the bantam incident. Instinctively, she didn’t fancy Agatha. Making a fool of her in public so soon: it was a mean thing to have done. She found herself sniffing again – stupid tears.
‘This your first time away from home?’ Stella asked.
Prue nodded. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I was sent away to a convent at twelve,’ said Stella.
At her far end of the room, Ag, piling up her Penguin copies of Hardy, gave a small acknowledging smile.
‘I never been ten miles from Manchester, myself, except for the training course.’
‘You get used to it.’
‘Hope so.’
Prue sat in the hammock-like dip of her bed, child’s legs swinging above the ground, a photograph clutched to her chest. She was extraordinarily pretty – the beguiling looks that come from a timeless mould, recognized in any age. Nothing original, but the kind of simple juxtaposition of features that makes prettiness look so easy when it’s before you – heart shaped face, curling lips that are halfway to pouting in profile, slanting eyes, tousled ash hair. Yellow-green tears glittered in her eyes. One of them spilt on to her cheek and instantly lost its colour.
Stella put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Show me your photograph,’ she said.
Prue held up a picture of the façade of a small shop. Elsie’s Bond Street Salon.
‘My mum’s hairdressing shop,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been for this bloody war I’d be almost under-manageress by now. I’d done eighteen months of my apprenticeship, shampooing and perming and that. I was just about to get on to tinting.’ She giggled. ‘Perhaps I can keep my hand in here. Be of service.’ She smiled up at Stella. ‘You’ve got nice hair. I’ve brought my scissors, my peroxide, my kirby grips.’ She nodded towards Ag. ‘I could give you a new style any time, too – you only have to ask.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ag.
‘Blimey: who’s the handsome fellow?’ Prue indicated the photograph Stella was holding. She handed it over: a large Polyfoto portrait of Philip. It had been taken in a studio in Guildford only a week ago – Philip the sub-lieutenant, stern in his uniform, defiant hair cowed by Brylcreem, mouth a thin line of serious intent, though Stella herself could perceive the tiniest upturn at one corner which privately indicated the other side of him.
‘Cor,’ said Prue, after a moment’s awed silence. ‘He’s quite something. You in love?’
‘Totally, hopelessly, absolutely.’ Stella laughed, pure happiness. ‘I can’t sleep for thinking of Philip, I can’t eat for thinking of him, I’ve lost half a stone.’
‘That’s going quite far,’ said Prue. ‘I’ve never felt like that. Have you, Ag?’
‘No,’ said Ag. She was wondering if the others would mind if she arranged her books on the top of one of the chests.
‘You’re right lucky, then,’ said Prue.
‘I am.’ Stella took the photograph back. ‘But then what’s the point of life if you’re not in love? I always have to be in love. I can’t imagine not being in love.’
‘Has it always been Philip?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Stella laughed again, a delighted cooing laugh that Prue envied. ‘There’ve been lots of others, but Philip is the real thing.’
‘Marriage, you mean? Wedding bells?’
Stella touched the outline of Philip’s face. ‘We haven’t known each other long,’ she said. ‘But I think you know, somehow, when it’s … I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised, when the war’s over …
‘Anyone mind if I put my photo on the chest of drawers?’ asked Prue, standing up.
‘Course not,’ said Stella. ‘I’ll have Philip on my chair.’
‘What about you, Ag?’ Prue thought that if she tried hard enough she might eventually get the tall, snooty dark girl to loosen up.
‘I’ll put mine beside yours.’ Ag took a small double leather frame over to the chest. On one side was a photograph of her mother, who had died when Ag was two, taken in the 1920s. On the other side was a recent snapshot she had taken with her own Box Brownie: Colonel Marlowe, her father, gentle solicitor, outside his office in King’s Lynn.
‘Now she’s what I call a beauty,’ said Prue, snatching up the frame as soon as Ag had put it down. ‘Smashing, isn’t she? Just like Vivien Leigh. Your mother, is it?’ Ag nodded. Prue returned the photograph to its place. ‘Can’t say you’re much like her.’
Now their score was even, and Prue was full of regret. She wished she hadn’t said that. It was worse than the bantam, more hurtful. She hoped she would be forgiven. But she could not tell what Ag, so dignified, was feeling. Ag quickly returned to her bed. She searched for something in her handbag.
Prue felt in urgent need of a cigarette. ‘Anyone mind if I have a fag?’ She took a packet of Woodbines and a box of matches from her pocket.
‘Not at all,’ said Ag, so lightly it seemed she had not noticed Prue’s jibe.
‘I don’t mind anything,’ said Stella.
Prue went over to Ag. ‘Sorry I said that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it. You can’t tell nothing from a photo. Don’t know what got into me.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Ag.
‘But your mum is beautiful,’ said Prue.
‘Was,’ said Ag. ‘Hadn’t we better be going down for high tea?’ She looked at her watch. It’s almost time.’
Prue moved over to the single armchair, sat on an arm, inhaled deeply. ‘Just a quick drag,’ she said. ‘D’you suppose we’re going to have to eat whatever that terrible smell was in the kitchen?’
‘Rabbit and turnip,’ said Ag. ‘I’ll take a very large bet.’
‘Rabbit and turnip? Crikey, I’ll never get that lot down my throat. And do you think Mr Lawrence’ll find his tongue?’
‘He was very nervous in the car,’ said Ag.
‘Huh! What did he think we were?’
‘I wasn’t nervous,’ said Stella, ‘I was just thinking of Philip.’
‘’Course you were.’ Prue pecked fast at her cigarette. ‘You were just thinking of Philip. As for Mrs Lawrence, she’s a real old battleaxe.’
‘So do I,’ said Ag.
‘That makes two of you, then,’ said Prue. She swung her legs faster. ‘It don’t feel much like there’s a war, here, do it?’
The dining-room had a patina of gloom. It smelt of darkly polished furniture. The central light, whose shade was fretted with the abstract wings of dead moths, feebly illuminated a bleakly laid table: fork, knife, pudding spoon, and napkin in a bakelite coloured ring at each place, glasses and a jug of water. In the centre of the table, island in a brackish lake, was a stand of lacy silver which held cut-glass pots of salt and pepper. A gleaming silver spine rose between the pots, its apex twisted into a small handle. This fragile object, the single shining thing in the sombre room, made Stella smile. She wondered when Mrs Lawrence had time to polish it. She imagined it was important to Mrs Lawrence to make the time.
Ag, standing by the table – none of them was sure what to do, whether they should sit down – straightened a table mat, a gravy-spotted scene of rustic Dorset a century ago. In the awkward silence that had netted them all, the grandfather clock ticked – muted, insistent, its fine brass hands stroking their imperceptible way round the brass sun of its face.
‘Give me the creeps, grandfather clocks do,’ said Prue. She moved over to the sideboard to study a photograph in a cheap leather frame. It was of a stern-looking young girl, her flat hair rolled up in the same way as Mrs Lawrence’s. ‘She don’t look like much of a laugher, do she?’
Mrs Lawrence came in with a pot of stew. It was rabbit. She was followed by her husband who carried a dish of mashed potatoes and roast turnips. The girls exchanged private looks. Prue, behind the Lawrences’ backs, imitated someone being sick. But she took the piled plate Mrs Lawrence handed her.
‘Where’s Joe?’ Mr Lawrence asked his wife, an enormous plate of food in front of him. Mrs Lawrence, the last one to sit, had taken a tiny helping herself.
‘Went to deliver that feedstuff to Robert. Said they might have something to eat at The Bells.’
Mr Lawrence sniffed.
There was a long silence, but for the subdued chink of knives and forks in thick gravy. Prue, despite herself, was eating hungrily. The ticking of the clock bored through her. She turned to Mr Lawrence, sitting next to her.
‘Is that your daughter?’ she asked, nodding towards the photograph.
‘No,’ he said.
Prue gave him fifteen ticks of the clock to tell her more. He kept his silence. She turned to his wife.
‘Who is it, then?’
Mrs Lawrence wiped her mouth on her napkin. Already she had finished her food.
‘That’s Janet,’ she said. ‘Joe’s fiancée.’ She waited till Ag and Stella had both turned to look at the photograph with new interest, and returned to their food. ‘They’re to be married when the war is over. In the spring, we hope.’
‘Depending on Mr Churchill,’ said her husband.
‘They know they may have a long wait. They seem quite resigned.’
Mrs Lawrence spoke tightly. Stella and Ag both hoped Prue would ask no more questions. Prue felt no such reticence. She turned again to the farmer.
‘So Joe, your son, he’s not been called up, then?’
‘No, he hasn’t, and he won’t be. Asthmatic. Not a hope. Suffered all his life.’
‘He’s been very unfortunate, Joe,’ said Mrs Lawrence. ‘He would have liked to have joined the navy,’ added her husband.
‘He would have liked to have gone to Cambridge. He got a place, they thought very highly of him. But then the war … we couldn’t spare him from the farm.’
‘My – I have a friend in the navy,’ said Stella.
‘I went to Cambridge,’ said Ag. ‘He shouldn’t miss it if possible. He could go once the war’s over.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Lawrence.
They fell back into silence. The ticking clock dominated again. It wasn’t until Mrs Lawrence had helped them all to large plates of apple pie and custard that her husband got down to business.
‘You’ll have heard about the place from the district commissioner, I dare say,’ he began. ‘Bit of this, bit of that, mixed farming. Up to now, we’ve done what we like best, though I hear there’ll be orders any minute to turn the place mostly over to arable land. For the time being we’ve got a small herd of Friesians and a hundred or so sheep, though we’re thinking of giving them up after the next lambing. Duties are pretty obvious. Faith, here, manages everything to do with the house – shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry and so on. Land girls aren’t supposed to help with domestic chores, but I dare say she wouldn’t say no to the odd helping hand.’ He watched his wife shake her head, cast down her tired eyes. ‘She takes care of all the fruit – just a small orchard, we have, damsons, plums and apples. She does all the pruning, picking, boxing up, everything, don’t you, Faith? Besides the jam and chutney – you’ll not be short of good jam, here, will they, Faith?’
‘They won’t,’ said Faith.
‘Apart from all that, in a real emergency the wife helps us out with the milking, the lambing – she can turn her hand to anything, can Faith.’
He stopped for a moment, glanced at Prue. Once again glassy green tears danced in her eyes.
‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ she said. ‘Poor Mrs Lawrence.’
Mr Lawrence ignored her. His instinct had been right. He could see this film star bit of fluff wasn’t going to be much use, women’s tears at the very thought of an honest day’s work.
‘Everything else’s up to Joe and me and you lot. You can all have a go at different things, see what you’re best at. Five twenty a.m. there’s tea on the kitchen table, five thirty it’s down to milking. I’ll sort you out, your various duties, in the morning. Anyone have any preferences?’
Prue volunteered at once. ‘Well, I found on the course I loved tractors, Mr Lawrence. Don’t suppose you’d ever believe it, but I could plough a pretty straight furrow, they said.’
‘I’d find that hard, I must admit,’ he replied, unable to resist a slight smile.
‘I loved working with cows,’ said Ag. She would be the one, perhaps, he would introduce to hedging. He could imagine her, slasher in hand – kind, studious face, thoughts hidden behind hooded eyes. He couldn’t picture her, somehow, serious head bent into the muddy side of a cow.
‘I’ll remember that, then. And you?’ He turned to Stella. The picture of her knee still flickered in his mind.
I’m afraid I got to the course late because my father was ill, so I missed learning to milk. I’m just a general sort of all-rounder … I’ll do anything.’
‘That’s good. Well, then, you start at dawn tomorrow. I warn you now, I’m a fairly easy man’ – Ag saw his wife’s mouth twitch almost imperceptibly – ‘but one thing I can’t stand is anyone late for anything, see? And another thing: there’s to be no shirking. It’s tough work, long hours, but it’s the satisfaction of a job well done you’ll get. The satisfaction of knowing you’re doing your bit for your country in this damn war. Now—’ he pushed back his chair, flushed from the exertion of so much speaking. ‘I thought we should … celebrate your first night with a sip of the wife’s home-made ginger wine. You’ll never have tasted anything like it, I can tell you that.’
He strode over to the sideboard, opened a cupboard, took out five wineglasses and put them on the table. Their glass, so pale a pink as to be almost an illusion, was engraved with butterflies that flew through swirling ribbons. It was a wonder their fine stems did not snap in Mr Lawrence’s huge clumsy hands, thought Ag. They were the first beautiful objects she had seen in the house. She could not contain her response of pleasure.
‘They’re so pretty,’ she said.
Mrs Lawrence blushed. She was confused by the least of compliments. ‘My mother’s,’ she said. ‘My mother liked to collect pretty things. We’ve not many left. We had to sell off gradually. Bad years.’ She put her hand to her mouth, as if she had said too much. The merest gathering of shadows beneath her eyes – which almost smiled – indicated a feeling of modest pride as she watched her husband pour the thick golden wine. Filled, the blush of the glass deepened against the wine.
By now it was almost dark outside. No one put on the light. The room was warmer, furred with the merged smells of food and polish, and the faint note of musky scent that came from Prue. Mr Lawrence, his dutiful speeches over, was suddenly looser in his movements, sitting heavily back in his chair – the only one with arms – swinging a frail glass to his lips.
‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To Mr Churchill.’
‘To Mr Churchill,’ the girls muttered, holding up their glasses.
The smoky light through the window joined the pink of glass and gold of wine. So now the glasses were the colour of misted plums, thought Ag, spurred by her usual private wonder at the antics of colour.
‘And, of course, to you girls.’
‘Thank you, Mr Lawrence,’ giggled Prue. ‘That’s nice of you.’
Again the farmer could not resist a smile as he watched three white little hands tipping the glasses to their pretty little mouths: tomorrow they’d be piling the dung heap, sweeping the yard, slapping grease on sore udders.
They all drank, Mrs Lawrence with tiny sips. The fiery wine burned their throats, their chests, their stomachs. It warmed their hands, and their heads spun with new ease and expectation.
The glasses were emptied, the cork put back with no invitations for more, the bottle returned to its cupboard. The girls helped Mrs Lawrence take the dishes through to the kitchen. Her husband stayed for a while in the empty room, made unfamiliar to him by the new presence of strangers. The wine still burned his lips, the ticking of the clock soothed. Perhaps he would get used to it, the full house. Might not be so bad after all. Even the film star looked as if she might shape up. In a moment, he would summon the energy to go out again. With Joe still not back, there was plenty to do before nightfall. He allowed himself a moment with his eyes shut, head thrown back. Behind the heartbeat of the clock he could hear laughter across the passage.
The kitchen was blurry from the steam of hot water from the sink. Mrs Lawrence’s arms were deep in murky bubbles, from which she produced shining white plates. The girls fluttered round her, competing to snatch each plate from her first. They had tied dishcloths round their coloured skirts. In the near dark they fumbled through strange cupboards guessing where to put things. They bumped into each other. The ginger wine surprised them with its strength. It made them laugh.
As they were all tired, and eager to be alert on their first morning, they agreed on early bed. Mrs Lawrence warned them not to put on the light unless they pinned the black-out stuff across each window. None of them had the energy to do this: they undressed beside their beds, turning their backs to one another as they slipped nightdresses over their heads. Prue, the only one to have been denied these lessons at boarding school, copied the modest gestures of the other two. She had difficulty in seeing her face clearly in her hand mirror: it took her some time to wipe the mascara from her eyes and the lipstick from her mouth.
She watched, fascinated, as the other two brushed their hair with short, strong, dutiful strokes as if it was a ritual they had performed for many years. Ag’s hair was dull and heavy. It needed thinning, shaping. Stella’s could do with a restyle, too. When Prue knew them better, she would introduce them to her scissors, persuade them to allow her to make improvements. The plans in her mind diffused the small feelings of homesickness.
‘Funny, me a hairdresser’s daughter and never brushed my hair at night,’ she said.
‘Very odd, that,’ agreed Stella.
Ag sat on the edge of her bed rolling up her stockings. She wore a flannel nightdress with a bodice of lace frills, and carpet slippers. So grandmotherly, thought Prue, slipping off her own pink velvet mules with their puffs of matching swansdown. And now the grandmother figure had laid the small neat bundle of stockings on her chair, beside a pile of books, and had turned to face Stella and Prue.
‘I think I must tell you something,’ she said quietly, folding her hands like a nun. There was a long pause. ‘That is, my name isn’t really Agatha.’
‘Oh?’ Prue was prepared to be surprised by any announcement this prim girl liked to make.
‘No. It’s much worse than that. It’s Agapanthus.’
‘What? Aga – what?’ Prue doubled up with giggles. ‘There’s no such name.’
‘Well, there is,’ said Ag. ‘It’s both the name of a flower and the name of my grandfather’s … boat.’
Prue studied her own incredulous face, with its mascara-streaked cheeks, in her hand mirror.
‘Fishing boat, or what?’
Ag hesitated. ‘More of a yacht, really,’ she said at last. ‘Just a small one. My father insisted I should be christened Agapanthus. He’s a strange man in some ways. But he also agreed I’d have a bad time at school with a name like that. So we settled for Agatha – which isn’t actually that much better, is it? Anyhow, in the end everyone called me Ag, so I never had to explain.’
She bowed her head. The warm confusion of the ginger wine was draining away. The compulsion to confess the matter of her name had come so powerfully upon her: now, having done it, she wondered why.
‘I think that’s wonderful,’ said Stella. ‘Agapanthus! You could be famous with a name like that.’
‘Wouldn’t be bad for a salon, to my mind,’ said Prue. ‘Have you ever told anyone before?’
‘Just one friend at Cambridge. Desmond.’
‘And here you are telling us the first night we meet? I’d say we’re flattered, aren’t we, Stella? Any trouble, and I’ll be shouting it from the haystacks. “Agapanthus!” I’ll shout!’
They all laughed.
Ag got into bed, sat with arms round raised knees. The feeling of the first night at a new school was overwhelming: on the one hand it was all so familiar, on the other there was the strangeness of being grown up in what felt like a child’s world.
‘I don’t know what came over me. I just felt I had to tell you. Good night.’
At school, they always bade each other good night, no matter how sleepy. She lay down and in a practised way shuffled about until she found comfort in the unyielding mattress. In a moment she was asleep.
Prue, in her bed, tossed about in search of softness: she doubted she’d ever get used to a mattress like this. Still, the ginger wine had cheered her, and she had to admit there was something intriguing about Ag’s confession. The tears her mother had warned her she would probably shed on her first night did not come. She, too, was quickly asleep.
Stella reached for Philip’s photograph on her chair, as soon as she judged the others would not hear. Terribly awake, she kissed his face in the dark. She replaced it, but could not sleep. After a while – it was too dark to see her watch, and Ag’s clock was too far away – she slipped out of bed and crept to the nearest window. There was a full moon. It shone hazily through dark clouds, fraying their edges. She looked down into the farmyard: looming black sides of barns and sheds, a huge pile of dung whose acrid smell just reached her. The night was so ominously quiet she feared bombs. Fighter planes often zoomed out of the deepest silence. What would they do in a raid? Mrs Lawrence had said nothing about a shelter …
Stella saw a man ride into the yard on a bicycle. He braked with a rather dashing little turn; had anyone been watching, she’d have thought he was showing off. He dismounted, pushed the bike into the barn. She could see he was tall, large. When he came out of the barn he paused, looked up at the moon, scratched his head. Now Stella could see he wore enormous muddy boots. Instead of moving towards the house, he turned back to the barn, leaned heavily against it, face to its wall. He protected his forehead with a bent arm, shoulders hunched. For a long while he did not move – two or three minutes, Stella thought it must have been.
She could be imagining it – he was a long way off – but his position struck her as one of despair. Eventually he moved, drew himself upright and took long mournful strides back the way he had come, towards the gate. Cold now, Stella returned to her bed. She picked up the photograph of Philip again, and clasped it in her arms. Under the bedclothes she kissed his icy glass face, and swore to love him till she died.