Prue, alone in the cowshed, no one around to complain, was taking her chance to sing.
If you want to go to heaven when you die
Wear a pair of khaki breeches and a tie.
Wear an old felt bonnet with WLA on it
If you want to go to heaven when you die …
She was doing her best to whitewash the battered walls. Bloody awful job, but at least better than carting loads of mangolds down to the cows, like Ag. Or harnessing the stubborn Noble, like Stella. They would have rain gushing down their necks, sodden hair, soaking wool gloves. It had been raining hard for the first week of the New Year – Prue had collected enough buckets of rainwater for a month’s hair-washing. Also, it was freezing. Bloody freezing. Prue was the only one of the girls still awaiting a greatcoat. Shortage of cloth for land girls’ coats had still not been overcome: there was no saying when hers would arrive. Mrs Lawrence had made several enquiries to the district commissioner, who held out no hope of a coat in the near future. So Prue had to make do with three jerseys under one of Joe’s old macs, and still the cold cut through her bones.
But Prue had learned as a child that hardship is a challenge. She remembered her mother’s advice: when the going gets tough, remember Winston Churchill. Remember everything you can that he says. He’s an inspiring man. Prue’s mother was given to muttering Now is our finest hour as she strove to overcome the shortage of solution for permanent waves. Now is my finest hour, said Prue to herself, sloshing whitewash over a daunting new area of dirty brick wall. Her arm ached so badly she wanted to cry. But there was no use in crying, or stopping. Mr Lawrence expected the wall to be finished by midday.
Besides, there were thoughts to dwell on that made up for everything: Robert. She and Robert had made a swift start on New Year’s Eve. Half an hour at the Red Cross dance was enough to convince them that his cottage would be a better place in which to celebrate the New Year. Robert had lit the fire and shaken out the rag rug in front of it. He had heated up a tin of soup, and found half a bottle of wine. Thus the setting for her third seduction as a land girl, while not perfect, was both slightly warmer and more comfortable than either the barn or the woods.
Prue found herself much taken by Robert’s shyness. She liked the way he averted his huge, moth-like eyes when, halfway through the revolting soup, she considered it time to stop dilly-dallying, and remove the velvet dress. She laid it on top of the rug, pushing the fur neck into a kind of fairy bolster. For some moments Robert looked so charmingly embarrassed Prue felt herself inclining towards him in a way that immediately alerted her to its inconvenience. Just in time, she remembered that to go falling in love with an anaemic young farmer, penniless to boot, would not fit in with her ultimate calculations. She quickly placed his chilly hand (in all her experience she had never known such icy flesh) on the silken thigh beneath her slip, and was rewarded by an electric reaction.
‘It’s the bombs urge a girl on,’ she said, fluttering lashes winged by three layers of mascara. ‘I’m not forward by nature, but when it comes to a race against the bloody bombs I want to win.’
‘Quite,’ said Robert.
He hastened out of his own clothes while Prue languorously released her stockings from their suspenders, an art she had learned from close study of many film stars. She smiled at the sight of her new lover-to-be’s feet – the smallest, most delicate men’s feet she had ever had the pleasure of observing. Blue-white skin stretched over fine bleached bones. The miniature toes wriggled in the folds of red velvet – crustacean (a word she had recently learned from Ag), somehow, and making Prue giggle. She looked up to see Robert naked but for his watch.
‘Five to twelve,’ he said.
‘And Big Ben ready to strike, I see.’
Prue collapsed into further giggles as Robert lowered himself beside her. As on many previous occasions, she was oblivious of the precise moment of the passing of the old year, but was able to rejoice, very early in the new one, at the presence of a new lover.
Now – the tiresome thought returned to her in the cold of the cowshed – the only thing that had to be tidied up was Barry. She thought of their last meeting – December the tenth. Quite a day for loss, as a matter of fact: Singapore, according to Mr Lawrence, who was a keen listener to the news, and her interest in Barry. She said nothing at the time, just promised she’d be in touch. This new turn of events meant she’d failed to keep her word. Perhaps she would write to him tonight. It wasn’t fair to keep a man mooning about in hope. Hard to know what to say, though.
Dear Barry
I can’t ask you to keep up all the bicycling any more and it wouldn’t be much fun in the woods this wintry weather, we’d catch our deaths, and anyway it’s difficult me slipping off so much even though Stella and Ag are kind and cover for me. So I think we shall have to call it a day. It was good fun. When it comes to telling grandchildren about wartime romances I shall say, well there was Barry …
Nah! Soppy, that last bit. She wouldn’t put that. Love and good wishes at the end, though: she didn’t want him to think he’d been nothing more than a bloody good shag.
In the past week, there had been much meal-time talk about the end of the war. Now that America had joined the fighting, Mr Lawrence seemed to think there was some hope it wouldn’t drag on too long. Prue herself thought such speculation pointless. She agreed with Ratty, who declared much worse was to come before victory. She had no wish to think about the future. She was happy – despite the cheerless rain and cold – with each day as it came: tough work, long hours, plenty of good hot food, and odd moments of reward in Robert’s dingy bed. He was something of a mystery, Robert, Prue had often thought in the past week: no matter how passionately they made love his skin never warmed up. Quite a challenge, that. One day she’d like to be responsible for replacing his corpse-like temperature with a warm pink glow (Prue giggled to herself at the thought). She liked his company, too: dry little phrases, their academic references usually way over her head, shy little compliments, quaint little jokes. And the way he stroked the bridge of her nose when he was being very serious about the war or something. He said the bridge of the nose was an erogenous zone. Perhaps it was among academics, she had replied, but she could think of more erogenous places in the opinion of ordinary folk. All the same, she didn’t try to stop him – tickle tickle tickle with his cold little finger.
‘You’ve done well, Prue,’ said Mr Lawrence.
Prue turned to see him at the door of the cowshed, appraising her work. Rain ran thickly down the raw-coloured runnels of his face. Swift as balls of mercury they slid down the creases of his neck. ‘Not exactly my finest hour, Mr Lawrence,’ she said, pleased, ‘but I’m getting on.’
At times like this, it occurred to her, there was a darn sight more reward in being a land girl than there was in hairdressing. In fact – it had crossed her mind several times – when the war was over it might be worth trying to find her millionaire somewhere in the country, rather than in Manchester.
‘You’re not half as daffy as you look,’ said the soaked Mr Lawrence, smiling.
Joe was avoiding her. This Stella noticed within a few days of their evening at the pub. At first she thought it was her imagination, and he was avoiding everyone. Certainly he seemed less forthcoming – the others had observed and remarked on that, too. Perhaps two days of the beautiful Janet’s company had caused his despair, suggested Prue. Ag’s view was that no end to the war in sight depressed everyone. But Stella knew it was neither of those things. It was something to do with her. She had inadvertently acted in some way to offend or annoy him, but could not imagine what it was she had done.
In the cold and gloomy days of early January, Stella puzzled over Joe’s behaviour. It was definitely her he singled out for the cold shoulder (she noticed a hundred small occasions) and the worry of her unknown misdemeanour was beginning to blight the days. She would have liked to confront Joe: ask him what had happened, clear the air. But he was not an easy man to confront. He had become more and more elusive, always the one willing to undertake jobs far from the farm that could be done alone. Stella watched for her chance. But, as the dreary days dragged by, it did not come.
On the afternoon that Prue was assigned the unenviable but dry task of whitewashing the cowshed, Mr Lawrence asked Stella to take the milk churns to the village. Usually, this was a task he undertook himself. But the persistent heavy rain had taken its toll on the old roofs. There was a leak in the laundry room: water had poured down on to a basket of Faith’s ironing. Repairing the tiles was urgent. Mr Lawrence apologized to Stella, said if he caught sight of Joe he would ask him to give a hand.
Stella, setting off for the field to catch Noble, leaned against the heavy slant of the rain. A dour mass of dark cloud was low in the sky, releasing no chinks of light to play among reflections. And yet the puddles in the lane dappled with inky blues and muddy pinks as Stella splashed through them. In the leafless hedges dishevelled sparrows cowered, unsinging. The thrumming of the rain would sometimes switch into an adagio passage, giving hope it would soon be stopping altogether. Then, like a tease who knows not when to stop, it would fall prestissimo again, defying all such silly hopes. The persistence of such weather had affected Stella’s spirits.
Noble sheltered under a tree, darkened by the rain. He came at once when Stella called. She removed her sodden glove and gave him half a carrot, snorts of warm breath agreeable on her cold hand. In the next field she could see the drenched figure of Ag; sou’wester falling over her eyes, throwing mangolds from the trailer behind the tractor on to the ground. The cows were hustled round her in a selfish crowd, a black and white puzzle whose individual pieces, at this distance, were indistinguishable.
Ag waved. Stella waved back. Ag had been much more cheerful since Desmond’s Christmas card. Strange how thin a hope the human soul can survive on, Stella thought, gripping the soaking rope of Noble’s halter. She and the horse sloshed their way through the long grass back to the gate. If Ag ever did secure this almost non-existent love, surely the stuff of fantasy, Stella would remind her of this rainy afternoon, January 1942, when she, Stella, had been quite convinced nothing would ever happen with Desmond. And with Philip? In his last letter, he had said that when he went to London he was going to buy her a ring. Then they would be engaged. Then they would be married. Then they would live together ever after. Wartime bride and groom. Romantic stuff. But happily? Stella supposed so, in some ways.
She tethered Noble to a post in the barn, made several journeys to and from the tack-room lugging the heavy harness. Her hands, wet and cold, worked inefficiently. She struggled to do up the hard old straps. She tugged at the stubborn leather, determined not to be beaten and have to call for help. As finally she led Noble towards the shafts, a thought came blindingly to her. It came with such terrible clarity that for a moment she was forced to lean against Noble’s damp withers, bury her head in her arms so that she could be submerged in blackness. The suspicion that had been nudging her for some weeks, that she had kept at bay, had suddenly stormed her fragile defences. It was Philip, not the weather, that caused her dejection. The sprightly love she had felt for him when she came to the farm, which had protected her in the many bleak moments that manual labour produces in all those who would rather be engaged in some more intellectually creative activity, was gone. Absolutely gone. She was fond of him, respected him … she would marry him: but she was not in love with him. And, as she had so often said to Prue and Ag, what is the point of life if you are not in love?
Stella moved back at last from the warmth of the horse’s body. She looked again at the swathes of rain that billowed across the yard. There was only one thing to do. The only antidote to any kind of unhappiness, her father used to say, was work. She must apply all her energies, all her concentration, on work: do her bit for her country to the best of her ability. She must remember that, while thousands of girls were suffering the premature death of their loved ones, her fortune was to be loved by a good man who, thank God, was still alive. The thought of Philip being killed sent a spasm of guilty horror down her spine … Should he be spared, she would make a good wife. Learn to come to terms with the kind of love, based on friendship and affection, that, buffed by marriage, lasts. She realized, as she tried to persuade Noble to reverse himself between the shafts of the milk cart, how young and silly she had been, hoping that the froth of love she felt so quickly for Philip, and others before him, was the stuff of permanence.
There was a helping hand, suddenly, on the bridle. Joe muttered a few magic words to Noble who instantly obeyed. The inexplicable discord with Joe was the other reason for her unusual depression, though minor by comparison. She looked up at his grim face, veiled by water that poured off the brim of his waterproof hat. Perhaps there would be a chance to confront him, discover what had caused his hurtful behaviour.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll give you a hand with the churns.’
When they had secured the shafts, Joe led Noble over to the milking shed, where the streaming silvery churns stood in a line. He swung each one easily into the cart, signalling to Stella not to help. She climbed into the driving seat, sat waiting. Joe, to her surprise, when all the churns were loaded, joined her. He looked at his watch.
‘I’ll come with you. Give you a hand the other end. They’re buggers when they’re wet.’
Stella relinquished the driver’s seat.
They clattered out into the lane. The rattling of the churns, Noble’s hoofs, and the drumming rain, made an orchestra of sweet sound. Branches of vapour drifted from the hedgerows, ghostly extensions of the hedges themselves. For all the discomforts of the wet and cold, Stella found herself enjoying exposure to such weather. She was awed by the mercilessness of the rain. She was fascinated to find so familiar a journey made unrecognizable by the gauzes of mist that filtered through it.
In no time, Joe unloaded the churns on to the wooden platform from which they were daily collected. The rain fell harder.
‘Think we should shelter for a moment or two,’ he said. ‘This’ll pass.’
He urged a reluctant Noble on a few yards, halted under the oak tree beside the gate to the church. There, they were protected from the main force of the rain, although it still managed to fall between the intricacies of bare branches. Joe, hunched on the seat, let the reins fall slack on Noble’s back. He stared ahead at the cascade of water battering the dark stone of the cottages opposite, oblivious, it seemed, to Stella’s presence.
‘Joe? Joe, what have I done?’ Stella broke a long silence between them. ‘You’ve been so distant, since that night at The Bells. Did you mind my singing?’
She watched his profile carefully. Even in the poor light under the tree his skin gleamed with running rain. Drips trickled from his eyebrows to join drips falling from the brim of his hat in a squiggling journey down his cheeks. He frowned, causing a rush of more drips to scurry down the bridge of his nose. His dark waterproof, silvered with rain, creaked as he turned towards her.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you haven’t done anything. I liked your singing. You’ve a lovely voice.’ He paused, sighed. The slight hunching of his shoulders caused another flurry of water to scuttle down his arms. ‘I suppose it’s just the thought of the long year ahead. Dark. Getting ill with asthma. The not knowing. The suspense. The waiting. The waste, for everyone. The utter waste.’
Stella, half appeased, half believing him, gave no time to the weighing of her next words.
‘But you’re just the same to Prue and Ag. It’s only to me, I feel … I’ve felt you’ve changed. Unfriendly, somehow.’
‘Really?’ He shifted further round so that Stella could see both his eyes. The irises were the same colour as the rain, flecked with light. He gave her a curious look that quickly wafted away, light as a flake of ash in a breeze. ‘Am I?’ Then he turned away.
‘You must know,’ said Stella. ‘It’s not my imagination. There must be a reason, beyond the doom of war we all feel.’
‘Maybe.’ He went on staring at the rain ahead, falling so hard it bounced back off the road only to fall again. ‘If that’s so, and I dare say it is, then I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unfriendly.’
Stella was aware of the effort he made, then, to remedy things. He turned to her again with a teasing half smile.
‘I could, I suppose, come back at you. Where’ve all your spirits gone? You’re neither so dreamy nor so happy, seems to me. But I could be wrong. People’s shifting moods, in a war, are almost impossible to keep up with. Hopes chasing fears: strain of broken rhythms, traumas, upheavals from the norm … What’s happened to you?’
Stella shrugged. Now, dozens of tiny streams ran down her own sleeves.
‘Perhaps a case of mistaken identity of a feeling. Perhaps I’ve been in love with an idea, instead of a reality …’
‘Ah. That.’ Joe looked as if he was attempting to concentrate very hard on the weather. ‘Doesn’t look as if this is going to ease up. I think we’d better brave it. I should be helping Dad with the roof.’
But as he picked up the reins, a cyclist came into sight. Head down, miserably hunched over the handlebars, his waterproof glinted dully as the feathers of a wet crow. ‘That’s Barry, isn’t it?’ said Joe.
The airman rode towards them, stopped at Noble’s head. He raised his sodden forage cap, looked at them enquiringly. It wasn’t Barry, but a man of similar physique: shaven head and ruddy countenance.
‘Could you tell me where I could find Prue? Prudence? Hallows Farm?’
‘Half a mile down the lane,’ said Joe, pointing. ‘We’re going there. Can we give her a message?’
The young man bit his lip. He squeezed and released the handlebars of the bicycle several times, as if to some private rhythm. Tapped the ground with his heavy black boot.
‘She was a friend of my friend Barry. I came to tell her he was … was shot down night before last. I thought … I thought she’d want to know …’ He replaced his soaking cap. Stella thought she could distinguish tears among the raindrops on his cheeks. ‘If you’re going back there, if you know her … I’d be grateful. My name’s Jamie Morton, should she want to get in touch. At the Camp.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Stella.
‘Buggeration!’ screamed Prue, when Joe told her Barry was dead.
She picked up a tin of whitewash and slung it at her newly painted wall. ‘That’s what I think of this bloody war. It’s come here, now. It’s hit here!’ She dropped on to a milking stool, thrashing her heart. Began to sob. ‘Poor Barry! He was so brave. He told me he hated night flying. I think he knew he was going to die. Oh God, he’s the only person I’ve ever known to die…’
As she buried her head in her hands, the yellow satin bow slumped in her sad curls. The toes of her white-streaked rubber boots were turned inwards: so often there was a childlike innocent look about Prue, thought Stella, for all her superior experience. She put a hand on the shaking girl’s shoulder.
‘You just cry,’ she said. ‘That’s the best thing.’
‘I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen to your Philip …’
Joe quickly picked up the tin of whitewash. ‘Marvellous job you’ve done in here,’ he said. ‘Finished on time, too. Why don’t we all go in and have some tea?’
Any approval from her employers affected Prue deeply. Her wails stopped for a moment. She looked up, her stricken face a grid of running mascara.
‘Heavens, you two – drowned rats! Whatever have you been doing?’ She sniffed, brightening. ‘Well, at least there’s one good thing. I hadn’t sent my farewell letter. I was planning it only an hour ago. So he died not knowing it was all over between us. I’m glad of that. Because he was a funny boy, Barry: I think he loved me.’
She stood, gave the faintest smile. The three of them made a dash through the rain to the house. When they had changed into dry clothes, and Prue had repaired her face, they gathered round the kitchen table with mugs of tea.
‘I can’t quite believe it,’ sniffed Prue, who had exchanged her wet yellow bow for a new black one. ‘Barry. One moment you’re with someone. The next moment they’re dead – and for what? This bloody, bloody war …’
A couple of silent tears fell from her naked eyes, dampening the long soft lashes which, devoid of mascara, glistened. She wiped them away with an impatient hand, cocked her head towards Joe.
‘This friend of Barry’s, Joe, who broke the news – what did you say his name was?’
‘Jamie Morton. He said you should get in touch, if there’s anything you want to know.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Sad, and soaked to the skin,’ said Stella.
‘I must write to him. I’d like to know … where it happened. I’d like to thank him for his trouble.’
She gave such a minor smile that her dimples were only just stirred into action. As Stella and Joe both recognized, and acknowledged with a private look, even in the darkness of Barry’s death Prue, with her resistant spirit, saw the light of some possibility in his friend, Jamie Morton.
* * *
That same afternoon of unforgettable rain, Ratty was at home making an attempt to celebrate his wife’s birthday. He had given her a card in the morning; at tea-time he produced a present made bulky with many layers of newspaper beneath the final wrapping – a sheet of paper decorated with holly, left over from Christmas.
Edith, never a gracious receiver of presents, tore impatiently at the string.
‘What’s this, then? Who said I wanted my birthday remembered? I’m past all that sort of thing.’
Nonetheless, she scrabbled through the paper like an excited child. Eventually she found the present, a small porcelain robin perched on a porcelain tree stump. Edith had always had a fondness for robins, though no interest in other birds. Ratty had made several difficult journeys to local towns in search of the robin in his mind. He had been pleased to find it at last, dusty in a junk shop – lifelike little fellow with a bright eye, especially attractive for its bargain price of sixpence. He anticipated Edith’s pleasure – stupidly, as he later reflected. He should have remembered there was nothing in the world he could give her that would please.
Except, curiously, the paper.
Edith picked up the robin with a sniff of disdain, put it on an empty shelf (previous home of saucepans) and said not a word.
Then she returned to the bundle of newspaper and wrapping paper, and began to flatten out the creases of each sheet with a trembling hand.
‘Where’d you get all this? This’ll be a help.’
Ratty was mystified. ‘Here and there. Got a store of old newspaper in the back shed.’
‘What? Storing up paper in the back shed without so much as a word? What for? Lighting bonfires? Don’t you know the Government’s asked us to save our paper? One envelope makes fifty cartridge shells, they say. They want every scrap. You bring me those papers, Ratty Tyler, or there’ll be trouble.’
By now she had folded one of the sheets of newspaper into small, neat squares. She took a pair of kitchen scissors and began to cut the squares reverently as if they were finest silk, mouth pursed in concentration.
‘What are you cutting them up for?’ Ratty ventured. ‘What’s the use of that?’
Edith snorted at his stupidity. ‘It’s a lot more use than not cutting them up,’ she said. ‘I must have cut up thousands of squares this week,’ she added, with some pride. ‘They’re all stacked away in boxes waiting to be collected. But I don’t suppose you’ve noticed.’
‘I haven’t, no,’ admitted Ratty. He wondered what sort of a man would instinctively know his wife wished him to hunt about the house for boxes of cut-up paper, and then to praise her for such husbandry.
‘Trust you,’ said Edith. ‘But then you’ve never been like me when it comes to doing your bit for the country. All you do is hang about the farm mooning after those useless land girls. First you complain about the saucepans, now you make a fuss over collecting paper.’
‘I’m not making a fuss,’ said Ratty. He watched her cut up the second lot of squares, carefully balance them on top of the first. Some devil within him urged him to express his puzzlement once more. ‘I still don’t see the use of all this cutting up,’ he said. ‘Paper is paper, just as good not cut up.’
‘That’s what you think. That’s what you would say, after I’ve spent all these hours doing my best.’
Ratty watched his wife’s tense shoulders as she hunched over the piece of holly paper, smoothing it again and again with swift little strokes. ‘The war’s got to you, Edith,’ he said gently.
‘Some of us have to take it seriously,’ she said. ‘Now you just go and get those papers from the shed. I’d like to make a start on them.’
‘What, in this rain?’
‘Are you a man?’
Ratty stood, tapping out his pipe. ‘Did you like the robin?’ he asked, playing for time, dreading the downpour in his already soaked mackintosh.
‘The robin?’ Edith looked wildly round, eyes veering over the shelf where the ornament perched, but seemed not to see it. Then she returned to stroking the holly paper.
In the New Year, evening habits shifted at Hallows Farm. After supper, instead of the family and girls gathering in the sitting-room, they went their various ways. Stella, on Ag’s recommendation, was reading the Iliad. As Homer needed a greater measure of concentration than she applied to her own choice of novels, and even the Third Programme was a distraction, she had taken to going up to the attic early and reading peacefully on her bed till the others came up. Prue went out with Robert several times a week. Joe had reverted to his old habit of disappearing. (Stella could see light under his door and hear faint music as she crept upstairs.) Only Ag stayed downstairs with Mr Lawrence dozing in and out of the news, and his wife upright on a chair beneath the standard lamp that cast a pale disc of light on to her darning. Ag herself, speeding through a pile of old Telegraph crosswords, reserved a small corner of her mind for further Desmond detective work: why had he sent a Christmas card? What could it mean? The answers never came. As is often the case when there is no evidence to the contrary, optimistic possibilities gathered strength.
On the evening of the news about Barry, with unspoken consent – perhaps to show support for Prue – they reverted to their old pattern and converged round the fire after supper. Prue, pale but calm, played Solitaire in a corner. She wore an unusually dark lipstick which, she had earlier told Stella, she thought appropriate to the occasion. When, on the wireless, there was news of a bombing raid on London, Mr Lawrence quickly changed to a symphony concert. Behind the music they could hear the single, persistent note of rain shredding against the windows.
The telephone rang. Mrs Lawrence, to whom it could only ever mean bad news, physically started. She put down her darning and ran from the room. A moment later she returned, flustered by relief that it wasn’t the call she dreaded from Yorkshire, but confused by another concern.
‘Prue, it’s for you. Robert. He wants to know if you’d like to go out for a drink.’
Prue’s back still ached, her eyes stung, an appearance of small appetite at supper had left her hungry. She would have done anything for a drink with Robert: the smoky warmth of The Bells, his cold fingers on her neck, his awkward comforting ways. But there were rules that had to be observed when your ex-boyfriend had been killed. She was aware of disguised glances towards her. Her answer was awaited with curiosity.
‘Not tonight, Mrs Lawrence,’ she said at last. ‘If you could explain …’
Further relief softened Mrs Lawrence’s face. She went off with her message. Prue returned to her game.
Joe, who had been restless all evening, stood up.
‘Ag,’ he said, ‘it was weeks ago you promised me some tutoring. I don’t know where to begin on all those books. Could I ask you … could we mark a start?’
Ag’s surprise was evident. Pleased to think that here was a sign at last that Joe was emerging from his gloomy mood, she jumped up, eager to help. The memory of their one strange afternoon was skeletal in her mind. She knew nothing like that would ever happen again. Joe had merely been obliging. She had no fear of going alone to his room and looked forward to their evening.
They left the room, causing Prue a private smile. She liked the thought that she had been the first of the girls invited to Joe’s room, albeit for different reasons.
Later, alone in the attic waiting for the others to come up, Stella was conscious of the kind of restlessness that physically chafes. She hurried into bed without kissing Philip’s photograph, lay listening to the slurry sound of rain against the windows, the whining of the wind. Why this feeling of discomfort? She put it down to the events of the day: the puzzle of Joe’s behaviour was not resolved – if it hadn’t been for the appearance of Barry’s friend, Stella would have probed further. The news that Barry had been killed. Prue’s distress. The endless rain. And now Joe’s invitation to Ag. Stella supposed, of all the disparate characters under this roof, Joe and Ag probably had the most in common. And maybe a little communing with books would cheer Joe up. All the same, for some reason she felt quite cross. She would like to talk to him – about music. Well, Prue and Ag had gratified him in their different ways. She would not like to be the only one who did not contribute to his life. Since she had been freed of the mists of romantic love of Philip, she had noticed Joe more often, and discovered she liked him.
His literary evening must have been a success because Ag came to bed unusually late. Stella pretended to be asleep.
It was long after midnight and still Edith had not come upstairs. Ratty, unable to sleep in a half-empty bed, stumbled to the kitchen. He found his wife standing at the table, as she had been most of the day, regarding a landscape of dozens of paper towers, made of hundreds of small squares of cut-up paper. The room was lighted by a single candle on the table. Shadows stretched darkly across the walls. The table of towers, each with its matching, paler shadow, was a picture of mad geometry, thought Ratty: something he couldn’t understand. Any more than he could understand the look on Edith’s face. Bent over the candle, her turnip skin pocked and scored in the halo of the flame, she seemed to be going through some kind of private mystic experience.
‘You’ll have us burnt to the ground,’ said Ratty at last.
‘That I’ll not,’ Edith replied, her voice quite normal.
‘Come to bed, Edith. It’s nearly one in the morning.’
‘Our country needs our paper,’ she said. ‘I’ll come by and by.’
With extraordinary calm – Ratty had feared his interruption would mean one of her funny outbursts – she began to knock over the paper towers. She flicked each one with a finger, watched it tumble. He regarded her for a while. Soon the table was covered with a thick layer of paper squares. Still Edith went on standing there, running her hands through them. Ratty could bear the scene no longer. Afraid, he turned and went back up to bed.
None of the land girls could remember a time when, if they came upon Mrs Lawrence by chance, she would not be engaged in some form of work. She never grumbled about her endless duties. In fact, the disparate jobs that occupied her, both indoors and out, from early morning till late at night, seemed to give her pleasure. She was an example of a married woman totally preoccupied by the narrow confines of her life, and happy within them. This gave all the girls food for thought. Prue, whose respect for Mrs Lawrence was infinite, was not for one moment deflected by her example: to swap such a life for her own dream of servants and cocktails did not occur to her. Ag had been romantically tempted by the thought of ironing Desmond’s future shirts (all that white linen, so Lawrentian). But of late she had begun to think about becoming a barrister: she would be willing to undertake household duties, but they would have to be arranged around a post-war life at the Bar. Stella, too, was inspired by the loving energy Mrs Lawrence put into every loaf and pot of home-made jam: something her own mother, a useless cook, had never instilled into her. But, like Ag, she was determined to go out to work when she and Philip married. Life would certainly not consist entirely of looking after his needs. Perhaps, she thought, when the war was over, a new and enlightened breed of women would feel much the same.
On a cold February morning – rain had given way to bitter frosts – Ag came into the kitchen to fetch a carrot for Noble. She had spent half an hour trying to catch him – Stella was the only one to whom he came at a call. Mrs Lawrence was sitting at the table, unoccupied. This was so unusual a sight Ag felt a sense of shock, as well as surprise. On the table was one of the small churns in which milk for the house came straight from the dairy. Also, two opened letters.
Mrs Lawrence looked at Ag, unsmiling. There was a tide-mark of milk on her top lip, a comic moustache quite out of keeping with her grave demeanour.
‘Oh Ag,’ she said, ‘good news and bad.’ She patted the letters. ‘John will have to go to Yorkshire tomorrow. He’s been putting it off for ages. But they can’t cope much longer. Things have to be sorted out.’
Ag sat down.
‘What it means, of course, is deciding when … when we have to leave here and take over up there. John’s brother will stay to the end. He won’t go into hospital. But then we’ll have to go. It’s much bigger than here, several hundred acres, mostly arable. God knows how we’ll manage.’
‘Perhaps we could be transferred with you,’ said Ag, touched by Mrs Lawrence’s despair.
‘Perhaps, perhaps.’ Mrs Lawrence looked out of the window. ‘We’ve been here all our married life.’
‘No. Some people don’t mind about houses, places. I wish I could be like that. Rootless. A happy mover, a wanderer, with a desire to see new places. But I’m not. I love our small world. I love this place. John loves this place. Joe, I think, too.’
‘Understandably.’
‘Still, there’s time left. Till the end of the year, I should think. We must warn you all. Give you plenty of notice so that you can make up your minds about what you want to do next. The immediate problem, John having to go tomorrow, is the lambing. We need all the hands we can get.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll help all we can,’ said Ag. ‘I expect Ratty wouldn’t mind—’
‘Ratty?’ Mrs Lawrence smiled at last. ‘Ratty wouldn’t miss lambing for anything in the world. He more or less camps in the shed. We’ll manage. Now: the good news.’ She picked up the second letter. ‘I’ve been in correspondence with the district commissioner. Believe it or not, you’ve been here six months: reward time, if the authorities think rewards are in order. Anyhow, there’s to be a little ceremony next week. Nothing very much: tea and badges. I was asked for a private report of your progress, naturally. Apparently there have been quite a few problems with land girls round the country. One Agricultural Executive Committee had to take disciplinary action against fourteen girls who refused to thresh in twenty-five degrees of frost. I said, nothing like that here.’ She paused to smile again. ‘My girls will do anything, I said … I don’t know what we’d do without them … But what am I up to? Sitting here chattering, the lunch not on. Go and tell the others, Ag. Best bibs and tuckers, four o’clock on Wednesday. Lardy cake, would you like? Egg sandwiches? Glass of ginger wine? We’ll try to make it a small celebration, if I have a moment.’
She hurried to the stove, her old self again.
* * *
Mr Lawrence left for Yorkshire early the next morning. As his wife waved goodbye, Ag noticed a small pulse began to beat in her neck. In twenty-four years of marriage, the Lawrences had never been apart for more than a couple of nights.
Joe drove his father to the station. Mr Lawrence had planned a complicated and slow journey by train. He hoped to return in a week.
There was too much extra work to allow time for much reflection on his absence. Lambing had begun. The night frosts were so hard that Joe worked to divide the lambing shed into many small folds. As the entire flock of ewes and lambs was to be sold in the spring, it was essential to make sure as many lambs as possible survived. Other years, only problem ewes or sickly lambs were given shelter. This year, Mr Lawrence believed, cosseting was the best policy.
Ratty and Joe set up the folds. Prue tossed wheat straw on the ground, filled troughs with water. She had already seen a lamb born, an experience which had inspired a long letter to her mother concerning Nature’s miracles: by comparison, she had said, even the most beautiful permanent wave was no great shakes. (By that I don’t mean I won’t always admire your talent and skill, Mum, she had added in brackets.) Her greatest excitement was for the forthcoming birth of Sly’s last litter. Although Joe assured her they were not due for at least another week, Prue kept running to the sty to judge for herself the pre-natal state of the sow with whom she had come to have a very good understanding. She was determined to be present at the birth.
For all their fitness and strength, the girls found themselves tired by the extra work and went to bed earlier than usual. Joe, having completed the night check straight after supper, did likewise. Frequently he was called out by the indomitable Ratty in the middle of the night to help with a ewe. A few hours’ early sleep was essential to the maintenance of his efficiency and temper.
At three o’clock one morning, Stella, eyes on her clock, happened to be awake. There was a bang on the attic door.
‘Could one of you come and help? There’s a lot going on. Sorry.’
Stella sat up in the dark. Silence from the other two meant they were deeply asleep. She fumbled as quickly as she could into her clothes. Crept out. What help did Joe need? She had no experience of lambing … She put on her coat and scarf, hurried across the freezing yard.
In the shed, she found biblical light from a few lanterns that hung from the walls, and were secured to the pens. There was a smell of hay, earth, blood. A discordant chorus of bleating filled her ears: tremulous notes from the ewes in labour, piteous high squeaks from one or two newborn lambs. In one pen Ratty was huddled over a ewe who lay on her side, mumbling comforting words to her as he dug a syringe into her hindquarters. He was watched by a tiny black lamb, its wool skin glistening like broken cobwebs. In another fold Joe was kneeling on the straw, one arm deep in a ewe’s backside. Stella made her way towards him. He looked up for a moment.
‘Oh, it’s you. Ewe in the far corner over there: turning on her lamb. See what you can do. I’ve got a nasty mess here.’
Stella hurried away, wondering what she was supposed to do.
The lamb needing her help lay on wet straw, its head tipped back, alarmed eyes a milky blue. It was still covered with a translucent skin, silvery over the dun-coloured wool, that its unmaternal mother had felt disinclined to lick clean. Stella stroked its neck, watched the flaring of the small black nostril. She felt helpless, useless. But the lamb, encouraged by her presence, struggled to rise. On tottering legs it made a precarious journey to its mother who stood sulking in a corner. She sighed deeply, twitched her ears.
The lamb gently butted its mother’s stomach in search of milk. With extraordinary speed the ewe lashed out with a hind leg, making the lamb jump back in fright. Then she turned and lowered her head towards her offspring with all the aggression of a ram. The lamb fell back on the straw from the fierce butt of its mother’s head. Stella saw a flash of dun-coloured teeth: the ewe was going to attack further. She quickly bent and picked up the squealing lamb. The slime of its skin slobbered down her greatcoat. The lamb felt cold and tense. It struggled. Stella, keeping a tight grip, swung herself back over the side of the pen and returned to Joe.
He was standing now, fiddling with a syringe. His bare right arm and hand were skeined with blood, as was the straw on which the ewe lay panting on her side. Beside her stretched the unmoving body of a lamb, obviously dead.
‘First one we’ve lost,’ said Joe. He glanced at Stella holding the rejected lamb, which had grown quieter.
‘Case of post-natal depression over there,’ said Stella. ‘Had to rescue this one. The mother was about to butt it.’
‘Good timing, at least.’ Joe put the empty syringe into his pocket. The upper half of his body was in shadow: she could scarcely see his face, but knew it was grave. Shadows flickered in the pen. Only a small stretch of straw bedding was illuminated by a nearby lantern. ‘Hang on to it, for a moment,’ Joe said, ‘while I deal with this.’
Stella leaned up against the pen to watch the process of adoption. Joe knelt down, patted the tired ewe, then picked up her dead lamb. He took a knife lying beside him in the straw, tilted back the rigid little head with its unlit eyes. Carefully he dug the tip of the blade into the skin, began to pull down towards the chest. Then, very fast, the knife travelled this way and that, its blood-laced blade giving an occasional muted flash in the dim light. With a surgeon’s skill, Joe began to ease the skin from the body and limbs. It came away all of a piece in his hands, a dishevelled old jersey, leaving a naked lamb behind. The small body, Stella could see, was an extraordinary blue – the blue of wild flowers, bluebells, forget-me-nots: the flesh iridescent between patterns of tiny veins. She burrowed her own icy hands into the warmth of the living lamb in her arms.
Joe picked up the corpse, slung it into a sack.
‘Now, give me yours.’
He took the animal from Stella. Again, fascinated, she watched as he struggled to fit the dead lamb’s skin over the orphan lamb. In a few moments he had succeeded. The creature stood beside its foster mother, bemused and shaky in its new ill-fitting clothes. The ewe, nostrils twitching, heaved herself up on spindly legs. She began to sniff the lamb, who stood patient, curious, wobbly. Then, with sudden confidence, it pushed and nuzzled towards the udder. Moments later it was sucking, a whispery, rubbery sound. Its tail wavered from side to side. The ewe, ears back, eyes half shut, did not move.
‘Worked,’ said Joe. ‘Usually does. Thank God for that.’ He threw the sack containing the dead lamb towards the door, glanced round the shed. Ratty had gone. The bleating had died down. ‘All calm for the moment. I’d better hang on, though. There should be a couple of others by the morning. Thanks very much for your help.’ From his side of the pen he patted Stella’s shoulder. ‘You’ll have to clean up your coat,’ he said, swinging a leg over the fold. ‘And you should go back to bed. But let’s sit down just for a moment.’
They sat on a pile of hay between two pens. Joe picked up a clump of straw from the ground, began to wipe the mess from his arm. Then he pulled down his sleeve, fastened the cuff, dragged a thick jersey over his head.
‘I suppose it’s freezing,’ he said, ‘but I stopped feeling the cold some time ago. You must be …’
He turned to Stella, whose hands lay flat on her corduroy knees. Like his, they were smeared with blood. Joe put a hand on top of one of Stella’s, covering it. Then he snatched it away. The touch was as transitory as a V in water after a bird has passed. The coldness of its imprint, on Stella’s own chilled skin, she could not feel.
‘There. I knew it.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘It’s a hard time, lambing.’ Joe now ran both hands randomly round his face. Stella could hear the squeak of flesh as he rubbed his eyes. She felt him shudder.
‘Stella?’ he said, after a while.
‘Yes?’
They listened to the stirrings of the animals in the dark straw. The weak mewing of the lambs indicated they were well-fed, sleepy. Outside, an owl hooted. Candles in the lanterns were low. The small patches of light they made were murky as cloud. Stella wanted to go on sitting there, sitting there.
‘I think it’s time you went back to bed,’ said Joe, at last.
‘I could stay and help,’ said Stella.
‘No,’ said Joe.
The unexpected appearance of Stella, followed by the cold night hours in the shed while lambs were born, dead and alive, very nearly blasted Joe’s resolve. After the brief, foolish touch of her hand, he felt he could keep his silence no longer. In the few minutes that they sat – tired, bloodied, cold – listening to the sounds of new life among the sheep, a thousand good reasons for telling her how he felt dazzled his weary senses. She would never know the effort he summoned to say, instead, in a normal voice, that it was time for her to go. She further confused him with her offer to stay and help. Almost more than he could bear. He prayed that she would go quickly – which she did – before weakness overcame him.
Left alone, he remained sitting staring at the moonless sky outside the shed. The darkness had that peculiar density, known to those who are up before dawn, before the first cracks of light, subtle as the camouflage of tiger skin, indicate the new day. Recent pictures of Stella shuffled across his mind: the anxiety on her face when he told her to deal with a ewe, the maternal relief as she stood by the pen holding the lamb. As he skinned the dead lamb her eyes, he knew, never left his knife’s journey. Then, as he fitted the skin on to her orphan lamb, he saw a look of – wonder, was it? Admiration? Or, in the poor light, was he merely seeing what he hoped to see? In a state of acute love, misinterpretation is so easy. Most probably all that had been in her eyes was the normal fascination anyone would have on witnessing an operation they had not seen before.
Since Stella’s accusation of unfriendliness, Joe had been doing his best to act as he had before his revelation and yet, for his own preservation, to avoid her as much as possible. For some reason, in the urgency of the moment, it had not crossed his mind she might be the one to answer his night call for help. And for all his concentration on the sheep, Stella’s very presence in the shed, followed by the terrible proximity on the hay, had caused him new agitation. Wearied by a week of broken nights with the sheep, he had little energy to fight the feeling. He found himself succumbing to an idea that raced suddenly from nowhere. He knew, however unwise, there was no holding back from his next plan.
Long hours later, he walked into the attic bedroom without knocking, holding a mug of tea. He allowed himself a moment to look down on the sleeping figure of Stella, hair awash on the pillow, one shoulder showing above the sheet. He called her.
Stella woke quickly, struggling through shards of dream to focus on reality. There was still a knife in the air, skinning a lamb: there was a silvery-blue corpse on bloody straw, there was Joe’s cold and bloody hand on hers. When the remnants of the dream dissolved and she saw the real Joe, tired eyes, small smile, mug of tea stretched out, Stella gave a cry.
‘Joe? Whatever …? What time is it?’
‘Seven.’ He passed the mug, stretching his arm rather than moving nearer.
‘Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’ve never overslept before.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘Milking.’
‘They should’ve woken me.’
The sheet slipped down her shoulder as two hands cupped the mug. There was a glimpse of low-necked white nightdress. The slight humping of one breast as the arm she leaned on squeezed her side.
‘I told them not to.’
‘I’m sorry, I really am.’ She shook her head. Hair surged about in natural waves.
‘I’ve said. It doesn’t matter a bit.’
‘What about you?’
‘There were two more lambs. Both fine.’
‘So you’ve not been to bed all night?’
Joe shook his head. ‘I’ll get a couple of hours now. Would you mind doing Sly?’
‘’Course not. Where’s Mrs Lawrence?’
‘Gone to the village with the eggs.’
In the cold air of the room Stella and her bed were an island that smelt of warm sleep. Joe wanted to kneel on the floor beside her, tell her of his certainty. He held on to the doorpost.
‘I won’t be long. Down in time for lunch.’
And what about all this luxury?’ Stella lifted the mug. ‘I don’t deserve this.’ She smiled at him. ‘Thanks. I won’t be a moment.’
She sipped her tea. Hair parted over shoulder. Eyelids, cast down, the colour of iris petals, blue-veined. Joe would have liked to watch her drinking tea for ever.
Stella quickly pulled on her breeches and thick jumpers. She ran across the yard to fetch a pitchfork from the lambing shed. Her special lamb, still wearing its adopted coat, was asleep beside its foster mother. Late, guilty, she did not linger to see the rest of the newborn lambs, but hurried to the pigsty. There she found Sly, in the last stages of her last pregnancy, in an irritable mood. First she refused to move from the bedding that had to be discarded, then she butted Stella’s side with a complaining snout. Stella’s usual patience was frayed. She wished she could swap jobs with Prue. Sly and Prue had a special relationship the others would never acquire. She did her best, flinging sodden straw into a barrow in the yard, to be moved later. While she tossed down the sweet-smelling new stuff, a wayward thought came to her: simply, she looked forward to lunch-time. She looked forward to Joe’s being there.
Engaged in this small reflection, it was some moments before she realized Prue was leaning over the sty wall, a critical eye on her work.
‘What’s going on?’ Prue asked.
‘Joe said would I—’
‘Sly’s my special job.’
‘None of us has special jobs, really, do we?’ Stella paused in her work, leaned on the pitchfork. Prue, she saw, looked unaccountably put out. ‘I’m sorry. I overslept.’
‘We have special things we’re good at,’ Prue snapped back. ‘Hedging and hens and the fruit for Ag. You’re good at milking and Noble and the cows. I’m the plougher and the pig lady.’
Stella had never seen Prue so petulant. ‘That’s probably so. But we all swap about without making a fuss, don’t we?’
‘Don’t you understand? Sly’s about to give birth and I wanted to look after her till it’s all over,’ Prue suddenly shouted. ‘I don’t want you interfering, taking my job, thanks very much.’
‘Calm down, Prue—’
‘I’m not calm, I’m furious.’
‘I can see that. Here.’ Stella handed over the pitchfork. ‘You take over. I’ll finish off the cows with Ag.’
Prue’s outburst was quickly demolished by Stella’s gesture. She entered the sty as Stella left it, ostentatiously rearranged the already well-tossed straw, gave Sly a proprietorial scratch behind one ear. Then she turned to Stella with an apologetic smile.
‘If you think about it, there’s not many hairdressers who fall in love with pigs.’ They both laughed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. Everything’s got on top of me. Nightmares about Barry. A letter this morning from his friend Jamie with details of how he died … Too many late nights with Robert. My nerves seem to have gone all to pieces.’
‘You could do with a good night’s sleep,’ said Stella.
‘You sound like my mum,’ said Prue.
It was the first squabble Stella could remember in their six months at Hallows Farm. That, she reflected on her way to the cowshed, was an amazing fact that perhaps the war could account for. Civilians, horrified by the fighting, instinctively wanted to live in extra peace at home. And, in any case, they were too busy to indulge in petty quarrels.
At four o’clock that afternoon the girls, in clean jerseys and breeches, sat round the kitchen table with Mrs Lawrence and the district commissioner, a Mrs Poodle. There was an air of a children’s tea party. The girls had brushed their hair: Prue, for the first time, for Mrs Lawrence’s sake, had left off a bow. They had washed every trace of mud from their hands and nails, laid a cloth on the table, and arranged a lardy cake and two sorts of sandwiches. Beside each of the girls’ plates lay three red half-diamonds, rewards for six months’ satisfactory service, which they were now allowed to sew on to the sleeves of their jerseys and coats.
‘The badges are usually just sent through the post,’ explained Mrs Poodle, ‘but I wanted to come and see how you’re getting on in this remote spot.’ She smiled round merrily.
‘We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, would we?’ said Prue. ‘Stella and Ag and me.’ Overcome by her badge, the first prize of any kind she had ever received in her life, Prue was close to speech-day tears. She fingered the half diamonds in disbelief, shuffling them together to make whole ones. ‘My mum’ll not believe this.’
‘It’s curious that the Land Army is the only one of the services in which there’s no promotion,’ Mrs Poodle went on. ‘Seems very unfair to me. But at least the badges are some recognition of your loyal service. If you keep up the good work you’ll be entitled to a special armlet in eighteen months’ time, and a special scarlet one after four years. Think of that!’
‘Good God,’ said Prue, tear-bright eyes flicking to the ceiling, ‘surely we’re not going to be needed that long. Surely the bloody war’s not going on for another bloody—’
‘Prue,’ said Mrs Lawrence.
‘Sorry.’
‘No one can say how long you’ll be needed.’ Mrs Poodle, unused to such feasts, was enjoying her third piece of lardy cake. She had cut it up into tiny morsels to prolong the treat. In return for such hospitality, she felt, her knowledge of how the WLA fared beyond Hallows Farm would be bound to interest. ‘But enrolment is galloping ahead,’ she said. ‘In Dorset alone, by the end of last year, three hundred and nineteen land girls had signed up. I reckon there’ll be twice that many by the end of this year.’
Mrs Poodle shook hands with each one of them, before she left, and wished them well in their long and hard service to their country that lay ahead. She, like Prue’s mother, found the famous words of Winston Churchill invaluable when it came, as it often did in her job, to encouragement on formal occasions. ‘We are moving through a period of great hope, as our great leader put it, when every virtue of our race will be tested and all that we have and honour will be at stake.’ Her eyes dimmed at the poignancy of her own rendering of the great man’s words. She pulled on a pair of black kid gloves, adjusted her hat. ‘It is no time for doubt … Good luck, girls. And congratulations.’
‘Bugger everything,’ shouted Prue, as soon as she had gone. ‘I’m going to sew on all my diamonds now.’ But as she was about to turn back indoors, they all heard Joe’s urgent shout from the pigsty.
‘Prue! You’d better hurry. Sly’s begun.’
Prue gave a shriek. Her half-diamonds dropped to the ground. Stella bent to retrieve them for her. Again, she felt a brief sense of annoyance. It was unreasonable. Unaccountable. But a fact.
That evening Robert came to supper and suggested that they should all go to The Bells to celebrate. Ag and Mrs Lawrence declined in favour of an early night. Joe said he could not leave the sheep. Stella volunteered to help him.
‘Just you and me, then,’ Prue giggled to Robert, the only one to accept a second apple dumpling and more Bird’s custard – love never affected her appetite. ‘But before we go you’ll have to be introduced to every single one of Sly’s litter. Help me give them names.’
The sow’s late-afternoon lying-in had inspired Prue with unexpected maternal feelings.
‘Never seen such a performance,’ she had kept on saying to Joe. ‘Look! There’s another one! How does she do it? Good old Sly …’
She had stood for a long time watching the fourteen tiny piglets writhing and squeaking, snouting among their mother’s dugs, their gristly bodies slipping over her panting belly – contemplating the miracle of birth. It was something to which she had given no previous thought: now, beguiled by Sly’s piglets, the attraction of having babies seemed suddenly understandable. She’d like four, she decided, and looked forward to telling Robert this new decision. So she was relieved to find the others would not be coming to The Bells. The announcement that she wished to make should be private. There was much to tell Robert: it had been a memorable day, what with prizes and piglets and decisions about children. The kind of celebration she fancied was several stiff gin and limes, followed by wild activity in the hard and noisy bed, and bugger Stella’s prissy suggestion about an early night.
As soon as the washing-up was finished, Mrs Lawrence and Ag went upstairs. Joe followed Stella into the sitting-room.
‘Cold?’ he asked, and put another log on the small fire before she could answer. Stella switched on the wireless. Rubinstein was playing a Chopin prelude. ‘I’m not much of a Chopin fan,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ He left the room.
Stella curled up on the hard sofa, disappointed. She had spent the last half-hour looking forward to a short time alone with him. Why she wanted this, she found impossible to explain to herself. But somehow, she had discovered since Christmas, his presence was a luxury, a comfort, a warm pleasure. Watching him skin the dead lamb last night, and skilfully introduce the orphan lamb to its foster mother, had inspired her admiration. This morning, tea in bed, he had surprised her. Now, he had sort of … insulted, rejected her. The curious thing was, however he acted seemed to affect her. This was confusing. Stella, not wanting to understand for fear of discovering the truth, allowed herself to believe that the distortions of the war were more devious than she had supposed. They accounted for Prue’s sudden temper, Ag’s unflagging hope of a non-existent relationship, and her own jumpy reactions to one who had become a friend.
The warmth of the fire, combined with Chopin’s sad and plashy chords, made her drowsy. She would make herself a cup of Ovaltine, go to sleep hoping Joe might call upon her again to help with more lambing.
Stella imagined he was already out in the shed, so was surprised to find him in the kitchen. He had spread paper over the table and was cleaning his shoes, chipping mud off a heel with a blunt knife.
‘Job I most hate,’ he said.
‘I was going to get myself some Ovaltine before bed. Like some?’
Joe nodded. Stella poured milk into a saucepan, prepared the drinks.
‘Good about the half-diamonds,’ said Joe.
Stella smiled, brought the drinks to the table, sat down. She held her mug to her nose, sniffing the hot, beige-smelling froth, enjoying the warmth of the steam. Joe kept his eyes on brushes, polish, dull leather that began to gleam under the fierceness of his polishing. After a while, the swishing of the brush, like the music, induced in Stella a further drowsiness of the careless kind.
‘Do you ever feel,’ she asked, ‘such total confusion that you don’t know where to begin to untangle the various strands? You don’t even know what the strands consist of? An amorphous confusion? Do you ever feel that, Joe?’
He glanced at her, saw the beautiful mouth turned down.
‘Of course. Often. All the time.’
He held up a huge black shoe, admired its shine, took up a duster. One of the dogs, asleep by the stove, growled in its dream.
‘We’re the ones who’ve decided on marriage. Do you think we’re right?’ Again Joe glanced at her. ‘I mean, why are you going to marry Janet?’ Even as she asked, Stella realized the silly risk she might have taken.
Joe put down the finished shoe, sat down, picked up his drink. He fought for calm, forced himself to look her in the eye. Oh God, please give me the strength not to let her see …
‘I could ask you the same question. Why are you going to marry Philip?’
Stella gave an embarrassed smile. She shrugged. ‘I was in love with an idea – one of my weaknesses. I’ve been in love with lots of ideas. I thought he was the right person. Perhaps it was the urgency of war …’
‘You thought?’
‘I thought.’
‘You still think?’
‘I don’t know. To confess any doubts would be too disloyal.’
‘I know those feelings.’
‘I’ve given him my word.’
‘I’ve done the same to Janet. You never said how it was, your weekend in Plymouth.’
‘It didn’t occur to me you’d be interested.’
‘I admit to being intrigued about the sort of man you love.’
Stella hid her face behind a structure of hands and mug. She tried for lightness.
‘Philip’s a good man. The weekend wasn’t … entirely perfect.’
Joe nodded, began to chip mud off the second heel. It fell on to the paper in dark curves, like giant nail parings. Stella stood up, took her empty mug to the sink. She was not sure if Joe had heard her last remark. She hoped he had not, for it was a first act of betrayal.
‘I must go to bed,’ she said.
‘We haven’t really answered each other’s questions.’
‘No. Perhaps we will some other time. Call me if you want any help in the night.’
‘Really. Please.’
Joe nodded. He did not watch her leave the room, but continued to work with manic concentration on the shoe. He polished and repolished till no brighter shine could be achieved. A possibility he hardly dared to think about added to the general morass in his mind. Surely it wasn’t his imagination: surely, tonight, there was some indication …
Joe felt he had seen signs of something so small, so amorphous – in Stella’s words – that she herself was perhaps innocent of its existence. But it was there, within her. It had taken root. The question was, should he stamp on it before it flared into consciousness? Or should he abandon all principles and encourage it to life?
Some days later, Ag finished her morning duties earlier than normal, so joined Mrs Lawrence in preparing the lunch. Joe came into the kitchen carrying a couple of dead rabbits. He slung them on the draining board. From the stomach of one of them purple blood oozed through the pale fur on to the dark wood.
‘Thanks, Joe. Your father will be pleased.’ Mrs Lawrence turned to Ag. ‘John’s expected home this evening. He’ll be wanting his rabbit stew and boiled onions. There’s suet left over for a treacle pudding – his favourite, too.’
The news came as no surprise to Ag. She had noticed early that morning that Mrs Lawrence’s spirits had risen. Her inner life, always so carefully concealed, emanated in subtle hints of private exuberance. She moved faster between table, sink and stove. Her worn hands, sometimes slowed and dull with fatigue, fluttered happily among soapy plates. She buttered slices of newly made bread with extraordinary speed. Her beige lips, released from their usual cautious clench, kept breaking into a smile.
Ag had often thought how she would have liked Mrs Lawrence for a mother: the idea was renewed this morning. She sensed that this strong woman, in her state of anticipation, exuded a kind of approachability which was rarely apparent. Ag, who loved as well as admired her, yearned to talk to her. She wondered if it would be untoward to try.
Mrs Lawrence darted to the sink holding a lethal knife. She began to skin one of the rabbits. Ag watched her firm hand grasped round the animal’s neck: the head flopped over, an obscene bunch of fur, bone, tooth resting on stiff lip, blubbery balls of dead eyes.
‘Could you do the other one for me, Ag? It’s not difficult. Common sense.’
‘I’m afraid I … I’m no good with dead things. Birds, fish, animals. For some reason, I can’t touch them.’ It was the first time Ag had had to refuse Mrs Lawrence any request. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, ashamed of her squeamishness.
Mrs Lawrence glanced at her. ‘That’s all right. I used to feel the same. I had to get used to it. I was sick, I remember, the first time I drew a pheasant. I don’t mind any of it, much, now.’
She tugged at the rabbit skin, turning it inside out as she pulled. It came off clean as a glove. Ag regarded the naked pink body beneath, the legs bent as if still running, their flight frozen by death. Feeling sick herself, she chivvied about, laying the table, not wanting to see more of Mrs Lawrence’s butchery.
The rabbits were quickly chopped into a jigsaw of pathetic joints and piled into a large bowl. Mrs Lawrence poured in a dash of cider, bay leaves, juniper berries, pepper. Her movements were light, happy. When the bowl of hideous contents was complete, she carried it to the larder as if it weighed no more than an empty plate.
‘John’ll love that,’ she said, on return. ‘When we were first married, not a brass farthing between us, we ate a lot of rabbit.’
She sat down at the table, correcting the position of a fork, a glass. She tweaked at the few sprigs of forsythia, still in bud, that Ag had arranged in a jug. She put one hand over her heart.
‘Ridiculous! I ought to be ashamed of myself, at my age. I’m all of a flutter.’
Ag smiled back at her. Here, perhaps, was her chance.
‘We’d be lucky,’ she said, ‘any of us, if we ended up with a marriage like yours and Mr Lawrence’s.’
Mrs Lawrence looked surprised. ‘Really? I don’t know about that. I think if you’re happy working together for the same end, it’s a help. We’ve been so lucky in that respect, John and me. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry a man who went off on a train every day. Like that, there’s so much of your lives unknown to the other … Absence can mean a blurring of the rules. I wouldn’t want to go away from home myself, either. I suppose I’m terribly old-fashioned. I can see an age, a generation or so ahead, when women will think it quite natural to go out to work. Mere housewives, like me, perfectly happy with their lot, will be scoffed at. Perhaps we are even today. But I’m too busy to dwell on things like that. I’m so out of the real world, I don’t know much of what is going on. But what about you, Ag? Have you thought about what you want to do after the war?’
Ag thought for a silent moment, decided to confide.
‘I’ve been thinking: I’d like to study law, go to the Bar. I’ll go on being a land girl, or do some other war work, while I’m needed; then I’ll try for law school. The ultimate plan – the old plan—’ she gave a self-deprecating smile – ‘is to marry Desmond.’
‘The one who sent the Christmas card?’
Ag nodded. ‘I sometimes think my dream of him is a stupid waste of time and energy. But then I remember the certainty I felt. Instantly. Positively. Mysteriously … Foolish, I suppose, but I’m relying on that.’
‘You must. You should.’ Mrs Lawrence sighed. ‘I wish Joe felt such certainty.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, he shows no great outward signs of it. We don’t talk of Janet. We talk about books. But he’s a dark horse, Joe.’
There was a long silence.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, Ag, and I would ask you not to repeat my indiscretions to the others. But I think John and I may have made the greatest mistake of our lives over Janet. And I don’t know what we can do.’ Mrs Lawrence spoke quietly, unsure she should be saying such things but compelled, after so many months of silence, to tell this sympathetic girl for whom she had particular affection.
‘Joe was such a daffy young boy, seducing every girl for miles, breaking hearts all over the place. We found ourselves lecturing him on the wisdom of looking beyond physical attraction, of choosing a good, solid girl for life. He used to scoff at such concepts, say the only marriageable woman he’d ever met was me!’ She smiled to show she knew this admission of vanity was an indulgence. ‘And of course he didn’t change his ways. Then – I don’t know how it came about, exactly, he never said – but he announced he’d proposed to Janet. Janet! Well, we’d known her for years – they used to live in Somerset. We liked her parents. She was a childhood friend of Joe’s – plain, gawky, kindest heart in the world. He treated her like another boy; she loved him from the age of twelve. As I say, I don’t know what drove him to his decision, but a lot of bad luck came at once – no Cambridge, no fighting. I suppose he felt bitter, a failure, useless, though he never actually complained.
‘Anyhow, unofficially engaged, as it were, he stopped chasing girls. He spent most of his free time with Robert, talking, talking: they have a lot in common. Then, out of the blue, this proposal; entirely to please us, we now think. And at the time we were pleased. We felt, here was security. Not very exciting, perhaps, but security, support, devotion.
‘But then, in a way, he seemed to give up. The life went out of him. He said, “I’ve done what you want, you ought to be pleased.” We said, “Joe, you must do what you want.” Timing was against him, of course. Just as they’d announced their engagement, Janet was posted to Surrey. Joe didn’t express any great sadness. I still have to chivvy him to write to her. As you’ve seen, they hardly ever have a chance to meet.
‘Then, you girls arrived. John and I were worried, of course. Especially, when all of you turned out to be so … well, it would have been easy for Joe to fall back into his old ways. We trusted him, naturally. He’s an honourable man, Joe. Once he’s given his word, he sticks by it. What’s happened, you coming, as you’ve probably noticed, is that he’s come out of his shell. He’s still tense, restless, full of regrets: but happier. Don’t you think? I think you must be his first women friends, all three of you. I have to admit I had my suspicions Prue would get her pretty little hands on him, and I dare say she tried, but she wouldn’t have succeeded. I know he enjoys your company so much.’ To Ag’s deep discomfort, their eyes met. ‘Intellectual equivalent. With all the farm work, he’s been denied so much of that sort of stimulus, apart from Robert. Prue amuses him – he’s amazed by her capacity for hard work, hand in hand with all her silliness. And he seems to like Stella – their mutual interest in music. Really, you’ve done him the world of good, the three of you, in your different ways.’ She paused, began to knead her knuckles.
‘You’ve also shown him … But I don’t want to be disloyal to Janet. Suffice to say that at Christmas the contrast between her and all of you … must have made him think. Besides which, Janet seems to have changed: jumpy, eager, irritating in her desire to be of use, to be liked, to be loved. The poor girl. She must see he doesn’t love her, she must see he’s merely trying to stick to his word.
‘We blame ourselves, John and I. We blame ourselves. We taught Joe to stick by his promises and now, in doing that, he may have a lesser life. What can we do?’
Mrs Lawrence gave Ag a look in which desperation was bound with regret. Ag, astonished by the confession of her normally reticent employer, felt unable to advise. She could give no immediate answer. To play for time, she fetched the warm plates from the stove, stirred the pan of carrot soup. Then she returned to her seat.
‘By strange irony,’ she said at last, ‘I think it’s a case where maybe the war can save. I mean, as it twists and breaks so much anyway, perhaps it could be used as an excuse. Perhaps both Janet and Joe will just drift apart, and blame only the war. The end of their arrangement could come about for the same reasons as it began: pressures of war, decisions forced by an unnatural time.’
‘You’re not accounting for his honour,’ said Mrs Lawrence.
‘I am. But even honour, distorted by the events of war, can be seen as foolishness. So if a word is broken, it may be forgiven.’
‘I hope that’s so. Perhaps events will right themselves. Now: not a word of all this, Ag, please.’
‘I promise.’
‘Take out the potatoes, if you will. I’ll call the others – only a few hours.’ She was cheerful again. ‘John’ll be back about five.’
Mrs Lawrence put on a clean pinafore for her husband’s return and her rabbit stew was appreciated by all but Ag, who could not bring herself to eat the running legs even though they were half disguised by gravy, having seen them in their naked form.
Mr Lawrence came back with the news he had expected. His brother’s illness was in remission. The prognostication was that he might now live months rather than weeks. Together they had agreed that the Lawrences would move to Yorkshire in the following new year.
He left no pause, after this fact had been announced, going on to explain his plans for Hallows Farm before their departure. He wanted as much as possible to be turned over to arable land before it was put up for sale. The cows – all but Nancy – would have to go within a few weeks. Sly likewise. At Prue’s squeal of protest he refrained from mentioning the fate that would befall her litter. But pig feed was scarcer than ever, he patiently explained to the distressed Prue, and their supply was almost finished. He spoke of detailed plans concerning which fields would be best planted with which crops.
‘I’m warning you,’ he said, ‘it’ll be the busiest spring of your lives. Harrowing, ploughing, weeding, sowing: good thing you’re all so fit. Half-diamonds well deserved, by the way. But I don’t want you to underestimate the hard work ahead. Tell me honestly: do you think we can manage, six pairs of hands and Ratty, or should I think about more help?’
‘We can manage,’ said his wife quickly, for all of them.
Next only to ratting, Ratty loved shepherd’s work. Lambing time was his favourite season, the nights away from home, the ‘dozens of bloody miracles’, as he called the births. Besides which, the night work afforded him the excuse of sleeping a few hours during the day, thus avoiding the increasingly irascible Edith.
The night Mr Lawrence returned home was a busy one for Joe and Ratty. Nine lambs, including twins, were born. It was six in the morning when he walked home – not tired, the adrenalin of wonder kept him going till the last lamb of the season was born – but hungry. There were signs of a fine day to come. Signs spring was not far away.
Ratty looked forward to an hour’s peace in the kitchen, frying himself rashers of bacon in the one pan, and a slice of bread. But to his dismay he found Edith already downstairs. She stood before a large box on the table, rummaging through deep litter of paper cut-up squares, as if searching for something in a bran tub. The squares, he noticed, had become smaller in the last week or so. Their symmetry took hours of her time.
‘Out with the girls again,’ Edith greeted him, a strange bleak look on her face.
‘I’ve been lambing with Joe. Nine since midnight, including black twins. You know I’ve been lambing. I could do with some breakfast.’
‘Breakfast!’ Edith cackled. ‘You can get your own rotten breakfast, or get one of those girls to get your breakfast.’
‘Now, look here, Edith …’ The pleasures and achievements of Ratty’s night suddenly left him. They were replaced with a cold anger, spurred by hunger and the desire for peaceful sleep. ‘You’re being unreasonable,’ he said.
‘Unreasonable?’ Edith snapped round. Her hands flew out of the box, scattering paper. She clutched its sides, threw its contents at Ratty. ‘That’s what I think of you, Ratty Tyler.’
The paper showered over Ratty: bright little sparks from old coloured books and postcards, dull flakes from newspapers, soft, clinging fragments of tissue. They chipped his coat, clung to his cap. Edith began to laugh.
‘Confetti! That’s it, confetti. We never had any on our wedding day, remember? You wouldn’t run to confetti. I should’ve known then …’
Ratty began to shake the paper from his clothes. He was suddenly very tired. Empty. Cold.
‘We did, didn’t we …? Surely?’
‘That we didn’t.’
Edith stomped over to the dresser and snatched up a small brass frame containing a sepia photograph. She thrust it at him.
‘Our wedding day, right?’
Ratty blinked at the faded image of the young foolish hope in his own wooden smile. Had Edith ever really been like that, smiling too?
‘No confetti. No confetti! See?’
‘It wouldn’t show, not in an old photograph. I’m sure we had. Pink stuff, petals.’ He was confused, dizzy.
‘I’m telling you. This is proof.’
Edith’s old indignation died down in her triumph. She stepped back, replaced the frame. ‘Well, what we didn’t have, at least the Government’s getting.’ Ratty could not see the logic of this argument, but was too weary to contradict. ‘I’ll just sweep this lot up, get going on some more.’
‘Is there a rasher?’ Ratty tried to dodge the broom she had picked up.
Edith swept the kaleidoscope of paper pieces with peculiar relish, for some moments, before she answered.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘There’s not so much as a slice of bread, Ratty Tyler, neither.’