The fine weather continued. Haymaking began. Mrs Lawrence had little time to join the others in the fields. With just six months before the move, every spare moment was spent with accounts books, calculations, lists.
One afternoon in late June, she carried the basket of washed sheets out to the line. It had been hot and sunny in the morning. Now, the sky was overcast and a strong breeze was blowing.
She began the job – which she seemed to have been doing weekly for as long as she could remember – and which, in fact, she found not without its pleasure. There was peculiar satisfaction in the whiteness of the coarse cotton, the wholesome smell of the soap which would be blown away by the wind and replaced with a scent of sun and earth. How many sheets, she wondered, should she take to Yorkshire? Should she reduce her linen cupboard, sell as much of everything as possible? Lately, a dozen such questions had besieged her mind each day.
There were six sheets on the line, now. In the increasing breeze they billowed like low sails. Their flapping noise, softer than canvas above waves, was more like the wings of a flock of large birds. One of the sheets wrapped itself round Mrs Lawrence. She felt its wetness through her apron, her dress. It enveloped her like a ghostly cloak. She stood there, a moment of sudden and unusual fatigue, letting it do with her as it liked. Each side of her, companion sheets were now swollen huge with air, tugging at their pegs. Mrs Lawrence dreaded their falling to the ground. She had no energy to rehang them. While they cooed at her, the free sheet still twisted round her, making her suddenly cold. The solid mass of grey sky, she saw, had been blown into a feathering of small cloud, like the breast of a guinea fowl. The dogs were barking in the yard. Mrs Lawrence’s misery was so acute that the familiar patch of garden in which she was imprisoned was contorted into a place she no longer recognized. She was aware only of a turmoil of blowing white all round her, agitated cloud above, the nagging of the breeze on her skin. She felt close to drowning.
Mr Lawrence, by chance returning to the farm for a new scythe, came round the corner to see his wife trapped in a sheet, the others blowing angrily on the line. He ran to her. Reaching her, he felt as if he was entering a surreal picture. Her misery reached out to him. He was alarmed by her face.
Quickly, he unwound her, took her icy hands. She leaned against him with so deep a sigh he could feel a shudder right through her thin body.
‘I don’t want to go, John,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘None of us wants to go.’
For the first time Mr Lawrence could remember, his wife sobbed – briefly and quietly. He held her for a long time. They stood clasped together, waiting for her to recover, listening to the soughing of the sheets.
With the increased amount of physical labour, even Prue found herself more tired than before, and was forced to cut down her visits to Robert to two evenings a week. This caused her no great sorrow. Her earlier doubts had hardened into a definite impasse with Robert – the kind of impasse she often came to with a man of scant means. Although her respect for him remained intact – there was something mysterious about him which continued to intrigue her – the affair had withered into an unexciting routine which Prue recognized as a signal to its end. Meantime, Jamie Morton was limbering up as a possible successor – though, as Prue explained to the others, it was only lack of choice that forced her to consider him at all.
Jamie dutifully cycled over to the farm several weeks running to meet Prue in the woods on her afternoon off. On closer acquaintance, Prue discovered that similarities with Barry were few. In fact, the only two things they had in common were the RAF, and heavy smoking. Unlike Barry, he did not like Woodbines: Players were what he preferred. He talked about cigarettes at some length. Sometimes Prue – an accommodating girl in some respects, she had switched to Players to please him – felt she could not bear another conversation about the relative merits of various brands, and stories about how many packets Jamie had smoked on various occasions.
Jamie’s alternative line of conversation was hardly more endearing. He would describe to her the nature of his fantasies – such coarse dreams, it turned out, that even Prue was shocked. He did not, however, lay a hand upon her. Although she might have conceded, if the moment had come, Prue felt no great desire to be pummelled by the hefty red hands with their swollen fingers and bitten nails. There was a certain simple charm in his face – Prue still admired his teeth – and she had always fancied the blue of the RAF uniform. But to be quite honest, as she told the others, the weekly appointment to smoke in the woods with Jamie Morton was not the sort of thing that would keep her interest alive for long.
For once in her life, there were two things that preoccupied Prue’s thoughts, that early summer, more than men. One was the departure of the sheep and lambs, the other was the invitation to Buckingham Palace.
When she was able to get a word in edgeways, she tried to tell Jamie about the day she had to spend helping Mr Lawrence go through the ewes’ wool looking for maggots – he wanted to sell a clean flock. She had found some. The bugs had made red patches of sour raw flesh at the roots of the wool, which had to be treated. The little buggers, Mr Lawrence had said, could get right down into a sheep’s bones, drive it mad. Prue had to give two bloody great tablets to each ewe. Persuading it to open its yellow teeth, and swallow the things, was one of the worst jobs she could remember, she said. All the same, she was fond of the sheep, and loved the lambs. When they were finally hustled aboard a convoy of vans, she sobbed her eyes out, she didn’t mind admitting. She’d never heard such a noise in her life. The baaing and bleating would haunt her for years.
Jamie conveyed little interest in Prue’s stories of the sheep. The invitation to meet their Majesties, though – that was another matter. While Prue described the difficulty she was having in finding bluebell artificial silk, and the picture in her mind of the King and Queen in their crowns on a golden throne, jewel-studded, Jamie puffed faster at his cigarette, inhaled deeply, blew beautiful smoke rings that flew high into the trees before they broke – a man full of wonder and awe.
‘Good heavens, Prue,’ he said, when her imagination finally ran out one afternoon in the woods, ‘that’ll be quite something. Not believable, really.’ He stubbed the butt of his seventh Players into a patch of virgin moss. ‘I’ve never shagged with a girl who’s been to Buckingham Palace. Know that? Don’t suppose any of my mates have, either.’
‘Don’t suppose they have,’ said Prue.
Distracted by her thoughts of the Palace, more real to her than the present scene, Prue noticed Jamie had clamped one of his terracotta hands on her knee. She allowed it to stay there, just for a moment, before encouraging him to engage in the whole studied business of lighting the next cigarette.
* * *
The weeks of high summer passed with astonishing speed. There were long days of hay-making in hot sun. There was the cultivating, and spreading the sheep and cow dung left in the fields so that it should not sour small patches. To ensure the successful transformation of Hallows Farm into a good arable holding that would attract buyers in the autumn, the jobs seemed never-ending. Prue, to show her gratitude for the privilege of being the chosen one to go to the tea party, worked with extraordinary energy by day – by night, too, there was so much to be done in preparation. A week before the great event, she refused Robert any favours, saying she had to get her beauty sleep, do her finger nails, her toe nails, try out hair styles, choose her hat, generally pull out all stops so as not to let down the honour of the Women’s Land Army at her meeting with their Majesties. Robert was understanding about everything except the toe nails.
And suddenly there she was on the platform of the station, a July morning, Mrs Poodle rounding up a herd of other land girls from the district. In their brightly coloured silks and crêpes, with rouged cheeks and waved hair, they jittered about, all shy smiles and nervous giggles.
Joe had paid Prue no compliments on the journey to the station: his silence was unnerving. But when he whispered to her, on the platform, before leaving, that she looked the best by far, Prue’s confidence returned.
Glancing about, she could not but immodestly agree with him. But then, she had taken so much trouble: weeks of effort and consultation to achieve the final picture. Her dress, though not quite the bluebell she had in mind, was at least a dazzling blue, with a sweetheart neckline copied from her winter red, and a flirty skirt, though, God forbid, nothing that could possibly cause a frown from the King. Her mum had dyed some old shoes an almost matching blue, and to cover her hay-scratched hands she wore a pair of white cotton gloves which Mrs Lawrence had kindly embroidered with small patches of forget-me-nots.
But the real inspiration was the hair. Having made a hat with a piece of the dress material, Prue had abandoned it at the dress rehearsal the night before and had replaced it with real cornflowers. She had run out into the warm night, frantically gathered cornflowers from tangled beds and long grass, preserved them in water by her bed. At dawn this morning she had, with Ag’s help, pinned them randomly among her blonde curls, and prayed very hard that they would not wilt before five o’clock. And indeed the cornflowers were causing something of a stir. The other girls in their stiff and elderly hats admired Prue’s great style. While they bobbed up and down practising their curtsies, at Mrs Poodle’s insistence, while waiting for the train, they paid Prue many a generous compliment. All the way to London in the train, warm bristly stuff of the seat prickling her thighs through the artificial silk, Prue basked modestly in their admiration. She could not remember a happier day.
Mrs Poodle had had the idea of taking the girls to the Albert Memorial for their picnic lunch. She thought they would enjoy sitting on the steps in the sun, beneath the gaze of the marble sages as well as Prince Albert, and then stroll in Kensington Gardens before returning to the coach that was to take them to the Palace.
Prue, who had not been to London before, was enchanted by the drive from the station. She had not expected to see so many trees, the lushness of Hyde Park, people lying on the grass impervious to the war or the possibility of a raid. She saw only one devastated building: blackened stone, piles of still uncleared rubble, shreds of once private wallpaper exposed to the world. But nothing could detract from her excitement.
At the Albert Memorial, she sat on a step a little apart from the others. She wanted to be alone, to take it all in: if only Stella and Ag had been here – but still, she thought she would try to be a good reporter. She opened her paper bag of lunch, unwrapped the sandwiches from their greaseproof paper, then threw them to the sparrows. No chance of eating till she was there. Their Majesties would hardly be impressed by smudged lipstick.
The sun shone warmly down on Prue. The cornflowers, she checked, were still perky in her hair. She stood up, impatient – half an hour before they had to reboard the coach. She smoothed the creases from her skirt, wandered round the side of the Memorial. There, the ground had been turned into allotments. Amazed, Prue stood looking down upon a man who was bent over a row of peas supported by twigs. The sight of such country labour in the middle of London reminded her that Stella and Ag, at this very moment, would be working in the fields. She shut her eyes, imagining the afternoon at Hallows Farm, a place by now light years away, a dream … But no! This, surely, was the dream: Prue Lumley, land girl, in artificial silk on the steps of the Albert Memorial, about to be presented to the King and Queen.
Prue’s imaginings of activities at the farm were not quite accurate. Stella and Joe were supposed to be cutting the clover field: Joe on the new International, Stella on the Fordson, with which she was now familiar. But the old machine, increasingly cantankerous, refused to start. Stella fiddled with the choke, topped it up with paraffin, finally banged the bonnet in exasperation, but to no avail. Eventually, not wishing to waste more time, she was forced to interrupt Joe, needing his help.
He solved the problem at once: dirty plugs. He removed them one by one, held them up, cleaned them on a piece of rag. The simple solution made Stella feel foolish.
‘I didn’t know about the plugs,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I’d have known where to find them.’
‘I haven’t fallen in love with a mechanic, thank God,’ said Joe. It was hot in the barn. No breeze stirred the broody shadows. There was a smell of chaff and sacking. In the rafters, drowsy pigeons barely cooed. Outside, sun blazed down on the yard. Stella was glad of a time in the shade before facing the heat of the field.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not going to say a word to Janet until you girls have left, just before we move to Yorkshire. Weighing up everything – it’s a difficult decision to make – that would be the kindest thing. Postponing her anguish, perhaps: but I must tell her to her face.’
Stella, leaning up against the warm metal of a mudguard, watched him carefully.
‘I think I should do the same. With Philip. Face him, too. Do you think they’ll accept our reasons? Vicissitudes of the war?’
‘They’ll have to. It’s the truth. Can’t say I look forward to the announcement, though I don’t suppose Janet will be altogether surprised. She must have some idea our so-called engagement is a ghastly mistake. Poor girl: she doesn’t have much in her life. Sparking plug tester—’ he held up the last clean plug – ‘little hope of promotion. I presume she’s calculated that marrying the wrong person is better than not marrying at all. I’ll have to persuade her she’s mistaken.’
‘Philip, I think,’ said Stella, ‘will be very shocked. Devastated. He’s no idea of my change of heart. He won’t believe it. His pride …’
‘Christ! We’re going to be making a bit of a bloody mess,’ said Joe, wiping the sweat from his face, ‘but I think our plan is the best one. We’ll only be postponing the evil day – for them – by a few months. As for us … I’ve been thinking. It wouldn’t be easy, your coming with us to Yorkshire as a land girl, my having broken off with Janet. My parents …’
‘I realize that. I thought I could join my mother driving ambulances in London. In my spare time, go back to the piano. But at the end of the war, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t come to Yorkshire.’
‘There’s a small cottage belonging to the farm, up in the dales. Needs complete renovation. I’ve often imagined …’ He climbed up into the driving seat, pushed the starter button. The engine growled into life. ‘You’d like it there.’ He climbed down again, gave Stella a hand. ‘Tractor awaits you, my love.’
‘Thank you! I’ll know next time.’
‘Any luck, this time next year, we’ll be harvesting Yorkshire fields, and bloody Hitler’ll be dead.’
Ag and Mrs Lawrence, at adjacent trees in the orchard, were thinning the near-ripe plums. There were several filled baskets on the ground. Ag enjoyed the job, as she did most jobs involving hedges, trees, fruit. She enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her bare arms. She enjoyed thinking, for the thousandth time, of Desmond reading her letter. It was – she could privately admit to herself – a work of such vivid description that it could hardly fail to give pleasure. And there were still two weeks in which she would carry on hoping for a reply. Beyond that, to presume the worst would be the only sensible thing. At that moment she would have to banish dreams, brace herself for a solitary future. But there were fourteen days before she might have to face that trauma, still a modicum of hope in the summer air. Her optimism among the branches, heavy with warm plums, was not in doubt.
‘It was incredible. I still can’t believe it. The red carpet. Honestly. A deep ruby red. Acres of it, all up these great wide stairs, all over this grand entrance hall. I mean, you could’ve carpeted Lower Pasture, easy, with all that red …’
Prue had the full attention of her audience. It was past ten at night, the darkness just light enough to see by, so the windows of the sitting-room were still open, the blackout had not been drawn. Scent from a few surviving tobacco plants came into the room, at odds with the heavy scent of Prue’s Nuits de Paris, which she had been applying extravagantly to her wrists and neck all day. She was slumped on the sofa, artificial silk crumpled, cornflowers wilting in the curls, blue shoes slung off, dreamy-eyed.
‘So. We go in, up these stairs, like walking on velvet. There’s a huge crowd of us by now, from all over. More than three hundred. Mostly in reds and florals – no blues like this, I’m glad to say.’ She patted the weary skirt. ‘There’s a bit of trouble, you can imagine, getting the counties into alphabetical order. Very smart men in tail coats bossing about, very politely. Ooh, and the footmen, just like in Cinderella … Anyway, at last we’re in this great room, the Bow Room, overlooking the gardens. Pillars and so on. There’s a band playing. My legs were aching to dance. Then the word sort of went round, despite the music, and suddenly there they were, coming in, the Royal Family. Me near them – me! King and Queen, two princesses. A path cleared for them. They walked down, smiling this way and that. The whole crowd of us went down in a wobbly curtsy, we were that nervous. Actually, I didn’t wobble as much as some. And it was the first of about twenty-nine curtsies I did, I tell you. Every time I saw one of them nearby, down I went, just in case. Once, I found myself curtsying to a girl from Derbyshire – she got in my line of vision, didn’t half laugh, vulgar bit. Anyway, you could see these gentlemen in charge taking up quite a few of the WLA bigwigs to meet the King and Queen. And some land girls. Not me, actually, though I gave them the nod, several times. Equerries, I think they’re called. Still, I got very near. Especially to the princesses. They were walking about, almost ordinary. I couldn’t believe it. Me, myself, within two feet of Princess Elizabeth in a lovely flowered dress.
‘We were urged to help ourselves to tea. Tea! Bloody banquet, more like. These huge great long tables covered in white damask cloths so bright they dazzled your eyes. A thousand cups and saucers, plates and plates of tiny sandwiches. And lashings of chocolate cake: you couldn’t taste the powdered egg at all. Perhaps they’d used real. I asked one of the footmen if they had a private supply of hens at the Palace, but he didn’t answer, just smiled, too discreet to say. Anyway, best of all were the teapots: enormous great silver things with little silver strainers hanging to their spouts – such a sensible idea, I thought. Truth to tell, I drank my tea – I’ll remember every sip of that royal tea – but had no appetite for the sandwiches. Just one bit of the chocolate cake, well, two bits – I thought: can’t pass up an opportunity like that. I wanted to bring some back but couldn’t think how … I took my plate over to the windows – tall as this house – to look out at the garden. Well, blow me down if it wasn’t all made over to vegetables, neat beds of vegetables between little paths without a weed. I turned round to say something to anyone who happened to be near, mouth full of chocolate cake, when Princess Margaret, in glorious pink, passed not one foot from me. Her eyes! I tell you, I’ve never seen such eyes. She smiled at me. At least, I think she did. Course, mouth full of chocolate cake it was a bit awkward – just my luck. By the time I’d cleared my teeth, she was gone. Still, I curtsied, just for safety. Hoped she didn’t think me unfriendly, but she caught me on the hop.
‘I still can’t quite believe it. I tell you, it was a dream. I only know it’s true because I got chocolate cake on my gloves. I shall never wash them. Never, ever. For the rest of my life the royal chocolate will stay on my white gloves, proof it happened, proof I, Prue, once went to the Palace …’
Stopped only by overwhelming tiredness, further details of Prue’s excursion came temporarily to an end that night. But next afternoon, at an assignation in the woods with Jamie Morton, she found no difficulty in retelling the story, refining here and there, guessing at the height of the magnificent ceilings, the yardage of silk curtain, the probable value of Her Majesty’s diamond brooch, and her pearls the size of goose eggs.
Jamie was impressed. Prue could see that by the way his cigarette went unusually slowly to his mouth. The inhaling was shallow, the smoke rings careless. He had probably never listened to anyone so long, so quietly, so completely enrapt, reckoned Prue. When she at last finished her story he put one of his wedge-like hands on her shoulder, fixed her with an intensity of eye.
‘By golly, Pruey,’ he said, ‘what a thing. Like I told you, I’ve never had a girl who’s been to Buckingham Palace. Could be my only chance. What do you think?’
In the slipstream of her exhilarated state, generosity of spirit further warmed by her unique experience, Prue was happy to concede. While Flight-Lieutenant Morton prepared to ravish the first girl in his life who had brushed with royalty, Prue lay back on the mossy ground and thought of Buckingham Palace.
The morning came when the threshing machine was stripped of its tarpaulin and introduced to the girls. At first they were bemused by the complicated-looking monster, felt they would never understand the intricacies of so many belts, shaking trays and cunningly placed holes all designed to divide each sheaf into separate pieces. But Mr Lawrence was diligent in his explanations, and managed to leave them with a feeling of admiration for the ingenuities of the machine.
Two middle-aged men from the village came to help with the threshing. The machine took a whole morning to set up on an area of flat ground between two ricks. Work began early one hot afternoon. It turned out to be a job the girls unanimously hated.
The rattling and noisy throbbing of the machine quickly gave them all headaches, exacerbated by the uncomfortable goggles they had to wear to protect their eyes. High on the rick, pitching sheaves required more skill than they had imagined. Frustrated by their own clumsiness, hot, itching all over from chaff and dust that penetrated everything, the few days of hard threshing were an endurance test. But none of them gave up or complained.
Looking back, years later, on those hard days, Ag remembered only a single afternoon with any clarity. She was, as usual, on top of the rick – more skilled by now at cutting the string from sheaves and tossing them on to the man who would drop them into the drum. It was a particularly hot afternoon: the shirts of all three girls were dark with sweat, their bare arms a deep brown. The landscape shimmered in a heat haze, doubly blurred behind the goggles. At some moment, watching her own hands mechanically repeat their mind-dulling actions, Ag remembered that Desmond’s time was up. No letter. No reply. Too many weeks for any possible excuse. Only thing to be done. Forget. Face a new kind of life.
Tears further confused her vision behind the goggles. But she smiled encouragement at Stella, who was clutching her ribs. She remembered allowing herself the sentimental thought that all hopes of Desmond were being shoved into the thresher, along with the sheaves, and, if she looked down the side of the machine, she would see them pouring out of the hole with the chaff: ground to dust, useless, gone.
By harvest-time, the customary peace at Hallows Farm was disturbed more frequently by passing planes: sometimes a Spitfire, sometimes the dreaded shape of the Luftwaffe monsters. Since the occasion of the incendiary bombs, the old, foolish sense of security in remote country was never quite recaptured. Living in anticipation of the next disaster became part of daily life.
But nothing stopped work on the harvest. It was safely gathered in, for the last time, by the Lawrences.
‘There’s something very satisfactory,’ Ag observed to Prue, ‘about seeing the barn filled again. Something very comforting, the annual storing of stocks for the winter.’
Prue giggled at Ag’s solemnity. ‘What I like the thought of,’ she said, ‘is all these new beds in here.’ She looked round the stacks. ‘Hope the new farmer’s son and his girlfriend will have a good time.’
The harvest supper took place one warm evening, in the corner of the field where they had lit the bonfire last autumn. Rugs and tablecloths were spread over the stubble. A few sheaves of corn were left standing, leaning against each other in wigwam shapes – they were to be taken to church for the Harvest Festival service next day. Noble was employed to pull the cart that once was used to deliver the churns. It was filled with bowls of food, bottles of cider and beer, hunks of cheese and baskets of plums. Mrs Lawrence had been preparing the feast all day: the harvest supper was the occasion she most enjoyed during the year.
The harvesters gathered at seven – three Lawrences, the two helpers from the village, Robert, Ratty and the girls. It was a warm evening of long shadows. There had been no planes to disturb the peace that day: the quietness felt settled. There were smells of warm earth, and Mrs Lawrence’s newly baked bread, unwrapped from its cloth. Poppies wavered in the hedgerow. A few survived in the stubble. The ravenous girls, chewing legs of cold roast chicken in their fingers, could not remember a happier occasion.
Each one had her particular reason. Ag had adapted to her new life of no hope in Desmond. She had filled her mind with other concerns, made plans for the future, read herself to sleep each night, managing almost completely to obliterate the old yearnings. She had returned to enjoying the present – occasions like this supper – rather than leading a double life with an imaginary future forever there shadowing the actual moment. Her efforts had brought their rewards.
Stella, sitting as far as possible from Joe, cocooned in her ever-increasing certainty of their mutual love, wondered if the others could see the indivisible bond between them. Avoiding his eyes, she drank a whole beaker of cold cider, felt a gold rush through her limbs, and doubted if any girl on earth could be so fortunate.
Prue, corn dolly in her hair in honour of the harvest celebrations, took the opportunity to furnish the assembled audience with more details of her afternoon at the Palace, until they laughingly shouted her down. She didn’t care: she didn’t mind being teased. She felt lithe, fit, strong, and ravenous. Cutting herself a huge wedge of home-made pie, she longed to shock them all with the secret that made the adrenalin charge through her blood. What would they say if they knew she was servicing two men, concurrently? Robert two nights a week, Jamie Morton two afternoons? And there was no let-up in her work and energy, either. If anything, they seemed to have increased. With secret pride she stroked her bare brown legs – since the ‘bare legs for patriotism’ campaign in May, Prue had refused to wear stockings. She saw Ratty’s eyes on her, and laughed.
‘So where’s Edith?’ she asked him.
Ratty took a long time to finish a mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘Coming later,’ he said. ‘With the tea. Usual custom.’
They sat eating, drinking, laughing for a couple of hours, watching the blue of the sky turn to the indigo of the shadows covering the stubble. Stella began to sing. Her Vera Lynn repertoire, songs that were on the wireless most nights.
We’ll meet again
Don’t know where, don’t know when …
Ratty thought he had never heard so sweet a voice. Spurred by a mixture of beer and cider, he ventured to join in. The others did likewise. The chorus roamed from war song to war song, the pure voice leading them, till it was almost dark.
It was Stella – by chance she stood up to relieve a stiff leg – who first saw a figure standing dimly by the cart.
Ratty, facing Stella, stood up too, back to the figure. It was his turn, he reckoned.
‘Let’s have a hymn now, everyone. What d’you say to “Abide with me” to close the proceedings?’ He spoke in his church voice, the one he used to guide rare visiting worshippers to their seats.
Ratty began to conduct with his hands, croaking voice leading them in the familiar words. Stella, watching the figure coming up behind him, saw that it was Edith. She wore a headscarf and a long skirt, an old woman from another age carrying a tin churn by its handle. Ah, thought Stella, she’s bringing the tea.
In the speckled darkness, she saw a trembling hand unscrew the lid of the churn, let the lid fall to the ground.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!
As the chorus gathered strength, Stella knew in an instinctive flash what was going to happen. In the second that Edith swung back the churn to gain the greatest possible thrust, Stella took a leap towards Ratty. She flung her arms round his knees so that his body was forced to flop over her shoulder. Carrying him in this fireman’s hold, she jumped through picnic things and stretched legs, and ran as fast as she could. The confused Ratty’s plea to his Lord to abide with him rose in throttled voice from somewhere near Stella’s waist.
Thus Ratty was just saved from the gush of scalding tea that Edith flung at her husband. Thrown by the sudden departure of her target, Edith’s aim went mercifully awry. The full blast of the liquid fell on to what remained of the food. Prue’s bare legs were splashed. She gave a quick squeal of protest, then leapt up to join the general chaos.
In the muddle of semi-darkness, Ag, Mrs Lawrence and Joe found themselves trying to calm an hysterical Edith, who kicked and screamed on the ground. Her feet clanked against the empty churn as she arched her back, pushing off hands. A cluster of cuckoo spit whitened the corners of her mouth. Mr Lawrence shouted that he would telephone for the doctor, and ran off. The others, between them, managed finally to get Edith to her feet, and dragged her to the back of the cart. She sat writhing on the tailboard, a pathetic old figure, legs swinging loosely, stockings wrinkled round the ankles. Between her screams she muttered incoherently: some daft notion about Ratty and the land girls, Prue thought it was. But Edith’s accusations were too confused to make sense of her trouble. Prue and Mrs Lawrence climbed into the cart beside her, clinging to her eel body. Ag walked, trying to make sure the old woman would not slip to the ground. Robert led Noble towards the farmhouse. The two men from the village followed, arms full of the picnic stuff. The procession made its way across the stubble lit by a white harvest moon. Edith never stopped screaming, attempting to escape. She was answered by the screech of a passing owl.
A harvest she’d never forget, thought Prue. She wondered if the story would make Jamie pause in his smoking.
Stella had landed Ratty back on his feet some fifty yards from the scene of chaos.
‘What was all that about, then?’ he asked, beer and cider still making merry in his brain. It was the first time he’d been alone with one of the land girls – with a moon and all, too. Not the sort of thing that happened every harvest.
‘Edith’s been taken ill. Don’t worry. The others are looking after her.’
‘Is that right?’ Ratty sounded unconcerned. He looked up as Joe appeared out of the darkness. ‘The wife?’ he asked.
‘Doctor’s coming. Bit over-excited, she is, that’s all. She’s riding back to the house in the cart.’
‘Is that so?’ Ratty shook his head, gave a deep sigh. ‘’Course, there’ve been signs, haven’t there? You could tell she was boiling up for something. These past months. Matter of waiting.’
‘Stella and I will walk you home,’ said Joe, taking the old man’s arm.
‘Very well.’
Ratty allowed himself to lean on the two of them just hard enough to be polite. But, considering the drama, he moved with sprightly step and head held high.
Much later that night, a heavily sedated Edith was driven away by the doctor and the district nurse. Ratty, asked if he would like to accompany them, said no he bloody wouldn’t.
On the October day that the Eighth Army under Montgomery began a big offensive along the coast of El Alamein, at Hallows Farm there was a small celebration to mark the first anniversary of the girls’ arrival. Mr Lawrence brought out the ginger wine, and said a few words of appreciation before proposing a toast. He wished them well, however their time might be spent when they left the farm. In particular, he said, he knew the others would want to join him in wishing Stella all the best in her marriage to Philip. In the general flurry of raised glasses and echoed hopes, he saw a look pass between his son and the blushing girl who had caused him some unnerving moments, in the past year, in his own heart. Not allowing himself time to reflect on what he had seen, he knew that, for Joe’s sake, it was perhaps a good thing the girls’ days were numbered. As for his own feelings: well, the internal unease had run its course, a shameful secret that would go with him to the grave. He could look easily on Stella now, knowing she was firmly committed to another. She had acted as a warning to him – a warning that the most stable of middle-aged men could be taunted by lascivious desire – and he had taken heed. Now, his energies must be concentrated on his wife, so courageous about the move she dreaded. He would support her to the best of his abilities, show his love and gratitude. He raised his glass, last of all, to her.
‘And can we drink to Faith, my wife?’ he said. ‘Because had it not been for her, for her extraordinary insistence, no land girls would have come to Hallows Farm. We would not all be here today.’
It was Faith’s turn to blush: a deep, muddy colour suffused her skin. She held up her pink glass, which flashed at her husband’s dear face.
Prue, sensing but not understanding the public reaffirmation, was the first to break the tension of the moment. She stood up, jabbing as usual at her bow.
‘Well, I’m going to take this opportunity to kiss everyone,’ she said, ‘before I cry. I trust you’ll all do the same.’
Thus Prue, in her innocence, afforded Joe and Stella a bonus chance, in public, to kiss each other quickly on the cheek.
Edith did not return, and Ratty could never remember so enjoyable an autumn. Within days of her departure he had restocked the kitchen with saucepans, and burned a dozen boxes of cut-up paper. For so many years he had longed to live alone. His solitude, won so late, he was now determined to relish to the full. For some weeks, padding about the house, he found it hard to believe Edith was not going to jump out at him in her gas mask or torture him in one of her sadistic, cunning ways. Not till the official letter arrived, confirming her insanity, did he finally realize that the new peace would be permanent. He could listen to Mr Churchill and ITMA, undisturbed: take his tea in by the wireless, spill crumbs on the floor, do as he wished in all respects – even smoke his pipe in bed – and never again be chided. As he said to the holy one in the orchard one afternoon – surrounded by baskets of plums, she was, all smiles – never had the autumn days gone by so fast.
It was a feeling shared by all three girls. Their time seemed to be running out with uncanny speed. It was now, more than in the summer when they were so busy in the fields, that they missed the cows, the sheep, Sly. They looked back with nostalgia to their bewildering start as land girls, just over a year ago. They remembered the mysteries of their early days, and laughed, thinking of the mistakes they made: how strange they had found the life which by now was so familiar. The weather they remembered on their arrival returned. The second time round of experiencing farmhouse and land in misted mornings, yellowing afternoons, frosted nights, was no less beguiling than it had been at first.
Once again, with the change of seasons, the pattern of life shifted in the house in the evenings. Instead of going their own ways, everyone gathered by the fire for an hour or so before going to bed. Mr Lawrence forced himself to make lists of farm implements that might be sold in the auction – the farm was to be put up for sale early in the New Year – while he listened to the wireless. Mrs Lawrence continued with her perennial darning, her needle only pausing at news of Montgomery breaking through Rommel’s front, or the hideous rumours that the Nazis had been systematically rounding up Jews throughout Europe.
She was never able to quell her anxiety when the telephone rang, particularly after dark. When she heard it ringing in the hall, late one evening in early December, she put down her work with a beating heart and ran into the darkness. A minute later she reappeared.
‘It’s for you, Stella.’
Stella left the room. Philip, she knew, was in London for two nights – the much postponed trip with his friend. It was his intention to buy the ring. He had rung only a week ago, insistent that he was off to Bond Street in search of an aquamarine. Stella, who thought a Dear John letter was the coward’s way out, had decided to stick to her intention of breaking off her engagement face to face. But there had been no opportunity. Guiltily, she hoped he was not telephoning with news of his find.
When Stella had not reappeared after ten minutes, Joe gave up his game of patience, rubbed his face, anxious. His own unease, he observed, was reflected by all those in the room. A long telephone conversation, at Hallows Farm, was far from a normal occurrence.
Stella came back at last. Pale-faced, her eyes swept dryly over each of them. She tossed back her head, spoke with the efficiency of one only just in control.
‘That was Philip’s mother,’ she said. ‘She was ringing to tell me Philip’s in hospital. He’s lost a leg: seems there’s little hope of saving his second foot.’
‘Stella!’ said Joe.
Ag jumped up, put an arm round her friend.
‘He was on leave in London, staying with his friend in Bermondsey. They had a day in the West End, apparently … Bond Street. They were on their way home. There was an air-raid warning: they were on a bus. It seems they couldn’t get to a shelter in time.’ She paused. ‘Would you mind if I took the day off tomorrow, Mr Lawrence? I must go to London. The hospital. See him.’
‘I’ll take you to the early train, of course,’ said Mr Lawrence.
‘Sit down, Stella,’ said his wife, leaving her own chair.
Joe quietly left the room.
The others did their best: Bournevita, an arm to guide Stella up the stairs, quiet listening faces in the attic, waiting for her to cry, to speak.
Stella thanked them, but said nothing. Before she got into bed she picked up the photograph of Philip that she had kissed with such passion every night, this time last year – and looked at it for a long time. Then she replaced it.
‘He expected to be wounded in battle,’ she said eventually. ‘But to be made useless by a bomb in the street: how will he ever cope with that?’
‘Poor, poor Philip,’ said Prue, rummaging in her drawer for a black bow which she would wear tomorrow, just as she had for Barry.
The following day was interminable for Joe. Heavy rain, mud, cold. He busied himself sorting out farm machinery in the barn, but flinging heavily rusted iron into various piles was no antidote to his thoughts. Eventually, by late afternoon, dirty light out in the yard, he slumped on to a pile of new straw, tried to slow the thumpings of his heart and think clearly.
Mr Lawrence appeared. He quickly assessed the state of Joe’s dejection.
‘We’re all worried for the poor girl,’ he said, ‘but Stella’s got guts if anyone has. She’ll stand by him, legs or no legs.’ Joe met his father’s eye. ‘Look, son, I’ve got a mass of paperwork still this evening. Would you go to the station, fetch her?’
Joe looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘She might not be up to facing everyone at supper. Might be better if I suggested a sandwich and a stiff whisky at The Bells.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mr Lawrence.
Stella’s train from London was half an hour late. Joe waited in the cold dark of the platform. When finally it steamed in, she was the only passenger to get off. They hugged each other silently, then walked hand in hand to the car park. They sat in the bucket seats of the Wolseley, rich with its smells of old leather and wet dog. There was no moon, dense darkness.
It was Joe who broke the silence. ‘I know what you’ve had to decide,’ he said.
He sensed her nod in the dark. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘you should have seen him.’
‘I can imagine. I know what you must do, what we must do.’
‘I don’t know what else … I mean, ordinary life has finished for him. Pain, dependency. All the things he hoped for ripped away in a moment. Except me. He was very drugged, of course, but he said the only thing worth living for, now, was me. Us. Marriage. Then he said he’d be the first to understand if I couldn’t go through with it, if I wanted my release.’ She sighed. ‘He was in so many bandages, mummy-like. I looked at his face and I thought: how could I have said to this man, who I don’t know at all, or love, that I would marry him? A complete stranger. Just as I was leaving – I was only with him for half an hour, the nurse said he couldn’t take any more – he said he’d bought the ring. He said he wouldn’t give it to me then, though: that would be tempting fate. But what was I going to do, he said? Somehow he needed to know the answer then. It would be his lifeline, or his death.’
‘So?’
‘So I said I’d stand by him.’
Joe, one arm round her taut body, moved to kiss away her silent tears. Then he cleared his throat, managed to find a vibrant voice.
‘Listen, my love, you must be exhausted. I’ve said you won’t want supper at home, I might take you for a drink at The Bells. Would you like that?’
‘I’d rather stay here. Oh, my darling Joe,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘There’s no new way to say it. I don’t know if I can make you believe me, but I shall love you for ever, no matter whom we marry. Remember the certainty of my love. Always.’
‘And mine,’ she said.
They talked till the cold of dawn. On the journey back to the farm, the wheels of the car split frozen puddles, and early mists rose up from the land.
In their last two weeks at Hallows Farm, jobs began to run out. The girls spent the short dark days helping Mrs Lawrence sort out and pack up things in the house, and Mr Lawrence to do the same outside. Only Prue was grateful for an easing off of physical labour. Busy accommodating and consoling her two men as often as she could before leaving, she was exhausted but radiant. Ag’s energies were spent in trying to keep up Mrs Lawrence’s spirits. She produced many a reason to persuade her employer that life in Yorkshire could be as rewarding as in Dorset, and was pleased to see the occasional spark of anticipation breaking through the melancholy. Stella’s low spirits were understood by everyone: none but Ag saw they were matched, beneath a normal surface, in Joe’s heart. To the last, Joe and Stella managed to continue their normal behaviour. To the last, they liked to believe, no one had guessed their secret with its bitter ending.
Mr Lawrence had contemplated for some time how best to manage a swift departure. He was not one for drawn-out, emotional farewells, and to that end he made a plan. He would load the girls’ luggage into the boot of the Wolseley while they ate their last breakfast, then make sure they were away fast.
It was a dreary morning, the day of their going: frosty cobwebs the only sparkle in the whitish gloom. The girls wore their coloured travelling suits, the ones that had so alarmed Mr Lawrence on their arrival, he remembered with a smile. Due to the cold, they pulled their WLA greatcoats over their shoulders – Prue’s had arrived just a week ago. Half-diamonds were sewn on their lapels.
Mr Lawrence hurried them out as soon as they had finished eating, no nonsense. Each girl hugged Mrs Lawrence quickly in the hall. Outside, they stood in a line waiting to see how Joe planned to conduct his farewells. He went up to each in turn, gripped her by the shoulders, kissed her lightly on each cheek. Stella was last. In this, the final part of the act, his behaviour to her could be no different.
Stella sat next to Mr Lawrence in the front of the car. Her natural place, somehow, he thought, after all he had gone through. His private triumph was to be at ease beside her.
Joe stood at the door, his arm round his mother’s shoulder. She flapped a hand at some nearby bantams.
‘Remember them, Ag?’ asked Prue. She giggled. ‘You were so bloody snooty just because I didn’t know a bantam from a hen.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ag.
The Wolseley lurched away. Everyone waved.
Mr Lawrence slowed down as they reached Ratty’s cottage. He could see, in the mist, the old man standing at the gate. As they passed Ratty raised his cap, shook his fist in the air, thumb up. He’d meant to come down to the farm last night and say goodbye officially. But he hadn’t much fancied a formal parting from the holy one – or the others, for that matter. Besides, with all the things there were to attend to in the cottage, in his new state of freedom, he liked to spend the evenings at home, marvelling at his solitude.