Land Girls (36 page)

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.