Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (15 page)

They found a secluded bench.

‘You’re looking well.’ James sounded surprised. Almost, Alice thought, disappointed.

‘I am well,’ she said.

‘I rather got the impression, when you started this job of yours, that you…’ He paused, uncertain how to continue.

‘That I was scared stiff of it?’ she suggested, smiling. ‘I was. I didn’t think I’d be able to cope. But it seems I can. In fact,’ she added lightly, ‘I’m rather enjoying doing something
more than simply taking care of you and Edward-John. Something useful. For the war effort, I mean.’ She did not look at him but she sensed the indulgent smile and because of it, continued. ‘I’ve become interested in the design of kitchens, James.’

‘You’ve done what?’ He half turned towards her.

‘It was part of my Domestic Science syllabus, of course, but it isn’t until you’re really up against things in terms of the time and labour available for the preparation of meals that you realise how essential it is to organise space and surfaces and access to equipment.’ She was aware of James’s stunned silence and this drove her on. ‘I redesigned the kitchen at the hostel, you see, and my boss was sufficiently impressed to recommend my services to a friend of his. And the Land Army rep has suggested to the Ag. Office that I visit a couple of quite large local hostels to streamline their kitchens. If they use my ideas I’d be paid for them. As a sort of consultant, I suppose.’ Her husband appeared to be so taken aback that she heard herself asking him whether he minded her being employed in this way. He was astonished and said so. Alice laughed. ‘I know!’ she said. ‘I was amazed, too! I seem to be rather good at it… And with the current labour shortage… What I’m doing could be quite important…’ There was a silence. James was smiling again.

‘Well…’ he said eventually, ‘I’m delighted you’ve found something that interests you, even if it is…’ She guessed, correctly, that he was going to add ‘only kitchens’, and he
apologised for sounding patronising. There was a silence. Then Alice said that she didn’t know what had possessed her to ask him. ‘Ask me what?’ he said.

‘Whether you minded… About me doing the consultancy work. Almost as though I have to have your permission! Why would I do that, do you suppose! Habit, perhaps.’ James did not respond. A pigeon strutted up to them and regarded them quizzically with one, sharp bright eye. Unlike some of the people seated around the square, they had no food with them. Registering this, the bird moved off and Alice spoke again. ‘I’m hoping that it might lead to…well, who knows…some sort of career. Anyway it should make it easier for you to say what you have come to say.’ She waited.

James admitted that he had come to tell her that he needed his freedom to remarry and was about to elaborate when she interrupted him and said she would prefer not to be given the details. She told him that her cousin, whom he had met at their wedding and who was a solicitor, would handle the divorce. She took from her handbag a neatly folded sheet of paper on which she had previously written down the name and address of the cousin’s firm. James took it from her and looked at it. ‘I imagine he will ask you for details of whatever evidence he needs.’ Alice glanced at her husband and smiled. ‘You look surprised. Did you imagine I would make a scene? There wouldn’t be much point, would there.’ James did not reply and they both, at the same moment, caught sight of Edward-John, cheerfully making
his way across the bright green grass towards them. Before the boy reached them James said, ‘Alice…I’m so sorry.’ Alice got to her feet. Smiling at her son, she asked James to spare her his apologies.

That night, after the girls were fed, the dishes washed and the next day’s sandwiches cut, Rose brought a cup of cocoa through into Alice’s room where she found her filling out a Ministry of Agriculture form. In response to Rose’s inquisitive glance, Alice told her that having been encouraged to do so by Georgina, Annie Sorokova was going to attempt the Women’s Land Army Forewoman’s course. ‘Mrs Brewster has asked me to endorse the application,’ she said. ‘I feel a bit like a headmistress!’

‘Pretty rum sort of school!’ Rose murmured and, hearing the clock striking ten, told Alice that all the girls, with the exception of two who had gone to the village pub, had returned. She challenged Alice to guess which two were still absent. When Alice named Winnie and Marion, Rose said, ‘Who else!’ adding, ‘Come to think of it, I don’t believe Mabel’s in either.’

‘She borrowed my bicycle again,’ said Alice. ‘She said Ferdie had invited her to play Monopoly.’

‘Monopoly, eh!’ said Rose, her inflection delivering precisely the element of suspicion needed to arouse Alice’s concern. At that moment the sound of a car arriving at the garden gate heralded the boisterous return of Winnie and Marion, whose arrival coincided with Mabel’s. Alice
called out to the girls to lock the front door, wished them goodnight, confirming that all three of them responded and then, as they clattered up the staircase, she relaxed and sipped her cocoa. Rose replaced her own empty cup on its saucer and regarded Alice.

‘Without wishing to pry,’ she began, ‘you look like a person what’s got something off of their chest.’ She saw Alice suppress a smile.

‘“Without wishing to pry”, Rose?’ Rose had the grace to blush and asked Alice not to laugh at her. ‘I’m not laughing at you,’ Alice said and she paused, adding easily that it had proved less difficult than she had expected to discuss things with her husband. ‘I had the advantage, I suppose. I knew what was coming! He was quite taken aback when I agreed to a divorce without the tears or the scene he’d been anticipating.’

‘You’re a bit upset though, I can tell,’ Rose said, divorce, in her book, being every bit as serious as several, if not all, of the seven deadly sins. Alice admitted that of course, in a way, the afternoon had depressed her.

‘But, when something you’ve been dreading actually happens you have this little space, don’t you, before you have to face the next hurdle.’ She drained her cup and smiled firmly at Rose. ‘I think we should get to our beds now,’ she said. 

At the end of April, which had been cold, windy and unusually wet, the wind backed suddenly to the south drawing mild air from the Azores and bringing with it the first swallows and house martins. Within days the girls had discarded their woolly vests, consigned their waterproof jackets to the linhay, pulled their sweaters off over their heads and were wearing their shirts unbuttoned at the neck. Winnie, Marion and Annie even went so far as to scissor the bottoms from their oldest dungarees and with these rolled up and their thick socks rolled down as far as their leather boots, exposed, from thigh to ankle, legs which quickly acquired a tan as matt and rich as the shells of the farmyard fowls. The sudden heat sent them home in the evenings with raging thirsts which Rose quenched with her
home-made
cordial, sharpened with citric acid in place of the
unattainable lemons and flavoured with the young leaves of apple-mint which was bursting through the old grass under the orchard trees.

‘I’m gonna strip off,’ said Annie, trailing into the kitchen, boots and damp socks in her hand, bare feet relishing the cold stone floor, ‘and lie on me bed starkers!’

‘You’ll do no such thing, miss!’ Rose told her.

‘It’s sweated labour, that’s what it is!’ Marion grumbled, sitting heavily at the table. ‘Hoeing those rows of turnips in this heat! Bloomin’ endless they are! You wouldn’t believe it!’ She glared at Alice and Rose as though they were personally responsible for her exhaustion.

‘Wouldn’t I, now!’ Rose snapped back. ‘And if ‘oeing upsets you just wait till ’ay-makin’! It’ll be even ’otter then! When I was a nipper us all had to ’elp with turnin’ the ’ay and then loadin’ it! Soon as us could walk they’d put us to it! Mr Bayliss’s father were boss in them days! Worked us till us dropped he did! Sixpence a day he give us kids! So stop your grumblin’, Marion, and cool off with a nice sip of my cordial!’ She ladled the liquid into half a dozen tumblers. ‘And a thank you wouldn’t come amiss neither!’ Rose was only slightly mollified when the girls obediently, if grudgingly, chorused their thanks.

‘Needs a drop of gin to liven it up, Rose,’ Marion said, pulling a face but pushing forward her glass for more.

‘Mrs Crocker to you!’

‘Always gets the last word, does Mrs C!’ Winnie murmured.

‘And I’m not deaf, Winnie!’ Rose called over her shoulder as she went into the pantry for more cordial. The girls smirked.

‘She does, too!’ Annie smiled, lowering her voice. ‘Always the last word, our Sergeant Major!’

Soon everyone became used to the warm days and balmy evenings. Until darkness fell, later each succeeding night, groups of girls took to sitting out on the coping stones of the garden wall, their voices rising and falling in the twilight, the smoke from their cigarettes lifting and fragrant, while bats dived and scattered as sunset after sunset silhouetted the familiar hills. In the recreation room, to a Glenn Miller record, Annie was teaching Hester how to waltz: ‘left, two three, right, two three…that’s it! You’re coming on a treat…’

One morning Alice encountered Andreis sitting in the sunshine, his back to the barn wall, his pale eyes squinting into the light. This was unusual. Despite her urging him to get more fresh air, Andreis had always shaken his head, saying he must use all his time to work on his painting. Now he caught her quizzical look.

‘It is finished, Missus Todd. It is all done. Everything I have to say is painted!’

‘Bravo, Andreis!’ He responded to her smile with a shrug and Alice sensed that the completion of the painting marked the onset of a crisis for Andreis. Until now it had occupied
him totally. Both physically and emotionally he had driven himself to this point, beyond which the future fell away and his mind, occupied for so long by the demands of his work, ran uncontrollably back to the situation that had inspired it. To Amsterdam. To his occupied country. To his family and friends, some in hiding, most transported to who knew where. Many, almost certainly, dead.

‘This calls for a celebration,’ Alice announced, her warmth briefly irresistible to him. ‘Come to supper!’ He smiled and Alice realised she had never before seen his face lose the grave, preoccupied look that haunted it. ‘Come tonight! The girls would love it!’ From the kitchen window she saw him, in the afternoon, stripped to the waist and with his head under the yard pump. He arrived, scrubbed and wearing a clean white shirt, carrying small posies of wild flowers, one for each girl, the stems bound together with twisted grass stalks. They sat him at the head of the table and watched as he relished a large helping of Rose’s hotpot. This was followed by a wedge of suet pudding with raspberry jam spooned over it and decorated, in honour of the occasion, with a dollop of Devonshire cream. When Rose offered him the last slice of the pudding he leant back, smiling, in his chair.

‘Thank you,’ he said graciously. ‘But no. I am absolutely fed up.’ When the girls, and even Alice and Rose, collapsed into laughter he looked from face to face in smiling confusion and apologised for his poor English. ‘Baint your
English that be poor, Andreis! ’Tis their manners!’ Rose said, controlling her own laughter sooner than the rest while Marion struck her plate with her pudding spoon and shouted, ‘Speech!’

Andreis got to his feet, smiling and nodding his thanks to the circle of bright faces round the table. The girls were young and tousled. Their suntanned skin was glossy. Their eyes clear. There were freckles and a few pimples. Dark roots were visible in Marion’s bleached hair, Rose’s ageing skin was weather-beaten and Alice, despite her smile, showed signs of the strain under which her situation had placed her. As he looked at them Andreis’s expression changed and they, seeing this change, reacted to it, their smiles slowly fading as he began to speak.

‘I have decided something,’ he said, his face now so grave that the girls immediately sensed something which altered the mood of the evening and sobered it. ‘You see…I came here from cowardice,’ he began and when the girls murmured and shook their heads and Alice said, ‘No, Andreis!’ he silenced them. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is true. Cowardice. My excuse is that I did not know – no one did then – what was to happen to Jewish people when the Gestapo came into the Netherlands. There were rumours, yes, but by the time it was known what their orders were, those Jews that had not left – had not run, as I ran – were trapped. I do not know what has happened to my family and my friends! There are no letters, you see! Nothing! Only
stories of doors kicked down in the night. Of people taken. Put onto trains to God knows where and then…nothing,’ The girls sat, barely breathing as they listened. ‘So I must go back. I do not know what will happen. Whether I can fight…or maybe I can only die… But I cannot stay any more here, in this peaceful place. I cannot!’

When, on the following morning, Roger Bayliss arrived at the hostel, Alice was uncertain of the reason for his visit. Usually he had some query or other, regarding the
day-to-day
affairs of the hostel. But on this occasion he seemed preoccupied and unable to communicate his concerns. Was he, Alice wondered, worried about Christopher? She was surprised to discover that the object of his concern was not his son but Andreis.

‘He came to see me this morning,’ Roger began. ‘I gather you know about this plan of his to return to Holland?’ After Alice had provided a cup of coffee and Roger was sitting in her room, drinking it, he continued. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense, you know. I mean… What does he think will happen to him? His family are missing. Amsterdam, as I understand the situation, is crawling with Gestapo and there are some pretty ugly rumours about, regarding their treatment of the Jews.’

‘Doesn’t he intend to fight?’ Alice, it had to be said, had not given a lot of thought to the details of Andreis’s plans.

‘I assumed it was his intention to join the Resistance,’ Roger continued, ‘but he seems consumed with a desire to
return to Amsterdam. If he does he would be walking into almost certain arrest. Probably transportation to one of these labour camps we hear about. Possibly death. He must know this but he doesn’t seem to care. Have you any idea when he plans to leave us?’ Alice said she hadn’t but would try to find out.

It was a week before the cricket match that a girl arrived, appearing, during supper, in the doorway that opened from the yard into the kitchen and which, that night, because of the warm weather, was standing open.

Her Land Army uniform was clearly too large for her. The breeches were held up by a belt and the short sleeves of her aertex shirt reached almost to her elbows. The hat sat too low on her head, constraining her shoulder-length blonde hair, the jacket was slung over one shoulder and she carried a small suitcase. The girls stopped eating and stared. Rose, ladle in hand, hesitated over the pan of rice pudding.

‘Nora Fuller,’ the girl announced in the silence. ‘I was told to come.’ Alice was baffled. ‘By the rep,’ the girl concluded, firmly.

‘Mrs Brewster sent you?’ Alice asked.

‘That’s right,’ the girl said, ‘Mrs Brewster.’

‘It’s most odd,’ Alice went on. ‘She was here earlier in the week. We are expecting another two girls soon… But she didn’t say anything about… It must have slipped her mind… Not like her, though… And I haven’t had any paperwork…’

‘They…she…said to tell you it would follow,’ said Nora.
‘The paperwork, I mean. In the post.’ She spoke clearly and without a detectable regional accent. This immediately provoked a low level of hostility from Marion, Winnie and Gwennan. Alice invited the girl to take a place at the table and Rose produced a plate of shepherd’s pie and a knife and fork to eat it with.

‘Best get that inside you, dear,’ she advised. ‘Those breeches’ll drop off of you else!’ The girls giggled.

‘They’re much too big, I know!’ said Nora. ‘There’s a shortage of small sizes. They’re going to send me a replacement set as soon as they can.’

The introduction of the unexpected arrival inhibited the girls and they spooned up their rice pudding, their eyes on the newcomer, in an unusual silence.

Mabel who had several times during the course of the meal opened her mouth to speak (although no one had noticed) and then thought better of it, finally took the plunge.

‘Mrs Todd,’ she began uncertainly, catching Alice’s attention and then continuing in a rush. ‘It’s me brother, Ernie.’ She stopped, unsure how to proceed.

‘Your brother?’ Alice enquired vaguely, her mind on the decision she was going to have to make regarding which of the available beds would be the most suitable for Nora.

‘’E’s got leave. And ’e’s comin’ down to see me next Sat’day.’

‘That’ll be nice, Mabel,’ Alice responded, brightly.

‘Yeah. Only ’e ain’t got nowhere to stay and ’e can’t afford the pub and please can ’e kip down in the ’ayloft? ’E’s due back at Caterham on the Sunday. Please, Miss. Just the one night. ‘E won’t be no trouble, honest.’ It was against the rules of course and Alice knew that Rose would not have allowed it. But Alice had seen Mabel’s photo of her brother, a scrawny boy, lost in his army uniform and looking barely older than Edward-John.

‘Very well,’ Alice said and everyone heard the sharp intake of Rose’s breath and saw the smile spread across Mabel’s shiny face.

‘Ta,’ she breathed, pushing back her chair and rising from the table in a cloud of warm, pungent air, for she had not yet taken her bath and the day’s sweat was still salty and sweet on her skin. ‘That’s ever so nice of you, Mrs Todd!’

‘He may not come in the house after supper, Mabel!’ Alice called sharply after her. ‘And he must be on his way by seven on the Sunday morning.’ Mabel promised no and yes. Rose rolled her eyes. Alice ignored her and decided that Nora could have the room which had been Taffy’s before she had moved in with Iris.

With the exception of Georgina, who had been forced into games of cricket by her brother Lionel and his schoolfriends, none of the girls had ever bowled or batted before. So the match between Alice’s land girls and Oliver Maynard’s young Fleet Air Arm trainees was much more of a social
occasion than a sporting one. The girls, unsuitably dressed in frocks or blouses and skirts, stepped doubtfully up to the crease when Georgina won the toss and chose to bat and although she raised everyone’s expectations by hitting two fours and a six in the first over their hopes were dashed when Gwennan, to cries of ‘Come on, Taff! Give it a good belting!’, saw the ball moving fast in her direction, flung aside her bat and ran, screaming from the pitch. Annie proved a better partner for Georgina but after she was dismissed for three and Winnie had ducked instead of addressing a moderately fast delivery and Marion had been caught without scoring, the innings was soon over. The young men played gallantly, allowing Georgina and Annie between them to take three quick wickets. But the girls’ score was soon reached and overtaken and the players gratefully trooped into a Nissen hut where afternoon tea was to be served.

Alice was sitting in dappled sunlight, at a small table outside the hut, enjoying a second cup of tea and the company of Oliver Maynard, when Rose, delighted to have been invited to join the occasion, excused herself for interrupting but needed a word with the warden.

‘It’s Nora,’ she said. ‘She come over funny just before the match. So Fred’s drove her back to the hostel. On’y I thought I should tell you. Fred says as he’ll be back for the rest of us as arranged. All right?’ Alice said it was all right but she knew Rose well enough to perceive that there was more to this situation than she felt inclined to divulge in
front of Captain Maynard. While Alice sipped her tea and responded to her host’s conversation, wondering what the complication could be, a young officer approached.

‘What is it, John?’ Oliver asked him. Alice paid little attention to the murmured conversation until she heard the young man asking about an Eleanor Fullerton whom he was certain he had seen among the party of land girls but who was no longer with them.

‘It’s just, well…it’s just that I thought she was someone I know. The cousin of a chap I went to school with, actually. Could have sworn it was Eleanor. Then, when I went to speak to her, they said she’d gone. Headache or something…’ The boy caught the blank looks passing between Alice and Oliver. ‘Sorry, sir. A case of mistaken identity probably. Didn’t mean to interrupt your tea!’ He smiled at Alice, excused himself and left them.