Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (16 page)

In the Nissen hut, which served as a mess and was shared with a contingent of American GIs, Hester Tucker and Reuben Westerfelt were standing at opposite ends of the long, narrow building, their eyes locked. A slow blush was colouring Hester’s cheeks. She stood, stock still, lips just parted, as Reuben made his way down the length of the space between them, in his left hand, a doughnut on a cardboard plate, in his right, a glass of lemonade and on his face a sweet, diffident smile.

Reuben, the eldest of three brothers, had been due to leave school the day after the recruiting officers arrived in
the small town of Bismarck in the state of North Dakota where Reuben senior, a third-generation immigrant, owned a modest general store. He sold petrol from two pumps out front and, in a garage next to the shop, ran an auto repair business. As the township grew and his sons reached manhood, Reuben senior planned on overseeing a rewarding expansion of this family enterprise and was less than pleased when his namesake announced that he had enlisted in the US marine corps. There had been a certain amount of patriotic pride in evidence when, together with half his high school year, and while the town band played a Souza march, Reuben junior boarded an army bus and was driven off towards the highway. It was only when familiar landmarks fell away that he and his fellows began to comprehend the enormity of the decision they had made that day. At times, over the succeeding weeks, Reuben junior had longed for home. His throat had swelled at the thought of his mom and even his pa. But mostly he had been kept so busy with training, eating or sleeping that he barely noticed that he was being changed from a homesick boy into a robust young man, able to operate the machinery of war and to run, a two-inch mortar plus its ammunition strapped to his shoulders, for as many miles as he was ordered to and to obey instructions, whatever they were, without questioning them. Reuben Westerfelt was, by the start of his nineteenth year, an infantryman, his existence bounded by the life he was living and the men he was living it with. They were
shipped to England, crossing what they boldly referred to as ‘the pond’ in a convoy harassed by German U-boats. Then, on a fine English summer afternoon, after watching the Fleet Air Arm boys play this crazy, British game they call cricket against a bunch of girls, he saw her. She was wearing a blue frock that matched her eyes. Her hair framed her small face in a pale gold haze. She was standing at the far end of a Nissen hut and she was looking at him. As he stood, transfixed, he knew that that image of her would stay with him for as long as he lived. Everyone and everything in the hut dissolved into a vague blur as he made his way towards her, lemonade in one hand, doughnut in the other. Marion, her make-up slipping slightly, what with the exertion of the cricket match and now the clammy warmth of the Nissen hut, watched Reuben and Hester for a moment, her expression briefly softening, then, smirking, she nudged her friend, ‘Look, Win! Love’s young dream!’

That evening the girls were so full of the buns (which their GI hosts had called ‘muffins’), biscuits (‘cookies’) and cakes (‘pastries’) that they were unenthusiastic about the light supper – two slices of spam and a leaf or two of limp lettuce with bread and margarine – which Rose produced for them.

Alice watched Nora clear her plate and sip her cup of cocoa. She was, when Alice asked her, quite recovered from her headache.

‘I’m fine now, thank you,’ she had replied to Alice’s
enquiry and she went, with Edward-John, up into the attic where the two of them had taken to playing for hours at a time with his Meccano set, constructing bridges and towers and fortresses until Alice insisted that it was way past her son’s bedtime.

‘Reckon there’s something funny going on with that girl,’ Rose announced when she and Alice were alone in the kitchen. ‘Don’t it seem queer to you, how she seems happier playin’ with your Edward-John than spendin’ time with the girls? Bit young for her age, wouldn’t you say.’ Alice said that Meccano was quite educational and in her opinion it was rather nice that Nora and Edward-John shared an enthusiasm for it. Rose, unconvinced, continued, ‘And there was something going on at that cricket match. One of them young officers kept starin’ at Nora. Couldn’t take his eyes off of ’er. Then she comes up to me, “Oh, Mrs Crocker,” she says, “I am feeling unwell and I think I should go back to the farm and lie down.” Unwell my eye,’ said Rose. ‘It was him starin’ as upset her! That was obvious!’

‘Perhaps she was shy,’ Alice tried. ‘Some girls don’t like being stared at by strange young men!’ Rose shrugged but seemed prepared to accept Alice’s explanation for Nora’s behaviour.

‘Not like our Hester then!’ she said and when Alice looked at her in surprise, went on, ‘Didn’t you see ’er with that GI? Nice-looking lad. She introduced me to him. “This is Reuben, Mrs Crocker,” she says, all pink and smiley.
“Bismarck, he comes from. In North Dakota, USA!” That proud of him, she were and very pleased with ’erself, too! Would you believe it! Our little Hester! A few months ago she wouldn’t say boo to a goose!’

The Sunday morning following the cricket match proved a difficult one for Alice. During the course of it there were three unconnected incidents, two of which reflected badly on Alice herself and a third, which cast a terrible and lasting gloom on the farm and its occupants.

The first incident involved Mabel.

‘Though I’m not one to tell tales,’ Gwennan began in her clipped, self-righteous Welsh voice, ‘I thought you should know that I saw Mabel and her brother come out of the barn about an hour ago. Her hair was all mussed, Mrs Todd, there was bits of straw stuck to her jumper and she was carrying one of the blankets off her bed!’

Mabel was contrite. ‘After we got back from the pub I showed ’im where ’e was to sleep, Mrs Todd. But it was ever so dark in that loft and the wind was ’owlin’ somethin’ ’orrible and there was things scuffling about in the straw!’

‘You slept out there with him?’ Alice was aghast at this breach of her trust.

‘He was that scared, Mrs Todd. I said as I’d just stay with ’im for a bit and then we got chilly and I fetched a blanket. We was warmer then and I must of nodded off. Next thing it were mornin’. He left before seven, like you said, Mrs Todd. He’ll be well on ’is way back to camp by now!’

Alice had been grateful for this last piece of news and as the girls appeared in the kitchen, helping themselves to cereal and toast and relishing the prospect of a Sunday to spend as they wished, she considered what she should do about Mabel’s breach of discipline. She was inclined to let the incident pass unreported to either Margery Brewster or to Roger Bayliss himself but Gwennan was unlikely to hold her tongue about what she had seen and would almost certainly be unable to resist the temptation to stir up trouble for Mabel as well as for Alice herself, as the person who was, after all, responsible for keeping the girls in order.

Alice was sipping a second cup of tea and making a list of things which needed to be done in preparation for the evening meal when a car nosed down the lane and drew up outside the farmhouse gate.

Moments later Alice was surprised when Margery Brewster came briskly into the kitchen. She was followed first by a stout, middle-aged woman in a tweed suit, then by Oliver Maynard with the young officer who had interrupted their tea on the previous afternoon. A chair scraped back and Nora, white-faced, was on her feet.

Alice took the visitors, together with Nora, through to the recreation room, leaving the half-dozen girls, wide-eyed, in the kitchen and Rose, who was radiant with the pleasure of having been right all along about Nora, happily stacking the dirty breakfast plates.

In the recreation room they seated themselves awkwardly
on the old sofas and easy chairs, Nora glowering at John and the tweed-suited woman, who was introduced to Alice as a Miss Singer, headmistress of Nora’s boarding school, glaring at her pupil.

‘How could you, Eleanor?’ Miss Singer demanded. ‘Have you any idea of the anxiety you have caused? Your parents have been desperately worried about you and I, as the person responsible for you, have been up all night, trying to find you! If it hadn’t been for Captain Howard,’ here she smiled tightly at John, ‘who knows how long it would have taken us to track you down!’

‘Why did you do it, Eleanor?’ John Howard asked more gently. ‘There’s been a hell of a panic, you know?’ Eleanor looked at the floor.

‘Because I hate school!’ she said. ‘I’m useless at lessons!’ She nailed John with accusing eyes. ‘Why did you have to be at that stupid cricket match! And why tell on me! I just thought I could be a bit useful, working on the land and you have to see me and blab and ruin it all! Everyone but me is having such fun in this war!’ She hesitated, looking from one to another of her audience and sensing their extreme disapproval. ‘I mean… I didn’t mean…’ she fumbled on into silence.

While Eleanor fetched her belongings, Margery Brewster asked Alice to explain how it had been possible for the girl to arrive and to remain at the farm for almost a week without Alice contacting the Exeter office.

‘She was very plausible, Margery,’ Alice began. ‘She told me the paperwork from your office was in the post. She was in uniform. She—’ Here Alice was interrupted by Miss Singer.

‘I can explain that!’ she snapped. ‘We have a land girl who cultivates the kitchen garden at the school. While she was on leave Eleanor must have taken her uniform from the shed where it’s kept! Stolen it, in fact! Then she told us she was expected at home for the weekend and by some clerical oversight…’ Here she blushed with embarrassment. ‘We assumed that was where she was… Until John Howard, here, telephoned her parents and told them he thought he’d seen Eleanor with a bunch of land girls! Appalling behaviour! Her family are quite distraught to discover that she had, in fact, been missing for almost a week!’

As the car moved off, Eleanor, wedged in the back seat, searched Alice’s face for signs of forgiveness.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs Todd,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to get you into trouble. I just didn’t think!’

‘Well, perhaps, now,’ Alice said soberly, ‘you understand that “not thinking” is a very foolish thing to do. Particularly when there is a war on!’ Alice glanced at Margery and saw, to her surprise, a trace of a quickly suppressed smile.

‘Silly child!’ Margery said, almost to herself as the doors of the car were slammed. ‘How on earth did she think she was going to get away with that!’

‘Thanks to me she did get away with it!’ Alice had been
right. Margery was trying not to smile.

‘Poor kid,’ she murmured, making her way towards her own car and settling herself into the driving seat. ‘Anything else I should know about, Alice?’

Alice shook her head, smiled and closed the door of Margery’s car. Margery wrestled with her gear lever and told Alice she’d pop over during the coming week.

It was around midday that Georgina’s brother Lionel arrived on his motorbike to take her home for a family lunch. He found his sister sitting on the garden wall with Annie.

‘You two have met before, haven’t you?’ Georgina asked, remembering her arrival at the farmhouse three months previously. Lionel propped his motorcycle.

‘Only very briefly,’ he said, pulling off the gauntlet gloves, leather helmet and goggles he wore when riding his Royal Enfield.

‘Well then, let me introduce you properly,’ his sister said, becoming aware of her brother’s reaction to Annie and hers to him. ‘Hannah-Maria Sorokova, known as Annie, meet Lionel Horatio Webster, known as Li!’ They shook hands and then stood, smiling. ‘Got a problem with the bike, Li?’ Georgina asked and when Lionel assured her he hadn’t, she said she thought she had heard it backfire as it approached the farmhouse.

‘No,’ Annie said, ‘that was a gunshot from somewhere behind the barn. Probably someone shooting rabbits.’ She
smiled at Lionel, conscious of his attention to her.

‘Not Andreis, though,’ Georgina said. ‘He’s leaving here tonight. Must go and say goodbye when I get back.’ She was buttoning her jacket and climbing onto the pillion seat. ‘Come on, Li. Mother’ll kill us if we’re late for her lunch!’

It was evening when Georgina returned, the bike purring down the lane. She knew at once that something was wrong. A cluster of the girls were standing near the porch. The south wind had veered north. The girls looked cold and miserable. As Georgina dismounted Annie ran down the path towards her.

‘It’s Andreis,’ she said flatly. ‘Oh, Georgie, he shot himself.’

They should have known something was wrong. Some of them had known. Roger Bayliss had been aware of the circumstances of Andreis’s desertion of his family and his homeland and that he was temperamentally incapable of joining an allied army and fighting for his country. Winnie had once seen him, when a stray Messerschmitt had swooped low over the farm, fling himself onto the ground, wrap his arms round his head and lie, quivering, long after the sound of the plane had faded to silence. Annie, posing for him while he painted onto the whitewashed partition in the barn his reaction to the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews, had seen him possessed by a desperation which had alarmed her. And Alice, preoccupied as she was by her responsibilities, had sensed that his ambitions to return to
Holland and in some way to involve himself in resistance to the German occupation were no more than a fantasy. True, she had counselled him to reconsider but she had not done enough, none of them had, to recognise the impossibility, or the obvious consequences of his decision, or to predict and maybe even prevent this tragic outcome of it.

Fred, checking his rabbit snares, had found him, at about three o’clock that afternoon, in the field behind the barns. By then he had been dead for several hours, all his blood having seeped out of a wound that had shattered the femoral artery in his left thigh. The sound that Georgina had thought was her brother’s bike backfiring was, almost certainly, the shot that killed him.

Wartime protocol meant that his body had, initially, to be collected by the military police. In a few days’ time, after an inquiry into the circumstances of what was referred to as ‘the accident’ and of his presence on Lower Post Stone Farm, his remains would be released to his sponsor, Roger Bayliss, and could then be returned to his native land for burial.