Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (27 page)

He made tea for them and cut large wedges from Eileen’s cake. Georgina told him she could not believe how well he looked.

‘I’ve never seen you like this! You are…’ She hesitated. ‘Transformed, Chris! I hadn’t realised…’ Again she paused, trying to choose her words carefully.

‘How messed up I was before? It’s the life up here, Georgie,’ he went on. ‘Basic and simple – with some useful back-up from Pa’s housekeeper, of course! Hence this noble cake!’

It was, she considered afterwards, almost like meeting a stranger. The clinging, self-deprecating wreck that had both scared and depressed her was gone. Now, just as she had been when they had first met and he had been concealing his imminent breakdown under a carapace of swaggering arrogance, she found herself attracted to him. But with this realisation came a sense of guilt. Her initial reaction to him had been superficial. She had, to begin with, lacked perception and then, when the wretchedness of the breakdown had stripped him of the qualities that, despite herself, she had found attractive, she had almost despised him. Now, having misunderstood him, she felt, as they sat in his firelight and he enthused about what he had already achieved in the neglected woodland, unworthy of him.

After half an hour or so Lionel got to his feet. ‘Better make tracks, sis,’ he said. ‘It’ll be dark soon and after I drop you off—’

‘You’re taking Drusilla to a party. I hadn’t forgotten.’ She stood, winding her scarf round her neck, smiling at Christopher.

‘You’re still going, then?’ he asked her as they moved out into the half-light where the thaw was steadily reducing the patches of snow. ‘To do this flying thing?’

‘Yes. I’m still going. But I could come and see you… When I get some leave… If you’d like me to?’ Christopher took her by her shoulders, kissed her and told her there was
nothing in this world that he would like better.

Then Lionel was revving the bike, she was on the pillion and they were negotiating the slushy track. Christopher’s mouth had felt warm. This kiss was quite different from the cold neediness of their first, when on a sharp April night, after an awkward dinner together, she had volunteered to drive them home because his burnt hands were hurting him.

‘Coming in for a warm-up?’ she asked Lionel when they arrived at the farmhouse.

‘I’d better crack on,’ he said, the noise of his bike echoing round the yard.

‘Don’t want to be late for your bit of cradle-snatching!’

‘Cradle-snatching? Dru’s almost eighteen, Georgie!’

‘And you’ve been going out with my friend Annie for the past six months!’

‘Annie’s lovely,’ he said, ‘absolutely lovely and great fun and everything…but…’

‘But what?’

‘Oh, you know, Georgie… She’s…well, she’s…’

‘Not posh enough for you? Is that the problem? Are you a bit of a snob, little brother?’ He pulled down his goggles and shut her out. She watched him turn the heavy machine and ride off, the beam from his headlamp wavering down the lane.

Annie must have heard the bike. Georgina would lie. She would tell Annie that Lionel had to get back to their parents’ guests. Avoiding the girls she climbed the steep
stairs to her room and stood for a moment, looking round it. At the desk where she had studied for her Ministry of Agriculture exams. At the narrow bed in which she had lain, arguing with her conscience about pacifism, and about Christopher. And up at the small, ill-fitting window, the blackout curtain pulled across it.

From the recreation room Georgina could hear someone at the untuned piano, picking their way through the refrain of ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’. She recognised Annie’s voice, hesitantly singing the words as her fingers fumbled over the keys. As she mastered each phrase of the song, Annie’s pace quickened and some of the girls broke off their conversations and began singing with her, stopping, starting and laughing as she stumbled through the familiar tune. Georgina identified Gwennan’s heavy Welsh contralto and snatches of Winnie’s thin soprano. The voices and the laughter rose and fell, reaching Georgina through the gaps in the floorboards of the draughty little room above the porch.

After supper she would slide her expensive monogrammed suitcases from under her bed. In three days’ time she would no longer be a land girl, a member of what was still disparagingly referred to as ‘the Cinderella service’, and she would leave Lower Post Stone Farm for what would probably be the last time.

J
ULIA
S
TONEHAM
began her career as a stage designer before moving into writing. She was a regular writer on
The House of Eliott
and her radio series,
The Cinderella Service
, was nominated for a Sony Award and was commissioned by Granada TV.

Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings

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