Land Girls (7 page)

By the time they reached the kitchen the three men were already half-way through huge plates of bread, bacon, eggs, tomatoes and black pudding. Mrs Lawrence was shifting half a dozen more eggs in a pan at the stove. She wore the same faded cross-over pinafore as yesterday, which hid all but the matted brown wool of the sleeves of her jersey. There was something extraordinarily detached, but reassuring, in her back view, thought Ag. It was as if the outer woman was performing her chores, while an independent imagination also existed to power her through the mundane matters of daily life.

Mr Lawrence introduced Ratty to the girls, remembering all their names, having checked with his wife. Ratty, a man of economy in his acknowledgements, made his single nod in their direction extend to all three of them. In that brief moment of looking up, Ag observed his extraordinary eyes, grained with all the colours of a guinea fowl’s breast. Here was a man who would provide much material for her diary, she felt, as she sat beside him, unafraid of his distinctive silence. Prue took her chance to sit next to Joe. Mr Lawrence observed her choice with a hard, flat look.

‘Well, we got through that all right, I’d say, didn’t we, Joe?’ Prue turned to the others. ‘I did twelve cows, Joe did the other eight. Just think, only a few more hours to go and we start all over again, don’t we, Joe?’

Joe shook his head. ‘Not me. Dad’s on the afternoon milk.’

Prue’s face fell. She accepted the plate of fried things from Mrs Lawrence and concentrated on eating.

Mr Lawrence, finishing first, seemed eager to be away. He outlined the chores for the rest of the morning. Ag was to help Mrs Lawrence with the henhouse, and try to patch up the tarpaulin roof. Prue was to sluice down the cowshed, sterilize the buckets, scour the dairy, and put the milk churns into the yard. ‘Ready,’ he added, ‘for the cart. Think you’ll manage to get them on to the cart, Prudence?’

Prue looked up from her eggs, alarmed, knowing what a churn full of milk must weigh. But she had no intention of looking feeble in Joe’s eyes. ‘Of course,’ she said.

‘I mean, you’re at least a foot taller than a churn, aren’t you?’ Mr Lawrence’s fragment of a smile indicated he was enjoying his joke.

Now he turned to his left, where Stella swabbed up egg yolk with a fat slice of bread. ‘Know anything about horses?’

‘A little.’

‘Then you can come with me. We’ll walk down to Long Meadow, give you an idea of the lie of the land.’

The three men rose, leaving their empty plates and mugs on the table. Mrs Lawrence sat down at last, with a boiled egg. Her cheeks were threadbare in the brightness, caverns of brown fatigue under both eyes. She cracked the egg briskly, looked round at the girls.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ was all she said.

By the end of their first day, the land girls were exhausted. After four o’clock mugs of tea, they lay on their beds, trying to recover their energy for supper.

If we’re this fagged, what must poor Mrs Lawrence be?’ asked Ag. ‘Up before us, never a moment off her feet. And now cooking. Perhaps we should go down and help.’

‘
Couldn’t,
’ sighed Prue. ‘Twenty-four cows milked dry first day – ninety-six teats non-stop, you realize? That’s me for day one. Finished.’

None of them moved, despite the guilty thought.

‘We should be less stiff in a week or so,’ said Ag, rubbing a painful shoulder, ‘able to do more.’

‘
More?
’ giggled Prue. ‘We’re land girls, not slaves, I’ll have you know.’

‘I
liked
the day,’ said Stella, sleepy. ‘I liked the walk to get Noble, and then getting into a terrible muddle with the harness.’

‘Mr Lawrence can’t keep his eyes off you,’ said Prue, after a while.

‘What?’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Don’t be daft.’

Ag laughed. ‘Your imagination, Prue,’ she said, from her end of the room. ‘I think Mr Lawrence is so giddied by our presence he doesn’t know where to look. He’s not used to women on the farm, or anywhere. But you can tell about him and Mrs Lawrence: soldered for life, I’d say. They don’t have to speak, or even look. They’re bound by the kind of wordless understanding that comes from years of happy marriage. My parents were like that, apparently.’

Prue sat up. She pulled the pink bow from her hair. ‘Don’t know about all that,’ she said. ‘My mum and dad love each other no end, but they don’t half scream at each other night and day. Do you think we stay in these things for supper? I bloody
stink
. Cow, manure, Dettol – you name it, I reek of it. As for my nails …’ She looked down at her hands. ‘What are we going to do about our nails?’

‘Give up,’ said Stella, smiling.

‘Not bloody likely. Land girl or not, I’m going to keep my nails, any road. Anyhow, what did you two think of him?’

‘Who?’ asked Ag.

‘Joe, of course.’

‘Seems nice enough. Shy.’

‘
Nice enough?
Are you blind? Don’t you recognize a real smasher when you see one? He’s something, Joe, don’t you realize,
quite out of the ordinary
? No easy fish, I reckon, but I’ll take a bet. Joe Lawrence and I won’t be too long before we make it.’

She looked from Stella to Ag, trying to read their reactions.

‘There’s Janet,’ Ag said at last, ‘isn’t there?’

Prue giggled. ‘Janet? Did you take a look at her photo? She’s not what I’d call opposition.’

‘But they’re engaged,’ said Stella.

‘Long time till the spring.’ Prue continued to study her nails. ‘Anyhow, I’ll keep you in touch with progress, if you’re interested.’

‘Immoral,’ said Ag, half-smiling.

‘Are you shocked?’

‘Rather.’

‘All’s fair in love and war’s my motto. And this is a war, remember? Don’t know about you two, but I’m getting out of these stinking breeches. Green skirt, pink jersey, lashings of
Nuits de Paris
, whatever Mr Lawrence says, and Joe’ll be beside himself, you’ll see.’

While the other two laughed, Prue took a shocking-pink lipstick from a drawstring bag and concentrated on a seductive outline of her mouth. ‘I’ve never gone for anyone so huge. What do you bet me?’ She challenged Stella, the most likely to take on the bet. But Stella’s mind had wandered far from Joe.

‘The only bet I’m interested in,’ she said, ‘is whether or not I get a letter from Philip tomorrow. But
probably
he won’t have time to write for ages.’

She wanted to begin the letter she had composed that morning. But tiredness overcame her good intentions.

By the time Prue had chosen the right pink from a row of nail polishes, and delivered her opinion about the hopelessness of men when it came to letter-writing, Stella was asleep. Ag, too, lay with her eyes shut and made no response. Pretty queer bunch, the three of them made, Prue couldn’t help thinking, as she dabbed each nail with the brush of flamingo polish and wondered if her shell earrings, for supper, would be going too far.

Contrary to her predictions, the object of Prue’s desire was far from beside himself at supper. He sat between his mother and Ag, silently eating chicken stew and mashed potatoes. He seemed not to notice the trouble Prue had taken with her appearance: spotted green bow in her hair, dazzling lipstick to match a crochet jersey, and smelling extravagantly of her Parisian scent. Mrs Lawrence, who as usual sat down at the table last, was the only one to react to all Prue’s efforts. She sniffed, grimacing.

‘Janet’s coming, Sunday lunch, Joe,’ she said. ‘She rang while you were out.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Janet,’ Mrs Lawrence explained to the girls in general, ‘manages to get here about once a month. It’s a long journey. She’s stationed in Surrey.’

‘That’s nice, her being able to get over at all,’ said Prue. ‘Nice for you, Joe.’ A thousand calculations buzzed in her head. She gave Joe a smile he arranged not to see.

Mrs Lawrence’s news failed to open a lively conversation. The aching girls became sleepier as they ate, only half listened to talk between Joe and Mr Lawrence about problems with the tractor. Supper over, they were invited into the sitting-room to listen to the news, but all volunteered to go to bed.

As the girls went upstairs – Mrs Lawrence insisted she needed no help with the washing-up – Prue observed Joe slip out of the front door. Where was he going? If her plan was to work, she must find out about his movements. The idea excited her enough to dispel her sleepiness. When the other two were in bed, their lights quickly out, she went to the window, stared moodily down at the farmyard. She saw Joe mount his bicycle by the barn and ride out through the gate. If his beloved Janet was three counties away, who was it he was going to see? Prue remained at the window, intrigued, until eventually she heard a distant church clock strike nine. Cold by now, she went to her bed, but could not sleep for the dancing of her plans.

On the stroke of nine from the same church clock, Ratty Tyler, sitting by the range in his small kitchen, knocked out his pipe and rose to make his wife a cup of tea. Edith was ensconced at the kitchen table, a dish of newly iced buns beside her, all ready to cause distress among early customers next morning. The dim light, over-protected by a dark tin shade, was pulled down as far as its iron pulley would go. Edith’s hands, parsnip coloured in its murky beam, concentrated on the darning of a sock.

‘So?’ she said.

‘So what?’

Ratty had been waiting for this all evening. He had observed the difficulty Edith had had, holding herself in, all through their soup and bread and cheese.

‘What’re they like?’

‘What’re who like?’

‘You know what I’m saying, Ratty Tyler.’

‘That I don’t.’

Edith sighed, bit off a new length of grey wool with her dun teeth.

‘The girls.’

‘The land girls?’

‘Of course the land girls. What other girls would I be asking about?’

Ratty gave her question some thought. ‘Just girls, far as I could see,’ he offered eventually. He put a cup of tea on the table. There were more questions to come, he could see that. He must play for time. Anything for time.

‘Where’s the sugar?’

‘Same place it’s always been for the last thirty years. Your mind must be elsewhere.’

It was elsewhere, all right. It was always elsewhere when he came home.

‘I was thinking about Mrs L., so happens,’ he said. ‘Taking on the girls eases some problems, but makes a lot more work for her.’

‘Pah!’ spat Edith, disbelieving. ‘Never known you trouble yourself about Mrs L. before. It’s the girls you were thinking of, I’ve no doubt.’ Her needle, newly charged with wool, dived swift as a kingfisher towards its prey of a hole in a brownish heel. ‘You may as well tell me.’

Ratty placed the sugar bowl by the cup, returned to his chair. For peace, he thought, he may as well.

‘There’s the small one,’ he said.

‘Name?’

‘Prudence, they call her.’ He judged it not worth referring to her as Prue, as the others did. The implications of a nickname would be bound to set Edith’s fears alight.

‘Huh!’ She was easily offended by mere names. Her indignation came as no surprise. ‘What’s she like?’

What was she like? Ratty asked himself. Prudence was the one with a face like the girls photographed in newspapers on the first day of spring. Small, but frightening. He wouldn’t fancy time alone with her.

‘As I said, not large. Nothing to write home about.’

Ratty had intended to say something more definite about her, to assure his wife that the girl, young enough to be their granddaughter, was no threat of any kind. But he feared that silent cogitation, striving for the right description, might itself inspire further suspicion. He need not have worried. For some reason Edith was not interested in the idea of Prue.

‘And the others?’

‘There’s the medium one, the one I took to Hinton in the cart with the milk. Not much experience in harnessing up.’

No point in saying she’d been mighty quick to learn, that one. He’d shown her what to do his side of Noble: she copied quick as a flash on her side. And lovely manners. All polite remarks about the countryside, on their way to the village, and doing more than her fair share of unloading the churns. Nice face, too. He liked her.

‘Name?’

‘Stella.’

‘Nothing like Cousin Stella?’

Ratty shook his head. Edith’s Cousin Stella was the nearest to a witch he knew. No comparison with this girl. He smiled at the thought, knowing his wife, in her quick glance, would
misunderstand
his expression.

‘You lay your hands on a Stella and it would be
incest
,’ snapped Edith in the furious voice she used for her most illogical remarks.

‘No fear of that.’

‘And the last one?’

She was suspicious, here, Ratty could tell.
How
could she be suspicious? He cursed her instincts.

‘The tall one. Agatha. Ag, they call her.’

‘Much taller than you?’

‘Good foot,’ he said, permitting himself the exaggeration of an inch or so.

Edith contained a sigh of relief. ‘You’ve never liked a tall girl.’

‘No.’

Foxed her! Ag was the one he liked even more than Stella. He’d studied her for a long time from his unseen position in the barn. There was something about her kind, private face that had struck him. He had been intrigued by the way her short hair had blown apart while she was sweeping, so he had had glimpses of white scalp. Reminded him of watching a blackbird in a wind, feathers parting to show white skin of breast. If he’d met someone like Ag when he was a lad, Lord knows, he’d have done something about it.

‘Blonde?’

‘Dark.’

‘You’ve never liked dark hair, neither.’ Edith briefly touched her own white fuzz of thinning curls.

‘I haven’t, neither.’

He saw the tension in Edith’s body slacken. She held the darned sock away from her, admiring the woven patch she had accomplished with such speed and skill. It would go
unacknowledged
by Ratty, like all the darns she had held up over the years. It wasn’t that he lacked appreciation, but words to express it froze before he could utter them. Hence the constant disappointment he caused her.