Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (12 page)

‘I’d ’ave gone though, Mabel! If I could of! Like a shot, I would.’

‘’Course you would!’ she soothed, adding, ‘Reckon we should mash them spuds now…’

They ate speedily and with mutual relish, wolfing the food and mopping up the gravy from their plates with doorsteps of bread. Their faces shone. There was potato in Ferdie’s beard and grease on Mabel’s chin.

‘Next time you come us’ll have pudden!’ Ferdie announced, for Mabel’s cooking had passed muster. This had been the best meal he’d eaten since his mother’s death and he wanted more. Just how much more he had not at that moment decided for, although he knew that no good-looking girl would give him a second glance except in response to his twisted shape and rolling gait, he resisted any ambition to regard Mabel as a possible wife. Although she was gross and clumsy he guessed that she too had her own ideas about the man she’d wed and would, should Ferdie make advances to her, repel him just as all the others had done before her.
Resigned to his isolation, Ferdie had given up his attempts to end it. But Mabel also had an agenda and her own hungers. The feelings of lust which warmed her prettier sisters also heated her. Like Ferdie and for much the same reasons, she knew she had little chance of satisfying her cravings. His cottage was unlike any other human habitation she had seen. She sensed the filth and the neglect. But it had walls, windows and a roof. These, for reasons of her own, Mabel needed. So she smiled at this strange, benign, whiskery little man and spoke to him promisingly of spotted dick, apple pie with dollops of Devonshire cream and of suet pudden with golden syrup spooned over it, until the clock struck ten.

Her mittened hands tight on the handlebars, Mabel negotiated the steep lane, letting gravity bear her home. The pale gold circle of light from Alice’s headlamp bounced over the ruts while moonlight flickered blindingly through the leafless hedge, disorienting Mabel so that she pitched dangerously from side to side, her legs spread and her rubber-booted feet fending off first one and then the other of the mossy banks that walled the narrow track, expecting at any moment to be thrown into the mud and unable to do more than try to keep the bucking machine on an even keel. Feeling herself to be delivered body and soul to the whim of God she surrendered to the careering descent and laughed aloud, shrieking ‘Whee!’ into the darkness. Across the dark valley sheep turned enquiring faces in her direction.

It was Margery Brewster’s policy to keep meticulous records of the hostels in her care. Every six weeks she had meetings with the wardens in order to review the running of each establishment. The consumption of food and fuel was monitored. Visits by the land girls to doctor or dentist were noted, together with any time off a girl might have taken, due to illness or family obligation. Requests for leave were discussed before referral to Roger Bayliss. Each warden would, at the end of the meeting, be given the opportunity to air any problems.

So, one blustery day towards the end of March, Mrs Brewster’s car nosed up to the front gate of Lower Post Stone Farm. Rose was predictably and visibly insulted when Mrs Brewster, after accepting the offer of a cup of tea, made it clear that when she and Alice withdrew for their meeting, Rose’s presence would not be required.

Alice led her visitor through to her own quarters where Margery spread her notes across the table, settled her spectacles and, as was her habit on these occasions, opened the proceedings by scrutinising the warden’s appearance. In Alice’s case she seemed pleased with what she saw.

‘You’re looking better, my dear,’ she announced.

During the six weeks since her arrival at the farmhouse Alice had given very little thought to how she was looking and even less to how she was feeling. It was all she could do each day to get through her workload, keep herself and her clothes clean and spare some time on Saturdays and
Sundays for her son. The initial bewilderment had settled into an almost unrelieved grind of labour and responsibility. Sometimes she had despaired of ever getting the routine organised enough to pause for breath and consider her situation. But perhaps such consideration would have depressed her and possibly it had been easier to submerge herself in her duties than to lift her head and contemplate her future.

Margery’s voice droned on.

‘…And apart from the unfortunate incident involving Christine what’s-her-name there have been no serious problems and no complaints from either your employer or your charges. So. Well done. During the cold snap you did rather overdo the consumption of logs and paraffin but I’m sure Mr Bayliss sympathises with your intention to keep the girls as comfortable as possible – however he did mention to me that it seemed to him to be slightly excessive.’ Alice was about to defend herself when Margery continued sweetly, ‘And now… Do you have anything you wish to raise with me?’ Alice considered for a moment and then described to Margery the ideas she had for the kitchen. She produced a scale plan which she had drawn on a sheet of graph paper taken from one of Edward-John’s mathematics exercise books.

‘It would make the preparation of food so much easier,’ she said when Margery stared, baffled, at the plan, and was explaining the merits of her scheme when Rose knocked on
the door, opened it and put her head into the room.

‘Sorry to intrude, Alice,’ she said, obviously delighted to have an excuse to interrupt the meeting. ‘Only the meat’s come and Tom says he could let you have a dozen best end of neck chops, if you want ’em…which means we could use them for a hotpot tonight and save the stewing steak to have with dumplings on Sunday…’

Having been complimented by Alice for her sensible planning, Rose threw a virtuous glance at Margery Brewster and left them. Margery was staring at Alice in astonishment.

‘She called you Alice!’ she exclaimed as soon as the door closed on Rose.

‘Yes,’ said Alice.

‘D’you consider that wise?’ Margery’s attitude was clearly censorious.

‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘You use my Christian name and I yours and for the same reasons.’

‘Which are?’ Margery asked and Alice noted the raised eyebrows and was unsure whether Margery was irritated or amused.

‘Because we work closely together and any distinctions between us on the grounds of class seem to me to be inappropriate.’ Margery managed a tight smile while she considered whether or not her status as a bank manager’s wife equalled or exceeded Alice’s, whose husband was a civil servant of an unknown but possibly quite senior rank. Eventually she seemed to relax and, muttering benignly
about war being a great leveller, allowed her attention to be drawn back to Alice’s plans for the kitchen.

After Margery had left the farm, taking the plans with her and promising to show them to Roger Bayliss but warning Alice not expect him to welcome the prospect of spending yet more money on the refurbishment of Lower Post Stone, Alice lingered at the front gate. Some daffodils were pushing up through the overgrown border to the path, their sheathed heads a bright yellow-green in the sunlight. She could hear the far-off bleat of lambs. Sparrows were fighting over nest sites in the gable end of the farmhouse. She knew that she must soon pay attention to the situation between herself and her husband, realising suddenly how seldom she thought of him and that when she did it was with reluctance because he represented such a welter of negative feelings. He was sending her money. A small weekly amount was arriving in the bank account he had advised her to open in her own name. A bachelor uncle, having heard of her marital difficulties, had assumed responsibility for Edward-John’s school fees and contributed generously towards the incidental costs incurred by his education. So, for the immediate future at least, Alice’s financial needs were met. She had a home of sorts and her thoughts and her energies were fully occupied. It was easier to push her reaction to James’s obvious indifference to her out of her mind. She could, after all, do nothing to change it.

‘Reckon you should get out this afternoon,’ Rose called
from the scullery as she washed Margery Brewster’s cup and saucer. ‘The hotpot’s simmering. The ’tatoes is peeled and the cabbage chopped for tonight’s dinner. Get yourself out and about for a few hours! Do you good!’

‘Where would I go?’ Alice asked, amused by Rose’s tendency to organise everything and everybody who fell within her range.

‘Bicycle into Ledburton! Only take you fifteen minutes! The pub’ll be shut of course but you can get a nice afternoon tea at the Arms! Go on! Dare you!’

Alice enjoyed her nice tea, strolled round the square, bought postage stamps and some blurred postcards of Ledburton church at the general store and, noticing heavy cloud moving in from the west, mounted her bicycle for the ride back to the farmhouse.

The rain had begun as she negotiated the shallow ford. She had pedalled up the hill beyond it and was
free-wheeling
down the steep incline towards the farmhouse when a car, moving fast in the opposite direction, rounded a blind corner, appearing directly in her path. She braked too sharply, the wheels locked and the machine slithered forward depositing Alice, quite gently, on the bonnet of the car, which was by then stationary. She became aware of two men, both in naval uniform, their faces grave, their hands, as they helped her off the bonnet and stood her gingerly on her feet, both awkward and gentle. The first man, who was in his forties, was an officer. The second, who was older
and had been at the wheel of the car, was crimson with embarrassment and shock and full of apologies. Alice, she repeatedly assured them both, was unharmed. She took responsibility for the accident which, she insisted, was caused by her haste to get home before the rain worsened. Having satisfied himself that neither Alice nor her machine was damaged, the officer introduced himself as Oliver Maynard, Adjutant at the nearby Fleet Air Arm training establishment.

‘We was thinking this might be a short cut, madam,’ the driver was explaining. ‘Only we got lost…!’

Alice explained who she was and what she was doing and after helping the men re-establish their bearings, extended her hand to Maynard. He took it and shook it, looking appreciatively into her face, enjoying the grave eyes, the set of her mouth, the creamy skin and the colour and texture of her hair. She was exactly the sort of woman he most admired.

‘Perhaps… Sometime… Your land girls would care to visit the camp? One of my responsibilities is to keep the lads happy…’ He hesitated, seeing in Alice’s response to this something which caused him to rephrase it. ‘I mean… I organise events at which the young people can meet. Socially. Concerts. Sports of various kinds. Dances and so on.’ Alice smiled and nodded. She became aware that her hand was still in his and withdrew it.

‘I see,’ she said, smiling at the commander’s driver. ‘Well,
you know where we are.’ She mounted the bike and, rather conscious of the two men’s eyes following her progress down the lane, cycled away. Her left knee felt stiff and the front wheel of the cycle was slightly out of alignment so that she had to turn the handlebars a little to the left in order to achieve a straight line.

Rose met her in the cross-passage.

‘A Mr James Todd telephoned,’ she announced, her eyes watching Alice closely for her reaction to this news. ‘I told ’im you was out and ’e said ’e’d ring again after four-thirty.’ It was now twenty-five minutes to five and precisely as Rose finished speaking the two women heard the sound of the outside telephone bell. 

At the Bayliss farm father and son accepted their plates of breakfast from Eileen, the woman who had cleaned and cooked for them since she was a girl. Following the deaths first of her husband and then of his wife, Roger had been pleased to lengthen the hours Eileen spent at the farmhouse and had raised her wages to take account of her increased responsibilities. She left her cottage in the village at
seven-thirty
each morning and seldom returned to it before six at night, having cleaned the farmhouse, laundered the linen, shopped for groceries and prepared Roger’s supper tray, his main meal, since the start of the war and except on special occasions, being taken at midday. When Christopher was on leave the two men ate breakfast together and Eileen contrived, whenever possible, to provide bacon and eggs, a fish kedgeree or devilled lamb’s kidneys but on this occasion,
Christopher having returned home sooner than expected, rations were short and she had resorted to eggs from the farm’s hens, scrambled in creamy milk and served on bread fried in bacon fat.

Christopher’s hands were bandaged from knuckle to wrist and he winced as he tried to cut into his food. Eileen took his knife and fork from him and remembered, as she did so, numerous occasions on which she had done the same thing for him when he had been an infant and she, fresh from the village school, employed as kitchen maid and
part-time
nanny, had divided his breakfast into small portions. Christopher thanked her and, holding his fork between finger and thumb, began to eat. His father, keeping his eyes on his newspaper, read out several items concerning the progress of the war, remarking with satisfaction, as Eileen excused herself and left them, that the Eighth Army had at last penetrated the Mareth Line. He omitted to tell Christopher that in the casualty list, yet another of his school friends was reported killed in action.

‘How goes your Land Army?’ Christopher enquired casually, anxious to discover whether Georgina had survived the wretched weather or had sensibly decamped to a softer life in another service.

‘The warden wants me to renovate the hostel kitchen!’ his father answered, spreading Eileen’s home-made strawberry jam on his toast and implying some unreasonableness in Alice’s request. Christopher said he was not surprised
and that it must be a nightmare trying to cater for ten thunderous young women in a kitchen from the Domesday Book. Roger smiled.

‘I’m going to ride down there this morning,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He hesitated and then, wondering whether Christopher’s injuries would prevent him from managing a horse, added, ‘If you feel up to it.’

Alice, about to shake Christopher’s hand, drew back when she saw the bandages. The undersides of his fingers were pink and blistered where they emerged from the dressing. She guessed he was burnt and he saw the look that changed her expression from polite greeting to concern.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing serious.’ He turned the conversation to the subject of the kitchen.

Alice made a good case for her alterations and had even discovered a stack of disused marble slabs, once part of an old dairy, which would, she said, be perfect for her purposes. Christopher suggested using timber salvaged from the same dairy as framing and supports for the new work surfaces and Roger found himself agreeing that as soon as Jack had finished drilling the spring wheat he could be released from farm work for a few days and put at Alice’s disposal. Rose, whose many useful ideas had been incorporated and credited to her in Roger’s presence, was as pleased as Alice herself with this result.

‘Us won’t know ourselves, will us!’ she crowed
triumphantly as she and Alice watched the men turn their horses towards the lane that led up the valley and back to the higher farm.

He found her at last in the farm office, bringing the land girls’ worksheets up to date. Her colour was slightly heightened by exposure to the winter weather but her eyes were as fine and her hair as sleek as he remembered. He smiled and sat opposite her, offered her a cigarette and leant forward to light it for her, using the same match to light his own. Then he sat back, looking at her and exhaling gently.

She guessed at once that it was because of his injured hands that his latest tour of duty had been curtailed and she asked what had happened. He gave her an edited account of the incident that, two weeks previously, had killed Peter Fairfax, one of the few airmen from Christopher’s intake who were still flying. The slangy, gung-ho, mess room language in which Christopher told part of his story would have offended Georgina if he had not looked so wretched.

It had happened on a raw day in early March. A flight of four Hurricanes had been scrambled in support of another which was responding to a heavy enemy presence over Portsmouth. Christopher’s aircraft was still in the hands of the servicing mechanics so, at the last moment, he was pulled from the operation and only three planes were approaching take-off. Christopher, wearing his flying suit and leather helmet, was standing with his back to the
service hangar, putting a match to a cigarette and watching the take-off when a Dornier broke through the cloud cover, came howling in from the south-west and released a stick of bombs, one of which struck the runway. The first Hurricane, which had already lifted off, climbed, banked and vanished into cloud, pursuing the attacker. The third pilot throttled back and managed to veer away from the mutilated strip, bouncing to a standstill on the tussocky grass. For the second man, Peter Fairfax, who was committed to take-off but had not yet achieved the necessary speed, no evasive action was possible. He forced the plane’s nose sharply upwards but not before a wheel plunged into a crater. Instantly his starboard wing dropped, embedding itself in the ground with such force that the aircraft slewed and then cartwheeled, crumpling into an unrecognisable tangle of metal. Christopher’s cigarette fell from his hand as he and several other observers began to sprint forward. The blast from the Hurricane’s exploding fuel tank almost threw them off their feet.

Christopher could see Peter Fairfax struggling to open his canopy which appeared to contain a solid mass of fire and fumes. As the perspex slid back a sheet of incandescent flame shot upwards enveloping him as he hauled himself out of the cockpit and slithered down into the wreckage of the blazing fuselage. To Christopher it all seemed, as it had appeared frequently since in dreams, to take place in slow motion. Fire engine and ambulance were heading out
across the airfield. But slowly. As he went into the flames, got a hold on Peter and dragged him clear, Christopher’s flying suit protected him and at first he felt nothing. They had rolled the burning man on the ground to put out the flames. To make his breathing easier someone pulled off his leather helmet and oxygen mask. With it came most of the skin from his face. He was screaming. Only when the needle had gone into his lacerated forearm, and he had been floated off into the blur of agony and hallucination which was all he would know of the remaining four days of his life, did Christopher feel the pain in his own blistering palms.

‘A mate’s kite blew up,’ he told Georgina, ashing his cigarette. ‘Had to get him out in a hurry!’ She stared at the bandages and at the damage in his eyes which he was unable to conceal.

‘And did you? Get him out, I mean?’

‘Yeah, we did. We got him out.’ He paused and then abruptly asked her to have dinner with him that night. She looked at him. She would have preferred to decline but that, she sensed, would have been churlish, even unkind. Georgina was neither churlish nor unkind so she accepted.

He borrowed his father’s car and, although, when he took the wheel, the pain in his hands made him wince, drove her to a favourite restaurant in Exeter where the chef managed to provide a dinner which was almost up to his pre-war standards. During the meal their good manners and similar backgrounds resulted in a steady flow of meaningless
conversation in which each discovered a set of predictable facts about the other. On the drive home Georgina saw Christopher grit his teeth as he pulled the heavy car round a tight corner and persuaded him, since his injured hands were obviously hurting him, to let her take the wheel. He asked whether she was a licensed driver.

‘Of course,’ she said, putting the car smoothly into gear. ‘Cars, tractors… And aeroplanes, actually!’ She smiled at his astonishment and explained that her godfather, who was a director at de Havillands, having taken her up in his bi-plane on her tenth birthday, had been so charmed by her reaction and natural aptitude that he subsequently paid for flying lessons. She flew solo two days after her eighteenth birthday and got her licence on her first attempt. Christopher looked at her with open admiration. Then he sighed and shook his head.

‘You could be having such a brilliant war, you know! If it wasn’t for…’ he stopped carefully.

‘My convictions?’ she finished for him and asked whether he considered that he himself was having a brilliant war, taking her eyes from the road just long enough to catch his expression. He did not respond and they barely spoke during the rest of the journey back to Lower Post Stone. He got out of the passenger seat and opened her door. In the moment they stood facing each other he kissed her mouth. It was a brief contact. Her lips felt warm against his. His, cold on hers. Then they thanked each other for a very nice evening.
He watched her negotiate the dark path, go through the porch and let herself into the dimly lit cross-passage, closing the door behind her.

Alice, waiting for Georgina, who, that night, was the only girl to have left the farmhouse, heard the sound of the door closing, called out, reminding her to bolt it and was surprised when Georgina came through the recreation room and tapped on the open door to her room. When Alice offered her a hot drink she declined.

‘I had dinner with Christopher,’ she said, standing in the doorway. Alice indicated the chair opposite her and threw a small log into the embers of her fire. They sat for a while, watching the flames lick round the dry wood. ‘I think something awful has happened to him,’ Georgina said at last. Alice waited but the seconds passed and Georgina remained silent.

‘You mean…his burns?’ Alice prompted, uncertain whether Georgina would continue.

‘He didn’t want to talk about it. No more than the basic facts, anyway. I could see that. So I didn’t press him.’ Georgina was thinking aloud and Alice hesitated to interrupt her. After a while Georgina began to speak, surprising Alice by launching into an exploration of her feelings about her commitment to Conscientious Objection. ‘It seemed so simple – pacifism… But it isn’t.’ She paused. ‘I mean, in principle war is wrong, obviously. But what do you do when the rules are broken? How do you defend people from other
people’s violence without using violence yourself? Innocent people get caught up and die of it. Like Chrissie did. Or their lives are wrecked. Like Andreis. And Christopher.’ She paused, then turned, looking into Alice’s face before adding hesitantly, ‘I think he’s cracking up, Mrs Todd.’

At the Bayliss farm Roger, as Alice had been, was sitting over a dying fire. An hour previously he had finished the whiskey in the decanter which stood on a low table beside his chair. He had decided not to broach a new bottle but, eventually, hoping that his son might, on his return from dinner, join him in a nightcap, he decanted a single malt, poured himself a tot and was rolling it carefully round his tongue when he heard the car, then the front door, then Christopher’s footsteps on the staircase which led up to the first-floor sitting room where Roger spent his evenings. The old spaniel, which had been Christopher’s since he was ten years old, got stiffly to her feet, greeted him and then flopped down with a sigh onto the tartan rug that Eileen always spread for her in front of the fire.

‘Join me?’ Roger said, indicating the whiskey. ‘It’s a rather good one. Christmas present from your Uncle Freddie.’

Christopher poured a generous three fingers of the gold liquid into a tumbler and added to it a very small amount of water. He sipped, tasted, nodded, swallowed, said, ‘Not half bad. Good old Fred,’ and dropped into the empty chair on the opposite side of the fireplace where he sat holding the tumbler and staring into the remains of
the fire. His father watched as the young man appeared to drift off, not to sleep but to somewhere. Roger cleared his throat and asked whether Christopher’s evening had been a success. For a moment there was no response and Roger thought Christopher had not heard him. Then he came back from wherever it was that his thoughts had taken him and answered brightly that yes, it had been ‘enormous fun’, and that Georgina was ‘one hell of a girl’. His father watched for a while as his son sat sipping. Then Christopher announced that he intended going back to his base the following day. Roger asked why, since his hands were not healed.

‘Oh, they won’t let me fly, Pa. But I’m beginning to feel a bit useless here and they’ll probably have something I can do…’ Roger was about to speak. To make some obvious remark about regretting that Christopher felt he must go, but that if he considered he should, it might be for the best and so on, when Christopher continued, or rather did not continue but abruptly changed the subject. ‘Tim Bretherton bought it the other day,’ he said. ‘A daylight raid on Brest. The announcement’s in your paper.’ Roger did not admit to having read the news. He watched as Christopher got to his feet and began to pace about the room. ‘That Dornier pilot – the one that took Fax out – he died too, you know. Shot down by our chap. It seemed good at the time. When Fax was dying, I mean. Good to know that the bastard that did it to him had paid for it.’ Christopher stopped pacing, wheeled round and stood motionless, facing his father. ‘But
what the fuck is it all about?’ Roger was unprepared for this outburst. Years of reticence between the two of them made him incapable of a significant response. So he lifted the whiskey bottle, offering a top-up. Christopher shook his head, dropped back into his chair and closed his eyes.