Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (6 page)

‘It’s called freedom, Rose. It’s what the war is for.’ Alice’s quiet statement failed to convince Rose.

‘So they say,’ she scoffed. Alice allowed her the last word and again they slipped into silence. ‘Christine seems a charming girl, don’t you think?’ Alice said, trying to find something positive to say.

‘Bit lippy, if you ask me,’ Rose snapped. ‘Wilful, I reckon!’

Alice smiled. ‘You’re awfully hard on them,’ she said gently.

‘Maybe,’ said Rose. ‘And maybe you’re not used to that class of girl, Mrs Todd! Hardly the sort of person you’ve mixed with, are they!’ Aware that Alice was looking at her, Rose turned her head and stared at the heavy curtains, which, too long for that window, lay with their hems dragging. ‘No more’n what I am, come to that,’ she concluded in a low voice, at once regretting having introduced a sour note into what she had intended to be a soothing gesture towards Alice.

‘Rose… Please…’ Alice began, after a short silence and then, catching Rose completely off guard said, ‘Won’t you use my Christian name? I’d really like you to!’ Rose, flushing with pleasure, was about to respond when the two of them were interrupted by a tap on the open door. Christine, a dressing gown wrapped tightly round her, stood in her slippers.

‘I need to ask you something please, Miss,’ she said to
Alice, ignoring Rose who got to her feet and took Alice’s empty cup from her.

‘I’ll say goodnight then…Alice,’ Rose said, glancing at Christine to see whether or not she had noticed her use of the warden’s Christian name.

Alice invited Christine to sit opposite her by the fire and asked what she could do for her.

‘Well… It’s my ’usband, see… He’s got a twenty-fourhour pass!’ She spoke with a soft West Country accent which Alice couldn’t quite place ‘We haven’t seen each other since the night we was wed, Mrs Todd! He’s in Plymouth… And he sails Friday! Can I go and see him when I finish work tomorrow? Fred…the driver fellow…he says he’ll drop me off at the railway after work and meet the milk train next morning. Lord knows when Ron and me’ll see each other again!
Please
can I go? I won’t miss no work!’ Alice considered and could see no reason why, in these particular circumstances, permission would not be given. She told Christine she would ask Mr Bayliss and basked in the girl’s gratitude, enquiring, as she rose to leave, whether her bedroom was comfortable.

‘Yeah,’ Christine answered. ‘I’m sharing with Mabel. She seems like a good sort, except…’ She hesitated delicately.

‘Except for what?’ Alice asked.

‘I don’t like to say, Miss,’ Christine said, colouring. ‘Prob’ly she just got too hot on the train… Mr Bayliss will let me go to Plymouth, won’t he?’

‘I’ll do my best for you, I promise.’

‘Ta. Night, then.’

‘Goodnight, Christine.’

In the small, dark bedroom above, Hester and Annie lay in their narrow beds under the roof-beams and tried to sleep. From the next room Marion and Winnie, unused to early nights, were amusing themselves, giggling together and keeping up an endless, bantering conversation. Eventually Annie struck the partition with her closed fist.

‘Leave it out, you two! We’re trying to sleep in here!’

‘Go to buggery!’ Winnie shouted but, more because they were becoming drowsy than in response to Annie’s request, silence fell.

It was the absolute silence of a still country night. It dropped over them like a blanket. The world beyond the valley might have ceased to exist as the farmhouse, with its complement of assorted women, sailed on into the night.

But the act of thumping on the partition had roused Annie.

‘Listen…’ she whispered.

‘What to?’ said Hester, half asleep.

‘It’s like when we was hop-picking,’ Annie said. ‘The quiet always kept us awake the first coupla nights…’ They lay in the silence; their feet, cold when they first got into their beds, were warm now. Then the vixen barked, its shriek close and hideous.

‘Jesus!’ said Annie, lurching upright.

‘S’only a fox!’ Hester murmured and Annie dropped back shuddering, burrowing into her hard pillow and pulling the skimpy blankets up around her shoulders.

‘Whew! I near enough shit meself!’ she said. There was a pause before Hester spoke, almost reluctantly, as though her conscience was driving the words from her.

‘Annie.’

‘What?’

‘You shouldn’t say “Jesus” like that.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘OK then,’ Annie sighed, yawning. ‘No fags… No Jesus… OK? Night, Hester.’

‘Night.’

It felt like the middle of the night when they were roused and came, still smelling of sleep, down to the kitchen, where the porridge had caught slightly and the toaster, a wire contraption that had to be balanced on the paraffin stove, proved intractable and was abandoned in favour of the toasting-fork method. In front of the open door to the range, the girls noisily competed for space until Rose organised an orderly queue.

Outside, in the freezing darkness, Fred sat in the idling truck, his headlights picking up the figures of the girls as they emerged through the porch and came groping and
stumbling towards him through the darkness. One by one they climbed, or were hauled, up into the back of the lorry where they seated themselves on benches that ran along each side of it.

‘This is it, then!’ said Annie. ‘Life in the Land Army! Shivering in the back of a truck as stinks of cow shit!’

‘In the middle of the night!’ added Christine, happy and uncaring because of the prospect of seeing her husband that evening.

‘Baint the middle of the night!’ said Hester, who was used to rising early.

‘Feels like it!’ whined Winnie, who never would get used to it.

‘My feet are freezing,’ said Gwennan, her Welsh voice half singing the words.

‘Should wear two pairs of socks inside your boots this weather, Taff,’ Marion muttered through chattering teeth. Gwennan told her to go teach her grandmother to suck eggs. Fred tried to hurry the stragglers by sounding his horn.

‘Doan wanna be late the first mornin’, do ee?’

‘Where are you takin’ us?’ Annie, in the passenger seat beside him, shouted over the revving engine.

‘To the Bayliss farm first off,’ he replied. ‘’Igher Post Stone, it be called.’ In the back Christine was counting heads.

‘Six, seven, eight… All aboard!’ she yelled. As Fred shoved the gear lever into position Rose appeared in his headlights,
several bulging brown paper bags in each hand.

‘Wait, Fred!’ she commanded. ‘They ’asn’t got their samwidges!’ Alice, in Rose’s wake, carried an armful of the same small packages which the two women rapidly distributed amongst the girls.

‘’Ere!’ Rose called. ‘Georgina! Taffy! Hester… Catch!’ And while Fred swore at the delay, the girls chorused back, ‘Thanks, Mrs Todd! Ta, Mrs Crocker!’

As Alice and Rose picked their way back to the porch they could hear the truck labouring up the incline towards the Bayliss farm.

‘That’s them gone!’ said Rose, sitting on the porch bench to heel-off her boots and slip her feet into the plimsolls that, over a pair of her late husband’s socks, she had taken to wearing about the farmhouse. ‘And good riddance, I say!’ She followed Alice through the cross-passage and into the kitchen and, glancing at the scatter of dirty porridge bowls, plates, cups and saucers, lifted the teapot.

‘Reckon there’s enough in ’ere for a cuppa each,’ she said and began to pour. Glancing at the dishes she added, ‘Deserve one too, afore us tackles that lot!’ Alice sat heavily down at the table.

‘We’re going to have to cut their sandwiches—’ she began and Rose interrupted, finishing her sentence.

‘The night before! I was just thinking the same thing myself.’

As the morning lightened, Taffy, Marion and Winnie were shovelling dung from the Bayliss cowshed into the back of a cart. Ferdie, lurching past them, snarled, ‘C’mon, c’mon! Put some muscle into it!’ and continued on his way, unaware that Marion’s middle finger was jabbing at the air behind his back.

Inside the byre Georgina was showing Mabel how to coax milk down through an udder and into a galvanised bucket.

‘It was pigs, mostly, where I bin!’ Mabel gasped, fingers slipping, cow fidgeting.

‘Keep the rhythm going!’ Georgina urged, encouraging her. ‘That’s it! Nice and easy!’ She steadied the bucket as the animal lurched, rolling its eyes at Ferdie as he approached.

‘Hold still, you varmint of a cow!’ he growled. ‘Can’t you see as the young lady’s on’y learnin’? And very well she’m doing, too!’

‘Thank you, Mr Vallance!’ said Mabel, her plump cheek pressed against the cow’s flank. Ferdie eyed her. He liked a big woman. Not that it mattered what he liked. Since he had been crippled he had learnt to accept the fact that no girl would go with him. He understood that there was nothing personal in their decision to exclude him from the ranks of possible mates. It was simply impractical. A girl needed a man who could provide for her and her babies. Ferdie, with his rolling gait and his weakened back, could not. But the girl squatting before him, her huge, khaki-clad thighs spilling over the edges of the milking stool, her hair
thin and lank, her face pocked with on-going pimples…she might not be too choosy. As he approached her he became aware of the pungent, animal smell that emanated from her, penetrating intoxicatingly into his susceptible nostrils.

‘You can call me Ferdie,’ he said and, turning to Georgina, asked if her name was Webster. When she nodded he went on, ‘Boss wants to see you. Nine sharp in his office, he said. ’Tis the door round the side. You can’t miss it… If I was you,’ he continued more gently, returning his attention to Mabel, ‘I’d move that there milking stool in a bit closer, see?’ Mabel did as he said, her smile revealing uneven, unbrushed teeth as she thanked him for his advice and, with something close to coyness, used his first name.

Georgina tapped on the door of the farm office. A voice said ‘Come’ and she went in. The man sitting behind the desk, his feet clad in riding boots resting on its surface, was much younger than Georgina had expected. He in turn seemed surprised by her appearance.

‘I say!’ he said appreciatively.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You should be in the WRNS with your figure!’

Georgina was not unused to compliments, sought or, as in this case, unsought.

‘Driving some admiral about in a shiny motor car? No thanks. I’d rather be doing something useful.’

‘The WRAF, then,’ the young man persisted, undaunted
and misreading her reaction. ‘The girls in Fighter Command see lots of action, I can tell you!’ He moved his eyebrows suggestively.

‘I don’t want to “see action”,’ Georgina stated soberly. ‘I happen to believe that war is—’

‘Oh, Lord!’ he cut in, ‘so what do you suggest then? “Dear Herr Hitler, please would you stop bombing London and give Poland back?” That approach didn’t work, duckie! Ask Mr Chamberlain!’

‘I don’t know what you’re so smug about!’ Georgina retaliated, feeling herself flush stupidly. ‘You’re not in uniform!’ He threw back his head and was laughing at her when Roger Bayliss came through the door and stood, tapping his riding stock against his palm.

‘Morning, Miss Webster,’ he said, as the young man quickly swung his legs off the desk and got to his feet. ‘Introduced yourselves, have you?’

‘Sort of,’ the young man said, smiling at Georgina’s reaction. Then he excused himself and left them.

Roger Bayliss sat behind his desk and motioned Georgina into the chair opposite him.

‘My son, Christopher,’ he said, searching for something amongst the scatter of papers on his blotter. ‘He’s in fighters.’

‘Fighters?’ Georgina echoed, aghast and then seriously embarrassed.

‘Yes. Spitfires mostly. And Hurricanes. Ah… Here it is…’
Roger Bayliss consulted a list and Georgina was grateful for the few moments in which she was able to collect herself. Then he told her that he had been looking through her application form. ‘In view of your education and…how shall I put it…your obvious…’ he hesitated, ‘superiority… I’d like you to act as forewoman. Nothing complicated, you understand,’ he added, misunderstanding her reaction. ‘Simply need someone who can keep the worksheets in order and distribute the pay packets on Fridays. Manage that, could, you?’

‘I should think so, sir,’ she said coldly and had begun to tell him about the Forewoman’s course she had almost completed, and of her work experience on her father’s farm, when she was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone on his desk. He lifted the receiver, said ‘Bayliss,’ and listened for some moments with, it seemed to Georgina, increasing impatience. ‘Absolutely not, Mrs Todd,’ he said. ‘She’ll get Saturday afternoons and Sundays off, the same as the rest of them!’ Georgina could hear Alice Todd’s voice coming down the phone line until Mr Bayliss interrupted her. ‘I can’t start making exceptions whenever their spouses get leave! Good day, Mrs Todd!’ He hung up sharply and returned his attention to Georgina.

‘I shall need a permanent dairy-hand,’ he said.

‘Mabel Hodges, perhaps?’ Georgina suggested. She watched him find the name on his list and try to connect it to a particular girl.

‘Hodges… Is she the overweight, plain one with the bad smell?’ Georgina felt a surge of defensive anger rise in her.

‘Unfortunately we don’t have the privilege of choosing our looks,’ she said primly. They were words her grandmother had once used to her when, as a small child, she had poked fun at the long-nosed verger at their local church and she had never forgotten them. ‘Mabel has a natural aptitude for dairy work and gets on well with Mr Vallance,’ Georgina concluded firmly. Her employer laughed.

‘With Ferdie! Does she! Does she indeed!’

‘And you’ll need someone to deputise for her, of course,’ Georgina continued, ignoring his amusement. ‘When she’s on leave, or sick or on her day off. I would suggest Marion Grice. She tells me she’s been milking on and off for the past two years.’

‘Yes,’ Bayliss said, impressed by the speed with which Georgina had not only familiarised herself with her fellow workers but was instinctively dovetailing their various skills and temperaments into the running of his farm. He thought better of confiding to her his well-established dislike of Marion Grice, shuffled his paperwork into a tidy pile, told Georgina he would consider her suggestions and dismissed her.