The Bannister Girls (39 page)

Before Angel could think of some way to avoid it, she was enveloped in her father's arms. Just for a moment she was able to forget that she was supposed to be hating him. For a moment she was his best girl once more, and her eyes were damp with sheer exhaustion and the sudden longing for things to be the way they used to be. But they weren't the same, and never could be again.

She slid from his arms and followed Ellen indoors quickly, leaving Fred to pick up the bags and bring them inside. It was Clemence they had come home to see, and Clemence who shocked them both when they saw her so frail and white, and so badly in need of their company. It was pathetic to both of them to see how dependent their self-assured mother had become because of her wretched illness.

‘The doctor says it will take time to clear up,' she told them repeatedly. ‘It's not a fatal disease or anything ghastly, but oh, my dears, it is just so very miserable! I can't tell you how distressing it is.'

Angel and Ellen avoided looking at one another. The trivia of miserable complaints that would eventually recover, compared with the horrors that both of them had seen, was in both their minds at that instant. But it would have been cruel to say as much to Clemence, who looked so abysmally sorry for herself.

Fred gently led the conversation towards their youngest
daughter's engagement. The letters from Jacques and his father had reassured them both, but they wanted to discuss it further, and it was sweet comfort to Angel to bring his name into the open at Meadowcroft at last. And clearly Clemence was more than happy to know that her daughter was to marry the son of Comte de Ville.

What a difference a title made, Angel thought, with a sly wink towards Ellen. But after the burst of enthusiasm, the talk turned inevitably to Clemence's illness again, and the girls guessed from the small resigned sighs from their father that this was the way of things at every opportunity.

They could almost see their mother shrink into the self-centred shell she had made for herself. Clemence had once been so strong, Angel thought sadly, caring for the wounded at the railway station and diligently organising her knitting circles for the poor soldiers' welfare. Nor could Angel forget her mother's stoicism over poor Hobbs, and she couldn't find it in her heart to censure her.

Ellen felt differently. When they had both recovered from the journey and were sitting on Angel's bed late that evening, she reverted to the old Ellen with amazing ease.

‘Honestly, old thing, did you ever see such pathos? I expected to hear the violins playing at any moment. It's only shingles, for God's sake! Nobody dies of shingles!'

‘Oh, but Ellen, she does look ill!'

‘I'm not disputing that. She seems much better since we've come home though, haven't you noticed? She brightened up once we talked about Jacques and his prospects, even though she only pecked at her dinner. Not that there was much to peck at, mind you. Hospital rations are better than these!'

Angel was thankful that her sister's attention soon changed direction. It was Angel herself who came back to the topic of their mother a while later, when they had agreed on the paltry amount of food on the table at dinner and the
privations at home that neither of them had really thought about.

‘What should we do about Mother, Ellen?'

‘What can we do? You heard what she said. She'll get better in time. You can't hurry shingles, apparently.'

Angel looked out of the window, to where the green summer countryside stretched away into the distance.

‘One of us should be here. Louise is so far away –'

‘And it's a pity that Dad has to keep skipping off like he does. Not that I blame him,' Ellen said bluntly. She looked directly at Angel. ‘So that leaves you and me. Are you suggesting that one of us should give up our jobs at the hospitals?'

‘It sounds a pretty awful thing to do. We both know how much we're needed there –'

‘And one of us is needed here. There's not really any choice, is there?'

‘What do you mean?'

Ellen gave a soft laugh. ‘Come on, old girl, do you think I don't know that you'll be itching to get back to France long before the week is out?' She gave a shrug as Angel didn't answer. ‘As for me – well, we both know that I went to France as a kind of escape from my own inadequacy. The devil of it is, you can't escape from yourself, darling, no matter how far away you go.'

‘So you'll stay, if Mother wants you to?'

‘I can't do it just like that. I'll have to go back. But perhaps Mother's doctor will give me a note so that I can get discharged on compassionate grounds.' She chewed her lip. ‘Will Sister Yard and her battle-axes think badly of me, do you think?'

Angel's voice was gentle.

‘I know they won't. They'll miss you, though. You're solid, remember? We're the solid Bannister girls.'

They convulsed in laughter on the bed, remembering Sister Yard's beetling brows, each glad that the solution had
been decided. Ellen would come home just as soon as she could. Angel would go back to stay as long as she was needed, and that in itself was a relief.

It was hard to pretend that there was a normal home life at Meadowcroft now. Despite the pleasure over her engagement to Jacques, Angel was so conscious of undercurrents in the family that had never been there before. Especially between herself and her father, who seemed in a world of his own half the time.

She might morally hate him and still feel the hurt and the bitterness, but she still felt deeply enough to mourn the loss of their once-loving and special relationship.

Ellen was counting the days now to going home. She had already made up her mind what she would do. The idea had come to her like an inspiration when she had faced Sister Yard with a stomach that felt full of butterflies, and made her request for an early discharge.

‘I never thought you were a young woman who would desert her duties, Bannister,' Sister Yard had the knack of looking a person up and down and reducing them to dust. Ellen looked her squarely in the eyes.

‘My mother needs me, Sister –'

‘I need you. The army needs you. There's so much to be done here –'

‘And so much to be done at home,' Ellen said swiftly. ‘I don't just mean caring for my mother. There are other ways to help win the war –'

‘By marching around London and waving banners, I suppose? I thought the redoubtable Miss Pankhurst had suspended her activities for the duration.' Sister Yard's voice could wither the most noble cause.

‘I didn't mean that,' Ellen spoke as evenly as she could, considering the way her temper was rising. ‘Nor do I mean to fritter away my days. I mean to join the Women's Land Army. You
have
heard of it, I suppose?'

She couldn't resist glaring at the unbending woman. To her surprise, Sister Yard gave a tightly-stretched smile.

‘Well done, Bannister. Always knew you were a good egg.'

Solid
, wasn't it…? Ellen tried frantically to stop her lips from twitching as Sister Yard overlooked any further objections, promising to arrange that Ellen would be allocated transport back to England as soon as the discharge was approved in the official quarters.

Ellen went weak with relief, and stuttered her thanks.

‘Don't thank me. Thank the flood of replacements coming out here. I think the entire youth of England has been hit by a new burst of patriotism since the Americans joined us,' Sister Yard said crisply. Then her eyes flickered a moment. ‘We shall miss you, Bannister. You've a fresh, no-nonsense approach to your work. Good breeding always shows.'

She swished away, leaving Ellen feeling more like a pampered cow than a normal, healthy young woman. But it didn't matter. She went at once to phone Angel and tell her the news. She was going home without disgrace, and nothing was going to dim her buoyancy.

But the weeks passed, and there was still no official release for her. August began with incessant rain, and for the first four days and nights it rained without stopping. Reports from the Front were appalling as the wounded were brought in, caked in mud and effluent. Stories of weakened men drowning in their own trenches were common among the survivors. Tales of how they tried vainly to bale out with tin hats and cocoa mugs were pathetic and terrible in their visual impact on those who were forced to listen.

The date of Ellen's discharge was finally arranged for August the 4th. In England it was Bank Holiday Saturday. The journey to the French coast and on to the hospital ship was a nightmare, with the ambulance being bogged down every few yards every mile of the way, and every able-bodied person being obliged to get out and help dig the wheels clear of the mud. They were all exhausted by the time they reached the ship.

So many wounded men were being sent home that the ships were low in the water, and there was a real fear that
with the bad weather and the extra weight, they would all end up as fishes' bait. Long before they reached the English coast, the jocular phrase on the soldiers' lips had ceased to be funny.

Ellen had expected to feel jubilant at being back on English soil again, and this time to stay. But she felt nothing. She was numb, and it was a feeling that remained with her long after she reached Meadowcroft. Clemence was glad to see her, even though they were never as close as mother and daughter should be.

Fred was away in Yorkshire, and as soon as she felt she decently could, Ellen reported to the appropriate office in Bristol to join the newly-formed Women's Land Army. Her mother had argued against the idea, but Ellen was adamant, and even Clemence couldn't deny a sneaking relief that the two of them wouldn't be under each other's feet all the time.

‘I don't mind where you send me, as long as it's near my home, since my mother's unwell,' she said imperiously to the fussy little clerk behind the desk. ‘And as long as it's not on Mr Peter Chard's farm.'

The clerk squinted up at her from behind his owlish spectacles. Some of these girls with the plummy accents thought they owned the world, he thought disagreeably. Probably spent the war years flitting from dance to dance, with never a thought for more serious pursuits. And now they fancied the look of the new country uniforms with their jaunty hats. But her last defiant words had caught his interest. He ran a skinny finger down the list of farms requesting Land Army women.

‘Is there any special reason for not wanting to work for Mr Chard? He's on our list –'

‘My reasons are my own,' Ellen snapped, her heart jumping. ‘Now, do you have somewhere to send me, or do I have to go back to France to be needed?'

The clerk stared at her.

‘You've been in France? I have a son there. He was at the
Somme, but I've had no news of him for six weeks. Still, no news is good news, they say.'

He spoke with a dogged refusal to believe otherwise, and the caustic words Ellen was about to say stuck in her throat.

‘I'm sure you're right. You'd have heard if anything was wrong.' She closed her mind to the memory of the horrific tales of men stepping on dead comrades and their identities being lost for ever beneath the mud and slime of the trenches.

‘I don't want to rush you,' she said more kindly, ‘but there are other ladies waiting outside. Can you please tell me where I should report?'

She finally left the little office after being allocated a job on Peartree Farm, for a Farmer Green. It was about three miles from Meadowcroft, and in the opposite direction from Peter's farm. The clerk pointed out the place on the huge wall map, on which he stuck a new pin representing Ellen's appointment. She gave a great sigh of relief. She wanted to work on the land, but never for Peter again. It would have been impossible.

Farmer Green and his wife were large country people, quite happy that the men who had left the farm to go to war should be replaced by the pretty young girls who brightened up the place. There were other three girls beside Ellen, two local ones and Charlotte Prole from Kent, with whom she immediately became friendly. The others, May and Lucy, were pleasant enough, but the girls drifted into amicable pairs almost at once.

If she thought the work was going to be easy, she soon discovered how wrong she was. Farming had taken on a new meaning since the food shortages. Farmer Green and his wife saw to the milking, to Ellen's relief, but there were hens and pigs to be fed and cleaned, and a constant eye kept out for rustlers.

And there was much more back-breaking work to be done. Much of the land was ploughed up to grow produce,
and Peartree Farm was as much a market garden as a working farm now. Row upon row of potatoes were waiting to be dug up, and the four Land Girls were set to work almost immediately.

By the time Ellen cycled home to Meadowcroft that first evening, she could hardly crawl into the house. The other girls were billeted at the farm, but she was near enough to go home. Every evening she sank thankfully into a hot bath, feeling as if every muscle cried out in protest.

‘It's hardly the kind of work for a young lady, Ellen,' Clemence said disapprovingly, trying not to notice the broken nails on her daughter's hands. ‘Couldn't this Farmer Green give you something less physical to do?'

‘No, he couldn't, Mother,' Ellen said wearily. ‘We do what we're told, so just be thankful that there are women willing and able to do men's work. There'd be fewer potatoes on your dinner plate if it weren't for the Land Army.'

‘I know that, my dear girl, and nobody knows better than I do about helping the war effort. But I fear that this war is taking away a woman's most precious gift.'

‘And what's that, Mother?' Ellen stifled a laugh. Her mother looked so stuffy, her spirits quickly restored since Ellen had come home, and reverting very quickly to her old autocratic ways, despite the irritation she still suffered from her miserable complaint.