Wedding Bells for Land Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  The door was flung open before she had time to knock. One glance at Poppy’s pale, frightened face and the sight of Alfie lurking at the gate told Neville all he needed to know.

  Once it was clear that the rotten sod had tried it on with Poppy and reduced her to tears, Neville’s shaky allegiance fell away. He pulled her inside the house then confronted Alfie. ‘Bugger off out of here, or else!’

  ‘Or else what?’ The childish threat amused Alfie. He pushed at the gate and started to advance up the path.

  Neville stood his ground. ‘I’m warning you. I’ll send you packing.’

  ‘You and whose army?’ This was too ridiculous for words: a floppy-haired, bruised and battered whippersnapper playing at being a knight in shining armour. Still, Alfie was riled by not getting his own way so he kept on advancing. ‘Stand aside, sonny,’ he ordered.

  Neville braced both arms against the door jambs, aware of Poppy tugging at his shirt from behind.

  ‘Come inside, close the door!’ she gasped.

  He ignored her. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he challenged. ‘Why are you trespassing?’

  ‘I’m looking for something that’s mine by rights. No, not her, stupid.’ He laughed as Neville glanced uncertainly over his shoulder. ‘The girl would have been a bonus, I admit. But that’s not what I was after, not really.’

  The way Alfie spoke about her, as if she was a thing, not a person, made Poppy’s skin crawl and it infuriated Neville, who launched himself from the doorstep, fists flailing. He landed a punch right in Alfie’s bread basket and heard him expel air with an ‘Oof!’ Then he felt a fist land smack in the middle of his face. There was the snap of knuckle against cheekbone.

  The two men crouched with fists up, pausing to size each other up. Neville’s confidence grew. Alfie might be heavier and stronger than him, but he was past his prime. And if he aimed his next punch at the nasty cut on his cheek, he could definitely make it count. Alfie saw that the lad meant business but it didn’t matter; he would knock him clean off his feet with a single blow. Then he’d be down on the ground and a few hefty kicks would finish him off.

  ‘Back off,’ he snarled. ‘I can eat two of you for breakfast.’

  Poppy’s heart was beating so fast that it practically jumped out of her chest. She dashed out after Neville and tried to come between the two men, only to be thrust aside by Alfie.

  Neville threw himself at his opponent and lashed out again, landing a couple of lucky punches that Alfie absorbed with ease. He smiled and beckoned him on. ‘Come on, sonny; have another go!’

  Blind with fury, Neville ran straight into an uppercut, a blow to the chin so hard and swift that it floored him. He felt his knees go to jelly and his head snap backwards before the sky whirled and he was down.

  Alfie gave a satisfied grunt and prepared to kick. He would aim for the head. But Poppy was back on her feet. She saw Alfie, one leg off the ground, ready to lash out and so she charged, succeeding in toppling him sideways. Alfie crashed to the ground and felt a searing pain. He knew it was a broken rib the moment it happened. He ought to have known his body wasn’t up to fisticuffs after the beating he’d taken from Nixon and Moyes, and now this one little push had done for him. He groaned as he rolled on to his front then raised himself on to his knees.

  ‘Neville, wake up!’ Poppy crouched over him and cradled his head. His eyelids flickered open. ‘Get up, get up!’

  Alfie tried to suck in breath then groaned again. No good, he was buggered. He reckoned that as long as no one tried to stop him, he could just about make it up on to his feet and stagger off. That was his best bet. He could reach the road and thumb a lift from a passer-by. Where he would go after that he had no idea.

  Poppy was still busy with Neville. Aware that Alfie was crawling away, she hitched both hands under Neville’s armpits and raised him to a sitting position. ‘It’s all over. We won, we did it!’

  Neville stared at her face with an unfocused gaze. ‘Did I knock him out?’

  ‘No, you idiot. He knocked you out. But I pushed him sideways and he fell over. I heard something crack – a rib, I think.’ She checked to see how far Alfie had got. He was halfway down the lane but in no shape to come back and take up where he’d left off, so she gave Neville time to recover.

  He fingered his chin and winced, predicting another massive bruise to add to the ones he already had. But the jaw wasn’t broken, so he got up on to his feet and dusted himself down, saying nothing as Poppy followed him into the house.

  ‘Where’s your dad?’ she asked, taking in the typical men’s mess in the kitchen and adjoining living room. There were dirty pots piled up in the sink and crumpled laundry slung over a drying frame above the old-fashioned stove. The table was covered by a stained brown oilcloth and the floor was in need of a good scrub.

  ‘Out.’ Neville was embarrassed by two pairs of his father’s long johns hanging from the frame. It would draw attention if he snatched them down so he left them where they were and sat down groggily at the table.

  Poppy sat opposite him, determined to get to the bottom of things. ‘So what did Alfie mean by looking for something that’s his by rights?’

  Neville shrugged and touched the tender spot on his chin.

  ‘Don’t you try to make me feel sorry for you, Neville Thomson. I want to know what’s going on. Why are you and that man covered in cuts and bruises? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s better if we keep it that way.’ He tried to wriggle but, like it or not, she was intent on pinning him down. It turned out that Poppy was like a fierce little terrier when she needed to be.

  ‘Answer me. What have you got to do with Alfie?’

  ‘All right, all right. If I let you in on it, you have to promise not to tell Dad – or anyone else, for that matter.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I mean it; you have to promise.’

  ‘I’ve said yes, haven’t I?’

  ‘All right then. I made an arrangement with Alfie to keep some of his things up in our hayloft.’

  ‘Without your dad knowing?’

  ‘Yes, I had to agree to keep it quiet. Dad only ever goes up there once in a blue moon, so I reckoned it was the safest place to stash them.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Neville!’

  ‘Just oranges and chocolate and other stuff.’ He looked down at his hands, up at the ceiling, anywhere but at Poppy.

  She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What other stuff?’

  ‘Women’s stockings and underwear, scent, watches, lipstick. I didn’t open all the boxes. I hid the small ones up in the rafters without looking inside. I knew enough to realize they were all things that you can only get on the black market.’

  ‘And Alfie paid you to look after them?’

  ‘Not a lot. But yes. It was all right for a while; no one bothered about them. Then last week two blokes turned up here out of the blue. They claimed it was their stuff, not Alfie’s, and I had to hand it over, or else. They scared the living daylights out of me, so I did as I was told.’

  ‘Yet they laid into you.’ Suddenly Neville’s failure to show up the previous Saturday made sense. He’d been beaten black and blue by two strangers.

  ‘Yes. They said some money had gone missing. It belonged to them. They wouldn’t leave without it.’ Neville’s mouth was dry, so he stood shakily and went to the sink for a glass of water.

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘Seventy-five quid.’ He took a swig from the glass.

  ‘That’s a lot!’ Poppy gasped. ‘Didn’t you tell the men that Alfie was the one who had it?’

  ‘Course I did. I stuck to my story and told them I didn’t know anything about their seventy-five lousy smackers. In the end they believed me and left.’

  ‘So did Alfie have it stashed away in his room at Home Farm?’

  Neville stared shiftily out of the window. ‘That’s wh
at I wanted them to think.’

  The penny dropped as Poppy studied the back of his head. ‘Neville, turn around and look at me. Who really had the seventy-five pounds – you or Alfie?’

  Without saying a word, he went to a set of shelves in a niche next to the fireplace and stood on a footstool to reach for a rusty tea caddy in the furthest corner. He stepped down from the stool and unscrewed the lid. With shaking fingers he took out a fat roll of five-pound notes held in place by a rubber band.

  Poppy’s eyes widened. ‘You didn’t!’ she gasped.

  ‘I did.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Now Alfie’s on to me and sooner or later I’m sure those other two brutes will be back.’

  ‘I see.’ She felt her blood run cold.

  ‘Do you?’ Neville came towards her with a look that was part forlorn, part hopeful. ‘Then can you tell me what to do now? Because I honestly don’t have a clue.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was comfort to be found in keeping to the busy, chatter-filled Friday-night routine. Behind the bar at the Blacksmith’s Arms, Grace pulled a pint for Roland while her father talked to Maurice about recent events in Egypt. Brenda sat with Les, diverted by the usual competition between Kathleen and Doreen to win the attention of a group of laughing Canadian pilots. Joyce and Edgar held hands across the table in a quiet corner of the room. For two of the couples, the weekend would bring a sad parting, while for Grace and Bill the same fate lay not too far ahead.

  The door was open, letting balmy air into the smoky room. As the evening wore on and the noise grew more raucous, Les had to shout above the racket to order another Dubonnet for Brenda and a half of bitter for himself, while one of the Canadians sat at the piano and struck up a tune. There was pushing and shoving and moving of furniture to make a space where couples could dance; the inevitable high spirits, the normal din.

  ‘Ready to leave?’ Edgar asked Joyce as he tilted his head in the direction of the open door.

  She nodded and picked up her handbag to follow him outside. Five days in Edgar’s company meant that she’d grown used to his shorthand way of speaking: never two words where one would do. It was actually one of the things she liked best about him.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said as he breathed in fresh air. ‘What now?’

  She slipped her arm in his and they strolled across the yard towards his car. ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘This is our last night. You choose.’

  ‘We could go for a little walk.’

  He stopped to look through the open doors of the smithy. It was a space full of boyhood memories: of his father in his prime raising a muscular arm to beat red-hot metal, of the hammer ringing out, the roar of flames, the hiss of steam when he dipped a horseshoe in the bucket of cold water. Suddenly Edgar’s heart felt too full.

  Joyce looked at his face and guessed what he was thinking. She pressed his arm then smiled.

  He smiled back. ‘Let’s go for a drive instead.’

  So they drove out of Burnside towards the wild places beyond Swinsty, soon leaving civilization behind. Eventually they came to the stark, dark bulk of Kelsey Crag, a massive cliff that rose vertically out of the valley, and they passed under the deep shadow of its overhang. Emerging on the far side, they climbed high on to the hilltops once more. Here, close to the tarn, Edgar stopped the car.

  ‘Remember this?’ he asked.

  Joyce gazed out over the smooth, black water to the far shore, where glints of white limestone amongst the thick heather caught the dying light. Three swans glided silently towards them, carrying their heads erect, causing scarcely a ripple. ‘How could I forget?’ Edgar at his worst, lost and lonely, striding into the frozen wilderness with death on his mind. The image would stay with her for ever.

  ‘You saved me,’ he murmured. ‘I wouldn’t have carried on living if it hadn’t been for you.’

  She said nothing, only looked at the swans as they circled slowly then swam away.

  ‘I don’t mean I’d have chucked myself in the water and finished it that way. More likely I’d have drunk myself to death or gone back to flying Lancasters, not caring if I lived or died. Then you came along.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything special.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You listened. You didn’t pass judgement. You believed in me.’

  ‘And you in me.’ It hadn’t been one-sided, she reminded him. ‘I was in a bad way myself. After I met you, all the misery over losing Walter gradually slipped away. It was like a new day dawning for me, like letting the sun in again. Not that I showed it, in case you didn’t feel the same way about me. It took that first letter for me to be sure.’

  ‘Ah yes, the letter.’ For a moment he was embarrassed. He turned awkwardly in his seat so that he could look straight at her. ‘And now this.’

  For Joyce, ‘this’ meant five days of working in the fields, while for Edgar there’d been endless hours of tinkering about and doing repair jobs for his father in pub and forge, but they had each known that they would meet afterwards in the pub or out at the hostel and make the most of the long, light evenings. They’d walked their legs off: Edgar showing Joyce his favourite boyhood haunts, where he’d built dams across a stream or made a den in the woods, Joyce pointing out ditches she’d helped to dig and drystone walls she’d recently mended. They laughed together about how their burgeoning romance might look to others – no candlelit dinners, no spooning in the back row of the cinema, no expensive gifts by which to measure their affection.

  ‘That’s not us,’ Joyce had told him as they’d sat perfectly still at twilight in the copse behind Fieldhead, watching a family of badgers forage in the undergrowth. ‘We don’t need any of that.’

  Edgar’s arm had been round her shoulder. She’d been nestled against him. Their kisses had grown stronger until passion had taken hold and almost swept them off their feet – almost but not quite. The lights of the nearby hostel had glinted through the branches; what if one of the girls had wandered into the woods and seen them? Joyce had pulled away just in time. Then, after she and Edgar had said goodnight, she’d lain awake for hours, regretting her decision.

  ‘Now this,’ she repeated at Kelsey Tarn as she put her arms around his neck. He kissed her hard without any of the usual soft build-up then suddenly broke off and swung open his door. He strode round the car and opened the door on Joyce’s side, offering her his hand. ‘Will you come?’

  She took his hand and let him lead her along the shore of the tarn. A magnificent sunset turned the clouds bright pink, edged them with gold and lit up the mirror-bright surface of the tarn. There was no wind, no movement other than the gliding motion of the swans, no sound except for the lapping of water and the piercing, two-tone cry of a curlew high above.

  ‘There’s a shepherd’s shelter just over here, a little stone hut.’

  She saw it as he spoke: a tumbledown affair with part of the roof missing and the rafters exposed. There was no door to stop them entering. He showed her the shadowy interior. A smooth green carpet of moss had grown over the original mud floor and there was an empty fireplace and a rough wooden platform where the shepherd had once slept. ‘Is this all right?’ With her heart in her mouth, Joyce nodded.

  ‘You’re certain?’

  She answered with an embrace then led him slowly towards the platform. There was a faint, lingering smell of woodsmoke coming from the hearth as they sat down. ‘I’m sure.’

  That lovely voice! It got him every time; rich and soft, from deep in her throat. Her skin was pale as she let down her hair then started to unbutton her blouse. From this point there was no going back.

  ‘Very sure,’ she told him.

  The blouse slid from her shoulders. He eased her arms and hands free. Her skin was smooth and warm, glowing in the half-light. Her eyes were softly dark as she removed her white under-slip.

  He put his lips to her shoulder and felt her shudder. Then she lay back and he sank down beside her, the length of their bodies touchi
ng. She ran her fingers over his rough scars then over the smooth skin of his belly, a soft stroke as he kissed her throat and the hollow at its base. She arched her back and pressed herself against him.

  He was everything she’d known he would be, not rushing on regardless, but gentle and patient, tender but strong, arousing her in a way that she’d never experienced before. And she loved every moment of it and every inch of him, his eyes on her face as she enfolded him and ran her hands down his back, the depth of his gaze. She looked up through the rafters at the open sky, felt the strong beat of Edgar’s loving heart.

  Saturday at Fieldhead dawned cloudy and with a damp chill in the air. A report on the wireless told listeners about preparations for a scaled-down Fourth of July celebration in America in light of losses in the Far East and the ongoing struggle to push the last of the German U-boats clear of the Atlantic coast. There were dour comments around the breakfast table along the lines of, ‘Those johnny-come-latelies should think themselves lucky they’ve got anything left in their larders to celebrate with’, or, ‘At least their food convoys are still getting in and out’, and so on. As usual, Jean was chief of the moaners, with Doreen coming in a close second.

  ‘What’s up with you this morning?’ Brenda asked as she offered to clear away her empty porridge bowl. She’d been amongst the earliest to sit down at the table and was the first to finish. So far, she’d not felt like saying anything to anyone about accepting Les’s sudden proposal of marriage. She wasn’t able to work out a good reason why not, only to acknowledge to herself that her previous night’s certainty seemed to have vanished like morning mist. A puff of wind and it was gone.

  ‘Everything,’ Doreen grumbled. ‘I’ve run out of shampoo for a start. And I need to wash my hair.’

  Brenda sent out an SOS: ‘Call out the cavalry – Doreen has run out of shampoo!’