Wedding Bells for Land Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  Poppy shrank back as Joyce launched into her speech. ‘Doreen, you were here last Sunday when the burglary happened, weren’t you?’

  Doreen dabbed at a small red pimple with a wad of cotton wool. ‘What if I was?’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘No. I’ve already told Ma Craven that. I said the same to the nice policeman who came to interview me. I was in bed with a headache.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why would I lie?’ Doreen made it plain that the state of her skin was far more interesting than Joyce’s unwelcome questions.

  ‘Because you have something to hide, that’s why.’ Once Joyce had her teeth into something, she refused to let go. And there was no point beating about the bush with Doreen; a direct attack was necessary. ‘Come clean now: admit that you made up the story about the headache.’

  ‘Dearie me.’ Reluctantly Doreen put down her mirror and tried to outstare Joyce. ‘You do go on.’

  ‘What are you hiding? Who did you see?’

  ‘I told you: no one.’ A faint shadow of uncertainty clouded Doreen’s expression. ‘In any case, we’re only talking about a few measly quid. Nobody got murdered, did they?’

  ‘Not yet. But if you stick to your story and the culprit gets away with this, somebody easily could.’

  Doreen snorted and tossed her head, then hummed a few chords of threatening music – the sort that played in the background of a murder mystery at the cinema. ‘Who done it? Is it the countess or the maid?’

  ‘Neither,’ Joyce said quietly but firmly, refusing to blink. ‘In this case I’d put my money on Alfie Craven.’

  The name made Doreen jump up from the bed and start pacing the room in exasperation.

  ‘You knew he was trouble but you were still happy to take presents from him.’ Joyce stood by the door in case Doreen tried to flounce out.

  ‘What’s wrong with that, for heaven’s sake?’ Reaching for a packet of cigarettes on her bedside table, Doreen found that it was empty and threw it down in disgust. ‘I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, not like some people round here.’

  ‘So let’s get this straight. Alfie turned up here last Sunday. You saw him. What then?’

  ‘Who says I saw him?’

  ‘I do. Come off it, Doreen, you might as well come clean.’

  ‘So I saw him! Have either of you got a fag?’

  Still backing away and wishing she was anywhere but in the room, Poppy shook her head.

  ‘No,’ Joyce said. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘All right, Alfie was here. We had a chat then he said he was hungry so I took him to the kitchen and gave him something to eat. Then I left him to it. What was wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing. But that’s not what you told the police. Or Mrs Craven, for that matter. I want to know why not.’

  Doreen paced again then sat down on her bed. Her voice changed to a low murmur, ending in a sigh. ‘Because, as I keep on saying, you take what you can get in this life but you don’t cross a man like Alfie. I learned that the hard way a long time ago.’

  ‘I see.’ Until now it hadn’t occurred to Joyce that Doreen might be afraid. ‘You say you left him in the kitchen?’

  Doreen nodded. ‘And I wasn’t lying: I did have a headache that day. I went straight up to bed and I have no idea what he got up to after I left.’

  ‘Or why he needed the money that he stole?’

  ‘Not a clue. Or about what’s happened to him since. Good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say.’

  ‘Except now Mrs Craven needs to be told.’ Joyce’s face settled into a deep frown while Doreen’s resumed its brittle, mocking smile.

  ‘I’ll leave that part to you, Sherlock.’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ Joyce decided. ‘Poppy, you stay here while I go and find her.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hilda listened intently while Joyce talked. They were in her office with the door locked so that no one could disturb them. The blackout blinds were down and they sat in a pool of yellow light cast by the overhead electric light.

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ Joyce said when she came to the end.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Hilda’s hands rested on the desk and her face showed no emotion. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘But still.’

  A heavy silence descended.

  ‘It explains a lot,’ Hilda said at last. Though ignorant of Alfie’s affairs, she’d long suspected the worst and now that worst had come to pass. Her son’s early pattern of petty theft had continued unabated and now it had come to this. ‘It explains why Alfie showed up in Burnside after so long – he was desperate to get away from whatever trouble he was in. But the plan backfired, didn’t it?’

  ‘Apparently.’ Joyce’s heart went out to the stoical older woman sitting across the desk from her. She’d just learned that her son had sneaked into her office and stolen Land Army cash. Not only that, he was caught up in shady, black market business with violent men. And yet Hilda didn’t show any sign of losing her dignity or her self-control. That took a lot of strength.

  ‘I knew he was up to something, I just didn’t know what.’ She leaned heavily on her desk as she stood up. ‘Thank you, Joyce. Thank you for letting me know. You can reassure Poppy that she hasn’t done anything wrong and please tell Doreen that she must go to the police station first thing tomorrow to put the record straight. I’ll take her off the work rota for the morning.’

  Joyce stood up too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I truly am.’

  Hilda unlocked the door and walked into the hallway towards the coat stand by the front door. ‘I can’t help thinking things might have turned out differently for Alfie if Willis hadn’t died when he did,’ she said with her back turned to Joyce. ‘Of course, my lad was always headstrong, even as a small boy. That’s why he needed a firmer hand than mine.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. I’m sure you did everything you could and more.’

  Hilda shook her head. ‘I was too soft. Alfie was our only son. In the early days I tied him to my apron strings. I spoiled him.’

  The idea of smooth-talking, burly Alfie Craven as a mummy’s boy was hard for Joyce to imagine. Much easier to picture him as the wayward youth, readily led astray. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked as Hilda put on her coat.

  Hilda felt in her pocket for her keys. ‘It’s late but I’m going to drive over to Home Farm.’

  Joyce understood that the warden needed to do something other than sit and brood, so she followed her through the door. ‘If it’s to find Alfie, he isn’t lodging there any more. He left a few days ago and only Poppy and Neville have seen him since. I’m afraid he was in a bad way.’

  ‘I’ll go anyway. Maybe Joe or Emily can tell me more.’

  Joyce made a quick decision. ‘Wait while I fetch my coat. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hilda walked purposefully towards the van parked in the drive. The sun had sunk behind the high fell to the west and the violet sky was rapidly fading to black. ‘I won’t let the matter drop,’ she muttered as she sat in the driver’s seat, grasped the wheel and waited for Joyce to join her. ‘I intend to sort this out once and for all.’

  ‘It’s a month ago today that we were married.’ Bill had woken early and watched Grace asleep beside him for a long time before she opened her eyes and he murmured the words. ‘Does that count as an anniversary?’

  She smiled sleepily and turned on her side to look at him. ‘A whole month.’

  A lifetime. Already the details of his single life were a blur: the Friday nights out with the lads before the war got in the way, the Saturday football matches, day trips to the seaside on the lookout for girls – all ancient history.

  As she came fully awake, Grace’s smile dimmed. ‘It’s six o’clock; I’d better get a move on.’

  Bill put his hand on her shoulder. ‘No. Stay here a while.’ In the warmth of this bed, close to me.

  She resisted
his touch. ‘No, really, I have to get up. I’m due at Home Farm in an hour.’

  ‘Please, Grace.’ Four weeks had gone by in what might have been perfect harmony if only he hadn’t made the rash decision to enlist. He imagined a month of uninterrupted kisses and sunshine, him and his new wife taking tea together in their cramped kitchen with the light streaming in, watching her get dressed into her Land Army uniform in the morning and undressed at night, lying without any clothes, her body so smooth and curved. The soft touch of her fingers on his chest. ‘We have to talk.’

  Grace sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Not now, Bill.’

  ‘Then when?’ Reaching out for her hand, he turned her towards him. ‘Tell me how I can put things right.’

  By not leaving me, she thought with a sharp pang. By not taking the risk of getting yourself killed. But this was wartime and a wife couldn’t say such things. All she could do was sigh and shake her head.

  ‘I have to go, Grace.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I have to do my bit.’

  She looked at him through sudden hot tears. ‘Oh, Bill!’

  ‘I understand,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you, and you know that deep down the last thing I want to do is to leave you.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because this is the way of the world right now. Would you rather I stayed here and felt the shame of it for the rest of my life? Think about it. How would I hold my head up when Jack comes home at the end of the war, or Les or Edgar for that matter, knowing that I’d been a coward and chosen not to fight? I couldn’t, could I?’

  Faced with this reasoning, Grace felt the arguments she’d rehearsed slip away. ‘I’m being selfish, I know.’

  ‘No, it’s only natural. And it’s bloody hard for me as well.’ To tear myself away, not to hear your voice every day, to give all this up for who knows how long.

  Grace wiped away her tears and struggled out of her own misery. She turned towards him. ‘I know and I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By not taking your feelings into account. How could I be so selfish?’

  ‘Grace, Grace.’ He reached out for her and she sank against him. ‘I love you.’

  ‘And I love you,’ she whispered. It would happen; Bill would join the army and the fears she’d felt for Edgar ever since he joined the RAF would be doubled and trebled by every passing plane, every wireless bulletin and newspaper report. How would she bear it? By putting one foot in front of the other, by working hard and soldiering on, she told herself.

  They embraced and kissed sweetly and sadly, then got up and dressed. Bill went downstairs and picked up a letter from the mat. He opened it and read that he’d passed his army medical and been accepted into the second battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment. He was to report for duty on Monday, 20 July at eight o’clock prompt.

  ‘Here we are: the old gang together again!’ Brenda was happy to be working alongside Joyce and Grace at Home Farm. Their company made even Joe’s gripes and grumbles bearable, as well as the presence of a small team of POWs headed by Lorenzo. Their job for today was to carry on with the drystone walling that had been begun a month or so earlier and continued on and off ever since. The wall that needed rebuilding ran along the back of the cowshed and dairy – a stretch of about thirty yards that had been neglected for years.

  It was hard, back-breaking work that went on amidst the constant chip of hammer and chisels against stone and the occasional bursts of Italian conversation. Two Tommies with rifles – Private Cyril Atkinson and one they didn’t know by name – supervised the prisoners while chatting and flirting with the three Land Girls.

  ‘Joe was in a terrible mood when we got here,’ Grace remarked to Brenda and Joyce. It would soon be time to take a much-needed break. Hopefully Lorenzo and his lot would have brought along some good coffee. She saw signs of this happening as Cyril ordered his charges to down tools.

  ‘As per usual.’ Brenda chose a heavy stone from the nearby pile then scraped away the moss and dirt. ‘But if Joe thinks he can get away with passing nasty comments and constantly moaning about the way we do things, he’s got another think coming.’

  Grace took the stone and positioned it carefully on the half-built wall. ‘He’s got worse, if anything, since Alfie vanished.’

  ‘Ah yes, about that …’ Though Joyce had been intending to bring the others up to date with the latest developments, she’d held fire until after they’d all settled into work. After all, she had to watch what she said about last night’s events because they involved other Land Girls, namely Poppy and Doreen.

  Brenda looked closely at Joyce’s face. ‘Come on, out with it.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was here in this very yard last night.’

  ‘Who with?’ Brenda demanded.

  ‘Not on a social visit, surely?’ Grace said simultaneously.

  ‘No, actually I came with Ma Craven.’

  ‘Ma Craven?’ they echoed.

  Lorenzo passed close to them as he went to the army lorry to fetch a small primus stove, his coffee pot and some tin mugs. He said a polite, quick hello in English instead of the usual friendly ciao.

  Brenda was the first to reply. ‘Ciao, Lorenzo. No Angelo this morning, I see?’

  He shook his head and hurried on, as if unwilling to answer questions.

  ‘So, Joyce, what’s this about Hilda and you paying Emily and Joe a visit?’ Grace wanted to know.

  Joyce framed her reply carefully and without drama. ‘There’s been a development regarding the burglary. Ma Craven needed to talk to Alfie.’

  ‘Mysteriouser and mysteriouser!’ Brenda’s face was flushed from two hours of heavy lifting. ‘What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait?’

  ‘It was something that Doreen told Poppy and me that I had to pass on straight away. It’ll all come out soon enough so you might as well hear it from me. The fact is we got Doreen to admit that it must have been Alfie who took the cash box.’

  ‘Ha!’ Brenda gave a cry of triumph as if she’d suspected this all along, while Grace’s thoughts flew to the warden.

  ‘Oh dear, that’s bad news,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘A lot’s happened since, to do with the two men seen hanging about in the pub yard a couple of weekends ago.’

  ‘Yes, I remember them,’ Grace said quietly.

  ‘Now Neville’s been dragged into it too.’

  Grace and Brenda looked at each other with furrowed brows.

  ‘Leaving that to one side for now, that’s the reason we came to pay Joe and Emily a visit. Alfie wasn’t here, of course, and Joe was none too happy about opening the door to us so late at night.’ In fact, he’d taken one look at his visitors through a chink in the door and slammed it shut.

  A minute or so later, Emily had opened it again, keeping Hilda and Joyce standing on the doorstep while she’d answered their questions. No, she had no idea where Alfie had got to, she’d insisted. And she didn’t care either – the lazy so-and-so had been eating them out of house and home. ‘Sorry, Hilda,’ she’d said, ‘but that son of yours is no good to anyone.’ She and Joe weren’t the only ones who held that opinion. In fact, Alfie had managed to ruffle someone’s feathers so badly that he’d been given a good thrashing.

  Hilda had listened with gritted teeth then turned and set off down the path. ‘Ta, Emily. If Alfie does turn up here again, can you let me know?’

  ‘He won’t.’ Emily hadn’t meant her reply to sound so curt but she was never one for beating about the bush. ‘And if he does, he’ll be lucky if Joe doesn’t take the horse whip to him. Or, worse, take a pot shot at him with his gun.’

  Hilda had carried on without a word.

  Joyce had lingered on the doorstep. ‘Why would Joe do that, Emily?’

  ‘Because there’s five pounds, two shillings missing from our bureau drawer, that’s why.’

  The door had slammed and Joyce h
ad followed Hilda to the van. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ she’d suggested on the drive back to the hostel. ‘Now you can hand over this whole thing to the police and let them get on with their job.’

  Hilda had looked resigned but said nothing to Joyce all the way home.

  ‘It’s her I feel sorry for,’ Joyce said now to Brenda and Grace.

  ‘I agree,’ Grace said. ‘This is a hard pill for her to swallow.’

  ‘Now then, girls, less of the chinwagging.’ Cheery Cyril broke into their conversation. ‘There’s coffee on the go, if you fancy a cup. And try to put smiles on the faces of our Eyetie friends while you’re at it. For some reason they’ve all got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning.’

  Lorenzo and co. had not been their usual chirpy selves, Grace, Brenda and Joyce acknowledged as they cycled towards Burnside after a long day at Home Farm.

  ‘No laughing and joking, no singing – nothing.’ Brenda sighed.

  ‘And no wonder,’ Grace observed. ‘Lorenzo’s obviously on edge about Angelo.’

  Joyce agreed. ‘He definitely clammed up when we asked him how his pal was. And of course they must all feel the strain of life in a prison camp. It can’t be much fun – being away from home for so long, missing your loved ones, and so on.’

  ‘Let’s keep schtum as far as Una is concerned,’ Brenda suggested. ‘She’s worried enough already.’ The exhilaration of freewheeling down the hill into the village was refreshing so she eased off the brakes and whizzed ahead.

  ‘Watch out!’ Joyce cried as Maurice’s van edged out of a narrow side road.

  Brenda saw it just in time, braked and screeched to a halt. The back wheel of her bike slewed to the left and she lost control and landed in a bush.

  ‘Blithering idiot!’ she cried after Maurice, who had slowed down to make sure she wasn’t hurt then given a casual wave and driven on. She was disentangling herself from the brambles when Joyce and Grace arrived.

  ‘Who? You or Maurice?’ Joyce’s wry expression elicited a snort from Brenda.

  ‘Him! It was my right of way.’