The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Fiddling with the strap of his tin hat, the doctor mumbled to no one in particular as if thinking aloud, until such time as he’d released the strap that attached it to his gasmask case. Momentarily checking to see that her attention was elsewhere, he tossed it onto the linoleum floor where it crashed with a dull thud. Not much of a noise to anyone except Rene, she leapt off the bed, violently pushing Pritchard and her mother aside before diving under the mattress springs from where she whimpered like a small child terrified by a nightmare.

  ‘It’s shell shock,’ said Pritchard, picking up the helmet and strapping it back onto the bag but all the time watching his patient cowering under the bed.

  ‘Shell shock? But she’s a civilian. Now, civilians don’t get shell shock, do they, doctor?’

  ‘They do when there’s a war on, Mrs Whiteshaw. And in this war the Germans are bringing it right to our doorsteps. I saw plenty of cases in the last war as a young subaltern in the medical corps.’ He wagged his finger to bring home his point. ‘In the trenches, mind, not on the home front! I’ve seen worse – much worse. Very debilitating, but this is quite mild, you see.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do?’ asked Agnes, wringing her hands.

  ‘Ideally, I’d like to get her into a hospital that deals with this, but quite frankly there’s nothing for civilians. She’d recover quicker in the peace and quiet of the countryside. Have you got a relative or friend in the country that might be able to take her in?’

  ‘An ageing aunt, but she couldn’t cope with this! Besides, it’s a ramshackle cottage and in her present state Rene would shake it to its foundations.’

  ‘I’ll be alright, doctor.’ Rene, her voice trembling, spoke for the first time in the doctor’s presence.

  ‘Could you not give her a sedative to calm her, doctor?’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep – the nightmares are horrible!’ With immense effort Rene crawled out from under the bed and valiantly tried to get to her feet, but the severe shaking made it impossible without assistance. Spontaneously, mother and doctor went to her aid, lifting her back onto the metal bedframe, which started to rattle again.

  ‘The shaking will subside in time. I’d like you to find peace and quiet, young lady, but in London you’re going to find that difficult.’

  Perusing the bedroom décor from his perch on the side of the bed, Pritchard removed his spectacles and polished them with a corner of the bedsheet, the procedure giving him a moment to think. On the wall he spotted a picture – a framed print of a daffodil field in full bloom, its once rich colours faded by two decades of bleaching sunlight.

  ‘I have a nice painting of daffodils like that one in my surgery. National flower for us Welsh, isn’t it? Maybe you’ve seen it? One of my patients is a local artist who used to live in Cornwall and was a member of the Newlyn School. Have you ever heard of the Newlyn School?’ Rene shook her head.

  ‘No, well that doesn’t matter, but he was a veteran of the First War like myself, and he had shell shock, and the doctor who originally treated him in Civvy Street sent him off to the West Country where the effect was most positive.

  ‘In Cornwall he learned to paint and that’s where his involvement with the Newlyn crowd led him to becoming a very successful artist. Like you, he shook, and the condition went on for the best part of a year before he eventually stopped shaking, but I think we can do better than that if we get you away from here soon – that’s if your mother is happy to release you?’

  Replacing his spectacles, he glanced up at Agnes, who smiled and nodded approvingly.

  ‘Very well. Now, my old neighbour, Mr Bevin, the Minister of Labour, has been recruiting young women to help with the war effort…’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to a factory!’ protested Rene.

  ‘And nor shall you! This is not factory work; you’d be working on the land – in farms and woods. It would be hard work and I can’t promise you a posting in Cornwall, but there’s always Wales. The Gower Peninsula is beautiful! Very beautiful and quiet – yes indeed.’

  ‘I’d love it!’ Almost instantly and for a brief moment the trembling voice and shaking limbs seemed to subside as Rene beamed, but Pritchard warned her not to be too optimistic; there were no instantaneous cures for shell shock.

  ‘I’ll write a note for the authorities, explaining your condition and how I think life in the country might be the ticket for your recovery. Be sure you keep me informed of your progress.’

  ‘I will, doctor.’

  The sticker on the hat case read in print: “With care”, then underneath neatly handwritten in blue ink: Miss R. Whiteshaw, 24 Rosemary Avenue, Wanstead, E11, via Chelmsford.

  ‘You won’t need a nice hat here,’ barked a brusque female voice. ‘Quite superfluous indeed! We’ll give you a uniform.’

  The bus driver handed out an assortment of cases and bags of luggage to his passengers as they alighted onto the gravel entrance drive of the once great country estate of Whitley Park. ‘It’s not a hat, just a case with some clothes in it,’ explained Rene; ‘my Mum gave it to me. It’s all we’ve got.’

  Her explanation meant nothing to the welcoming committee comprising Mrs Audrey Chambers and Miss Marylyn Williams who were already impatient with their new intake and keen to usher them into the vacuous grand hall of Whitley House, the requisitioned home of Conservative peer Lord Marchant.

  The whole process – from Doctor Pritchard’s house call to arrival for training – had taken just three weeks. Rene, still shaking, was at the commencement of a six-week training course in the basics of agricultural working. Now a proud member of the newly formed WLA (Women’s Land Army) she was to take her seat along with an intake of some eighty girls from all over the southeast.

  The stern Mrs Chambers, in the traditional manner of a headmistress, climbed three wooden steps to claim an elevated position on a platform covered by cheap carpet offcuts, from where she could see the entire ensemble. She clapped her hands to gain the attention of the chattering rabble before her, cleared her throat and bade her contingent of new recruits welcome before giving a potted history of the organisation, the sound of her own cultured tones giving her a deal of pleasure as it reverberated around the packed hall.

  ‘Can you hear me at the back…? Yes? Your parents may well have told you that the WLA was first formed in 1917 – so nothing new under the sun. Reformed most recently in 1939 just prior to the outbreak…’ – by which point Rene’s attention span had reached its limit, in part due to the splendid surroundings of the hall with its magnificent Renaissance murals and medieval carvings that Shakespeare had probably touched, or at least might have seen. Through immense concentration she tried to consign to memory snippets such as: ‘… a quickly growing citizens army that will reach over 70,000 strong by this time next year… introductory training… placements… committees… gangs… haymaking… harvests… tractors and horses… muck spreading… early mornings… late nights… not to take bad language to heart… fieldwork… skills… potatoes… greenhouses… enough mud to drown in.’

  Twenty minutes later, once the speech was over and the polite applause subsided, Rene turned to her neighbour and whispered, ‘No shopping for us for a while, then.’

  The next morning after a breakfast of cool porridge, she was dispatched again by bus to the nearby Midlands village of Hopthorne and Jersey Farm for lessons in how the countryside worked and what was expected of her; it was all very outdoorsy and pleasant and she was loving it already.

  Looking around at her fellow classmates, they seemed to come from all corners of the social divide, with names like Shirley, Rosey and even Lavinia. She’d never been in a room with anyone called Lavinia before.

  The six weeks were hard work, but the long days were also a lot of fun with some good friendships made in the process. Rene might never have left the Midlands or seen Cornwall had it not been for a near mutiny
instigated and led by her over the serving of kippers for every breakfast at her lodgings.

  Kippers – her landlady insisted – were a staple for British people from the Scillies to the Shetlands and the best start to a working day for everyone regardless of creed or class and therefore would be served daily. Rene, along with several colleagues, could not agree and so the breakfast renegades were summarily dispatched by express train to the far southwest for tractor training.

  Before her factory was bombed, Rene, who’d been working since just after her fourteenth birthday, had never raised so much as a query with anyone regardless of how she towered above them and how through sheer height alone she could have been intimidating but never was. Now, following her narrow escape from death, a brave and confident young woman was emerging, though her incessant trembling showed no sign of abating.

  Night-time brought the most horrendous nightmares: screaming, visions of animated corpses emerging from the rubble, with all too familiar faces of colleagues chastising her for surviving, severed heads rising from the floor then floating in the air; visions that conspired to torment her no sooner had her weary head hit the pillow. Years later, she would compare notes on these nightmares with Hugo, both praying that a disturbed night would not be experienced by both at the same time. Thankfully, over the course of their long marriage, the bringer of nightmares respectfully acquiesced.

  Her days, however, were more peaceful and joyous than she could ever have hoped for. The train journey from Birmingham to Penzance filled her with wonder for a country she had not realised existed beyond London. All along the south coast of Devon she stared out of the carriage window transfixed at the sight of so much water and so many boats of all sizes and shapes. She even heard someone say of her, ‘That young lady smiles all the time! How wonderful to be young!’

  To Rene, the journey was more like that of a cruise on an ocean liner than a train meandering down the Devon coast. Worried about missing her stop she would harangue the guard every time he passed through the carriage. ‘Don’t worry, miss,’ he’d assure her, ‘the train goes no further than Penzance. It’s a terminus, see.’

  Her instructions were to meet a man called Albert Wallace “Wally” Johns, who was to be her instructor for tractor training. In the farming community of the West Penwith area, he was highly regarded as having a natural ability for the modern world of mechanical technology and had even completed an engineering apprenticeship in Camborne. ‘No good with horses,’ his old man would tell folk, ‘but he can pull an engine apart, repair and replace it before your tea gets cold.’

  Wally was set to meet Rene in Penzance and together they’d catch the bus to Nancepean Farm. Little did either of them know that they would not only become life-long friends, but that Wally would encourage and inadvertently introduce Rene to her future husband, who at this moment in time was ensconced on the Continent as the enemy across the water.

  Billeted with two other Land Army girls – Angela and Madeleine – Rene settled into her new accommodation safe in the knowledge that the bombers couldn’t reach her so far west; and even if they could, they surely wouldn’t bomb a stable block that belonged to a country house. This part of the world, unscathed by the war, at least seemed secure by its remoteness.

  The following morning, the three girls – already firm friends – gathered in the tractor shed for their first lesson. Wally – not one day older than any of the girls he was about to teach – appeared a few minutes later than his pupils with the intention of making an entrance, and sucking on a pipe that clearly didn’t suit his baby fresh face and tender years. Dressed in heavy denim, navy blue overalls that were clearly too wide and too long for his short, skinny frame and having abandoned his cheery meet-and-greet persona of the previous day, Wally’s attempt at a more authoritative demeanour failed to impress his new class – particularly Rene.

  ‘This, ladies, is a Fordson Model N tractor, and the first thing you need to know about tractors is that like horses they need feeding.’ Wally’s voice sounded alien to Rene. To her ears, he was more like an American or Canadian than someone British, and as they were so far west perhaps this wasn’t surprising. She’d never met anyone from Cornwall before, but she did her utmost to concentrate and understand as much as she possibly could without a translator.

  ‘What do you feed these tractors on? Hay and carrots?’ she quipped. Like traffic lights his face turned from a pipe tobacco induced novice green to flaming bright red almost instantaneously. She hadn’t meant to be mean and felt rather ashamed when he stumbled with embarrassment rather than roll with the silly joke as a Londoner would have done.

  ‘No. You feed them on Tractor Vaporising Oil, which is known as TVO, and engine oil for the engine itself. Without proper fuel, the tractor doesn’t work and will be nothing more than a lump of metal taking up space in the yard and be no good to no one.’

  ‘Then the tractor has nothing to fear,’ retorted Rene. ‘We know exactly what it feels like to not have the proper fuel!’

  The joke meant everything to the girls but left poor Wally bemused and wishing they were anywhere other than in his beloved workshop. The desire to run out the door and join the Royal Air Force was never more appealing than now, but it wasn’t an option so he put the kettle on.

  With tea on the go, the morning was spent demonstrating how to fuel the tractors with a hand-operated pump, how to check oil levels, the technique of starting the machines with a starting handle and, if the wretched thing didn’t start, he taught them how to change plugs. That’s when he noticed Rene’s trembling hands.

  ‘There’s nothing to be nervous of – it won’t bite you.’

  ‘I’m not nervous, I’ve just got the shakes.’ She was tempted to explain how her factory had been bombed and how she’d survived, but the truth was she felt guilty for having survived. She was afraid that people would think her a coward and that she must have hid when the air raid siren sounded.

  For his part, Wally didn’t push his enquiry any further. The war was causing the most severe reactions in folk and he knew better than to try and make a conversation out of it. Everyone had their story to tell, even him.

  Ironically, the first ploughing job the girls undertook didn’t even involve a tractor as the farmer they were assigned to insisted on using a pair of horses. ‘No good will come of tractors,’ the old man informed them. ‘Waste of time! I know horses better than anyone, and besides there isn’t enough petrol to run tractors. There’s a war on, don’t they know, fuel’s hard to come by. Horses put back into the land what they take out.’

  They couldn’t argue with his logic, but the effort of trying to hold a horse-drawn plough for hours and hours of ploughing was almost too much. Even the horses were in bed before they were, and bed itself offered little comfort when every muscle ached.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to take your boots off?’ Angela asked. ‘The farmer’s wife will kill us if we get mud on her bedclothes.’

  Barely able to lift herself, Rene put her feet on the floor and bent to untie the laces. It was Madeleine who noticed first.

  ‘Rene? You’re not shaking… you’re really not shaking.’

  ‘Too tired to shake.’ Rene fell back onto the bed exhausted, but this time, for the first time in three months, the bed didn’t shake.

  Another week another farm another plough another horse until eventually she got to drive her first tractor. So this was agriculture; this was the country life, and the only bugbear now was occasional chauvinism from farmers and farmworkers who saw the end of the world rapidly heading their way in female form.

  ‘Don’t take any notice,’ Wally told her. ‘It’s not that you’re women, it’s that they’re too old to do anything about it.’

  Problems were solved between the girls whenever the men took it upon themselves to be busy elsewhere. Wally was always dependable even if the tractors were not, and even on those occasion
s when he couldn’t be found there were always the maintenance handbooks and a small booklet entitled Tractor Ploughing in War Time, issued by the Agricultural Advisory Department.

  Madeleine left to join the ATS the summer a photographer from The Cornishman newspaper came to take pictures of Angela and Rene sitting behind the wheels of their tractors. Haymaking was underway much to the chagrin of the men who’d never witnessed such tomfoolery as two uppity city girls posed, grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats into the lens, as the photographer snapped away with an antique bellows camera that looked as if it had been used to take Queen Victoria’s coronation portrait. In all fairness, the photographer’s assignment was taken most seriously. He insisted on their utmost concentration over the next hour and a half as he painstakingly took their pictures in a variety of poses for use in that week’s local edition and for the Dig for Victory campaign posters. ‘If you’re really good, these might make Fleet Street,’ he warned in all seriousness.

  ‘Hollywood next stop, then!’ joked Rene.

  From the field’s edge, crude and jealous remarks blighted what was otherwise a perfect day in both weather and activity.

  Later that evening, and long after the photographer had packed up his tripod with the sun falling headlong toward the horizon, Rene was struggling to engage reverse gear – a not uncommon problem with this particular tractor – when a man’s voice yelled: ‘JERRY BOMBER! TAKE COVER! TAKE COVER!’

  Switching off the tractor’s engine, only the sound of birds and the breeze whispering through the woods could be heard. It took a moment, then, sure enough, in the distance she could hear the distinct hum of an aeroplane – maybe in trouble or at least very low. Trying not to panic so as to get off the tractor without catching her denim trouser leg in one of the pedals – she’d done that once too often and almost broken her leg.

  Glancing above the treeline of a nearby wood she could see a bomber heading toward them in a shallow dive, black smoke trailing from one of its engines and worryingly on course for the very field they were in.