Aunty Doris, arms folded, stood watching her. A worried frown creased her brow. ‘Lass’ – her tone was weary – ‘what are we going to do with you? I’ve never heard the like before, starving yourself till you’re so skinny the clothes hang off your body.’ Her chin quivered but she quickly recovered.
Frieda felt bad for causing her aunt distress. But when she looked in the mirror all she saw was a fat waistline and big hips.
Aunty Doris continued, ‘I don’t usually give a damn what people think but folk are starting to comment and I’m worried they think I’m not feeding you properly. The authorities might take you away.’
A cold shiver ran down Frieda’s spine. She’d grown to love her over the years. She was kindness itself and the thought of losing her new aunt as well as her family terrified Frieda. But the wilful voice inside that ruled her life and didn’t allow her to eat wouldn’t give in – even for Aunty Doris.
How could she explain, when she didn’t even understand why she had this starving problem? All she wanted was to be normal and eat without thinking. Frieda despised herself. For when it came to food, she’d turned into this secretive deceiver and barefaced liar.
‘How about we go to see Doctor Shepherd?’ Aunty Doris, ever diligent over her responsibility towards Frieda, appeared to know her very thoughts. ‘Maybe he’ll know what to do.’
Frieda desperately wanted to change as she knew she must be damaging herself, but she couldn’t ignore the powerful will that seemed to take over. Perhaps she should give the doctor a try. She did want to conquer this dread of eating, didn’t she?
She looked Aunty Doris in the eye and nodded.
Her aunt gave a relieved sigh. ‘We’ll go to the surgery tomorrow after work.’
As they sat waiting in the queue at the surgery in the basement of Doctor Shepherd’s house, Frieda regretted her decision. She would rather have a broken leg or disfiguring spots on her face like some boys had at school, than what troubled her. She was afraid Doctor Shepherd would class her insane and have her put away.
She was distracted from her thoughts as Doctor Shepherd hurried out of his surgery, black bag in his hand. Without looking up he rushed out of the basement doorway and up the outside flight of stairs.
‘An emergency call,’ Betty, the nurse who came out of the surgery’s disinfectant-smelling dispensary, told the waiting queue.
After three quarters of an hour, the doctor returned and resumed his surgery.
When it was their turn to be seen, Frieda took a seat on one side of his large inlaid desk, Aunty Doris next to her.
Doctor Shepherd was elderly-looking, with grey hair and a bald patch on top of his head, and wore a black suit. Aunty Doris waited until the doctor had finished writing and looked up, before she said, with an anxious face, ‘As you can see, doctor, Frieda’s lost a lot of weight. I’m at me wits’ end what to do. There’s nothing physically wrong with her but she just won’t eat. She’s becoming skin and bone.’
Both Doctor Shepherd and her aunt stared at Frieda and she felt like a specimen in a glass bottle they used at school.
He sat back in his chair and, resting his hands on his chest, entwined his fingers. His expression looked faintly amused. ‘Now then, what’s all this about? You must eat to stay healthy.’ He went on to tell her the benefit of certain foods and recommended she drink milk for healthy bones.
Frieda saw that Aunty Doris was getting irritated, but didn’t interrupt the doctor. For like the clergy, doctors were held in high respect.
‘So, enough of this nonsense,’ he finally ended. ‘Do you promise to be sensible and eat properly?’ Doctor Shepherd raised an eyebrow.
To please him, Frieda nodded.
The consultation finished, Aunty Doris stood up, her expression bemused as she made for the door. Frieda followed.
‘Frieda,’ the doctor called from his chair, ‘remember, boys prefer a girl to have a bit of beef on them.’
Aunty Doris tutted in fury and slammed the door.
‘Well, are you going to keep your word and eat?’ Aunty Doris wanted to know as she closed the doctor’s front garden gate and they started to make their way home.
Frieda studied the stream gurgling beyond in the allotments. She wanted desperately to say yes to make her aunt happy but the voice, still objecting, was firm. You’ll get grossly fat.
An idea struck her. She could find out which foods didn’t put weight on and give that a try.
‘I will try,’ she hedged.
Aunty Doris let out a sigh of relief. ‘Then I suppose the visit to that old fool was worth it in the end.’
10
Sandra
As time went by, Sandra fell into the drudgery of doing kitchen duties and serving up meals at the hatch. She hardly ever saw the other lasses as by the time she’d finished tidying up after the evening meal, most of the others had gone to bed. She felt alienated, and not at all like a proper Land Girl.
The day was one long round of chores that started at half five in the morning when Sandra washed, dressed and folded her blanket on the bed. She felt like she was back in the orphanage. At quarter to six she knocked on bedroom doors to waken everyone and then she rang the bell at six o’clock for breakfast. Sandra helped Mrs Parsons, the kindly but demanding cook, make cheese or beetroot sandwiches for the Land Girls to take to their respective farms for a makeshift dinner, and prepared and served breakfast at the hatch for those who wanted it. Breakfast at the hostel rarely deviated from lumpy porridge and a slice of fried bread. Land Girls who helped with milking left earlier and had breakfast later at the farm when the work was done.
There was a roster for mealtime duties and one of the eight girls that sat at each table waited on the others, then helped wash the dishes after the meal. The common room was always filled with either tired or high-pitched, excitable voices – depending on the time of day – and Sandra, rather envious, wished hers was one of them.
Her working day was spent clearing and tidying the common room and kitchen, ccleaning the bathroom and toilets, scraping vegetables, then helping Mrs Parsons organise and cook the evening meal. Generally this was meat stew, potatoes and greens, followed by milk pudding or the favourite suet pudding and custard. The Land Girls were always starved after working in the fresh air.
At six thirty, after they all returned, Sandra rang the bell for the evening meal. When the dishes were done, she again tidied the kitchen and common room, washed the pantry floor and set tables for the morning. Finally, Mrs Sanderson came to inspect and after a nod of approval, Sandra, exhausted, was only fit to collapse into bed.
Mrs Parsons told Sandra one morning, as she stirred a pan of porridge, ‘Living in the country is a different world to what you’re used to. My sister is a townie like you and she’s only got a concrete back yard. How, may I ask, can she dig for victory like the ministry wants?’
Thin but wiry, Cook was one of those women of indeterminate age. She liked nothing better than to talk while she worked.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Would you believe, the Nichols up at the farm have to apply for permission to the local Ministry of Agriculture offices for permission to slaughter a pig? You’d be surprised how many pigs have accidents in the area.’ She chortled. ‘But you have to watch out ’cos the powers that be have eyes everywhere. I read in the local paper someone was brought before the magistrate’s court for pinching food from a scrap bin for the pigs. Poor soul, they must’ve been starved.’ Sandra surreptitiously smiled because Cook entertained her with her gossiping.
Sometimes, Cook told Sandra to take the scraps along the road to the Nichols’ farm during her dinner break. ‘In the hope we’ll get some of the end result when a pig’s slaughtered,’ she cackled, reminding Sandra of her dear friend Olive.
Though the Nichols’ farm was a good stretch of the legs along the main road, Sandra found it therapeutic to be out in the fresh air. Carrying the sack and avoiding the cowpats on the path leading to the farmhou
se, she went to the back garden and emptied the sack of scraps into the bin.
Making her way back to the hostel, Sandra passed fields where diminutive figures in the distance helped with lambing. Sandra wished she was working alongside them. They were doing a vital job like the posters said, to help feed the nation. While Sandra was… just a skivvy slaving in the kitchen in a job any numbskull could do.
‘You’re such a bore,’ Evelyn, yawning, had told her one night as they were getting ready for bed after Sandra had complained about her lot working in the hostel kitchen. The others were still in the common room, so they had the bedroom to themselves. ‘You’ll be telling me next you ending up in the kitchen is to do with people looking down on you.’ Evelyn folded her jersey and laid it on the bed. ‘Don’t you realise you’re as good as the next? It’s believing it that counts.’
Sandra realised with shock that what Evelyn said was true; she was still convinced that she couldn’t do anything right.
‘Though, I should talk,’ Evelyn went on. ‘I’ve always felt second best to my eldest brother. Eddy is the son and heir and can do no wrong. And he’s a scoundrel, especially where girls are concerned. He gets away with it because he’s only, according to Daddy, sowing wild oats.’ Evelyn snorted. ‘If I acted the same way I’d be sent to a convent sharpish. The thing that gets me is I’m not allowed ambition because apparently, education is wasted on girls.’
Sandra was amazed at Evelyn’s confession. She assumed that Evelyn, with her strength of character, could do anything she wanted and with her family’s approval.
‘I bet you think you’re in the kitchen helping Cook because of your working-class Geordie accent or some such thing.’
Sandra did.
‘Has it never occurred to you it’s purely because your previous employment was on your application and mentioned in your interview? It’s because you’re so experienced that they’ll have decided you’re best suited in the kitchen where you’re proficient.’
Sandra hadn’t thought of this.
‘Whereas, well… I have to prove myself because, as far as the locals are concerned, I’m just a spoiled good-for-nothing townie who is frightened to get her nails dirty.’
This was news to Sandra. That someone like Evelyn, who came from the middle classes, had problems asserting herself in life.
‘If you’re not careful, you’ll end up an inverted snob… and in my book that basically means scorning someone just because you consider them posh.’
Sandra flushed. Her friend was right.
‘The thing is’ – Evelyn’s tone changed, became gentler – ‘we all have choices and what you decide makes you the person you are. I’m going to prove to Dad and those cynical locals they’re wrong. I’m intelligent and strong and can pull my weight. While you… what you can do is simply to tell Jessie you’re not happy and you’d prefer working on a farm. She’s an understanding sort under that tough exterior.’
So, taking Evelyn’s advice, that’s what Sandra had done.
‘Have you trained at agriculture college?’ Jessie wanted to know when Sandra, hesitantly, had requested she work on a farm.
‘No. Should I have?’
Jessie shrugged. ‘It’s a four-week course that incoming Land Girls are required to do.’
If that was the case, Sandra thought, she was destined to work in the kitchen forever.
Jessie shrugged, resignedly. ‘The reality is for most of the recruits in Northumberland, training is a rarity. They have to make do with the farmer or his foreman to show them the drill. And usually that never happens either.’
‘So, how do I get trained?’
‘You’ll learn as you go along.’ Jessie smiled and winked.
A few days later, after breakfast, Sandra stood with the rest of the Land Girls outside the hostel where a hazy moon, sailing across the sky, shed the only light. She was wearing dungarees, a jerkin, and a turban-like scarf covered her hair. She carried a yellow waterproof and sandwiches in a bait tin.
Jessie stood in front of them. A robust woman, she appeared to be bursting out of her clothes. ‘Those of you already allotted work on a farm, off you go.’
A group of Land Girls made off to the bicycle shed and were seen, cloaked in the half light, to pedal their way along the earthen path. Sandra had never learnt to ride a bicycle and she worried it might hinder her travelling to work.
Jessie continued, ‘The Ministry of Ag has sent notice they need a gang up at Tyler’s farm.’ She peered into the semi-darkness and called out some of the girls’ names. ‘You six know where it is, you’ve been there before.’
‘What’s ahead?’ one of them asked.
‘Clearing fields.’
‘Of stones?’
‘Correct.’
There were groans.
‘What does that mean?’ Sandra asked Ruby, who stood next to her. Ruby Todd slept in the opposite bunk bed. She came from Sunderland and Sandra felt an affiliation because the lass was northern.
‘They’ll toil all day picking stones and filling buckets and then probably they’ll chuck them the other side of the farmer’s field.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘A stony field means the ploughshares get destroyed. Picking stones is a soul-destroying, back-breaking job of work made a hundred times worse if it’s raining. I’m glad it’s not me.’
Sandra thought the same. ‘What’s a ploughshare?’
Jessie, hearing the conversation, piped up. ‘Blimey! Save me from townies. It’s the main cutting blade behind the plough.’
There was a lot of activity as farmers arrived in cars or sent lorries to pick up Land Girls to work on the farm. When all the vehicles had left, only Sandra, Evelyn and a girl called Enid – who had long manicured nails and wore a hint of lipstick – were left standing. A forlorn group, they stood waiting until an old Morris car came up the earthen path and the shadowy figure of a famer loomed from the front seat and came striding over. He peered at Sandra and she smelt stale, beery breath.
He bellowed to Jessie, ‘Is yon lassies all that’s left?’
‘It is.’
He pointed with the stick he carried to Evelyn and Enid. ‘I’ll have to make do with you two.’
The car made off with the two girls in the back and Sandra, the only one left, felt rather dejected – and yet relieved.
Jessie told her, ‘Take one of the bicycles and get yourself to the Nichols’ byre. They have a device you can use to learn how to milk cows. I’d show you but I’ve got to check on a gang planting seedlings.’
‘I can’t ride a bike.’
‘Then walk. You’ve got legs.’
The morning was cold and the sky, with its orange glow on the horizon, shed enough light to see dew sparkling on the grass and dandelions growing in the hedgerows. These April days were deceiving – sunny and bright one minute but the threat of lambing storms when the skies darkened the next.
Sandra walked along the country road past the village until she reached the opening that led to the Nichols’ farm. Making her way up the track, she passed the peaked roof farmhouse with its white front porch that looked over the main road to the fields beyond, all owned by the Nichols. She continued past the back garden where washing hung on the line. A dungy smell Sandra now associated with the area permeated the air. Making her way to a sprawling shed covered by a tin roof, she could hear cows mooing.
Inside, by the light of hurricane lamps, her eyes acclimatised to the scene before her. Cows, tails swishing, were tethered to stalls either side of the passageway. They looked huge and Sandra was wary as she’d never seen a cow this close up before. The stalls were raised with a channel running in front filled with cows’ muck and urine. The reek of cattle manure made Sandra wrinkle her nose.
An old man with an unlit clay pipe dangling from his mouth sat on a three-legged stool milking a cow, while a ruddy-faced man with an air of authority stood talking to him. The man who stood sighed and shook his head in a burdened sort of
way.
Sandra looked in the next stall and her eyes widened in surprise. Sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow was the girl Sandra had bumped into at the local church the other Sunday.
The ruddy-faced man, thickset, with muscled arms protruding from the sleeves of his checked shirt, walked towards her.
‘Bob Nichol.’ He gave a curt nod. ‘The hostel sent you?’
‘Yes. I’m Sandra.’
Mr Nichol looked her up and down. ‘You been on a farm before?’
‘This is the first time.’
He heaved a laboured sigh. ‘You’ll be from the town I expect?’
‘I am.’
He pulled a disgruntled face.
A sense of not being good enough washed over Sandra. Her confidence dipped and she was transported back to her time with the Kirtons – a dogsbody. Then she remembered the new life she was making for herself. She was in the WLA and proud to be doing a vital job.
She pulled back her shoulders. ‘I’m here to work,’ she reminded her apparent employer.
‘It was yesterday I needed help when Antonio didn’t show.’ The timbre of the farmer’s voice held a strong Northumbrian burr. ‘Have you been shown how to milk?’
Stiffening at his attitude, Sandra shook her head. ‘No.’
With an air of impatience, Mr Nichol scowled at Sandra as if all his ills were her fault. He rolled his eyes. ‘Then why have they sent you? I haven’t the time for novices.’
‘To learn,’ she volunteered.
Mr Nichol nodded at Sandra. ‘See that?’ He pointed to the other end of the byre where a contraption of make-believe udders filled with water hung across a beam that was between two wooden uprights.
‘You can practise on that. Frieda,’ he called to the girl in the stall, ‘you can show her.’
He turned and made his way back to the old man.
The girl stood and, removing a bucket from beneath the cow she was milking, placed it outside the stall. She moved into the passageway between the stalls, gesturing for Sandra to follow. Passing the cows’ huge hindquarters and aware of their swishing tails, Sandra felt the hairs on her neck stand up. The animals were enormous. What if they break loose? Or kick out? The urge to flee overcame her but she told herself to buck up. She meant to prove herself and make a success of the job.
The Outcast Girls: A completely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 historical novel Page 9
