The Sisters of Battle Road

by J. M. Maloney

  A visit from their aunts, always something to endure, was made even more unpleasant if the women were in a bad mood when they arrived because their free-ride scam had failed. Their scheme involved boarding the train in London, without having bought a ticket, then, on arrival in Polegate, they would alight and hide inside the platform toilets while the station attendant checked passengers’ tickets. After a while he would move off and, when the coast was clear, the aunts would sneak out of the toilets and make their way quickly to the bus stop. However, having caught them once, the attendant had grown wise to their habit and had started to wait for them to emerge from the toilets so that he could ask for their tickets. To his surprise, the women would act affronted rather than abashed when confronted.

  ‘You should get a proper job!’ they would say. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with yourself?’

  Pierce would stand in the background, embarrassed. His sisters had persuaded him that they could all get away with travelling for free and, after they had been proven right on the first few occasions, he had warmed more and more to the scam. He was always short of money, after all. The increasingly furtive behaviour it entailed was making him think again, though. It wasn’t something that a man of his age – and a father too – should be doing. What would his daughters think? His sisters’ bullish reaction to getting caught also made him wince. He loved them dearly, but there were times when he could see things from his daughters’ point of view.

  Meanwhile, Kath and Pat were getting into a few scrapes of their own. Fortunately for them, Joan didn’t know about most of them. She did her best and tried to emulate her mother, reprimanding her younger sisters if they were naughty and administering the occasional smack, if required. If word had reached the welfare officer that a couple of young ‘thieves’ were living in the house, however, then Pierce would have received a stern letter saying the arrangement allowing his daughters to live without parental or adult supervision during the week was not working.

  On one occasion, Kath and Pat were playing on the embankment by the railway with their friends, Cheryl Cartwright and her younger sister Iris, when they caught sight of some plump damsons on the branches of some trees overhanging a fence. Unable to resist, they picked and ate some.

  ‘Do they belong to anyone?’ asked Pat, as she bit into the juicy fruit.

  ‘Well, they won’t miss a few on this side,’ said Kath. ‘Besides, they’re windfalls.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Pat.

  ‘Fruit that’s fallen to the ground and will only be eaten by the birds if no one else has them.’

  Pat was puzzled. ‘But they’re not on the ground.’

  Kath looked at her sister. ‘Not yet, but they’re about to fall at any moment,’ she replied. ‘So it’s silly to let them rot.’

  To emphasize the point, Kath twisted one of the damsons until it came away from the branch.

  ‘See?’ she asked. ‘Loose.’

  This was evidence enough for Pat. She climbed up to the roof of a dilapidated-looking shed nearby so that she could reach the higher branches but, with a cracking sound, she fell through the thin, rotten wood. Groaning, she managed to pull herself out but the noise had drawn attention and they panicked when they saw a man approaching.

  ‘Run for it!’ Kath said. The girls needed no further prompting as they clambered up the embankment back towards the field. Pat hobbled along, in considerable pain, but they didn’t stop running until they reached Cheryl and Iris’ house.

  Mrs Cartwright was alarmed by the excited, breathless jabbering of the girls as they burst through the door, and by Pat’s bloody leg, which had gone unnoticed in the commotion. Pat hadn’t noticed the large splinter of wood buried in her shin either and howled with pain as Mrs Cartwright pulled it out with tweezers. It was even more painful when she dabbed the wound with iodine lotion.

  ‘Ow! What’s that?’ Pat cried through watery eyes.

  ‘Just something to clean it up so that it doesn’t get infected,’ said Mrs Cartwright.

  ‘It hurts like hell!’ Pat complained.

  ‘Stop making a fuss, Pat,’ said Kath, feeling a little queasy as she looked at the wound.

  The girls told Mrs Cartwright that they had been playing and climbing but felt it best not to mention picking the damsons. They omitted this part of the story when they got home, too, during Joan’s questioning.

  Pat’s leg continued to play up over the next few weeks but her attention, along with her sisters’, was soon distracted by something much more pleasing. One Saturday afternoon, the girls were playing in the garden when they heard, and then saw, a trail of lorries and trucks arriving in the field beyond.

  ‘What do you think’s going on, Kath?’ asked Pat. As they screwed up their eyes to try to see more clearly, they could make out a colourful livery on the sides of the vehicles.

  ‘It’s a fair!’ Kath shouted.

  The girls ran inside to tell everyone, and Joan agreed that they could go over to the field to watch the proceedings more closely.

  ‘Wait for me,’ called Sheila, who had been lying on her bed reading a book when she heard the commotion.

  Over by the field they were joined by several other eager-faced children, peering over the hedge as the vehicles and attractions trundled into place. Their excitement increased when they saw a carousel full of ornately painted carved horses and the Big Wheel arrive. The Jarman girls stood watching, transfixed by the activity, until Joan arrived to reprimand them for being late home for tea.

  That evening, as they lay in their beds, they could hear the fairground workers still about their business. Usually night time was very quiet and so to listen to the sounds of hammers at work on something that would create so much pleasure was joyful to their ears.

  The Jarman girls had never been to a fair before but they had experienced a taste of the gaiety it could bring via the street entertainers who sometimes visited Abbey Street. There was a horse-drawn merry-go-round, which was a penny a ride; the game of ‘catch the rat’, where a stuffed sock was dropped down a length of drainpipe and you had to try to trap it with a stick as it emerged at the other end; and a barrow full of buckets of goldfish, where unwanted rags could be exchanged for a fish – so long as you provided your own jam jar to take it away in.

  Men, garishly made up as women, toured the street with a barrel organ. One would turn the handle to play the tinkling music and others would dance along, hitching up their heavy skirts to the amusement of the audience. There were also jugglers, magicians and a man who made the girls squeal with laughter when he chased after any passing cyclist, trying to tickle them with a feather duster.

  The girls would sit on the kerb outside their house, gleefully observing the silly antics, and when the entertainers moved on to another street, they’d follow them and sit down to watch them all over again. The girls missed such delights living in Hailsham but the arrival of the fair made their spirits soar and they looked forward eagerly to the day of its opening.

  All of the sisters, including Joan and Mary, went to the fair. Joan gave the younger ones the few pennies she could spare so that they could enjoy themselves on the prized rides – the carousel, the Big Wheel and the Big Dipper. Even when they had no money to spend, while the fair was there they would head over most days to enjoy the sights, sounds and confectionery smells. In the early evening, as the younger ones settled into bed, they could hear the faint music of the carousel playing popular songs, such as ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ by Cole Porter, and would fall asleep with a gentle smile on their faces.

  It was during this summer of 1942 that Mary got talking to a local girl named Barbara at a dance at Magham Down. They took a liking to each other and Barbara told Mary that she was in the Land Army, working on a farm in Battle Road. With German U-boats continuing to target merchant ships bringing food supplies into Britain, the Women’s Land Army played a vital role in helping to increase the production of home-grown produce in order to keep the nation fed. M
ary had seen the government posters and newspaper adverts extolling the virtues of enrolling. She was particularly struck by the poster depicting a Land Army girl, pitchfork in hand, standing in a field bathed in sunshine beneath the slogan, ‘For a healthy, happy job join the Women’s Land Army’.

  The Government paid farmers to employ Land Army girls and that money was used to pay the girls’ wages. Mary was intrigued and liked the idea of working so close to home. She asked Barbara all about it.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ said Barbara. ‘Out in the fresh air. Lots of sunshine. It’s not really like work at all and it’s respected because it’s making an important contribution to the war effort. Plus, you get a smart uniform to wear. It’s a good job with decent pay and a lot of variety. I can put a word in for you, if you like. The farmer, Mr Burton, is looking for another girl to drive the milk van. You could do that. It’d be fun. We’d be working together.’

  Mary liked driving the laundry delivery van but it had begun to feel a little repetitive. The sheen had worn off and she found herself swept up by the idea of working on the farm. The Land Army pay was better too, according to Barbara. It all seemed to be positive, with no negatives that she could see. Mary knew she would need to talk it over with Pierce, though, and she told Barbara she would do so over the weekend.

  Pierce was hunched over a shoe last in the kitchen when Mary approached him. Whenever the girls’ shoes needed mending he would bring the last down with him from Bermondsey, along with strips of leather and nails. The girls would often sit and watch him at work, marvelling at his expertise but apprehensive that he might swallow one of the nails held between his lips. If a hole appeared in one of their shoes when Pierce wasn’t there with his repair kit, the girls would take the temporary measure of cutting a sole from cardboard, which they would then insert inside the shoe until he could fix it properly the following weekend.

  ‘If that’s what you want to do then it’s OK with me,’ he said, looking up at Mary from the last. ‘But I don’t want you moving away from Hailsham,’ he added. ‘You’ve got to be here for each other.’

  Mary beamed and assured him that she didn’t want to work anywhere other than at the Battle Road farm, anyhow. The proximity to home was a large part of the job’s attraction as it would mean more take-home pay in her pocket each week. Many Land Army girls worked a long way from home and had to live on the farm, paying the farmer out of their wages for their accommodation.

  Barbara arranged for Mary to meet Mr Burton one day after work. A short, stocky man, Mary thought him rather blunt in his manner but imagined that was what all farmers were like.

  ‘I expect they’re more used to dealing with animals than people,’ she said to Joan that evening as they enjoyed a cup of cocoa before going to bed.

  Mr Burton wrote a letter for Mary to take to the local Land Army offices in Lewes, stating that he needed another girl to work on his farm and that he considered Mary to be perfectly suitable. Mary then took the day off work and caught the bus into Lewes. At the Land Army offices, she sat nervously while being interviewed by a panel of two men and a woman who, amongst other things, asked her about her general health, any previous jobs she had done and her two desired locations for working. Mary then showed them the letter from Mr Burton. After a little quiet discussion between the members of the panel, the man who was seated in the middle looked over and smiled at Mary.

  ‘Well, you have good driving experience, you’re local and seem to be in good health and, if Mr Burton would like you, we have no objection,’ he said.

  Mary looked at him for a moment. ‘So … Does that mean …?’ she began.

  ‘It means yes,’ he interjected. ‘We’d be happy to have you in the Land Army, working with Mr Burton.’

  An excited Mary returned home to tell everyone the good news and Barbara was delighted. Mr Burton said that as a final requirement she would need to provide him with a job reference from her current employer, which was where Mary encountered an unexpected problem. Mr Leslie, her manager at Silverlight Laundry, was not happy when she informed him that she was leaving, and tried his best to stop her.

  ‘You’re exempt from the Forces because you’re already helping the war effort with us – cleaning the army camps’ uniforms,’ he said.

  Mary remained firm, saying that the Land Army had accepted her, that she was keen to work outside and have a change of scene, and was going whether he liked it or not. He finally came to terms with her decision when she agreed to teach Iris how to drive the delivery van so that she could take on Mary’s job.

  He wrote the reference for her to take to Mr Burton and it was glowing – Mary had done a fine job. However, it also included the word ‘stubborn’, followed by a pointed exclamation mark, leaving her new employer in no doubt as to Mary’s character.

  After filling out the required paperwork for enrolment, Mary was issued with her Land Army uniform – a dark green jersey, brown corduroy breeches and a wide leather belt, a cream short-sleeved top with an open necked collar, khaki knee-length socks, brown shoes, a brown coat and a matching felt hat.

  Once back home, she couldn’t wait to try the clothes on and was thrilled with her new look. It made a welcome change from the threadbare dresses she was used to and she thought how proud her mum would have been if she could see her at that moment.

  On her very first day at work, Mary realized she had made an awful mistake. For one thing, she was frightened of cows and was going to have to spend a lot of time dealing with them. Mr Burton was indeed a brusque, no-nonsense type and had no time for Mary’s concern when she admitted to him that she didn’t like being near the animals.

  ‘Well, that’s of no use to me,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to get used to them. Besides, there’s nothing to be frightened of. They’re more scared of you than you are them.’

  Mary sincerely doubted this.

  ‘Here, take this stick. When I herd the cows from that field into this one,’ he said, pointing into the distance, ‘you stand by the gate and make sure they all go through.’

  Mary looked at him with some alarm. ‘But what if they don’t want to?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s what the stick’s for,’ he replied.

  Reluctantly, Mary traipsed over to the gate, her feet sticking in the mud. As the cows headed her way, she became terrified. She stood well back from them, knowing that she would never be able to persuade any of them to go through the gate if they didn’t want to! Fortunately, she had little to do, as the cows appeared to be pretty well rehearsed in this particular manoeuvre.

  Mr Burton was also a censorious and religious man for whom the idea of any form of fun or enjoyment was frowned upon, as Mary discovered later that day when she was given the job of washing the used milk bottles. As she stood by the large sink, she began to whistle a cheerful tune. As soon as her new employer heard her, he bristled.

  ‘I don’t want you whistling!’ he barked from the doorway, making her jump. ‘A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men.’

  Mary was shocked. It was only midday and she was already yearning to be back in her nice, clean laundry van, on the road and chatting with Iris. Instead, she was waddling knee-deep in mud and breathing not the fresh air that Barbara, as well as those glowing posters, had promised, but the overwhelming stench of cow dung! The thought of what she had given up for this, and of knowing that there was no way back, made her tearful. The last time she’d made a mistake like this, Annie had sorted it out for her. This time she was on her own.

  During her next break she had some heated words for Barbara for painting such a rosy picture of the job. And why hadn’t she mentioned how difficult Mr Burton was to work with?

  ‘He’s OK, once you get to know him,’ Barbara replied defensively. Mary wasn’t convinced. Finally, a sheepish Barbara admitted what she’d done. ‘I just wanted the company of another girl,’ she confessed.

  Some time had passed since Mary had needed someone else to sort out h
er problems, and her newfound resilience in getting on with things, come what may, shone through. Putting her best foot forward, she welcomed the £2 wages at the end of each week, knowing how much she deserved it.

  With time, she began to use her natural creativity and guile to find ways of making the job bearable. She hated cleaning the cow stalls after milking – the smell made her feel sick. Sometimes, she’d only just finished cleaning up the mess when one of the cows let nature take its course and, once again, with a resigned sigh, she would have to reach for the shovel, the broom and a bucket of water. So, after a while Mary devised a way of preventing the cows from messing up their shed when she had barely finished cleaning it. If she saw a cow lift up its tail, she would quickly grab said tail and hold it down to prevent the animal from defecating. This meant the urge would temporarily go away, giving Mary time to finish and get out. It would then be down to Barbara to clean up any subsequent mess when it was her turn in the cow stalls. It was only many years later that Mary was to think about the possibility that this might have been quite uncomfortable for the cows.

  In reality, Mary never actually got to drive the milk van but she would accompany Mr Burton, sitting on the open back, perched on a milk crate. When they set off on their first outing together, Mary was tense with apprehension. She could feel herself wobbling amidst the clinking milk bottles in their crates. Then, disaster struck as he drove over a bump and Mary, along with the crate, toppled into the road.

  She sat on the cold ground, wincing, as she watched the van continue on its way, Mr Burton oblivious to what had happened. He was some distance down the road before he realized Mary was no longer with him and headed back. Getting out of the van, he walked over, looked down at her and, to her astonishment, asked, ‘Have you broken any of the bottles?’

  Pierce’s optimism about the war ending soon, now ‘the Yanks’ had joined, was dulled as the conflict see-sawed between Allied and Axis successes. American and Filipino forces had surrendered at Bataan on 9 April 1942 and the Philippines fell to Japan. Two months later, General Rommel’s Panzer division routed the British–Allied garrison at Tobruk, Libya, forcing them to retreat. Churchill called the defeat ‘a disgrace’. It all made for depressing and worrying reading in the newspapers.