The Land Girls at Christmas

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘I am. In fact, I’d have laid money against it happening.’

  ‘Then you would have lost your bet,’ she’d retorted, taking her bike from its stand. Neville reminded her of her youngest brother Geoffrey who had joined the army and she hoped that, just as with him, there was no malice beneath the cheeky persona.

  Neville had put the note into his jacket pocket. ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ he’d said with a wink.

  ‘I think it’ll be all right, though,’ she told Grace now, her mittened hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea. ‘I gave Neville sixpence for his trouble.’

  Grace said nothing except, ‘Let’s wait and see.’

  ‘This is nice and cosy,’ Una said, looking around the room at the hand-made rag rug and the old pewter plates lined up along the high mantelpiece. The fire burned brightly in the kitchen grate. She heard movement in one of the upstairs rooms and looked enquiringly at Grace.

  ‘That’s Father. He went upstairs to wake Edgar just before you arrived.’ A troubled expression flitted across her face and she tried to smooth it away by drawing her fingers across her forehead.

  ‘How is Edgar?’ Una didn’t pretend not to know what had happened on Friday night. ‘Was he badly hungover?’

  ‘Yes, as bad as can be. He was good for nothing all day yesterday.’

  The floorboards above their heads went on creaking then a door closed firmly and there were footsteps on the stairs. The kitchen door opened and Cliff glared in at Grace and Una.

  ‘Well?’ Grace asked. ‘Is he awake?’

  ‘He’s not there. And his bed hasn’t been slept in either.’ Cliff’s accusing look made it seem as if Grace had known this all along but Grace jumped up in alarm. If Una hadn’t been there, she would have run upstairs to check for herself. As it was, she tried to keep her worries in check. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. He must have stopped out all night.’

  ‘Where?’ The last time Grace had seen Edgar had been yesterday teatime when he’d finally emerged from his room. Unshaven and bleary eyed, he’d come into the kitchen as dusk fell, put on his overcoat and gone out without saying a word. ‘Where would he go?’

  Cliff shook his head and closed the door. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

  Una and Grace looked at each other in alarm, each thinking of the freezing fog that had cloaked the hillsides all night long.

  ‘Could he have stayed at a friend’s house?’ Una asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Edgar hasn’t been in touch with any of his old pals since he came back. Anyway, most have been called up.’

  ‘Could he have caught the bus into Northgate to see a film, perhaps?’

  ‘And missed the last bus back? Yes, that’s possible.’ But the more Grace thought about it, the less likely it seemed. ‘We have a telephone here. Edgar would have rung us if that had been the case.’ She frowned then spoke in an undertone. ‘The truth is, I’m worried that Dad might have driven Edgar away.’

  ‘By something he said?’

  ‘Exactly. He seems not to care about what Edgar’s been through. You see, he came through the First War when the attitude was you have to grin and bear it, no matter what. He was blacksmith for a cavalry regiment in Belgium, which kept him away from the front line.’

  Una understood what she was getting at. ‘He doesn’t see that everything is different this time around.’ Machines were the killers now – not men on horseback.

  ‘With Dad everything is black and white. Edgar has no business being at home. His duty is to serve his country, full stop.’

  ‘Has he said as much?’

  ‘To Edgar? I’m not sure. What I do know is that Edgar is in a poor way and if Dad has spoken his mind, he’ll have taken it badly.’

  Kind-hearted Una cast around for ways to help. ‘Just suppose that the two of them did have an argument that made Edgar storm off. I’m trying to think what I would do next if I was him. It’s getting foggy and dusk is falling. I know the countryside well because I grew up here so it’s not too hard to make my way to the nearest barn and climb up into the hayloft for the night. Yes – something like that, don’t you think?’

  Grace nodded. ‘You’re right. I have to remember that Edgar is his own man. If he chooses to keep out of Dad’s way for a while, it’s up to him.’ But still she couldn’t get rid of the pathetic sight of him lying dead drunk in the cellar, and being dragged upstairs to bed by Bill and Thomas.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Una said as she prepared to take her leave, ‘I’ll keep a lookout for him on my way back to the hostel. I could get the other girls to do the same while they’re out and about.’

  ‘No, you’ve got much nicer things to think about.’ Grace gave herself a shake. ‘Good luck tonight with your handsome Italian. I’ll be thinking of you.’

  ‘If it ever comes off.’

  ‘It will.’

  Una buttoned her coat and tied a scarf around her head then she held up two sets of crossed fingers. ‘Ta for the tea, Grace. If we hear any news of Edgar, I’ll give you a call.’

  ‘These days we have to think the unthinkable.’ Vince Mostyn was in a gloomy mood on the way back from Hawkshead Manor where he’d spent the morning bemoaning the state of the world over a glass of sherry with Alice and Lionel Foster. Bill had picked him up at noon and now they were speeding back over the moors in his Austin 7. ‘Did you know that the Ark Royal went down off Gibraltar?’

  ‘Yes, I heard it on the wireless.’ Bill kept his eyes on the icy road ahead. ‘She was under tow at the time.’

  ‘A U-boat got her.’ Vince spoke with a tone of disbelief. ‘If they can sink her, they can sink anything. We’ve already lost HMS Hood, and she was the pride of the Royal Navy.’

  ‘It’s not all bad news, though. Mr Churchill’s doing his best to persuade Roosevelt to declare his hand and come in with us. It’ll happen if the trouble that’s brewing over Pearl Harbor comes to a head. That’ll turn things around, you’ll see.’

  ‘The Yanks should have been in before now,’ Vince pointed out. ‘Hitler needed stopping long before he got a grip on Yugoslavia and Greece, let alone Poland and France.’

  Bill couldn’t disagree, though his father’s belligerent patriotism disturbed him. He didn’t like to discuss the war with him because deep down he had a certain amount of sympathy for conscientious objectors, although he kept that well hidden. In any case, he probably wouldn’t have the courage to voice his convictions if his call-up papers ever landed on the mat. He would take up arms like everyone else. ‘How were the Fosters?’ he asked.

  ‘Worried. With their two boys in the RAF as well as Shirley in the WAF, you can understand it.’

  The conversation was like every other between Bill and his pessimistic father. If it wasn’t war casualties, it was the German Chancellor’s iniquitous treatment of the Jews, if not food shortages then the shameless black marketeers. ‘Cheer up, Dad,’ he said as he put on the brakes to avoid a rabbit sitting bang in the middle of the road. The car hit a patch of ice and the back end swung round, sending them up onto the grass verge. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘You should have run it over,’ Vince commented as Bill steered them back onto the road.

  ‘Why – did you want it for your supper?’

  Unexpectedly, the near miss and his son’s joke jolted Vince out of his cloud of gloom. ‘I can’t see your mother skinning a rabbit and putting it in the pot, can you?’

  Bill laughed and looked in the mirror to check that the rabbit hadn’t been harmed. The road was clear but a movement off to the side caught his eye. He looked harder. A figure had stood up from behind one of the stone hides built for the ‘guns’, marksmen who came up onto the moors in August to shoot pheasants. ‘What the heck?’ he muttered as he slammed on the brakes a second time.

  The man left the hide and limped away from the road through the dead heather towards the crest of the exposed hillside, his coat flapping open.

  Something t
old Bill that he should investigate so he pulled over to the side of the road. ‘There’s a chap up there heading off into the middle of nowhere,’ he told his father. ‘Wait here – I won’t be long.’

  Bracing himself against the bitter wind, Bill climbed the low drystone wall and went after the figure on the hill. He quickly gained on him. ‘Are you lost? Can I help you find your way?’ he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  The man ignored him and stumbled on.

  He looks familiar, even from the back, Bill thought. I’m sure that’s Edgar Kershaw. Bloody hell, what’s he up to? ‘Edgar, it’s me – Bill Mostyn! Hold on a minute, I want to have a word.’

  Edgar recognized Bill’s voice and picked up his pace. The frost-covered heather tugged at his feet and he staggered sideways as a strong gust of wind almost tore the coat from his back. ‘Get stuffed,’ he muttered to his pursuer. After a night of misery spent huddling in the lee of the gamekeeper’s hide, he was hell-bent on heading for wilderness and oblivion.

  Bill broke into a run but the closer he got, the more determined Edgar was to ignore him. ‘Hang on. I just want to see that you’re OK. Slow down, hang on—’

  Edgar whirled around and held up his fists, ready to fight.

  Bill stopped and kept his distance. ‘Whoa. It’s all right; I’ll stay where I am.’ My God, he looks awful, he thought. Edgar’s face was blue with cold. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were sunk far back in his head. What the hell is he up to?

  ‘Fuck off, Bill. I said, fuck off!’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He made a conciliatory gesture. ‘Listen, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

  Edgar let his fists drop to his side. The wind gusted so strongly that he lost his balance again and went down onto one knee. Placing his palm flat on the ground, he leaned sideways, feeling the cold pierce his entire body. Then suddenly his arm was too weak to bear his weight and he found himself falling flat on his face and rolling down the cold, cold slope towards Bill.

  Bill stooped to pull him up. ‘Let me help, there’s a good chap. That’s right – I’m hooking your arm around my shoulder. There, that’s better.’

  Edgar felt the huge sky press down on him. He saw the yellow, snow-laden clouds through half-closed eyes, felt the black earth spin. He had no strength to resist.

  ‘Now then, we’ll walk back down to the road together. You see my car down there? That’s where we’re heading.’ Slowly Bill led Edgar down the steep moor side. He saw his father get out of the car, cross the road and wait by the wall. ‘There’s a blanket in the boot,’ he called down to him.

  Vince went to fetch it. He handed it over as Bill helped Edgar over the wall. ‘Good Lord, I thought it was a tramp but it’s Cliff Kershaw’s lad. What’s wrong with him? What’s he doing all the way out here?’

  Bill shook his head. ‘Wait till we get him home. We’ll leave it to Grace to try to get some answers.’ Easier said than done; Edgar was heavier than he looked and his body was rigid with cold. At last, however, they managed to sit him on the back seat and close the door. Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the Blacksmith’s Arms.

  Grace had been on the lookout for Edgar all morning and at the sound of Bill’s car she dashed outside. She saw Edgar wrapped in a blanket, hunched forward on the back seat, and Bill opening the door to let him out. Bill’s father sat in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Oh, Edgar, thank heavens!’ she cried. ‘I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  Bill held up a warning finger. ‘Stand back, Grace – don’t crowd him. Come on, Edgar – you’re home now. Grace will look after you.’

  Edgar sat with his head hanging, showing no sign of getting out of the car, and Grace felt her heart skip a beat and then quicken. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ she begged.

  ‘We found him up on Swinsty Edge – just in time, by the look of it. I think he’s been out there all night.’

  Suppressing a groan, she stepped forward, crouched to Edgar’s level then took his hand. ‘It’s me – Grace,’ she whispered gently.

  Edgar turned his head towards her with a dark, empty gaze then glanced down at her hand clasped over his. He looked up again with dead eyes.

  ‘You’re home,’ she murmured, willing him to respond. ‘Can you walk across the yard?’

  ‘I don’t think he can answer you.’ Bill ushered her to one side and leaned inside the car. ‘Go around the other side and sit beside him,’ he told Grace. ‘A little push from you might galvanize him into action. I’ll be ready here to fish him out.’

  The plan worked and Bill supported Edgar as he stepped shakily out of the car. ‘Easy does it,’ he cajoled before asking his father to go ahead and warn Cliff of Edgar’s imminent arrival.

  ‘Oh, Edgar,’ Grace said, sorrowfully brushing aside the idea that her brother might have lost his way in the fog. No – his decision to stay out all night had been premeditated. ‘Things can’t be that bad, surely.’

  Bill said nothing until they’d got him into the house and sat him down at the kitchen table.

  Vince stayed with Cliff in the doorway, advising him not to say too much. ‘Better to let Edgar thaw out by the fire before you start firing questions at him.’

  ‘You’re right. But I’m not expecting to get any sense out of him, even then.’ His son looked like the living dead, so gaunt and vacant that Cliff was shaken to his core. ‘He’s not right in the head, is he?’

  ‘He’s not,’ Vince agreed. He’d seen enough cases of shell shock as a stretcher bearer in the First War to recognize it in Edgar. ‘Give him time to come to his senses, there’s a good chap.’

  ‘Is that why the doctors sent him home?’ Cliff was stricken by sudden guilt. ‘Why the heck didn’t he say something?’

  ‘I expect he felt he couldn’t.’ Vince led his old friend down a corridor into the deserted forge. ‘Don’t be too hard on the lad.’ His voice echoed in the barn-like space. Old horseshoes lay in a pile under the window, two pairs of bellows leaned against the wall and Cliff’s blacksmith’s hammers and tongs hung in a tidy row next to the unlit furnace. ‘Time will be the healer here, and plenty of it.’

  By late afternoon, Bill and Grace had at last managed to get Edgar to bed. They stood outside in the quiet pub yard, looking up at light clouds scudding across the big moon.

  ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t found him?’ she said with a shudder and a glance up at the light glimmering in Edgar’s window. ‘Do you think he would have made his own way home eventually?’

  ‘There’s no point wondering.’

  ‘Anyway, thank you.’ Her plain words fell far short of expressing the gratitude she felt.

  ‘Shall we walk a little way?’ He put his arm around her shoulder, led her behind the forge and over the stile into the field.

  They fell into step in the moonlight and soon left the lights of the village behind.

  ‘This is the first bit of time we’ve spent together for more than a week.’ He’d missed the sway of her body against him as they walked and the light feel of her arm around his waist. ‘How did we let that happen?’

  She smiled but didn’t reply as she leaned in closer.

  ‘We won’t do it again,’ he assured her.

  They’d reached another stile. He stepped to one side and watched her climb over it. Her hair looked fairer in this light, her face paler. She was a slender woodland creature surrounded by silvery branches, turning to wait for him. He jumped down and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close. ‘This is what I’ve missed the most,’ he whispered as he kissed her lips.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Out at Fieldhead, Una waited an age for darkness to fall. Time dragged as she methodically polished her shoes and folded her laundry then reluctantly went to rehearse her duet in Elsie’s room.

  ‘You’re a bag of nerves,’ Elsie chided as Una dropped her sheet music for the third time. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  �
��Nothing. I’m tired, that’s all.’ It was a decent excuse after her first solid week of working on the land. ‘Nine hours at a loom was nothing compared to this.’

  ‘You should try being the only lass on a stable yard full of lads,’ Elsie pointed out. ‘They’re scrawny but strong – ex-jockeys most of them. I had to work twice as hard to prove my worth.’

  Una liked Elsie but she was scarcely listening. ‘What time is it?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Half past four. Why?’

  Suddenly it was time to leave and Una thrust the music into Elsie’s hands. ‘Sorry, I have to go. Brenda’s promised me a ride on her motor bike.’

  She shot down the corridor into her own room where she found Brenda and Kathleen lounging on their beds. ‘Ready?’ she asked Brenda who carried on flicking through her copy of The Land Girl magazine.

  ‘It says here that Lady Denman is pleased with her appeal to bring in new volunteers. It’s paid off, apparently.’

  ‘That’s because they put our wages up to thirty-two shillings.’ Kathleen was waiting for her hair to set before she took out her curlers. ‘I’ll bet that’s why you joined up, Una – because you’re earning more than you did as a mill girl.’

  ‘And aren’t you glad you did!’ Brenda leaped up then searched in her drawer for her pair of goggles and leather gloves. ‘Think of all the fun you’d have missed if you hadn’t.’

  Kathleen raised a sarcastic eyebrow. ‘All the cowsheds and hen huts you wouldn’t have had to clean, all the ditches you wouldn’t have had to dig …’

  ‘Shut up, Kathleen!’ Brenda waltzed Una out of the room then hustled her down the stairs, along the damp corridor into the kitchen. ‘Did Nev deliver your note?’ she hissed in her ear.

  ‘I’m not sure. I hope so.’ At around midday, shortly after her visit to the Blacksmith’s Arms, Una’s stomach had tied itself into a knot that had twisted tighter as the afternoon had worn on. What if Neville had just pocketed her sixpence and was laughing up his sleeve?

  ‘Ah, little chicken,’ Brenda cooed. She found a pencil and paper on a shelf and scribbled a note for the warden: