The Land Girls at Christmas

by Jenny Holmes

  Ma C,

  Please keep our cottage pie warm in the oven. Back around nine. Ta.

  Love from Brenda and Una

  This done, she used the servants’ door to slip away. ‘There’s no point drawing attention to ourselves,’ she explained as they crossed the yard to the old stable where she kept her bike.

  ‘How far is it to Beckwith Camp?’ Una asked once they were on their way, roaring past Peggy Russell’s farm with its noisy dog.

  ‘It’s eight miles to the north, so no more than fifteen minutes on Old Sloper here. It’ll be almost dark by the time we get there. I’ll drop you off at the junction of Penny Lane and wait for you there.’

  Una crouched behind Brenda to stay out of the wind. She felt as if she was stepping into the unknown, with no clue about what she would find at the camp, but visualizing barbed-wire fences and armed guards at the very least.

  ‘Or else I can take you as close to the woods as we can get.’ Brenda sensed a growing nervousness in Una’s silence. ‘Then I’ll be within shouting distance if you need me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’ This will go well, she told herself firmly. Angelo had come across as gentle and sincere. They would meet and talk as they walked, exchanging facts about their families, taking things one slow step at a time.

  At the crossroads into Burnside, Brenda turned right along the road leading towards Swinsty Edge then, after a mile along this road, she turned away from the ridge down a more sheltered lane that came out onto a long lane that ran as straight as a die with a large, brick-built building in the distance.

  ‘This is Penny Lane and that’s the old isolation hospital,’ Brenda said over her shoulder. ‘They’ve turned it into officers’ quarters for the Canadian Air Force now. Beckwith Camp is half a mile beyond that.’

  In the dim dusk light Una could just make out the outline of the old hospital, with its ornate gables and arched windows. There was a sentry box at the gates and two servicemen leaning out of a Land Rover to talk to the armed occupant.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll invite the Canadians to our Christmas show as well as the prisoners.’ This new idea appealed to Brenda and she resolved to talk to Edith Mostyn about it the first chance she got. ‘After all, why shouldn’t they join in the fun?’

  ‘Where’s the prisoners’ camp?’ Una clung tight as Brenda braked suddenly, came to a halt and pointed. ‘Oh, I see.’ She took in orderly rows of Nissen huts laid out in a flat field in front of some tall conifers. There were no high fences or guards, only the usual low stone walls and a five-barred gate across the narrow driveway.

  ‘Is this close enough?’

  Una nodded then dismounted. She took off her hat and patted her hair. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Adorable, baby.’

  Una smiled at Brenda’s American drawl. ‘All right, I’m ready. Wish me luck.’

  ‘Good luck, Una.’ Straddling her bike with her arms folded, Brenda followed Una’s progress with interest. Would she march straight up to the gate and risk being turned back, or would she work her way around the side of the Nissen huts and enter the wood from behind? Brenda thought that the cloak-and-dagger style would produce better results.

  The approach to Beckwith Camp was bare of trees and, sure enough, Una quickly realized that the only way to reach the meeting place without being spotted was to climb a stile and follow a cart track to one side of the open field. Luckily for her, centuries of use had created a rutted dip between two stone walls so that her head barely came up to the wall tops and she could easily make her way to the wood unseen. As long as I don’t trip and fall, I should get there safely enough, she thought. She stopped and took a deep breath, looked up at the darkening sky then walked on.

  Sounds from the camp reached her as she drew near. A car engine started up, followed by a shout of ‘grazie’ and doors slamming shut. Someone whistled a tune then there was laughter, footsteps on gravel, more doors slamming.

  Una paused again before entering the wood. She tried not to think of how silly she would feel if Angelo didn’t turn up; she would just have to swallow the bitter pill of disappointment and make Brenda promise not to tell a living soul.

  New sounds drifted through the calm, moonlit air. She heard more men’s voices, this time from among the trees. Then she made out two figures stooped over a pile of logs that had been neatly stacked between two tree trunks. One was Angelo, the other Lorenzo. Her heart jumped and she suppressed an urge to hurry towards them.

  Lorenzo stood up straight to let Angelo load pine logs into his outstretched arms. Both men were looking keenly around them, anticipating her arrival, and it wasn’t long before Angelo spotted Una waiting silently at the edge of the wood. He spoke rapidly to Lorenzo then came to meet her.

  Una held her breath. Here he was, striding towards her, his hand raised in glad greeting. The white scarf at his throat stood out in the gathering darkness.

  ‘You are here,’ he began, taking her by the hand. His smile was broad as he linked arms and walked her into the wood to join his friend.

  ‘He hoped but he didn’t believe,’ Lorenzo told her with an amused grin. ‘I said yes, this one, she will keep her promise.’

  ‘Neville gave you my note?’ she asked Angelo, who kept tight hold of her arm. Her heart soared and sang, her body tingled with excitement.

  He nodded and patted her hand.

  ‘I take wood for the fire.’ Lorenzo glanced in the direction of the camp. ‘I tell the guard, ten minutes then Angelo will come with more.’

  She understood the plan. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, her voice seeming to float away from her into the gathering darkness.

  Then she and Angelo were alone. She breathed in the strong, sweet smell of pine resin.

  ‘Bene,’ he murmured and smiled. Their footfall was silent as they trod over a thick bed of pine needles towards a fast-running beck at the far side of the wood. ‘Good, good, you are here. How are you? You are well?’

  Una smiled at the formality of the phrases. ‘Very well, thank you. How do you say “thank you” in Italian?’

  ‘Grazie,’ he said with a roll of the ‘r’. He found a flat rock by the side of the stream and they sat side by side. ‘Sorry … my English.’

  ‘No, don’t apologize – my Italian is worse.’

  ‘You are Una. I am Angelo. My home is Pisa in Italy. Your home?’

  ‘Millwood,’ she told him. ‘It has mills, making cloth – the name tells you that. I worked as a weaver.’ She made an undulating movement with her arm to mime the action of a shuttle darting across a loom. ‘You understand?’

  He nodded. ‘Family?’ he asked.

  ‘Four brothers – Tom, Douglas, Ernest and Geoffrey.’

  ‘Mother, father?’

  ‘They died when I was young. Yours?’

  ‘They live,’ he replied, moving closer. ‘In Pisa I work for them as cook.’

  ‘In a restaurant?’

  ‘In hotel. Why you smile?’

  ‘You make me smile, that’s why.’ She felt his arm slide around her waist and let her body lean against his.

  ‘You are happy?’

  She nodded. His voice was warm and tender, his gaze clear. Water rushed over rocks, moonlight filtered through the pine canopy and she was falling, falling …

  ‘You are here,’ he murmured again as he brushed her cheek with his fingertips. Then he put his hand to his chest and tapped it rapidly. ‘My heart.’

  ‘Mine too,’ she confessed.

  They kissed. Falling and melting, giving way to a feeling that was too strong to resist, here on their first meeting, lips touching, hands caressing, hearts beating fast. They embraced in that moment and let go of the world.

  The second half of November brought some good news for a country already wearied by war. In North Africa the British 8th Army began an operation to relieve Tobruk and HMS Devonshire sank the German cruiser Atlantis. Better still, Stalin had stood firm and kept the enemy out of Moscow, where the cold f
orced them into an ignominious retreat. However, the Americans still teetered on the brink of declaring war against Japan and German air raids continued over Britain’s major cities and sea ports. Rationing was extended to include eggs, lard and milk.

  ‘It’s the price we have to pay,’ Vince Mostyn insisted whenever Edith grumbled about an almost empty larder. ‘If Adolf thinks he can starve us into surrender, he has another think coming.’

  This was the widely held opinion amongst Burnside residents. Horace Turnbull out at Winsill Edge and Roland Thomson from Brigg Farm had their regular get-togethers in the Blacksmith’s Arms with Maurice Baxendale and Joe Kellett when they pored over the latest newspaper reports. Churchill was the man to carry on leading the charge against Herr Hitler – no one better. And Jerry was on the verge of being frozen out of their approach to Moscow. On the last Saturday in November, the pub was busier than usual and Grace and Cliff worked hard to slake their customers’ thirst.

  ‘Did you hear on the wireless that Jerry dropped his bombs over Thornley Reservoir earlier this week?’ Maurice kept the closest eye on local events. ‘He intended to destroy the dam and cut off our water supply.’

  ‘Did he do any damage?’ Roland was keen to find out. He conjured up the low rumble of enemy engines over the moors, the whir of propellers, the thud of bombs on the ground, the ear-splitting explosion.

  ‘No, he missed his target by a mile.’

  ‘But he’ll be back,’ Joe predicted.

  Drinking beer next to a warm fire was the best way to end a hard working week. You could sit here and have a natter, watch the Land Girls gather around the piano and listen to them warble. Yes, war would get you down if you let it, but you were better off than the poor buggers in the cities being bombed to smithereens, and you must always look on the bright side.

  ‘I haven’t seen anything of Edgar lately,’ Bill mentioned to Cliff while he waited his turn at the bar. ‘How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Grace took him to the quack’s yesterday to see if there was a medicine to help steady his nerves.’

  ‘And was there?’ Bill was surprised she hadn’t mentioned it to him beforehand. He leaned forward to catch her attention. ‘What did the doctor say about Edgar? Was he any help?’

  Grace slid two glasses of cider towards Brenda.

  ‘Ta very much.’ Brenda took them and seized her chance to chat with Bill about the day’s football result. ‘I hear your team won. What was the score?’

  ‘Two – nil. It was a scrappy match, though.’

  ‘Never mind, the result is what matters.’ She smiled brightly to hide a small stab of disappointment that he’d turned his back on her, then she carried the drinks to the piano – one for her and one for Joyce.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Bill told Grace. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘The doctor listened to Edgar’s heart, took his blood pressure, and so on. He could tell he was far from right, but he admitted there wasn’t much he could do except write to the RAF base to recommend keeping him at home for a few more weeks.’

  ‘Until after Christmas, then?’ Bill considered this for a while. ‘Do you think that’s the answer? Mightn’t it be better for him to get back to flying before then or at least to being with his pals?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘You haven’t seen him lately.’

  ‘No, not since the day we found him on Swinsty Edge.’

  ‘He’s worse, if anything.’ She sighed deeply. ‘He won’t eat. I try to stop him drinking whisky, but the moment my back is turned …’

  Bill saw her shoulders sag. ‘Where is he now? I could have a word with him if you like.’

  ‘He’s in bed.’

  ‘With a bottle for company?’ It wasn’t fair of Edgar to pile more worry onto Grace’s shoulders – he might at least see that. Bill frowned at the hopelessness of the situation.

  ‘That’ll be one and threepence, please.’ She took money from Maurice and put it in the till.

  ‘Meet me outside.’ Bill decided on the spur of the moment that he and Grace needed to talk. ‘After you’ve finished here. I’ll wait in the car.’

  Across the room, Brenda leaned against the piano and considered the latest snub from Bill. She confessed to Joyce that she found him hard to weigh up. ‘He blows hot and cold,’ she confided. ‘Sometimes he’s nice as pie, all smiles and offering to mend my bike.’

  ‘But not tonight?’ Joyce was accustomed to the other girls using her as a sounding board. She was a few years older and seemingly wiser, preferring to listen as a way of keeping attention away from herself. No one here knew about her life in Warwickshire, how her father had gone wrong in business in the build-up to war and the farm had been sold to pay his debts, or how her fiancé’s ship, the HMS Southampton, had been sunk off Malta in January this year and he was missing presumed dead.

  Brenda ran her fingernail along the top of the piano. ‘No, not tonight. Still, I’m glad Una is having better luck with her Italian.’

  ‘Yes, he sounds nice.’

  ‘She can’t stop babbling on about him. It’s Angelo this, Angelo that. Apparently he’s shown her a photograph of himself and his sister standing in front of the Leaning Tower. He’s teaching her the different words for “love”, “dear” and “darling”. Amore, amore!’

  ‘Sweet nothings,’ Joyce murmured.

  ‘Una was over the moon on Thursday when she and Kathleen were sent back to Home Farm and he and a bunch of his friends happened to be hedge cutting there. That was their third meeting in the space of two weeks and every time she sees him she falls more and more in love.’

  ‘She does look happy.’ Joyce felt a painful tug at her heartstrings as she recalled the early days of her romance with Walter Johnson. They’d met in Stratford when he was on leave from the Royal Navy and she’d been there for the day, selling off farm machinery at an auction. Afterwards she’d gone with her sister Patricia to drown their sorrows in a pub overlooking the Avon and Walter had arrived in uniform with two of his pals. ‘Look out; here comes the Navy,’ Patricia had said with a nudge and a wink.

  It had been love at first sight on both sides and a whirlwind romance. Joyce had loved Walter with a hot flame of passion that she hadn’t known existed. Bright and dangerous, short lived and fragile – now it was nothing but ashes and memories.

  ‘Lucky her,’ Brenda said with a sigh as she watched Una and Elsie practise a few bars of the song they were working on for the show. They went wrong and giggled then tried again.

  Joyce closed her book of sheet music. She was slowly starting to accept that though Walter was gone, life went on. ‘Yes, good luck to her, I say.’

  Later that night, Bill drove Grace out of Burnside towards Swinsty Edge. It was gone midnight when he parked the car under Kelsey Crag, a remote beauty spot famed for its overhanging cliff and fast-running trout stream. Out here, in the dead of night, not a creature stirred.

  ‘I’m glad you managed to slip away,’ he told her.

  ‘I had to wait until Dad had called last orders. He went straight up to bed afterwards and that was my chance.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You must be tired, for a start.’ He studied her face. ‘Yes, you are – I can see that.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll have a lie-in.’ There were few stars. Clouds scudded across the face of the moon but the massive shadow cast by the crag was impenetrable. ‘Is everything all right, Bill? Has something happened?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ he assured her. He turned on the interior light then rested his arm along the back of Grace’s seat. ‘I’m worried about you, that’s all. You’ve got too much on your plate.’

  ‘I can cope. As long as Edgar doesn’t do anything silly, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t help either, do I?’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ She looked away and saw their reflections in the side window – two pale, unsmiling faces.

  ‘I don’t, though,’ he sa
id glumly. ‘I just make things more complicated, that’s all.’

  Grace glanced down at her lap. She saw that her hands were trembling. ‘Everything is complicated these days. It’s not just us.’

  ‘You mean the war? Yes, I suppose so. No one knows what’s going to happen from one day to the next.’ Only this week, Thomas Lund had received his call-up papers because the rules had been changed again and his clerical job with the civil service was no longer protected. As the feeling of uncertainty built, so Bill grew less sure of his own footing and place in the world. ‘But look, Grace, if you wanted to break off, I’d understand. Honestly, I would.’

  She took a sharp, short breath and an ice-cold chill ran through her. ‘Why would I want that?’

  ‘Because we can’t be open and above board about it. We have to keep it a secret in case people gossip. And that’s my fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I agreed to it, remember.’ Somewhere she found the strength to stop shaking and her voice grew calm. ‘I understand the reasons.’

  Plagued by guilt, Bill plunged into a sea of self-justification. ‘It’s a combination of things. First off, there’s Mother to consider. You know what a fusspot she is and she doesn’t seem to see that it’s high time for me to lead my own life.’

  ‘And you haven’t the heart to tell her.’ Bill’s kind-heartedness was a double-edged sword in Grace’s eyes. It was why she’d fallen in love with him in the first place, but it was also what held them back.

  ‘It’s Dad as well. He’s more and more set on me stepping into his shoes as far as the business goes. In his eyes, I don’t have time for anything else – it’s all work, work, work. And back to Mother; she’s scared to death to upset Dad in case it sets off another heart attack. I tell you, between the pair of them, I can hardly find room to breathe in that house.’

  ‘Stop, Bill – don’t go on.’ Grace had long held a suspicion that there was a darker reason that hadn’t yet seen the light of day. It was rooted in Edith Mostyn’s snobbish resentment at having ‘married beneath herself’, as the saying went. The marriage to Vincent had dragged her out of a world of books and scholarship into one where Ferguson tractor engines and Shell motor oil reigned supreme. Now she wanted better for her son and had persuaded her husband to set their sights on Alice and Lionel Foster’s daughter Shirley, who was due home on leave from the WAF at Christmas. The Fosters were well off and had the status in the neighbourhood that Bill’s parents craved. Whereas what was she, Grace Kershaw? The daughter of the village blacksmith and publican, that’s what.