The Land Girls at Christmas

by Jenny Holmes

  The deal was done and Brenda, Grace and Joyce set about their morning’s work. They used wide, soft brooms to sweep up dust, old sweet wrappers and cigarette ends from under cast-iron radiators and generally make the hall ready.

  ‘The Christmas tree looks a bit bare,’ Joyce remarked as she swept behind it. ‘It needs more baubles.’

  Grace stood back and examined it. ‘We’ve used everything in Alice Foster’s box, but I’ve forgotten to bring the silver pine cones that you brought.’

  ‘Never mind the baubles, what about Una?’ Joyce brought them back to their original topic. ‘I’m worried about what Jean and Co. are up to behind her back.’

  The others agreed. ‘Jean never took to Una from the start,’ Brenda pointed out.

  ‘Well, I did,’ Grace said firmly. ‘I’d stick up for her any day.’

  ‘You might have to.’ Joyce rested her broom against the wall and gathered them into the corner close to the tree. ‘This mustn’t go any further until I know what Mrs C intends to do about it, but I’ve found out that Frank Kellett is still pestering Una – well, worse than that, he’s broken into the hostel again and started stealing her things.’

  There was a shocked intake of breath and a stunned silence.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Grace asked after she’d gathered her thoughts. So much had happened lately that Frank seemed to have slipped from everyone’s thoughts. Even Emily and Joe rarely mentioned him.

  Joyce recounted the evidence to more shocked gasps. ‘Think about it – who else but Frank would do something like that?’

  ‘You’re right.’ Brenda kept her voice down because of an uneasy sensation that someone might be eavesdropping. She glanced quickly around the empty hall to convince herself that this wasn’t true. ‘How did Una react?’

  ‘I don’t know if Mrs C has told her yet.’ This was the crux of what was making Joyce so uneasy – surely Una had the right to know that Frank was back in the picture and in the worst possible way. ‘Perhaps that’s why she’s kept her at Fieldhead – so she can take her to one side to put her in the picture then explain what action she’s going to take.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Like Brenda, Grace was rattled by the news. ‘In the meantime, there must be something we can do.’

  ‘You mean you, me and Joyce?’ Brenda brightened at the idea. ‘You’re right – it can’t be too hard to track down Frank Kellett once we set our minds to it. Between us, we know every inch of these hills and dales – better than Policeman Plod, at any rate. You know how long the boys in blue take to organize themselves.’

  ‘Especially coming up to Christmas.’ In Joyce’s mind, the only obstacle was tonight’s performance, which was taking up most of their spare time. But then, when she thought about it, perhaps the show was a good opportunity to pass the word around. ‘There’ll be more than sixty people in this hall later,’ she realized. ‘Each with a sharp pair of eyes. We’ll let them know who we’re looking for and pick up any information we can – who might have seen Frank lately, whether or not he’s been back to Beckwith Camp for food, and so on. Then, if anyone happens to spot him, they can nab him and turn him in.’

  ‘That’s a tip-top idea,’ Brenda agreed. ‘And after tonight’s over and done with, we can ask for an extra day off and spend the whole of tomorrow scouring the countryside for him.’

  The plan made them feel better so Grace turned her mind back to the silver pine cones stored at home in a box under the kitchen sink. ‘I won’t be long,’ she promised Brenda and Joyce before she slipped across the road to fetch them.

  The door to the forge was open and lanky, lackadaisical Neville stood in the arched entrance with old Major while Cliff was hard at work fashioning an outsize metal shoe. Grace’s father was dressed in his leather apron over some faded blue overalls, sleeves rolled up and his bald head covered by a worn flat cap.

  He pulled a red-hot shoe from the furnace with a long pair of tongs, placed it on the anvil and, with sparks flying in every direction, began to beat it into shape.

  ‘Flippin’ horse has lost another shoe,’ Neville complained over the clang of the hammer when he saw Grace.

  She smiled briefly and hurried on. Inside the house, she found Edgar sitting by the kitchen fire, leafing through her sketchbook. He looked up at her with new interest. He’d made the effort to shave and get dressed in shirt and dark trousers held up by braces, but hadn’t bothered about a collar and tie. He still wore the bandage that Joyce had tied around his left hand. ‘Who drew these?’

  ‘Me,’ she said simply before blushing and trying to snatch the book away.

  He moved it out of reach and held it open at a page containing a pencil drawing of his own face in profile, hair flopping forward, mouth open and eyes closed. ‘When did you do this?’

  ‘A few days ago; while you were nodding off by the fire.’

  Edgar studied the sketch. ‘I look like an old man – bags under my eyes, lines on my forehead, the whole lot.’

  ‘You’re not old,’ she told him as she took the book away then searched under the sink for the cones. There was a smell of shaving foam on his warm skin and she picked up the faintest hint of the old, slightly vain Edgar in the way he complained about how she’d drawn him. She smiled to herself. ‘By the way, you don’t happen to have seen Frank lately, do you?’

  Edgar stood up and put his uninjured hand in his trouser pocket. ‘Why, what’s he done now?’

  She pulled the box out then stood up to face him. ‘I can’t tell you – it’s not common knowledge yet. But if you do spot him, will you let me know?’

  ‘Actually, I have seen him and he was looking like death warmed up,’ Edgar said slowly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Twice.’ He rattled the change in his pocket. ‘He was hanging around in the back field last night, after the pub had shut. I bumped into him when I went for a walk.’

  ‘You should’ve told someone,’ Grace said with a frown. ‘You know the police are after him for breaking into the hostel.’ She resisted asking him why he’d been walking alone in the field at midnight.

  ‘I didn’t have the heart,’ Edgar admitted. ‘The poor bugger scarpered as soon as he saw me. Anyway, he’s harmless, if you ask me.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Her angry retort surprised them both. ‘Ask you, that is. And if you must know, Frank has been making even more of a nuisance of himself since the first break-in. You say you’ve seen him twice. When was the first time?’

  ‘The night before that – Sunday, when the Dornier came down.’ It came as another surprise that he could say these words out loud without stammering or shaking. Staring at his injured hand, he slowly began to untie the bandage. ‘Frank was heading for one of the outhouses at the back of the hostel. I spotted him through the sick-room window, while Joyce was seeing to this hand. I reckoned it was the only place he could find to keep warm.’ Edgar unwound the white gauze, took away the iodine-stained lint pad then laid it on the draining board. He flexed his fingers and examined the scabs. ‘Starting to heal nicely,’ he murmured. Then, before Grace could hurry back to tell Brenda and Joyce what she’d just learned, he went to the door and blocked her exit.

  He looked at her fair and square. ‘I was there last night when you gave Bill his engagement ring back.’

  ‘In the forge?’ Edgar’s eyes and voice were clear – that’s what she noticed more than anything else. He wasn’t miles away in a world of burning planes and dying comrades. He was there in the room with her.

  He nodded. ‘You didn’t see me but I saw you.’

  ‘Edgar, I’m busy. I don’t want to talk about it.’ Try as she might, she couldn’t get past him with her box of decorations.

  ‘It didn’t make sense to me – giving the ring back. Not when you love him and he loves you.’

  When Brenda returned the Institute key to Bob Baxendale at midday, she went back to Joyce and Grace with the news that several POWs were being sent over to Burnside early with supplies for the inte
rval buffet table.

  ‘Bob couldn’t name names but I’d say there was a fair chance of Angelo being amongst them as usual,’ she predicted with a gleam in her eye. ‘What do you say to me cycling back to Fieldhead and letting Una know? Wouldn’t she just love to be here when he arrives?’

  ‘You’ll have to snatch her from under Mrs C’s wing first,’ Joyce warned.

  They were sitting eating sausage rolls in the pub porch, looking out at an inch of fresh snow cover and clearing skies.

  ‘But it would mean the world to Una.’ Grace approved of Brenda’s plan. ‘Joyce and I will go on ahead while you pass on the message. We’ll see you up at Brigg Farm later.’

  So Joyce and Grace finished their packed lunches and cycled off, passing Neville riding bareback as they neared their journey’s end. The grey carthorse plodded steadily up Cragg Hill, hooves sliding over packed snow, tossing his tangled mane and breathing out vast clouds of steam through his wide nostrils. Neville’s legs dangled to either side of his round flanks, heels down and toes up, whistling as he went.

  ‘Give us a tow,’ he called out as the women overtook him.

  ‘Huh, it’d take a Cruiser tank to pull you up this hill.’ Joyce was breathing hard and her legs ached.

  Grace had no breath to spare so she cycled silently on, grateful to turn up the rough, ice-bound lane then walk her bike the final few hundred yards until they came to the spread of low farm buildings on the brow of the hill.

  Roland greeted them from the hayloft above Major’s stable. ‘Have you seen any sign of that half-baked son of mine?’ he shouted to Joyce as she propped her bike against a wall.

  ‘Neville’s on his way.’ Joyce saw Ivy emerge from the stable with a barrow load of soiled straw. She managed a civil greeting then waited with Grace for instructions from Roland.

  Ivy returned the greeting then wheeled the barrow around the back of the stable. Soon afterwards the farmer descended the stone steps from the loft. He dusted hay from his jacket and sneezed loudly. ‘Now that you two have decided to put in an appearance, you might as well load turnips onto the cart, ready to feed the sheep in the bottom field,’ he said grudgingly. ‘You’ll need that wheelbarrow when Ivy’s finished with it. Don’t stand around doing nothing – make a ramp for it with those two planks of wood.’

  The work was well underway when Major plodded into the yard with his passenger aboard. Neville hopped off the horse’s back and opened the stable door. As he passed close to the half-loaded cart, he stopped to tap his top pocket and whisper in Grace’s ear. ‘I’ve got a letter for your friend from a certain person. Shall I give it to you for you to pass on? I’d need a nice shiny sixpence for my trouble, mind you.’

  ‘You’ve already been paid, you cheeky thing!’ Grace watched him pull out the letter but had to stand aside when Ivy came out of the stable and sidled past Major who stamped his feet impatiently. The horse dwarfed them all with his high withers, broad back and enormous head.

  ‘You three – get out of the road!’ Roland yelled from the farmhouse door.

  They shuffled to one side to let Major enter his stable then Neville closed and bolted the door.

  As he did this, Ivy snatched the letter out of his hand. It was written in pencil on a piece of lined paper taken from a cheap notebook. ‘What’s this?’ she said as she began to read its contents out loud. ‘My Oona, my love. I dream of holding you. Always I dream …’

  She stopped and laughed, waving Angelo’s letter under Grace’s nose. ‘Don’t tell me – this is from the Italian gigolo!’

  ‘Give it to me.’ Grace fixed Ivy with a stone-cold stare.

  ‘I think of you always, every moment …’

  ‘I said, give it to me.’ To have Una and Angelo exposed to Ivy’s ridicule was more than Grace could bear. With a rapid flick of her hand, she tried to take the letter from her. The thin paper tore in half, leaving Ivy with Angelo’s signature and a row of kisses.

  Ivy laughed again. Joyce put aside the wheelbarrow and strode across the yard to join them.

  If Ivy felt outnumbered and intimidated, she didn’t show it. ‘If it’s not bad enough for Una to fraternize with the enemy whenever she gets half a chance, you two have to encourage her,’ she mocked.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Grace had regained her self-control. She held her head high and didn’t budge as Ivy attempted to push past.

  ‘You’re always sticking up for her, aren’t you? You and Kathleen, and Brenda as well. In fact, Brenda’s the worst of the lot.’

  ‘We don’t have to stick up for Una – she can hold her own against you and your pals.’ Joyce used the last word disparagingly to show just how little she thought of Ivy, Jean and Dorothy.

  ‘Girls, girls!’ Neville came between Joyce and Ivy and pushed them apart. ‘Simmer down.’

  Ivy pushed back, shoving the scrap of paper at him. ‘You’re as bad!’ she said furiously. ‘Carrying messages and sneaking about. What have you got to say about that, Mr Thomson?’

  Roland strode towards them. ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you loading the cart?’

  Ivy ran to meet him. She was a match in height for the wiry, grey-haired farmer and gesticulated wildly as she spoke. ‘Did you know that Neville is in cahoots with a girl from our hostel? He takes silly love letters from Una Sharpe to an Italian at the camp and vice versa.’

  ‘Does he now?’ Roland narrowed his eyes then made a beeline for his son. ‘Is that right?’

  Neville stuffed the torn note into his pocket. ‘What if I do? There’s no law against me making a bit of pocket money on the side.’

  Ashamed to be a part of the unseemly squabble, Grace held the other half of the note in her shaking hand. Joyce sighed and fumed inwardly.

  Ivy pointed to the scrap of paper. ‘There’s the evidence. And, would you believe it, these two don’t see anything wrong in it.’

  Slowly Roland made sense of what was going on. ‘Is Una Sharpe the lass who pulled the Jerry gunner out of the plane wreck?’ he asked Grace.

  A furious energy pushed Ivy to jump in with an answer. ‘That’s the very one. And, if you remember, she went AWOL with him for a couple of hours afterwards. No one knows where they went or what they got up to.’

  Roland looked from Ivy to Neville then to Grace and Joyce. ‘Una Sharpe?’ he repeated with a perplexed shake of his head.

  ‘Yes. We’ve got a turncoat among us.’ Ivy’s sense of self-importance made her puff out her chest like an angry robin. ‘I’m not afraid to call a spade a spade, Mr Thomson. Una’s only been at Fieldhead for a few weeks but ever since she came, her antics have turned the whole place upside down.’

  While Grace shook and Joyce fumed, Neville took an uncoordinated, angular step forward. ‘Don’t listen to her, Dad. She’s talking a load of old codswallop.’

  Roland couldn’t have been more surprised if Neville had told him that Major had won the Grand National. ‘Why are you sticking your oar in?’ he grunted.

  ‘Because it’s not fair, that’s why.’ Neville’s shoulders went back and his chin came forward as he squared up to Ivy. ‘When has Una ever put a foot wrong? Give her a job and she does it. She’s never late and she works twice as hard as some I could mention.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Neville.’ At this rate, it would be too late to hitch Major up to the cart and take the turnips down to the sheep in the bottom field. Roland turned on his heel and went to fetch a halter from the hook by the stable door.

  Neville followed him. ‘I mean it, Dad. Una doesn’t deserve to have her name dragged through the mud.’

  ‘A fat lot you care,’ his father retorted as he got ready to unbolt the stable door. ‘All you mind about is losing your precious pocket money.’

  Major appeared at the door. He kicked it with a front hoof the size of a dinner plate and the low boom echoed around the yard.

  ‘Here – give me that.’ Neville took the halter and buckled it around Major’s head then let him out. ‘You’re wrong,�
�� he told his father as he steered Major a few inches too close to where Ivy stood, forcing her to take a quick step back. Before she could protest, he muttered a few words under his breath, to the slow rhythm of his horse’s clopping hooves – one short syllable at a time so there could be no mistake. ‘You leave Una alone, or else.’

  ‘The tide is starting to turn in Una’s favour,’ Grace told Brenda when she turned up on her motor bike late in the afternoon. Joyce had ridden on the cart with Neville and Ivy to feed the sheep, leaving Grace to tidy up the yard. ‘Neville put Ivy in her place good and proper.’

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d been here to see that.’ Brenda leaned on the wall overlooking the Thomsons’ land. In the valley bottom she saw a hundred sheep running from all directions towards the turnip-laden horse and cart. They looked grey against the white hillside. ‘Good for Neville, at any rate.’

  ‘I know. He really meant what he said. How is Una, by the way?’

  ‘How do you think?’ Brenda had cycled back to Fieldhead as planned. She’d found Una moping in their room, fresh from an interview with Mrs Craven, who’d informed her about the latest developments. ‘I could see that she was shaken up by the news of Frank stealing her things and about the police being involved again. By the way, she said there should’ve been a set of six hankies in that drawer. I went down and told Ma C it would do Una good to ride with me into the village. Keeping busy in the Institute would help take her mind off the nasty business with Frank. She could take everything she needed for the show – her dress and shoes, et cetera, then there’d be no need for her to go back to the hostel.’

  ‘And she agreed?’

  ‘After a few honeyed words from me – yes. On the way in I let Una know there was a fair chance that Angelo would get to the hall early. Her face lit up at that, I can tell you.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Brenda shrugged. ‘There was no sign of anyone from the camp when we got there. I offered to stick around with her but she said no, she’d be fine on her own.’