A Girl Can Dream

by Anne Bennett

  ‘That’s because a lot of the factories were built to back onto the canals,’ Rita said. ‘And all their effluent and waste were just tipped into them.’

  ‘Dad said we have more than Venice,’ Joy said. ‘Not that he’s been or anything, but he read it somewhere.’

  ‘Venice is in Italy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Joy said. ‘And they sort of live on the water. They have river taxis and river buses and all sorts.’

  However, before they saw the canal they passed a field that appeared to be empty until Meg spotted the horses sheltering under a tree.

  ‘What enormous horses,’ Joy exclaimed. ‘And look at their shaggy feet.’

  ‘Our Co-op milkman has one like that,’ Meg said. ‘He told me horses like that are called Shires.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rita said. ‘Built for stamina and strength, not speed, and more important than ever now that tractors are hard to come by. Not that all farmers hold with tractors, anyway. A fair few want to stick with their horses.’

  One of the horses gave a snicker and then a snort, nodding his head as if in disgust. ‘Probably making a protest about horses being replaced by machines,’ Meg said with a laugh.

  ‘I think it’s just that they don’t like the smell of petrol,’ Rita said. ‘Cows don’t seem to mind.’

  Again Rita was right because the black and white cows in the neighbouring field had their heads over the fence, jostling for position, their large brown eyes fastened on the truck chugging past as they stood patiently chewing.

  ‘Why are they eating like that all the time?’ one girl asked, and her voice was so high-pitched that they heard it in the front of the cab, even over the noise of the engine.

  ‘It’s called chewing the cud,’ Rita called out, as she negotiated the country roads with ease. ‘A cow is able to regurgitate its food because it has four stomachs.’

  ‘Ugh. That’s disgusting.’

  Rita laughed. ‘’Course it isn’t, it’s nature. That’s how they make the milk, and you won’t think “Ugh” when you have it on your porridge tomorrow, will you now?’

  ‘Don’t suppose so.’

  ‘One thing we have plenty of is milk,’ Rita said. ‘And you might be glad of it before you are much older.’

  They passed signs to West Bromwich. Rita turned the truck instead towards Coseley and there, running alongside the road, was the canal. Although Meg knew it was probably torpid and oil-slicked, it looked quite attractive with the sun shining on it, making the water gleam.

  The truck rattled along merrily, and now and again, through a gap in the hedgerow Meg could see the towpath running alongside the canal. Sometimes people were on it and occasionally she got a glimpse of a vibrantly bedecked barge, but then at Coseley they left the canal.

  ‘Is it much further?’ she asked as they drove through a little place called Darlaston.

  ‘Not much further,’ Rita said. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’

  ‘I’m hot more than anything,’ Meg said. ‘And my bottom’s gone to sleep and I’m not at all sure about the rest of me.’

  Rita let out a gale of laughter. ‘In a few minutes we will be driving through a place called Willenhall and Wolverhampton just lies to the west of it, but we have to go another ten miles or so to Penkridge.’

  ‘Dad says Wolverhampton is a sizeable place.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Rita said. ‘It is your nearest big town – well worth a visit if ever you have the time.’

  ‘I presume we get some time off?’ Joy said.

  ‘Well,’ said Rita, ‘I think officially you work fifty hours, now reduced to forty-eight in the winter with one day off a week, but all I’m saying is there are times when the farms are extra busy, such as at harvest or spring planting, and the hours can’t be so rigid; but they’ll likely give you more time later when it is quieter.’

  ‘Oh, I think we understand that well enough,’ Joy said. ‘I don’t think in any kind of farming the hours can be as exact as that.’

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ Rita said. ‘And look now, Huntington is just ahead and Penkridge Lodge where you’re staying is just this side of the village. Only a step away.’

  Meg couldn’t quite believe it when Rita turned the truck through wrought-iron gates and down a gravel path. Her startled eyes met the equally amazed ones of Joy as Rita drew up in front of an enormous mansion set in its own grounds. It was three storeys high and built of honey-coloured bricks. A cream balustrade ran all along the first and second floors, and marble steps led up to the impressive studded oak door.

  ‘Wow,’ said Meg as the truck stopped with a squeal of brakes and a spray of gravel.

  ‘Right, ladies, we’re here,’ Rita shouted to those in the back, and she leaped down from the cab like a woman half her age. Meg and Joy got down much more gingerly to see the others, equally stiff-limbed, staring around as if they too could hardly believe they would be staying in such a place during training.

  ‘Blimey, look at all them chimneys,’ one girl said.

  ‘My mom was in service here before she got married,’ another said. ‘She told me what this place was like. And you’ve got to remember that every chimney leads to a grate for a little servant girl to clean out every morning, and then light and keep alight all day and into the evening, which involved carrying heavy buckets of coal up and down stairs all day. My mom swears that she has one arm longer than the other because of it.’

  ‘I bet she had to clean the windows too,’ Meg said. ‘And there’s hundreds of them, and some of them have got circles on them.’

  ‘And if Mary’s mother didn’t clean them,’ Rita put in, ‘someone else must have done, and fairly recently too, because see how they are sparkling in the sun?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s lovely,’ Meg said. ‘It will be great to stay here.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll say,’ Joy said. ‘I can stand a bit of this. When I joined up they didn’t tell us we would be living in the lap of luxury.’

  ‘You probably won’t be,’ Rita warned. ‘This is really only while you’re being trained. You might find many of the farms a bit primitive.’

  ‘And we stay on the farms?’

  ‘Ideally,’ Rita said. ‘But that really depends on the farm. If the farmer has a big family, or just a small farmhouse and there isn’t room for you to stay, then you could come back here. Now pick up your bags and baggage and we’ll go and meet Mrs Warburton, who will cook for you here.’

  ‘Through the front door?’ Meg asked in surprise as Rita mounted the marble steps.

  ‘But of course through the front door,’ Rita said, and swung it open. They all followed her into a large hall with a black and white checked floor and the magnificent sweep of a highly polished oak staircase. ‘Dump your things in the hall till we have your bedrooms assigned,’ Rita said. ‘You must have had your breakfast early and I bet you’re hungry.’

  There was a murmur of agreement, though Meg hadn’t realised how hungry she was until Rita mentioned it. They followed behind her a little nervously as she crossed the hall, and Meg almost expected an officious and pompous butler to pop up and direct them to the servants’ entrance at the back.

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ Joy said when Meg whispered this to her. ‘You can almost see the ghosts of women in long dresses with satin slippers and men wearing suits that make them look like penguins.’

  Meg smiled as Joy went on, ‘Seriously, though, who does this place belong to? Houses like this don’t usually stand empty.’

  But this one certainly was. Rita, ahead of the line of them, had turned down a corridor and she was opening a green door. ‘That’s the green baize door Mom told me about,’ Joy said.

  ‘Did she know this house then?’

  ‘No, not this house,’ Joy said. ‘It’s in all big houses, and it separates the house where the posh people live from the kitchen and all the servants that look after them. It’s supposed to close silently so it doesn’t disturb them.’

  A
nd it did, Meg noticed, unless you could count the very slight ‘Ssh’ sound. It led into the biggest kitchen Meg had ever seen in her life. There was a huge old-fashioned cooker, gleaming copper pans hung from hooks, and floor-to-ceiling cupboards and shelves, and in the middle of the shiny tiled floor was a very large scrubbed wooden table.

  Presiding over this was the woman Rita introduced as Mrs Warburton.

  ‘Never trust a thin cook,’ Joy whispered out of the side of her mouth, and Meg smiled because Mrs Warburton was a roly-poly kind of a woman, her brown frizzy hair was half covered with a hat and an apron was tied around her more-than-ample waist.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ the cook said with a smile. ‘And though there is a dining room, it would hardly accommodate everyone, and anyway, I thought you might feel more at home in the servants’ hall.’

  ‘I don’t care where we eat,’ called a woman from the back. ‘Just as long as we do it soon.’

  They were all soon sitting around a table even bigger than the one in the kitchen. Three large steaming casserole dishes were put before them along with two bowls of buttered potatoes. The food was delicious and Meg tucked in with relish, wondering at her appetite because she had done nothing but sit in a truck half the morning.

  The stew was followed by jam roly-poly and about a ton of custard, and it was as everyone was finishing and the girls leaning back in their chairs, replete, that Mrs Warburton said to Rita, ‘Silas came in this morning.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What did he want?’

  ‘To see if you were here with the girls. I said that you wouldn’t be here till lunchtime.’

  ‘Why did he want to know?’

  ‘He says their help might be needed,’ Mrs Warburton said. ‘There’s a big storm coming.’

  Meg looked at Joy and then at Rita, thinking of the heat of the day and for days past. It hadn’t rained for weeks. Rita obviously thought the same. ‘Surely not? It’s lovely out.’

  Mrs Warburton shrugged. ‘S’what he said.’

  ‘Who’s this Silas?’ someone asked.

  ‘He’s an old fellow who helps in the gardens and he can predict the weather.’

  ‘Is he good?’

  ‘Better than the bloke on the wireless,’ Mrs Warburton said.

  ‘Has he ever been wrong?’ Meg asked, and Rita shook her head.

  ‘So,’ Meg said. ‘There is going to be a storm.’ She didn’t see what a problem that could be.

  ‘This could be catastrophic for the farmers at the moment,’ Rita said. ‘A storm now would ruin the hay. Many were late cutting it anyway after the young men were all called up. It has dried lovely in the hot summer we’ve had, but rain now we can do without.’

  ‘Silas has been round the farms already and they’re taking it seriously,’ Mrs Warburton said.

  ‘And so must we,’ Rita said. ‘How long did Silas say before this storm breaks?’

  ‘Eight hours or thereabouts, but that was mid-morning.’

  ‘Dear God!’

  ‘Some of the women from the village have already set off to lend a hand.’

  ‘Girls,’ Rita said, ‘I’m afraid I must throw you in at the deep end. Come with me quickly and I will give out your summer uniforms for now because there is no time to waste.’

  They trooped behind Rita into what Meg imagined was the dining room, and on the beautiful shiny wooden dining table were piles of clothes. From each pile Rita selected a short-sleeved beige Aertex shirt, a green jumper, a pair of dungarees, one pair of Land Army issue socks, one pair of boots and a hat.

  Meg changed in the room she was going to share with Joy and wrinkled her nose when she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the outside of the wardrobe. ‘Not the most elegant of uniforms,’ Meg said. ‘But I suppose it’s practical enough.’

  ‘Well, I joined up to make a difference,’ Joy said. ‘So I’m not that bothered what the clothes look like as long as they are suitable for the job.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Meg said. ‘And if this Silas is right in his predictions and we can get the hay undercover before the storm breaks, then it will make a difference.’

  ‘I’ll say – and I don’t think we have long, and being new to it we’re bound to be a bit slow and clumsy,’ Joy said.

  ‘We’ll soon see,’ Meg said. ‘I can hear Rita calling us.’

  However, Meg was not the only one who found it difficult to hurry in the heavy, cumbersome and very stiff boots; they all were complaining about them. One girl said, ‘If you wee in the boots and leave them overnight, they soften up lovely.’

  There was a combined cry of disgust. ‘Ugh!’

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ Meg said, and there was a mumble of agreement from many of the others, but the girl was unabashed.

  ‘Please yourselves,’ she said. ‘I thought that too at first, but my brother was one of the young ones called up and he got blisters on top of blisters at first, until an old hand gave him that tip and he had no trouble after.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to try it?’

  ‘Why not?’ the girl said. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’

  ‘Get a move on girls, do,’ Rita said. ‘You can discuss your boots later.’

  Outside, although it was still warm, it was muggy heat. Clouds had begun to drift across the blue sky, and in every hay field the truck passed the land girls saw people – old men and women and even children – working feverishly.

  Eventually, Rita stopped at the top of one lane and said, ‘Oakhurst Farm. This is where you will be, Meg and Joy. They have lost their son and two farm hands to the Forces, but we can only give them two Land Army girls, so I’d say you’ll have your work cut out. Name of Will and Enid Heppleswaite. Just do your best.’

  ‘Are you dropping us here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rita said. ‘I can’t risk the truck down the lane. I might get down and not get back up. Here’s Will come to meet you now.’

  Will Heppleswaite was in his early fifties, though he looked older, for his hair was white, bleached by the sun, and his face was wrinkled and weather-beaten. But his brown eyes were kind and Meg felt herself relax.

  ‘Here you are, Mr Heppleswaite,’ Rita said, as she climbed back into the truck. ‘I’ll leave them in your capable hands.’

  Will smiled, crinkling all the skin around his eyes as he waved to Rita, but really he was dismayed at the sight of Joy and Meg. They wouldn’t have known this initially, for his smile was warm and welcoming and his handshake firm.

  ‘Now, as Rita told you, my name is Will, so we’ll get the names out of the way first.’

  ‘Meg Hallett,’ Meg told him, shaking the proffered hand.

  ‘Joy Tranter,’ Joy said, doing the same.

  ‘Well, I am very pleased to have the two of you here,’ Will said. ‘And never doubt that for a moment. ‘It’s just … well, you’re such slight things. Do you think you are up to this sort of work?’

  ‘We’re stronger than we look, honestly,’ Meg said. ‘But we will do our best and work as hard as we know how, and surely any help is better than none.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Will said. ‘And I have no time for arguing the toss either. Come on, Enid and I will work alongside you and show you what to do. Between us all, and with God’s help, we may save most of the hay.’

  The mown hay had been made up into little hay cocks to dry thoroughly and Will told them these had to made into stacks, which he secured with ropes made out of straw. These tied stacks could then be transferred to the trailer that the farm horse they called Dobbin would pull down to the barn. They had already built one stack and it was in the barn, and they were halfway through another. Meg was assigned to work alongside Enid and found there was an art to getting hay to stay on a pitchfork so that she could throw it up to the top of the stack, as Enid did with such ease.

  However, she was in the same mould as Will and unfailingly kind and patient. They had similar eyes, but Enid’s face was plumper. In fact, she was plumper all over, and her
brown hair, which was scraped back into a bun, was liberally streaked with grey.

  As they worked Enid spoke of the difficulties of running a farm without help, and what a blow it had been when their son, Stephen, had been called up.

  ‘He wasn’t on his own, of course, because the other two young farm hands we took on were called up too. They joined the regular army. I mean, Stephen came and told us that he felt that’s what he had to do. Well, now he’s home again for a bit.

  ‘Is he? Meg said, wondering why he wasn’t out in the fields helping them if he was home. She didn’t say this, but Enid must have guessed she was curious.

  She said, ‘And we are lucky to have him home in one piece because he was run over at the camp a month ago now. He hadn’t signed to go into the regular army that long before this accident. The brakes failed on the truck one of the chaps was driving and Stephen wasn’t able to get out of the way quick enough.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Meg said. ‘Was he badly injured?’

  ‘Nothing that won’t fix, praise God,’ said Will. ‘He had some internal injuries but the camp doctor sorted those out. But he needs time for them to heal properly, we were told. His body is a mass of cuts and bruises and he also had a badly broken ankle and arm, and dislocated shoulder, and feels bad that he isn’t able to help more. Enid and I think he was lucky that the injuries were not worse and I just tell him to be patient. Now he can be seen as an outpatient he has been allowed to come home for a bit.’

  ‘And “patient” is not a word Stephen thinks much of,’ Enid put in.and Will replied with a wheezy laugh, ‘No indeed he does not.’

  ‘We’ll try and make up for the loss of the help you had,’ Joy promised, and the two girls threw themselves into the work with even more vigour as the clouds gathered above them. The drop in temperature was welcome – Meg and Joy had already been forced to remove their jumpers – but the breeze that sprang up wasn’t, because it scattered the little hay cocks and the hay had to be gathered up again.

  When they could no longer throw up the hay from the ground, Will produced a small ladder to lean against the stack, and Meg and Joy laboured on. Meg was very glad that she had got the hang of keeping hay on the pitchfork at last. But as fast as they worked, they knew time was against them, especially as Will had to leave them to do the milking just as the third stack was completed.