A Girl Can Dream

by Anne Bennett

  The dark, dense, purple-fringed clouds that now filled the sky were so low that they turned the afternoon prematurely dark. It was difficult to see but they couldn’t afford to stop, so Enid went down to the house and came back with two hurricane lamps, which helped a bit.

  Sometime later, when Will returned, he was in time to tie down the fourth stack, which was then hitched to Dobbin. Enid led him down the lanes as fast as the horse was prepared to go.

  The two girls and Will bent to their task again, but they had only made a smallish mound when the first large drops of water fell. ‘Oh, bugger!’ Will cried, and then the sky was rent open by forked lightning, cracking across it from one side to the other. Will leaped to his feet as the lightning was followed almost immediately by the extremely loud, rolling crash of thunder.

  ‘Must give Enid a hand,’ Will said. ‘Damned horse can’t abide thunder. If Enid can’t handle him and he rears up, he might do himself a mischief, hitched to the trailer as he is. And we also risk losing the whole stack of hay.’

  ‘Go,’ Meg said to Will as the rain began to fall like solid sheets of water. They collected up the ladder, the pitchforks, the kerosene lamps and their jumpers, and made for the farmhouse. The lane was already filling with mud, and slippery, but it was hard to be careful, for with the dense, dark clouds and relentless, torrential rain, they could scarcely see where they were going. And then the lightning crackled and flamed, throwing everything into sharp relief for a second, and then the evening plunged back into darkness while the rumble and boom of thunder filled the air.

  By the time they got to the farmhouse, a whitewashed two-storeyed building with shuttered windows painted red like the front door, they were soaked through, but went straight to the stable where they found that Enid and Will still had their hands full with Dobbin. Will had managed to unhitch the trailer, but the horse was so unnerved by the storm that he couldn’t get near him to get the hitching harness or bridle or anything else off him. Meg could understand the horse’s agitation, because she thought herself unafraid of storms, but she had never seen such a ferocious one.

  ‘Can we help?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Will said. ‘Thanks anyway, but Dobbin is too spooked to have anyone here he doesn’t know. Every time he hears the thunder and lightning he rears up, and I’m afraid of him hurting himself. But it would help if you could put the hens away before the fox pays us a visit. That would really put the tin hat on it today. Oh, and the sow and piglets better be shut up safe in the sty. Old Reynard might fancy a bit of pork for a change.’

  ‘He might indeed,’ Enid said. ‘Cheek of the devil, foxes have. That would be such a help. Do you mind doing that?’

  Meg minded very much going back out into the teeth of that storm and she could tell by Joy’s rueful expression that she did too. But they assured Enid they didn’t mind in the slightest, for as Joy said when they were again in the yard facing the elements, ‘It isn’t as if we can get any wetter.’

  Joy was right, as the water was running off them, but the hens had also been disturbed by the storm and had scattered all over the farm. The two girls hadn’t any idea of how many there should be and so they had to delve under every hedge and bush and search every ditch while the relentless rain hammered at them as if they were being beaten with stair rods.

  ‘I’m sure if we get the rooster in, the hens will follow,’ Meg said. But the rooster proved the most awkward of all. In the end they each took a handful of chicken feed they’d found in the barn and, using that, they coaxed and cajoled the cantankerous old rooster in and the hens followed behind. Eventually all the fowl were locked up safe for the night.

  The indolent sow was another matter; she was in no hurry to move anywhere. She was feeding her numerous offspring under the overhang of the pig pen, so was in some shelter, and she completely disregarded Meg and Joy’s efforts to move her into the sty, where there would be more shelter from the elements and where her brood would be safer from the attentions of the fox.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Meg said. ‘We can hardly haul her inside.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Joy. ‘Even with the two of us, we’d hardly manage it, and anyway she might not go without a fight. I think she could give you a hefty thump if she put her mind to it. Oh,’ she added suddenly, ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll see in a minute,’ Joy said. ‘Keep her attention.’

  ‘What?’ Meg said, staring at Joy incredulously. ‘What are you on about, “keep her attention”? She’s a flipping pig.’

  ‘I know what she is and I don’t want her to see me going to the back of her,’ Joy said, moving around as she spoke. And then once at the back of the pig pen, she lifted her leg over the wall and – quick as a flash – she plucked the last two piglets from the sow’s teats and they began to shriek lustily as she tossed them into the straw in the sty.

  The sow moved surprisingly quickly for one so large, and Joy hastily pulled her foot back as, with a grunting roar, the sow got to her feet, spilling the piglets from her. She gave Joy a malevolent glare as she lumbered into the sty and the other piglets followed her.

  Meg leaned over and shot the bolt, saying with a grin as she did so, ‘Made an enemy there, I’d say.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Joy. ‘And do you think I’m worried? Now let’s get inside, out of this bloody rain, before both of us catch our deaths.’

  Enid threw her hands in the air at the state of them as they stood at the doorway shivering in their saturated dungarees, Aertex shirts and their sodden, muddy boots but all Meg’s attention was taken by the young man beside the range, his plastered foot on a stool and his plastered arm in a sling. She thought Stephen Heppleswaite the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

  It seemed odd to call a man beautiful but she couldn’t think of another word to describe a man with hair so blond it was almost white, a handsome yet kind face and lively dark blue eyes. But those eyes, indeed, his whole face, looked troubled as he watched his mother fussing over the girls. Girls he had never seen before, but his mother said they’d been assigned Land Girls and so he presumed that’s who they were for they had a uniform of sorts and they were so wet water was pooling at their feet

  ‘Look how wet you both are,’ he said as Enid ran for towels. ‘Are you from the Land Army?

  Still shivering the girls just nodded. ‘Baptism by fire all right,’ Stephen went on, ‘while I just sit here like Lord Muck.’ Even his voice had a musical quality to it, thought Meg.

  ‘Well, that’s not your fault is it,’ Enid said, wrapping towels around the Meg and Joy. ‘And I’ll soon deal with the girls, never fear.’ She took them to her bedroom and had them stripped and rubbed dry and their hair towelled, and then she pulled her spare nighties over them and wrapped blankets around them before they returned to the kitchen where Enid arranged their uniforms on a clothes horse and opened the door of the range to let the fire out to dry their clothes and their boots which were steaming on the floor.

  ‘Is anyone going to try and fetch you tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘No one said anything about fetching us,’ Joy said. ‘I mean, we weren’t given a time or anything, but I expect they will come for us eventually.’

  ‘In the meantime you have this,’ Enid said, and she handed the girls each a bowl of broth she had put on the range to heat, and gave another to Stephen. The girls took them gratefully, and the hunk of bread was very welcome too.

  ‘Oh, that was so good,’ Meg said sincerely as she drained the bowl.

  ‘One thing about working on a farm,’ Stephen said, ‘you build up a rare appetite.’

  ‘You might be right there,’ Joy said. ‘Though we’ve not done much farm work yet I was famished. Weren’t you, Meg?’

  ‘You bet I was,’ Meg said. ‘That was delicious broth, Enid. Thank you so much. I was so hungry I was beginning to feel I’d have to gnaw on the chair leg.’

  Enid laughed. ‘That’s one thing you’ll never
have to do on this farm,’ she said. ‘I can always knock up a meal.’

  ‘I can second that,’ Stephen said. ‘Tell you, if Dad hadn’t kept me hard at it in the fields I’d be the size of a house by now.’

  Enid was preventing replying for Will came in then and he looked at the two girls and said, ‘You won’t get back to Penkridge Lodge tonight because the lane is flooded. It’s completely impassable, and the rain is still coming down, though the thunder and lightning has stopped, thank goodness, so the horse is settled at last. I thought at one point I would be spending the night in the stable.’

  ‘Then you must stay here,’ Enid said to the two girls. ‘That will be better in a way because your clothes will be properly dried by tomorrow.’

  Meg was immensely glad not to be going out into that cold, squally night again, but she said, ‘Sorry to be putting you out like this.’

  ‘You’re not putting us out,’ Enid insisted. ‘And it’s hardly your fault anyway. No, we’ll be glad to have you stay.’

  ‘I’ll echo that,’ Will said. ‘You two girls have worked like Trojans today.’

  Meg knew that to be true, for even when they chatted they never stopped and at times she had felt as if her back was breaking. But still they had left a quarter of the field where the hay would be lying flattened by the rain. ‘Sorry we couldn’t get all the hay in,’ she said. ‘There was at least one more stack left there, maybe two.’

  ‘Listen,’ Will said. ‘We have four full haystacks in the barn, thanks to you, plus the one Enid and me did on our own, so you should be proud of yourselves.’

  ‘Yes, you should,’ Stephen said. ‘I bet it’s not work you are used to.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  ‘You are likely tired, though,’ Enid said, ‘so I’ll just go and make the beds up for you.’

  Meg was so glad to hear that because she was more than tired, she was exhausted, but hadn’t liked to say, so she was thankful when Will said, ‘When Enid has the beds made, you can go up when you want. I’ll be following you myself shortly, for we don’t keep late hours on farms.’

  So when Enid came down, Meg and Joy, still with blankets wrapped around them, made their way to bed.

  ‘What an eventful first day,’ Joy said as she climbed into bed.

  ‘I’ll say,’ Meg agreed.

  ‘Wonder what tomorrow will bring.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Joy sleepily.

  ‘Well, we best go to sleep now or we shan’t be able for whatever it is,’ Meg said, but there was no answer from Joy, just the sound of her gentle breathing because she was already fast asleep. Meg gave a small sigh of contentment, closed her eyes and followed her friend’s example.

  SIXTEEN

  When Meg opened her eyes the next morning, she was disorientated for a moment, and then she realised where she was, sat up in bed and pulled the curtain.

  ‘Oh wow!’

  ‘Wassup?’ Joy asked sleepily.

  ‘There’s water everywhere,’ Meg said. ‘Don’t mean a bit of water, like, but lots. I mean, there’s no fields, just a proper sea of water.’

  Joy joined Meg at the window. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s the same everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Blimey, even in the yard the water is more than halfway up Will’s boots.’

  They watched as he ploughed his way across to the barn to let the dogs out, and when they jumped into the swirling water their legs almost disappeared. ‘Will must be going for the cows,’ Meg said. ‘If they have been stood in water all night, that won’t have done them any good.’

  ‘No,’ Joy agreed. ‘And the cowshed might be waterlogged as well.’

  ‘Everywhere will be, I’d say,’ Meg said, getting out of bed. ‘Good job they have those two steep steps to get into the house, or the water might have got in here as well.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Joy asked as Meg struggled to her feet and wrapped the blanket back round herself.

  ‘To see if I can help.’

  ‘You’ll be as good as useless without wellingtons.’

  ‘Maybe they have spare ones,’ Meg said. ‘Stephen must have used boots. Maybe they kept the ones he grew out of. I mean, wellington boots don’t have to fit like shoes. I used to keep a pair of wellies for about three years, stuffed the toes with old socks that were past darning, and I didn’t get a new pair till they were small enough for the next one down. Anyway, I won’t know till I ask. Come on, this is our chance to get our uniforms on while Will’s out of the way.’

  Enid was downstairs and was surprised to see them up. ‘Thought you’d still be tired,’ she said, pouring them each a very welcome cup of tea. ‘You looked done in last night.’

  ‘We were tired,’ Joy said. ‘But that was yesterday. We’re young and fit and we bounce back.’

  ‘We’d like to help,’ Meg added. ‘But we have no wellies.’

  ‘No wellies,’ Enid said. ‘I’d say they were essential for farm work.’

  ‘They might well be part of the uniform,’ Joy said. ‘They just gave us the basics to get us here as quickly as possible. I mean, Rita knew there was going to be a storm, but I shouldn’t have thought she had any idea it was going to be as fierce as it was.’

  ‘No one expected that,’ Enid said. ‘I have never experienced such a storm. The man on the wireless said this morning that Staffordshire was the worst hit.’

  ‘You have a wireless?’ Joy asked in surprise.

  ‘Yes, there it is on alcove by the chimney breast,’ Enid said.

  ‘Fancy us not noticing that yesterday,’ Meg smiled as she struggled into her crumpled but dry uniform.

  ‘We haven’t had the wireless that long,’ Enid said. ‘And we’re not really in the way of turning it on much, except for the news. We got it after our lad came home after his initial six weeks and said that he was joining the Royal Staffs because there was one holy bloody war coming and he wanted to be part of it. His dad was upset, you know, with him being in the last one. He never said much about it, always said he didn’t want to relive it, but the odd thing he let slip was bad enough. I mean, I know that every man is someone’s son or brother or father, but when it is your much-loved only son, it’s very hard.’

  Enid’s eyes suddenly looked very bleak and then she said, ‘And now he’s home for me to spoil a bit before he’s back in the fray again.’

  ‘My brother did the self-same thing,’ Joy said. ‘And my parents were upset as well.’

  Enid nodded. ‘At the beginning, Will wanted Stephen to claim exemption as a farmer, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Really I was proud of him and deep down Will was too. Anyway, when he’d gone, Will said we needed to get a wireless to keep abreast of any war news.’

  ‘You get some good stuff on a wireless,’ Joy said. ‘Plays and all different kinds of music and comedy shows and that.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Enid said. ‘Will turned it on this morning for the weather report. That’s how he knew Staffs took the brunt of that storm, but he turned it off again because we run it with an accumulator that we have charged up every week in Penkridge. With the weather the way it is, who knows when we will get to Penkridge again.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘you were asking about wellington boots. We have a collection in the attic. I never threw the old ones away because Will said rubber was useful and he has mended more than one bike puncture with a pair of old wellies. Come up and see if there’s some to fit you.’

  There were, and soon Meg and Joy were sloshing across the yard to meet Will, who was leading the twenty cows down the waterlogged lane towards the cowshed, the dogs, Fly and Cap, beside him.

  ‘Were they stood in water all night?’ Meg asked, concerned.

  Will laughed. ‘Not they,’ he said. ‘Mind, I might have been in a pretty pickle by now if they had been. I might be facing foot rot and all manner of other things, but this little lot found this hummocky grass on the field. It goes up a slight incline, but there’s
not much of it and they were all squashed on and around that, and not that keen on moving off it either. See, they are usually waiting by the gate at milking time ’cos their udders are heavy and probably uncomfortable, but they wasn’t moving through that water and I had to go and fetch them. In the end it was the dogs barking that made them shift.’

  ‘Oh, I bet they enjoyed that,’ said Meg, giving the two sheepdogs a tentative stroke. ‘Look at them with their mouths open like that. You’d swear they were laughing.’

  ‘I often think the same myself,’ Will said. ‘Now I bet you want to have a practice milking these here cows.’

  ‘It’s one of the things we shall have to learn,’ Joy said. ‘Apparently, to teach you they have this contraption on a frame that has rubber teats filled with water attached.’

  ‘Nothing like a real cow,’ Will said. ‘Let me show you.’

  Will was very patient with the girls, first of all showing them how the udders had to be washed gently. Meg was almost too frightened to touch them (she had never seen udders before and thought them rather grotesque), but she also saw how uncomfortable the cows were, and so she washed them as tenderly as she could, then sat astride the three-legged stool the way Will showed her, pulled slightly and squeezed the first teat. She was ridiculously pleased that a squirt of milk hit the bucket held between her legs.

  ‘Well done,’ Will said. ‘Now relax. Lean your head against the flank of the animal and get a rhythm going.’

  It didn’t come straight away, but Meg had more of a technique by the second cow and was better still with the third, and later she came to regard milking as one of the favourite of all her farming duties. This was despite the fact that there were rogue cows that could kick out and upset the bucket, depositing the milk all over the milkmaid and the straw, or the ones that would shuffle round to crush the unsuspecting, or knock a person off the stool altogether, and she learned the hard way not to stand at the back of the animal.