by Anne Bennett
‘I can understand that,’ Will said. ‘That storm was certainly a ferocious one – even I’ve never seen the like. The thunder and lightning nearly drove the horse mad and I would imagine there’s some damage hereabouts.’
‘Sure to be,’ Rita said.
‘Well, as you can see, no harm came to the girls,’ Will said. ‘And they helped me save a sizeable amount of hay and have taken to the milking like they’ve been doing it all their lives. The missus has even had them learning how to make butter and cheese with the excess milk when we couldn’t get the churns to the head of the lane. All in all, they have turned out a treat and we would like to keep them, but I didn’t know whether they had been assigned to someone else.’
‘Oh, no, Mr Heppleswaite,’ Rita said. ‘It isn’t as organised as all that. You were assigned two girls and if you want these two to train up, they needn’t go anywhere else. In fact, yours is a good farm for teaching them all aspects of farm work because you do arable as well as dairy, don’t you?’
Will nodded. ‘And I keep chickens and pigs.’
‘And the girls can live in?’
‘Oh, yes. We have plenty of room.’
‘That suit you?’ Rita asked Meg and Joy, and both girls nodded eagerly.
‘Well, that seems to cover everything,’ Rita said. ‘I shouldn’t think you had that much time to unpack when you arrived, but get your things together and I will give out the rest of your uniforms and then you are set. You know where to come if you have any problems, but I will come out to see you by and by anyway.’
A little later, as they were stuffing the few possessions – the civilian clothes they had removed on their arrival – back into their cases, Meg said, ‘Yes, I’m glad to be going to the Heppleswaites because I really like them, but won’t you miss living in this big house? You seemed very impressed when we arrived.’
‘Oh, it’s true that I was a bit awed by the size of the place,’ Joy said. ‘But I’ve been thinking about it since. None of us land girls will be living in the lap of luxury, it seems to me. Instead we will be toiling at physically hard and dirty work. This hostel might have mod cons in the shape of baths, and so on, but anyone staying here will not have much time to use them – they’ll have to be up earlier than we will be in order to reach the farms they are working on, and they will get home later, too shattered to do anything but fall into bed, I should think. What about you?’
‘I never wanted to stay here,’ Meg said. ‘I would have felt like a fish out of water.’
‘Good job it worked out the way it did, then.’
‘I’ll say,’ Meg said, picking up her case and giving the room a cursory glance. ‘You ready?’
‘I’m ready.’ Joy said.
Penkridge soon came into view as the road was a long straight one, and Will said, ‘Now, although lots of people call this a village, it is in fact a small market town and holds a market twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday.’
‘Pretty enough place, though, for all that,’ Stephen said as the cart rumbled along the cobbled streets. ‘You’ll soon see that for yourselves.’
Will pulled the horse to a stop in Market Street. ‘I have to take Will for his hospital appointment, leave the accumulator at the garage, and it will take a few hours to charge, and then I have a few errands of my own to do, including fetching gas masks for us all.’
‘Gas masks!’ repeated the girls, looking askance.
‘Yes, well, the Germans used mustard gas in the Great War,’ Stephen said. ‘It’s only a precaution.’
‘But also the law,’ Will said. ‘Everyone has to have a gas mask. There’s no choice in the matter. Though let’s hope we never have to use them. So why don’t you forget all about gas masks for now and, while I’m busy, take a turn about the town and get to know your way round a bit? When all my business is attended to, you will find me and Stephen at the Boat Inn on the canal side. Join me there when you have finished your jaunting. Anyone will tell you where it is.’
The girls were pleased enough by that suggestion and quickly clambered from the cart outside the garage and set off, coming first upon a train station. It was small and very basic, but a few passengers sat on one of the benches on the platform and a porter wheeled parcels about on a trolley and looked very important.
‘Didn’t know there was a railway station here,’ Meg said. ‘Wonder where it goes to?’
‘Be great if it went all the way to Birmingham, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Meg said. ‘If we ever get time off, we might be able to go home – not that I am in a great hurry to see Doris.’
‘We’ll ask Will and Enid,’ Joy said. ‘They are bound to know, but no chance of much time off yet, I’d say, so let’s go and look at the rest of Penkridge.’
Stephen was right, it was a pretty place, with many old timbered and half-timbered houses both big and small. Some had thatched roofs and some of the larger ones had mullioned windows similar to the ones at the hostel. ‘These must be really old,’ Joy said. ‘See, some of the beams are quite crooked.’
Meg nodded. ‘But they are lovely, aren’t they? I mean, I have seen pictures in books of houses like these, but never thought I would see the real thing.’
And whether Penkridge was regarded as a village or a town, it did have a proper village green with shops grouped around it, which the girls were delighted to find. They discovered the river overhung with weeping willows, babbling over its stony bed, the sun glinting on the ripples.
Eventually, though, they went back into the town and came upon a large and imposing old church. It stood in its own grounds through small, wrought-iron gates with a little graveyard beyond that. The stained glass in the large arched window facing them sparkled in a myriad of colours in the early autumn sun, and there was a castellated turret above the main body of the church with a clock on the side of it.
‘Looks very grand, don’t you think?’ Meg said.
‘I’ll say,’ Joy agreed. ‘And it’s got a fancy name that fits it somehow, St Michael and All Angels.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Meg said. ‘That will be the parish church – Anglican, you know.’
‘You looking for a Catholic one?’
‘Well, as we’re here, I thought I would have a look,’ Meg said. ‘I mean, as the Heppleswaites are Catholic too, it makes life easier for me, and Enid said they usually go to nine o’clock Mass on Sunday morning in Penkridge, so I’d like to have a dekko at it.’
St Mary’s, the Roman Catholic church, was on the edge of town and, after the splendour of the Anglican church, Meg was rather disappointed by its square block construction Even the stained-glass looked not a patch on the beautiful windows of St Michael’s. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Joy said when Meg said this. ‘It’s got a lovely entrance. Anyway, does it really matter what it looks like? I thought it was what went on inside it that was more important than the building.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Meg said. ‘Just now, though, we had better find this pub and Will and Stephen, ’cos we’ve been ages and they might be waiting for us.’
‘Yes,’ said Joy. ‘I saw a gleam of water as we were making for the church. That’ll be the canal.’
It was, and they walked along the towpath towards the town, watching the brightly coloured barges ploughing their way slowly through the water.
‘At least it looks cleanish here, not like the dirty, oily canals in Brum,’ Joy said. ‘My brother learned to swim in the canal and my mother was always saying it was a wonder he had never caught anything. She never told him off much or anything for all the scrapes he got into. All our growing up she was fond of saying, “Boys will be boys”, and that seemed to give my brother licence to do what he wanted.’
‘I know,’ Meg said. ‘It’s not fair, is it?’
‘When we are older and in charge we’ll have to change things round a bit,’ Joy said.
‘We will,’ Meg agreed, and then suddenly said, ‘Oh, look, there’s Stephen waving.
’ They hurried towards him.
‘Have you been waiting long?’ Joy asked. ‘I think we got a bit carried away looking round.’
‘No worries,’ Stephen said. ‘I had a pretty long wait at the hospital for all I had an appointment, and now I’m stood here with a pint watching the world go round, and there is no better way to spend a Friday morning. Anyway, Dad says charging the accumulator takes some time.’
‘Did you get the gas masks?’ Meg asked Will when he came to join them.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Each one comes in its own little box. We’ll examine them when we get home, and that is all I’m going to say about the gas masks now. I have a much better thing to ask you,’ he went on, consulting his watch. ‘There’s time enough for another drink. Would you girls like a glass of lemonade?’
‘Oh, yes please,’ Meg said, for she had seldom drunk it and thought it one of the nicest drinks she had ever had.
Later, as they climbed into the cart to go home, Will said, ‘Hope you like fish because I’ve got us some nice haddock for tonight. You’ll find Enid can do a mean fish pie.’
‘I eat most things,’ Joy said. ‘Though I must admit I’ve never had much fish, but I will eat it. I always find it doesn’t pay to be fussy.’
‘Well, you’re right there,’ Will said approvingly. ‘And if I hadn’t got hold of any fish today, we’d only have had eggs for the meal because we can’t eat meat, see, with it being a Friday.’ And he said to Meg, ‘We’d best rattle through the milking Sunday morning then, because we’ll all be going to nine o’clock Mass. And what about you?’ he said to Joy. ‘Are you a churchgoer?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Well, whether you are or not in the general way of things, I would go to some church this Sunday,’ Will told her. ‘And, once there, pray like you have never prayed before, because I believe that is only divine intervention that will stop this war now.’
At the farmhouse they found Enid using the treadle sewing machine, making curtains for the windows that didn’t have shutters, using the horrible black material she had put by and hoped she’d never have to use.
‘It’s a two-hundred-pound fine if you let a chink of light show, they say, so I can’t bury my head in the sand any longer,’ she said. ‘But I must admit it will depress me totally to have black curtains covering the windows.’
Neither Meg nor Joy blamed her one bit. ‘Still,’ Enid said, ‘that’s the way of it today and we have just got to get on with things.’
What everyone was really curious about was the gas masks, and a few minutes later, when Meg opened the box and hauled the mask out, she thought she had never seen anything so hideous in the whole of her life. When she fitted it over her face it was even worse, because she found it hard to breathe and the stench of rubber was overpowering. Joy felt the same.
‘God,’ she said, ‘if we all have to wear these things for long, Hitler won’t have any trouble invading us. No one will be able to stop him because we’ll all be asphyxiated.’
‘We may be glad of them if he uses poison gas,’ Will said.
‘I don’t know whether I wouldn’t rather take my chance with the gas.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Will and Stephen assured her.
‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that,’ Enid said soothingly. And she added, ‘Let’s not fight amongst ourselves. Hitler and his armies are what we have to focus our energies on. Mind you, the news just now is enough to make anyone tetchy.’
When they settled down to eat the steaming pie – which Will declared ‘champion’ – Enid said to Joy, ‘What religion are you, Joy? C of E?’
Joy shrugged. ‘Suppose so. Never really thought about it ’cos it’s not as if we went to church or anything.’
‘Would you like to go to St Michael’s?’ Enid asked. ‘We could take you in on the cart with us?’
It was on the tip of Joy’s tongue to say she wouldn’t bother going anywhere, but with the world situation as it was, she thought a few prayers and church attendance couldn’t hurt. She knew, though, that she would feel nervous of going to a strange church where she knew no one so, accepting the fact that one church was very like another, and that all Christian churches worshipped the same God, she said that she would like to go with them to Mass at St Mary’s.
Later that day, now the girls were staying with them, Enid asked about the rates the land girls were paid and learned that Joy was to be paid thirty-two shillings because she was eighteen but Meg only twenty-eight shillings because she was younger.
Enid was annoyed. ‘We paid our two male farm hands thirty-eight shillings a week and you two will be doing the work of three,’ she said. ‘And you must pay keep out of that.’
The girls nodded. ‘Well, I’ve never heard the like,’ Enid went on.
‘The farm hands, because they were young, single chaps, used to sleep in the rooms we had made for them above the barn. You could have slept there too because we made them right cosy and warm, with a Primus stove and all, but we just thought being young ladies you might be more comfortable in the house. But what I am saying is we never charged them for those rooms. It was part and parcel of their wages, for farm work in general isn’t well paid, but for you to get so much less and then to pay keep out of that doesn’t seem right, especially as you are doing us a favour.’
‘Have many hours a week are you expected to work for this princely sum?’ Will asked.
‘Fifty in the summer and forty-eight in the winter,’ Meg said. ‘And I think we must pay you something just for the inconvenience of us being here.’
‘I agree,’ Joy said. ‘It might even be one of the rules or something.’
‘Maybe,’ Enid said. ‘God knows, there are rules for every damned thing these days. So how about if I take a third of your money, that’s seven shillings from you, Meg, and eight shillings from you, Joy.’
‘Oh, are you sure that’s enough?’ Joy asked.
Enid never got to reply, however, because suddenly Will lifted his hand, crossed the room and turned up the wireless for the news. The newscaster was saying Poles were fighting for their lives although everyone knew that they had little chance against the disciplined German armies. Meg felt really dispirited as she went to bed that night.
EIGHTEEN
Sunday morning before Mass there were clusters of people standing about all talking of the possibility of war. Enid did interrupt the talk to introduce the two girls to her sister, Lily, whom she’d told them about, and Meg was surprised when Lily said the three children she had with her – one girl and two younger boys – were her new evacuees, because she had understood that Lily never bothered with children other than Stephen. These three looked extremely malnourished and were stick-thin and scrawny, reminiscent of many children in the streets Meg had been born in.
But she knew in the care of Enid’s sister, Lily, they would be all right. She had been taken with the older woman straight away. She was a little on the plump side, like Enid, and had the same lovely, kind face, with twinkling blue eyes and round rosy cheeks. Her hair was cut much shorter than Enid’s and worn loose, so dark curls peeped out from under the bonnet she wore for Mass. She had a beautiful smile, a soft voice, and a sort of goodness seemed to ooze out of her.
They went into the church as the strains of the organ could be heard. Meg thought the inside of the church matched the outside for it too was rather plain. Around the walls were the carved figures of the Stations of the Cross and it had a simple high altar and the only ornamentation on it was a Lamb and a Flag etched in a recess underneath the altar table. There was a very old statue of the Virgin Mary that Enid whispered came from the Benedictine friars when their convent was ransacked by Parliamentarians in the civil war.
When the Mass began though Meg was impressed by the priest, who said that there might be testing times ahead and that they had to pray for courage to meet the challenges. She prayed earnestly for just that.
They didn’t linger after Mass. Meg, Will a
nd Enid had taken communion and no one had eaten breakfast, so they were all famished. They wanted breakfast over and done so they could concentrate on the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain’s, wireless broadcast, which was due that morning.
It was almost a quarter past eleven when the sombre tones of Neville Chamberlain announced that because Hitler refused to withdraw his armies from Poland, Britain was at war with Germany. Although it was what they had all expected, for a few seconds no one spoke, stunned at the magnitude of the terrible reality.
‘Thank God the doctor is removing the plasters next week,’ Stephen said, breaking the silence. ‘He said the bones have knitted together nicely.’
‘So what happens now?’ Meg asked.
‘Back to camp,’ Stephen said. ‘A spot of physio will get me fully fit again and not a moment too soon I’d say.’
Immediately after the declaration of war, places of entertainment such as cinemas, theatres, concert halls – and any similar places where large numbers might gather – were closed, but that made little difference to life on the farm. The whole of the country was shocked, though, when the day after war was declared, news came in of a passenger ship, SS Athenia, carrying evacuated children and mothers to America, torpedoed and sunk with the loss of nearly 120 lives.
‘Shows what barbarians we are dealing with,’ Enid said fiercely, very agitated by the news. ‘Fancy attacking and sinking an unarmed ship filled with civilians.’
‘Well, maybe now you’ll realise why I felt I had to join in the fight,’ Stephen said. ‘This man and his fearsome armies have to be stopped.’
‘Yes, and it’s a fight we must win,’ Meg said.
‘Of course,’ Will said. ‘And our bit is to grow enough food to feed the nation, because what has been done to an unarmed passenger ship can be done to unarmed merchant ships just as easily. The more we are able to produce here, the less we have to import and the more sailors’ lives we can save.’
