‘Roger!’ she said, extending her hand. ‘Haven’t seen you since the Blatchfords’ Christmas bash! How the hell are you?’ Alice suspected that for a split second Roger Bayliss was unable to place Margery but he recovered quickly, said that he was well and enquired, not however by name, after the health of her husband. Now it was her turn to look blank. ‘Gordon? He’s fine as far as I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m so damned busy these days I hardly see the man!’ This reminded her of the purpose of her visit. She turned to Alice. ‘May I introduce Mrs Todd?’
In Alice’s hand Roger’s felt large, rough and warm. Hers in his struck him, although her grasp was firm, as cold. Her smooth, narrow fingers slipped through his as she withdrew them. Margery was talking.
‘As I told you on the telephone, Mrs Todd hasn’t quite as much experience as we would like, but she does have a Certificate in Domestic Science and before her marriage took a cordon bleu cookery course in Paris.’ Alice saw one of Roger Bayliss’s eyebrows lift. ‘She has, until the outbreak of war, run her own home, of course, and raised her son…’ It sounded weak. Behind them, Rose cleared her throat, eloquently suggesting her own lack of confidence in Alice. Without looking at her, Roger asked Rose to show their visitor over the upper floor. He did not say please. There was a silence as Alice and Rose left the room. Roger waited until their footsteps had faded. Margery smiled.
‘Your Mrs Crocker seems a bit hostile!’ she said. Roger shrugged.
‘You know these Devonians, Margery. Distrustful of strangers to a man.’ He peered out of the north window, checking on the horse he had tethered to the yard gate. ‘This Mrs…’
‘Todd,’ Margery finished for him and waited.
‘Isn’t she a bit…’
‘Genteel?’ Margery ventured, hoping he would not bring up the matter of Alice’s lack of experience, confidence or natural authority.
‘Some of these girls are going to be pretty rough characters. Will she be able to handle them?’ Margery avoided giving him a direct answer by flicking through the notes she had attached to Alice’s application form.
‘She’s not quite what we’re looking for, I know. But there’s absolutely no one else I can offer you! Beggars can’t be choosers, Roger!’
Upstairs, Rose’s tour was almost complete. Alice was paying little attention as she had already decided that the prospect of running a hostel in this building was not only beyond her but that her prospective employer shared this opinion.
At one end of the upper floor partitions were already in place, transforming the available space into one large bedroom containing three beds, two slightly smaller rooms, each housing two beds, and a fourth rather cramped room which would also accommodate two girls. Each bedroom had its own low, square window and, as well as its beds, just enough space for the dressing table and wardrobe that would shortly be moved into it. At the other end of the building, studs were in position for another room, which would make provision for a further two land girls who might be required either to join Roger Bayliss’s workforce, or whose labour could be hired out to one or other of his neighbours. There was also, above the porch, a small space with a tiny, high window, which Rose described as a boxroom, and next to this a bathroom equipped with a stained, white enamelled bath with claw feet, its brass taps bright with verdigris. In one corner was a hand basin, in the other a lavatory.
‘Only one bathroom!’ Alice breathed.
‘One more’n I’ve got!’ Rose snapped. ‘The range heats the water but there’ll not be enough in the tank for separate baths. Reckon they’ll have to share. Still, ’tis better than a tub in front of the kitchen range, which is what I ’as to make do with!’ she finished virtuously.
At the foot of the stairs they encountered Roger and Margery. Roger dispatched Rose to unpack a box of crockery that had arrived that morning.
He stood, regarding Alice, making her feel as though she might be an item of livestock he was considering bidding for at a cattle auction and she wished, more fervently than she had ever wished before, that James was here. That he would put a protective arm round her and explain that it was all a misunderstanding. That she was, of course, to accompany him to Cambridge. But she knew that this was not going to happen and she had recently guessed why.
When Penelope Fisher had first been assigned to James as his secretary and personal assistant, he had mentioned her quite freely and frequently to Alice. My secretary thinks this, says that, has been reading this or that novel, liked this or that film. One evening, before the move to Exeter, he had brought her home for dinner. She was a nice-looking, soberly dressed girl. Rather thin. Rather quiet. Slightly humourless. Harmless enough, Alice had thought. But as the months passed, James had spoken less and less of her to Alice. In fact he had spoken less and less to Alice about anything. Apart from brief discussions of the day’s news of the war and any domestic matter that needed his attention, they communicated very little. When she had asked, over supper one night, whether Miss Fisher would be going with him when his department moved to Cambridge, James had hesitated a touch too long before answering, yes, of course she was going, adding that she was a valued member of his department. Roger Bayliss had begun to speak.
‘Not too daunted, I hope, Mrs Todd?’
Alice hesitated. She wanted to say, yes, she was daunted. She wanted to look helpless. To apologise for wasting his time. To be aboard the bus, travelling back to Exeter. To re-enter the depressing safety of the rented room. She cleared her throat and forced herself to meet his eyes.
‘I hadn’t realised quite how…’ she hesitated.
‘Primitive the place is?’ he finished for her.
‘You’ll think me foolish. But I didn’t know. Wasn’t told… that this building was not already in use as a hostel.’
‘I need more labour,’ he said. ‘Lower Post Stone has been lying idle. Seemed sensible to use it as a billet.’
‘I understand that. But I’d expected to be taking on an establishment that was—’
‘Up and running?’ Margery cut in brightly, attempting to ease the tension between the woman who needed work but not this work and the man who needed a warden but not this warden.
‘It’s a valid point, Margery,’ he conceded, glancing at his wristwatch. Margery launched into a spiel.
‘Most of our smaller hostels are very much like this one, Mrs Todd. We’ll see you get all the standard equipment – a bread-slicer for the sandwiches and so on. There’s a telephone in the barn across the yard – for emergencies – and a generator for the lights so you won’t be dependent on oil lamps – at least not downstairs.’
‘If you feel it’s going to be too much for you, Mrs Todd…’ Roger Bayliss sounded dismissive. He had looked at her, listened to her and found her wanting. She felt insulted.
She asked for the weekend to consider, but he shook his head and said it was out of the question. Then he said he had to leave them. That running his farm almost single-handed meant that his time was short. He asked Margery to give Alice his telephone number. ‘Ring me by noon tomorrow if your decision is positive, Mrs Todd. Otherwise I’ll assume it’s not. All right with you, Margery?’ Margery glanced at Alice and nodded. He excused himself and left them. Rose came into the room with an armful of the old newspapers in which the crockery had been packed. She dumped them in the fireplace, straightened and wiped her hands on her apron. She saw Alice flinch as the yard door slammed noisily behind her employer.
‘That’s Mr Bayliss for you!’ she said, enjoying the effect of her words on Alice. ‘On a bad day you can hear his door-slams two fields off.’
Buses from Ledburton into Exeter were infrequent and it was dusk by the time Alice arrived back at the boarding house. She hurried up the stairs, anxious to confirm that Edward-John was safely home.
He was in the rented room, sitting at the table playing Happy Families with his father. He smiled at his mother as she entered but the looks that passed between his parents reaffirmed what he already knew
and he sat looking gravely from face to face.
James seemed thinner than Alice remembered. His face was almost gaunt. Guilt perhaps. Or maybe simply the strain of wartime London. His suit was a new one. His appearance was altogether sharper, more suave than when she had last seen him. The bones of his face were as familiar to her as her own and yet he seemed almost a stranger now that she did not share or even know his plans. She wished she could tell him about the awful farmhouse and the impossible job but she could not. She felt her son’s eyes on her.
‘Have you had your tea, Edward-John?’ When he shook his head Alice took two pounds and fifteen shillings from her purse and told him to give the rent money to Mrs Bowden and to ask her if she would very kindly make him some beans on toast for his tea. He protested, appealing to his father to be allowed to stay.
‘Off you go, there’s a good chap,’ James said. Edward-John sighed and left them.
‘This is so awful for him!’ Alice began. ‘I don’t know how you—’ She stopped. Reproach was useless and James did, to his credit, look as wretched as she felt. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until Edward-John’s half-term.’ James got to his feet and walked about the room, making the loosened floorboards creak. His shoes were new and well polished.
‘This situation…’ he began.
‘So your wife and your child are “a situation”, are we?’ James sighed and sat down. After a moment he began again.
‘Penny thinks…’ So it was ‘Penny’ now. He paused. ‘No…I think…’ He wasn’t going to blame his lover or hide behind her feelings. Alice hated him for being so considerate, so noble. ‘I think it’s best if I remove the rest of the stuff I have here and…’
‘And leave us?’ Alice completed the sentence for him and stood, searching his face. ‘Just…leave us, James? Here?’
The scene which followed, conducted in lowered voices so that neither the other tenants, Mrs Bowden or Edward-John should get wind of it, was bitter. As they argued James packed a suitcase with the clothes he had previously left in Exeter. He took several of his books from a pile that was stacked against a wall. Since bomb damage had forced the family from the house they owned in Twickenham, their furniture had been stored. Exeter had been thought of as a temporary refuge until a more permanent home, safe from the bombings, could be arranged. As a result of this, James’s personal belongings had been scattered between a warehouse, rented rooms in Exeter and the small flat in Finchley that he was currently sharing with a young colleague. He was closing the suitcase as his son came back into the room. Edward-John looked at the case and then from one parent to the other.
‘Say goodbye to your father, Edward-John,’ said Alice and she went to the door and stood, holding it open. Edward-John and his father shook hands. Then James took the weight of the suitcase and went out through the door.
In a corner of the public bar of the Ledburton Arms two young women were sitting over half-pints of shandy. Their skirts were short, their jumpers tight and their hair, which had spent the day in curlers under headscarves, was marvellously dressed in sausage curls in the front and long, unravelling tresses at the back. Their eyebrows were plucked into carefully shaped crescents, their lashes were stiff with mascara, their lipstick was beetroot red and they sat smoking moodily. Marion, the taller of the two and who had dyed her mousey hair a rich plum colour, screwed her fag-end into the ashtray and sighed.
‘Sod Bayliss,’ she breathed.
‘Bugger hostels,’ echoed Winnie, blowing smoke. During the two years they had been deployed to work on the Bayliss farms, and while Roger had been able to retain the three labourers who had only recently been conscripted, Winnie and Marion had been billeted at the village pub. This had ideally suited them, for here, after work, when they could emerge from the chrysalis of dirty dungarees, rain-soaked coats and muddy boots and become the sort of creatures blokes buy drinks for, take to the flicks and to the dance halls in Exeter, they could meet whomever was on offer or had strayed in their direction from any of the several military and naval establishments in the area. Now it seemed that their boss was about to take on another eight girls and billet them in the disused farmhouse that he had acquired some years previously when he had bought out a neighbour. Once installed in the new ‘hostel’, which was over a mile from the village, Marion and Winnie knew how rarely they would encounter anyone but aged, groping farmhands or boys unfit or too young for the armed services and therefore too broke or immature for their purposes. Furthermore, the hostel would have rules. And a warden to enforce them. And Mr Bayliss for her to report to if she was disobeyed. The news of this change in their circumstances had been broken to them earlier that evening on their arrival back from work when, in the kitchen of the pub and still clad in their working clothes, their landlady had set before them their plates of dinner which, as on most Thursdays, consisted of fried sausages, a pile of mashed potato and another of swede, all of it doused in thick Bisto gravy and followed by suet pudding under a spoonful of golden syrup. Then, just as they had drained their shandy, smoked the last of their fags and the future seemed bleak, the door of the bar burst open and a bunch of likely lads came stumbling in. They sported various uniforms: Fleet Air Arm, Navy and Army. On setting their eyes on Marion and Winnie they responded at once to the girls’ body language. Their bearing altering perceptibly, they slowed, regrouped and then, swaggering and grinning, approached their quarry.
‘Oh, aye!’ said Marion under her breath to her friend, baring her teeth in a wide smile, her Geordie accent warm in the thick air. ‘’Ere come the lads!’
Alice was at her dressing table smoothing cold cream into her skin when she became aware of Edward-John at her elbow. He was wearing his pyjamas and his hair was on end where he had lain on it.
‘You should be asleep,’ she said.
‘I woke up,’ he said. ‘I was worried.’
‘Try not to be.’
‘You are,’ he said. His eyes were huge, missing nothing. ‘Anyway, where were you when I got home from school?’ Alice had almost forgotten about the other disaster of the day.
‘I had to go out into the countryside,’ she told him. ‘And then wait ages for a bus back again.’
‘I didn’t know where you were and I don’t like not knowing where you are.’ His voice was thick and she knew he was close to tears, which she guessed had as much to do with his father’s visit as her own, earlier, absence.
‘I’m sorry, darling. Won’t do it again. Promise.’ Then she lightened her tone and asked him whether he had remembered to brush his teeth. He smiled sheepishly and she watched him go to the hand basin and squeeze paste onto his toothbrush.
‘But where did you go?’ he persisted, shoving the brush around his mouth.
‘To see about a job,’ she said. Impressed, Edward-John stopped brushing.
‘Gosh!’ he said. ‘Like a workman, you mean? What would you have to do?’ The memory of the unsatisfactory interview swept over Alice but she controlled her voice and almost cheerfully told her son that this particular job entailed looking after land girls. Cooking their meals and supervising their hostel. ‘What’s a hostel?’ was his next question, between spitting and turning off the tap.
‘This particular hostel is a farmhouse,’ Alice answered, a vision of the crumbling, damp building solidifying as she spoke. But her son’s eyes were widening.
‘A farmhouse? A real farm? With animals?’ Alice had not noticed any animals.
‘I don’t remember seeing any,’ she said, discounting the chickens in the yard and the distant sheep. ‘But I suppose there must be animals there…’ Her son was transformed by this news.
‘Animals! And haystacks! And carts and tractors and things! Can we go there? Can we go tomorrow?’ His delight was infectious. She found herself smiling with him as he pleaded, climbing beguilingly onto her lap, hugging her, pressing his cheek against hers, engaging her eyes via the dressing-table mirror.
‘I don’t think
so,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘It would be too far to get you to school each day… You’d have to board…except for the weekends…’ He was interrupting her, his keen eyes inches from hers.
‘I don’t care! I don’t! Let’s go there, Mother!’
In the pub, as the landlord called time, Marion and Winnie, closely pressed by several uniformed male bodies, were at the centre of a group clustered, singing, round the piano. The chorus of ‘You’ll Never Know’ filled the smoky air and in Marion’s handbag were two lipsticks, a bottle of crimson nail varnish and several pairs of silk stockings.
Margery Brewster’s ‘office’ was a desk in the corner of a small ante-room in Exeter Town Hall. There was a sign that read ‘Women’s Land Army’, a telephone, an in-tray and an out-tray, stacks of papers, tidily clipped together, and an immaculate blotter. She invited Alice to sit in the chair opposite to her own and sent a girl for two cups of tea. She knew, from Roger Bayliss, that Alice had accepted the job and had been asked to report to the Land Army office to complete the formalities.
‘So your son’s needs made up your mind for you, did they?’ Margery Brewster asked when Alice had explained the reasons for her decision. ‘I was almost sure you would turn us down!’ Alice took the cup and saucer in her hands and declined sugar.
‘I’m hoping he will be happy on the farm,’ she said. Margery looked at her sharply.
‘And will you be?’ she asked, sliding Alice’s contract across the desk and indicating the places that required her signature. Alice felt that she was unlikely to be happy anywhere but she told Mrs Brewster that she thought she would be. The interview was obviously over. The tea was too hot so she left half of it in the cup, got to her feet and shook the proffered hand.
Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Page 2
