‘If you know where to find ’em,’ Marion said.
‘Or if you like your men under sixteen or over sixty,’ Winnie giggled, adding to Marion, ‘Hey! She could come with us, Sat’day night, down the pub.’ She hesitated, silenced by a sharp look from her friend and then asked tentatively, ‘Couldn’t she?’
Marion’s glance as she screwed the top tightly onto the nail polish was designed to shut Winnie up and close the subject but Winnie persisted. She would have been happy enough for Annie to join them. There were always more than enough men to go round on a Saturday night. But Marion remained adamant, exercising her well-developed facility to lie.
‘No, Win,’ she said, ‘she can’t ’cos we’re going on, aren’t we!’ She began running a razor over a smooth shin.
‘On?’ Winnie echoed. She was, Marion considered, very stupid at times.
‘To Exeter, Win! To that dance! Gary and Sergeant Whatsit’s got a staff car for the night and there’s only room for them two and us. Sorry,’ she added, glancing coolly at Annie.
Marion was not beautiful. She was not even pretty. It required a lot of hard work to make her sharp face, mousey hair and angular body attractive to men. She employed most of the devices available to her and spent a large portion of her small income on smoothing out the sharp corners of the raw material against which she had been fighting a running battle ever since she had first admitted to herself that she was plain, bordering on ugly. In her raw state Marion would have been passed unrecognised by the same men with whom, foundation-creamed, plucked, rouged and powdered, her contact could hardly have been more intimate. She was very aware of competition. Winnie, small, soft and silly, was the perfect companion. She laughed at Marion’s jokes and was impressed by her shrewdness. She was happy to sit smiling in the pub until Marion attracted the men and Winnie willingly linked arms with the soldier, sailor or airman who, for one reason or another, did not link arms with Marion. Annie, on the other hand, struck Marion as competition. She was not only attractive but pretty, if not downright beautiful. Added to which she had exactly the sort of personality blokes like best. As a consequence she would have to make her own way into the unreliable, fluctuating social scene of the Ledburton area for neither Marion nor Winnie would initiate her, a fact which, although Marion would not have considered it so, was no disadvantage. As Annie stubbed out her cigarette she caught sight of the silk stockings.
‘Blimey!’ she exclaimed, ‘where d’you get all them?’
‘Where d’you think!’ Marion snapped, enjoying Annie’s envy.
‘From an admirer!’ Winnie said smugly. ‘Three pair each, we got!’
‘Jeez!’ said Annie, deeply impressed. ‘He must’ve been feeling generous!’
‘Well, he was feeling something!’ Marion shrieked and the ensuing laughter echoed along the corridor and was even faintly audible to Rose as she knocked on the door of Alice’s room.
After supper and the washing-up and the setting of the table for tomorrow’s breakfast and the putting of porridge oats into a pan to soak, Rose had retired to her cottage where she had eaten the plate of chicken which, despite being reheated, was not quite hot enough to be pleasant. Try as she might – and for her own, complicated reasons – to harden her heart, she could not forget the look of exhaustion on Alice’s face when her day’s work was at last completed. Unable to stomach the chicken, Alice had given her portion to a cat that, discovering the farmhouse to be once again inhabited, was clearly planning to take up residence in it. Rose fretted for a while and then left her fireside, returned to the farmhouse, heated a pan of creamy milk, filled two cups and made her way through the house to Alice’s door.
‘Only hot milk,’ Rose said breezily. ‘Six tins of cocoa we ordered but d’you think I can put my hands on ’em?’ Alice was at her mother’s desk. She looked, Rose thought, like an exhausted child.
‘We must reorganise that store cupboard tomorrow,’ Alice said, reaching for notepad and pencil.
‘Never you mind that now,’ said Rose, putting one of the cups of milk into Alice’s hand. Alice thanked her.
‘Bit of a baptism of fire, that supper!’ Rose stood, her own cup in her hand.
‘It certainly was!’ said Alice. ‘And the awful thing is that we have to do it again tomorrow… And the day after… And the day after that!’ She was trying to laugh but Rose felt, uncomfortably, that she was very close to tears. ‘Sit down,’ she invited Rose. ‘Join me, won’t you?’ She indicated one of the two armchairs but remained where she was, at her desk. Rose sat. She looked round the room and complimented Alice on how nicely she had arranged it.
‘The other bed’s for your boy, I suppose?’ Rose said. The thought of Edward-John, alone in his boarding school dormitory brought Alice close to tears. She nodded at Rose and there was a small silence while both women sipped at the hot milk. ‘They’re a rough old lot, these girls!’ said Rose. Alice looked at her in surprise.
‘D’you think so?’ she asked.
‘I know so!’ Rose replied. ‘And that Georgina! Make my blood boil, conchies do! When I think of my Dave…out there…riskin’ ‘is life! While her sort—’
‘It’s called freedom, Rose. It’s what the war is for.’ Alice’s quiet statement failed to convince Rose.
‘So they say,’ she scoffed. Alice allowed her the last word and again they slipped into silence. ‘Christine seems a charming girl, don’t you think?’ Alice said, trying to find something positive to say.
‘Bit lippy, if you ask me,’ Rose snapped. ‘Wilful, I reckon!’
Alice smiled. ‘You’re awfully hard on them,’ she said gently.
‘Maybe,’ said Rose. ‘And maybe you’re not used to that class of girl, Mrs Todd! Hardly the sort of person you’ve mixed with, are they!’ Aware that Alice was looking at her, Rose turned her head and stared at the heavy curtains, which, too long for that window, lay with their hems dragging. ‘No more’n what I am, come to that,’ she concluded in a low voice, at once regretting having introduced a sour note into what she had intended to be a soothing gesture towards Alice.
‘Rose… Please…’ Alice began, after a short silence and then, catching Rose completely off guard said, ‘Won’t you use my Christian name? I’d really like you to!’ Rose, flushing with pleasure, was about to respond when the two of them were interrupted by a tap on the open door. Christine, a dressing gown wrapped tightly round her, stood in her slippers.
‘I need to ask you something please, Miss,’ she said to Alice, ignoring Rose who got to her feet and took Alice’s empty cup from her.
‘I’ll say goodnight then…Alice,’ Rose said, glancing at Christine to see whether or not she had noticed her use of the warden’s Christian name.
Alice invited Christine to sit opposite her by the fire and asked what she could do for her.
‘Well… It’s my ’usband, see… He’s got a twenty-fourhour pass!’ She spoke with a soft West Country accent which Alice couldn’t quite place ‘We haven’t seen each other since the night we was wed, Mrs Todd! He’s in Plymouth… And he sails Friday! Can I go and see him when I finish work tomorrow? Fred…the driver fellow…he says he’ll drop me off at the railway after work and meet the milk train next morning. Lord knows when Ron and me’ll see each other again! Please can I go? I won’t miss no work!’ Alice considered and could see no reason why, in these particular circumstances, permission would not be given. She told Christine she would ask Mr Bayliss and basked in the girl’s gratitude, enquiring, as she rose to leave, whether her bedroom was comfortable.
‘Yeah,’ Christine answered. ‘I’m sharing with Mabel. She seems like a good sort, except…’ She hesitated delicately.
‘Except for what?’ Alice asked.
‘I don’t like to say, Miss,’ Christine said, colouring. ‘Prob’ly she just got too hot on the train… Mr Bayliss will let me go to Plymouth, won’t he?’
‘I’ll do my best for you, I promise.’
‘Ta. Night, then.’
<
br /> ‘Goodnight, Christine.’
In the small, dark bedroom above, Hester and Annie lay in their narrow beds under the roof-beams and tried to sleep. From the next room Marion and Winnie, unused to early nights, were amusing themselves, giggling together and keeping up an endless, bantering conversation. Eventually Annie struck the partition with her closed fist.
‘Leave it out, you two! We’re trying to sleep in here!’
‘Go to buggery!’ Winnie shouted but, more because they were becoming drowsy than in response to Annie’s request, silence fell.
It was the absolute silence of a still country night. It dropped over them like a blanket. The world beyond the valley might have ceased to exist as the farmhouse, with its complement of assorted women, sailed on into the night.
But the act of thumping on the partition had roused Annie.
‘Listen…’ she whispered.
‘What to?’ said Hester, half asleep.
‘It’s like when we was hop-picking,’ Annie said. ‘The quiet always kept us awake the first coupla nights…’ They lay in the silence; their feet, cold when they first got into their beds, were warm now. Then the vixen barked, its shriek close and hideous.
‘Jesus!’ said Annie, lurching upright.
‘S’only a fox!’ Hester murmured and Annie dropped back shuddering, burrowing into her hard pillow and pulling the skimpy blankets up around her shoulders.
‘Whew! I near enough shit meself!’ she said. There was a pause before Hester spoke, almost reluctantly, as though her conscience was driving the words from her.
‘Annie.’
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t say “Jesus” like that.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘OK then,’ Annie sighed, yawning. ‘No fags… No Jesus… OK? Night, Hester.’
‘Night.’
It felt like the middle of the night when they were roused and came, still smelling of sleep, down to the kitchen, where the porridge had caught slightly and the toaster, a wire contraption that had to be balanced on the paraffin stove, proved intractable and was abandoned in favour of the toasting-fork method. In front of the open door to the range, the girls noisily competed for space until Rose organised an orderly queue.
Outside, in the freezing darkness, Fred sat in the idling truck, his headlights picking up the figures of the girls as they emerged through the porch and came groping and stumbling towards him through the darkness. One by one they climbed, or were hauled, up into the back of the lorry where they seated themselves on benches that ran along each side of it.
‘This is it, then!’ said Annie. ‘Life in the Land Army! Shivering in the back of a truck as stinks of cow shit!’
‘In the middle of the night!’ added Christine, happy and uncaring because of the prospect of seeing her husband that evening.
‘Baint the middle of the night!’ said Hester, who was used to rising early.
‘Feels like it!’ whined Winnie, who never would get used to it.
‘My feet are freezing,’ said Gwennan, her Welsh voice half singing the words.
‘Should wear two pairs of socks inside your boots this weather, Taff,’ Marion muttered through chattering teeth. Gwennan told her to go teach her grandmother to suck eggs. Fred tried to hurry the stragglers by sounding his horn.
‘Doan wanna be late the first mornin’, do ee?’
‘Where are you takin’ us?’ Annie, in the passenger seat beside him, shouted over the revving engine.
‘To the Bayliss farm first off,’ he replied. ‘’Igher Post Stone, it be called.’ In the back Christine was counting heads.
‘Six, seven, eight… All aboard!’ she yelled. As Fred shoved the gear lever into position Rose appeared in his headlights, several bulging brown paper bags in each hand.
‘Wait, Fred!’ she commanded. ‘They ’asn’t got their samwidges!’ Alice, in Rose’s wake, carried an armful of the same small packages which the two women rapidly distributed amongst the girls.
‘’Ere!’ Rose called. ‘Georgina! Taffy! Hester… Catch!’ And while Fred swore at the delay, the girls chorused back, ‘Thanks, Mrs Todd! Ta, Mrs Crocker!’
As Alice and Rose picked their way back to the porch they could hear the truck labouring up the incline towards the Bayliss farm.
‘That’s them gone!’ said Rose, sitting on the porch bench to heel-off her boots and slip her feet into the plimsolls that, over a pair of her late husband’s socks, she had taken to wearing about the farmhouse. ‘And good riddance, I say!’ She followed Alice through the cross-passage and into the kitchen and, glancing at the scatter of dirty porridge bowls, plates, cups and saucers, lifted the teapot.
‘Reckon there’s enough in ’ere for a cuppa each,’ she said and began to pour. Glancing at the dishes she added, ‘Deserve one too, afore us tackles that lot!’ Alice sat heavily down at the table.
‘We’re going to have to cut their sandwiches—’ she began and Rose interrupted, finishing her sentence.
‘The night before! I was just thinking the same thing myself.’
* * *
As the morning lightened, Taffy, Marion and Winnie were shovelling dung from the Bayliss cowshed into the back of a cart. Ferdie, lurching past them, snarled, ‘C’mon, c’mon! Put some muscle into it!’ and continued on his way, unaware that Marion’s middle finger was jabbing at the air behind his back.
Inside the byre Georgina was showing Mabel how to coax milk down through an udder and into a galvanised bucket.
‘It was pigs, mostly, where I bin!’ Mabel gasped, fingers slipping, cow fidgeting.
‘Keep the rhythm going!’ Georgina urged, encouraging her. ‘That’s it! Nice and easy!’ She steadied the bucket as the animal lurched, rolling its eyes at Ferdie as he approached.
‘Hold still, you varmint of a cow!’ he growled. ‘Can’t you see as the young lady’s on’y learnin’? And very well she’m doing, too!’
‘Thank you, Mr Vallance!’ said Mabel, her plump cheek pressed against the cow’s flank. Ferdie eyed her. He liked a big woman. Not that it mattered what he liked. Since he had been crippled he had learnt to accept the fact that no girl would go with him. He understood that there was nothing personal in their decision to exclude him from the ranks of possible mates. It was simply impractical. A girl needed a man who could provide for her and her babies. Ferdie, with his rolling gait and his weakened back, could not. But the girl squatting before him, her huge, khaki-clad thighs spilling over the edges of the milking stool, her hair thin and lank, her face pocked with on-going pimples…she might not be too choosy. As he approached her he became aware of the pungent, animal smell that emanated from her, penetrating intoxicatingly into his susceptible nostrils.
‘You can call me Ferdie,’ he said and, turning to Georgina, asked if her name was Webster. When she nodded he went on, ‘Boss wants to see you. Nine sharp in his office, he said. ’Tis the door round the side. You can’t miss it… If I was you,’ he continued more gently, returning his attention to Mabel, ‘I’d move that there milking stool in a bit closer, see?’ Mabel did as he said, her smile revealing uneven, unbrushed teeth as she thanked him for his advice and, with something close to coyness, used his first name.
Georgina tapped on the door of the farm office. A voice said ‘Come’ and she went in. The man sitting behind the desk, his feet clad in riding boots resting on its surface, was much younger than Georgina had expected. He in turn seemed surprised by her appearance.
‘I say!’ he said appreciatively.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You should be in the WRNS with your figure!’
Georgina was not unused to compliments, sought or, as in this case, unsought.
‘Driving some admiral about in a shiny motor car? No thanks. I’d rather be doing something useful.’
‘The WRAF, then,’ the young man persisted, undaunted and misreading her reaction. ‘The girls in Fighter Command see lots of action, I can tell you!’ He
moved his eyebrows suggestively.
‘I don’t want to “see action”,’ Georgina stated soberly. ‘I happen to believe that war is—’
‘Oh, Lord!’ he cut in, ‘so what do you suggest then? “Dear Herr Hitler, please would you stop bombing London and give Poland back?” That approach didn’t work, duckie! Ask Mr Chamberlain!’
‘I don’t know what you’re so smug about!’ Georgina retaliated, feeling herself flush stupidly. ‘You’re not in uniform!’ He threw back his head and was laughing at her when Roger Bayliss came through the door and stood, tapping his riding stock against his palm.
‘Morning, Miss Webster,’ he said, as the young man quickly swung his legs off the desk and got to his feet. ‘Introduced yourselves, have you?’
‘Sort of,’ the young man said, smiling at Georgina’s reaction. Then he excused himself and left them.
Roger Bayliss sat behind his desk and motioned Georgina into the chair opposite him.
‘My son, Christopher,’ he said, searching for something amongst the scatter of papers on his blotter. ‘He’s in fighters.’
‘Fighters?’ Georgina echoed, aghast and then seriously embarrassed.
‘Yes. Spitfires mostly. And Hurricanes. Ah… Here it is…’ Roger Bayliss consulted a list and Georgina was grateful for the few moments in which she was able to collect herself. Then he told her that he had been looking through her application form. ‘In view of your education and…how shall I put it…your obvious…’ he hesitated, ‘superiority… I’d like you to act as forewoman. Nothing complicated, you understand,’ he added, misunderstanding her reaction. ‘Simply need someone who can keep the worksheets in order and distribute the pay packets on Fridays. Manage that, could, you?’
‘I should think so, sir,’ she said coldly and had begun to tell him about the Forewoman’s course she had almost completed, and of her work experience on her father’s farm, when she was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone on his desk. He lifted the receiver, said ‘Bayliss,’ and listened for some moments with, it seemed to Georgina, increasing impatience. ‘Absolutely not, Mrs Todd,’ he said. ‘She’ll get Saturday afternoons and Sundays off, the same as the rest of them!’ Georgina could hear Alice Todd’s voice coming down the phone line until Mr Bayliss interrupted her. ‘I can’t start making exceptions whenever their spouses get leave! Good day, Mrs Todd!’ He hung up sharply and returned his attention to Georgina.
Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Page 5
