Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings

by Julia Stoneham

  The noise of boisterous conversations interrupted by bursts of hearty laughter, all of this competing with the music of Glenn Miller at full volume from the gramophone in the recreation room, made it almost impossible for Roger to hear Alice as she explained how the day had developed for her and her girls. She invited him into the slightly quieter kitchen, encouraged him to help himself to the food and led him back into the cross-passage where everyone moved up enough to make room for him at the table. Oliver poured him a glass of wine and, in the manner of a victor, raised his own glass and proposed a toast to Alice, who responded with a short, charming speech of thanks to Oliver and his men for helping to give her girls such a splendid Christmas feast.

  With the table cleared from the cross-passage and the sofas in the recreation room pushed against the walls there was space for some serious dancing. Dave took Hester in his arms and carefully circled the floor with her. Gwennan stumbled through a foxtrot with the cook, who, thanks to his chef’s hat, equalled her lanky height. Annie, much in demand, moved sociably from one partner to another, while Winnie smiled politely for her GI Joe and watched Marion and Marvin jitterbugging as though their bodies were designed exclusively for that purpose. Mabel and her gran led the Lambeth Walk. Dave organised the hokey-cokey and Alice tried, without much success, to teach everyone the steps of Sir Roger de Covelly.

  At ten o’clock, when most of the food and almost all the drink had been consumed, Reuben arrived. He had been walking for nine hours and stood, breathing hard, snow in his hair, packed ice falling off his boots, his skin glowing with exertion and exposure, his eyes scanning the room for his girl. Dave, waltzing with her, felt her pull away from him, watched her weave through the dancers and fling herself, to whoops of delight and applause from everyone, into Reuben’s arms.

  ‘’E needs feedin’, Mrs Todd,’ Hester said happily and taking Reuben by the hand, led him into the kitchen, closing the door behind them.

  The Webster home, when Georgina and Lionel had reached it, looked much as it always had on Christmas Eve. The tall spruce standing in the hallway was decorated with familiar gilded fir cones, tinsel and lights, topped with the now bedraggled fairy that Georgina had made in kindergarten. The house was warm and in the kitchen festive food was being prepared. The snow, which had barely begun to fall when Lionel had collected his sister from Lower Post Stone, had become a wind-driven blizzard and by the time they reached their destination they were chilled to their bones. Their father had led them into the warm sitting room and administered mulled rum-and-orange, watching them as they sipped. Later, after Georgina had lain for some time in a hot bath and was now wrapped in her dressing gown, Lionel wandered into her bedroom and sprawled across her bed.

  ‘Seen your chap lately?’ he asked her.

  ‘Which chap is that?’ she countered, adding, ‘If you mean Christopher Bayliss, no. Not lately.’ She had washed her hair and was towelling it dry.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s taken himself off somewhere and become a lumberjack.’

  ‘I heard that much from Annie. But it doesn’t explain why you—’

  ‘Why I what? You’re being very nosy, little brother! Stop it!’

  He ignored the second part of her response and repeated his question.

  ‘Why, after visiting him in that hospital place, have you suddenly dropped him? Doesn’t make any sense to me!’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know—’

  ‘I know I “don’t know”, woman!’ he interrupted. ‘That’s why I’m asking!’ Georgina laughed, went to her bedroom door and opened it.

  ‘Can I have some privacy, please?’ She was teasing him. ‘I need to get dressed now. I promised our mother I’d help her in the kitchen.’ As Lionel went past her onto the landing she added, ‘I will tell you all about it, Li… But later… OK?’

  Georgina was grateful that the family had company for Christmas dinner, which they were to eat at three o’clock. It gave her a valid reason for not broaching the awkward subject of her future plans until most, if not all of the day’s festivities were over.

  Alan and Pamela Marshall farmed nearby and the two families were well acquainted. The Marshalls put chains on the tyres of their car and safely managed the two-mile drive to the Webster house, bringing with them their younger daughter, Drusilla. An older girl was with the WRAC at Caterham. Drusilla, still at boarding school, was a pretty seventeen-year-old and had been in love with Lionel since she was twelve, a fact of which he remained unaware.

  The afternoon and evening passed pleasantly. The two families played their own familiar versions of some Christmas games. At eight o’clock everyone went out into the garden and pelted each other with snowballs, returning to the warm house for a light supper followed by dancing to gramophone records. Lionel dutifully partnered his mother, Pamela Marshall and then his sister. After that, it was noticed, he danced almost exclusively, with Drusilla.

  By midnight, with the guests departed, the house was suddenly quiet. Georgina had decided that rather than spoil the happy atmosphere, she would keep her difficult news until the morning. She was about to switch off her bedside light when Lionel knocked on her door.

  ‘You said you’d tell me later, why you’ve dumped your mad airman.’

  ‘He’s not—!’

  ‘I know!’ Lionel interrupted her interruption. ‘I know he’s not mad and I’ve found out something about these guys… these pilots that crack up. Want to hear it?’ Georgina nodded and patted the bed, inviting him to sit, as he always had, for as long as either of them could remember, when they had something important to discuss. ‘It’s not always that they lose their nerve, you know, or even that they get traumatised by what they have to do – although that would account for some cases, but…’ He paused, trying to formulate the information he had for her. He told her about a friend of his who had been at university reading psychology when the war broke out. Because of this he had been given the opportunity to work with a group of consultants on cases where servicemen suffered breakdowns caused by what, in earlier conflicts, had been classified as ‘shell shock’. Frequently, brave men, having exhibited acute symptoms of distress, had been condemned to death and shot as deserters. Georgina said she knew this.

  ‘But did you know, Georgie, that front-line guys, like pilots, are regularly dosed with amphetamine these days?’ His sister was not absolutely certain what amphetamine was. ‘Stimulants, Georgie. Stuff that keeps you awake and fired up when you’re exhausted but you need to keep going. You’ve heard of pep pills?’ She had. ‘Well, like that only more so. Now, some guys can cope with it. Others can’t and they get all sorts of problems with side effects. Black outs, breakdowns, hallucinations – a whole range of psychotic symptoms. I thought of your Christopher. I thought that could be the reason he’s, you know… Not…how he was. And maybe that’s why you feel…’ Lionel, watching his sister’s face, realised suddenly that this could not be the reason for Georgina’s rejection of Christopher Bayliss – if it was rejection. She had a more compassionate and sensitive nature than that. He fell silent, feeling foolish.

  ‘The thing is, Li,’ she began, ‘it’s not that I don’t want to see him, exactly. It’s that he doesn’t want to see me. He’s… well, he’s cross with me. He thinks I let him down. And in a complicated way…I did.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘It was the pacifism thing. We used to argue about it. After what happened to Chrissie – you remember? The girl who got killed in a raid on Plymouth? – and then Andreis and then Christopher himself – you didn’t see him, Li, when the military police arrested him… All of those things made me realise just how awful war is… What it had done… To just three individuals that I happened to know!’ She paused, scanning her brother’s face. ‘Anyhow, at the same time as I’d decided that pacifism is not the answer, Christopher decided that it is – and when I told him, he…’

  ‘When you told him what? That you’d st
opped believing in pacifism?’

  ‘It was more than that, Li. I told him I was leaving the Land Army and joining the ATA. That’s the Air Transport—’

  ‘I know what the ATA is!’ He was staring at her. ‘God Almighty, Georgie! What will Ma and Pa say!’

  ‘It’s not the RAF, Li. It’s not exactly fighting! I shan’t go on missions! I’ll only be delivering planes to airfields—’

  ‘From which someone else does go on missions!’

  There was a long pause. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said at last, ‘but I’ve been having the same arguments with myself as you’ve been having. And I decided, the other day when I was watching the Pathé news in the cinema in Taunton and it showed people trying to escape from some French village while Jerry blew it up because the locals had been hiding members of the Resistance in their houses… And I thought… To hell with this turning the other cheek stuff! I need to have a go at those swine!’ He paused and then added quietly, ‘I’ve decided to enlist.’

  ‘No!’ Georgina’s voice was loud in the quiet house. ‘You can’t, Li! You mustn’t!’

  ‘Shush!’ he said, smiling. ‘You’ll wake the parents!’ Georgina’s expression changed from shock to controlled determination. She shook her head and lowered her voice.

  ‘You can’t enlist! You’re not to. There must be some other way you can—’

  ‘Fight? Without actually fighting? We’re not all as clever as you, Georgina Webster, with your “non-combatative” involvement!’

  At the farmhouse Alice was dancing with Oliver Maynard while Roger Bayliss, having paid his respects, eaten some of the excellent food – his own plump goose having become somewhat lost amongst the mountainous contribution from the Fleet Air Arm kitchens – was wondering how soon he could decently make his farewells and leave the party. He would have very much liked to dance with Alice but she seemed always to be circling the floor with Oliver Maynard or attending to some domestic duty or other. From time to time she sought him out, making sure he had all he needed to eat and to drink but each time, just as Roger gathered himself to invite her onto the dance floor, Oliver Maynard appeared at her elbow and led her back into the jostling dancers where, eventually, Roger saw him put his lips to her ear and whisper earnestly.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Alice.’

  ‘You are talking to me, aren’t you?’ she laughed. He steered her through the open door to her sitting room. Roger, from the recreation room, watched them. They sat facing each other, she in a small upholstered chair and he on the window-seat. It appeared to be a serious conversation; Oliver, leaning slightly forward and looking into her eyes, Alice, sitting bolt upright with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked, Roger thought, slightly ill at ease. Almost cornered. He wished he could lip-read.

  ‘It isn’t my intention to pressure you, Alice,’ Oliver said. ‘As you know, I never have and I’ve always accepted our relationship exactly as you wanted it to be. But my circumstances are about to change.’ He told her that he had just received a promotion that involved a posting to Greenock. This was to take effect in early January. Alice remembered him telling her about the house he and his wife had bought when he had been given a permanent, peacetime posting there.

  ‘How splendid, Oliver,’ she said. ‘You’ll be going home! Diana must be—’

  ‘Diana isn’t there, Alice. Hasn’t been for months. As you know the marriage has been wobbling for a while. Now it’s over. She wrote last week. She’s been posted to a US airbase in Norfolk. There’s a Canadian wing commander there. Someone she’s known for a while. She’s had a few flings, old Di, but this one is serious apparently and she says she wants to be free – presumably to marry him. So you see, we’re in the same boat, Alice, you and I. You’ll be divorced in a few months’ time and I…’ He smiled a warm, uncertain smile and waited. After a moment Alice felt compelled to ask, although she had already guessed the answer.

  ‘You…what, Oliver?’

  ‘Would very much like some sort of commitment from you. An indication, perhaps, that sometime soon, you and I… That you might join me in Greenock.’

  Alice had only been proposed to once before and on that occasion had not considered the possibility of it ever happening again. She had loved James in a fervent, youthful and uncomplicated way. The failure of the marriage had both shocked and scarred her. She remained bruised by it and only if she had fallen heavily in love with Oliver, or indeed, with anyone, which she had not, would the damage caused by James have been overridden by the blinding optimism of a new relationship. She shook her head and told him gently that she was sorry but it was too soon after the breakdown of her marriage for her to consider what he was suggesting. She had half expected him to protest and was slightly surprised by how easily he accepted her refusal. It suddenly occurred to her that she might not have been the only woman with whom Oliver had shared his off-duty hours since his driver had knocked her off her bicycle almost nine months previously. The war had separated thousands of couples and put hundreds of marriages into jeopardy, creating countless lonely people amongst whom there lurked a percentage of unscrupulous and predatory ones. Not that Oliver fell into either of these categories but it was nevertheless feasible that he had assembled a list of possible partners and Alice wondered, if this was so, where she would feature on that list. Would she be at the top of it? Halfway down it? Or at the bottom? She found herself smiling.

  ‘So you find it amusing?’ Oliver asked tightly. ‘Encouraging people to declare their feelings for you and then rejecting them?’

  Alice explained, as inoffensively as possible, what it was that had made her smile, realising almost at once that Oliver was unlikely to share the joke. She felt suddenly relieved that Oliver’s posting to Greenock was to take effect almost immediately and glad when a diversion, which was taking place in the recreation room, ended their conversation.

  ‘Mrs Todd! Come here, quick,’ Annie laughed, taking Alice by the hand and towing her into the crowded recreation room.

  Hester and Reuben were at the centre of a throng of beaming faces. She was displaying her left hand. On its third finger was a modest ruby, set in gold and circled by small diamonds.

  ‘It was ’is grandma’s!’ Hester announced, transfixed with joy. ‘A legacy! ’E sent for it! All the way from North Dakota, it’s come! We’re getting married, Reuben an’ me!’

  After this news had been properly celebrated it took Oliver Maynard very little time to wind up the festivities. Within ten minutes the kitchen was cleared and his men were saying their goodnights to the land girls, trooping down the path and climbing aboard the Bren-gun carrier. Roger, having thanked Alice for her hospitality, had reached his tractor but decided to wait until the carrier, being the larger vehicle, was clear of the confined space outside the farmhouse gate before making his own departure. He stood watching as the last of the soldiers left the porch, saluting or shaking Alice’s hand as they went. Oliver Maynard brought up the rear. He took Alice’s hand. She saw him glance across to where Roger Bayliss was hesitating beside the tractor. With his eyes still on Roger, Oliver raised Alice’s hand to his lips and very deliberately kissed it. This gesture was not lost on Alice or on Roger, who turned away, climbed onto the tractor, switched on the ignition and sat staring ahead while he waited for Oliver to reach the Bren-gun carrier. As its engine revved and the massive tracks turned, hauling it, together with its trailer and its load of men, away along the narrow lane, Roger began to ease the tractor forward, its huge tyres biting into the ice. Alice, watching from the porch, raised her hand to wave, half expecting Roger to look back. He did not. He felt embarrassed that he had allowed himself to be outmanoeuvred by Maynard and annoyed with himself for being irritated, even disconcerted, by the fact that the warden found the man attractive.

  ‘Well, ’e can’t sleep here!’ Rose had announced firmly, fixing Reuben with her beady Devonian eyes.

  ‘You reckon he should walk back to Salisbury Plain, do you? You evil old
—’ Gwennan stopped in mid-sentence as Alice entered the kitchen.

  ‘It’s Reuben, Mrs Todd.’ Hester fixed Alice with her wide eyes. ‘We thought p’raps he could kip in the recreation room but Mrs Crocker—’

  ‘Mrs Crocker said no!’ Rose confirmed emphatically, daring Alice to flout the number-one rule of the hostel. ‘And I’m sure Mrs Todd will agree!’ Alice did agree but, after some discussion and much to Dave’s annoyance, it was decided that Reuben should sleep on the kitchen floor of Rose’s cottage. Blankets and pillows were piled into his arms and after kissing his fiancée goodnight he followed Rose across the snowy yard. Dave, bringing up the rear, was heard muttering, with more feeling than originality, about GIs being ‘oversexed, overpaid and over here’.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, boy!’ his mother hissed back at him. ‘Told you she was spoke for!’

  They told their parents at breakfast. Georgina’s news did not surprise them. The ‘de Havilland godfather’ had in fact, and unknown to Georgina, warned them of it. Lionel’s case was different and both his mother and his father accused him, a charge he hotly denied, of being too easily influenced by his sister. Eventually he agreed to postpone his enlistment at least until his father, who had come to depend heavily on his strength and expertise on the farm, could find some way of replacing him. Georgina had joined her parents in persuading Lionel to make this compromise and he had reluctantly agreed to it.

  Although both parents were disappointed that Georgina had rejected a philosophy in which they passionately believed, they were wise enough to accept her decision, possibly because they knew their daughter too well to expect, at this stage, to influence her. Their focus now must be on Lionel. With an allied invasion of occupied France looming, they were well aware that were he to enlist in whatever service, he would be in greater danger than his sister would soon be facing. Although this aspect of the problem should not have been the primary one, they were honest enough to accept that it was and that the longer they could delay Lionel’s enlistment the more likely they were to reach the end of the war with their family, if not their principles, intact.