The Land Girl

by Allie Burns

  ‘Finch Hall is quite transformed. You must visit,’ Lady Radford was telling Mother and John. ‘The billiard room is a store. The smoking and drawing rooms are wards. I have to remind myself that it was once my home and not always a hospital.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to put the house to such good use,’ John said, though they didn’t need any encouragement and Mother was craning backwards, trying to attract the attention of Norah Peters.

  ‘Lady Clara is responsible for book-keeping,’ Lady Radford continued. ‘And you’re in charge of dispatching packages, aren’t you?’ she said, addressing Clara.

  ‘Mother has even conceded that I can push the soldiers around the lawn.’ Lady Clara raised her eyebrows.

  ‘We’re quite a formidable team aren’t we, dear?’

  Emily forced a smile. ‘How wonderful,’ she said. Clara was so much more confident now she was a war girl. Even John was looking at her anew as if he didn’t recognise this new independent woman before him. He’d better not fall in love with her. She didn’t want to spend any more time with Lady Radford.

  ‘Although much smaller, you could volunteer HopBine House as a convalescent home for the men recovering from their treatment up at Finch Hall.’ Lady Radford surveyed the hallway and the upstairs. ‘You’d be able to offer ten beds here, quite easily.’

  ‘Oh no. I don’t think so,’ Mother said flatly. ‘I think we’ve done enough for this war – what with John amongst the first to join up. And I’m terribly busy with the knitting and sewing parties and putting together packages.’

  John mouthed ‘go on’ to Emily, but anything she might say would only antagonise Mother for putting her on the spot in front of Lady Radford.

  ‘Mr Tipton is also cultivating more land for crops,’ John reminded Lady Radford. ‘He’s reducing the land given over to hops and setting more by for important crops like potatoes. For which he will need more manpower.’

  Womanpower, was on the tip of Emily’s tongue, but Mother was tugging at a brooch that had become enmeshed in her lace trim and the look on her face forced Emily’s mouth shut.

  ‘And how is he managing without his labourers?’ Lady Radford asked, either oblivious to the tension or because of it. ‘You took many men with you when you joined up, did you not?’

  Mother’s face was set while John explained that Mr Tipton wasn’t as young as he was, and they’d not been able to find enough help, how he was struggling to keep up with the demands from the government, and how the village women had proved troublesome, but that the Board of Trade were training up educated women to lead the volunteers and supervise them on the farmer’s behalf.

  ‘Tremendous idea,’ Lady Radford said. ‘The village women will be an asset, I’m sure, with the right leadership.’

  Emily dared to meet her Mother’s gaze. Her lips were tightly pursed. She’d been right – it would never be that easy to convince her.

  Lady Radford turned towards Emily, the penny finally falling into place with a clunk they could all hear. ‘Emily! A young, strong girl like you, who isn’t afraid of getting dirty, should be put to work. You shouldn’t be knitting, you must leave the lighter, less taxing work to the older women.’

  Mother’s back straightened, her arms folding across her stomach. ‘I couldn’t spare her,’ Mother said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And she has a sweetheart of course,’ Mother added. ‘A charming young officer, by all accounts, from a good family.’

  Ah. Emily’s white lie came back to haunt her. Mother thought she was busy solving their problems by finding a respectable husband, rather than corresponding with a corporal.

  But Lady Radford wasn’t the least bit interested in affairs of the heart, only of war.

  ‘And what about Cecil?’ Lady Radford asked, forgetting about Emily now that Mother had sewn her into a pocket of domesticity. Cecil had been talking to Mr and Mrs Peters – the village solicitor and his wife – just next to them, and he turned now.

  ‘And what about Cecil?’ he asked.

  ‘Will you volunteer?’

  Emily noticed how the crowd around them fell into hush as they waited for this answer. Mother became flustered, asking Lady Radford if she needed another drink, but their neighbour wasn’t to be put off, and Cecil wasn’t going to give her a fudge of an answer either:

  ‘I just haven’t been stirred by the call to fight,’ he confessed, as if casually telling them he wasn’t all that partial to something as trivial as caviar. The conversation around them died. It was always the sort of thing he might say, just perhaps he might have told the family first rather than announcing it to a room full of people who had loved ones at the Front right then.

  Lady Radford’s eyes were wide.

  ‘I wish I could stand beside my friends, my brother. But I can’t.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ she began, ‘your country needs you. Now is the time to stand up and be counted, like your brother. Other men will follow your lead.’

  ‘Stand up and be blown to smithereens is more like it,’ Cecil retorted. ‘This war is for the capitalists, and it’s the average man on the street who is paying the price.’

  ‘Louisa,’ Lady Radford turned to Mother. Apart from one or two oblivious guests in the far corner, the entire party had abandoned their own exchanges now. ‘Like the Radfords, you are in a position to set an example to the rest of the village.’

  Mother’s grey-blue eyes were wide, the colour completely drained from her face.

  John stepped in, when it was clear that Mother was lost for words. ‘Cecil isn’t nineteen until January.’ Emily often forgot there was only a year between them. Cecil behaved as if he were so much younger. ‘And he doesn’t have to fight if he doesn’t wish to. The country needs men like Cecil to challenge points of view and make us think.’

  ‘Yes, well conscription will change all that. And they say it’s inevitable. One really can’t do enough.’ Lady Radford smiled sweetly. ‘John and Emily are commendable, but this war calls for everyone to do their bit. Everyone.’

  The chatter slowly returned to the room and Cecil’s revelation, on the surface at least, had been glossed over. But there was no avoiding it. Cecil would go back to university the next morning and he wouldn’t be enlisting. Several guests slipped out early without even saying goodbye to John. Mother mingled for the rest of the evening, not once catching Emily’s eye. When they’d waved off the last of the guests and her brothers had gone to bed, Mother called her into her room where she sat propped up in bed.

  ‘Oh, my days,’ Mother said. ‘They will lock Cecil up you know. The way this government is enlisting men they’ll make an example of those who refuse. Oh my, two sons to worry about, on top of everything else. I can’t cope, I can’t breathe. Emily, will you help me up? My chest is quite tight …’

  Mother’s skin had a tinge of blue to it. ‘Please drop your ideas, for your Mother’s sake. Don’t leave me, dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  Chapter Seven

  July 1915

  The morning John was to return to the Front the rain fell in stair rods, and the temperature was so cold they had to light the fires again.

  John sat in the chair, biting his nails to the quick while Mother’s gaze never left him, trying to store away every detail.

  Emily had also woken up earlier than usual, jolted into consciousness at the realisation that John was departing that day. Unlike Mother, she couldn’t look at him and instead gazed out the window. Her stomach lurched whenever she returned her attention to the room and saw him shifting about in his seat, checking his watch, his mind already back there, with his men.

  No one had mentioned the previous evening’s events. Cecil’s revelations hadn’t been in the script and weren’t discussed now. Mother had lines on her face that weren’t there the night before. Her usually impeccable appearance was tarnished with unkempt hair and few of her signature finishing touches. She wore no earrings or brooches. Cecil’s defiance of convention was brav
e and he was being true to himself, but he didn’t give a single thought to the impact it would have on the rest of the family.

  Cecil came into the room, just as Emily was thinking about him. Mother’s anguished eyes lifted from John and alighted on her younger brother. Emily avoided his eye, shifted her shoulder away from him as he reached out for her. Perhaps he ought to be made to realise how much this would change their lives too. Hoping and praying that the rumours of a conscription bill for the first time in British history were wrong wasn’t much of a position of optimism.

  Mother said nothing about the cherry stains on her skirt or the conversation with Lady Radford about the need for land girls. If it had even registered with Mother that everyone else was in support of her working on the farm it had all been swept away by Cecil’s shock announcement and John’s imminent departure.

  Then her heart stopped. The whole world stopped.

  Mr Hughes’ car crunched across the gravel.

  ‘Time’s up then.’ John’s smile was feeble as he pushed himself out of his chair.

  Emily stared at her shoes as Mother clung to him so tight that, in the end, he had to wrench her hands from his arms.

  She, Cecil and John travelled to London together largely in silence and at Charing Cross they accompanied him to his train on Platform 5.

  ‘I love you, brother dear,’ she said, her voice muffled against his neck.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t convince Mother to let you work on the farm, but you mustn’t give up,’ he said as he slammed his carriage door shut.

  ‘Just come home safe,’ she called as his train pulled away.

  The two of them stood and waved until the train had disappeared off over Waterloo Bridge and snaked around a bend and into the grey gloom of the day. They remained in silence, a safe distance between them, lost in their own thoughts. John had been ripped away and they were powerless to prevent it.

  The crowd on the platform was thinning out when Cecil told her he’d better be off, if he was going to catch a debate in a pub’s back room. Through clenched teeth she declined his offer to escort her back to the platform while she waited for her train back to Chartleigh. He dashed away, his kiss skimming her cheek, as he left her on the platform, awaiting the twenty-eight past twelve. That suited her just fine.

  Once he’d disappeared down the staircase to the underground, she checked her watch, left the platform and the station and, on a wet Strand, she joined a taxi rank. If she was quick, she would still make it in time.

  *

  A wave surged through Emily’s stomach every time a man in khaki strode past. She waited by the Telegraph Office entrance with a beating heart, louder than the station clock on the tower outside. She couldn’t shift Mother’s voice from her mind. She’d be confined to knitting for a month if Mother learnt that Emily had met a man, a stranger no less, unchaperoned, in London. Then her mind flitted to what Theo would be like in the flesh. Would he think she was fast because she’d come without a chaperone?

  It was ten past two and her concerns might be for nothing if she’d already missed him.

  ‘Emily?’ A voice came, just as she crossed the concourse. She jumped clean into the air, her stomach still twisting and turning as she turned and gasped at him. He was a good-looking young man, as his photo had suggested, better perhaps in the flesh. His sandy hair was parted to one side, and he had warm brown eyes. Nothing within her stirred though. Her knees didn’t go weak; butterflies didn’t hatch and flap their wings in her stomach. She’d had a silly hope that she’d fall in love and they’d get married and he would take her away from her worries.

  She gasped as he lifted her up from the ground and spun her around, her cheek pressed against his, the sandalwood scent of his cologne wafting by. People stopped to admire the soldier and what they probably thought was his sweetheart. She smiled as if she held some secret knowledge.

  He set her back down and now it was her turn to admire him. He was a vision in khaki; stiff cap, brown belt. His shoulders broad, capable and safe.

  ‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Your letters have been a real tonic.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ she said. ‘It’s been a sad day, and I’m glad of the chance to brighten it up. Now, how long do you have until your train?’

  He checked the clock. ‘A couple of hours. I was wondering if we might take a stroll beside the Thames, see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.’

  Together they walked out of the station into the driving rain and joined the taxi rank, the people waiting in front moving aside to let the returning soldier go ahead of them.

  The taxi was soon held up in the traffic.

  ‘It’s the women’s march,’ the taxi driver told them. Emily couldn’t believe her luck. She’d read in the newspaper about the march for women’s right to serve their country, to work in the munitions factories and on the land.

  ‘Gosh, we might see Emmeline Pankhurst,’ she said. She suggested they hop out and walk the rest of the way. Theo had on his trench coat to protect him from the rain, and sheltered her with an umbrella, inviting her to steady herself on his outstretched arm.

  ‘I was going to suggest that we change our plans and avoid this part of town,’ he said, ‘but I can see you’re excited by the march.’

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’

  He said that he didn’t, of course not. She’d never walked out with a man before. She found she couldn’t quite keep up with him. His strides were longer than hers and she found herself scurrying to keep under the comfort of his umbrella.

  The crowds were thickening up and a brass band moved closer. As they approached Westminster Bridge the spectators were four or five deep, the view obscured by top hats and umbrellas. Emily left Theo’s side to thread her way through the crowds, pushed her way to the front. Theo joined her.

  ‘Would you look at them,’ she said, pointing at a group of women marching with purpose down the centre of the road, undeterred by a little thing like rain.

  ‘Three cheers for our gallant soldiers,’ she read aloud and smiled at Theo. ‘Oh, I like that one: mobilise the brains and energy of women,’ Emily said, reading the next banner. The word brain was underlined. Quite right.

  ‘There’s a shortage of ammo,’ said Theo. ‘That’s what’s triggered this march, and it’s not the lack of women volunteers that’s the problem but the unions standing in their way, and the idea of women doing a man’s work, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you think women can make shells?’ she asked, and then waved at the women who marched by. She was being pulled by an invisible force to burst out of the crowd and walk alongside them.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Theo said. ‘But why not? We won’t win this war without shells and with empty stomachs, that much I do know.’

  ‘I still want to work on my farm,’ she said.

  ‘Good for you,’ he said.

  ‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never said.’

  ‘Sorry?’ he said. The crowd had cheered and drowned out her voice.

  ‘Your living, what do you do?’

  A shadow passed over his face. ‘That’s all a long time ago now …’ He focused on the passing crowds. ‘It’s as if I’ve only ever been Corporal Williams.’

  ‘But you must have a trade, or a family business?’

  He tutted, but he was smiling at her, amused by her persistence. He took her arm and led her back through the crowds to a Lyons’ Corner House. Once they were sitting down and had ordered afternoon tea he asked her about her farm.

  She told him all about Lily, and how she’d rescued the village women from being trampled. She told him about the cherry harvest, how kind Mr and Mrs Tipton were to her, and how they let her help out on the farm and kept it a secret from Mother.

  ‘And your family own the estate and the farm. Just the one, is it?’

  ‘That’s right, my father owned a cement works but my brother John sold that when Father died.’

&
nbsp; ‘So, your Mother has enough to go around then, should you ever need it?’

  She smiled and drank her tea. Their predicament was family business. John had trusted her enough to tell her that Uncle Wilfred had come to their rescue and she wouldn’t betray that trust with a loose tongue. Besides, Theo had chosen not to tell her about his past, which meant she could opt not to talk about money and spoil a really lovely end to what had promised to be a rotten day.

  ‘Those women were quite a sight today, weren’t they?’ he said.

  She remembered the large float, garlanded with plants and flowers; behind it followed women in white smocks holding their hoes aloft. ‘It’s clear the country needs educated girls, girls just like you,’ he said. ‘I feel rather proud to have a girl like you writing to me at the Front.’

  ‘There’s nothing I would like more than to be a land girl,’ she confessed. She waited for him to snort, or say something to belittle her, but he didn’t. He leant in, interested. He beckoned her closer. Her mind raced with the things she could tell him about her ideas and plans for the future.

  ‘There’s something I would like more.’ His hot, damp breath blew into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer than was decent. She tried to stare him down, but his eyes were so brimming with desire that it was she who had to break away. And she wasn’t comfortable with the way her stomach betrayed her by curling at the edges and threatening to flip right over.

  Thankfully the waiter appeared at her shoulder with a tray of tea things. Her cheeks were burning so much that she excused herself and hid in the lavatory until the heat had subsided and her skin had settled back to its normal colour.

  He missed his next train, and the next. When the tea rooms were closing and the streets were too wet for walking he suggested they rent a room, spend some time alone together. Her speechlessness was enough for him to promptly come up with another idea.