The Land Girl

by Allie Burns

  She might have given up and laughed it off when she reached the high notes, but for a chap right at the front with sea-green eyes who smiled with encouragement. He didn’t lift his gaze from her the entire time she sang, but instead of shrinking she bathed in the glow of his spotlight and the misty emotion in his eyes. When his forefinger hastily wiped away a tear, her own jaw tightened. The sensitivity of the man with green eyes reminded her of John. She had to break the spell and focus on the floorboards, otherwise she wouldn’t have finished the song.

  Once they’d taken a bow she made a point of going over to the man with green eyes and offering him a piece of their homemade Turkish delight.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said, a cube in his left cheek.

  She surveyed him while he rolled his eyes and let slip ‘mmms’. He didn’t have a visible injury, but he moved slowly, smiled rarely. Before she could ask him his name the matron called Martha and her away to visit the men on the ward. Emily left him one last piece of Turkish delight. Their skin touched as she placed the sweet in his palm. His hands were strong and soft at the same time and a jolt of electricity passed between them. She swam in his sea-green eyes one last time.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said to him. Then as she walked away she chastised herself for being drawn to an injured and vulnerable man who couldn’t be blamed for confusing attention with attraction; but she should know better. She was a married woman.

  ‘I think it’s just as well my calling was to be a land girl and not a nurse,’ she said to Martha as they reached the ward and her stomach lurched at the sight of the bandaged men lined up in their beds. She’d fall in love with them all, if she were working here. Martha raised a quizzical eyebrow, but Emily kept her eyes forward, took a deep breath and strode into the ward.

  *

  In the front room of the farmhouse, stubs of burnt-down candles wedged into empty bottles lit their ballroom for the evening. The candlelight muted the dusty shadows of the sooty room.

  ‘We’ll have to imagine that we have high ceilings, polished floors and chandeliers,’ she said to the crew sprawled around the edge of the room.

  ‘Most of us have to imagine all that anyway,’ Martha said with a wink. It had been Emily’s idea for the girls to dress as pirates. Shirts tucked in at the waists of their breeches and teased out to look blouson. Engine grease smeared onto their chins to give the effect of beards. Martha had fashioned an eye patch out of an old stocking and fastened a red scarf over her raven-coloured hair. Emily asked Olive for a dance. She’d thawed towards her now, but it made her shudder to think what Olive would say if she knew Cecil was staying at Perseverance Place.

  Martha attended to the fire. They were down to coal dust now. They had all but used up their supplies, even though they’d been careful. They hadn’t had enough coal for fires in their bedrooms in Perseverance Place for several weeks.

  Martha cut in, raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Care to dance, lady of the manor?’ Martha said in a mock deep voice.

  ‘My card is rather full, but I don’t like to disappoint. I am sure I can find room for you,’ Emily replied. They took to the flickering light of the dance floor, and Emily fought the lurch in her stomach. Theo was miles away and they might all still be doing the same thing next Christmas. How desperate might it all have become by then?

  ‘I’ll check on him.’ Martha knew exactly what was on her mind. Cecil. He was hiding in their home.

  He’d returned from prison gaunt and pinched. His flesh had fallen away. He hadn’t started a single argument, which was the most worrying sign of all.

  He had taken a hard decision to refuse to fight but it had a bearing on all of them. If he’d worked on the farm, or been a stretcher-bearer at the Front, people would have been more understanding; but to be an absolutist, and refuse any part of the war, had made it difficult for the whole family. Being tied up, locked up on his own, kept on the brink of starvation, meant it was hardest for him, though. He’d developed the habit of chewing the top of his thumb, as if he was destroying himself, one tiny piece at a time.

  She thanked Martha and leant against the piano. It hadn’t been so long ago that Martha would have poked Cecil in the eye for being a shirker, but the war had changed them all and forced them to understand decisions and behaviour that was incomprehensible just a short time ago.

  Mrs Tipton spilt over the edges of the piano stool, her eyes twinkling with sherry and festive spirit. She warbled ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’ in a surprisingly delicate voice.

  Martha came back in what seemed like a matter of moments, breathless, and whispered in her ear. ‘You need to come. Now.’

  Outside the farmhouse, last week’s snow had cleared leaving the tracks around the farm muddy. Her footsteps squelched in the mud. She slipped and slid as she tried to get a grip.

  The back door was already open. Cecil ran towards her, panting, his eyes wide. He paused to breathlessly shove his arms into his coat and tug on his hat. His boots weren’t even laced, his heels crushing the backs as he started out onto the path.

  ‘Where are you going, Cecil?’ she asked, trying to pull him back. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s not welcome here.’ A deep voice from within the dark hallway startled her. ‘There are to be no shirkers under this roof.’

  She reached for the wall to steady herself.

  ‘Theo!’ He emerged into the shadows of the hallway, swaying unsteadily on his feet. His broad shoulders reached from one wall to the other. As he loomed closer she was smacked in the face by sickly alcohol fumes. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Another fine welcome,’ he said, sneering to reveal the whites of his teeth. He waved a bandaged hand at her. She stepped back to avoid it.

  ‘A Blighty injury,’ he said. ‘Shrapnel. A bit of luck. Except of course I come to surprise you and find your ridiculous little brother is squirrelled away, hiding like the coward he is.’

  Cecil had taken harbour in the shadow of the shed at the end of the yard, his panting still audible.

  ‘Please, Theo,’ she said. ‘It’s Christmas. And I don’t want any fuss.’

  She signalled to Martha that she should bring Cecil back inside, and she took Theo back into the front room.

  ‘I have to report back on Boxing Day.’ She surveyed him in the candlelight. More lines had etched around his mouth and eyes. The skin about his eyes was puffed up and plum-coloured. The eyes themselves weren’t a soft brown any longer; they were a hard black. The man at ease who’d harvested apples with her in October had faded away and all that was left was a brittle core.

  ‘We’ll make it a very special Christmas then,’ she said, determined that she could thaw him out, bring that other part of him back.

  ‘Not if he’s here.’ Theo’s brow was as heavy as storm clouds.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Cecil said, holding up his palms in surrender. ‘I’ll sleep in the hay barn, Emily.’

  ‘No, you will not.’ Emily raised her voice. ‘It’s the middle of winter and you already look malnourished.’

  ‘I’m prepared to put my differences aside for Christmas.’ He held out his hand for Theo, edging into the doorway, his angular knees jutting through his trousers.

  ‘Theo?’ Emily framed it in a gentle tone, as if he were a lion in a cage. Cecil folded his arms.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Cecil said. ‘Christmas is a time of forgiveness.’ At another time, Emily might have respected Cecil’s resolve, and determination to stick to his morals, but not now when Theo was simmering like a kettle on the range.

  ‘You want me to forgive you?’ Theo let out a bone-shaking laugh. ‘France is a stinking cesspit of slaughter and despair. And you want my forgiveness for sitting on the sidelines? Will it make you feel better?’ Theo stepped closer to Cecil, leant in towards him, snarled, and then spat in her brother’s face.

  She was on her feet and moving towards Theo.

  ‘I refuse to breathe the same air as this pathe
tic excuse for a man.’

  Cecil cowered. The foaming spittle sliding down his cheek. ‘I only ever wanted the war to end. I couldn’t perpetuate it; I just can’t be a part of it.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up.’ Theo shook his head, his tone low and cutting.

  ‘I think that’s enough now,’ Emily said, a tremor in her voice. ‘Theo, why don’t you go upstairs and rest and, Cecil, we’ll ask Heinrich next door if you could sleep there tonight.’

  ‘Heinrich!’ Theo leant against the wall. ‘I’d forgotten we have to sleep cheek by jowl with the ruddy Hun. You Cothams really wouldn’t know patriotism if it shelled the living daylights out of you.’

  Emily clenched her fists. What right did Theo have to come into her home drunk and hailing such insults at her and Cecil? Her brother had stood by his convictions and one look at him would tell anyone he had paid a high price.

  ‘Perhaps it should be you who sleeps next door,’ Emily said. She stared at the floor as she spoke, but she meant it, by God she meant it. She clenched her jaw. ‘I want you to leave.’

  Theo had been toying with the bandage on his hand. Now he ripped it free and raised a bloodied and scarred hand up to Emily’s face. Martha screamed. Cecil stepped forwards, shoved Emily back against the wall, and squared up to Theo; a waif against an ogre. Theo brought the bare hand down, connected with the side of Cecil’s head. It rebounded from the hallway wall with a sickening thud.

  Emily and Martha charged at Theo, Martha pummelling his back, Emily tugging at his shoulder, desperate to pull him away from Cecil. Theo’s fists flew thick and fast. The air filled with the rasp of Cecil’s wounded breath. The whole time Cecil kept his arms by his sides, his eyes those of a cadaver.

  ‘Stop,’ Emily cried. ‘Stop!’ She stood wedged between Theo and Cecil to shield her brother as a painful blow rammed into her side, and knocked her to the floor. Martha tried to tug Cecil away, breath expelling in groans, until eventually blood spilled from Cecil’s lips. His body grew limper and limper. Still Theo didn’t tire.

  Back on her feet now, Emily charged at Theo and landed on his back, hitting him and then trying to wrap her arms around his shoulders to prevent him from hitting Cecil, but her brother was on the floor now and Theo shook Emily off and began to kick Cecil in his stomach. She heard a sickening wheeze from Cecil with each blow.

  ‘Help!’ Emily screamed, banging on the hallway wall. ‘Help!’ She threw herself down onto the floor at Theo’s boots, shielding Cecil. She held her breath as he retracted his boot behind him, and just before he flicked it forwards towards her head, Heinrich filled the hallway. He was taller, broader, and he was fresh and full of strength. Theo panted, stood his ground. Heinrich shouted at him in German.

  Then he was gone, and she had no idea what Heinrich had done with him once he’d lifted him out into the yard.

  Martha gasped. Cecil was listless, an outcast fledgling tossed from the nest. She felt his neck for his pulse. It was weak, but it was there.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he murmured through a bloodied mouth. ‘Just a bit sore.’ They helped him up to standing and took him slowly and tentatively up to her bedroom where they laid him on Emily’s bed. He gave another wheeze. They fetched him blankets that they would have to forgo that night in the coal-less house, and made a cold compress to put on his swollen eye.

  ‘Would you like me to check on Heinrich, see what’s happened to Theo?’ Martha asked.

  Emily shook her head. Good riddance to him. She applied the compress to Cecil with shaking hands. He was going to be all right. Sensations returned to her own body, and the sharp sting in her side where Theo had struck her. She lifted her pirate shirt to find a purple bruise the size of a dinner plate.

  ‘There, there,’ she whispered to Cecil, in a soft voice that broke despite herself. ‘Let’s be glad that Mother can’t see you now,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t he hit him back?’ Martha whispered, her face streaked with tears, as they closed the door on him. Martha had offered to share her bed with Emily that night and had prepared her a compress for her bruise.

  ‘Because he’ll stand by what he believes to be right, no matter what,’ Emily said through her own tears. ‘Even if it kills him.’ She smiled a wonky, trembling smile. ‘It makes him the most infuriating, but admirable brother.’

  She collapsed into Martha’s arms and they held on to one another with a tight grip while they wept quietly.

  *

  Sitting in the house, the new marks on the wall, the broken door, were all reminders of Christmas Eve. She started every time the back door opened now, awoken by the badgers and foxes prowling at night. If sleep had been hard before, it was impossible now.

  It drove her out of Perseverance Place and back up to the convalescent hospital. She baked a cake. While she clattered about in the kitchen making a terrible mess, Martha popped in and out, amused and curious at what had stirred her into action.

  It was a fruit cake, a bit lopsided, and she wasn’t convinced it had cooked properly all the way through, but it had turned a lovely golden brown on the top, which was no mean feat with the inconsistent temperature of the range.

  She could change out of her trousers and smock, but it was better this way. She didn’t want to appear to be making a special effort, which she absolutely wasn’t doing. It was nothing like that, she told herself as she fanned the cake, willing it to cool so she could take it up to HopBine before she lost her nerve. She just wanted to see a kindly face.

  Christmas had been so distressing. Cecil was so unwell after his fight with Theo that they’d had to call out the doctor, and so the village knew they’d been harbouring him. Then just after New Year’s Day he was arrested again and they had no idea of when he’d be released again. Somehow, throughout it all, she was certain that everything would be better if she saw the soldier who’d enjoyed her Turkish delight.

  As she stepped into the familiar primrose yellow hallway at HopBine House and her senses were at once assaulted with antiseptic and unfamiliar voices and the scraping of furniture, it was peculiar – as if she’d travelled through time and landed at her home in the distant future.

  ‘Back again!’ The matron rested her hands in front of her. Emily craned to look over the matron’s shoulder into her old sitting room, but the space was empty. ‘So, what can I do for you?’ Matron clasped her hands together and rocked slightly on her feet to signal she’d be on the move again in a matter of moments.

  Emily cleared her throat. ‘There was a chap,’ she began, ‘when I was here at Christmas. He rather enjoyed the Turkish delight, so, well, I made him a cake. It’s sweetened with carrot. He needed feeding up.’ She laughed, fiddling with the cake tin.

  ‘And you know this chap’s name?’

  ‘Oh, well.’ Her cheeks were burning up now. ‘I don’t, no. He had green eyes, a moustache and a narrow face.’ Kind but sad, but she’d keep that to herself.

  ‘I think you must mean the Captain. Shell shock. Rather emotional?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds like him. Might I see him? Say hello and give him the cake?’

  The matron tilted her head to one side.

  ‘You might, except Captain Ellery was discharged just yesterday. He’ll be on his way back to the trenches, if he isn’t already there. He’d better not scream in his sleep as he did here, or his men won’t get any rest. Poor chap.’

  Emily dropped her head, staring at the frivolous cake tin and wishing she’d gone to the farmhouse. So that was that. It had been a silly idea anyway, fanciful, and the poor man wasn’t well. What would he have said if she’d turned up out of the blue? He might have sent her away.

  It was for the best that she had missed him; it was a lesson, a message, that she had to face up to what had happened between Theo and Cecil. She could hide in the farmhouse, the farmyard or HopBine House, but it didn’t change anything. She had seen a truly terrible side to her husband, and no amount of running was going to change it.

  Chapter Nineteen
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  August 1918

  ‘Is he here again?’ Theo stood in the doorway.

  She blinked at the sight of him. Since Christmas, since Theo had last been home, they’d prepared the land, planted seeds and watched the crops grow; they’d picked the fruit and the livestock had given birth, but the memory of what he’d done to Cecil hadn’t faded. He was capable of hurting a defenceless man. She might never look at him and not remember him kicking her emaciated brother to the floor.

  His chest was puffed up now, his black eyes searching the corners of the room. His hand was healed up; just an angry scar ran across the skin.

  ‘Cecil’s back in prison.’ She pulled her knees up to her chest.

  ‘Good.’ He collapsed into the armchair. ‘I’m just here for tonight.’

  She straightened her back. How could he think that he was welcome? Martha’s footsteps travelled down the stairs. Her raven hair appeared around the doorframe.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, her eyes wide behind Theo’s back.

  ‘I think so,’ Emily said, gesturing with her head to keep the back door open in case they needed to call for help.

  Theo wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any brandy?’

  She shook her head. If she didn’t have it here, he would just go out and look for it – it was pointless to think it would be any different. She’d not much to offer him in the way of food either. Since they’d introduced rationing at the beginning of the year, even on the farm they’d had to use what little they had sparingly.

  ‘I passed a public house on my way up from the station.’ And there it was. ‘Will you come with me?’

  She couldn’t go to the Queen’s Head, even if she’d wanted to. Her family would never drink with the labourers and land girls weren’t permitted. She offered to make him a nice cup of tea instead, but as the kettle boiled, he was fidgeting about, his leg twitching, his gaze on the door.

  She held her breath whenever he moved close to her. Martha left the room.