Land Girls

by Angela Huth

  ‘That’s going quite far,’ said Prue. ‘I’ve never felt like that. Have you, Ag?’

  ‘No,’ said Ag. She was wondering if the others would mind if she arranged her books on the top of one of the chests.

  ‘You’re right lucky, then,’ said Prue.

  ‘I am.’ Stella took the photograph back. ‘But then what’s the point of life if you’re not in love? I always have to be in love. I can’t imagine not being in love.’

  ‘Has it always been Philip?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Stella laughed again, a delighted cooing laugh that Prue envied. ‘There’ve been lots of others, but Philip is the real thing.’

  ‘Marriage, you mean? Wedding bells?’

  Stella touched the outline of Philip’s face. ‘We haven’t known each other long,’ she said. ‘But I think you know, somehow, when it’s … I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised, when the war’s over …

  ‘Anyone mind if I put my photo on the chest of drawers?’ asked Prue, standing up.

  ‘Course not,’ said Stella. ‘I’ll have Philip on my chair.’

  ‘What about you, Ag?’ Prue thought that if she tried hard enough she might eventually get the tall, snooty dark girl to loosen up.

  ‘I’ll put mine beside yours.’ Ag took a small double leather frame over to the chest. On one side was a photograph of her mother, who had died when Ag was two, taken in the 1920s. On the other side was a recent snapshot she had taken with her own Box Brownie: Colonel Marlowe, her father, gentle solicitor, outside his office in King’s Lynn.

  ‘Now she’s what I call a beauty,’ said Prue, snatching up the frame as soon as Ag had put it down. ‘Smashing, isn’t she? Just like Vivien Leigh. Your mother, is it?’ Ag nodded. Prue returned the photograph to its place. ‘Can’t say you’re much like her.’

  Now their score was even, and Prue was full of regret. She wished she hadn’t said that. It was worse than the bantam, more hurtful. She hoped she would be forgiven. But she could not tell what Ag, so dignified, was feeling. Ag quickly returned to her bed. She searched for something in her handbag.

  Prue felt in urgent need of a cigarette. ‘Anyone mind if I have a fag?’ She took a packet of Woodbines and a box of matches from her pocket.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Ag, so lightly it seemed she had not noticed Prue’s jibe.

  ‘I don’t mind anything,’ said Stella.

  Prue went over to Ag. ‘Sorry I said that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it. You can’t tell nothing from a photo. Don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Ag.

  ‘But your mum is beautiful,’ said Prue.

  ‘Was,’ said Ag. ‘Hadn’t we better be going down for high tea?’ She looked at her watch. It’s almost time.’

  Prue moved over to the single armchair, sat on an arm, inhaled deeply. ‘Just a quick drag,’ she said. ‘D’you suppose we’re going to have to eat whatever that terrible smell was in the kitchen?’

  ‘Rabbit and turnip,’ said Ag. ‘I’ll take a very large bet.’

  ‘Rabbit and turnip? Crikey, I’ll never get that lot down my throat. And do you think Mr Lawrence’ll find his tongue?’

  ‘He was very nervous in the car,’ said Ag.

  ‘Huh! What did he think we were?’

  ‘I wasn’t nervous,’ said Stella, ‘I was just thinking of Philip.’

  ‘’Course you were.’ Prue pecked fast at her cigarette. ‘You were just thinking of Philip. As for Mrs Lawrence, she’s a real old battleaxe.’

  ‘I like her,’ said Stella.

  ‘So do I,’ said Ag.

  ‘That makes two of you, then,’ said Prue. She swung her legs faster. ‘It don’t feel much like there’s a war, here, do it?’

  The dining-room had a patina of gloom. It smelt of darkly polished furniture. The central light, whose shade was fretted with the abstract wings of dead moths, feebly illuminated a bleakly laid table: fork, knife, pudding spoon, and napkin in a bakelite coloured ring at each place, glasses and a jug of water. In the centre of the table, island in a brackish lake, was a stand of lacy silver which held cut-glass pots of salt and pepper. A gleaming silver spine rose between the pots, its apex twisted into a small handle. This fragile object, the single shining thing in the sombre room, made Stella smile. She wondered when Mrs Lawrence had time to polish it. She imagined it was important to Mrs Lawrence to make the time.

  Ag, standing by the table – none of them was sure what to do, whether they should sit down – straightened a table mat, a gravy-spotted scene of rustic Dorset a century ago. In the awkward silence that had netted them all, the grandfather clock ticked – muted, insistent, its fine brass hands stroking their imperceptible way round the brass sun of its face.

  ‘Give me the creeps, grandfather clocks do,’ said Prue. She moved over to the sideboard to study a photograph in a cheap leather frame. It was of a stern-looking young girl, her flat hair rolled up in the same way as Mrs Lawrence’s. ‘She don’t look like much of a laugher, do she?’

  Mrs Lawrence came in with a pot of stew. It was rabbit. She was followed by her husband who carried a dish of mashed potatoes and roast turnips. The girls exchanged private looks. Prue, behind the Lawrences’ backs, imitated someone being sick. But she took the piled plate Mrs Lawrence handed her.

  ‘Where’s Joe?’ Mr Lawrence asked his wife, an enormous plate of food in front of him. Mrs Lawrence, the last one to sit, had taken a tiny helping herself.

  ‘Went to deliver that feedstuff to Robert. Said they might have something to eat at The Bells.’

  Mr Lawrence sniffed.

  There was a long silence, but for the subdued chink of knives and forks in thick gravy. Prue, despite herself, was eating hungrily. The ticking of the clock bored through her. She turned to Mr Lawrence, sitting next to her.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ she asked, nodding towards the photograph.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Prue gave him fifteen ticks of the clock to tell her more. He kept his silence. She turned to his wife.

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  Mrs Lawrence wiped her mouth on her napkin. Already she had finished her food.

  ‘That’s Janet,’ she said. ‘Joe’s fiancée.’ She waited till Ag and Stella had both turned to look at the photograph with new interest, and returned to their food. ‘They’re to be married when the war is over. In the spring, we hope.’

  ‘Depending on Mr Churchill,’ said her husband.

  ‘They know they may have a long wait. They seem quite resigned.’

  Mrs Lawrence spoke tightly. Stella and Ag both hoped Prue would ask no more questions. Prue felt no such reticence. She turned again to the farmer.

  ‘So Joe, your son, he’s not been called up, then?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t, and he won’t be. Asthmatic. Not a hope. Suffered all his life.’

  ‘He’s been very unfortunate, Joe,’ said Mrs Lawrence. ‘He would have liked to have joined the navy,’ added her husband.

  ‘He would have liked to have gone to Cambridge. He got a place, they thought very highly of him. But then the war … we couldn’t spare him from the farm.’

  ‘My – I have a friend in the navy,’ said Stella.

  ‘I went to Cambridge,’ said Ag. ‘He shouldn’t miss it if possible. He could go once the war’s over.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Lawrence.

  They fell back into silence. The ticking clock dominated again. It wasn’t until Mrs Lawrence had helped them all to large plates of apple pie and custard that her husband got down to business.

  ‘You’ll have heard about the place from the district commissioner, I dare say,’ he began. ‘Bit of this, bit of that, mixed farming. Up to now, we’ve done what we like best, though I hear there’ll be orders any minute to turn the place mostly over to arable land. For the time being we’ve got a small herd of Friesians and a hundred or so sheep, though we’re thinking of giving them up after the next lambing. Duties are pretty obvious. F
aith, here, manages everything to do with the house – shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry and so on. Land girls aren’t supposed to help with domestic chores, but I dare say she wouldn’t say no to the odd helping hand.’ He watched his wife shake her head, cast down her tired eyes. ‘She takes care of all the fruit – just a small orchard, we have, damsons, plums and apples. She does all the pruning, picking, boxing up, everything, don’t you, Faith? Besides the jam and chutney – you’ll not be short of good jam, here, will they, Faith?’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Faith.

  ‘Apart from all that, in a real emergency the wife helps us out with the milking, the lambing – she can turn her hand to anything, can Faith.’

  He stopped for a moment, glanced at Prue. Once again glassy green tears danced in her eyes.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ she said. ‘Poor Mrs Lawrence.’

  Mr Lawrence ignored her. His instinct had been right. He could see this film star bit of fluff wasn’t going to be much use, women’s tears at the very thought of an honest day’s work.

  ‘Everything else’s up to Joe and me and you lot. You can all have a go at different things, see what you’re best at. Five twenty a.m. there’s tea on the kitchen table, five thirty it’s down to milking. I’ll sort you out, your various duties, in the morning. Anyone have any preferences?’

  Prue volunteered at once. ‘Well, I found on the course I loved tractors, Mr Lawrence. Don’t suppose you’d ever believe it, but I could plough a pretty straight furrow, they said.’

  ‘I’d find that hard, I must admit,’ he replied, unable to resist a slight smile.

  ‘I loved working with cows,’ said Ag. She would be the one, perhaps, he would introduce to hedging. He could imagine her, slasher in hand – kind, studious face, thoughts hidden behind hooded eyes. He couldn’t picture her, somehow, serious head bent into the muddy side of a cow.

  ‘I’ll remember that, then. And you?’ He turned to Stella. The picture of her knee still flickered in his mind.

  I’m afraid I got to the course late because my father was ill, so I missed learning to milk. I’m just a general sort of all-rounder … I’ll do anything.’

  ‘That’s good. Well, then, you start at dawn tomorrow. I warn you now, I’m a fairly easy man’ – Ag saw his wife’s mouth twitch almost imperceptibly – ‘but one thing I can’t stand is anyone late for anything, see? And another thing: there’s to be no shirking. It’s tough work, long hours, but it’s the satisfaction of a job well done you’ll get. The satisfaction of knowing you’re doing your bit for your country in this damn war. Now—’ he pushed back his chair, flushed from the exertion of so much speaking. ‘I thought we should … celebrate your first night with a sip of the wife’s home-made ginger wine. You’ll never have tasted anything like it, I can tell you that.’

  He strode over to the sideboard, opened a cupboard, took out five wineglasses and put them on the table. Their glass, so pale a pink as to be almost an illusion, was engraved with butterflies that flew through swirling ribbons. It was a wonder their fine stems did not snap in Mr Lawrence’s huge clumsy hands, thought Ag. They were the first beautiful objects she had seen in the house. She could not contain her response of pleasure.

  ‘They’re so pretty,’ she said.

  Mrs Lawrence blushed. She was confused by the least of compliments. ‘My mother’s,’ she said. ‘My mother liked to collect pretty things. We’ve not many left. We had to sell off gradually. Bad years.’ She put her hand to her mouth, as if she had said too much. The merest gathering of shadows beneath her eyes – which almost smiled – indicated a feeling of modest pride as she watched her husband pour the thick golden wine. Filled, the blush of the glass deepened against the wine.

  By now it was almost dark outside. No one put on the light. The room was warmer, furred with the merged smells of food and polish, and the faint note of musky scent that came from Prue. Mr Lawrence, his dutiful speeches over, was suddenly looser in his movements, sitting heavily back in his chair – the only one with arms – swinging a frail glass to his lips.

  ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To Mr Churchill.’

  ‘To Mr Churchill,’ the girls muttered, holding up their glasses.

  The smoky light through the window joined the pink of glass and gold of wine. So now the glasses were the colour of misted plums, thought Ag, spurred by her usual private wonder at the antics of colour.

  ‘And, of course, to you girls.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lawrence,’ giggled Prue. ‘That’s nice of you.’

  Again the farmer could not resist a smile as he watched three white little hands tipping the glasses to their pretty little mouths: tomorrow they’d be piling the dung heap, sweeping the yard, slapping grease on sore udders.

  They all drank, Mrs Lawrence with tiny sips. The fiery wine burned their throats, their chests, their stomachs. It warmed their hands, and their heads spun with new ease and expectation.

  The glasses were emptied, the cork put back with no invitations for more, the bottle returned to its cupboard. The girls helped Mrs Lawrence take the dishes through to the kitchen. Her husband stayed for a while in the empty room, made unfamiliar to him by the new presence of strangers. The wine still burned his lips, the ticking of the clock soothed. Perhaps he would get used to it, the full house. Might not be so bad after all. Even the film star looked as if she might shape up. In a moment, he would summon the energy to go out again. With Joe still not back, there was plenty to do before nightfall. He allowed himself a moment with his eyes shut, head thrown back. Behind the heartbeat of the clock he could hear laughter across the passage.

  The kitchen was blurry from the steam of hot water from the sink. Mrs Lawrence’s arms were deep in murky bubbles, from which she produced shining white plates. The girls fluttered round her, competing to snatch each plate from her first. They had tied dishcloths round their coloured skirts. In the near dark they fumbled through strange cupboards guessing where to put things. They bumped into each other. The ginger wine surprised them with its strength. It made them laugh.

  As they were all tired, and eager to be alert on their first morning, they agreed on early bed. Mrs Lawrence warned them not to put on the light unless they pinned the black-out stuff across each window. None of them had the energy to do this: they undressed beside their beds, turning their backs to one another as they slipped nightdresses over their heads. Prue, the only one to have been denied these lessons at boarding school, copied the modest gestures of the other two. She had difficulty in seeing her face clearly in her hand mirror: it took her some time to wipe the mascara from her eyes and the lipstick from her mouth.

  She watched, fascinated, as the other two brushed their hair with short, strong, dutiful strokes as if it was a ritual they had performed for many years. Ag’s hair was dull and heavy. It needed thinning, shaping. Stella’s could do with a restyle, too. When Prue knew them better, she would introduce them to her scissors, persuade them to allow her to make improvements. The plans in her mind diffused the small feelings of homesickness.

  ‘Funny, me a hairdresser’s daughter and never brushed my hair at night,’ she said.

  ‘Very odd, that,’ agreed Stella.

  Ag sat on the edge of her bed rolling up her stockings. She wore a flannel nightdress with a bodice of lace frills, and carpet slippers. So grandmotherly, thought Prue, slipping off her own pink velvet mules with their puffs of matching swansdown. And now the grandmother figure had laid the small neat bundle of stockings on her chair, beside a pile of books, and had turned to face Stella and Prue.

  ‘I think I must tell you something,’ she said quietly, folding her hands like a nun. There was a long pause. ‘That is, my name isn’t really Agatha.’

  ‘Oh?’ Prue was prepared to be surprised by any announcement this prim girl liked to make.

  ‘No. It’s much worse than that. It’s Agapanthus.’

  ‘What? Aga – what?’ Prue doubled up with giggles. ‘There’s no such n
ame.’

  ‘Well, there is,’ said Ag. ‘It’s both the name of a flower and the name of my grandfather’s … boat.’

  Prue studied her own incredulous face, with its mascara-streaked cheeks, in her hand mirror.

  ‘Fishing boat, or what?’

  Ag hesitated. ‘More of a yacht, really,’ she said at last. ‘Just a small one. My father insisted I should be christened Agapanthus. He’s a strange man in some ways. But he also agreed I’d have a bad time at school with a name like that. So we settled for Agatha – which isn’t actually that much better, is it? Anyhow, in the end everyone called me Ag, so I never had to explain.’

  She bowed her head. The warm confusion of the ginger wine was draining away. The compulsion to confess the matter of her name had come so powerfully upon her: now, having done it, she wondered why.

  ‘I think that’s wonderful,’ said Stella. ‘Agapanthus! You could be famous with a name like that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be bad for a salon, to my mind,’ said Prue. ‘Have you ever told anyone before?’

  ‘Just one friend at Cambridge. Desmond.’

  ‘And here you are telling us the first night we meet? I’d say we’re flattered, aren’t we, Stella? Any trouble, and I’ll be shouting it from the haystacks. “Agapanthus!” I’ll shout!’

  They all laughed.

  Ag got into bed, sat with arms round raised knees. The feeling of the first night at a new school was overwhelming: on the one hand it was all so familiar, on the other there was the strangeness of being grown up in what felt like a child’s world.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me. I just felt I had to tell you. Good night.’

  At school, they always bade each other good night, no matter how sleepy. She lay down and in a practised way shuffled about until she found comfort in the unyielding mattress. In a moment she was asleep.

  Prue, in her bed, tossed about in search of softness: she doubted she’d ever get used to a mattress like this. Still, the ginger wine had cheered her, and she had to admit there was something intriguing about Ag’s confession. The tears her mother had warned her she would probably shed on her first night did not come. She, too, was quickly asleep.