by Roland Moore
Vanessa helped her to position the nozzle from the foot pump into the one remaining hole, as the others finished filling as many gaps as they could with fertiliser sacks and earth. Everyone secured their bicycle clips onto their ankles to stop desperate rats from going up their trousers. Then Vanessa gave the order to start pumping. Iris pressed her foot on the pump again and again, but realised she wasn’t doing it fast enough to generate any gas. Vanessa ordered her to go faster. Iris increased the pace. Finally, she could hear the thrusting hiss of the deadly gas as it went from the canister into the area under the barn.
Pssst, pssst, pssst.
The Land Girls waited, pitchforks and axes at the ready, a grim tableau on a fine day.
Pssst, pssst, pssst.
Iris felt her head swimming slightly. Thinking it was probably the effort of pumping the pedal so fast, she tried to take deeper breaths. But the scarf was wedged tightly against her nose and mouth, making breathing difficult. She gasped, trying to not succumb to the dizziness, all the time aware that Vanessa was urging her to pump faster.
Psst, psst.
Pin-pricks of brilliant light played over Iris’s eyes and she blinked madly to try to clear her vision. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that the forest floor was moving, a flow of black leaves moving like an oil spill from the barn. Dimly she realised that they weren’t leaves, but rats. She heard the muffled shouts of the other girls as they tried to impale as many of the creatures as they could. There were screams from the women and squawks from the rats, but the sound was fuzzy and somehow distant, as if she was dreaming it. Iris felt her foot slipping off the pedal. Vanessa was shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear the words. They were just muffled noises from another room.
Pssst.
Iris tumbled in what seemed like slow-motion off the pump, falling backwards on the forest floor. Some of it moved beneath her and she dimly realised that she had landed on some fleeing rats. The blue sky was exploding in tiny white fireworks as consciousness slipped away and Iris Dawson passed out.
She expected to see the forest and the sky, but when Iris blearily opened her eyes, she was sitting in an armchair. And yet she was sure she could see the sun, burning brightly. Near. Too near. As she regained her wits, she realised it was a large globe gas lamp that stood burning in front of her. She was in the parlour of the Jordan Gate farmhouse. Whereas the parlour at Pasture Farm was decorated in tasteful wallpaper, the walls here were bare brick. It didn’t even have the decency of a skirting board. Beyond the lamp, Iris could make out a clock on the simple wooden mantelpiece. She squinted to read the time.
It was eight o’clock.
Daytime? The next day?
Iris looked towards the bare window. The sky was greying but not dark. She guessed it was evening time.
Suddenly a face loomed into view. The smiling, pink face of Clarence Trubb. He spoke softly, in what he supposed was a calming voice, but which Iris found creepy.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “You took a tumble in the woods. The gas.”
“Am I all right?” Iris stammered. She felt quite sick and her head was pounding.
“You didn’t die, so I think you’ll be all right.”
For a moment, Iris wondered if this was an example of his black humour, but then she realised that he wasn’t joking. Had he fetched her any medical attention? At Pasture Farm, Esther would have called Dr Wally Morgan, even if he was as useless as a Spitfire without wings. But had Clarence really done nothing but sit and watch her?
“Have I been checked?” Iris said, nervously. “What is that gas? If it kills rats …”
“Relax.” Clarence smiled. “I’ve checked you over.”
Feeling a wave of panic, Iris glanced down at herself, fearing that her blouse might be undone, or worse. To her relief, she was still wearing her pullover and clothes. But her alarm amused Clarence. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He moved away, padding across the bare wood floor and exited the room. Iris realised that she was holding her breath until he’d gone. She loathed the man and didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. When she’d woken this morning, she thought she could bide her time and count down the days, but now she knew she had to get away from this place. Hurriedly, she tried to get to her feet, but her head still felt woozy and she faltered. Gripping the arms of the chair, Iris tried again, more slowly this time. She edged towards the door, using the scant pieces of furniture for support. Finally, she reached the entrance and left the room. She didn’t know where Clarence had gone as the kitchen was empty. That made this easier.
Iris went outside, the early evening air making her feel dizzy all over again. She had to get herself checked over by Dr Channing or someone. What if she was dying? That stuff was poisonous!
Iris staggered towards the barn where she had been billeted. She crept inside and scrambled to her camp bed. Pulling out the suitcase from underneath, she gripped the handle and was about to turn when a figure blocked her path.
It was Vanessa Collins, harbouring the same impassive look as she had when Iris had arrived.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to get away,” Iris stammered. “I’ve been poisoned and no one cares. And Clarence is really creepy and I don’t trust him.”
“Don’t worry about him.”
“But you said he watches us have a bath and -”
“I know.” Vanessa lowered her voice. “But he’s busy with Maureen. As long as he’s got her, he’ll leave the rest of us alone like that. Please, trust me. Don’t make a fuss and it’ll all be all right.”
“And does this Maureen want to be with him?” Iris protested.
“Just be grateful she is,” Vanessa snapped.
The idea of Maureen being some kind of sacrifice to keep Clarence away from the rest of them made Iris’s skin crawl. She didn’t even want to ask what Maureen’s ‘arrangement’ was with Clarence. They couldn’t be courting, could they? No one would want to be with that unpleasant man, surely? Who was Maureen, anyway? Perhaps she was one of the other Land Girls that Iris hadn’t met yet. Feeling overwhelmed, she slumped down onto her bed, the case falling limply from her hand. The room was spinning.
“You need to rest. Let the gas wear off.”
“I don’t - I need to get a doctor.”
“Clarence won’t allow it,” Vanessa said, cracking a strangely unnerving and unexpected smile. “We’ll look after you. And you’ll get used to life here. You’ll be all right. I promise. We’ve all taken in lungfuls of that stuff.”
“But -”
Without waiting for her consent, Vanessa swung Iris’s legs onto the bed and started to take off her boots. As Iris went to protest, Vanessa indicated for her to lie back. “Just relax. You need to sleep.” But Iris found that she was thinking of a hundred different things, each swimming into focus in her mind. The glimmer of hope when she found out she wasn’t going to be draining marsh land in East Anglia. Finch had made that sound like an act of benevolence from Evelyn Gray. But now she was beginning to think that Evelyn knew what a hellish place this was. This was her punishment for not handing over the map, wasn’t it?
“I thought she was being kind,” Iris said, feeling desperately tired, her words hardly more than a slur.
“What? Who?” Vanessa asked. But Iris was fast asleep.
The next few days passed like a blur for Iris, as she got used to the systems and routines of Jordan Gate. She didn’t like it, but she knew what was expected of her, and she knew how to keep her head down to get through each day with the minimum of incident. The sickness from the gas had passed by the afternoon of the next day. So she assumed she wasn’t going to die of Cyamag gas poisoning. And luckily she hadn’t seen much of Clarence Trubb since she’d woken up in the chair in the parlour. That was a blessed relief.
The days were long and hard, and Iris found herself working until nearly ten o’clock at night before rising again for a six o’clock start. Working with Vanessa and some ot
her girls from another farm, Iris would travel short distances away from Jordan Gate to tackle vermin problems wherever they were found. Over time, she had learnt how to avoid inhaling the gas quite so much by tightening the scarf around her mouth and nose and breathing away from the pump. She would still feel light-headed and sometimes a little sick, but she hadn’t blacked out since that first time. She had also discovered that Horace’s repertoire of meals was severely limited, with porridge being served for breakfast, cheese and potato bread for lunch, and some gloopy vegetable stew appearing most evenings. Iris had queried how a man was allowed to be a warden in the Women’s Land Army and Vanessa, who had slowly become more talkative, thought he was a temporary, unofficial replacement for the woman who had left before.
“Why did she leave?”
“Why do you think?” Vanessa mimed a pair of groping hands. Clarence.
Iris liked Vanessa now, and for her own part, she seemed to have brought Vanessa out of her shell. She didn’t say as much as Joyce and she wasn’t as much fun as Shelley, but at least a few jokes and a bit of conversation would pass the time more quickly for the pair of them. From time to time, Iris wondered what Martin was doing. Would he be thinking of her? She wished she’d spent more time trying to get to know him rather than wasting her time with Joe Batch.
The fragments of conversation with the girls was the closest that Iris had to a social life since moving to Jordan Gate. Being on top of a hill, several miles from the nearest village meant, according to the girls, that pub visits and dances were exceptionally rare. Vanessa had revealed that the nearest pub was a village haunt called The Flag, some three miles away. Pasture Farm had also been a couple of miles away from the village, but at least the way over the fields and the country roads were fairly easy to navigate, lit most evenings by moonlight and aided by wide country lanes. But to get to the pub from Jordan Gate you had to make your way through a dense forest on the side of a steep hill. Vanessa cited a story, probably apocryphal, about a girl who had broken her ankle when she got her high heel caught on a branch root. Since that event, they had rarely ventured out.
“If I’m still here on Friday, we should go to the Flag,” Iris announced.
Vanessa pulled a doubtful face. “I’m not sure.”
“Go on. What’s the point of working all the time? We need an hour or two off. Get away for a bit.”
Reluctantly, Vanessa nodded.
If Iris was still there on Friday, they would go to the pub …
Chapter 13
As the week edged towards Friday and the tantalising prospect of escaping for a few hours, Iris had an accident. She cut her hand on the gas pump. It was only a minor cut, but Vanessa told her to go back to the farmhouse to wash and dress it. The last thing she wanted was gas getting into an open wound. So Iris ran back to Jordan Gate and went inside the farmhouse. Bracing herself to see Clarence Trubb, she was instead surprised to find someone else in the kitchen. A girl of about the same age as herself, wearing the uniform of the Women’s Land Army. The girl was thin, pretty with long blonde hair. She reminded Iris of Shelley from Pasture Farm, albeit a Shelley who had had all the life sucked out of her.
“Hello?” Iris ventured, wondering who she was.
The girl didn’t answer at first, but then turned and offered a thin smile.
“I’m Iris Dawson. I’m new. Are you new too?” Iris laughed as she said the words, realising that they rhymed. But the girl didn’t laugh. She had the same troubled look that Vanessa had had when Iris first saw her.
“I’m Maureen Hinks,” the girl said, her voice thick with a Birmingham accent.
Maureen? The name sounded familiar. Then Iris remembered where she’d heard it. This was the woman who Vanessa had mentioned, the sacrificial lamb that was keeping Clarence occupied. Iris felt a wave of unease. This girl seemed so unhappy, a shadowy figure lost and alone. Iris didn’t quite know what to say. She thought of Clarence making her do things against her will and remembered the panic and fear she’d felt when Joe Batch had tried to assault her outside the village hall. She was grateful that she had managed to stop him. But to ask Maureen about her relationship with Clarence seemed presumptuous and rather forward, especially as they’d only just met. Instead, she steered a safer path to the comforting reassurances of small talk.
“I haven’t seen you before,” Iris said.
“I work on a neighbouring farm. I come here every now and then,” Maureen said. “When Clarence needs me.”
Iris felt her skin crawl, but once again, avoiding asking about that side of Maureen’s life and what she’d heard.
“Well, we’re having a drink at the Flag on Friday. You’re more than welcome.”
Maureen nodded, but even her acknowledgement was non-committal. Iris knew that she wouldn’t be raising a glass with this girl in the pub any time soon.
“You’re hurt?” Maureen noticed. She pulled a first-aid tin from under the sink and started to open a bandage. “Run it under the tap.”
Iris put her hand under the tap. Then Maureen helped her dry her hand before applying the dressing. Iris watched her working. Although they were both the same age, thereabouts, Iris felt a protective streak. Maureen looked so fragile and vulnerable, like those porcelain figurines that Iris’s mother kept on the bookshelf. But despite her feelings, Iris knew she had to return to the rat-catching.
“Thank you.”
“Pleasure.”
“See you around, then,” Iris offered as she left the kitchen. She didn’t get a reply.
Iris walked back over the fields. In the distance, she could see a gang of Italian prisoners of war working, under the watchful eye of Horace. The warden had a Lee Enfield rifle slung over his shoulder, but she knew that it was just for show and that he wouldn’t need to use it. These prisoners were classed as low-risk and were likely just biding their time until the war was over. They were counting the days until they could go home. Just like Iris was.
On the edge of the field some British men were toiling, in shirtsleeves and flat caps. They were middle-aged, too old for service. These were the itinerant workers, perhaps displaced because of having their homes bombed, who needed to earn a living. These wanderers relied on people helping them, people such as Clarence Trubb. Iris headed into the trees, where she knew her gang of vermin-hunters were having lunch. She joined them, sat on a tree stump and took a sandwich that was offered to her. As they ate the lumpy slices of bread, she decided to broach the subject of the girl in the farmhouse.
“I saw Maureen. The girl you told me about,” she said to Vanessa. There must have been something about Iris’s tone of voice that made Vanessa wary, since immediately she seemed keen to close down any thoughts Iris was having about intervening.
“You don’t want to rock the boat.”
“But she’s obviously really sad.”
“If it’s not her, it would be one of us,” Vanessa whispered under her breath. “Is that what you want?”
“No,” Iris conceded, before adding, “What I want is for him to stop what he’s doing. To any of us.”
“Well, there’s as much chance of that as Hitler just giving up,” Vanessa said.
She tipped the remains of her mug of tea away and chivvied the girls to get back to work. Reluctantly, Iris wolfed down the rest of her sandwich and joined them. Maybe it was none of her business. Maybe she shouldn’t get involved. She thought of Esther telling her to sort herself out and focus on her own lot. Getting involved in a crusade to save a young woman wasn’t going to help Iris sort herself out, was it? Maybe she should just turn a blind eye, like Vanessa and the others. But that course of action didn’t sit well with her. Evelyn had manipulated Finch to dump her in this ghastly place, but Iris was determined not to be dragged down by it. She glanced back towards the farmhouse and started to work out how she could help Maureen Hinks.
When Friday came, Iris managed to chivvy the girls along so that they had finished work by seven o’clock in the evening. Horace w
asn’t happy about them finishing early, but Iris promised him that they would make it up on Saturday. He wasn’t happy about them going to the pub, but he knew they were entitled to some time off. The girls didn’t have time to change or freshen up, so they went as they were, dressed in their jumpers, heavy dungarees and long coats, to the village pub down the hill.
“We’re so glamorous!” Iris laughed.
“This isn’t going to help me find a man,” Vanessa replied.
Gingerly, they navigated the steep incline, the hazards of tree roots snaking across their path. At this time in the evening it was relatively easy, but on the way home, this would become a relentless series of ankle-breaking traps to weave around in the near-dark. But Iris was hoping that alcohol would help the return journey. The thought of alcohol made her think of Vernon Storey. She hadn’t thought about him since she’d been here. Maybe Esther had been right, being away from Shallow Brook Farm might have been the best thing for her. It was just a shame that her new environment wasn’t a rose garden.
