Land Girls, The Promise

by Roland Moore

  Iris dragged herself over the last few feet of hedging, hardly aware that it was ripping her hands and legs to shreds. She pushed herself over the top and tumbled down the other side. Expecting to find herself in a field, it was a stomach-churning shock to find herself falling into nothingness. She was cartwheeling out of control down the sheer side of a quarry, despite her hands trying to claw onto the chalky outcrops. Her stomach lurched as gravity took hold, and she swung round, banging her head on the rocks on the way down. She tumbled hard, out of control, the air smashed from her body. All she could do was hope as she fell like a rag doll.

  By the time Vernon got to the top of the hedge, he looked down to see the still figure of Iris Dawson lying in a bloodied heap at the bottom of the quarry.

  Chapter 14

  This was how Joyce thought she would always remember the place. The warm glow of orange lights through the curtains of the farmhouse kitchen, the smell of baking enveloping your nostrils as you neared the back door. And inside, the warm smiles and laughter around the long, wooden table, as everyone made the best of their lot. She neared the farmhouse with John, having gone to collect him from Shallow Brook Farm. He squeezed her hand and they gazed lovingly at one another. They had endured so many dark days apart when John was in the RAF, with Joyce frequently out of her mind with worry. Would he make it back safely from each bombing raid? When his letters were delayed, she would be frantic. All the girls who had husbands and loved ones in the forces feared the arrival of the awful telegram. The one that said it was deeply sorry for their loss. But now Joyce had him back and he was a civilian again, signed off from military action and doing his best to run a farm. And the icing on the cake was that she was right next door. It had worked out beautifully. It was what they deserved after so much pain and loss.

  And tonight, they were here to let their hair down for a few hours. Esther smiled at the two new arrivals as they stepped through the door into the kitchen. It had been her idea to play cards tonight. Not for money, but just as a fun way of spending a Friday night at the farm. She had prepared a pot of tea and some beetroot buns. Already sitting around the farmhouse table, Finch and Frank were preparing to play Pontoon. Finch wasn’t keen, partly because Esther wouldn’t allow him to play for money, and partly because he would rather be seeing Evelyn. But Esther had pointed out that he’d soon be able to spend all his time with her when they were married. This would be one of the last times they might all do this together. They should make the most of it before he was tied to the apron strings of his new wife.

  “Has she said yes, then?” Joyce asked, a cheeky smile on her face. They all knew the answer. Frank and John grinned in amusement.

  “Oh, will everyone stop going on about it?” Finch grumbled. “I’ll ask her in my own good time.”

  “He’s waiting for the right time,” Frank said. “When she’s lost her marbles!”

  Everyone laughed. Finch scraped his chair back and rose in anger, throwing the pack of cards down on the table. “Stop it!” The laughter died down as they realised they had gone too far. Esther knew that this outburst didn’t just come from Finch’s sensitivity about asking Evelyn to marry him, but from his guilt over his treatment of Iris. Since Iris had gone, Esther had had several conversations with Finch about it. He would clam up and become uncomfortable, knowing that he had done a selfish thing in shipping her off. But he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, hoping instead that the awkward feeling would just fade away. Sometimes the hardest truths to confront were the ones that made you uncomfortable.

  “She treated you a bit like a father,” Esther had pointed out.

  “That’s probably true, but I couldn’t have her spreading lies about Evelyn,” Finch muttered, before adding a heartfelt and honest explanation. “Do you know how long I’ve been on my own, Esther?”

  Esther felt some sympathy for him. He had a lot of love to give, but had simply never looked at another woman in a romantic way. And in Esther’s mind, with her knowledge of some of the lecherous farmers out there, that was a Godsend. She would hear tales of other farmers leching over girls, perhaps even assaulting them. But Finch got on with running the farm, helping the girls, amusing himself by taking his little victories where he could. Life had simply passed by, the years tumbling slowly away, until he’d found himself in his current situation. Alone but with a second chance at love. She knew he was conflicted, feeling all sorts of guilt towards his wife, towards Iris, so Esther had reassured him that it was probably time to move on. No one could accuse him of rushing into a new relationship. She had only said one further thing on the subject of Iris and Evelyn. A simple, but searching question.

  “Why would Iris have lied?”

  The words hung in the air as Finch sighed, shook his head. Esther knew that he didn’t have a cast-iron answer but he had a theory, and it seemed that sticking to a shaky theory made him feel better, made him feel justified. “Evelyn picked Iris up on her drinking. She made us all know what Iris was doing. So Iris wanted to get back at her.”

  “That doesn’t seem like Iris. She’s a sweet -”

  “She’s not been the same since that Vernon business.”

  “But I don’t think she would -”

  “Let’s not talk about it, I’m not in the mood,” he snapped. And to definitively close the subject, Finch had stomped out to check on his pigs. Esther hadn’t tried to broach the subject again. For her part, she was grateful that somehow Iris had ended up at Jordan Gate. She didn’t know how Finch had wangled that, but at least it was closer than East Anglia.

  So now, sitting round the table, about to play cards, everyone realised that Finch had probably endured all the joking and ridicule that he was prepared to on the matter. Esther knew it was time to leave it. But as they sat in an awkward silence, she knew that everyone probably had a lot more to say on the matter, even if Finch didn’t. She hoped they wouldn’t try tonight. It might be best to leave their grievances and opinions until Finch wasn’t quite so raw about his own guilt.

  “Who’s going to be the bank?” she asked, bringing things back on track.

  “I’d better do that,” Finch said, a sly smile returning to his lips, even if the humour didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “You’re going to cheat, aren’t you?” John laughed.

  “That’s a serious accusation!” Finch grumbled in mock outrage. “How did you know?” Everyone laughed and the atmosphere of awkwardness lifted for the moment. Finch dealt out the cards to each player, one card face down in front of each of them. Tentatively and secretively everyone checked their card. Joyce was first to place a bet. Two matchsticks. Finch grumbled that it would be more interesting with real money.

  “Don’t you mean, more expensive?” Esther laughed.

  They played the game and after four hands, Finch had a large pile of matchsticks in front of him. He chuckled with the same joy that he would have done if it had been real money.

  “Soon have enough for a whole tree, Fred,” Frank smiled.

  By the time it reached eleven o’clock, everyone’s interest in the game had petered out and Joyce and John left the farmhouse. Esther was happy to allow Joyce to stay at Shallow Brook Farm with her husband tonight as it was the weekend. Frank was about to attend to some business in his shed, when he turned to Finch.

  “I wanted to go to see Iris, take her more reading books.”

  “All right,” Finch said. Esther could see mild discomfort playing on his face. He’d obviously thought he’d buried the subject for the evening, but it wasn’t to be. “You can go over on your day off. Sunday.”

  “Can I borrow Evelyn’s car?” Frank asked hopefully.

  “No, you’ll have to take the pony or walk,” Finch grumbled. “It’s not a blooming taxi.”

  Frank nodded and left the house. Esther cleared away the cups and the empty pot of tea, while Finch put the cards away. Esther desperately wanted to talk about Iris again, to see if there wasn’t some way of bringing her back, bu
t she knew Finch wouldn’t be receptive. She would have to bide her time, work on him. She was hopeful that she could change his mind and perhaps broker some sort of peace deal between Iris, Finch and Evelyn. But that wouldn’t be on the cards tonight.

  As Frank approached his shed, he was surprised to see golden light pouring from inside. He was certain that he had turned off the light earlier, so he tensed his body in readiness. Wary that someone had crept inside, Frank moved quietly towards the door, his fists ready to batter any intruder. Silently, he counted to three before flinging the door back hard and rushing inside. To his surprise, a startled Martin got up from the workbench, banging his head on the shelf.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry!” Frank fussed around the boy. “I thought you might be a German or a vagrant or a -”

  “I’m not.” Martin winced in pain. “Jesus.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No!” Martin rubbed the top of his head.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Then Frank spied that Martin was holding an old sheet of paper in his hands. The map that Iris had found. “I found it in your tin, sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t have been looking.” Frank snatched the map back. “That’s Iris’s map.”

  “I was looking for a smoke.”

  “Since when did you smoke?”

  “Since never. But I wanted to try it.”

  “Best leave it alone, son,” Frank chided.

  “What’s it for? The map. Pirate treasure?”

  “Grow up.”

  “Yeah, well tell me who else has maps with mysterious crosses on them?”

  “It might not be treasure. It’s something. I don’t know what it is. We’ve not had time to look.” Frank examined the page again. Simple sketches of a tree and a road and a compass with map points on it, and a big X near a big tree. What was buried there? He’d never had time to ask Iris what she thought, and they’d never had time to look. Then Frank came up with one of those plans that seem like a good idea at midnight on a Friday. “You know, we should find out what it is.”

  “What, now?” Martin asked, confused. It was pitch black outside and they had little chance of finding the stables in the dark, let alone treasure under a big tree, somewhere on Shallow Brook Farm.

  “No, we’d better do it in the light,” Frank decided, feeling foolish that a 16-year-old boy was being the sensible one. “Do you want to help? It’ll have to be our secret, though, eh?”

  “Why?” Martin asked.

  “She wanted me to look after it, keep it out of view. Iris was certain that Evelyn wanted to get her hands on it,” Frank said. Martin nodded, accepting that and trotted off, closing the shed door behind him. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  Frank unclipped his reading spectacles and had another look at the map. It was extremely vague, almost just an aide-memoire to someone who already knew where to look. Frank squinted at the map for any clues. Was it even drawn to scale? He guessed they would find out. Placing the map back in the small tobacco tin, Frank caught sight of the battered children’s books that were tucked on one corner of the workbench; some of Iris’s reading books. Frank smiled, happy to think he could see her on Sunday, check that she was fitting in to her new surroundings. On the front of one book was a drawing of Rupert Bear running a race.

  At ten o’clock the next morning, Martin asked John if he could help Frank for an hour and hurried off to meet him in the big North Field of Shallow Brook Farm. Frank was waiting, sitting on the pony and trap, looking intently at the map. In the back of the wagon were two spades. “I’ve copied the map onto squared paper. Just in case there’s any scale to the whole thing.”

  “Clever. Where do you think we should start?”

  “It’s one square south-west from a big tree eight squares from the farmhouse. That’s all I know.”

  Martin glanced around the field. It was used for grazing, not growing, so there were several large trees dotted around. Martin counted four that could be the right one. Frank smiled, noticing the overwhelmed expression on Martin’s face. “We’d better get digging,” Frank said.

  The two of them walked to the first tree. Frank checked his compass and pointed to an area to the south-west of the tree. He leaned against the trunk and then took an exaggerated single step in the correct direction. “Here,” he announced, plunging the tip of his spade into the grass.

  “How do you know the scale’s right, Mr Tucker?”

  “I haven’t a clue, son. But we’ve got to start somewhere. Come on.” They started to dig, quickly finding a rhythm, where as one person removed a spade of soil, the other started to dig the next one. Soon they had dug down three feet. Frank indicated for Martin to stop. He checked the hole, removing some stones and a broken length of root with his hands. There was no treasure chest. But then, they didn’t know they were looking for a treasure chest. It might be an envelope or a box or an old watering can. And not only was the map frustratingly vague, they didn’t know how wide to make each hole. What if the treasure was inches away to the left or right from where they had dug? What if it was another six inches deeper down? Frank realised that they would have to be very lucky to find the buried item.

  Frank took another spadeful before deciding that they weren’t going to find anything here. Martin started to fill in the hole as Frank tried to dig another a foot away. They might as well be thorough, even though that would take a lot longer. As they worked, Frank could tell that Martin was keen to speak about something, plucking up the courage to get the conversation rolling. Frank guessed what it was about.

  “You thinking about Iris?”

  “Yeah,” Martin sighed. “It wasn’t right my mum sending her away like that. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, son,” Frank replied. “But it wasn’t your mum’s fault. Finch wanted rid of her. He’d do anything to keep Evelyn Gray sweet.”

  Martin scowled. “What if we show Finch the map? Then it’s proof that Iris found some papers at Shallow Brook.”

  “Yes,” Frank said, mulling it over. “But it doesn’t prove Evelyn was there, does it?”

  “But Iris finding the map …”

  “It’s not proof. Not enough, anyway.” Frank rested on the end of his spade. “We should keep the map to ourselves because sooner or later, Evelyn is going to realise it’s missing. And then she might come for it. And who knows, maybe that will give us some better proof, eh?”

  Martin nodded obediently as he started on another hole. By the time an hour had passed, the base of the tree looked as if it had been subjected to a mole invasion, even with their best efforts to fill each hole afterwards. They started on what Frank had decided would be the last hole for this tree, some three feet further out from the trunk, just in case they’d got the scale wrong from the map. Martin crunched his spade through the grass to take the first load, when a familiar voice called out from across the field.

  “What’s going on here, then, eh?” It was Fred Finch, wearing his usual scruffy farming clothes but adorned incongruously with a smart, yellow-checked waistcoat.

  “Drainage,” Frank replied as quick as a flash.

  “How’s that helping drainage?” Finch raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “It’s holes, isn’t it?” Martin chipped in.

  Finch wasn’t stupid, even if sometimes he liked to act as if he was. He jabbed his finger in the air at the two men and laughed, assuming he had caught them out. “You know what that reminds me of, Martin? That time we thought we’d found gold coins on Mrs Gulliver’s land.”

  Martin nodded and winced, keen that Finch wouldn’t make a similar ‘treasure connection’ here.

  “Oh, you should have seen us, Frank. We dug up half her plot!”

  “Don’t you mean I dug up half her plot?” Martin protested.

  “I wasn’t a well man!” Finch snorted.

  As the farmer’s attention was taken with Martin, Frank used the opportunity to tuck the
map into his jacket pocket. He needed to distract Finch from what was happening here, and he needed to do it quickly.

  “That’s an interesting waistcoat you’ve got there, Fred,” he said, stifling a laugh. Finch glanced down at himself, as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing. “Did you steal it from a dandy?”

  Martin burst out laughing. Finch glowered. “It’s not that loud, is it? I don’t think it’s that loud.”

  “It’s very bright!” Martin howled.

  “Don’t be daft!”

  “It might have looked darker in the shop,” Frank said, laughing.

  Taking umbrage, Finch turned and started to stomp away. Martin and Frank smiled at each other, mission accomplished. They waited until they were certain he wasn’t going to turn back and then they resumed their work. But after two hours of fruitless digging, their hands and backs sore, Frank conceded defeat. As they walked away, waiting crows swooped down and patrolled the recently disturbed earth for worms. Frank and Martin both had legitimate chores to attend to, so they put the spades back in the trap and rode the pony back to their respective farms. They agreed to meet up in a few days’ time to make another attempt. As Martin got off the trap, he grinned to Frank.

  “Can I come with you tomorrow? To deliver the books.”

  “Why not? I could do with the company.” Frank got the pony to move forwards and Martin watched as they clip-clopped out of the yard.

  Chapter 15

  Shiny, black patent-leather shoes. Small feet running full pelt down a cobbled street on a Sunday afternoon. A bloody, painful gash on the girl’s right knee was nearly hampering her progress, but she blocked out the discomfort. She’d fallen over in her haste to run, but she knew she couldn’t stop. She knew she had to keep running. Her small chest felt as if it would burst with the exertion as she ran over a wrought-iron bridge, slaloming around a mother with a large pram. The mother turned to scold the clumsy child with the mane of red hair. But Iris Dawson was already on the other side of the bridge, running, running, running.