Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  ‘It must have been a bit of a shock, the mudslide, I mean. And the Italian soldier getting hurt like that. Poor chap. From what they tell me he could easily have—’

  He interrupted her. ‘Lost his arm. Yes, it was a pretty close call apparently. Bones can usually be fixed but if the circulation to the lower arm had been cut off for much longer … gangrene, you know …’ He paused and then excused himself, saying that Eileen, his housekeeper, was about to serve him his evening meal.

  ‘We ’eard this rumble,’ Marion was telling her fellows, not for the first time, at supper that night, ‘and down come ’alf the wood! Trees crashin’ right and left they was! Great boulders and mud all roarin’ downhill like one of those avalanche things they get in Switzerland – only not snow!’

  ‘Right through the back wall of the barn, it come!’ Winnie cut in, matching her friend’s excitement. ‘And the roof fell in! Down came the rafters and all the thatch! Right across the lane it went! And those Eyeties was all buried underneath!’

  ‘You should of seen the state of ’em!’ Marion continued, when Winnie stopped to draw breath. ‘Covered in mud they was! And cut! And bruised! Could of been worse. Only one of ’em was hurt bad. You should of seen ’is arm! Ughh! It didn’t ’alf upset Mr Bayliss!’ she added, thoughtfully, picturing their boss huddled over the steering wheel, racked with sobs.

  ‘What was ’e called?’ Evie asked suddenly.

  ‘What was who called?’

  ‘The one what was hurt? What was ’is name?’

  ‘’Ow should I know?’ Winnie asked her. ‘No one said.’

  ‘Not Giorgio?’ Evie asked, casually.

  ‘Why would it be Giorgio?’ Gwennan asked, eyeing Evie, her curiosity aroused.

  ‘I dunno,’ Evie said, shrugging. ‘I just wondered. Lots of Eyeties is called Giorgio, aren’t they …? Can I ’ave another cup of tea, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘Well, all’s well that ends well,’ the warden said, rather too brightly, as she drained the pot into Evie’s cup. She caught Rose’s quizzical glance and added, ‘What I mean is that whoever he is he’ll be in good hands by now and will most probably be repatriated as soon as he’s well enough!’

  ‘What’s “repatriated”, Mrs Todd?’ someone asked.

  ‘Sent home,’ Alice explained. ‘To his home in Italy.’ This brought smiles to some of the girls’ faces and had the effect, as Alice began stacking the pudding plates, of changing the topic of conversation. The girls drifted off to sprawl in the recreation room or go, early, to their beds.

  Alice’s concern for Roger persisted for some days after the collapse of the barn. Why, she wondered, had he been so upset by it?

  The injured POW was discharged from hospital, and with his arm heavily plastered, repatriated to his native Calabria, months before his fellow prisoners would be released. The barn, with the assistance of a larger group of Italians from the same detention centre, was razed to the ground and the slate quarry made permanently safe with a wide drain that would prevent rainwater from accumulating in it.

  Alice knew better than to question Roger about the accident and was left to speculate on the strange effect it had had on him. Gwennan Pringle told Alice that she had read in the paper that some men who had been injured in the war ‘came over funny’, like Mr Bayliss had.

  ‘It’s to do with that shell shock the Tommies got after the Great War, it said in the paper,’ she continued, watching Alice ironing one of Edward John’s school shirts. ‘But Mr Bayliss has never fought in no war – so it couldn’t be that, could it!’ Alice slid the iron across the white cotton and it seemed to Gwennan that the warden was paying very little attention to what she was telling her. ‘Anyhow,’ she concluded, ‘that’s what it said in the paper.’ If Mrs Todd took no notice of her or even of what it said in the paper, what was the good of talking to her at all? ‘I’ll go to my bed now,’ she sighed. ‘I’m that tired … Goodnight Mrs Todd.’

  ‘Oh …’ Alice said, suddenly aware that Gwennan was speaking to her. ‘Sorry, Gwennan, I was—’

  ‘Miles away. Yes, you was, wasn’t you? ’Night, Mrs Todd.’

  ‘Goodnight, Gwennan.’

  ‘Mrs Todd … could I have a word?’ This phrase, or something very much like it, was a familiar one to Alice, and after almost two years as warden of the Post Stone hostel, there was hardly a girl who had not, at one time or another, made the request.

  Today it was Hannah Maria Sorokova – whom everyone at the farm called Annie – who had tapped on the door marked ‘Warden’ and was waiting, respectfully, to be invited into Alice’s bed-sitting room.

  ‘I’m of Polish extraction,’ Annie had solemnly informed the other land girls on the day they had all arrived at Lower Post Stone.

  ‘Extraction?’ Marion had bellowed. ‘You make yourself sound like a tooth!’ And she and Winnie had howled with such ribald laughter that Rose Crocker, spooning out mashed potato, that first supper time, had pursed her lips in disapproval.

  Apart from her name, her classic Jewish looks and the nationality of her antecedents, Annie was an East Ender, born, if not bred, in Duckett Street and – when she had arrived at the farm – had spoken with a broad, cockney accent. This, Alice noticed, had, over the past few months, become moderated. Possibly due to her friendship with the well-educated Georgina, or because of her association with Alice herself, Annie no longer dropped her aitches and now said ‘singing’ instead of ‘singin’, ‘I came home’ instead of ‘I come ’ome’, and ‘how d’you do’ rather than ‘pleased to meet you’. If she wanted to attract the attention of a waitress she did not attempt to summon one by calling her ‘miss’.

  Winnie and Marion accused her of putting on airs.

  ‘First off she sets ’er cap at Georgina’s toffee-nosed brother and now she’s after this Hector fellow!’

  While it was true that Annie’s intense but brief affair with Lionel Webster ended badly, it had, for both parties, been an innocent and mainly happy interlude. When Lionel had succumbed to the pressures of his middle-class upbringing and ended the relationship, Georgina had been ashamed of her brother’s snobbishness. Annie, however, accepted the situation, consigning it easily enough to the past, possibly because Lionel, although handsome and passionate, was hardly more than a schoolboy in her eyes and no match for her lively mind and more mature temperament. Hector Conway, on the other hand, and rather to her surprise, suited her well.

  The two of them had met when Hector, in his capacity as a researcher with the War Artists Scheme, had visited the farm to inspect the huge mural which a Jewish refugee had painted on a pair of barn doors shortly before taking his life. Hector’s interest in the painting, which represented the persecution of the Jewish community in Amsterdam at the time of the Nazi invasion, was genuine enough, but it was the mutual attraction between him and Annie Sorokova that had drawn him back to the farm on several occasions and had resulted in him being introduced to Annie’s Polish family during her brief Christmas leave.

  ‘It’s about Hector,’ Annie told Alice, who was unsurprised to hear it.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked, lightly. ‘You saw him at Christmas, didn’t you?’ Annie nodded.

  ‘He came to tea,’ she said. ‘He met my family. Everyone liked him, Mrs Todd, and he talked to Grandfather for ages about Polish art, and he’d heard of my uncle who was a well-known engraver. He wants me to visit his family in Oxford and stay overnight so he can show me the colleges …’ Annie paused, watching Alice, who was very aware of the importance of her reaction to this news.

  ‘That sounds lovely, Annie. When d’you hope to go? You’ll need a couple of days’ leave, I expect? We’ll have to sort it out with Mr Bayliss and he is a bit short-handed at the moment, what with Mabel only working part-time because of the twins … But we’ll manage something …’ She watched Annie’s delicate face cloud, the perfectly shaped lids were lowered over her expressive eyes. Alice asked if there was anything wrong.

  ‘Not exactly wrong, Mr
s Todd, but … well … Hector’s father is a don, you see.’

  ‘Yes. I remember you telling me. But how does that affect …?’

  ‘They’re what’s called academics, Mrs Todd. All his family are. With letters after their names. Hector’s father, his brothers and even this Aunt Sybilla person who lives with them. They’re all scholars and that. His mother died, you see, when the boys were quite young and there’s a housekeeper and everything … I just think they might reckon I’m, you know, not …’

  ‘Not what, Annie?’

  ‘Not … not educated enough, Mrs Todd! And that I don’t speak like they do or think what they think or know about the things they know about. That I’m not … well … not good enough for them.’ Annie’s voice faltered into a doleful silence and Alice sighed.

  ‘Oh Annie! It’s this class thing, isn’t it?’ she said. Annie nodded and they sat without speaking for a moment or two. ‘We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we have. And you said it’s all nonsense and that what with the First World War and then the suffragettes and now this war, society is changing and it’s not where you went to school or your accent or whether you say “serviette” or “napkin” that matters, it’s who you are and what you do!’ Although Annie had precisely remembered Alice’s comments, she repeated them without much conviction. Alice nodded and waited, guessing that Annie’s next word would be ‘but’. ‘But …’ she began, exactly on cue, adding, embarrassed, ‘You’re laughing at me, Mrs Todd! Am I being stupid?’

  ‘No. Not a bit stupid. A little predictable perhaps, but not stupid. The thing is, Annie, that most of the people who worry about what is correct or incorrect, and who look down their noses at people whose accents are different from theirs, and who either don’t know or don’t care about the so-called “rules”, do so because they’re insecure.’

  ‘Insecure? Are they?’

  ‘Conforming to the rules is a sort of protection.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘They feel safe and even smug, hiding behind all these meaningless conventions. You’re a clever girl, Annie! You got excellent marks in your Ministry of Agriculture exams! You’ve read all the books on that list Georgina left with you. You’re sensitive and you’re courteous and you’re very, very beautiful. Hector’s a lucky fellow! He is also, from what I’ve seen of him, a very nice one. What’s more,’ Alice added, laughing, ‘Rose approves of him!’

  ‘Does she?’ Annie was smiling now. ‘Well that’s good news, then!’ she laughed. ‘There can’t be nothing … I mean anything … wrong with Hector if he passes muster with our Mrs Crocker!’

  ‘Go and visit him, Annie! He’ll look after you! He loves you! His family will probably surprise you. They won’t be like anyone you’ve ever met before, but nor was I when you and I first met, and we get on together pretty well, don’t we?’

  The attraction between Annie and Hector had surprised everyone. Gawky and tall, his poor eyesight exempting him from conscription, the kindest description of Hector would be that he looked ‘bookish’. His forehead was high and his long hair flopped, except when he drove at speed about the countryside in the course of his work, the canvas hood of his bull-nosed Morris folded down. Then, with his hair whipping in the slipstream and his chin slightly lifted, Annie had seen a different Hector. A man of sensitivity and determination. A man who knew things. Who shared his knowledge with her and who encouraged her curiosity without patronising her. Who made her laugh and found her funny. A man who for a long time had done nothing more than hold her hand, but whose first kiss had expressed his feelings more eloquently than any words could have done.

  Alice seldom gave her girls direct advice, suggesting, instead, various ways of approaching whatever problem was worrying them. Having been more specific on this occasion, she was concerned that her optimism where Annie was concerned might backfire. That Hector’s family could, possibly unwittingly, make her feel inferior and destroy her growing confidence. Nevertheless she encouraged Roger Bayliss to allow the girl the three days leave she requested, and when Mr Jack came to collect her and deliver her to Ledburton Halt, Alice was waving goodbye to her from the farmhouse gate.

  ‘It is one of those tall, thin houses, with a basement and then, on the floor above, a kitchen and a dining room and then, above that, on the next floor, an enormous room with windows in the front and at the back and then, further on upstairs there were bedrooms that the boys and Mr Conway and Miss Sybilla Conway use as their studies as well as to sleep in. Miss Conway said I was to call her Sib, like everyone else does!’

  Annie, straight off the train and with her overnight bag beside her, had found Alice in the hostel kitchen, checking the boxes of groceries that had just arrived, and was keen to lay the details of her visit to Oxford before the warden, rather as a labrador delivers a pheasant to its master’s feet.

  ‘You were right about them being different, Mrs Todd, but they were lovely and not at all stuck-up! There was always someone laughing about something, and if I wasn’t sure what was funny, Hector explained! The Mrs Potter person, who looks after them, is a very good cook and they eat round the kitchen table – almost like we do here. One of Hector’s brothers – Howard, he’s called – had the books he’s studying propped open on the table beside his plate because he has to have his thesis finished by Tuesday. He apologised for his terrible manners, but I thought it was nice that he felt I was sort of part of things and would understand, although Mrs Potter – Pottie, they call her – said he should be ashamed! Hector showed me round the colleges and we went into some of them! He explained about their history. They are so beautiful, Mrs Todd! We went to the Ashmolean Museum and there were things from Knossos and Troy! Then we walked along the river where they go punting, but it was too cold for that so we had cinnamon toast and a pot of tea in a café instead! Mr Conway asked me about the Land Army and the Blitz and about my family arriving from Poland in the Twenties and everything, and I asked him about Oxford and him being a don and he told me about his work and his students and the papers he’s had published. I enjoyed myself, Mrs Todd! I really did. It’s made me think about what I want to do when the war’s over. I don’t reckon I want to work on the land, even as a farm manager. And I don’t want to go back to our factory in London.’

  ‘But what about your family?’ Alice asked, encouraging Annie to face the decisions she was soon going to have to make. The Sorokova family were modestly successful and hard-working garment manufacturers in London’s East End and Annie, who had already proved herself to be useful, was expected to please her father and grandfather by working her way up through the ranks of first and second cousins into a responsible position. ‘Aren’t they expecting you to return to the family business?’

  Chapter Three

  By mid February the weather had turned milder and Georgina, arriving at the farmhouse early one Saturday afternoon, had needed only a thick sweater and a woollen scarf to keep her warm when she rode over to Lower Post Stone on her brother’s motorbike.

  The land girls, still sitting over their lunch and, except for those on weekend dairy duty, enjoying the prospect of freedom from work until Monday morning, were relaxed and planning trips to Exeter or, after a lazy afternoon, to the pub in Ledburton. Evie, as she often did, was planning a walk through the woods and up onto The Tops.

  ‘I like it up there,’ she would reply when the girls teased her about her long, solitary excursions into the surrounding countryside. ‘You can see for miles and miles.’

  ‘What’s up, Georgie?’ Marion asked when Georgina arrived in the kitchen. ‘Face like a cracked pisspot, you got!’ Georgina looked from one smiling face to another, sat down at the table and slowly unwound her thick scarf.

  ‘You haven’t heard about Dresden, then?’ she asked. For a moment everyone looked blank. Then Alice, who was struggling with the lid of the last jar of bottled plums, which she and Rose had preserved the previous summer and would use in a pie that evening, fina
lly loosened it.

  ‘You mean the bombing?’ she asked, licking plum juice from her thumb.

  ‘Yes. The bombing,’ Georgina repeated, heavily.

  ‘What about it?’ Gwennan snapped back, her Welsh accent crisp, her tone self-righteous. ‘So Dresden got bombed. So what!’

  ‘It wasn’t just bombed, Taff. It was obliterated!’ Winnie wasn’t sure what obliterated meant so Georgina told her, adding emphatically, ‘The whole city, Winnie! Acres of it. Hundreds of buildings gutted! Roofs gone! Just the walls standing! Thousands of people … Thousands! Incinerated in the fires!’

  ‘Like Liverpool!’ Gwennan announced, firmly. ‘Like Southampton and Bristol!’

  ‘And the London docks,’ Annie added and, thinking of Chrissie, ‘and Plymouth.’

  ‘That was different,’ Georgina countered. ‘They were military targets!’

  ‘Not all!’ Marion said. ‘Bath wasn’t!’

  ‘Nor was Exeter.’ Rose, sitting knitting, beside the range, remembered the night when the thuds of exploding bombs had been audible from the Post Stone farms, six miles away from the shuddering city.

  ‘Or Coventry!’ Evie added. She had gone with her mother to see the smouldering ruins that were all that remained of the cathedral, and had stood beside the pile of rubble in a nearby side street where her Auntie Gladys and two of her cousins had died. ‘Eight hours that blitz lasted!’ she said, her eyes narrowed and fixed accusingly on Georgina’s. ‘Wave after wave of bombers come over. You never saw so many planes. Incendiaries, they dropped! Then high explosives to spread the fires! On an’ on it went! People was lyin’ dead in the streets and by mornin’ there wasn’t nothin’ left but rubble as far as you could see!’ She paused, breathless, the other girls shocked and silent. ‘So ’ow come you’re so steamed up about this Dresden place, Georgina?’