On their previous visits to Ledburton and before the hostel had been established, the rat-catchers had been billeted at the village pub and Rose would have preferred it if that had also been the case this year. But the hostel had a vacant room and it made economic sense for them to use it.
‘And this be the bathroom,’ Rose announced, emphatically, when, after they had eaten, she briskly showed Pat and Connie round the converted farmhouse.
‘What’s the matter?’ Alice asked when, with pursed lips, Rose returned to the kitchen.
‘Nothing I can put my finger on,’ Rose told her tartly. ‘But there’s something about the pair of them as puts my teeth on edge.’ When Alice laughed, intending to ease the tension, Rose told her that she might well scoff but that time would tell.
Chapter Three
As often happened when there were changes amongst the inmates of the hostel, the status quo was subtly altered. Sometimes, when one girl arrived or another departed, the impact of the change was minimal. On other occasions it was more evident – usually to Alice, sometimes to Rose and then, to a lesser extent, to the girls themselves. Chrissie, who had arrived on the day the hostel first opened its doors, newly married and brimming with happiness, had been with them for only a few days before she died in an air raid on Plymouth. This tragedy had left its mark and the effect of it was still felt. Eleanor, the young runaway, was remembered with smiles by those who had witnessed the scene when she was hauled off by her irate and embarrassed headmistress, back to the boarding school from which she had briefly absconded. Then there had been Lillian, whose exuberant beauty and instant popularity with the local servicemen had been perceived as a serious and unacceptable threat to Marion and Winnie.
Lillian had looked like a film star. She was glossy and perfect. No curlers were needed to coax her naturally golden hair into the required, luxuriant cascade. The cold wind only brought a charming blush to her cheeks and brightened the incredible blue of her wide eyes. While the other girls huddled against the wind and slouched through their day’s work, moaning about the rain, Lillian strode buoyantly through it. Her rich soprano voice echoed round the hostel and when she sang along to the gramophone records playing in the recreation room she sounded very much like her idol, Gracie Fields.
Lillian had auditioned for a job entertaining the troops, been shortlisted and placed in the Land Army on a temporary posting until arrangements could be made for her to join a travelling concert party. Even as she settled noisily and happily into life at Lower Post Stone Farm, strings were being pulled to remove her from it. Had the other girls known this, the tensions that arose during Lilian’s brief stint as a land girl would have been less disruptive. As it was, Alice became almost immediately aware of a hostility which, though most obvious in Marion and Winnie’s treatment of Lillian, extended beyond them and included Gwennan.
Mabel, awestruck by Lilian’s larger-than-life glamour, proved unable to treat her as a normal person. Instead she regarded her as some sort of icon, addressing her as ‘she’ or ‘her’, asking ‘Shall I hang up her dungarees for her?’ instead of ‘your dungarees for you?’
‘’Ave you lost your wits, Mabel?’ Marion had hissed in exasperation, overhearing one such conversation, and even the easy-going, tolerant Annie seemed to find Lillian an irritating intrusion into the accepted humdrum of their lives.
In a matter of days and without any deliberate intention on her part, Lillian’s presence had disrupted the established routine of life within the familiar, thick walls and under the heavy, damp thatch of Lower Post Stone Farm, and had created what Rose bluntly described as an ‘atmosphere’.
Although Alice had done her best to stabilise things, Lillian never did fit in and when, on the day she left the hostel, clutching her belongings and, despite them, elegantly negotiating the cobbled path in her high heels as she headed for the army staff car that had been sent by ENSA to fetch her, she sang to the girls the familiar song that urged them to smile as they waved her goodbye.
‘We’ll wave you goodbye alright!’ Marion had sneered, her jaw clenched in an icy smile.
‘And good riddance!’ Winnie had echoed. Even Hester had found herself sighing with relief as the car lurched away down the potholed lane, with Lillian bouncing dangerously around on the back seat as she attempted to blow extravagant kisses through its rear window. But most newcomers arriving at the hostel were soon put at ease and made welcome by the girls’ basic friendliness. As well as satisfying their innate curiosity it was, after all, only common courtesy to ask the obvious questions about their families, their boyfriends, their backgrounds and their previous experience, if any, of life in the Land Army.
With the rat-catchers it was, from the beginning, different. For one thing, the two girls were established friends as well as colleagues. Consequently they did not depend on, or seek, more than a passing acquaintance with the rest of the Post Stone girls. For another, their specialised work meant that they would not be labouring alongside them during the three or four weeks it would take them to carry out their grisly task, the thought of which made the other girls squirm.
‘I don’t reckon there’s that many rats round ’ere anyroad,’ Marion had muttered moodily during the first supper, aiming her comment at Connie and Pat, who sat, side by side, at the crowded table. ‘Leastways, I hardly ever see one!’
‘We hear ’em though!’ Mabel said, enthusiastically mopping up the gravy on her plate with a thick wedge of bread. ‘Scuttlin’ round under the thatch all night!’
‘How many will you catch?’ Hester wanted to know and was surprised to learn that the number, on an average farm and including mice as well as rats, ran into hundreds.
‘Poor little sods,’ Annie murmured. ‘All they want is a bit of a nibble of this and that.’
‘A bit of a nibble?’ Connie was astounded. ‘Tons of grain, they get through! Not to mention spuds and swedes and beet!’ Her face had flushed with indignation at the suggestion that her work was unnecessary.
‘Not much point you lot floggin’ yourselves half to death growin’ the food to feed the nation if rats is gonna eat ’alf of it!’ Pat added, supporting her friend. There was a brief silence, broken only by the clatter of knives and forks.
‘’Ow d’you kill ’em, then?’ Mabel asked with her mouth full. ‘One farmer where I worked ’ad little yappy dogs. Used to set ’em loose in the barns where the rats was. Loved it, those doggies did! Killed ’em with one bite! Fast as lightnin’, they was, and twice as noisy!’
‘We mostly use poison,’ Pat said conversationally. ‘We bait the runs, you see, and…’ She hesitated. Several of the girls were staring balefully at her. Winnie had pushed away her plate, her food only half eaten.
‘Shall we talk about something else?’ Alice suggested brightly. ‘Where do you two come from and how long have you known each other?’
Early next morning the two newcomers drove, in their small van, down the lane, following the truck that had, as usual, collected the girls and would deliver them to the higher farm for their day’s work.
The rat-catchers spent their first morning locating the creatures’ runs, establishing where their nests were and in which sites poison could safely be laid down.
‘We can gas your badgers and foxes for you, too, if required, sir,’ they told Roger Bayliss when he briefly interviewed them in the farm office. He declined the offer because, despite the fact that a dog-fox had recently raided his poultry shed, he preferred the use of a bullet from his shotgun to the prospect of gassing, which conjured, for him, an image of troops dying of mustard gas in the trenches of France during what had been called ‘the war to end all wars’.
‘Is that the poison in them bottles and tins, then?’ Gwennan asked, peering short-sightedly into the dim interior of the rat-catchers’ van. Connie nodded. The containers and jars were all neatly labelled, the word ‘poison’ very much in evidence. One large tin even had a skull and crossbones emblazoned on it.
‘Wha
t about the farm cats, though?’ Annie enquired suspiciously.
‘And Shep and Bonny, what about them?’ Mabel’s boot-button eyes were dark with anxiety for the two elderly sheep dogs.
‘It’s a special poison that only kills rodents,’ Pat assured them. ‘And anyhow, we don’t put it where other animals can get at it.’
‘Those bags have got baited grain in ’em, see,’ Connie elaborated, indicating the small sacks, slung from hooks on the van’s side. ‘It’s already got the poison in it. Impregnated, it is. We lay it in the rat runs and places where only they can eat it.’ Nevertheless, when it was Lower Post Stone’s turn to be purged of pests, Rose kept her fat tabby safely indoors.
‘I’m takin’ no chances!’ she told Alice, casting a malicious glance at the rat-catchers. ‘Not with them two, I’m not!’
Soon, evidence of the effectiveness of the rat-catchers’ skills became obvious as the pile of corpses, heaped in a corner of the yard and which Jack would only bury once the girls’ work was completed, increased in size each day.
The sight of the odd rat, moving fast in the shadowy extremities of a barn or scuttling away from a half-eaten swede, was a familiar and acceptable sight to the land girls, most of whom, though they might give a token squeal when surprised by a mouse in the hostel pantry, were reasonably stoical where rodents were concerned. But the gruesome mound of inert creatures, their scaly tails stiff, their blank eyes still wide with the pain they had suffered, nauseated the girls as they hurried past it.
‘Can’t you dig your bloomin’ hole and get the poor things buried straight off?’ Annie beseeched Jack, when the pile had reached several feet in height.
‘I casn’t do that ’til them rat-catchers be done, my lover!’ he said, enjoying her discomfort. ‘Then I ’as to put some lime into the pit afore I fills ’e in, see. Youse’ll just ’ave to look the other way for a couple more days.’
In common with the few hardened farmhands who were exempt from fighting, Jack enjoyed provoking squeamishness amongst the girls whose presence on the land still seemed to him to be unnatural. Sometimes, although he would not admit it, he was impressed by their fortitude and even, occasionally, by their physical strength, but mostly he felt superior to them and consoled himself with the conviction – unjustified as it was – that it took two of them to equal one of him.
‘Oh, they mean well enough,’ he was heard to grumble in the pub to anyone who would listen. ‘But they ’asn’t got the muscle, see, nor the stayin’ power, that’s the trouble with ’em.’
Although Alice knew that Rose was harbouring an undefined disapproval of the rat-catchers, it was Gwennan who first voiced hers. She had come down to the kitchen late one evening to refill her hot-water bottle. A recent cold had settled on her chest and she smelt strongly, Alice noticed, of camphorated oil.
‘I should of had a day in me bed to get over it proper,’ the girl wheezed, casting an accusing glance at the warden. ‘But what with there being a war on and everything, I do the best I can.’ She was screwing the top into her hot-water bottle and coughing noisily when Connie and Pat, on their way to bed, put their heads round the kitchen door and wished Alice goodnight.
‘I don’t care for them two,’ Gwennan said in her usual aggrieved voice, and then, when Alice failed to react, added, ‘What do you make of ’em, Mrs Todd? Like ’em, do you?’
Alice, stoking the range and closing it down for the night, told Gwennan that she had no strong feelings, one way or the other, about the rat-catchers.
‘But you must admit they’re strange. Always together and—’
‘They work together, Gwennan!’ Alice interrupted, irritated as she often was by the Welsh girl’s spite. ‘Of course they’re always together!’
‘But all that smiling!’
‘Smiling?’
‘All that “Yes, Connie dear” and “No, Pat love”!’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Gwennan! They’re friends! Why shouldn’t they call each other “dear”? Take your hot-water bottle and get back to bed. P’raps you’ll manage to be a little more tolerant in the morning.’ Alice could see that Gwennan was inclined to stay and continue the debate so she smiled, took her firmly by the shoulders, turned her round and pushed her towards the door.
‘But you must admit, Mrs Todd—’ Gwennan’s lilting voice began but Alice interrupted her.
‘Bed, Gwennan! Now!’
It was on the next morning that the rat-catchers over-slept, arriving in the kitchen, yawning and frowzy, a good ten minutes after the lorry, taking the other land girls to work, had left Lower Post Stone Farm.
‘Ever so sorry, Mrs Todd,’ Connie apologised. ‘Dead to the world, we was! Don’t ’spose there’s any porridge left?’ Rose was already clattering the breakfast things in the scullery while Alice spooned what was left of the porridge into two bowls and made a fresh pot of tea. The rat-catchers ate quickly, collected their packs of sandwiches from the dresser, reminded Alice that they were working at a farm some miles off and might be late home that evening and – after apologising again for being late for breakfast – hurried out to their van and drove off.
It was laundry day, which meant that Rose would strip the sheets and pillowcases from the beds, leaving clean linen on each. The girls were expected to make up their own beds when they returned from work.
Rose was in the habit of throwing the damp towels and soiled linen down the steep stairs and then bagging it up, ready for Fred to collect and deliver to the laundry in Ledburton.
She went up the stairs and then, to Alice’s surprise, came quickly down again. Her face, as she joined Alice in the kitchen, was hard with satisfaction.
‘I knew it!’ she said. ‘I just knew there was something!’ Before Alice could enquire further, Rose continued, ‘Come with me, Alice! Just you come with me!’
They climbed the narrow stairs, Rose puffing ahead and Alice following. Rose led the way into the rat-catchers’ room.
‘There!’ she said, exuding an unattractive triumphalism. ‘Didn’t I say?’ she gasped. ‘Didn’t I just know?’
The two beds stood side by side in the small space. One was a chaos of rumpled sheets, its blankets tossed onto the bare boards of the floor. The other bed was as neatly made as it had been when Rose had swept the room on the previous morning. A winceyette nightdress lay, neatly folded, on its pillow.
Rose, breathing heavily, stood waiting for Alice’s reaction.
‘You are suggesting that they share the same bed, Rose?’
‘It’s obvious they do! You only ’as to look!’ Rose was quivering with indignation. ‘That one’s not been touched! Nor the nightie! All this going to bed early and oversleeping – and all that smiling and touching!’
‘Touching?’ Alice demanded. ‘I’ve never seen them touching.’
‘That’s because you ’aven’t been looking, Alice.’ Rose went to the window and threw it wide open, as though intending to rid the room of the corrupted air it contained. ‘You’ve heard about women like them,’ she said, turning to confront Alice. ‘You must of! There’s a name for it. Can’t remember what, but there is. Gwennan’s noticed. She wanted to tell Mr Bayliss about them, or Mrs Brewster. And she would of done afore now if I ’adn’t told ’er not to until we ’ad proof and I’d spoken to you about it. Well, now we ’ave proof and what I want to know – what they’ll all want to know – is what you’re going to do about it.’
‘Do about what, exactly?’ Unlike Rose, Alice did know the name for what Connie and Pat were. She felt suddenly concerned for them, perceiving at once the level of hostility and intolerance the two girls were about to be subjected to, not only from Rose but from the other land girls, once the word had got around.
‘About them being here!’ Rose continued, her voice shrill. ‘Living in a hostel with other girls! Normal girls!’
Where Connie and Pat were concerned, Alice had perhaps been less observant than was usual for her. She was certainly unaware of the gossip or of th
e rising level of suspicion pervading the hostel amongst not only the girls who were most familiar to her but also the three comparative newcomers, Elsie, Eva and Nancy, who, although billeted at Lower Post Stone, were deployed on a neighbouring farm.
Rose claimed emphatically that all the girls were determined that the rat-catchers should be immediately removed from the hostel and billeted elsewhere until their work in the area was completed. Alice protested, asking Rose for evidence of any impropriety in the behaviour of either Connie or Pat where the Post Stone girls were concerned, and although Rose blustered and threatened, she was too honest a woman to invent any. But that evening she intercepted the girls when they arrived back from their work, rather earlier than usual, and ten minutes later she led them into the kitchen where Alice was easing a heavy pan of potatoes onto the stove.
Connie and Pat, working that day ten miles from the hostel, were not expected back for some time, so the Post Stone girls, armed, now, with Rose’s evidence of bed-sharing, took this opportunity to confront Alice with their grievances.
They gathered, most sitting at the kitchen table, some hovering round it or lurking in the cross-passage and stated their case. Alice listened.
‘But what is it that they have actually done that has offended you?’ she asked quietly, when silence fell. There were ten of them, including Rose. Ten pairs of eyes, some openly hostile, some mildly accusative, several of them – Annie, Hester and Mabel amongst these – concerned and uncertain.
Alice allowed her question to hang, unanswered, for a moment. The crowded kitchen was filled with such a solid sense of unease that it was almost tangible. When she sensed that Rose or Gwennan were about to speak, Alice continued.
The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate Page 6
