The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate

by Julia Stoneham

  Gwennan had rubbed her nipple vigorously with her rough, damp towel until it grew pink and appeared almost normal. Then she turned away from the mirror and the sight of the suspect breast, promising herself that she would never again look at it or touch it. That was how she chose to deal with it. By denying not only what she had seen but the knowledge of what was going to happen to her. To her anger, her sense of outrage at the unfairness of it all and the jealousy that washed over her, she reacted differently.

  Unlike the other land girls, who shared their troubles with each other, sometimes with the warden and even, occasionally, with Margery Brewster, Gwennan’s clenched and defensive personality prevented this and, following her frightening experience in the bathroom, she distanced herself more than ever from the rowdy camaraderie of the hostel. She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, applied herself diligently to her work and if she felt exhausted at the end of a particularly heavy day, she attributed the sensation to over-exertion rather than as a symptom of failing health.

  Since her sister’s death, Gwennan rarely received any letters, but on the Saturday after her frightening discovery and while she was still numb with shock, she intercepted the postman and carried the handful of envelopes into the empty kitchen, examining each as she went.

  There was a picture postcard of Harlech Castle for Miss Hannah Maria Sorokova from Hector Conway, who was in Wales on some War Artists’ Scheme work. A buff envelope, clearly from the US military, would require forwarding to Hester Westerfelt at her parents’ smallholding in North Devon. A third letter, the name of its sender, Sergeant M Kinski, printed on its reverse side, was addressed to Miss Marion Grice.

  The arrival of this token, perhaps only of flirtatious friendship but possibly of much more, overwhelmed Gwennan. Why should Annie and Marion be lucky while she herself was not only ignored and unloved but also doomed to an early and cruel death? Witnessing the light-hearted adventures of her fellows seemed to her to be like having salt rubbed into her wounds. In every direction she saw friendship, excitement and optimism, and in some cases, love itself, all of it excluding her. But these girls were no better than she! Some were less moral, less honest and less hard-working! But there they were: Mabel, fat and happy with her Ferdie; Annie with her Ministry of Agriculture exams successfully behind her and clearly enjoying the attentions of Hector, who was not only well-educated but who owned a motor car. Georgina, deployed importantly by the Air Transport Auxiliary, seemed cool and confident when she visited the farm during her infrequent days of leave. Both Eva and Nancy had boyfriends and even the rat-catchers had had each other and, in Gwennan’s opinion, an undeserved, even unseemly, happiness together. The warden, too, though recently divorced, seemed fortunate in her friends and Mr Bayliss was, Gwennan considered, quite inappropriately attentive to her. What had any of them done to deserve happiness when she, Gwennan, was the one with the highest standards of morality? Yet she had no one. She had never had anyone. And now she had this disease. It was too unfair. As it seemed that no one and nothing would level the score on her behalf, she would have to do it for herself. She would redistribute some of her own bad luck. For a start, the letter from Marvin to Marion would somehow go astray so that both of them would be deprived of that much happiness at least. But even then, on that Saturday morning, when the letter addressed to Marion had slipped so easily from the shelf down to lie amongst the cobwebs between the kitchen dresser and the wainscot, Gwennan felt a pang of guilt that weighed her down and made her feel more tired, more isolated and more miserable than ever. Over the following weeks, her conscience would wake her in the night. ‘But,’ one half of her mind would say to the other, ‘she hadn’t heard from him for months. Since well before D-Day. She most likely thinks he’s dead and if she doesn’t hear from him she’ll be none the wiser. And anyhow, she doesn’t deserve him. Or any bloke, come to that. She went with anyone who fancied her before she met the sergeant as well as after! Writing to her, indeed! He should know what sort of girl she is! See if he’d write to her then!’ And so she justified her spiteful deed.

  The evenings and the mornings grew darker as first autumn and then winter took hold of the land. Rain filled the ditches and the cart ruts, clouding the streams and saturating the fleeces of the sheep. The river seethed and churned, breached its banks and spilt across the water meadows until the floor of the valley became a shallow, marshy lake.

  The land girls returned to the hostel each night wet and muddy, their fingers and noses pink from the cold. With the worst of the weather ahead of them and the diversion of Christmas still many weeks away, their morale was at a low ebb and they quarrelled amongst themselves and complained, even more than was usual, about their conditions.

  One wild night, Nancy, known for her forgetfulness, returned to the dark porch to fetch the pair of damp socks she had left inside her boots and which she needed to dry, ready for the next morning.

  ‘Mrs Todd!’ she called from the cross-passage, ‘there’s something funny out there!’

  Alice peered at the shape that was wedged into a shadowy corner of the porch and as far as was possible from the rain that was being driven in by the wind. At first the object appeared, to Alice, to be a large, badly wrapped parcel. There was sacking draped over the top, then came a piece of stained canvas and below that the folds of a dark, heavy fabric trailed down, almost to the ground. Then she saw that a clenched and bony fist was gripping the two edges of the canvas, holding them together, and that a pair of saturated, oversized boots protruded from the fabric where it dripped onto the cobbles. Alice leant closer, Rose at her elbow.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘What do you want?’

  A face pushed forward between the edges of the sack. It was an old face, lined with age and so grimed with dirt that the skin resembled weathered stone. Straggles of stiff, grey hair protruded from the sacking, framing a handsome bone structure and a pair of bright, deep-set eyes. The smile, which revealed gaps between discoloured teeth, illuminated the face and was so infectious that Alice and even the wary Rose found themselves responding to it.

  ‘Marlie, my dears! That’s who I be. But don’t you mind me. I’ll do just fine here, so I will.’ She snuggled her undefined shape further into the corner of the porch and closed her eyes. The accent, which Alice recognised as Northern Irish, reminded her of a gardener she and James had employed just before the outbreak of war.

  ‘What you goin’ to do with ’er?’ Rose whispered, leaning round Alice to stare at the extraordinary damp bundle.

  ‘Well, we can’t leave her out here! She’ll die of something!’

  ‘You let her inside,’ Rose declared, ‘and we’ll all die of something!’

  Opening her eyes, scanning the faces of the two women leaning over her and concluding, immediately and correctly, that Alice would prove to be the softer touch, Marlie focused her attention on her, bestowing on her another huge, toothless smile and ignoring Rose, who continued to fret about fleas, carbuncles and bedbugs.

  ‘A cuppa tay’d be acceptable, if you’re askin’,’ Marlie announced. ‘With a dash of the creater in it, p’raps? For to warm an old woman’s heart?’

  ‘What’s the “creater”?’ Rose demanded suspiciously.

  ‘I think it’s whiskey,’ Alice told her, and Rose said some people had a blooming cheek and wondered whatever next.

  Alice began easing the piece of canvas from the old woman’s bowed shoulders. ‘We’d better leave your… outer thing…in the porch, I think.’ She took Marlie’s cold hands in hers and heaved her gently to her feet, drew her along the cross-passage and through into the warm kitchen, moved a chair closer to the range, sat her down and watched her steam.

  Marlie declined to remove her boots, which, she assured them, had been given to her only days before by a soldier and kept her feet bone dry. The unravelling shawls and buttonless cardigans were barely damp but the hemline of her skirt, which appeared to be made of an old blanket, was heavy with rainwater.

 
; Rose produced a mug of tea and Marlie nodded encouragingly as several spoonfuls of sugar were stirred into it, wrapped her bony hands round it and sipped noisily. As there was no whiskey, Alice donated a dash of sherry from the bottle she kept in her room and from which she occasionally offered a glass to Roger Bayliss or, sometimes, to Margery Brewster, if she seemed out of sorts when she visited the farm.

  The land girls, clustering in the doorway, described, for those behind them and who could not see past them, the events that were unfolding in the kitchen.

  ‘They’ve took off some of her clothes and hung ’em up to dry!’

  ‘Rose ’as give ’er a cup of tea!’

  ‘Five sugars, she’s had!’

  ‘She’s that soaked there’s steam comin’ off of her skirt!’

  ‘Rose ’as fetched ’er a plate of leftovers!’

  ‘Crikey! She don’t half tuck in!’

  ‘Are you on your way to somewhere?’ Alice asked Marlie, conscious of the looming question of what was to be done with her. It was already past eight o’clock and the night was pitch dark. She could hardly turn the old woman out into the rain. But as Marlie grew warm and her clothing began to dry, a smell spread from her which made Mabel, whose own particular blend of body odours had so offended her hostel mates, seem positively fragrant.

  ‘Pherff!’ Mabel whispered. ‘She don’t half…’ She stopped in mid-sentence and had the grace to blush.

  ‘Look who’s talkin’!’ Winnie giggled. Mabel was mortified.

  ‘I’m not that bad any more!’ she protested, turning to Alice for support while the rest of the girls, though not unkindly, enjoyed her embarrassment and broke into laughter when Alice herself smiled before assuring Mabel that, no, she was not that bad any more.

  The old woman, now warmed, fed and drying, seemed to be drifting towards sleep.

  ‘Marlie!’ Alice said, hoping to prevent this. ‘Much as I’d like to, I can’t offer you a bed here. This is a Land Army hostel, you see, run by the Ministry of Agriculture. The rules are very strict about…’ Marlie was shaking her head and laughing gently.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear!’ she said. ‘You’ve done me proud, so you have!’ She began to heave herself to her feet, found standing difficult and subsided again onto her chair. ‘If you have a bit of a barn somewhere that’d keep off the wet, then the good Lord will bless you for your kindness. If not, I reckon I’ll find me a bit of shelter somewhere along the way, so I will!’

  Watching the old woman had made the land girls keenly aware of the youth and strength which, they realised, almost guiltily and with the possible exception of Gwennan, they took very much for granted. Within the last hour or so most of them had washed off the day’s mud in a hot bath, even if the water in it had been shared. They had filled their bellies with food that was satisfying and wholesome, the clothes they were wearing were dry and the beds in which, later that night, they would sleep, were clean and warm.

  Complaints about the cold, about the rain, the snow, the summer heat, the low wages, the monotonous food, the hostel rules, the lack of privacy, the dearth of entertainment, the unreliable plumbing, the overtime, the mud, the earwigs, the exhaustion and the homesickness – all filled the hostel on a regular basis, morning noon and night, seven days a week. There was usually one girl or another with a grudge or a sore throat or a blister or a painful period. Someone who had lost something or broken something. Who felt insulted, neglected, cheated, thwarted or, in one way or another, deprived of her rights. So they would grouse and mutter, squabble, whine, bully, snub, insult and sometimes rage. But here was this woman, whose name was Marlie, who was grimed and wet, reeking and old, but who would be grateful to be allowed to sleep in a barn.

  As they stared thoughtfully at her, wondering how she came to be how and where she was, homeless and filthy on a dark, wet night, Marlie seemed to read their minds.

  ‘It’s me brothers,’ she volunteered suddenly, and in response to the dozen pairs of eyes which were focused on her, continued, ‘It’s me baby brothers, so it is. The two of them came across from Derry when the war began for to find work. Liverpool they went to. “Marlie,” they said, “we’ll go ahead and get work and a place to live, then you’ll catch the boat and come over to us.” Promised to meet me on the dock, so they did! The older boys had already gone, see. New York they went to and then Chicago but where they are now, only the good Lord knows!’

  Rose had refilled Marlie’s cup with tea. She drank noisily and then pulled a face. ‘Could you be a little kinder regarding the sugar, d’you suppose?’ she asked Rose, who, with something less that good grace, dipped her spoon three more times into the sugar bowl.

  ‘And did they? Your brothers?’ Annie asked. ‘Did they meet you on the dock?’ Marlie shook her head.

  ‘No, they did not! I took meself to the address they’d given me, so I did, and what did I find?’ She looked from one fascinated face to the next, at the girls gathered round the table to the girls in the doorway and the girls peering in from the cross-passage, and at Alice’s face and at Rose’s. ‘I found a bombed house, so I did! No roof! Just rubble inside it. Only the four walls standing, so they were!’

  ‘And no sign at all of your brothers?’ Gwennan asked, her gaunt face sober and almost sympathetic.

  ‘And no sign at all of me brothers.’ Marlie sighed, shaking her head. ‘No Donal and no Liam.’

  ‘Had they been killed?’ Winnie asked.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Marlie said emphatically. ‘Not killed! Not they! Not our Donal! Not Liam! No, no, no! They’d have just took ’emselves off to somewhere safe! That’s what they’d have done, so they would! But can I find the pair of them? No, I cannot! They could hardly leave a forwarding address on a pile of rubble, now, could they? Been looking for the pair of them ever since, so I have! Years it must be now! I tried the places where Irish folk goes for the work. Big cities, they were. But not a sign of them! “D’you know of a Donal?” I’d ask, “D’you know of a Liam?” But no one did. I went to lots of towns, so I did. Can’t remember the names of ’em but there was always a next one and a next one, so there was.’ Her eyes seemed to be focused on some vague and distant future. Some time and place where her tiredness would overcome her. Where it would all stop.

  ‘There’s Exeter down the road from ’ere,’ Winnie suggested helpfully.

  ‘And then Plymouth,’ Marion added, pointing vaguely westwards.

  ‘Is that right?’ Marlie asked, rousing slightly. ‘Maybe I’ll try them next, then. I’ll track ’em down, those brothers of mine, so I will, that’s for sure! And when I find ’em, what a time we’ll have! We’ll crack open a bottle of good Irish whiskey, Donal and Liam and I, so we will, so we will…’

  Rose shone the torch and Alice took Marlie’s arm and steadied her across the yard. They let her into the barn, spread a thick layer of straw in one of the empty stalls and covered the old lady with a horse blanket.

  In the morning Mabel carried a bowl of porridge across the yard but returned with it, minutes later, to the kitchen.

  ‘She’s not there, Mrs Todd. Reckon she gone lookin’ for them brothers of ’ers.’ Alice was unsurprised by this and, it had to be said, slightly relieved. Roger Bayliss discouraged vagrants and Gypsies on the grounds that their presence in the neighbourhood always seemed to coincide with pilferings and poachings. As well as this they were considered by the Ministry of Defence to be a security risk, and since the start of the war there had been instances when men – and even women – masquerading as tramps, had been convicted of spying for foreign intelligence.

  ‘Oh, I do hope she finds ’em!’ Mabel said. ‘D’you think she will, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘’Course she won’t!’ Gwennan said flatly, and although her view was not one anybody wanted share, it was plain to most of them that the old woman’s quest, given her age and circumstances, was unlikely to prove successful.

  ‘She’s gone a bit potty, I reckon,’ Gwennan added, watching disapprovi
ngly as Mabel appropriated and rapidly devoured the porridge that had been intended for Marlie. ‘And anyhow, they’re most likely dead if their lodgings was bombed.’

  ‘Always the optimist, eh, Taff!’ Marion sneered. But they all knew Gwennan was almost certainly right, and in the brief silence before the horn of Fred’s truck summoned them out into the cold morning, they pictured Marlie plodding off, accosting strangers and asking them, ‘Have you seen Donal? Have you seen Liam?’

  No one at the Post Stone farms ever knew that, a fortnight later, the body of an old woman was found stranded on a sand bar in the Exe Estuary. The condition of the corpse and the lack of any form of identification or evidence of foul play discouraged the local police from pursuing their inquires. A verdict of accidental death was recorded and the case was closed.

  Chapter Nine

  One afternoon, when a south-westerly gale was driving veils of rain across the valley, Alice heard the sound of a motorbike arriving at the farmhouse gate and guessed that the figure, concealed in bulky waterproofs, was Georgina’s and that the bike and the garments were borrowed from her brother, Lionel. She stood in the porch, stripping off the heavy oilskins.

  ‘Go through to my sitting room,’ Alice said, ‘I’ll bring us some tea.’ But when Georgina followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table, she turned to her and asked, ‘Are you all right, Georgie? You look a bit…I don’t know…wan.’ Alice spooned tea into the battered enamel teapot. ‘I thought it was this week that you and your…what’s his name?’