The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate

by Julia Stoneham

  ‘What did you say to ’im?’ she demanded. Alice sat down at the table.

  ‘What would you have done, Rose, if…’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘If you knew where Georgina was but you also knew she would be in trouble if her father knew.’

  ‘My goodness!’ Rose was flushing with excitement. ‘You think she be with Master Christopher, don’t you?’ She had never rid herself of the habit of referring to Christopher as she had done when he was a small boy.

  ‘I’m certain she is! Her brother’s motorbike was on the track near the woodsman’s cottage. There were lights in the window and smoke coming from the chimney…’

  ‘And what was you doing there?’ Rose, who usually knew, more or less precisely, where everyone in the Ledburton area was – and why – had never been so baffled or intrigued in her life.

  ‘Mr Bayliss and I drove up—’

  ‘You and…? Drove? Up there? In this weather?’

  ‘In the truck, Rose, yes. The rain had stopped. And the worst of the wind—’

  ‘But, in the name of heaven, why would you do that?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Certainly is!’ Rose was enjoying herself. It wasn’t often that she felt smarter than Alice. ‘So it bain’t only your girls as gets into scrapes round ’ere then, be it?’ she purred.

  ‘It was during the Brewsters’ party,’ Alice explained, ‘that I suddenly felt concerned about Christopher being alone over Christmas. It seemed to me to be the perfect time to attempt a reunion – a sort of reconciliation between father and son! But I suspected that what with Mr Bayliss being how he is and Christopher being how he is—’

  ‘I knows what you mean. Dead stubborn, the pair of ’em!’

  Alice hesitated. She had always resisted discussing their employer’s shortcomings with Rose. ‘Well, yes,’ she conceded, ‘so I decided that if it was going to happen at all, I was going to have to make it happen. It was probably Margery’s punch,’ she added vaguely.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘It clouded my judgement. Gave me Dutch courage.’

  ‘There was gin in it, then!’

  ‘Brandy, actually,’ Alice admitted ruefully. ‘And lots of it!’ Rose was thrilled. Her boss, her employer and probably most of the other guests at the Brewsters’ party, all drunk as lords!

  ‘So the two of you drove up to the forest and there they was, eh? Georgina and Christopher! Bet they was pleased to see you! Whatever did they say when you two turned up?’

  ‘We didn’t.’ Rose stared at Alice in disbelief.

  ‘You mean…you snuck off? Just got back in the truck and…’ Rose’s pleasure was complete. She shook her head, buried her face in her apron and laughed as Alice had never heard her laugh before. ‘I can just see the two of you creepin’ away! Like a pair of naughty…’ She stopped abruptly. Alice looked so stricken with embarrassment and concern that it seemed to Rose to be unkind to be enjoying the story so hugely. ‘No real ’arm done though, lovey, eh?’ she said, collecting herself. ‘I reckon Mr Bayliss should be proud of ’is boy! ’Avin’ it away with a lovely girl like Georgina!’

  ‘The thing is, he doesn’t know it was Georgina! He wanted to knock on the door but I wouldn’t let him! All he knows is that it’s someone with a motorbike. He probably thinks it’s an old school friend of Christopher’s, or an RAF colleague.’

  ‘So how come you’re so sure it was ’er? It might of bin ’er brother Lionel, mighten it?’ Or anyone with a motorcycle, come to that?’

  ‘No. It was definitely Lionel’s bike, and Georgina’s scarf – that royal blue cashmere one she was given for her birthday – was hanging out of the pannier, Rose. It had to be her!’ There was a pause while Rose applied her shrewd mind to the whole, fascinating scenario. After some moments of thought she asked Alice what she had said to Georgina’s father.

  ‘What could I say?’

  ‘You could of told ’im the truth… But you didn’t, did you?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Well, what did you tell the poor man?’

  ‘That a tree was blocking a lane and Georgina had been forced, by the storm, to take shelter with friends but that she was quite safe and I was certain she would return home as soon as she possibly could. Well, most of it was true!’ Rose, unconvinced, shook her head reproachfully.

  ‘And what did he say to that?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t he want to know where this fallen tree’s to and who his precious daughter be with?’

  ‘Yes. I expect he did. But—’

  ‘But? But what?’

  ‘But I pretended the line had gone dead. I kept saying “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” and then I hung up. I left the receiver off the hook so that if he telephones again he’ll think the lines have come down in the gale.’ She looked at Rose’s self-righteous face. ‘Oh, I know, Rose! It was dreadful of me! What would you have done?’

  ‘Lord knows! But then I bain’t so quick and clever as what you are, Alice!’ They sat in silence for a while before Rose added magnanimously, ‘I reckon, all things considered, you done right. And now you’d best just sit tight and keep mum!’

  ‘But supposing that when Georgina gets home her parents tell her they spoke to me on the phone! Georgina will know I’d lied! And she’ll know I knew where she had been! Oh, heavens! It’s true, isn’t it, what they say about weaving a tangled web when we practice to deceive!’

  ‘Grandma Crocker allus said as you needed to be sharp as a tack if you was goin’ to lie and get away with it. But Georgina bain’t stupid, Alice. She’ll think of something.’

  The early morning of Christmas Eve was mild and windy. The girls were to work until midday, when the lorry would deliver them to Ledburton Halt to catch trains to their various hometowns.

  ‘I get to Paddington at four o’clock, Mrs Todd,’ Annie had announced at supper a few days previously. ‘Hector’s meeting me and I’m taking him home to meet my mum and dad.’

  ‘What? That posh bloke?’ Marion queried, with her mouth full of fish pie, which, as a result of a disappointing delivery from the fishmonger, contained less fish and more potato than usual.

  ‘Yeah. Why not?’ Annie answered, colouring slightly.

  ‘’Cos you know what happens with you and posh blokes!’ Gwennan smirked, remembering Annie’s brief and painful affair with Georgina’s brother.

  ‘Hector’s not stuck up like Lionel!’ Annie protested. ‘And anyhow, my Grandad Sorokova knows some of the Polish war artists that Hector’s been working with. Hector says he’s very keen to meet him, so there! I reckon he’ll like my folks!’

  ‘But will ’is folks like you?’ Gwennan snapped back, her barbed tongue finding its mark.

  ‘Maybe they will and maybe they won’t,’ Annie said defensively, ignoring the cynical smiles of the other girls.

  ‘Why wouldn’t they like her?’ Mabel demanded, holding out her plate for seconds. ‘What’s not to like about our Annie? She’s lovely!’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s common, Mabel,’ Marion explained dismissively to the plump, baffled girl. ‘And ’is folks is prob’ly even posher than what ’e is. So if ’e ever takes ’er ’ome with ’im, they’ll most likely give her the cold shoulder!’

  The same thought had occurred to Annie. In the course of one of their early conversations Hector had told her that his father was a don in an Oxford college. She had searched for the word in the dictionary Georgina had given her and been daunted by one of the definitions, which read ‘a senior member of staff at Oxford or Cambridge’, which sounded, to Annie, ominously lofty.

  She knew that Hector’s mother had died when he and his brothers were still schoolboys and that they lived with their father in the family home together with his elderly sister. Annie had assumed that this woman acted as a surrogate mother to the Conway boys and managed the household for their father. What she did not know was that Sybilla Conway was herself an academic and that domesticity was not one of her fortes.

&
nbsp; Over the years, Sybilla had allowed the rooms, which were always overflowing with books, manuscripts, paintings, prints and a sprawling and as yet uncatalogued collection of fossils, to descend into near chaos. Nevertheless it was a happy house where a Mrs Potter, known affectionately as Pottie, kept the four men, plus the one eccentric woman, warm and fed. Pottie dealt with the laundry and did her best to keep the stacks of books under control and the floors swept. None of this was at all what Annie expected the Conway’s home to be. Consequently she was, for all the wrong reasons, nervous, when Hector had suggested that one day soon, when she had some leave, he would take her there to visit them.

  A repeat of last year’s weather, when, on Christmas Eve, a blizzard had put paid to the land girls’ plans and marooned them in the snowbound farmhouse, seemed unlikely. On that Christmas Day, Alice’s almost empty larder had been miraculously replenished with lavish supplies provided by an American army training base whose personnel were also, because of the snow, in effect confined to barracks. To the astonishment of the stranded girls, twenty or so GIs had arrived at the farm on Christmas morning in a Bren gun carrier laden with cooked hams and turkeys, plum puddings, muffins, pastries and cookies. They brought crates of beer and Coca-Cola and Alice had been presented with a bottle of champagne.

  The riotous party had continued all day and, unabated, had carried on into the evening. Marion had met and boogied with Marvin Kinski while Rose’s Dave, on a 48-hour pass, had danced every dance with Hester Tucker, only hours before Reuben, after trudging for five hours through the snow to keep his date with her, arrived and slid onto the third finger of her left hand, a pretty ruby ring that had belonged to his grandmother.

  This year, only Alice and Edward John, together with Gwennan, Elsie and Eva, who had volunteered for milking duty over Christmas, were to remain at the farm.

  Mabel’s grandmother and little Arthur had already travelled down from London and were installed in Ferdie’s cottage. Rose would cook a capon at the hostel while Alice and Edward John were to join Roger Bayliss for Christmas dinner at the higher farm.

  Ferdie had procured, possibly feloniously, a piglet for his guests. Butchered and prepared for roasting on a spit, it would rotate inches from his red-hot range while potatoes were baking to a golden brown in his oven.

  ‘What you wrapped up like that for?’ Gwennan demanded that morning, glaring at Mabel, who was balancing her considerable bulk on a creaking milking stool. ‘You got on so many clothes you can hardly fit on that stool! Any minute now it’ll fall to bits under the weight of you! And it’s not even cold, Mabel! What’s the matter with you?’

  Mabel buried her face in the cow’s side and said nothing. Freezing weather in early December had enabled her to continue to conceal the evidence of her now-advanced pregnancy under several layers of jackets, coats, scarves and waterproofs. But the temperature had risen over the last few days during which she had not only been far too hot but was so constricted by these layers of clothing that she could barely move. She now looked almost completely rotund and was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She knew, instinctively and from experience, that the birth of her secret child was imminent. She bit her lip and tugged at the cow’s teats.

  Several times, over the past few months, Mabel and Ferdie had attempted to address their situation. Their discussions always foundered when they reached the uncompromising certainty that if Mabel confessed to being pregnant she would have been instantly dismissed from the Land Army, forcing the pair of them and the coming child to survive on Ferdie’s meagre wage.

  ‘I can’t hardly live as it is,’ Ferdie had told her each time she had raised the question of their immediate future. ‘’Ow can I feed a wife and child on what I earns?’

  ‘But what’ll we do, Ferdie?’ She had been sitting beside his fire, running her calloused hands over the protrusion that overflowed her lap. ‘She’s not gonna stay in ’ere much longer! And that Gwennan Pringle knows there’s some’at up! Any minute now she’s gonna guess and she’ll go to the warden and she’ll say, “That Mabel Hodges be in the family way, Mrs Todd and what are you gonna do about it?” And Mrs Todd’ll go to Mrs Brewster and Mrs Brewster’ll go to Mr Bayliss and…’

  ‘She?’ Ferdie asked, looking sharply at the worrying bulge. ‘You said “she”, Mabel. Don’t reckon ’tis a girl, do ee? ’T won’t be no girl! Us Vallances don’t ’ave girls! ’T will be a boy, my lover! A fine big boy! Or I’ll want to know the reason why!’ Mabel stared at him in amazement. The sex of the coming child seemed to her to have very little bearing on their difficulties.

  In the woodsman’s cottage, Christopher had been the first to wake. He was immediately conscious of Georgina, curled against him. They were lying on their left sides, like two spoons in a cutlery drawer. He had never imagined that on the dilapidated sofa, piled with old cushions and sheepskins, where he had so often slept alone, there would be room for two. And not only room, but that two could be so divinely accommodated by its sagging contours.

  Georgina was sleeping soundly, her left arm stretched out over the edge of the sofa, her right arm folded against her chest. Christopher’s arm was round her, his fingers loosely holding her right wrist. Her breathing was almost imperceptible.

  The two of them fitted so perfectly together that Christopher decided that, after their months of estrangement, he could not risk losing this intoxicating closeness and would never move again. He would lie, quite still, for ever, sublimely conscious of the concave line of Georgina’s ribcage from her bare shoulder to where the convex curve of her hip began. He carefully inhaled the smell of her hair and, with the tip of his tongue, tasted the skin at the nape of her neck. The sun could rise, move to its low, winter zenith, and then lose itself in the murk of a midwinter sunset and still he would not move. He dozed, blissfully, while the light through the small, uncurtained window, slowly increased.

  Then she was awake. Inhaling luxuriantly and rolling onto her stomach where she lay, propped on her elbows, looking down into his face. They smiled. Their eyes met and held. Then she sighed and said she must go because her parents would be worried about her. He extricated himself from the sheepskins and, wrapping his faded dressing gown around himself, opened the fire, which, well stoked on the previous night, began to draw vigorously. The water in the filled kettle, already hot, seethed as he spooned tea into an old porcelain pot he had discovered, together with numerous ancient bottles, dumped in the yard and had kept because, although it was chipped and lidless, he liked the pansies that were painted on it.

  ‘Tea,’ he announced. ‘You must at least have a hot drink before you go.’ She was out of the bed and pulling on her clothes, her body lithe and luminous in the wintry morning light.

  She glanced at Christopher as he fetched milk from the linhay and set cups on the table. He was naked under his dressing gown, his hair dishevelled, his face relaxed but intent on what he was doing. She felt a surge of pleasure at the prospect of a thousand future mornings when she would enjoy this image of him. Seating herself at the table, she watched him pour the tea.

  ‘What will you tell your folks?’

  ‘The truth.’ She answered without hesitation.

  ‘Will they be angry with us?’

  ‘They’ll probably be surprised.’ She sipped carefully at the hot tea. ‘But they’ll have to accept it, sooner or later.’

  ‘Accept what, exactly?’

  ‘Us. The fact that we’ve got this far.’

  He was tempted to ask her to define how far that was but rephrased his question.

  ‘And will that be enough for them?’

  ‘It will have to be. Don’t rush me, Chris!’ She smiled and blew him a kiss across the table.

  ‘I’m not, honestly! I just don’t want them to think—’

  ‘What? That your intentions are dishonourable? I promise to assure them that they’re not! In fact, I’m the one whose behaviour could be perceived as dishonourable, aren’t I? I mean, people are always accusin
g me of trifling with your affections!’

  ‘Are they? Who, for instance?’

  ‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘Rose, for one.’

  ‘Rose? Rose Crocker?’ He was astonished and could barely control his amusement.

  ‘And Alice.’

  ‘Ah. Alice. Her views seem to feature strongly these days! What Alice thinks about my pa and now what she thinks about you and me!’

  ‘She’s a good person, Chris. I admire her. So of course I listen to her and value her opinions. She likes you. She’s always thought that you and I should, well…at least take each other seriously. In fact, I believe she thinks we love each other.’

  ‘And don’t we?’

  ‘This tea’s too hot. Put some more cold milk in it, please. I must go home!’

  ‘Don’t we, Georgie?’ he persisted, half serious and gently challenging her, as he added the milk to her tea.

  ‘Well, I do.’ she said gravely, meeting his eyes. ‘I really do, Chris.’

  ‘And I do! So good old Alice got that right, bless her!’

  ‘It’s just that…’ she hesitated. He waited, paying her serious attention while she sorted out her feelings. ‘It’s just that there have been so many versions of you since we met! You, before you cracked up. You really messed up. You recovering but still a bit…you know…’ He nodded. ‘And you now. Fit and fine and focused on the future…’

  ‘And on you. But then I always was focused on you, madam, as well you know!’

  ‘But what I mean is…you confuse me! Are there any more of you out there? And if so, will I like them?’

  ‘You’ll like one!’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘He’s a lovely old chap! Eighty-five if he’s a day! Silver hair, all his own teeth…and he adores you! Always has. Always will! So? What d’you reckon?’

  She was on her feet, laughing, reaching for the borrowed wet-weather gear, locating the goggles and helmet.

  ‘I reckon if I don’t get home pretty soon, my folks will have organised a search party and how embarrassing would that be?’