The Girl Now Leaving

by The Girl Now Leaving (retail) (epub)

  It was only at Roman’s Fields that she felt completely herself; nobody expected anything of her.

  But who was this person Herself?

  On the return journey from the comforting and undemanding atmosphere of Roman’s Fields, and the often silent affectionate hours with Bar, she could see clearly the changes in herself and in Bar; yet there was no question that they were still basically the same people of six years ago.

  But Bar’s family were not the same deviating family they had been then. Eli now owned Gabriel Strawbridge’s field and stable, and had converted the buildings into a more permanent home; as a consequence, they had become slightly more acceptable in the village.

  Duke had never come to see her, and had now gone off to make his fortune at Newmarket.

  His mother said, ‘He says he’s going in for breeding and training, but I don’t know, I reckon that’d cost a deal of money. There, you can’t never tell with our Duke. He’s always been a law to himself.’

  Now that the stables were partitioned inside, windows put in and a wood-burning stove installed, Lu felt a loss of some of the magic a visit to Ann Carter’s had been. They were still not ‘respectable’ people. Eli made his money in ways that were too mysterious and nonconformist for that – knackering, breeding and dealing generally in horses, on the hoof or as flesh. The villagers proper still believed that what Ann Carter had done was scandalous – to ‘go’ with a gyppo who wore a gold earring – but the two youngest of the family, Ephraim and Mary, attended the village school with much less aggravation than Bar had experienced.

  The more her family became part of the village, the less Bar seemed able to adjust to it. She could not accept the greetings of such as Mrs Catermole: ‘Well, if it isn’t Barbara. I hear from Mrs Stickland that you are proving a star with the horses.’ Mrs Stickland was an Honourable, so Mrs Catermole was bound to concern herself with any comments made by such a personage. Nor did Bar find herself able to reciprocate the smiles of some of her erstwhile playground bullies when they were forced to serve her in the village shops.

  As her skill with horses developed, she withdrew into her life at the stables, relieved only when she could visit Roman’s Fields where, as May Wilmott expressed it, she was as welcome as the flowers in spring. When Lu paid her visits there, May would sometimes tell Ted, ‘Did you see our two girls go off together? I never knew two girls take to each other like they did.’

  Through the strawberry fields towards the woods or The Swallitt Hole, or any one of the secret places of that first summer they had spent together. When Ralph visited, May would say, ‘Do you think there’s going to be a romance there?’ Ted would cast his eyes upwards and say, ‘Why do you women always want to marry everyone off?’

  It wasn’t that May particularly wanted that, it was more that she wanted the people she loved not to have problems, and she supposed that if Ray and Bar were to fall in love then she could feel sure that they had each found a good partner.

  * * *

  When Christmas came round again, May invited the three of them for their two days’ holiday at Roman’s Fields. Early on Christmas morning, Bar, eighteen years old now that the winter solstice had passed, came to tell Lu that she was allowed to borrow two of the Barneys’ horses to take Lu riding; but Lu was full of a head cold and decided to stay by the fire with Mr Strawbridge. Ken was off out with Ted to take a look at the pack at the estate kennels before the great Boxing Day hunt.

  ‘What about taking me on, then?’ Ralph said.

  Bar’s eyes brightened. ‘Riding, d’you mean?’

  ‘Why not? I’d do my best not to fall off.’

  ‘Then I’d best get a saddle for you.’ And within fifteen minutes she was back with just one horse, saddled ready for Ralph.

  May and Lu watched from the window whilst Ray, refusing to try to mount with them watching, waited for the privacy of the yard before subjecting himself to any indignity. ‘I think we’ll go round my pa’s field a bit first. I’ll have to lead you.’

  Ralph, who had never had so much as a kitten for a pet, was, even though Bar had insisted that it was only a docile little animal, suspicious of a creature of this size and, looking down from the saddle once she had helped him to mount, it seemed to him that he was much further off the ground than he knew to be the fact. Looking down too, he caught glimpses, between watching his own hands on the reins, and watching where his horse was being led, of Bar’s head, which had more than once entered his thoughts since that occasion when he had realized that she was no longer a girl. At the moment her long, black hair, which had seemed to him so much at odds with her short, slight figure, was bundled in a coarse net, and he wished that she would set it free.

  ‘Go as limp as you can… not floppy, keep your knees in. Get your head up, look ahead. Keep your back straight, loose off the rein. That’s it, good… that’s it.’ She began to quicken her pace, urging the horse to a gentle trot. ‘Don’t grip the reins so hard.’ Round and round and back and forth over the frost-hardened grass where there was a pig-sty and where goats were tethered. Ralph, out with Bar and no Lu, became aware of the intimacy of this fortuitous circumstance. Thought of it, led to arousal by it.

  She had led the horse out of the field where her father kept his own few animals, and into a small meadow which was lying fallow, the seed-head ghosts of last summer’s poppies, winged pepperwort and cornflowers protected from the crisp wind by an ancient, high hedge. The hedge, providing its own protection, still held here and there flames of dog-rose hips, dark crimson haws of the thorn bushes, mummified crab-apples, and a few sagging strings of shiny black beads of the nightshade. Having shut the gate, she said, ‘Now, slowly forward on your own. Knees together, straight back, forget your ass, it knows what to do if you let it.’

  Twice, three times he went slowly round the field, with Bar sitting astride the gate calling encouragement to both horse and rider. When she was on the back of a horse, she was totally at ease, in command, an extension almost of the animal. She made it look easy, and although he felt that he was slowly getting the hang of it, he felt rigid and awkward. Sixth time round the field, he called for the instruction about ‘pulling up’. Bar laughed, ‘Try the handbrake, or just shout “woah”.’ The horse stopped close by where she sat straddling the gate.

  ‘Now I’m stranded, how do I get down?’

  She smiled at the silliness of his situation, and he smiled back. Ralph knew that she idealized Lu, almost hung on her every word; more so now that Lu was becoming quite the fashion model. Bar wore no cosmetics, but her skin, having known only rainwater upon it, was clearer and finer than any that had been daily laved with cream and lotion. Her cheeks were reddened by gentle exertion and the winter chill. He would have liked to see her hair unloosed, ‘gypsy hair like my Dad’s’ she had once said it was, and later he had realized that she often referred to that side of her ancestry. Which was surprising, remembering all that Lu had told him about the villagers’ prejudice against the Barney family.

  Ralph thought, ‘Whoever would have thought I’d fall for a gypsy girl?’ He knew, of course, that this was not altogether correct, but he liked it, the colour and romance of a railway clerk and a girl who had been brought up as hardy as a red Indian, and had seldom been out of her home village. Yet, as he suddenly became aware, it didn’t matter who or what he had been, who or what she was: he was in love with her.

  In love with a girl only Lu’s age and himself ten years older.

  In love with a girl who had been a barefoot urchin when he was already a man. He had first seen her, standing in May’s kitchen, one leg tucked into her thigh. At that time the difference in their ages seemed great. When she was twenty-five, he would be thirty-five. When she was sixty he would be seventy. Not until then would the age-gap appear reasonable.

  ‘You froze up there, or do you want me to lift you down?’

  He returned her challenging smile. ‘If I thought you could, I’d let you.’

  ‘Don’
t you worry, I could. Swing your right leg up and over. I’ll see you don’t fall.’

  He looked down at the diminutive figure, boyish in her breeches and pullover except where her swelling breasts and hips showed her femininity. As he swung down, he twisted too much; his left foot did not leave its stirrup so that he hung there helplessly.

  And it was in that situation that he received a long and ardent kiss upon his mouth.

  A kiss he quickly returned. Then exchanged again when he took off the riding net that offended him and laced his fingers into her long, black locks.

  Lu and May were about to chaff him for his dalliance in frosty meadows, when they exchanged glances at what they thought they perceived in Ray’s frivolous and boyish manner.

  A working-class Christmas was short but was packed with as much pleasure as could be had in two days. Except that this year Duke was not there to make an enigmatic visit, which was disappointing in view of the impression he had made upon Lu last year. But Duke had gone off, Mr Strawbridge said, ‘to seek his fortune in the manner of all young men with romantic notions’.

  Until then Lu would have scarcely associated Duke with romantic notions, but as she had discovered over the years, Mr Strawbridge had the ability to see into people. It was he who had said that the two eldest Barneys hankered after things they wouldn’t find round here. ‘You’ve only got to see young Bar on fair day, she becomes her true self in the crowds and bright lights.’ Until then, in Lu’s imagination, Bar was forever a fey, mystical girl who belonged in the woods, or riding hard on big hunters. But Mr Strawbridge was possibly right. Lu remembered from that very first visit that Bar’s dream had been for a proper house with a cooker indoors, and the way she had dressed up for the fair. And remembering Duke’s noble pose with Pixie’s reins running through his fingers, it became clear that he had no future in the self-contained little village.

  * * *

  Early in 1935, and quite out of the blue as far as Ray and Lu were concerned, Kenny suddenly announced that he and two of his oppos were going to pack up their jobs and go on a hike through France and then into Spain. ‘We’ve all got a few quid; we shall sleep rough and get what work we can.’

  ‘What brought this on so sudden, Ken?’

  ‘Not sudden, but we decided to do it instead of keep talking about it. Three of us from the old Labour League football team. I was going to say about it when we were at Aunty May’s, but I still wasn’t sure then whether I was being a fool giving up a safe job. I told Ted I was thinking about it. He said, “Young men out of universities do it, so why not?” It was Georgie Hoffard that started it.’

  ‘Georgie’s dead,’ Lu said. ‘He jumped off the tram right into a lorry.’

  ‘Don’t tell me something I know, Lu. Wasn’t it me laid him out? And that’s it really. Georgie started school the same day as me, and there he was gone. So I thought to myself, you’d be better seeing a bit of the world and end up falling off a mountain or going under the wheels of some lorry in China or India as never do anything.’

  Ray said, ‘There’s trouble brewing in Spain.’

  ‘I know, Ray.’

  Ralph said, ‘So it’s Spain you’re really aiming for then? It’s not just a hike through France. I never thought you were that serious about hiking off abroad.’

  But he had been. ‘Why not? What is there here for us? There’s no chance of us getting another Labour government in for a hundred years. Yes, I do want to see Spain, I want to know what it’s like living in a republic.’

  To see Spain. From half-remembered geography lessons, she created a place of sun and blue skies and the warm Mediterranean sea. Castles… olives and oranges… or was that Italy? To go there, to be there. To walk out of the house as Kenny was going to, with a bit of money, some friends. The idea exhilarated and excited her. She was envious. She wanted to be Kenny. ‘You don’t know how to speak Spanish.’

  ‘No entiendo… ah lo que quieres… decir,’ he stammered. ‘How will I get on? With a dictionary to start off. Terry Black’s one of the others going. He’s a teacher, speaks good French. And I’m the Spanish expert.’ He grinned, ‘El pan – bread, el te – tea, por favor – please. Gracias – thank you. Nobody thinks twice about all those French onion-sellers who come over here and can’t speak English. It can’t be that hard getting around in a foreign country.’

  He left in early spring. The letter he wrote home was composed in fits and starts over the days that followed. Lu devoured every word.

  Dear Ray and Lu,

  The night crossing was so cold that I wondered if the climate on the continent really was going to be warmer than home. Then we arrived in Paris. It was early morning, the sun shining warm and bright and sparkling, steaming the wet pavements.

  At first it was disappointing to find that the trees and winter flowers were no more exotic than those in Portsmouth parks, but the buildings were very different. So was the way in which groups of small tables were put out very early. The four of us who started out from England together are forced to be mean with our money, but the pastry rolls and plentiful coffee are nicely filling and stimulating. Over breakfast I watched Terry Black reading a French newspaper, can you imagine being able to do that? But I will learn. How would we manage without Terry? He even took us on the Paris Metro. You should see it, the ticket cost twopence and we could go anywhere the trains went.

  ‘The night crossing.’ The words leapt from the page and into her daydreams, embedding themselves in the great pool of fertile imaginings that sustained her during her long hours of repetitious machining. She saw the decks lit up, light streaming from portholes and smoke streaming from the funnel as the steamer’s prow cut into the dark waters of the English Channel. Lu had suggested to Ray that they should buy an atlas and mark up where Ken went. She didn’t know what to make of Ray since Ken left. Certainly the house seemed a lot emptier than she had anticipated, but Ray and Ken had never been in one another’s pockets, except when they went together to watch the Pompey team play. Ray thought Ken, when he was away from his sober work, to be too rackety, and Ken thought Ray too much of a sobersides.

  For the first time in their lives, Lu and Ralph began to fall out over trivial matters. They were irritable with one another. Once, Lu bolted the outside doors and went to bed, forgetting that Ray was going to be late, leading to a wrangle that lasted days; another time they each said that the other had promised to bring home something for supper. Nit-picking arguments, until on one occasion Ralph actually raised his voice to Lu when she launched into an angry tirade against the Ezzards. ‘Give over, Lu, you’ve only got yourselves to blame.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’

  ‘You’d soon sort him out if you formed yourselves into a damned union!’

  ‘It’s all right for you in your safe railway job. If anybody at Ezzard’s joined a union, they’d just sack them and take on some more hands. I can’t do without my wages, can I?’

  ‘He can’t sack you all. Where would he get three hundred trained hands overnight? If all three hundred of you switched off your machines and walked out together, he’d soon learn. He wouldn’t want to lose a day’s production.’

  It was the same at work, snapping people’s heads off, arguing, burying herself in the mind-numbing slog. She had no patience with the unnecessary rules, whose only purpose was to keep factory girls in their place: rules about starting time, peeing too frequently, walking in the factory without permission, talking, singing; so she took pleasure in rubbing George Ezzard up the wrong way.

  That same disturbing unsettlement had a wider focus. Massive rearmaments in Germany. Counter-arming at home. The country was said by its leaders to have eighty per cent recovered from the Depression. It did not show on the streets. Unemployment was nationwide. Signs of poverty and deprivation did not appear to lessen. A housing bill was passed outlawing overcrowding. It had no effect in areas like Lampeter.

  Then, in May 1935, the whole country was given a prolonged whiff of la
ughing gas in the form of the king’s Silver Jubilee. A great show of pageantry, wealth, privilege and abundance was put on to calm the unsettled nation.

  It was from this time that there began a sequence of events that sent Lu hurtling into a whole new realm of experience. She often needed someone to talk to to make sense of what was happening, but of the people close to her, there was none she could trust not to treat her as a child to be protected. Ray wrapped her in cotton-wool, May would probably have liked her to settle down and have lovely babies, Sonia and Kate judged on the amount of pleasure or fun to be had. Bar was inexperienced and would want Lu to do what Lu wanted without judgement. Which left Ken. He seemed an ideal person on whom to test out her ideas, so she often wrote to him. She never expected him to comment, and usually he did not.

  The trouble is [she was forced to confess when she wrote to Ken about the Jubilee celebrations] Miss Lake asked me to be one of the helpers to go on the train taking Lampeter Street schoolchildren on an excursion to London to see the big parade. I didn’t like to refuse, because she is very good to the people round here. The factory was closed down for the day, and she said she had hand-picked some of her old girls to go with her because she knew they were reliable. (I know what you’re thinking, but girls like me and Katie are reliable when it comes to Lampeter kids because we talk their language, not like the Sunday school teachers who are so soft they let even the tinies run riot when they take them on outings.) I’m like you and don’t agree with royalty and, like Ray says, we ought to be wondering why we keep on putting up with them, but most people don’t care, and I don’t see why children shouldn’t have a bit of a treat now and then, Lord knows there’s few enough of them round here.

  So, early on Monday morning, a special train full of schoolchildren went up to London. I have to say it, the three compartments full of Lampeter Street Mixed Infants Kate Roles and I travelled with were proper litde angels. The third ‘aide’, as Miss Lake called us, was (you’ll never guess) Mrs Ezzard! I thought I would die when Miss Lake said, but she turned out to be nice. I can’t imagine how she ever came to marry him. But then I could never understand how Miss Lake was friends with her – until now. Perhaps underneath he is nice too (ha-ha).