by Rachel Malik
‘I’m sure there were people who thought I should have worked harder to keep him at home. But no one blamed me, not to my face.’
Bertha had blamed her at the beginning; Lily had defended her and now here was Elsie.
‘But you do work hard, very hard. I’ve seen how hard you work.’
Lily would have raised her eyebrows at that, but Elsie was struggling, tired of this talk.
They turned away from the canal now in favour of Cole’s wood, and Rene was glad to get away from the stillness.
Here all the trees were shooting green and everywhere birds were twittering, darting, things rustling in the leaves.
‘Oak,’ Rene said hesitantly. She couldn’t think of anything else.
‘Oh Rene,’ said Elsie.
For it was a beech wood, with the usual errant fruit trees. A spindly, springy branch had sprouted low from a stubborn scar and Elsie pulled off a leaf: bright yellow-green with little hairs all round.
‘There used to be deer, lots of them, but they’ve nearly all been poached.’
‘Since the war?’
‘Oh, well before that. There are still a few left, if you know when to look, if you come very early in the morning. This way …’
Rene followed just a little behind. Lily would have giggled at Elsie – not at the time, but afterwards. Oh Rene, really, you can’t be serious. But Rene didn’t want Lily now. Lily had got rid of her swimming cups when she got married. She would carp and grumble plenty, but that was it: you’d made your bed. They’d all made their beds when they got married. Lily was no use, nor was Hilda. She would much rather have Elsie’s ghosts: Moira with her jacket pulled tight around her, complaining about the mud, never in the right shoes; Bert falling into the ditch; Moira coming back from a dance, sitting in the cart, singing while everyone else slept. The cart passed on; everything floated away.
They came out into a clearing finally full of sunlight where the trees stretched and soared and Elsie, all loose-limbed and easy, pointed out the clutch of trees that had been struck in a summer storm. Still dying, she said, and sometimes she could still smell burning, and the blackberries were the best for miles for the storm had let the light through.
‘Look!’
Rene had seen something hanging in the trees above.
Elsie looked up.
‘It must be a parachute …’ Rene’s voice was a whisper, dry.
YOU MUST NOT BE TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
‘Are you sure?’
It was hard to be sure, something white or perhaps grey – it looked like a big white sheet hanging lankly in the branches high above. BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY – that didn’t sound right.
‘What else could it be?’
Rene’s mind spun – someone falling, jumping, out of the sky. The surrounding woodland was suddenly alive with Germans, caught, concealed in the trees. Enemy agents, spies. TELL NO ONE, NOT EVEN HER. Elsie didn’t have blackout upstairs. LIGHTS OUT IN THE BLACKOUT. Elsie didn’t have light upstairs. Take a deep breath.
‘A sheet,’ Elsie said.
‘What?’
Elsie had her neck craned back at a near impossible angle, shielding her eyes, staring up. ‘Somebody’s washing, I don’t know. It was that blowy on Monday.’
YOU MUST NOT BE TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
Or an English airman flying home, now lying injured, lying dead. She didn’t want to find a body.
‘We should look around, in case there’s anything else.’
They looked around on the ground underneath the trees, uncertain of what they might find, what might count. If this were a film, Rene thought, there would be a pair of cracked flying goggles, a map, foreign cigarettes and German writing, yes, somewhere there would be German writing, but all she found was a blunt penknife with a rusty blade. That sustained their search but they found nothing else and started to lose interest; it was getting cold and late. They stared up at the fabric one final time. There was no sign of strings, but maybe that was just the angle: it was forty foot up at least.
YOU MUST NOT BE TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
Rene was calm again now. Elsie smiled at her.
‘If there was a crash or something, Colonel Pinkie is bound to know. We can ask him when we get back.’
IF THE INVADER COMES, KNOW WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT.
That night, after Elsie had gone to sleep, Rene got up and went downstairs, clutching the tin box where she kept the remains of her other life. Her most precious things were still folded into the old copy of Treasure Island and tied with fraying ribbon. This she left well alone, but she tidied up the other bits and pieces, read a letter from her dad to her mum – Oh, my darling – and stared at her wedding photograph for some time. She wasn’t quite sure why she had kept it, except that it was a reminder. Just a small group: she and Alan in the middle, her mother and Leo, with a silly smirk on his face. And on Alan’s side, his mother – such a nice woman – and his sister with her fox collar limp round her neck. And then there were the cuckoos in the nest: Bertha and her fiancé, just announced, Mr Ernest Massey (surely they’re too old, Leo had said). It was only the second time she had met him, short and sturdy with his barrel chest, and smart that day in a borrowed suit. He stood beside Bertha, the proverbial spinster, pencil thin – no wonder Leo smirked. Rene had never quite recognized herself in the photograph, eyes down as if she were shy; she had thought she was clever that day, had thought she was escaping.
* * *
Phil Townsend came up to Starlight the following evening, not something he did very often these days. Very friendly he was: did Elsie know he was on the Land Ag now; any help you need, just say the word. Full of it. He brought a copy of The Times with him, with a report of yesterday’s debate. The Times came courtesy of old Harris. It wasn’t Phil’s usual reading, but he said there was something Elsie should see.
For Elsie, reading the paper was part of being a farmer: it was what old Alfred had done. The Newbury Advertiser, the Berkshire Gazette. Rene made a habit of bringing her back one of these when she went into Lambourn on Fridays. But other, more specialized press also fell into Elsie’s hands. There had once been a subscription to the Farmer, and when Elsie went to the mart, or to the forge to get the pony shod, there was often a copy of something. Local, parochial in so many respects, untravelled, she knew nevertheless that before the war most of her cow cake came from South Africa and Canada, about the grand empire beef conference, about the farming of ostriches and emus for meat, and of trade fairs, in London and Paris. Rene was quite amazed by some of the things that Elsie knew; amazed too that this knowledge didn’t seem to make the prospect of visiting the town of Reading any less frightening. Elsie read and Rene took it up too: reading her way into Elsie’s world. They took it in turns to read aloud – taking turns to be the wireless, Elsie called it. The war made it a duty of sorts and so, after Phil had left, they had sat in the parlour, taking turns to read the report of the Commons debate from The Times. Imagine Rene’s soft rising rhythms, the faintest unattributable lilt from Elsie:
The debate was bad-tempered in parts, and there was much righteous anger that no one from the war cabinet saw fit to be present … It is certainly reassuring to know that the House can still muster the redoubtable qualities usually associated with more tranquil times. Readers of these pages may well have wondered if the member for Caernarvon Boroughs’ oratory has been too frequently praised of late, but yesterday, he spoke ‘with wizardry and magnetism’ …
Lloyd George had a strong suspicion of these Agricultural Committees, too much stroking self-interest. This struck a chord with Elsie, who was inherently suspicious of the Land Ag – just wanted to line their pockets. Above all, said that most famous MP for Caernarvon Boroughs, an army was needed to grow the food that would fight this war. Stirring stuff.
Lloyd George, how old must he be now? Rene, hearing him broadcast in Elsie’s soft tones, found it easy to respond, ‘A war indeed.’ She had learnt very quickly during her training it was best
to be at the front of the field, to see only what was in front. Irritated by interruption, by foolers, always the first to volunteer, front-of-the-queue Hargreaves (a good-natured jibe, that), she was fighting, no mistake; and didn’t everyone have a bit of their own war mixed in with the rest?
* * *
The letter arrived two weeks after Elsie’s birthday. It was another ‘letter from no one’, as Elsie called such communications, to Rene’s initial amusement. There had been a slow and steady stream of these, mainly from the Ministry of Agriculture, since the mid-thirties. She had read them all, acted on some, ignored others, crossed her fingers, hoped, feared and forgotten. Each letter carried the possibility of the past, a sin of omission, a link in some obscure, tightening chain. There was no such thing as a letter from no one: she knew that really.
‘Why do you call it that?’
They were sitting at the table, lingering over breakfast, the first shift of the day done.
Elsie placed the letter (one page, official, spun with acronyms) very carefully in front of Rene, pointing at the inky squabble of a signature.
‘See.’
‘Yes, yes, the writing is dreadful.’ She stole a glance at Elsie, who nearly smiled. ‘But look, it says Robinson. It comes from Robinson, oh no, wait, a Mr M. Sealy-Robinson from the Ministry of Agriculture. No wonder he can’t sign his own name.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Robinson, Sealy-Robinson.’
They both laughed at that, but Elsie soon turned mutinous.
‘I don’t like it. He knows me but I don’t know him. What does he want with me?’
‘He doesn’t know you, but he knows you’re a farmer. And farmers are fighting the war. Like the land girls. You and me, we’re fighting the war. These are our orders, our instructions. This is the Lambourn front, the Starlight front.’
Rene found this line of argument easy, natural. She’d heard a good deal of it on her training. It was speech that talked itself and she had filled up on it.
She was right about orders, but they didn’t come in the form expected. The letter, with its unreadable signature, announced a survey: ‘designed to obtain a complete picture of the current state of agricultural production in England, Wales and Scotland with the aim of increasing productivity …’ It announced, within the next few weeks, the arrival of a field recorder, a complete stranger who would, with their assistance, complete the above-mentioned survey on the condition of Starlight, its current and future ‘productivity’. They should be ready to expect the arrival of the recorder on the morning of Wednesday 4 May and be prepared to make themselves available to assist him. He would expect to be shown all over the farm, alone or accompanied. He would inspect the condition of all the buildings, including the house; the state of all walls, gates, fences, ditches and water supplies. He would record details of all stock, foodstuffs, seed, machinery and equipment.
The birthday card still sat on the parlour mantel: pale yellow tulips in a willow-pattern jug. It was a long time since anyone had remembered Elsie’s birthday. It was a lovely picture, but the real interest was inside: Rene’s writing, a looping ribbon: writing you could look through, spun and swirled. She had found the pen and the dark green ink in the drawer of old Alfred’s desk. Elsie had been amazed. Her own hand was a clear, easy copperplate, but this, her name like this, was beyond anything. She was a picture; her name like icing piped on a cake.
* * *
They spent the next ten days working all hours, trying to put things to rights. Some of the fencing mended, much of it a patch-over job. The cowshed scrubbed down, a gate painted and its rusty catch fixed, the two furthest drains cleared. Rene took it upon herself to bleach the walls of the cowshed, found some white paint for the rotting window frames and whitewashed the walls of the yard. The little vegetable plot at the edge of the orchard was already budding with greens; they were eating well. The old field of glasshouses looked terrible, but there was no time to clear the glass and no money to replace it; in the end, Elsie could only secure the gate. At least it was a field that could be offered up to the plough.
The diminished livestock were intrigued by the sudden activity. Penned into the small paddock while Rene scrubbed out the cowshed, the Guernseys watched, pretty, golden brown, with their soft dark eyes. Periodically, they rested their heads on the wall. Inside, she darned and patched curtains, and sewed up all the coverings one bright morning when Elsie said the sky was promising wind for later. In the kitchen she scoured the old deal table. She cleared out the larder and scrubbed that too, put down new paper, threw out the contents of a few jars and boiled them clean. She ranged them by the sink, a shining mass of waiting glass. They were ready for anything. She wondered if this man, this field recorder, would want to look upstairs. There was a leak in the bedroom when it rained heavily, and the paper on the ceiling was tea-stained.
* * *
Alan Ainsley, the young field recorder who was conducting the survey in Hungerford and Lambourn, wasn’t sure what to make of the ‘two maiden ladies’, as he called them in the survey. Harris, his host, was openly hostile.
‘A woman, a woman running a farm on her own. What utter foolishness! Can’t be done. When her father died, everyone thought she’d go. Only sensible course. But no. Decided to stay put. Even her sisters thought she was mad. Farm’s in a terrible state, according to that chap Townsend.’ Harris paused; he had slid into gossip, rather like the kind his wife brought back these days with the shopping. Nevertheless, Harris thought it was important young Ainsley should have the full picture.
‘It’s all hare-brained if you ask me. Now, she’s got a land girl to help her. You’ll see her. You’ll see them both, I dare say. Well, she’s not going to complain about that. But farms that size just don’t make sense. Especially not now.’
Ainsley smiled politely, and waited for Harris to continue. Each was sure they had the other’s measure. Harris thought Ainsley was all very well with his talk of nitrogen and variegated leys, and you didn’t get much company these days. But it wouldn’t do to load him up with too much responsibility: just a young chap, must be feeling the pressure. Besides, this was county business, and for Harris, county and country were one. When the two diverged, he chose not to notice. He knew where the war was being fought and where it would be won.
Ainsley’s vision did not preclude the small farm. He took pride in his scientific approach. He was no iconoclast, but he could see the future: a chain of white coats, great concentrations of fowl and pigs, milking factories, artificial insemination. There was no need to shout, and he was not without sympathy for yesterday’s man. His picture wasn’t monochrome, no indeed, it was full of nuance and delicate variety, but for the most part it came in packets: each a combination of leys perfectly matched to a different soil type. He never got into an argument. His tomorrow was assured, its exact date of implementation the only uncertainty. Ainsley’s war was a great opportunity. He was more than willing to be out gathering evidence, to see what he was up against, and occasionally, if conditions seemed right, plant the proverbial seed of his vision.
Yet when he arrived at Starlight, Ainsley didn’t find the farm as he expected, as Harris had led him to believe. There was no struggling lady farmer; there was no land girl. Not any more. There were just, as he would write in his report, ‘two maiden ladies who …’ They were both waiting for him by the gate. They were both wearing trousers, but he was quite used to this by now. Miss Hargreaves, who was very slight, wore her hair very short. Miss Boston, who wouldn’t leave, invited him into the farmhouse for tea before he made the inspection. They were friendly and welcoming, and he was relieved about the land girl. Ainsley had become quite used to land girls, though their numbers varied across the country. Like Elsie, he remained frightened of these startling brown Amazons, with their hands on their hips and their sharp-seeing eyes. Like Elsie, his fear was far stronger when they occurred in groups (his definition of a group was conservative rather than scientific).
It
fell to Rene to show him the farm. He noted the stile (recently fixed), the cracked pipe, the cheap repairs that had been done to the fencing. He saw that the glasshouses had been abandoned and that the oats were green and strong. They walked the boundaries. Miss Hargreaves was the easier one, he thought: quick, chatty, interested in what he had to say (he wasn’t used to flattery). But here on this land, in this fresh blow, she sounded so foreign, you could taste the smoke. It was she who asked about the categories and their consequences: A, B and C; good, fair and poor.
They ended up at the farm gate, waiting for Elsie to come out and say her goodbye. Rene had planned everything out very carefully: Ainsley would get a last view of them together, polite (that would make a change from a lot of places), serious, willing. It was a good day for showing off the farm, she thought, early May, just the suggestion of summer.
‘What happened to the land girl?’ asked Ainsley.
Rene said nothing.
‘Mr Harris told me that Miss Boston was sent a land girl.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Rene looked at him straight.
‘Did she not stay?’ And then, because this might have sounded rude or intrusive, ‘Some of them don’t really fit the task, or so I’ve heard.’
All in all, Ainsley decided to take the rough with the smooth where Starlight Farm and the two maiden ladies were concerned. In his report, he noted the signs of recent work and responded to the willingness both women displayed. Eager to take advice, he wrote, no reason why they shouldn’t do well with a little assistance. Fair enough, he thought. Fair. B.
How utterly foolish, Harris thought when he saw the report, but he said nothing till the next meeting of the Land Ag and Ainsley was long gone by then. The committee all agreed that he was a fine chap with an interesting future, but very young. He hadn’t made too many mistakes, considering. It was probably best if they sorted these out among themselves. Phil Townsend agreed.
* * *
It was nearly a month later when Phil Townsend came with the news. Only Elsie was at home, and she invited him into the kitchen (her father had always taken him to the parlour). He left his stick by the door and limped over to the table, where he sat down in old Alfred’s carver. Elsie, flustered by his visit and wondering why he had come again so soon, sat down too. He had no newspaper with him this time.
