The Land Girls

by Victoria Purman

  Lily paused, checked the position of her fingers over the keys and pressed three quick strokes.

  War

  ‘How are you progressing, Miss Thomas?’ Miss Callen was suddenly at her right shoulder. Lily leant forwards as if studying her terrifyingly bad typing up close might magically re-arrange the letters on the page. She lunged for the platen knob and w a r disappeared.

  ‘I am trying, Miss Callen. Honestly I am.’ She couldn’t even convince herself that what she was saying was true. Her words sounded like lies.

  Miss Callen’s breathing became loud in Lily’s ear. Lily stiffened at her teacher’s proximity.

  ‘How on earth are any of you going to achieve one hundred words per minute with such lackadaisical work habits?’ She held a ruler in her hand and slapped it at the edge of Lily’s desk, which made every young lady jump in her seat. ‘Captains of industry are crying out for girls with secretarial skills. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Again! And next week, shorthand!’

  By seven o’clock, Lily had caught the tram home, through Victoria Square and up King William Street past Parliament House and the city baths on the Torrens, and then hopped off on O’Connell Street for the short walk home to Buxton Street. She’d completed half an hour of piano practice—wishing she could strike typewriter keys as fluently as she could black and ivory ones—and then began reworking an old gown of her mother’s. She’d bought a pattern the week before from a haberdasher in Rundle Street and hoped she had the patience to create something that was, if not brand new, at least new to her.

  She unpicked stitches and threaded her needle, humming along to the songs on the wireless in the corner of the room. And when the brass of Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ filled the room, she leant back on her chair, her stomach fluttering. She and David Hogarth had danced to that song all year.

  David. She liked every single thing about him. Handsome, intelligent and funny, he was from a family of graziers in the south-east. His three older sisters had married local property owners and his older brother, Bill, was serving in the RAAF. He’d come up to Adelaide as a boarder during high school and now had a flat, at Greenways Apartments at the top of King William Road, and a car, courtesy of his parents.

  Lily had met David at a recital at Elder Hall the previous May and she’d been rather unashamedly instantly attracted to his dark blond hair and blue eyes that always seemed to have a sparkle in them. He played tennis on Saturday afternoons and practised two nights a week and it showed in his physique.

  She was absolutely smitten with him.

  They’d spent a lot of time together in the past six months. She was often on his arm at parties. He’d tried to turn her into a tennis player but, although she loved wearing her sister’s old whites, she was hopelessly uncoordinated on the court. How on earth was she supposed to concentrate on the ball when he was on the other side of the net looking so dashing and being so patient with her lack of athleticism? They were regulars at West’s Coffee Palace on Hindley Street when they felt like mixing it with the low crowd after a picture at the Metro. David was in his final year of law at the University of Adelaide but seemed to spend more time reading novels and poetry than legal texts. Perhaps if he’d been forced to attend Miss Ward’s every day to learn typing he might be a little more grateful for the opportunities that had presented themselves to him. His father had gone to school with a man who was now on the bench and David had been almost guaranteed a clerkship, although Lily suspected he didn’t fully appreciate either his intellect or his good fortune. They’d been on picnics to the Botanic Gardens and long drives up to Mount Lofty to admire the view over the city, and even talked until three in the morning once or twice.

  But he’d never kissed her.

  It had all been deliciously frustrating. Sometimes she believed she’d seen a look in his eye, detected that he might be moving in to press his lips to hers, or held her hand a little longer than he ought when he was helping her out of his car, but no. She remained unkissed, seemingly unloved. And entirely confused.

  The music program on the radio ended and the familiar orchestral strains from the ABC announced it was time for the news. Lily hurriedly put down her sewing and rushed to turn it off. She was alone that evening and didn’t have to listen to the war if she didn’t want to. Davina was enjoying a night off seeing her family in Mile End, and Lily’s parents were at a Red Cross fundraising dinner at the Town Hall. The house was quiet. She wandered into the hallway, ran a finger across the spotlessly clean side table in the hallway, her footsteps noiseless in the Persian rug, stopped to take in the scent of the red roses sitting in a crystal vase, and then swung open the double doors in the front reception room. This was where her parents entertained. There were more fresh flowers on the side table by the tapestry sofa, and the heavy brocade curtains were drawn. She went to the mantel and looked up at the photograph of her sister.

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asked Susan.

  Susan stared back at her from the photograph frame.

  ‘I hope you have. I hope you’ve met another doctor in Egypt and he’s swept you off your feet. Or perhaps you’ve fallen in love with a soldier, a working man, and as you’ve been treating his wounds he’s fallen crushingly in love with you. What would mother and father say about that?’

  Lily closed her eyes and saw David’s smile and his blue eyes, felt the familiar thudding of her heart when she thought of him.

  ‘It’s complicated, isn’t it, Susan … love? I’ve been asked out to dances and lots of other places by Tommy Skinner and he’s a charming chap but he’s not a patch on … you won’t tell anyone, will you, Susan?’

  Lily knew Susan would keep this secret.

  ‘He’s not a patch on David Hogarth. You’d like him, Susan, I just know it. He’s incredibly clever but, I’ll admit, not as clever as you. He’s lovely. He dances like a dream and he loves poetry.’

  Tears welled in Lily’s eyes. ‘Sometimes I think he might love me back, but then I’m not so sure. Sometimes I absolutely detest being eighteen.’

  The next week, Lily went to the Metro with her new friend Clara from Miss Ward’s for a seven-thirty screening of Mrs Miniver with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon; went to Wests to see Loretta Young’s The Men In Her Life; attended sewing class in the evening; practised her piano until her fingers ached; and tried not at all to learn the shorthand for bill of lading. She had no idea what a bill of lading was and hoped she would never need to know. On Thursday she had coffee at the Gresham with Edwina Clarke and Serena Evans, old friends from school.

  She hadn’t heard from David all week.

  On Friday evening, she was out with Tommy Skinner at Tux and accidentally drank a little too much sherry, which left her rather thick-headed for her stint with her mother on Saturday at the Red Cross trading table at the St Peters Town Hall. Her mother had been happy to work beside her daughter and Lily was pleased that the afternoon had passed remarkably quickly, so that she had time to go home and dress and fix her hair for the dance that night with Tommy at the Palais Royal on North Terrace. David hadn’t asked her and saying yes to Tommy’s invitation was a far better alternative than staying home on her own and pining.

  It was a warm Adelaide December night. Lily really didn’t need to be wearing her fur wrap over her pale pink chiffon shoestring-strapped gown but she looked rather glamorous in it, she thought, and had received approving looks from her parents as she’d presented herself at the top of the stairs when Tommy knocked on the front door. It had been nice to see them smile, and she’d made them laugh by pretending to trip on her way down. They’d shuffled her out the door looking quite proud of their daughter, and that filled her heart.

  ‘Here we are then, Lily.’ Tommy took her arm and guided her up the stairs to the curved brick entrance of the Palais and she felt rather like a Hollywood movie star arriving at a film premiere. Inside, art deco lights hung from the centre of the wide room, illuminating all the pretty girls and t
heir dashing partners like a thousand stars twinkling in the sky.

  ‘Lily! Lily!’ someone called but the music and the chatter and laughter all around her was too loud for Lily to make out who it was. A young woman brushed past her and didn’t stop to apologise, all her attention on the tall, uniformed American who was escorting her to the dance floor. Tommy led her to a table along the side of the dance floor, by the painted brick archways and the trailing ivy hanging above them. The table was scattered with velvet handbags, ashtrays half filled with lipstick-stained butts, empty bottles of lemonade and beer, and tall bottles disguised by brown paper bags.

  ‘Have a seat, Lily.’ Tommy pulled out a chair for her.

  ‘Oh, no, I won’t.’ She slipped off her fur wrap and draped it over the back of the chair, and then put her clutch and gloves on the table. ‘You promised me dancing, Tommy Skinner, and that’s a foxtrot I hear.’ She looked him over. He looked dashing in his black tuxedo, his white wing-tip collar and white bow tie. His hair was slicked back and, when he smiled at her so happily, in that moment she decided that if he tried to kiss her at the end of the night, she might well let him. He seemed to be the only man in Adelaide who wanted to try.

  They danced a foxtrot, a tango, a waltz—twice—and a quickstep. Twirling around the dance floor in Tommy’s confident arms, Lily let herself feel like the belle of the ball. They passed Bryan Gould dancing with Edwina Clarke, and Tony Allington and Serena Evans, and then twirled and laughed as they moved across the parquet floor, and as Lily took in the lights strung across the ceiling she tried to enjoy every step. She didn’t want to think about going back to Miss Ward’s on Monday and feeling like a complete and utter failure with a Remington. She didn’t want to think about Susan and what she might be doing this very moment in a hospital in Egypt, and she couldn’t think about David Hogarth either. He’d disappeared off the face of the earth, it seemed. She lifted her chin to look above the crowd and the sea of gowns and tuxedos, of slicked hair and set curls, of bow ties and pearls and glittering diamantes. How many of the Americans dancing at the Palais Royal tonight would be shipped off from this safe place to fight and die on islands they didn’t yet know existed? How many Adelaide girls might fall in love with them before then, and have their hearts broken? What would happen to Susan and all the boys she knew who were abroad?

  It was all Mrs Miniver’s fault. She shouldn’t have gone to see the Greer Garson film that week. In the closing moments, as the vicar sermonised to his congregation in the remains of their bombed church that this wasn’t just a war of soldiers in uniform on the battlefield, but it was a war in the home and in the heart of everyone who loved freedom, Lily had cried, and when all around her people began singing along to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, she had wept. It had left her feeling tearful all week, when she’d always tried so much to be hopeful and cheerful.

  ‘Gosh, there are so many Yanks here tonight,’ Tommy said with a shout in her ear. They looked over to a huddle of uniforms by the bar.

  ‘Yes,’ Lily replied. ‘They’re everywhere, aren’t they?’

  ‘What’s that they say about those fellows? Overpaid, oversexed and over here?’ Tommy rolled his eyes. ‘All I know is they’d better keep their hands off our local girls. Don’t you be tempted by one of those smooth talkers, Lily.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  She hadn’t heard a word because she had seen David across the room. He was manoeuvring through the crowd of dancers towards her, and the thumping of her heart in her ears drowned out Tommy’s voice and the music from the band and absolutely everything else.

  ‘I said, don’t you go losing your heart to a Yank,’ Tommy shouted, leaning in close.

  ‘No chance of that,’ she replied dreamily.

  One song ended and just as Tommy was about to launch Lily into a quickstep to one of Glenn Miller’s new tunes, David was at Tommy’s side.

  ‘Skinner,’ David said with a nod.

  ‘Hogarth,’ Tommy replied.

  David turned his gaze to Lily. ‘May I have this dance?’

  Lily nodded politely. ‘Why, yes, of course.’

  Tommy bowed slightly and stepped back into the crowd. David reached for Lily’s waist and pulled her in close. She rested one hand in his and put the other on his shoulder. Her fingers smoothed over the wool of his tuxedo and, too nervous to look directly at him, she stared at his black bow tie instead. He must have tied it hurriedly as one half was slightly bigger than the other and the knot was off centre.

  ‘How are you, Lily?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you. And you?’ She didn’t want to sound cold but she was hurt about how he’d treated her.

  ‘Fine.’ He looked over her shoulder and his lips pulled together tightly.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here tonight,’ she said.

  ‘It was a last-minute decision, I have to admit.’

  He was acting as if he’d rather be in the dentist’s chair and she felt a flash of annoyance. ‘You don’t look to be in the mood for dancing.’

  As if to prove her wrong, he pulled her ever so slightly closer and twirled her until she felt unsteady on her feet.

  ‘David, it’s hardly fair that you’re cross that I came tonight with Tommy.’

  He met her eyes and his brow wrinkled in confusion. ‘What? No, I’m not. It’s not that at all.’

  Her heart sank. That had felt like her last hope, that he might be jealous and do something to claim her. What had he meant by toying with her all these months? The frustration and disappointment welled inside her. There were so few men left and the one she had fallen in love with didn’t love her back. She tried not to cry but could feel she was on the verge of it—damn that Mrs Miniver all over again—and she tried to let go of him but when he realised what she was doing, he pulled her into his chest.

  ‘Lil,’ he said roughly and when she could bear to look at him his eyes were shining with tears. He leant down, his breath against her cheek. ‘Bill was wounded in New Guinea. We found out on Tuesday.’

  Lily’s legs turned to rubber. She stumbled and it was only David’s tight embrace that prevented her from falling to the floor. She pressed her cheek into the satin lapel of his tuxedo. ‘Oh, no. Oh, David.’

  They stopped twirling and stood, unmoving, in the middle of the dance floor.

  Lily took her hand from his and gripped the lapels of his tuxedo, burying herself there in the safe warmth of him.

  ‘I was hoping I’d see you here tonight. To tell you.’ His chest rose and fell on a deep sigh and his lips pressed into the curl of hair at her ear as he told her, ‘I’m joining the air force.’

  Chapter Four

  Betty

  The door to the Woolworths staff cafeteria, in the building on the corner of Market and Pitt Street in the heart of Sydney, swung open and Miss Brougham strode in, blew a shrieking whistle and shouted, ‘Evacuate!’

  Betty almost choked on her cheese and pickle sandwich. Her friend Jean spluttered her tea. A hundred perfectly coiffured heads looked up towards the door, their mouths agape in that moment of silence and shock that precedes a panic.

  ‘You heard me, girls,’ Miss Brougham ordered. ‘Grab your things and off we go. We’re evacuating the whole store. Every single one of us.’

  Someone screamed, high pitched and terrified, and then there were shushes all around.

  ‘Are the Japs coming?’ someone else shrieked.

  ‘For goodness sake, girls.’ Miss Brougham held the door behind her and with a wave of her hand beckoned them all to walk through it. ‘It’s a drill but if this is what we’re to expect if they do make it into Sydney Harbour again, God help us all. Up, grab your things. Go, go go! It’s a drill. The whole store, customers and all, are being evacuated.’

  Betty pushed her chair back and reached for Jean’s hand, and together they pushed their way through the crowd of girls to the door, to the flight of stairs at the end of the corridor, and down three levels out into the sunshine and crowds
on Pitt Street.

  ‘Bit of power’s gone to her head, don’t you think?’ Jean rolled her eyes.

  ‘That’s unkind, Jean. If there really was a bomb, wouldn’t you want everyone to get out safely?’

  Jean tugged her hand. ‘Crikey, Betty. I’m just having a bit of fun.’

  Betty pulled her hand away and pushed ahead to the middle of the street. Of course the war was fun for Jean, full of handsome Americans and stockings and cigarettes and drinking in nightclubs and secret connections to find chocolate. And who knew what she was getting up to with the American soldier who was paying for it all.

  The war hadn’t seemed real for a long time, with the fighting so far away in Europe, in countries Betty had never heard of. But since the Japanese had taken Singapore, made it into Sydney Harbour and bombed Darwin and Pearl Harbor, things had been different in Sydney. Her parents woke every morning before six to listen to Wake Up With Withers on 2GB to keep up to date with the latest on the war. It all felt so close now, suffocating, as if everything she loved could be taken away at any minute.

  And now Michael was going off to fight too.

  Thousands of people, staff and customers, jostled around her in the street. Someone close lit a cigarette. A paper boy, sensing an opportunity, slicked through the crowd yelling, ‘Newspapuh!’ Someone tugged at the peak of his cap and he shook them off with a shrug. He adjusted the leather strap of his bag, which hugged his chest and bounced against his knee, and when an old man slipped him two pennies he handed over a Sydney Morning Herald. The customer tipped back his hat and took it upon himself to read out loud the latest details of the war to everyone around him.

  ‘Allied forces have completely occupied the Gona area of the Japanese beachhead in New Guinea. It says here that Curtin announced it yesterday in the House of Representatives.’