The Land Girls

by Victoria Purman

  It was Peggy who found her.

  ‘Baby Betty. What on earth are you doing out here in the dirt?’

  Betty lifted her head. She made a fist and rubbed her eyes, which spread the grit and made her cry even more.

  Peggy sat next to Betty. She brought her knees up too, mirroring Betty’s crouched pose. She was silent for a long while before reaching behind her to pluck a bunch from the vine and picking the tiny grapes off one by one. She popped a few in her mouth, chewing slowly. Then she offered one to Betty.

  Betty shook her head. She couldn’t eat. She felt sick. ‘No, thanks Peggy,’ she said, her voice croaky.

  Peggy popped another grape in her mouth. ‘Don’t blame you. Don’t reckon I’ll eat another one as long as I live after being here.’ Slowly, she picked the grapes, eating them one by one.

  Finally, Betty summoned the courage to ask. ‘It’s Reggie, isn’t it.’

  Peggy nodded. ‘He’s been reported missing. He’s an RAAF boy, just like the ones we were dancing with on Saturday night.’

  The thought made Betty want to weep all over again. But she clenched her teeth together and willed herself not to cry. Not in front of Peggy.

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ she whispered.

  ‘No one wants to get that telegram.’

  Betty thought she heard Peggy sniff.

  ‘But there could still be hope, couldn’t there? If he’s missing they might find him. It doesn’t mean he’s …’ Poor, lovely Gwen. Betty thought of the children called John and Peter and Margaret that Gwen and Reggie would never have if he didn’t come home.

  Peggy didn’t answer Betty’s question. ‘The Stocks have taken Gwen up to the main house. They’ll look after her for a bit.’

  Betty could only nod to acknowledge their kindness.

  ‘They’re good people. I didn’t know until just now but they lost their only son in Palestine in 1940 and a daughter in Darwin last year when it was bombed. She was a telegraphist in the army.’ Peggy paused, wiping her cheeks. ‘Who would have thought answering the phones could get you killed, hey?’

  Peggy got to her feet, dusting off her shorts and any hint of the emotion that had made her cry. ‘You coming, baby Betty?’

  Betty followed Peggy back to their quarters.

  On February fourteenth—Betty’s eighteenth birthday—the girls did their best to help her celebrate but Gwen’s news had cast a pall over them all. No one wanted to talk about the telegram and what it meant, and Gwen’s bed sat empty, a reminder to them all that grief and loss had snaked their way into their quarters and would never leave.

  That evening, the women found ways to distract themselves. Nancy took to her bed and read all of her husband’s letters over and over. Dorothy read the Women’s Weekly magazines in her collection from front cover to back and, if she was inclined to share the latest titbits of news from the home of the movies that she might have previously missed, she held her tongue. Enid whittled a piece of wood with a pocket knife, the slick sound of the knife blade against the wood rhythmic and calming, and left a perfectly formed little cat on Gwen’s bed. And no matter how much Peggy tried to jolly them up with a rousing call for a game of cricket or an impromptu dance around the dining table to Australia Sings blaring from the wireless, there were no takers.

  Betty sat on her bed, with a pencil and her notepad on her lap.

  Dear Michael,

  Today is my birthday and I’ll admit to being a little cross with you for not sending me a birthday card or a Valentine’s card. I hope you see that I’m pulling your leg. As I sit in the quarters here on the fruit block near Mildura (that’s on the River Murray) with my pencil scratching out my thoughts, I can’t help but think how different things were just one year ago. I remember well our little party at home for my last birthday, with your mother’s delicious sponge cake with jam. I promise you I can still taste it. Things were a little bit more gloomy then, don’t you think? I mean with the war, not the blackouts. Not that I know all that much but from what we hear on the radio, Churchill and MacArthur seem to be turning the tide against the Nazis and the Japanese.

  I miss our park and the Moreton Bay figs and Columbines and Cherry Ripes and the sound of all the boys in the street playing cricket at night.

  Be safe.

  Yours always,

  Betty

  Chapter Twenty

  Four days before the girls were to pack up and leave the Stocks’ fruit block, Mr Stock knocked on the door after supper and handed over a box of letters, each bundle wrapped in twine. Peggy thanked him and assumed the role of lady postmaster.

  The girls gathered around the table as she did a rollcall of names and passed on the bundles.

  ‘Dorothy. Enid.’ Peggy looked up from the box and handed a collection of letters to Gwen. ‘There are quite a few there.’ Gwen snatched them up and ran through the open door of their quarters and out into the twilight.

  ‘Betty. Well, you have a parcel of some kind. And some letters.’

  As Betty walked to her bed, she tugged on the twine and let it fall to the floor. One from her parents. One from Mrs Black. One from Jean, her friend from Woolworths. And two from Michael.

  A tiny grey envelope was stamped with a diamond shape and the words Passed by Censor on the front.

  Pte MX Doherty

  2/23rd Bn

  AIF

  Abroad

  January 16th, 1943

  Dearest Betty Boop,

  Just a few lines to let you know that we have left country and are out at sea. We left camp and caught the train to and had an excellent supper at . We then embarked at . The cabins on board are great and there is plenty to eat, with the food as good as you’ll get at any hotel in town. There is not much I can tell you about the ship or tell you its name but I’m sure you quite understand that.

  All the boys are looking forward to getting to . We’re all up for an adventure and determined to do our best for Australia.

  When you write, Betty, use the address at the top here and it will find me no matter where I am.

  Don’t forget to write. I will very much look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours,

  Michael

  Betty snatched up his second letter and tore open the envelope. A folded letter was inside and when she opened it, a little post card fell out too, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, with Be My Valentine printed on the front, the red words set among roses and carnations and a lace garland. She flipped it over. There was an X and nothing else.

  Betty’s pulse raced. He hadn’t forgotten. She flipped open the wafer-thin pages.

  The address on it was King Street. Home. And the date in his neat handwriting was the day they’d said goodbye. The day he’d kissed her on the footpath and said, ‘Don’t get too lonely.’

  Through her tears, she tried to focus on his words.

  Dearest Betty,

  Happy birthday!

  I bet this is a surprise. I don’t know when I’ll get to write to you after I leave and how long it will take for you to get my letters, so I have written this tonight after my birthday party. It really was a good night. Thank you for the Biggles book and the Cherry Ripes. Boy, do you know how to get to a fella. You won’t be surprised to know that I’ve already eaten them all.

  I will ask Mum to post this to you wherever you are ‘soldiering’. I’m sure she will find out from your mum so will have the proper address. It didn’t want to miss your birthday or Valentine’s Day so also, happy Valentine’s Day.

  Well, well. Betty Boop is eighteen. All grown up, as they say. I hope you are having fun working the land and that you are sorting out those cows and pigs. Or maybe you’re picking peas or carrots? I don’t know. I hope you’ll write me many letters telling me all about your adventures. It must be a big change from Woolworths, hey.

  I know your mum and dad will miss you terribly, as will my own mum. You know you are like a daughter to her. With so many sons, she has always treasured your com
pany. As have I.

  That’s about all the news from here. Cheerio and happy days,

  Yours,

  Michael

  P.S. I hope you like the Valentine’s card. I’ll be thinking of you on the 14th, wherever I am.

  Betty flopped back on her pillow, clutching the little Valentine’s card to her chest. There was a sound in her ears that felt like ringing and she was suddenly hot and shivery all at the same time.

  ‘I’m thinking of you, too, Michael,’ she whispered.

  Two days later, the harvest was finished and the vines were bare of fruit. The wind blew as hot as the first days of summer. The dry red earth was as hot first thing in the morning as it was in the middle of the blazing afternoons, water from the tap was always warm enough to have a bath in, and they’d almost got used to the flies. Gladly, there had only been one snake sighting, and it was still unconfirmed.

  The girls were stronger than when they’d arrived. Leaner, too. Those with olive skin tanned as if they’d been on holidays on a tropical island, while those with fair skin, Gwen especially, constantly had peeling sunburn.

  Betty had eaten well but worked hard and she’d had to ask Peggy to work a new notch on her belt as her uniform’s skirt had become loose.

  The last night, all the girls were invited up to the Stocks’ for a special farewell dinner. There wasn’t enough room for them all to sit at a table, so the twenty girls filled their plates with sandwiches and cream cakes and biscuits adorned with glacé cherries and sat wherever there was a space in the large living room.

  Enid had dubbed the girls a flying squad, and Betty smiled at the thought of that. They may not be up in the skies like the local trainee pilots in their Spitfires and Boomerangs, or like the lads abroad keeping ships and troops safe, but they were flying off nonetheless, to who knew where. Six weeks earlier, Betty had sobbed over being away from all she knew, all that was familiar, so far from the loving embrace of her family.

  Deep down she knew that it wasn’t her birthday that had changed her. It was the girls and the hard work and the independence she’d discovered being away from home, something she now relished. She couldn’t wait to decide on her next posting. How much had changed. How much she had changed.

  As the girls ate and chatted, relived adventures and misadventures, teased Dorothy about the snake she’d supposedly seen, taunted Enid about her pledge never to marry, Betty listened on. For an only child, this was the first experience of what it might have been like to come from an enormous family of sisters.

  For they felt like sisters now. Even if there had been squabbles about who needed to wash their smalls first and who was spending far too much time in the lav, they were quickly forgotten. If one girl was suffering with her monthlies and needed to stay in bed to deal with cramps and headaches, the others worked harder. When Gwen had received her news and spent two days up at the main house, as many grapes were picked as if she were still in the vineyard with them.

  Protective Peggy. Gossipy and glamorous Dorothy. The quiet Daphne and dreamy Helen, who always seemed to be two steps behind in any conversation. And dear Gwen, who’d looked hollowed out since she’d received the telegram about Reggie. The night Gwen had gone up to the main house, the other girls had shared their stories, murmuring quietly in the dark. Nancy told them about her husband, who’d gone from packing biscuits at Mottram’s in Grote Street in Adelaide to the jungles of Malaya. Nancy had four brothers away, all in the army. Enid had two. Others had cousins and uncles and neighbours and sweethearts. Someone’s father was in Darwin, too old to go and fight but still young enough to stand guard duty with a rifle. There were boys from school and from their street. Sisters and friends were in the AWAS or the AWAAF. One had gone to school with one of the nurses killed by the Japanese at Bangka Island.

  ‘You have to bounce back,’ Peggy, wise as ever, had told them, and they did their best to, for Gwen’s sake. For all of their sakes. They may have been a long way from blackouts and bomb shelters and beaches strung with barbed wire, but they had all brought the war with them to Mildura and, sure as anything, it would hunt them down too if there was more bad news.

  ‘I don’t know if I want to pick any more grapes,’ said Helen. ‘I might try oranges instead.’

  ‘If you’re keen to do more of this work, there’s more grapes down Shepparton way,’ Peggy said. ‘The season’s longer there with all the different varieties.’ Peggy knew as much as any farmer about the seasons and when crops would need harvesting come February and March and April and May. ‘Or there’s apples, pears and peaches until about April. Or who wants to go up to New South Wales to pick cotton?’

  There wasn’t a taker for that option.

  Daphne piped up. ‘There’s potatoes in Berri, just over the border in South Australia. They’re dried into flakes. I’ve got family there. My great aunt.’

  ‘Or there’s peas in Oberon,’ someone else added and Betty couldn’t keep track with the conversation going so fast.

  ‘Portarlington needs pea pickers, too.’

  ‘My friend Mary’s at an orchard near Leeton. I can’t remember where exactly, and she’s permanent. Wouldn’t it be nice to not be sent here, there and everywhere?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘Couldn’t stand it,’ said Enid. ‘I like the change. If one place doesn’t turn out so good, or the blokes who run the place give you the heebie-jeebies, you can always go somewhere else. Last year I worked on a pig farm for a while.’

  ‘Don’t pigs stink?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Not more than a houseful of brothers,’ Nancy piped up and everyone laughed and then looked away from Nancy’s wistful smile. Everyone sat for a moment in silence, leaving her in that memory for just a little longer.

  ‘What about working in a cannery?’ Peggy suggested.

  ‘That could be all right,’ Nancy replied. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be working inside for a change instead of outside in the stinking sun every day?’

  ‘Your tan would fade,’ said Dorothy. ‘And maybe those wrinkles will, too.’

  ‘What wrinkles?’ Nancy exclaimed.

  Dorothy tapped her index fingers to the corners of her eyes and cocked her head at Nancy. She then leant over to inspect her friend’s face. ‘Gosh, how dreadful. Girls, I think we should all chip in a few shillings to buy Nancy some Pond’s cream next time we’re in town. Who’ll ever want to marry her when her face looks like a sultana?’

  The girls burst into uproarious laughter. Betty looked across the room at Gwen. She was smiling, too. Finally. It hurt Betty’s heart to see it.

  ‘I think I might go to Batlow,’ Gwen announced, and the room fell silent, every head turning to her as she spoke. ‘It’s closer to home in case … well, in case I need to get home. It’s coming into apple-picking season and I like apples.’

  Dear Gwen. Betty had thought she might find a special friend in Gwen and they’d been growing close until she’d received the news about Reggie. Since then, Betty had felt herself unprepared, naive even, about what to say to her friend. She hadn’t been able to find the right words of comfort. She wanted to tell Gwen how brave she was to keep on going the way she had, to even think about continuing in the Land Army when she was still waiting for the second shoe to drop. That’s what Betty’s mum used to say, when one bad thing had already happened and you were waiting for the next bad thing. Or perhaps when you didn’t want to think positive thoughts just in case. Betty had laid awake at night in their quarters, the soft sounds of snoring and sleep chatter all around her, thinking about Gwen—and how she herself would react if such news were to arrive about Michael.

  Was it better to know or be in the dark? What if Reggie had already been dead for weeks? Was it better for Gwen to keep hope alive in her heart for him or think the worst? Betty didn’t know. She’d never had to think about such things before.

  But she knew this much was true. She could be a friend to Gwen and, in that moment, she realised exactly how she would be that friend.

&nb
sp; ‘I’ll go to Batlow with you, Gwen. I like apples.’

  From across the room, Gwen smiled happily. There was a pat on Betty’s shoulder. Peggy. And then murmurs and hear, hears and someone was proposing a toast.

  They all raised their glasses of lemonade.

  Peggy got to her feet. ‘Isn’t this a funny turn of events? Who would have thought that we shopgirls and secretaries and hairdressers would all know so much about the land?’

  There was laughter and cheering.

  She lifted her glass. ‘To those who serve. To those who have been lost. And to those we keep in our hearts.’

  The girls fell into a thoughtful reverie. Heads dipped. Prayers were uttered and one or two of the girls crossed themselves. Betty stole a quick glance at Gwen, who seemed to be praying the hardest of all.

  ‘To the Stocks, who’ve been marvellous hosts.’

  ‘Hear, hear.’

  ‘And finally, to the Mildura sultana and currant season of January 1943. May you fill the fruit cakes of people all over Australia and every fruit cake shipped to our troops. And to you girls.’ Peggy stopped. Every Land girl could see her eyes filling with tears. ‘You’ve been absolutely smashing.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lily

  March 1943

  ‘I bet you’re glad you came, hey?’

  Lily looked across the field at Kit. Kit was standing, her hands braced in the small of her back, stretching backwards and moaning. This was nothing like the cool valleys of Norton Summit. Port Noarlunga was flat plains and burning sun and sweat drizzling down her back all day. Their overalls were hot and the rubber boots on their feet made Lily’s feet swell. They needed to wear gloves for protection and by the end of the day her hands were like prunes from the sweat.

  But she was happier than she’d ever been. She was with Kit and a whole group of new Land Army girls in a hostel near the beach and they seemed to laugh all the time, despite how hard they were labouring.