The Land Girls

by Victoria Purman

  ‘Very pleased to meet you, Roger. My name’s Betty.’

  ‘My sister’s name is Betty,’ Roger replied with a smile. ‘At least we call her that. Her real name is Elizabeth.’

  ‘My name’s Elizabeth, too, but I’ve always been Betty.’

  He stomped on her feet and she tried not to gasp too loudly. ‘Here, Roger, let me show you something. Try this. Two steps to the right and one to the left.’ Betty guided him to the left, then one step back. They tried it again. ‘You’ll always impress the young ladies if you at least know this dance.’

  They moved around the floor for a few minutes, Roger earnestly mumbling one, two, one to himself and staring at his feet. He really was sweet and the people of Batlow had put on a wonderful dance but Betty longed for a Sydney boy, one who knew the foxtrot and the waltz and the twostep, one who would whirl her around the dance floor and sing along if they knew the words to the tune and make her feel like a movie star.

  ‘That’s it, Roger. You’re really getting it now.’

  ‘Thanks, Betty. This is pretty easy, actually.’ He glanced down at his shoes.

  ‘How old is your sister, Roger?’

  ‘She’s twenty. Six years older than me. She works up in Sydney in a munitions factory making bullets.’

  ‘You must be very proud of her. Her work is helping to keep our boys safe.’

  ‘I asked her to send me a bullet once but she’s not allowed to.’

  ‘I can see why. Our troops need every single one.’

  Roger stepped on her foot again. Betty turned a wince into a quick smile.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘My mum made me come tonight. She said you Land Army girls need partners and, well, all there’s left around here are boys from school and our dads and grandpas.’

  Betty glanced around the hall. He was right.

  ‘I hope the war goes on a little bit longer so I can go. I want to fly bombers and drop bombs on the Japs. Take that for Darwin, Tojo!’

  ‘Oh,’ Betty managed to say but her heart wasn’t in her reply.

  The band ended the song with a cymbal crash and Roger bowed to thank her. She nodded her head in return, complimented him on his dancing, and then moved off to the side of the hall where the refreshments table was being refilled with trays of sandwiches and jugs of cordial.

  Gwen sidled up to her. ‘I saw you dancing with that young local boy. He very sweet.’

  ‘Couldn’t dance for toffee,’ Betty whispered and rolled her eyes at her friend. She feigned swooning and held the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘Oh, for a partner who can foxtrot.’

  ‘Or waltz.’ Gwen smiled sadly and wrapped her arms around her waist. ‘Reggie’s the most beautiful dancer. That’s how we met, you know. He really did sweep me off my feet. I went home that night and waltzed around the kitchen. I told my mother right there and then that I’d met the boy I was going to marry. And I was right. Two months later, Reggie proposed. It was the night before he shipped out. He gave me a ring and everything but I left it at home. It’s sitting right there in the little wooden jewellery box on my dressing table. I didn’t want to lose it when I was away in some apple orchard or potato field or crop of peas. It’s safe at home. It’ll be waiting for me when all this is over.’

  Betty’s heart ached for Gwen. Could the agony of not knowing be worse than the truth? She slipped an arm through her friend’s.

  ‘I just happen to know an excellent dancer.’

  ‘Oh no, Betty. Don’t make me dance with that boy.’

  ‘I mean me, silly. Shall we?’

  The next morning was Sunday, their only day off. A couple of the girls had volunteered to chop some more firewood in exchange for being let off kitchen duty, so the stove in their quarters was glowing red and radiating warmth, which was a blessed relief from the night before. The young women spent most of the day sitting by the fire, with blankets wrapped around their shoulders like capes, writing in notepads pressed against their knees, or leafing through old magazines and newspapers that had been sent to them by their families.

  On Sundays, Betty wrote to Michael, to her parents and sometimes to Jean, her old friend from Woolworths. She missed her fun friendship but Jean’s letters had become sporadic since Betty had joined the Land Army and they’d begun to lose touch. Back in February, just as Betty and Gwen had been packing up to leave Mildura, Jean had become engaged to her American soldier, Kevin from South Carolina. That’s how Jean described him in her letters. ‘Kevin from South Carolina has a funny twang in his voice and a good heart. He’s going to send me to America to live with his family until he gets home from the war.’ Even if Betty thought the engagement rather rushed, she didn’t say that to Jean. She simply congratulated her friend on her good fortune and wished her all the best.

  ‘Don’t forget to send me your new address in America,’ Betty had replied. ‘And be sure to send me photos of all your American children!’

  When all the American troops had begun pouring into Sydney after Pearl Harbor back in 1941, rumours had begun to spread about what Australian girls were willing to do for silk stockings and pretty orchids and a one-way ticket to Hollywood. A customer at Woolworths had turned her nose up at a young lady buying a red handbag, scowling, ‘Yank catcher’ at her. Betty didn’t know what to think but Jean liked the Americans. They were polite, they had money to take girls out to dinner and dancing, and as Jean had said, there were so many of them to choose from. Betty supposed that moving a long way away from your family would be very hard, but on the other hand it seemed quite romantic and glamorous to be waiting to be whisked across the sea to South Carolina or California or Kansas. Some people said outright that the girls were being disloyal to the Australian troops by going after Americans. Some of the local boys were nothing but jealous, Betty thought. But there was lots of talk.

  ‘Wait until the Yanks go home,’ she’d heard a customer say once. ‘Those girls will be hunting for those self-same Australian boys who weren’t good enough for them when the Americans were here. Those girls should be blacklisted, I reckon. And anyway, they’ll never make good Australian wives once they’ve chased after a Yank.’

  Betty hadn’t understood the sentiment. If you were lucky enough to fall in love with someone, did it really matter where they were from?

  She adjusted the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was close to the fire and she was finally feeling almost warm. On the notepad on her lap, she’d written, Dear Michael. The rest of the page was blank. What more could she say about picking apples? And how to tell him how much she’d changed since he’d gone? She was no longer the young girl he’d kissed on the path outside her house in Sydney, who loved Columbines, who was happy to sit in the park across the street in which she’d played pirates with him and stare up at the stars. They had only been children back then, really, but she was no longer a child. Perhaps it was her friendship with Gwen, watching on as she struggled and survived with the knowledge that Reggie was missing. She’d soldiered on, kept working, kept smiling, but there was a light in her eyes that had gone out, and Betty wondered if it would ever come back. The war had stolen from them too, even if they weren’t holding a rifle or flying a plane or stoking coal on a ship.

  ‘Dear Michael,’ she whispered to herself and her pen hovered over the page, hesitantly.

  The door to their quarters flew open and when a freezing gust blew in there were howls of complaint from around the fire. Their friend Mary slammed the door behind her as she came in and turned to look at the girls with a gleeful expression.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Gwen asked, shocked. Mary slipped off her coat and hung it on one of the nails on a beam by the door. Her winter uniform was rumpled, her shirt untucked. Her hat was crooked on her head and when she whipped it off, they could see her hair was knotted and unkempt. ‘In Batlow.’ She pulled her lips together to supress her smile.

  ‘We waited for you last night,’ Betty said. ‘The taxi driver was about to leave wi
thout us but no one fancied the walk home in the cold at that hour of the night. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m perfectly … oh, I feel just terrific.’ Mary beamed.

  Gwen and Betty exchanged glances. A murmur rose among the other girls. ‘Those Sydney girls are fast,’ someone said under their breath.

  ‘Country boys are so grateful, aren’t they?’ Mary sighed and sauntered to her bed at the end of the shed.

  By the fire, Doris stood hurriedly, the blanket in her lap falling to her feet. The gold cross around her neck glinted in the light of the fire. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she called to Mary. ‘For your sins.’

  Mary stilled and spun around. ‘I don’t want your prayers, Doris. I wanted a man’s arms around me and, yes, I wanted sex.’

  Some of the girls gasped. Betty shrank in her chair.

  ‘Is that so wrong? Do you know how long my husband has been away?’ Mary’s voice cracked, her hands were fists. ‘Since May 1940. May the sixth 1940, to be precise. That’s more than four years, Doris. Four bloody years. So, Doris, don’t waste your prayers on me. Send them all to New Guinea, will you?’

  Mary covered her face with her hands and began sobbing, wailing, stomping her feet in her rage. Betty moved to go to her, but Gwen was there first, an arm of comfort around her, leading her to her bed. Doris crossed herself over and over and over, her eyes closed, whispering to herself.

  Betty snatched up some of those prayers for Michael.

  Chapter Thirty

  August 1944

  That August in Batlow, it was colder than July. The apple-tree pruning continued. The Land Army girls’ routine of Friday-night dances and Saturday nights at the pictures continued through those winter months, small windows of respite from the hard physical work and the incessant cold. They’d sung along to Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and been scared out of their wits by Apache Trail starring Donna Reed. When the newsreel relayed the latest news from the war, of further Allied gains in France and American bombing in the Philippines, everyone in the theatre stood and sang ‘God Save The King’ and cheered.

  The girls had marched out of the cinema exhilarated, singing the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ until they forgot the lyrics and botched the harmonies but they didn’t care as they walked the two-and-a-half miles home in the cold.

  On the sixteenth of August, Gwen received word about Reggie. A telegram from his parents came with the mail and she’d almost fainted before ripping it open. It contained the best of news. Previously reported missing from operations over enemy-held territory, Reggie was now listed as a prisoner of war. The word had come from the air force, via the Red Cross in Geneva. Gwen had sobbed happy tears for days and their friends had celebrated with an impromptu dance around the fire that night, with the wireless turned up as loud as it could go.

  On weeknights after supper, the girls had grown used to sitting around the radio, listening to Australia Sings and then the news on the ABC. When the familiar orchestral music played, everyone knew to hush, put down their cups of tea or their books or magazines, and listen intently to the sombre tones of the announcer broadcasting from Sydney.

  ‘The Red Army is within one hundred and thirty miles of the frontier of Germany proper and the road in the heart of Germany is open.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ asked Doris, clutching her Bible to her chest.

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely good news,’ Gwen replied, her eyes bright. ‘The Allies are in France and the Russians are taking the east. In no time, the Germans will be squeezed in the middle and they’ll have no choice but to surrender. And then it’ll be all over for the Japs, too, won’t it? And then our boys will come home.’

  The next Saturday night the girls climbed up onto the back of a flatbed truck and hung on for dear life for the forty-minute drive to Tumut in the north-west of the Snowy Mountains. They’d been invited to a dance and euchre party in aid of the Red Cross at the Oddfellows’ Hall. Gwen had been particularly keen to go along as a way of thanking the Red Cross, which had helped get word to her about Reggie.

  They’d all happily paid their admission of three shillings and had bid on items in the silent auction. Betty had come home with six embroidered handkerchiefs and a pair of thick woollen socks. Gwen had won a pack of notebooks, envelopes and stamps, and Doris had been pleased to bring home a new knitted woollen cap.

  The social life in the region was almost too much to keep up with. Grand Balls sponsored by the Patriotic and War Fund in Brungle. Football dances. Hospital dances at Adelong in the local parish hall. Cheer Up reviews organised by the Tumut Comforts Fund, featuring tap dancers, yodellers and a two young ladies doing an Irish jig, which finished with tearful renditions of ‘There’ll Always Be an England’ and ‘Advance Australia Fair’. Betty would have enjoyed them all the more if she hadn’t had to work so hard during the day, but the social occasions and the warm welcomes certainly helped time pass.

  In September, just as the weather at the foot of the Snowy Mountains had begun to thaw and orchard pruning work was coming to an end, Gwen received news that Reggie had died and had been buried in a prisoner-of-war camp in a place in Germany called Weinsberg.

  She’d quit the Land Army that day to go home.

  Betty missed the 1944 Batlow Apple Blossom festival. She went home for a few weeks. She’d never met Reggie, but his death had been as devastating to her as if she’d known him all her life. Betty had admired Gwen so much for the calm restraint she’d shown when she’d told the rest of the Land Army girls. Was it easier to come to grips with the death of someone you loved when you’d already imagined them dead? Betty had never let herself think of Michael being in danger and it was only after Reggie’s death that she realised how naive she’d been. Michael’s letters had been filled with humour and reminiscences and tales of local people and his mates. Shouldn’t she have guessed that anything more wouldn’t have passed the censor’s pen? She’d seen the stamp on all his letters—Passed By Censor—but hadn’t twigged what that really meant. How could the news on the radio and the newspapers be full of the war every day and letters home not mention it?

  Reggie’s family couldn’t have a funeral as there was no body to bury, but Gwen had stood by his parents’ side at a memorial service at their church. She was nothing to them now, the almost daughter-in-law they barely knew who was now a reminder of the son who would never be coming home.

  A month after the service, Gwen wrote to Betty. She was working in a munitions factory near home and trying to find a new life for herself. Although she would never wear it again, she told Betty that she would keep Reggie’s engagement ring forever.

  Betty’s parents met her at Central Station on the day she arrived home on leave, bearing a posy of daisies and a box of chocolates. They splashed out and paid for a taxi home to Rozelle and when she walked in the door, the first thing Betty did was strip off her Land Army uniform and soak in a hot bath. As the water cooled, she pulled the plug a little and topped it up afresh, and repeated the procedure for hours and hours. She wondered how long it would take to completely thaw after her winter in Batlow.

  When she was as wrinkled as a prune, she dressed in the new pyjamas her mother had kindly left on her old bed, wrapped herself in her soft and comforting dressing gown and sat down at the kitchen table for a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake. It was golden and dense, full of sultanas and currants and orange peel and, as she slowly savoured it, she was reminded of Mildura and her two seasons there.

  ‘Betty?’ Her mother sat opposite, staring at her. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Sorry, Mum?’

  Her father sat at the head of the table, a folded newspaper in front of him. He’d asked the deputy headmaster to look after things at school so he could take the day off to meet his adventurous daughter. ‘Your mother asked what you’d like for dinner.’

  ‘Anything,’ Betty sighed. ‘As long as it’s not macaroni cheese. I think I’ve had enou
gh of that to last a lifetime. Our matron at Batlow was not the best of cooks and, well, none of us wanted to appear ungrateful and at least it was warming. I’m sure whatever you’ve prepared will be delicious, Mum.’ Betty didn’t bother to stifle her yawn. It had been a long trip home from Batlow and the bath had made her even sleepier. ‘I thought I might pop next door before bed and see Mrs Doherty too. She’s well?’

  Betty’s mother dropped her teaspoon with a clatter onto her saucer. Her father cleared his throat.

  ‘What is it?’ Panic rose up in Betty’s throat and she sprang to her feet, adrenaline coursing through her veins like an electric shock.

  ‘Michael? Is it Michael?’

  Suddenly, her mother was on one side and her father on the other, each with a hand on her shoulder, urging her to sit down.

  ‘It’s not Michael,’ her mother said quietly. ‘It’s Patrick.’

  Betty felt her legs give way and she splayed her hands on the table to keep herself upright. Her breath came fast and short. It hurt to breathe all of a sudden.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she said quietly as her eyes welled.

  Her mother went to the stove to boil the kettle for another pot of tea. Her father covered a hand with one of his. ‘He was killed in Bougainville two weeks ago. Mrs Doherty found out yesterday.’

  ‘Is … is he coming home?’ Betty stammered.

  ‘Betty, listen to me. Patrick has died. He won’t be coming home.’

  She closed her eyes and thought of Gwen without even a body to mourn over. ‘No, I mean, are they going to bring his body home? Will there be a funeral?’

  ‘We don’t know, Betty.’

  ‘And Michael. Does he know? Will they send a telegram to him? He’ll want to know, he’ll want to know.’ And then she could speak no more, as the tears came and sobs wracked her chest. She sat with her parents at the kitchen table until she fell asleep on her crossed arms.

  The next morning, when Betty knocked on the Dohertys’ door, there was no Michael calling out to her, ‘Don’t you knock any more, Betty Boop?’ but she let herself in anyway. The curtains were drawn in the living room at the front of the house and she stepped quietly past Mrs Doherty’s china cabinet in the hallway. Its shelves full of trinkets and her best china were familiar and comforting but something was different. The top of the polished cabinet had been cleared of its bone-china figurines and in their place were two framed photographs of her sons in their uniforms. Patrick and Michael. How proud she was of her only children.