Land Girls (13 page)

She raised her hand, sniffing, to be dazzled by the beam of a powerful torch. It quickly moved to one side. Prue could make out the figure of Joe standing by the tractor.

‘So there you are,’ he said. ‘Tractor covered, I see. Coming down?’

‘Soon.’

Joe banged one of his jacket pockets. ‘I’ve got a Mars bar.’

Prue giggled. Her tears dried. Biscuit tins fled.

‘Where did you find that? There aren’t any in the village.’

‘I have my sources. I’m stocking up against sweet rationing. Come on down and I’ll give you a bit.’

‘You come up here. Why not? It’s warmer.’

‘If you insist.’

In a few huge, climbing steps, Joe was beside her. It was almost completely dark: she could only just make out the blunt edges of his profile. There was a strong smell of animal on his boots. Vaguely, she could see him take the Mars from his pocket, strip off its paper wrapping which crackled thinly as finest taffeta, and hold it out to her. She felt almost faint with desire for a taste of the chocolate.

‘Got a knife?’ she asked.

‘No. Can’t you just bite a bit off?’

He pushed it at her. Duskily, their hands met. She took it from him. Unable to see how far she was biting, she aimed for a modest length. The sweetness of the toffee, malt and chocolate was more delicious than any taste of Mars she had ever known.

‘Thanks,’ she said, smudgily, mouth full. ‘That’s absolute heaven on earth, that is. That’ll have me working, resting, playing,
dagging
, like nothing you’ve ever seen.’

For the third time, Joe laughed, firing Prue’s confidence. Somewhere in the dark she recognized the outline of her chance.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked, after a while.

‘Not really.’ Prue shivered, not entirely from the cold. ‘Where do you go most evenings? We’ve all been trying to guess.’

There was a long pause before Joe answered.

‘Walk up to The Bells, have a couple of pints with my friend Robert. We talk. Nothing very exciting.’

‘That all? I imagined something very different.’

‘I bet you did. Robert owns a farm nearby. Like me, he can’t be called up for medical reasons. Like me, he’s stuck on the farm all day, no one to talk to.’

‘There’s us, now,’ said Prue, after a while.

‘I suppose there is. But I’m not used to that idea, yet.’

‘You’re not easy to talk to, actually, are you? Pretty surly, on the whole.’ Prue turned on him with a sweet smile, hoping his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and it would not be wasted.

‘Surly? Me? Strange idea. Reflective, more, I would have said. More Mars?’

Again their hands briefly touched as she took the half bar, bit off another modest share.

‘Thanks. Well, you’re not at all surly tonight. First time.’

‘I expect you find it all a bit strange, don’t you? There’s so much to do, I dare say we’re all rather preoccupied. It must be very different from your normal life.’

‘It is, of course. But I rather like it.’

‘It’s tough work.’

‘I don’t mind that.’

‘Some pretty disagreeable. Wait till it’s your turn to do the pig.’

Prue was colder, now. She clutched her arms more tightly about her.

‘What I wanted, you know, was to be in a circus. That was my childhood dream. I used to practise little bits of acrobatic stuff from about five onwards. I used to put a plank between two chairs and call it my tightrope. I could do a backwards somersault from standing, when I was eight. I’d go to every circus I could – not many, mind – and long to be one of those acrobats in sequins. But my dad put his foot down, said no daughter of his was going into a circus. I went on practising whenever I had a chance, but then the enthusiasm sort of went.’

She sensed Joe turning towards her, interested.

‘I walked a plank about twelve feet high, once. Never a real tightrope.’

‘Could you have gone higher?’

‘Easy. Just never had the chance.’ She gave a small sigh.

‘Here’s your chance, then.’ Joe stirred. He switched on his torch, lighting a crossbeam high above their heads. ‘Bet you couldn’t walk that.’

Prue studied the huge beam of blackened wood. It was wide enough, but many times the height of anything she had ever tried before. Disturbed by the torchlight, pigeons in the rafters broke into murmurous complaints.

‘Ooh, Joe. How’d I get up?’

‘There’s a ladder. If you fell you wouldn’t come to much harm – all this hay and straw. Besides, I’d catch you …’ He swung the beam of the torch so that half Prue’s face was lighted. ‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to. I just thought it might be a lark.’

Prue looked into the deep, complicated shadows of his face.

‘What would you think if I said yes, if I had a go?’ she asked.

‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose I’d think you were rather brave.’

‘Switch off the torch, then.’

‘Why? I’ll have to light your way very carefully.’

‘Just for the moment. I want to take my shoes and socks off. I don’t want you watching that.’

Joe turned off the torch. The darkness, renewed, seemed deeper. While Prue fumbled with her laces and pulled off her woollen socks, she heard Joe finish the Mars.

‘Right?’

‘I’m ready.’

‘I’ll help you down, put up the ladder. Sure you want to do this?’

‘’Course.’ Prue’s voice was light.

Joe jumped down to the ground, put out a steadying hand to help Prue scramble after him. They landed close together by the tractor. Prue touched its mudguard, steadying herself. Her heart was battering. She was no longer cold.

‘Pity there’s no fanfare of trumpets,’ Joe said. ‘Really, you need trumpets.’

Prue cocked her head, again hoping the wan light of the moon would be just strong enough to illuminate her devil-may-care expression.

‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ she said. ‘
You need trumpets.
I shall always remember that:
you need trumpets.
’ She was surprised by the shakiness of her voice.

‘Come on, silly.’ Joe touched her shoulder. ‘I’ll get the ladder.’

Here on the floor of the barn she was better able to see the large dark figure of Joe as he collected the ladder and propped it up against one end of the beam. Then he lit his torch again, flashed it up the rungs.

‘All right?’

‘Fine.’

Prue moved to join him, straw and rubble of the floor troubling the soles of her feet. She trembled with excitement, with fear.

‘Don’t worry about the ladder. I’ll hold it firm. Then I’ll keep the beam of the torch just ahead of you.’

‘Okay.’

Prue took hold of the ladder’s sides, put a foot on the first rung.

‘Imagine the trumpets,’ said Joe quietly.

Prue began to climb.

For the first time since she had been at Hallows Farm, Ag felt restless. Neither the news nor her book could fully engage her attention. In the sitting-room, where Mrs Lawrence made progress with a pair of socks for the troops, and Mr Lawrence sat with head tipped back, eyes shut, Ag studied the mauve-blue of the flames as they hissed up through a pile of damp logs. It was too early to go up to the bedroom. Besides, she did not want to disturb Stella in her letter-writing. Ag believed in protecting people’s need to be alone: she was always at pains not to intrude. She could not be sure of what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go. Some vague anxiety about Prue assailed her, and then a larger worry seared: she had shut up the chickens, but not the bantams. Dear God, how could she have forgotten? Just like Prue, she had failed over a vital matter. Dreadful pictures flashed into her mind: the corpses of fox-chewed bantams littering the yard in the morning: Mr Lawrence’s anger, Mrs Lawrence’s sadness, disappointment … they would be unbearable. She would never forgive herself, such stupidity …
Never disappoint
had been her father’s unofficial motto, branded deep into her since childhood. Here she was, just one week into her job, about to disappoint deeply.

Ag put down her book and swiftly left the room, whispering goodnight to Mrs Lawrence.

Outside, she found the denseness of the night confusing. No stars were visible. The moon, elusive in wandering clouds, would give ghostly light for a moment, then disappear again, leaving total blackness. Ag had a torch in her pocket, but determined not to use it till she reached the bantam house. You had to be so careful about light after dark, Mr Lawrence had warned them. She made her way cautiously through the garden. Unseen branches brushed at her face and snagged her arms. Despite the firmness of the ground, there was a sense of drowning. The sudden hoot of an owl made her heart race: she dreaded what would surely be a long hunt under hedges for the bantams.

Far sooner than she expected a familiar smell of creosoted wood came to her out of the darkness and she ran to the henhouse. She switched on her torch, slid the door of the peephole to one side. Inside were all ten roosting hens, heads drawn down into raised neck feathers, giving them a look of unconscious indignation. A couple of them, disturbed by the torchlight, began a minor, sleepy clucking. Ten pairs of wrinkled eyelids quivered, but none of them quite opened.

Ag moved away to the bantam house. She switched off her torch at the sudden return of the moon. In its brief light the wire netting, nailed to the wooden frame of the run, looked fragile as cobwebs. There were no birds in the run. The door was ajar, just as she had left it when she had let them out this morning. Ag closed it, shone her torch through the peephole of the house. To her amazement, there were birds inside, huddled more closely than the chickens, their feathers a grainy sheen. Five of them had returned to the fold on their own: just one was missing.

Ag’s feelings of relief at the safety of the five were clouded with anxiety about the missing one. She hurried back through the garden, torch beam discreetly sweeping the ground, but with little hope of finding the bird here. The barn, she thought, would be the most obvious place. The bantams always congregated in the barn by day. It often took a while to flush them all from their hiding places when it was time to shut them up at night.

According to the restless rhythms of tonight’s sky, it was the turn of darkness again when Ag reached the farmyard. She made swiftly for the barn. From halfway across the yard she saw a slash of torchlight inside. She stopped, straining to hear muted voices.
Have you seen a bantam in there?
she wanted to shout: but then her concern for the bantam was overwhelmed by curiosity, fear, dread. What was happening? She slowed her steps.

By the time she gained the barn’s entrance, Ag could hear exchanged words clearly.

‘Sure you’re all right?’

Long pause. ‘I’m fine. It’s fun up here.’

It was
Prue
, for heaven’s sake, with Joe.

‘You’re doing well. Not much further.’

Ag flattened herself against the outside wall of the barn, peered round. She saw Joe, back to her, looking up, torch trained to somewhere high above him. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim scene she could see shadows huge as sails flapping at the walls of the barn, their shapes cut into by the expanding beam of torchlight that showed Prue – dear God, the fool, the fool – engaged on some flight of madness in the rafters …

Ag turned away, clasping her hand to her mouth.

‘Well done, you’re over half way,’ she heard Joe say.

Ag turned to look again. She saw Prue more clearly now, creeping along the crossbeam, arms stiffly outstretched, awkward, determined, brave. Her thin white legs were lit by the torch. Far below, Ag caught sight of thick regulation socks and heavy brown shoes cast into the hay.

She saw Prue pause, flutter, not daring to look down. Her left foot wavered, suddenly unsure where to land. The toes panicked. She was nearly at the end, where a ladder waited. But she could not make it.

She saw Prue fall into the darkness, heard her scream.

No one in the house could have heard because at the same moment a distant siren began to wail. Its mournful voice and the ragged shriek coiled together, then were split by a sound even closer to Ag as a terrified bantam ran squawking from the barn across the yard. To save? Or to protect? Ag found herself running towards the house before she had time to make a decision. She saw the door open, the figure of Mrs Lawrence holding a candle.

‘I was looking for a bantam,’ she cried.

‘Never mind the bantam: straight down into the cellar.’ Mrs Lawrence slammed the door behind Ag. ‘You didn’t see Joe?’

‘No.’

‘He must be at The Bells. Either there or on his way back.’

The siren was fading. Ag followed Mrs Lawrence down the cellar steps. Stella was already there, sitting on the floor beside a small rack of ginger wine, a pad of writing paper and a pen on her knee – scarcely interrupted, it seemed.

‘You didn’t see Prue?’ Mrs Lawrence was brusque in her anxiety.

‘She might have gone to The Bells, too. She was upset about that tractor business,’ said Ag.

Mrs Lawrence gave a sharp sigh. ‘Little fool,’ she said.

Ag sat on the cold stone floor beside Stella.

‘You all right?’ Stella asked, smiling, still half-entangled by the thought of her letter.

Ag nodded. She wrapped her arms round her bent knees, pressing them against her body, trying to extract the various feelings: the fear of bombs, the guilt at lying, the worry of the Lawrences’ scorn at her inefficiency about the bantams. But far more disquieting than these was the horribly familiar feeling, experienced all too often in Cambridge when she had caught sight of Desmond in the distance – on the Backs, or passing through a quad – with another girl.
That
, at least, was understandable, loving him as she did.

But with Desmond miles away, unaware of her love, hope of anything ever bringing them together almost dead … why had jealousy followed her to Hallows Farm? And what, when the horror of the night was over, would it mean?

To Prue, falling into darkness, the siren was part of her own scream. How could such a huge and terrifying sound emerge from her own small throat? In the immeasurable moments as she plummeted down into the hay, that was her only thought.