Land Girls (17 page)

‘Steady, old girl,’ she soothed, feeling the frantic shoulder muscles writhe queasily in her hands. ‘It’s all for your own good …’

She remembered drawings of a sheep in a childhood book: anthropomorphized into a stern teacher, it was, with glasses on the end of its nose and a cane in its hoof. She thought of her father’s love of boiled mutton and caper sauce, rainbow bubbles of fat in the gravy. Sunday after Sunday they would lunch alone together, the bowl of wax fruit between them, using their spoons to gather up the last grains of pearl barley swollen with the mutton juices.

‘I think this one’s okay,’ said Stella. ‘No rot, far as I can see. Just needs a trim.’

She clutched a waving leg, flushed with the effort. The horn of the hoof was splayed at the edges. There were two small splits. Biting her lip, Stella dug in the sharp knife and started to peel off a strip of hoof just as she would peel a potato. The ewe struggled harder, but in a moment a black half-circle of stuff like hard Plasticine fell to the ground.

‘There – triumph!’

Stella let go of the frantic leg and was promptly kicked in the stomach. Ag laughed so hard she released her hold on the ewe’s shoulders. If Stella had not then thrown herself, sack-like, over its belly, the animal would have escaped.

‘You’re a natural hoof trimmer,’ was Ag’s praise to Stella when the long job of manicuring all four hooves was completed. It was time for the dreaded dagging.

By now the sheep was weary, easier to handle. Stella bent over its head, hands plunged into the sticky matted chunks of its wool. She watched with some amusement as Ag picked up the clippers and assessed, with a look of mock wisdom, the dung-knotted expanse of the animal’s hindquarters.

‘Here goes.’

She took up a length of wool, rigid with dried mud and dung. Carefully, she snipped. It hit the ground with a small thud, like the shell of an empty nut. She chose another lump, snipped with more confidence. It was like cutting through pebbles, she thought, not half as revolting as she had expected. She worked faster. The animal scarcely twitched by now. Soon its
hindquarters
were shorn and clean. Ag felt pleased with herself. She and Stella gently helped it back to the ground. It went bleating away to join its companions in the pen Mr Lawrence had rigged up in the yard. Its head pecked the air like a great black beak, the spittled lips flung into a grimace of relief.

‘Philip wouldn’t believe it,’ sighed Stella, rubbing her back. ‘Only fourteen more to go.’

‘We must try to get them finished by dark.’

‘Easy,’ said Stella. ‘We’re experts, now.’

At the end of the afternoon Joe drove the tractor to the field where Prue was muck-spreading. He had to pick up the empty trailer and tow it back to the yard.

He found Prue standing in a sea of tawny dung, the limp straw just lighted by dwindling sky. Her pitchfork moved feebly, twitching at the stuff she had already scattered. She heaved a clump from the small pile that was left, and threw it carelessly. When she saw Joe she stopped and gave up all pretence of effort.

He jumped down from the tractor, climbed the gate and strode towards her. She put out her arms. He held her, lightly kissed her hair. The satin bow had slumped over sideways, lying among the curls like a dead canary.

‘You’ve done well,’ he said.

‘But Joe,’ she said, ‘I’m all in. Never, ever been so exhausted.’

His chest, where she lay her head, was saturated with sour farmyard smells. She found them more comforting than any bottled scent. The stuff of his waterproof crackled beneath her cheeks when she stirred.

‘You go to bed very early tonight,’ Joe said, ‘and you’ll be fine in the morning. Tomorrow, when the others are asleep, come down to my room.’

‘But surely that’s mad? I don’t want to be sent away.’

‘We’ll take care.’

‘There was something up, today – your mum and dad. All the rotten jobs they gave me. They were being tough: sort of testing me.’

‘They have their ways. Best not to question them. Shall I run you back in the trailer?’

‘I haven’t quite finished – that small pile.’

‘Leave it till tomorrow.’

‘I’d like to get it finished.’

‘I’ll do it for you.’

‘No.’

Joe lifted Prue’s face, gave a wry smile. ‘You’re a determined one, I’ll say that for you.’

‘Might as well do my bit for my country well as I can.’ She giggled, energy returning. ‘God, I smell awful. I stink.’

‘Not so awful that I couldn’t take you right here on this sodding bed of straw, if we had the time,’ said Joe. ‘Kiss me.’

Their mouths clashed. Behind Prue’s closed eyes she saw that their heads had merged into one huge flower of interlocking petals that spurted with light, like sparklers. She felt herself sway. She felt Joe hold her more tightly, to stop her falling. She dropped her pitchfork. It fell to the ground.

Mr Lawrence saw them as he passed the field on his way back from looking at a sickly cow. A mist had begun to rise, making them legless. They looked like the top half of a statue on a fragile plinth, swaying slightly, loosely soldered.

Mr Lawrence felt the burning of his face. He walked on, quickening his stride.

Ag and Stella failed. It was too dark to see clearly, and there were still five sheep left.

‘We can’t go on, we could hurt one of them,’ said Ag. Both girls’ backs ached badly. It was chilly, dank. Their last sheep skittered away to join the small flock. ‘Still, we haven’t done badly.’

They gathered up the tools, then each took an end of the heavy bench and moved it back to its place in the shed.

‘What I’d love more than anything in the world is a long, hot bath,’ said Stella.

‘Me, too. Followed by some sort of silly cocktail in front of an open fire.’

When they returned to the yard, they found Mr Lawrence, flanked by the two collies, had already let the sheep out of the pen. The creatures pivoted about in the dusk, followed first one of their number then another, bleating with articulate monotony.

‘Silly animals, really,’ said Stella.

‘Best as part of a landscape,’ said Ag.

Mr Lawrence whistled to the dogs. In a trice they lowered their backs, nosed swiftly off towards the scattered flock, and formed it into an orderly bunch.

‘We didn’t quite finish, I’m afraid,’ said Stella. ‘Five to go.’

‘Never mind. Tomorrow. We’ll leave the pen up overnight.’ Mr Lawrence seemed unconcerned, moved off to the gate.

‘Can we help?’ called Ag.

‘I can manage.’

A few yards down the lane Joe, on the tractor, met the flock. He switched off the engine, watched them divide in confusion each side of the machine. The dogs skilfully kept them from running into the ditches – barking, pausing and sprinting with a subtle bossiness. Mr Lawrence, crook in hand, followed a little behind them. When he drew level with the tractor, Joe called to him.

‘How did it go, the dagging?’

‘Fine.’

Mr Lawrence strode past, not able to look at his son. Joe started the engine, drove into the yard. Ag and Stella were still there, leaning against the sheep pen – laughing, he thought. One of them waved: hard to tell which one. He drove into the barn, jumped down. The thump of gumboots warned him the girls had come to join him.

‘It wasn’t at all bad,’ said one, with a happy voice.

‘We became quite expert,’ said the other. ‘We managed almost all of them.’

‘Good.’

One of them helped him unlock the trailer. The other threw a piece of sacking over the Fordson’s engine. Then they found themselves looking towards the black hump of the house.

‘One of the things I most miss in this war,’ said Joe, ‘is lighted windows. Imagine how it would be if we could walk towards a lighted kitchen window.’

‘Never mind,’ said Stella – he thought it was Stella. ‘We’re getting pretty good at finding our way in the dark.’

Joe put a heavy arm across each of their shoulders. ‘I’ll guide you all the same,’ he said.

Prue, her muck-raking finally finished, tottered towards the gate. She decided to sit on it for a while, summon the energy to walk back up the lane. She would have done anything to accept Joe’s invitation of a lift in the trailer, but some sense of pride insisted she finish the job completely before leaving the field.

She sat on the top bar of the gate watching the last light fade from the sky, trees change into black hoods, the ground mist stretch higher. She put out a foot, dipped it into the silvery skeins as if trying the water of a ghostly sea.

Prue didn’t much like the dark. A shiver went down her spine. She feared an owl might hoot (something she had never heard, always wanted to hear, but not
now
). If a bat brushed past her, she’d scream bloody murder.

There was silence. Then, the distant shuffle and thud of sheep, anxious bleats, dogs barking. Prue swivelled herself precariously round, using the pitchfork for support, to face the lane. She could just make out a rumbling wave of fat woollen bodies, spectral cushions lumbering past, the occasional glint of an eye. Bloody hell, she said to herself, this is what I’d call
spooky
. What’s more, they came with a phantom shepherd and his crook. Not till the shepherd reached the gate could Prue see it was Mr Lawrence.

‘Finished,’ she called. ‘I done the lot, Mr Lawrence.’

Perhaps he did not hear, for he gave no answer. He strode past her, legs lost in the mist, whistling to the dogs.

‘Old mean face,’ she said out loud, jumping down.

With the last of her energy she hurried up the lane. She was very cold by now. She craved a hot bath in a bathroom like the one in shampoo advertisements – soaking in asses’ milk or pine essence, gin and lime to hand. And what would she get? Three inches of tepid water, if she was lucky, in the Lawrences’ mean and icy bathroom, followed by a glass of water and rabbit pie.

‘
Land girl, you’re barmy
,’ she sang.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. When she reached the yard she could make out, quite easily, three figures walking towards the house. Joe seemed to be in the middle, arms slung  across Ag’s and Stella’s shoulders. Prue stopped for a moment, to make sure.

Blimey, she thought, a week ago he was hardly speaking to any of us, and now he seems to
like
land girls. Very peculiar, men, as her mum always said.

Mr Lawrence strode into the kitchen without stopping to wipe his boots.

His wife, heeding the warning, glanced up from the pudding she was making at the table.

‘Little hussy,’ he said.

‘What’s she done now?’

Mr Lawrence frowned. He had meant to keep his silence. Calculations circled swiftly in his mind.

‘Nothing you could put your finger on,’ he said eventually. ‘I told you. I always said land girls wouldn’t work.’

‘I don’t know what we’d do without them,’ she said. ‘I’d begun to think you were getting used to them.’

‘That Prudence girl. She’s a menace.’

Mrs Lawrence put the dish in the oven, took her time to answer.

‘I thought she might have been a threat – Joe. But I’ve come to the conclusion she’s harmless. And she’s a worker. It’s Stella I worry about.’

‘Stella?’

Mr Lawrence, on his way to the doormat, looked back so sharply the movement could have been taken for guilt. ‘What’s the matter with Stella?’

His wife coolly met his eye. ‘Pining for the lover at sea. She seems so troubled by his lack of letters.’

‘Is that all?’ Mr Lawrence kicked off his boots with some relief. ‘She’ll get used to it. Pining’ll get her nowhere. Hankering for what is not – stupid waste of time.’

‘Quite,’ said Mrs Lawrence. 

Was it a smirched conscience, the farmer wondered, that caused him to think Faith knew he was addressing himself? He felt a sudden desire to be far from the house – a house so full and changed by its new occupants. He wanted no part of the bustle, the chatter, the evening ahead. He wanted to get away, collect his thoughts in peace.

‘I’ll be out tonight,’ he said. ‘There’s something on Ratty’s mind and I’ve had no time to listen to him this past week. He needs an hour or two to unwind. Said I’d meet him for a pint in The Bells.’

‘You’ll need a shave, then. There’s a clean shirt in the drawer.’

‘Thanks.’

Mr Lawrence was convinced he saw a shadow of incredulity in his wife’s tired eyes as she looked up at him. He left the kitchen too perturbed to drink the mug of tea waiting on the stove. It was the first time in their married life he had ever lied to her.

The others, at supper, were subdued by fatigue, but not uneasy. Joe got up after the cottage pie, saying he was going to his room to read. Before leaving he kissed his mother lightly on the top of her head – something none of them had ever seen him do before, and patted her shoulder. She did not respond.

Some moments later, Prue, with schoolgirl politeness, asked to leave the table: she didn’t fancy any pudding and feared she would fall asleep in her chair. Mrs Lawrence nodded her assent, mouth reduced again to a thin line of disapproval.

Stella and Ag, on their way upstairs when the washing-up was finished, heard the thin sad sound of the Brahms cello concerto coming from Joe’s room.

‘Good heavens,’ said Stella, pausing on the stairs. ‘
That
. I didn’t know Joe liked music.’

‘Do you? Do you play?’

‘I play a little. I sing a bit, dance a bit. I’d like to teach one day, but at this rate I’ll be far too rusty.’

They found Prue on her bed, the cover crumpled beneath her, fully dressed. She had fallen asleep even before taking off her shoes. She wore the crochet jersey again: the crystal beads on the collar sparkled like two inanimate smiles round her neck. Her bow-mouth was slightly open, two child-like front teeth resting on the bottom lip. Even in sleep she looked tired.

Ag struggled to pull off the regulation shoes. Lumps of dried mud fell to the floor. Stella began to tug at the breeches.