Land Girls (39 page)

‘Bugger everything,’ shouted Prue, as soon as she had gone. ‘I’m going to sew on all my diamonds
now
.’ But as she was about to turn back indoors, they all heard Joe’s urgent shout from the pigsty.

‘Prue! You’d better hurry. Sly’s begun.’

Prue gave a shriek. Her half-diamonds dropped to the ground. Stella bent to retrieve them for her. Again, she felt a brief sense of annoyance. It was unreasonable. Unaccountable. But a fact.

That evening Robert came to supper and suggested that they should all go to The Bells to celebrate. Ag and Mrs Lawrence declined in favour of an early night. Joe said he could not leave the sheep. Stella volunteered to help him.

‘Just you and me, then,’ Prue giggled to Robert, the only one to accept a second apple dumpling and more Bird’s custard – love never affected her appetite. ‘But before we go you’ll have to be introduced to every single one of Sly’s litter. Help me give them names.’

The sow’s late-afternoon lying-in had inspired Prue with unexpected maternal feelings.

‘Never seen such a performance,’ she had kept on saying to Joe. ‘Look! There’s another one! How does she do it? Good old Sly …’

She had stood for a long time watching the fourteen tiny piglets writhing and squeaking, snouting among their mother’s dugs, their gristly bodies slipping over her panting belly – contemplating the miracle of birth. It was something to which she had given no previous thought: now, beguiled by Sly’s piglets, the attraction of having babies seemed suddenly understandable. She’d like four, she decided, and looked forward to telling Robert this new decision. So she was relieved to find the others would not be coming to The Bells. The announcement that she wished to make should be private. There was much to tell Robert: it had been a memorable day, what with prizes and piglets and decisions about children. The kind of celebration she fancied was several stiff gin and limes, followed by wild activity in the hard and noisy bed, and bugger Stella’s prissy suggestion about an early night.

As soon as the washing-up was finished, Mrs Lawrence and Ag went upstairs. Joe followed Stella into the sitting-room.

‘Cold?’ he asked, and put another log on the small fire before she could answer. Stella switched on the wireless. Rubinstein was playing a Chopin prelude. ‘I’m not much of a Chopin fan,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ He left the room.

Stella curled up on the hard sofa, disappointed. She had spent the last half-hour looking forward to a short time alone with him. Why she wanted this, she found impossible to explain to herself. But somehow, she had discovered since Christmas, his presence was a luxury, a comfort, a warm pleasure. Watching him skin the dead lamb last night, and skilfully introduce the orphan lamb to its foster mother, had inspired her admiration. This morning, tea in bed, he had surprised her. Now, he had sort of … insulted, rejected her. The curious thing was, however he acted seemed to affect her. This was confusing. Stella, not wanting to understand for fear of discovering the truth, allowed herself to believe that the distortions of the war were more devious than she had supposed. They accounted for Prue’s sudden temper, Ag’s unflagging hope of a non-existent relationship, and her own jumpy reactions to one who had become a friend.

The warmth of the fire, combined with Chopin’s sad and plashy chords, made her drowsy. She would make herself a cup of Ovaltine, go to sleep hoping Joe might call upon her again to help with more lambing.

Stella imagined he was already out in the shed, so was surprised to find him in the kitchen. He had spread paper over the table and was cleaning his shoes, chipping mud off a heel with a blunt knife.

‘Job I most hate,’ he said.

‘I was going to get myself some Ovaltine before bed. Like some?’

Joe nodded. Stella poured milk into a saucepan, prepared the drinks.

‘Good about the half-diamonds,’ said Joe.

Stella smiled, brought the drinks to the table, sat down. She held her mug to her nose, sniffing the hot, beige-smelling froth, enjoying the warmth of the steam. Joe kept his eyes on brushes, polish, dull leather that began to gleam under the fierceness of his polishing. After a while, the swishing of the brush, like the music, induced in Stella a further drowsiness of the careless kind.

‘Do you ever feel,’ she asked, ‘such total confusion that you don’t know where to begin to untangle the various strands? You don’t even know what the strands consist of? An amorphous confusion? Do you ever feel that, Joe?’

He glanced at her, saw the beautiful mouth turned down.

‘Of course. Often. All the time.’

He held up a huge black shoe, admired its shine, took up a duster. One of the dogs, asleep by the stove, growled in its dream.

‘We’re the ones who’ve decided on marriage. Do you think we’re right?’ Again Joe glanced at her. ‘I mean, why are you going to marry Janet?’ Even as she asked, Stella realized the silly risk she might have taken.

Joe put down the finished shoe, sat down, picked up his drink. He fought for calm, forced himself to look her in the eye.
Oh God, please give me the strength not to let her see
…

‘I could ask you the same question. Why are you going to marry Philip?’

Stella gave an embarrassed smile. She shrugged. ‘I was in love with an idea – one of my weaknesses. I’ve been in love with lots of ideas. I thought he was the right person. Perhaps it was the urgency of war …’

‘You
thought
?’

‘I thought.’

‘You still think?’

‘I don’t know. To confess any doubts would be too disloyal.’

‘I know those feelings.’

‘I’ve given him my word.’

‘I’ve done the same to Janet. You never said how it was, your weekend in Plymouth.’

‘It didn’t occur to me you’d be interested.’

‘I admit to being intrigued about the sort of man you love.’

Stella hid her face behind a structure of hands and mug. She tried for lightness.

‘Philip’s a good man. The weekend wasn’t … entirely perfect.’

Joe nodded, began to chip mud off the second heel. It fell on to the paper in dark curves, like giant nail parings. Stella stood up, took her empty mug to the sink. She was not sure if Joe had heard her last remark. She hoped he had not, for it was a first act of betrayal.

‘I must go to bed,’ she said.

‘We haven’t really answered each other’s questions.’

‘No. Perhaps we will some other time. Call me if you want any help in the night.’

‘You need your sleep.’

‘Really. Please.’

Joe nodded. He did not watch her leave the room, but continued to work with manic concentration on the shoe. He polished and repolished till no brighter shine could be achieved. A possibility he hardly dared to think about added to the general morass in his mind. Surely it wasn’t his imagination: surely, tonight, there was some indication …

Joe felt he had seen signs of something so small, so amorphous – in Stella’s words – that she herself was perhaps innocent of its existence. But it was there, within her. It had taken root. The question was, should he stamp on it before it flared into consciousness? Or should he abandon all principles and
encourage
it to life?

Some days later, Ag finished her morning duties earlier than normal, so joined Mrs Lawrence in preparing the lunch. Joe came into the kitchen carrying a couple of dead rabbits. He slung them on the draining board. From the stomach of one of them purple blood oozed through the pale fur on to the dark wood.

‘Thanks, Joe. Your father will be pleased.’ Mrs Lawrence turned to Ag. ‘John’s expected home this evening. He’ll be wanting his rabbit stew and boiled onions. There’s suet left over for a treacle pudding – his favourite, too.’

The news came as no surprise to Ag. She had noticed early that morning that Mrs Lawrence’s spirits had risen. Her inner life, always so carefully concealed, emanated in subtle hints of private exuberance. She moved faster between table, sink and stove. Her worn hands, sometimes slowed and dull with fatigue, fluttered happily among soapy plates. She buttered slices of newly made bread with extraordinary speed. Her beige lips, released from their usual cautious clench, kept breaking into a smile.

Ag had often thought how she would have liked Mrs Lawrence for a mother: the idea was renewed this morning. She sensed that this strong woman, in her state of anticipation, exuded a kind of approachability which was rarely apparent. Ag, who loved as well as admired her, yearned to talk to her. She wondered if it would be untoward to try.

Mrs Lawrence darted to the sink holding a lethal knife. She began to skin one of the rabbits. Ag watched her firm hand grasped round the animal’s neck: the head flopped over, an obscene bunch of fur, bone, tooth resting on stiff lip, blubbery balls of dead eyes.

‘Could you do the other one for me, Ag? It’s not difficult. Common sense.’

‘I’m afraid I … I’m no good with dead things. Birds, fish, animals. For some reason, I can’t touch them.’ It was the first time Ag had had to refuse Mrs Lawrence any request. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, ashamed of her squeamishness.

Mrs Lawrence glanced at her. ‘That’s all right. I used to feel the same. I had to get used to it. I was sick, I remember, the first time I drew a pheasant. I don’t mind any of it, much, now.’

She tugged at the rabbit skin, turning it inside out as she pulled. It came off clean as a glove. Ag regarded the naked pink body beneath, the legs bent as if still running, their flight frozen by death. Feeling sick herself, she chivvied about, laying the table, not wanting to see more of Mrs Lawrence’s butchery.

The rabbits were quickly chopped into a jigsaw of pathetic joints and piled into a large bowl. Mrs Lawrence poured in a dash of cider, bay leaves, juniper berries, pepper. Her movements were light, happy. When the bowl of hideous contents was complete, she carried it to the larder as if it weighed no more than an empty plate.

‘John’ll love that,’ she said, on return. ‘When we were first married, not a brass farthing between us, we ate a lot of rabbit.’

She sat down at the table, correcting the position of a fork, a glass. She tweaked at the few sprigs of forsythia, still in bud, that Ag had arranged in a jug. She put one hand over her heart.

‘Ridiculous! I ought to be ashamed of myself, at my age. I’m all of a flutter.’

Ag smiled back at her. Here, perhaps, was her chance.

‘We’d be lucky,’ she said, ‘any of us, if we ended up with a marriage like yours and Mr Lawrence’s.’

Mrs Lawrence looked surprised. ‘Really? I don’t know about that. I think if you’re happy working together for the same end, it’s a help. We’ve been so lucky in that respect, John and me. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry a man who went off on a train every day. Like that, there’s so much of your lives unknown to the other … Absence can mean a blurring of the rules. I wouldn’t want to go away from home myself, either. I suppose I’m terribly old-fashioned. I can see an age, a generation or so ahead, when women will think it quite natural to go out to work. Mere housewives, like me, perfectly happy with their lot, will be scoffed at. Perhaps we are even today. But I’m too busy to dwell on things like that. I’m so out of the real world, I don’t know much of what is going on. But what about you, Ag? Have you thought about what you want to do after the war?’

Ag thought for a silent moment, decided to confide.

‘I’ve been thinking: I’d like to study law, go to the Bar. I’ll go on being a land girl, or do some other war work, while I’m needed; then I’ll try for law school. The ultimate plan – the old plan—’ she gave a self-deprecating smile – ‘is to marry Desmond.’

‘The one who sent the Christmas card?’

Ag nodded. ‘I sometimes think my dream of him is a stupid waste of time and energy. But then I remember the certainty I felt. Instantly. Positively. Mysteriously … Foolish, I suppose, but I’m relying on that.’

‘You must. You should.’ Mrs Lawrence sighed. ‘I wish Joe felt such certainty.’

‘Doesn’t he?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, he shows no great outward signs of it. We don’t talk of Janet. We talk about books. But he’s a dark horse, Joe.’

There was a long silence.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, Ag, and I would ask you not to repeat my indiscretions to the others. But I think John and I may have made the greatest mistake of our lives over Janet. And I don’t know what we can do.’ Mrs Lawrence spoke quietly, unsure she should be saying such things but compelled, after so many months of silence, to tell this sympathetic girl for whom she had particular affection.

‘Joe was such a daffy young boy, seducing every girl for miles, breaking hearts all over the place. We found ourselves lecturing him on the wisdom of looking beyond physical attraction, of choosing a good, solid girl for life. He used to scoff at such concepts, say the only
marriageable
woman he’d ever met was me!’ She smiled to show she knew this admission of vanity was an indulgence. ‘And of course he didn’t change his ways. Then – I don’t know how it came about, exactly, he never said – but he announced he’d proposed to Janet.
Janet!
Well, we’d known her for years – they used to live in Somerset. We liked her parents. She was a childhood friend of Joe’s – plain, gawky, kindest heart in the world. He treated her like another boy; she loved him from the age of twelve. As I say, I don’t know what drove him to his decision, but a lot of bad luck came at once – no Cambridge, no fighting. I suppose he felt bitter, a failure, useless, though he never actually complained.

‘Anyhow, unofficially engaged, as it were, he stopped chasing girls. He spent most of his free time with Robert, talking, talking: they have a lot in common. Then, out of the blue, this proposal; entirely to please us, we now think. And at the time we were pleased. We felt, here was security. Not very exciting, perhaps, but security, support, devotion.

‘But then, in a way, he seemed to give up. The life went out of him. He said, “I’ve done what you want, you ought to be pleased.” We said, “Joe, you must do what
you
want.” Timing was against him, of course. Just as they’d announced their engagement, Janet was posted to Surrey. Joe didn’t express any great sadness. I still have to chivvy him to write to her. As you’ve seen, they hardly ever have a chance to meet.