Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (20 page)

‘Everyone is very kind here,’ Christopher said. He was,
it was true, very much calmer now than he had been on her earlier visit. But it was also true that the person sitting across the table from her, eating cakes and carefully lifting his cup of tea, bore little resemblance to the arrogant and dashing young man he had been six months previously. This depressed and scared Georgina. What she did not know was that Christopher’s drugs were being slowly withdrawn and that soon his doctors would begin to allow him to face the problems which the next phase in his recovery would deliver.

By now the harvesting of the arable crop was in full swing. Both Higher and Lower Post Stone farms were alive with activity. The weather was kind in the sense that it was dry and hot with no threat of the storms or damp weather which could have ruined the crop. Barley, wheat and oats went under the harvester and as it spewed out the bound sheafs the girls gathered them and propped them in rows of stooks, up and down the lengths of the fields to dry out in the warm wind, ready for threshing. Edward-John, now on his school holidays, joined in, working alongside the girls and, to his mother’s consternation, enjoying the pursuit of the rabbits, which, finally trapped in the last remaining acres of standing wheat, made frantic bids for freedom and were, only too often, clubbed to death by Fred and Ferdie and even, occasionally, by Edward-John himself.

The dry heat, which ensured the swift and safe gathering in of the harvest, took its toll on the girls who, dusty, hot,
dehydrated and scratched by thistles, were, by the end of each long day, so exhausted they could barely speak. Even Rose was sympathetic when they limped and reeled into the farmhouse as dusk fell.

‘’Twon’t be long now, my pretties, till it’ll be over,’ she soothed, pouring cordial and then ladling onion gravy over plates piled with sausages and mashed potato. ‘Mr Bayliss allus give us a day off once the threshin’ be done and the ricks thatched! So that’ll be nice, won’ it!’

‘Only one rotten day?’ Gwennan’s voice was an agonised wail. ‘I’ll need a month in the cottage hospital after this!’

It was rare for Marion and Winnie to decline invitations when army trucks drew up outside the farmhouse and sounded their horns as the girls finished their supper. But on several nights during the harvesting, the trucks had driven off without them.

‘It’s not so much the goin’ out,’ Marion sighed wistfully, stretching out in her dressing gown, across a sofa in the recreation room, her sunburnt skin pink after her bath, her hair still dusty with chaff and several of her fingernails torn. ‘It’s the gettin’ dolled up ready for ’em I can’t be doin’ with!’

Hester, who in spite of Reuben’s continuing attention, wore very little make-up, remained fascinated by the fact that Marion, before she transformed herself with mascara, pancake foundation, crimson lipstick and powdered rouge and had rolled her hair into solid mounds which gave onto
cascading curls and had caged her body in waist-cinching belts, above which frilled blouses suggesting irresistible roundnesses and softnesses, was an entirely different person from the frowsy, angular, pale creature with lank hair and thin lips who, at breakfast and during working hours, was familiar to all of them. ‘What you gawpin’ at then, Hester?’ Marion would demand as Hester stared spellbound when she tottered dangerously down the steep stairs in her high heels and what Annie called her ‘warpaint’.

‘Nothing, Marion. I’m not staring,’ Hester would smile. Winnie relied less heavily on the jars and tubes and bottles and brushes that crowded the dressing table she shared with her friend. Not because she disapproved of Marion’s complicated ritual but because, being an altogether prettier girl, she was more easily transformed into something
eye-catching
. Also, she knew better than to compete with Marion, who needed to be recognised as the more dazzling of the two of them and consequently the rightful recipient of the lion’s share of any available male attention that was on offer.

Annie, with encouragement from Georgina, had embarked on her studies for the series of Ministry of Agriculture certificates, which, if she was successful, would eventually qualify her for employment as an assistant farm manager.

‘What d’you want to waste your time on that for?’ Gwennan had asked curtly, when she heard about Annie’s
plans. ‘That’s for posh girls, in’t it? An East Ender like you’s never going to get work as a farm manager!’

‘Why not?’ Georgina asked on Annie’s behalf.

‘’Cos she’s common, that’s why! ’Cos of the way she talks! It’s obvious, “Miss Webster”!’ Calling Georgina Miss Webster was Gwennan’s way of reminding her of the class difference between them. The girls were sitting over the cups of tea that rounded off their evening meal. Gwennan, leaning forward, reached for the pot and drained it into her cup.

‘Ta, Taffy,’ Marion said wearily, clattering her empty cup in its saucer. ‘I
would
like another cup, thanks very much!’ While Gwennan and Marion glared across the table at one another Georgina went to fill the kettle.

‘You’re talking rubbish, Taff,’ she called from the scullery, hoping to ease the tension by using the Welsh girl’s nickname. ‘Almost the only good thing about this war is that it’s kicked all that class rubbish out of the window!’

‘Rubbish, is it?’ Gwennan snapped back. ‘Then why is it that girls who get into the WRNS and the WRAF is all
lah-di-
dah
and the ones in the munition factories or up to their necks in muck, like us, is board-school kids?’

Georgina stood the kettle on the stove and returned to the table. This was not the first time that the question of class had been raised in the hostel and would not be the last. Her own status as a pacifist also caused tension.

Annie had confided in Georgina that, after delivering his
sister back to the farm after her second visit to Christopher, Lionel had drawn her aside and invited her out.

‘And are you going?’ Georgina had asked, smiling. Her brother’s obvious attraction to Annie had not escaped her and now, seeking Annie’s reaction to it, she scanned the girl’s face. She was easily the best looking of the Lower Post Stone girls. Her dark hair framed striking features. The lustrous eyes were huge and solemn, the jawline delicate, the mouth lush. Georgina had heard Annie speak of a boyfriend, Pete, with whom she had been ‘going’ since they were both at elementary school. His father ran a market stall off the Mile End Road where Pete, from when he quit school at fifteen until the day he was conscripted, had worked alongside his dad, in his shirtsleeves in the summers and blowing on mittened fingers in the winters as he weighed out the fruit and veg. Now he had progressed to a trainee aircraft mechanic in the RAF, writing letters to his girl and sometimes sending her small gifts. A pair of
mother-of-pearl
earrings had been his latest offering. But Georgina had sensed in Annie a desire to move on from Pete, just as she had yearned to move on from employment in her uncle’s garment factory.

‘Well?’ Georgina asked again and, when Annie hesitated, repeated the question. ‘Are you going out with my bro?’

‘I dunno, Georgie.’

‘Don’t you like him?’

‘’Course I like him. He’s…well, he’s lovely, isn’t he!
Good-looking 
and funny and everything, but…’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘I’m not…well, I’m not the sort of girl a bloke like him goes out with, am I? It’s no good you looking at me like that, Georgie! Or goin’ on about there being no class system!’

‘There isn’t! Well… Not as much as there was, anyhow.’

‘Enough though,’ Annie said. It was evening and the two girls were sitting on the garden wall. Bats were diving and wheeling above their heads and the August full moon, a soft rose-pink globe, was just clearing the eastern horizon.

‘Shall I give you a for instance?’ Annie offered and when Georgina nodded, paused for a moment before continuing. Then she said, ‘You remember that Sunday we got volunteered for church parade?’ Georgina nodded. A few weeks previously Margery Brewster had coerced a group of the Post Stone girls into attending morning service at Ledburton church.

‘It’s good for the Land Army’s image,’ she had explained to Alice over morning tea. ‘We need to be nicely represented from time to time, in public, in uniform and in church. There will be coffee and cakes in the vicarage afterwards. Don’t encourage Mabel Hodges to volunteer, Alice. And if she does, make sure she’s… Well, you know what I mean!’ Alice did know. Even after a bath and dressed in a clean uniform, Mabel was not quite the image of a land girl that Margery Brewster wanted to offer for public scrutiny. Fortunately for Alice, Mabel was not in
the least inclined to spend the morning of her precious day off sitting in a church. So it was Alice herself, accompanied by Edward-John, Gwennan, Georgina and Annie who sang the hymns, sat through the sermon, said the prayers and afterwards filed across the churchyard and into the parsonage where they were introduced to the vicar and his wife.

‘Pleased to meet you!’ Annie had said and, ‘Ta very much,’ as she helped herself to a fairy cake.

‘So?’ said Georgina. ‘What was wrong with that?’

‘What was wrong, Georgie, was that you and Mrs Todd said “how d’you do” when you was introduced. And “thank you” when you took your cake!’

‘They’re only words, Annie!’

‘Yeah, but the ones I use is the
wrong
words!’

‘But the meaning was fine! You
were
pleased to meet them and you
were
grateful for the cake!’ But Annie was not convinced.

‘Then there was that time you and me had tea at the Rougemont!’ The two of them had, Georgina recalled, entered the prestigious hotel and, amongst the potted palms, ordered afternoon tea in the formal lounge. Annie, attempting to summon the waitress for more hot water, had called ‘Miss!’ The girl, immaculate in black dress, white apron and frilled cap, had approached their table and deliberately ignoring Annie, very pointedly addressed her ‘yes, madam?’ to Georgina. ‘I should of said “waitress”,
shouldn’t I! “Miss” is what common people call waitresses, isn’t it!’

‘It doesn’t matter, Annie!’ Georgina laughed.

‘That waitress thought it did! If I went out with your brother I’d be scared to open me mouth lest I embarrassed ’im! You could give me lessons, Georgie! Teach me to say “how de-do” and hold up my hand, like you did, with your forefinger raised and your other fingers curled and say “Waitress! May we have our bill, please”!’ Annie’s faux accent, delivered falsetto and with a po-face, sounded so much like Margery Brewster’s when she summoned the girls to the recreation room for the regular six-weekly meeting, which always concluded with her looking from face to face and enquiring shrilly whether any of them had any questions, that one or two startled faces appeared at the hostel windows.

Annie did go out with Lionel. On Saturday afternoons she hauled up her skirt and climbed onto the back of his motorbike, wrapped her arms tightly round his waist and leant against his broad back.

‘I’m not being forward or nothing!’ she explained to Hester, who witnessed her arrival back at the hostel one evening, her face flushed by the rush of wind and her hair tangled. ‘But you has to hold tight like that, Hes! You’d fall off else!’

They made love among gorse bushes on cliffs above Branscombe Beach. It was not her first time. Pete had
taken her virginity the year before. But it was Lionel’s. Annie taught him how to avoid making her pregnant by withdrawing from her before he ejaculated. He managed it, apart from the first time and after that was always equipped with what Annie called ‘preventatives’, which he had procured with only a minimum of embarrassment when his barber tactfully enquired whether he needed ‘something for the weekend, sir?’

For Alice the summer passed quickly. The routine she had established, together with the new layout of the kitchen, made her heavy workload at first possible and then tolerable. Edward-John’s uncle had visited the boy and his school and, being impressed by both, had offered not only to continue to pay the fees but to make funds available for other expenses. Letters passed between Alice’s solicitors and James’s but no date had yet been set for the divorce hearing. Oliver Maynard was attentive and charming though there had been a couple of occasions when she had to remind him that their relationship was one of friendship only. He was careful not to embarrass her, understanding, correctly, that to do so at this stage would be to lose her.

She was concerned about the welfare of a few of her girls and unsure how far she should take her attempts to influence them. Since the crisis over Winnie’s abortion, she and Marion were, presumably, using the contraceptive devices with which they had been fitted but, although the
results were under control now, their relationships with Tom, Dick and Harry continued to raise eyebrows and to encourage widespread attention from soldiers in the many camps, barracks and training establishments where British, Commonwealth and American troops were being prepared for the next major offensive of the war, the invasion of France, which was to become known as the D-Day landings.

Hester, when Reuben’s courtship had intensified, had taken him to Barnstaple to meet her family and had returned to the farm in tears.

‘I’m not to go home no more, Missus Todd,’ she had sobbed. ‘Marryin’ outside our faith is a mortal sin. They never want to see me again! Reuben says I’m not to think of them as my folks no more. He says, one day, his mother will be my ma and his dad my pa! I didn’t want it to be this way, Missus Todd! I love my mum and my brother Zeke. But I love Reuben more! I won’t part with him! Not for no one!’ It concerned Alice that Hester and Reuben were both still very young and that with the most violent fighting of the war still to come, their future was, at best, uncertain.

Margery Brewster had expressed her concern regarding Mabel Hodges’ relationship with Ferdie.

‘I understand that she spends a great deal of her free time in his cottage. What do they do, d’you suppose?’

‘They cook, Margery,’ Alice replied. ‘And sometimes she washes his clothes and darns his socks. She tells me all about
it and it seems quite innocent and very constructive to me.’ Margery considered this and then conceded that Ferdie was certainly looking cleaner and fitter than he had done since his poor mother had died.