Once a Land Girl (12 page)

Ag had little news: settled on a Devon farm with Desmond, she more or less carried on with her land-girl work, she said, and loved it. She had become famous in the community for her hedging, she
modestly admitted when Prue pressed her to say exactly what work she did on the land.

Stella, in a cottage on the Norfolk coast – Philip insisted on being by the sea – could do little beyond look after him, bound to his wheelchair, and their son James. It was hard to
get help and sometimes, Stella said, she was so tired she could lie on the floor and sleep. But they wanted another child – hoped for a girl. ‘What keeps me going,’ she said,
‘are long walks on the vast empty beach, all weathers. The skies . . . Sometimes I wheel Philip down to the marshes, but I don’t think he sees it all as I do. He feels the cold so.
Turns up the collar of his coat after a moment or two, wants to go home almost at once.’ She sighed, picked up her bag, rummaged for her wallet. ‘Want to see a picture of James?’
She took out a photograph of a small boy, lock of hair falling over one eye – such an exact image of Joe that Ag and Prue gasped.

‘Has Joe seen this?’ Prue asked.

‘No. But I’ll show him one day, perhaps.’

Ag studied the photograph carefully. ‘Does he know?’

‘I think he’s probably guessed. I mean, I’m sure he knows. I knew I was pregnant soon after we were back from France, before Philip and I were married. I wrote to Janet and Joe
when James was born. He wrote back a note saying . . .’ Stella turned away, pushed her fist into her eyes. ‘The main thing is that Philip is in no doubt James is his – keeps
saying their foreheads are so alike. Amazing how people can see what they want to see.’ She turned back to the table. ‘But, Prue, what’s your news? Is your millionaire husband
still the man of your dreams?’

Prue giggled. She sat down, pulled a chopping board of parsnips and a knife towards her. ‘He’s very rich, just as I wanted,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘He’s very generous.’ She lifted the hand with the diamond ring and tapped the gold watch on her wrist.

‘Good.’ Stella was brusque. ‘And are you happy?’

Prue felt herself blush. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘Happy?’ persisted Ag.

Prue giggled again. ‘Course I’m happy. I mean, I don’t suppose any of us – except you, Ag – has found the actual man of our dreams. There’s always got to be
something wrong, hasn’t there? You can’t expect a hundred per cent, can you? Barry isn’t exactly what I’d imagined, but we get along fine in a funny sort of way. He’s
got a wizened old housekeeper who doesn’t fancy me, and he’s out a lot of the time so I haven’t much to do. He let me buy some chickens – I think of you every time I collect
the eggs, Ag – and one of his tenants, a carpenter who says he’s a poet and lives next door, Johnny, built a lovely house and run for them. But chickens aren’t much company, are
they?’

Her question wasn’t answered. Stella, frying at the stove, said: ‘And what about this Johnny carpenter-poet?’

‘Oh, Johnny. He likes driving me about in my Sunbeam Talbot. He shows me Derbyshire, talks about poetry – a bit above my head as you can imagine. He’s all right. Nothing to
make the heart race.’

‘That’s good.’ Stella smiled at her, motherly.

‘Don’t you worry, I’m not up to my old tricks. I know bloody well how lucky I am being married at all. I’m not going to risk messing that up. All I want is to find
something to do, something useful. I’m not used to a lazy life. I mean, crikey, I’m glad I no longer have to get up at four in the morning to pick a field of frozen sprouts . . . but
I’d like to be doing something.’

‘Quite,’ said Stella.

Supper was a muted occasion. Joe barely spoke. Mr Lawrence’s repertoire of memories, so bravely conjured to ease lunch, had run out. The girls did their best, but
everyone was relieved when it was time to listen to the news on the Home Service in the sitting room. It was another cheerless room despite the familiar furniture. Pictures were still stacked
against a wall, and there was still blackout at the windows, which awaited curtains. On the seat of the chair by the fire – Mrs Lawrence’s old chair – lay a bundle of knitting
speared by two long needles, each full of stitches, suggesting that the unfinished scarf, trailing on the floor, had been quickly abandoned. Perhaps Mrs Lawrence, on her last night, had felt a
strange desire to hurry upstairs to bed, Prue thought. And it was suddenly unbearable. With no excuse she left from the room, intending to go up to the attic to shed private tears, but Joe, who had
not followed the others into the sitting room, was ahead of her. With no plan in mind, she followed him to the kitchen. He went out through the back door. She followed him again, knowing he was
unaware of her, watched him make for the barn. There, from a distance, she saw him lean up against one wing of the new-looking Fordson and light a cigarette.

Prue crept into the barn, a dark and husky place, no feeling of husbandry there had been in the barn at Hallows Farm. A few bales of hay and the unfamiliar tractor were the only furniture.

‘Joe,’ she said.

He looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, Prue,’ he said.

She moved nearer to him. If Mrs Lawrence hadn’t died she would have flung her arms round his neck and kissed him in the old, thrilling way, telling herself it was for old times’
sake. It would all have been innocent, the kind of innocent gesture neither Stella nor Janet would have minded. As it was, she had no plan in mind. She just wanted to be close to him, to feel . . .
what? She couldn’t say. Comfort from Mrs Lawrence’s son, perhaps. She stood with her arms by her sides. ‘I just wanted to say how dreadfully sorry—’

‘Yes, well.’

‘None of us can believe it, really.’

‘It’s hard to believe, Mum not there.’

‘Not there . . . Your dad seems to be coping.’

‘He’s in shock at the moment.’ He glanced at her, his eyes two shards of pure silver as the moon moved from behind a cloud.

Prue took a step nearer. ‘I often think Stella and Ag and I will remember our year at the farm as the best time of our lives.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Joe, dragging on his cigarette. ‘How’s life with you? Married woman.’

‘It’s OK. It’s fine.’

‘Good.’

‘And you and Janet?’

‘What about me and Janet?’

‘Are you . . . ?’

‘We’re fine, too. We’ll be coming up here in a few months’ time. Taking over. Looking after Dad.’

‘That’s good.’ So slowly she might have been playing a private game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, Prue moved even nearer to Joe. ‘Do you remember all those times,
Joe?’ she said.

‘Course I remember all those times,’ Joe snapped, ‘but I don’t think about them often. I’m not thinking about them now.’

‘No. Nor you should. Quite right. It must be odd, seeing us all again.’

‘You’re the one who hasn’t changed,’ said Joe, reverting to a milder tone. ‘You’re exactly as you ever were, you minx.’ He suddenly laughed. Prue saw
that as the signal. With no thought of betrayal to Stella, who really loved him, or to his wife, who probably did too, she threw her arms round his neck. She felt him rock against the tractor
bumper, and clamped her mouth to his. For an infinitesimal moment she knew that in another time, another place, he might have responded. But now he was shocked, angry. He pushed her roughly away,
bent down to pick up the butt of his fallen cigarette.

Desolate at having done the wrong thing, Prue cursed herself for not having thought hard enough about how Joe might respond to her act of ‘comfort’. Most of the mistakes she made,
she remembered in the sharpness of the moment, were due to her thoughtless spontaneity. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whimpered. ‘I didn’t mean . . . It’s just all the
sadness. I thought—’

‘You thought – what? You’d be a comfort? My mother dead? A quick kiss in the barn for old times’ sake? Honestly Prue. Your sense of timing. Your rotten judgement. Go on.
Get back to the house.’

Prue turned from him and ran. In the house she sped up the stairs, mortified. The others were already in their narrow beds. A lighted oil lamp made soft shadows creep out of the real
darkness.

‘You been seducing Joe?’ Ag asked, laughing.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Stella. ‘Even you wouldn’t go that far, would you Prue? Not on this occasion.’ She laughed, too. Their trust in Prue’s honour was
almost unbearable. She got into the empty bed by the window, cold under two thin blankets, wondering why the beams she knew so well in the attic at Hallows Farm were not holding up this ceiling. Ag
turned down the lamp. The three girls struggled in silence with their own thoughts. Then Stella said: ‘Prue, I’ve been thinking. I’ve an idea. What you should do is get a job on a
farm.’

The thought of that possibility deflected Prue’s agonizing over her shameful behaviour, but it was a long night of little sleep for all of them.

Next morning the girls, once breakfast was finished, continued to sit round the table, unsure what to do. There was an hour until the hearse arrived and they were to walk to
the church. Ag looked out of the window. Dark ribbons of cloud chased across a sky pale as a wheatfield: sometimes they clustered together, then divided again to swoop off in another direction,
like flocks of starlings uncertain of which way to go. ‘What a frivolous sky for a funeral,’ she said.

‘What on earth?’ Prue giggled. ‘Trust you to come up with some fancy observation, Ag.’ Though Ag smiled, Prue could see that once again she had said the wrong thing. It
was not the moment to scoff at her old friend. ‘Sorry, Ag. But you still say the sort of things that would never come into my head in a million years. I like that.’ She stood up,
scraping her chair with a hideous note across the floor. ‘I’m going to change. My black . . .’

Mr Lawrence came in. He wore a newly ironed white shirt – perhaps the last shirt his wife had ironed for him – and a black tie that hung thinly down its front, the knot tight as a
small fist.

‘Shall I cook you something?’ Stella asked.

Mr Lawrence paused, trying to understand the question.

‘Not this morning, thank you, Stella. Joe and I had a pot of tea earlier. That will do.’ He paused again, working something out. ‘Mary from the village will be coming up with
something to eat after the . . . service.’

Half an hour later Stella and Ag came downstairs in quiet black dresses. They found Joe in the hall sitting on an upright chair by the grandfather clock. He was still in his new-looking tweed
jacket. His black tie was as narrow as his father’s. He got up and they stood there, the three of them, in silence.

‘Prue ready, is she?’ he asked at last.

‘I’m coming,’ she shouted from the top of the stairs, and hurried down. Her long, full black skirt, gathered from a tiny waist, thrashed round her legs. She joined the group,
looked from one to another. ‘The New Look,’ she said quietly, desperate to explain in case they thought it inappropriate. ‘Mum ran it up for me from some blackout stuff. We
couldn’t get anything else. Hope it’s—’

‘Car’s here,’ Mr Lawrence shouted from outside, where he had been waiting for the arrival of the hearse. He opened the front door. Sun had scattered the last of Ag’s
frivolous clouds. It beat into the hall, outlining everything with a dazzle of gold. The hearse was parked at the bottom of the garden path. There were just three bunches of white flowers on the
coffin: one each from husband and son, one from the three girls, which Ag had organized through a florist.

Prue let Stella and Ag go ahead, one each side of Mr Lawrence, each holding an arm. She took her chance. ‘I’m so sorry, Joe,’ she said. ‘I made a mistake. I misjudged
– I didn’t think. Please forgive me.’

‘Don’t give it another thought. We’re not ourselves. None of us.’ He said it kindly enough, but his mind was not on Prue’s apology. She could see that anything he
had felt for her in the past had long since evaporated. She was of no concern to him. Her clumsy kiss had been a mere irritant: he was surprised – shocked – that she could have behaved
so carelessly, but not angered because his mind had been on his dead mother rather than a scatty land girl he had fucked for a few weeks long ago.

‘Come on,’ he said, and hurried ahead of her down the path.

Prue followed him more slowly, disentangling her legs from the frolicking skirt, wishing she hadn’t been so insistent on the New Look. Her sadness about Mrs Lawrence was added to, now, by
the way that Joe had made it clear that all he wanted was to be rid of her. Perhaps she had destroyed his friendship completely by acting in such thoughtless haste. In future reunions with the
past, she vowed, she would curb expectations, hopes. It was foolish of her to have supposed that sensations that were once alive still burned with the kind of flame that could be reignited.

There were a dozen or so people in the church, villagers who had come to know the Lawrences in the last three years. No one from Hinton Half Moon. Mr Lawrence would not have expected any of them
to travel so far. He stood very upright, arms folded, his eyes avoiding the coffin. Joe, beside his father, also kept his eyes fixed on the altar where two candles were lighted. Their flames,
against the rods of sun that came through the stained-glass window, were deathly pale. The girls sat in the front row opposite Jo and Mr Lawrence. They sang loudly to make up for the lack of male
voices, and kept their tears in check until the coffin was borne out to the graveyard.

After the burial they returned to the farmhouse where sandwiches and a coffee sponge were laid on the kitchen table. The kindly Mary bustled about making tea, relieving the girls of any
responsibility. Mr Lawrence sat in his upright wooden armchair, hands hanging over the arms as if they were weighted. Joe was the one who, knowing his mother would have had little patience with
gloom, suddenly felt the need to invest the occasion with a little merriment. He began to reminisce, with stories of the land girls when they had worked at the farm, and there was relieved
laughter.

By supper Mr Lawrence had unbent a little, though he looked exhausted. He went early to bed. Joe remained downstairs to tell the girls his plan was to stay for a few days to make sure his father
was all right – ‘which he will be’ – and that he and Janet would be moving in as soon as they had sold their house. Prue noticed that while he and Stella glanced in each
other’s direction they made sure their eyes never met.