Once a Land Girl (17 page)

‘Steve’ll be grateful,’ said Johnny. ‘I know he hates to see the place slowly disintegrating, but he seems incapable of doing anything about it.’

‘It’s just a matter of negotiating with Dawn. I can’t get on with her. She’s the problem.’

‘I’ve an idea there. I happen to know she loves cars. Have you seen the piles of car magazines in the kitchen? Why don’t you . . . one day, offer her a ride in the
Sunbeam?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Prue, after a while.

‘You might win her over like that.’

‘How do you know how well she drives?’

‘Might be worth taking that risk.’

Prue was grading Johnny’s eggs at the table in his kitchen. The sun made the room warm. She liked handling the eggs. Johnny, his hands always shaking, was inclined to break them. She felt
happy, useful. ‘Have you noticed the huge great Humber in the drive?’ she asked.

‘What’s that all about?’

Prue smiled. ‘Barry’s new acquisition. Apparently he’s going to collect a whole lot of cars that will be very valuable in about fifty years’ time. The bad news is
he’s suggested we do a run in it to Hallows Farm.’

‘You’re not going to mention our visit?’

‘Of course not. I’m just going to suggest we look at a few fields, the village, Ratty’s house – just glance at the farmhouse from afar and not go anywhere near the
barn.’

‘Right.’ At the mention of the barn Johnny’s mouth had tightened.

Prue filled the stack of egg boxes and piled them neatly on the table. Her job finished, she left to go back to The Larches for the grim ceremony of Sunday lunch alone with Barry – tepid
shepherd’s pie, tinned plums, two cigars. At his door Johnny gave a very slight movement of his hand, not quite a wave: this was his new goodbye. Since the visit to Hallows Farm he had never
once kissed her on the cheek, or looked as if he wanted to. Even as they sometimes gathered eggs together he seemed to avoid being near her.

Prue sighed deeply as she let herself into the stale hallway of The Larches. She was determined today to make Barry shut up about his wretched Humber and listen to her own news.

Over the next few weeks Prue made a routine for herself at the farm. In truth, there was not enough for her to do. Once she had thoroughly mucked out the pig shelters she had merely to lay clean
straw once a week, a job she could do in a morning. This surprised Steve. He told her it used to take him a week.

She tidied the large shed, cut down nettles, chopped wood and took Jack for longer and longer walks. She had established good relations with him: there was give and take. Prue would let him stop
every now and then when he was particularly keen to try a patch of tempting grass. In return, he lowered his head when he saw her coming so that there was no problem putting on his head-collar. His
size no longer alarmed her. Sometimes, when he paused to graze, she would lean against him, enjoying the warmth of his great body. She always hoped they would not run into Dawn on their return for,
confused by her feelings of relief and jealousy, Dawn would invariably snarl some criticism then storm off in angry silence.

One day, on their return to the stable, they found Dawn waiting for them with an unusual smile on her face. She came right up to them, patted Jack on the withers, which she knew Prue found hard
to reach – the gesture seemed to be designed for point scoring.

‘We need some more pig feed,’ she said, in a small girl’s voice Prue had never heard before. ‘The van’s playing up. I wondered if I could ask—’

‘Of course,’ said Prue, remembering Johnny’s advice. ‘I’ll drive over and get some now.’

Dawn continued to smile. Her face had gone rigid with the effort. ‘I don’t want to put you to that bother,’ she said. ‘Perhaps, I was thinking, you might let me run down
in the Sunbeam. I mean, I’m a good driver. I like driving. If I had a decent car I’d drive all over, like the wind.’

Prue laughed. She handed Dawn the keys. ‘Here you are. Don’t drive like the wind, though. Put the stuff in the boot.’

‘Oh my goodness. What a treat.’ Dawn hurried off, forgetting her usual backward glance at Jack.

Prue went to the bungalow to join Steve, engaged in the football pools, for a cup of tea. Whenever Dawn was safely out of the way they indulged in this practice, made all the more enjoyable by
its secret nature. Steve enjoyed Prue’s company: he liked to hear stories of her days as a land girl, and she his stories of his past farming glories and the pleasure of breeding
prize-winning Shires.

The pig-feed suppliers were only a ten-minute drive away, but Dawn did not return for an hour. Prue waited, anxious, by the large shed where it was to be stored. When the car eventually roared
along the track and pulled up with a show-off swirl, she showed no flicker of the worry she had suffered. That would have been too pleasing for Dawn. The car, apart from being heavily
mud-splattered, seemed undamaged.

Dawn, back to her normal scowl, leapt out of the driving seat, opened the boot and picked up a large bag of meal as if it weighed nothing.

‘That was grand,’ she said, with difficulty. ‘Lovely little engine.’ She could not bring herself to say thank you – Prue had not expected thanks – but
something in Dawn’s exuberant carrying of the sack indicated gratitude for the loan of the car. Goodness knew where she had gone, or how fast she had driven – Prue was determined not to
ask.

‘You must drive it when you want to,’ she said. Dawn sniffed, tried but failed to smile and went off to the shed with another bag.

On her way home, driving very slowly down the lanes as she always did, Prue suddenly tasted Steve’s strong tea in her mouth. She was not used to tea in the morning so was not surprised
when its bitter taste returned to her. But suddenly it filled her mouth – strong liquid that seemed to fountain up from her stomach. She made an emergency stop, flung herself onto the verge
and was violently sick in the ditch. No more elevenses, she told herself. The sickness over, she thought no more of it.

A week later she and Barry drove to Hallows Farm where she managed to stop him visiting both the barn and the house. They merely looked over a few gates into the fields, and as Barry showed no
interest in knowing what part they had played in his wife’s work as a land girl, she did not trouble him with the kind of anecdote that had entertained Johnny a few weeks before.

On the way back, in the comfort of the Humber’s front seat, she felt not positively sick, but queasy.

‘You look pale, sweetheart,’ Barry said, once they were home.

‘It was a long drive. I’m fine.’

‘Lovely, the car.’

‘Lovely.’ Prue realized she must be extraordinarily pale for Barry to have noticed. She went upstairs to the bathroom, took one look at herself in the mirror and was sick again.

In the sitting room Barry was pacing, fiddling as usual with his cigar. ‘You still look pale,’ he said. ‘Sure you’re not coming down with something?’ It was the
first time she had ever seen him worried.

‘Sure. I think it was . . . well, you know. Beautifully sprung cars do make some people feel sick.’

‘No! Not a Humber. You could travel round the world and back and not feel sick in a Humber.’

‘Perhaps some people could.’ By now, spurred by the cigar smoke, Prue was feeling a new surge of nausea. ‘But I don’t think I could face fish-paste sandwiches. I might go
to bed.’

Barry gave her a long, hard look. ‘You do that. That’d be best. I’ll get Bertha to open me a tin of pilchards.’ He sat down heavily in his usual chair, confused in a no
man’s land of irritation that his wife was going to leave him for the evening, but knowing that, if she was feeling as wretched as she looked, he had to do encourage her to lie down. She was
wrong on one count, though: it was nothing to do with the Humber – a Humber had never made anyone feel sick as far as Barry knew, and Prue was going to have to get used to it. They
couldn’t always take the Daimler . . .

Prue confessed to Jack, on their next walk, what she was going to do. She spoke of her plan out loud to him, and felt a surge of relief at having made her decision. On one of their stops for
Jack to graze, she leant her entire weight against him and felt herself shudder. Then she saw that mysterious tears had clotted a small part of his coat.

The next day she booked an appointment with her mother’s doctor in Manchester. Within the week he confirmed it: she was pregnant.

F
or two months Prue kept the news to herself. Only Jack the Lad, had he known about human pregnancy, would have been aware of her condition for
often when he stopped to graze Prue was sick beside him. She was aware that she looked wretched – unusually pale, and patches of grey skin that had swelled slightly under her eyes. She
brushed rouge thickly over her cheeks and hoped Barry noticed nothing. From time to time she saw Bertha give her acute, prying looks, but that was not unusual.

Impatiently she waited for the joy of pregnancy to consume her, but she waited in vain. Perhaps, she thought, once she felt better, the anticipated happiness would arrive. Behind this hope
snarled the desolate thought that her old dream of having a child by a man she loved was not going to happen, and pregnancy was no consolation for all that was missing in her marriage. So she
continued to keep her silence. There was a particularly wretched morning when the smell of a bucket of chicken feed made her retch into a hedge by the chicken run and Johnny, from his window,
pointed to her white cheeks. She was tempted to run to his flat, tell him, seek comfort. Instead she waved back, smiling.

One evening, pregnant for almost four months, her secret was blasted by a stodge of rice pudding produced by Bertha for supper. Topped with a blob of seedless raspberry jam, Prue saw it as one
of the housekeeper’s challenges. She always forced herself to eat even the most unappetizing of the woman’s food, for to leave it, she felt, would mean triumph on Bertha’s part.
But as she crushed the jam into the loathsome mess, she felt her gorge rise: strange, for she usually felt fine in the evenings. She rose, ran from the room, no time to explain to Barry, and
upstairs to the bathroom.

When she had rinsed her mouth, and washed her face with cold water, she felt able calmly to return. Barry had left the dining room. He had moved his own helping of pudding to one side of his
plate – a rare gesture. Prue had always guessed that he liked Bertha’s cooking no more than she did but was nervous of causing offence.

Prue moved to the sitting room. Barry was in his chair, cigar already lighted, smoke moving blowsily above his head. ‘Ah, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘What was the
trouble?’

‘That rice, Barry. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t—’

‘It was little thick,’ Barry agreed.

Prue took a seat opposite him, rested her chin on clasped hands. ‘But also,’ she added, ‘I’ve not much appetite, these days. I feel queasy quite often. I mean, in the
mornings.’ She did not want to use the word ‘pregnant’ herself. She wanted Barry, sometimes a dim idiot, to guess.

‘Anything wrong? Are you ill?’

Prue hesitated. ‘I’m pregnant. Having a baby.’

There was complete silence. Barry waved away a scarf of smoke from his face. Prue could see a dull glitter, more like a second skin than tears, appear in his eyes. He shifted in his seat,
changed his cigar from his right hand to his left. Then, as if enlightened, he stubbed it out in the ashtray. ‘You won’t want smoke around you,’ he said at last, trying to control
an emotional voice. ‘I’ll give up smoking in the house . . .’ A very small smile cracked his mouth, then stretched into a bigger one. There was a flash of his gold tooth. He
heaved himself out of the chair, stood up, patted his trouser pockets with cupped hands. It was plain he was undecided how to act. The smile still intact, he moved towards Prue, took both her
wrists, pulled her to her feet. ‘This is the happiest day of my life, sweetheart. Me, a father! Imagine! You a mother! How about that? Are you excited?’

‘I’ll be more excited when the sickness is over.’ Prue managed a smile.

Barry kissed her on both cheeks, then laid a hand on her stomach. ‘Is it kicking? Don’t they kick quite early?’

‘Not just yet. It’s only a few months.’

‘You’ll have the best private care, of course. And we’ll get a room done up however you want it, a nursery.’ He said the word with great care, for it was not one he had
previously had reason to use. ‘Oh my goodness, sweetheart. This is the news we’ve been waiting for. Trying for. Haven’t we? You must take such care of yourself. You’ll have
to give up all that farm work. You can’t carry on heaving things about. It’s not even necessary. You can lie back reading magazines all day, thinking about the colour of the
nursery.’

‘I don’t heave things about,’ Prue interrupted. ‘Mostly I just walk with the horse.’

Barry, noticing her indignation, decided not to pursue his point. ‘Well, we’ll see.’ He moved his hand from her stomach. ‘And now you’re having a baby I won’t
have to bother you any more. I’ve heard it said sex can be dangerous during pregnancy. We wouldn’t want to take any risks, would we?’

‘Of course not.’ Prue hoped the lightness of her reply concealed the depth of her relief at his plan.

Barry returned to his chair. For a moment he looked with longing at the cigar stub. A hand automatically went to his inside pocket, home of his cigar case. Then, with a small, pathetic laugh, he
forced his strength of will to triumph. His hand returned to his knee, gripped the stuff of his trousers. ‘Silly me,’ he said. Then he frowned. ‘Who else knows?’ The
question was a swift change from mellow to sharp.

‘No one. Of course you’re the first to know.’

‘I’m glad, sweetheart. It’s wonderful. You can’t know how my heart’s bursting.’ He was gentle again. A real tear escaped from one eye.

‘It
is
wonderful,’ said Prue. He deserved the pleasure of her agreement. She would not want him to guess at her honest, muddled sensations. ‘I might go to bed. Early
start tomorrow . . .’

‘Course. You go. Get as much sleep as you can. Is there anything I can do for you?’ Barry’s unaccustomed solicitude was making his voice unsteady. He seemed to be ungrounded by
approaching fatherhood.