Once a Land Girl (3 page)

‘Here’s to . . .’ he said, breaking the silence at last. He held up his glass of champagne, urging Prue to do the same with a nod. Their glasses clicked.

‘Here’s to what?’ asked Prue, with a smile.

‘Who knows?’ Barry smiled too. Somewhere towards the back of his mouth there was a very large gold tooth. So perhaps he had gold taps as well, thought Prue. He leant back in his
chair, allowing a spread of light from a corner lamp to illuminate his heavy but adequately proportioned features. Prue guessed he must be forty, or thereabouts. A touch young for her mum but, she
reckoned, if he gave her some sort of opening, she’d try to find out what he had made of her, though she had little hope for this plan. What mattered was that he had a nice face, kindly. The
wide-apart, frog-like eyes blinked slowly, taking her in so intensely she felt herself blush. She fixed her eyes on his maroon tie – not, she knew, artificial silk but the real thing. Then
they moved over the pin-stripe suit, stripes a little too wide for her taste but a fine bit of cloth. Pre-war, she supposed. Everything about Barry Morton, including a visible paunch, indicated
money.

‘What a lucky man I was,’ he said, ‘finding you like that the other night. I was only being a good Samaritan. The bonus was that you and your mum turned out to be a couple of
good-lookers. I thought, They’ve got something, those two. Took me a week to decide whether I should follow up our meeting. Then I decided, what the hell? Go for it, Barry. They can only say
no. When I say “they”, of course I meant you. Threesome’s aren’t much fun, and I’m a touch on the young side for your mum, lovely lady though she is.’

‘Yes.’ The idea of recommending her mother’s qualities was quickly blasted.

‘But I imagine what you’ll be wanting to know about is me.’

Prue nodded, hoping her expression was suitably enthusiastic. She finished her drink quickly. Barry Morton waved at a woman behind the bar, signalled that she should bring two more glasses. It
seemed he was the only man in the bar who did not have to get up and fetch his own drink.

‘Born and brought up in Manchester. Father a scrap-dealer. Not a bean to begin with. My two brothers and I shared a bed, outdoor toilet, all that. But did that man work! My dad? Ended up
with a bit of money, took my mother for a Southend holiday, tried to make up for all the years of hardship, bought a nice bungalow – all that. Left each of us a small lump sum, enough to buy
my first car. I’d always been car mad. I resprayed it, sold it for a profit, and I was off. Ended up buying a house, then another for rent, and now I own most of a street. Well, I exaggerate,
if the truth be known. I own a couple of other houses in my street. But twenty, thirty years from now they’ll be worth a fortune. Prue, I tell you, I’ll be a very rich old man. When the
country’s back on its feet again the housing market will shoot up, mark my words.’

In the next two hours Barry furnished Prue with many details of cars he had bought and sold, the size of the profit he had made on each one. He went on to describe his house: ‘Lovely
place, wall-to-wall carpets, chandeliers, three-piece suite in the best leather money can buy—’

‘Gold taps?’ Prue, who had not spoken for so long, put the question with a laugh in her voice so that he should not think she was serious.

Barry paused, fussed at his dying cigar with a new match. ‘Ah. There, Prue, you’ve caught me out.’ He laughed. ‘No gold taps so far, though there could be one day if ever
I find a wife who wants such things. I’ve got a nice line in brass taps, mind. Take a bit of cleaning, but worth the effort.’

Prue cast him a look of profound understanding – the kind of look that would indicate she would never be that kind of wife. She glanced at the clock above the bar: time for Barry to ask
his first question.

‘And you, Prue? What’s been your life?’

As the question did not reverberate with an aura of deep interest, she decided to mention just one era. ‘I was a land girl,’ she said.

Three glasses of champagne had made Barry’s cheeks a lively red – a cranberry red, Prue thought.

‘Very interesting,’ Barry said. ‘Admirable, admirable. I used to look at photos of land girls in
Picture Post
. Sexy, weren’t they?’ The tip of his tongue
slithered halfway along his bottom lip, making it glisten.

‘I don’t know about that. We were just ordinary girls, really.’ ‘Was it a good life? Better than munitions factories, I dare say.’ Prue sighed. The champagne had
made her sleepy. Barry’s interest did not seem keen enough to spur the energy for a proper reply. Here, in this doleful pub, the lights an ugly orange, the air thick with smoke, she knew she
could not begin to convey to this stranger the highs and lows of the time at Hallows Farm. And she didn’t want to. They were private, stored in her mind for revisiting when hours in the salon
became almost unbearable. ‘It was a good life,’ she said at last.

That was enough to satisfy Barry. He suggested it was time to take her home.

They did not speak in the car. Prue found it hard to keep her eyes open. He took her arm as they swayed up the garden path, and when she faced him to thank him for the evening, he put a hand
round her wrist. It was warm and encompassing as a muff – Mrs Lawrence had once given her a muff made of rabbit skin – which Prue found reassuring. She had vaguely imagined there might
be a tussle. But there was not so much as a peck on the cheek. Barry merely said that if it suited her they could go out again some time. Plainly, as Prue told her mother next morning, he was a
gentleman.

For several months they went out once or twice a week, to different pubs that all suffered from the same lighting and smoke. Champagne was not offered again, but Barry urged
Prue to try various cocktails. Proud of his cocktail knowledge, he would give strict instructions to the barman, whose pursed lips indicated instructions were not necessary, he knew his job –
and Prue grew to love White Ladies. The first cocktail would lull her into a mood of rather odd contentment. Barry Morton was not an exciting man, but he was easy to be with – Prue simply had
to ask a question about his rise in the world and she could sit back for an hour or so while he described his progress in unsparing detail. It did not occur to her to be offended by his lack of
reciprocal interest: it was a relief. She felt no inclination to talk about herself. There were no jokes, as there had been with Barry One. No laughter, except when Barry came to a part of his
story in which some woman had behaved so badly that he had been obliged to give her a comeuppance she was unlikely to forget. At these parts of the story – and there were quite a few –
Barry growled with laughter, but he laughed alone.

The outings always ended in the same way: a decorous goodnight in the porch, the muff-grip of his hand on one wrist.

‘I can’t think what he gets from our evenings out,’ Prue said to her mother. ‘He doesn’t fancy me, that’s plain.’

‘I wonder what he’s up to?’ Mrs Lumley had kept this question to herself for several weeks. ‘Perhaps he just wants companionship.’

‘No man in his right mind just wants companionship,’ said Prue. ‘Most of them don’t want companionship even after they’ve had their way.’

‘Dare say you know best,’ replied her mother, who had always secretly wondered whether her daughter had clung to her virginity during her days as a land girl.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Prue assumed a look of such total innocence that Mrs Lumley quickly chided herself for ever having thought badly of her daughter. They both laughed for
their different reasons.

The evenings had begun to lighten. One Saturday, as Prue climbed into the passenger seat of the Daimler (the grasp of its huge front seat was by now wonderfully familiar) Barry
Morton looked at her and frowned. ‘Not that blue again,’ he said. ‘You’ve worn it every time. I’m not partial to blue, though I’ve kept it to myself.
Haven’t you anything else?’

Prue tilted up her head, caught his eye in a defiant glare. ‘It’s my best dress,’ she said. ‘I wore it at the Palace. And no, I haven’t anything else that’s
suitable. I mean, what if one evening you decided to take me somewhere posh?’

Inadvertently she had delivered a punch below the belt. Barry blew out his cheeks, amazed to discover what had been going on in Prue’s mind. All these weeks she’d seemed to be quite
happy, now she was confessing she’d been hoping he’d take her somewhere better. Why hadn’t the thought occurred to him? He had no idea. But he was full of remorse. His hand
searched for her wrist and took it in the usual soft grasp. ‘I’m sorry. I really am. I never thought – well, I thought we were quite happy having a drink, chatting, getting to
know each other . . .’

‘Oh, we’ve been quite happy. It’s been good going out with you . . . just a bit different. But then I’ve never been out with an older man before.’

This new blow – he had never thought of himself as an older man – caused Barry to reach for his wallet. He took out a five-pound note, the huge piece of fragile white paper folded
into crisp edges, its black script a beautiful pattern scrawled across it. ‘Here, take this,’ he said. ‘Get yourself a couple of new dresses and we’ll go somewhere grand.
Bright lights, pancakes set alight, crapes they call them—’

‘I can’t take money from you. Thanks all the same.’ Prue handed back the note.

Barry pushed it away impatiently. ‘I want you to.’ Prue heard the truth of this in his voice. She resisted no more – too much resistance, she had learnt, meant you could miss
out on valuable things. She put the note in her bag. Never having been in possession of so much money in her life, she felt light-headed.

‘You treat yourself,’ Barry was saying. ‘If you need more, you only have to say the word.’ There was a catch in his voice, a softness she had not detected before. Had
kindness or nefarious intent spurred such generosity? Prue wondered. It was the last time she wore the blue dress.

The following week Barry arrived in a tie that shone like beaten gold, and Prue wore a new dress of amber crêpe that fluttered round her legs like a breeze. It had taken
most of her saved coupons and was, her mother assured her, a wonder. Barry’s look was complimentary. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘That makes a change.’

They drove to a large hotel in the centre of Manchester where Prue went round the glass entry doors several times. She had never been to such a place before and the view of red carpets, pillars
and posts with golden edges made her laugh.

‘You’re quite a child sometimes,’ Barry said, when she had finished merry-go-rounding. ‘You need looking after. You could do with a firm hand.’ Prue laughed again.
She was used to his slight criticisms. They didn’t offend. She gave him her wrist – a little nervous of all the red carpet – and they went into an enormous white dining room where
a waiter at the entrance gave what Prue supposed was a bow. He showed them to a round table so dazzling with white napery that Prue rubbed her eyes in the way people do when caught out by snow.
There was a confusion of cutlery, too – which knife or fork or spoon should she choose first? Such a collection of silver was unnerving. In a tall thin vase a single rosebud stood at
attention. It would never open, Prue thought, though she chose not to mention this to Barry in case he took it as a reproach. In the great white lake of the place a few other diners sat at
far-apart tables like people stranded on islands. Their mouths moved, but there was no sound.

Barry guided Prue through the short menu with some delicacy. Not a French speaker himself, a decade of studying menus had left him with a certain ability to understand culinary language, made
easier, these days, by the paucity of post-war choice. Prue was impressed and agreed to all his recommendations. She was further impressed by his exchange with the wine waiter, mentioning names and
vintages that meant nothing to her.

As they ate their miniature cutlets, almost hidden beneath paper ruffles, and Barry spoke of the childhood love affair with cars from which his present business had begun, Prue studied his face.
She had never seen it before in such a good light: the pubs had all been so gloomy. Here, the dark eyes sparkled, the pockmarked nose shone. The thin line of his top lip was less noticeable when he
smiled: a smile also reduced the heaviness of his long jaw. Not exactly handsome, thought Prue, though from a distance he might be considered quite passable-looking. But she was aware of being used
to his face, fond of it. She regarded him as a kindly uncle. She was grateful to him for taking her out in his amazing car, buying her as many drinks as she wanted, and now bringing her to this
place. Most of all she was grateful that he had not tried any hanky-panky, and it looked as though he never would.

Three elderly musicians entered in an orderly line, crossed the small dance-floor and took up their positions. They wore dinner jackets whose shoulders were uniformly bronzed with wear. Prue did
not see a look pass between them, but when the pianist gave a slight nod they started to play a somnolent version of ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. Barry jumped up so fast he knocked over his
wine. Red surged over white. From behind pillars several waiters ran to deal with the emergency. ‘Dance, Prue?’ he said, holding out his arms.

Here goes, she thought, embarrassed by all the fuss at the table, such tall strong rather handsome men dealing with a mere glass of spilt wine. Here goes, Mum’s wish come true:
fox-trotting.

In her high heels, Prue was only an inch shorter than Barry. He led her through the maze of tables to the floor. One other couple had got there first. Married, they looked, as they gently rocked
like an old boat at low tide. Barry put one hand round Prue’s waist: he held her hand very high, as if clutching a long skirt to avoid a wet street. He moved, tilting his head fractionally
toward her.

Barry was a dancer whose enthusiasm outreached his talent. As they traversed the floor Prue was aware that, while his feet kept in time, his body lacked the essential rhythm to match her own.
She longed for him to be livelier, but that was plainly beyond him. His Brylcreemed head bent lower towards hers: to avoid it, she was forced to bend her neck into a painful position. ‘Gee,
it’s great to be walking back late, walking my baby back home,’ slurped the music.