Once a Land Girl (33 page)
Prue spent the afternoon in Marlborough. She came back triumphantly with several bags of the best food she could find. ‘And,’ she said, as they sat at the kitchen table crowded with
her purchases, ‘guess what. A Mars Bar! I found the last one in some sweet shop. If we cut it into thin slices, we can make it last a week.’
‘I don’t believe it – Mars! You know how I love it.’ Johnny’s cheeks were suddenly pink. ‘Thank God you’ve come.’
‘Well . . .’ Prue sat back, looking round the kitchen – almost as depressing, she thought, as the Ganders’. ‘You know what I’ve been thinking? I’m going
to clean this place up for you, starting tomorrow. I’ve bought scrubbing brushes, Sunlight soap, Dettol, everything.’ She giggled. ‘This time next week, you won’t recognize
the place.’
‘You’re an angel,’ Johnny said again, too grateful and relieved to think of a better compliment. ‘If you really don’t mind.’
‘You know me. I love hard work. A project. I’ll enjoy it.’
‘I’ll keep out of your way. I’ll be in the shed all day, working on a new table which I’m hoping to sell to some man of impeccable taste, though I haven’t come
across him yet. I’ll have to advertise, as you say.’ Once again he touched her hand very briefly, as if he didn’t dare let his skin meet hers for more than a second.
‘I’ll be in charge of the chickens. You be in charge indoors.’
‘Fine.’ There was a waft of doubt at the back of Prue’s mind. For how long would she be happy spring-cleaning someone else’s cottage – she who yearned to be outside
working the land, milking cows, dagging sheep, ploughing? She decided not to think about that for the moment, and began to pile tins of soup into a dirty cupboard which, later, she would scrub.
That evening, Johnny drove the Sunbeam to a pub beside the nearby canal. There was a lighted fire, and a few locals at the bar. Having chosen a table, Prue went quickly to order two ginger beers
– she remembered Johnny had once said it was his favourite drink. He smiled when she put the tall glass in front of him.
‘So.’ Shaven, and in a clean shirt as requested, Johnny looked more like his old self. ‘I’m out of touch with all your activities. What went on in Norfolk?’
As she began to tell him, Rudolph came stingingly back to Prue. She realized she had only three days before the letter she had promised was due. She also realized that for one whole day,
occupied with Johnny’s problems and his filthy cottage, she had not given Rudolph a thought. Johnny, a rather sad friend, as she now thought of him, had shown apparent approval of her Norfolk
adventure. He seemed to be uncritical of her lively week. Perhaps it was his understanding that made Rudolph fade a little.
‘My guess is,’ said Johnny, at the end of the story, which had taken them from tinned mulligatawny soup through tough liver and on to blancmange the colour of sore bunions, ‘is
that you’d soon be homesick, so far away. You’re so deeply rooted in English earth. I think you’d be happier . . . here.’
Prue longed for a gin and lime but did not dare suggest it. ‘If I stay, I must get a proper job,’ she said. ‘I can’t just stay in your cottage scrubbing and cooking,
grateful though I am for a roof over my head.’
‘Of course not. We’ll start looking next week,’ Johnny agreed, in a voice hollow with reluctance.
‘We will. That is, if . . . I decide not to go to America. If . . .’
‘But you said you’d definitely decided not to go?’
‘I have. But perhaps not completely. It’s so difficult to be absolutely sure. One moment I’m certain about one direction, the next I’m certain of another.’
‘I’ll have to try to help you make up your mind.’ Johnny looked down at his empty glass. His fingers tightened on it. Prue could see he was exercising control. She suggested it
was time they left, and gave him her purse to take to the bar to pay. ‘You think of everything,’ he said, when he returned with the change.
When they got back Prue went straight to her room. She said she had to write to Barry and Rudolph.
This caused Johnny anxiety about the lack of a table in her room. He ignored her declarations that she was happy to write on her knee, and went out to his shed with a torch. He returned a long
time later with a wooden packing case, which he heaved slowly upstairs, apologizing for not having anything better. Finally, the packing case placed by the bed, he left her with a wistful look that
he quickly replaced with a smile. She heard the door of his bedroom bang very hard.
Prue took out her pack of Basildon Bond paper, chosen for its useful undersheet of ruled lines, and her fountain pen.
Dear Barry, [easiest to start with him]
I want to thank you very much for all the trouble you took to find me somewhere to live. But I have to say that the flat and Brighton were not really for me. It was never going to work out.
I wonder if you ever saw it yourself? It was dark and pretty gloomy. I did go to the pub, not exactly crowded with potential friends, and wandered round the streets, and just felt there was no
future there. Besides, I really didn’t want to be in a town or by the sea. So after one night I left. Now I’m staying with Johnny – I’m his lodger – in a cottage
he has been lent in Wiltshire. It’s a terrible dump, which I’m going to clear up, but a most lovely part of the country, the Downs nearby. I do promise I am only a lodger, not that
I think you would mind if I was anything else. Johnny is sad and lonely and thinks he has made a mistake leaving Manchester. I’m sure I won’t be here long as I will put my mind to
settling somewhere.
Thank you for all that money. You are very generous. It makes me feel safe. I hope Mum is happily settled. You’ve been very good to her. Give her my love. I’ll keep in touch.
Love, Prue
As Prue stuck up the envelope, she remembered both Stella and Ag saying how much they enjoyed writing letters, what a pleasure it was to try to convey to someone exactly what you were doing or
feeling at the time of writing. Ag had said she sent her father long descriptions of her progress in hedging, of Ratty’s eccentricities and Mrs Lawrence’s pride in her fruit trees.
Stella had declared she wrote pages to Philip about everything on the farm, but always ended with a paragraph describing her undying love for him. Prue had said that if ever anyone besides her
mother wrote to her, perhaps she would be inspired to write a good letter back. But she received almost no letters while she was at Hallows Farm, and didn’t mind about this: what she had,
which the others did not, were boyfriends nearby who gave her much more fun than letters.
As she picked up her pen to write to Rudolph, she still did not know what she was going to say: ‘Yes, I’ll come to America’, or ‘No, I’m staying in England.’
She thought she would see what came out of her pen.
Dear Rudolph,
I’m not much good at writing letters, as you will see. I hardly ever need to write them and nobody but my mother writes to me. But I promised to let you know the Answer, so here
goes.
Rudolph, I’ve thought and thought and thought and I still don’t really know what to think. I’ve weighed everything up a thousand times. On the one hand there isn’t a
scrap of doubt that you gave me one of the best weeks of my life. It was like a dream, completely unreal. Every day I felt we were floating. I wanted it to go on and on and on. But you see it
probably was a dream: two people meeting, dancing as one till they could dance no more, bound together by the music and the mutual wanting. But in that glorious week I’m not sure we
really got to know each other, did we? I mean, we were so full of sky and sea and seals, and that scratchy grass stuff on the dunes and the rain coming through the leaves that first
unforgettable time that we didn’t have any need to talk. I liked that very much. I’ve had boyfriends who want to analyse progress every five minutes and I think that’s very
boring. I just like being, as I was with you. But is perfect being the same as long-lasting love? I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone can ever tell if something is for life, so a
decision either way is always a risk, isn’t it?
When I first saw you, and then soon after we started dancing, I said to myself I’d found my man. But then, like all single girls in search of love and a husband, which is how I see
myself now it’s come to an end with Barry, I was full of hope. And it seems to me that when you’re really full of hope you can imagine things. So how do I know whether what I felt
for you was real love instantly recognized or hope in disguise? I do believe we both felt the same, but perhaps you were full of hope too, and you just plonked it on me and imagined it was
real. I don’t know. Maybe all my thoughts are rubbish – I wish Ag was here to sort it out for me, or Mrs Lawrence. I wish you’d met her. She was the most wonderful woman in
the world, so wise. She would have known what we should do. I would have liked her to be my mother.
Anyhow, I think what has always been my dream is very ordinary: married to a farmer, living in the West Country, several children. Well you of course are going to be a farmer, we could have
lots of children, but the only problem is that your bit of country is thousands of miles away. And that, to be honest, is my great worry. I’m rooted here. I passionately love England
– it came to me when I was a land girl and we all had the feeling we were actually doing something for our country, helping in a small way. America is just a shape on a map to me. I know
you would do everything in your power to make me feel at home, but I would never feel at home. I really believe that. I would be in a state of constant missing.
You will say this is daft as I haven’t actually got a home here – The Larches was just a house, and my mother’s house I never thought of as home, and now I just wander
about from Ag to Stella to lodging with friends. Hallows Farm was the nearest ever to home for me, and I know it’s probably stupid but I want to make something like that in England. I
think I wouldn’t be any good at a great leap both of miles and culture. I’m afraid that the a desire to explore the world, travel, live in foreign countries isn’t for me: my
happiness is to live in a few small acres of home land, the local community.
There is one other thing – your pigs. I feel very foolish telling you this, ashamed at my feebleness. But I think I must explain. Your pigs are perhaps the strongest reason of all I
have against emigrating to America. I didn’t tell you in detail, but when I gave birth to the baby in a barn I was attacked by dozens of pigs and it was the most horrible, horrible
experience of my life. I honestly don’t think I could ever go near a pig again, let alone a herd. I couldn’t cope, so I couldn’t help. Pigs are your livelihood. Of course you
couldn’t give them up. I couldn’t ask you to or want you to. So . . .
Since leaving you in Norfolk I tried the Brighton flat for one night and decided to leave next morning. There was no hope of that being the answer. Now I am staying with my old poet friend
Johnny, who lived next door in Manchester and has a very dirty old cottage in Wiltshire, which I am going to spend the next week putting to rights. Just in case that thought is painful, please
believe me when I say Johnny is not a lover. He will never lay a finger on me, but he is kind, lonely and struggling against drink. So I’ll stay with him till I work out what to do. I
hope that will be soon.
Dear Rudolph, I’m so sorry. I hope you will forgive me. I do love you and there are shooting stars all through my body when I think of you. I ache with missing you and I know I will
always be haunted by the thought that I have made the wrong decision. But, uncertain about the strength of our love – would it last, would it? – and cowardly about leaving a country
I love so much, I have to say I won’t be coming to join you in Georgia. Please put me to one side and find a nice girl from Savannah who will deserve you more than me, and please keep the
memory of our Norfolk week, as I will, till you are very old and can look back on it with a smile.
I told you I’m no good at letters but hope you can understand what I’ve tried to say, and I send you very very very much love,
Prue
Prue let her writing pad, pen and ink slide to the floor. She lay on the bed and began to sob. She remembered Stella saying to her – they were haymaking at the time – that if you had
a single doubt about the man you had decided to marry, you shouldn’t go ahead. Stella had not a doubt in the world, she said, about Philip. But then she had fallen in love with Joe. And
because both she and Joe were so honourable they had trapped themselves for married life with spouses they did not love in the same way. It was all so confusing.
Exhausted by sobbing, not long before dawn, Prue decided not to post the letter. This, she knew, would mean all the struggle and heartache of writing another, and the uncertainty would still be
there.
But she got up when it was light, went out into the rain and walked to the scarlet Victorian postbox, attached to a pole at the foot of the Downs, that reminded her of a red-breasted parrot on a
perch. It was the kind of surprise that is sometimes found deep in the English country that she loved. Smiling at the final change of her quicksilver mind, she posted the letter. Done it. In two
hours’ time it would be collected by a postman on a red bicycle who had no idea of the depth-charge he had in his sack. Tomorrow Rudolph would have his answer.
On the way back to the cottage, an amber sky pushing past the grey, she began to plan her day of housework. By the time she had had breakfast with Johnny she felt calm, strong. She looked
forward to scrubbing the kitchen floor. Doubts as to whether she had done the right thing chimed deep within her, but she knew she would have to live with them for the rest of her life.
It took Prue a week to transform the cottage. Each day she carried out a blitz on one room: scrubbed, dusted, shook the cushions, threw out a mass of junk, cleaned the filthy
windows. She left the washing till last, for she most dreaded that. But she got down to it, in batches, with her usual determination. There was an old mangle in an outhouse: there, she spent hours
persuading sodden things into the jaws of the wringer, and listening to the water squeezed from them dripping into a tin bucket. On a couple of fine days she set up a line in the garden and enjoyed
watching the clothes and sheets billow about as the wind turned them into dancing balloons.