Once a Land Girl (34 page)

Then there was the ironing. Prue had watched Mrs Lawrence and Stella, both accomplished in the art, while the iron sizzled over sprawling shirts, which, within minutes, were transformed with
neat folds. Prue had rarely tried ironing. But one gloomy afternoon – the week she had allowed for the transformation was nearly up – she plugged in the new decent-looking iron and
began her experiment on the newly scrubbed kitchen table. There was a programme on the Home Service about foot-rot in sheep, which, she thought, Mr Lawrence was probably listening to in Yorkshire,
perhaps Joe, too. It was an oddly comforting thought. There was a pleasing smell of damp cotton, and an undersmell of the bacon she had fried for lunch. Prue picked up the heavy iron, poised it
over one of Johnny’s shirts, and began.

It wasn’t easy, but it was less difficult than she had imagined. A couple of hours later several triumphant piles of ironed clothes and sheets lay at the other end of the table. Prue was
surprised by her own pleasure. Quite an accomplishment, in her estimation. She felt the same elation as the day she had finally mastered milking. All she needed now was a mite of appreciation.

She picked up two of the folded shirts and held them on the flat of her hand. Her idea was to take them to show Johnny now, rather than wait for him to come in for tea. Surely his surprise, and
delight, would equal her own.

She walked across the garden, holding them carefully. The door of the shed was shut. She pushed it open and went in, holding out the shirts on her hands as if she was offering an omelette.
Waited for the surprise, the praise.

Johnny was sitting on a low bench, head down, studying the wood shavings at his feet. He held a hammer in his right finger and thumb, swinging it backwards and forwards. Each time the hammer
thrust forward, it just missed a bottle of vodka, almost empty, on the floor.

‘Johnny?’ Prue stayed by the door. ‘I thought you . . .?’

He looked up, mouth downturned, eyes red. ‘So did I,’ he said.

Prue took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been ironing,’ she said, aware of the banality of her announcement. ‘I just brought these to show you . . . that somehow I
managed—’

Johnny stood up so fast that Prue, caught off guard, stepped back, hitting her head against a shelf that jutted from the back of the door. He was beside her in a single stride. ‘Bugger the
ironing,’ he said, and swiped the shirts from her hand onto the floor. They looked at each other.

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ said Prue.

‘You’re taking over,’ shouted Johnny. ‘Whole cottage antiseptic as a hospital. I was quite happy with things as they were.’ His words were slurred.

Prue was not sure she had heard correctly. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to – I mean, I thought you were pleased at the idea of my getting it all straight for
you.’

‘That’s what you thought. That’s where you were wrong. You’re often wrong, Prue Morton. You’re just no bloody good at reading people. I’d be grateful if you
went away now. Take the bloody shirts with you.’

He stumbled back to sit on the bench. Prue picked up the shirts, now crumpled and dirty again. She hurried out of the shed, shutting the door behind her.

Back in the cottage, the discussion on foot-rot was still going on, which, for a moment, tricked her into thinking that the scene of the last few minutes had not taken place. But the piles of
laundry had lost their charm. Plainly, she was bad at reading people. Her foolish pride about her achievements of the last week, when she had been convinced that Johnny really hadn’t been
drinking, was blasted. He’d been at it secretly in the shed, and had disguised it very well. What, now, should she do? Perhaps the answer was to leave all this very quickly, just as she had
left Brighton. It would be a relief to abandon the probably insuperable problem of Johnny, and send a telegram to Rudolph, saying, ‘I’m coming after all.’

With this plan firmly in mind, Prue went out to the car. To her annoyance, she saw that one of the front tyres was flat. Johnny could have changed it easily, but to ask him was the last thing
she wanted to do. She returned to the kitchen, took the clean linen upstairs. Then she concentrated on making a lamb stew – a local farmer had given them a few chops in return for eggs. She
tried to remember what Mrs Lawrence had thrown into her stews. Then she switched the radio to the Third Programme. A cello, she thought it might be, was playing the saddest music she had ever
heard. If Johnny returned while it was still on she would ask him what it was.

But he did not come in till long after the music had finished. It was dark. Prue had drawn the curtains and switched on the lights. The place looked unrecognizable, but she reminded herself not
to feel any pride in this because she had misunderstood Johnny, and it was not what he wanted. When at last he came in he went immediately to the table and sat down, apparently sober.

‘Smells good,’ he said. Prue gave him a plate of the stew and a baked potato. ‘I’m ravenous. Thanks.’

Prue took the seat opposite him, faced her own small helping. The internal churning had blasted her appetite.

‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Prue,’ Johnny said. ‘Please forgive me. I do promise you that until today I haven’t touched a drop of anything. Your being here has
made a magical difference. Made it easier. Honestly. But today I woke up in one of those amorphous glooms that sometimes accost me, and then . . . something hit me that was the last straw.’
He paused to cut his potato in half, mash into it a small slab of margarine. Prue had miscalculated the length to which their combined rations of butter would go, and once again they had run out.
‘When I went out to see to the hens this morning, I found a fox had got in – it’s never happened before. There were feathers everywhere. And poor old Dolly, one of the first birds
I ever bought, was lying there without her head. I put her in the shed – should have buried her straight away. When I went back to get her after lunch and saw the disgusting sight of her,
blood dripping from the gaping neck, I just became enraged. Once I’d buried her I came back to the shed and couldn’t face getting down to work. Feeble, I know, but I was oddly upset. I
thought, Just one swig, calm myself down. Unfortunately there was a bottle in the shed from when I’d had my bad week before you came. So I opened it, cursing myself.’

‘First thing tomorrow morning,’ said Prue, ‘you must do something about mending the run.’

‘I’ve fixed the weak place for tonight and I’ll mend it in the morning. I will, I will. And I’ve thrown away the rest of . . .’ Johnny sat back, held out his plate
for more. ‘God, I feel better. That was so good. One day you’ll be a cook.’ He gave her a smile, then his eyes roved round the room. ‘I suppose I haven’t really said
anything, have I? Shown appreciation. What you’ve done to this place? It’s an absolute wonder. It’s marvellous.’

‘Almost as hard work as farmwork.’

‘Thank you for all your efforts. I never quite understand you, Prue. There you are, a dotty flibbertigibbet, apparently no thoughts in your pretty head beyond dresses and bows and seducing
young men, yet you’re the hardest worker I’ve ever met. All that rubbish I think I said to you about not being able to read people is completely untrue. I’m so sorry. I
didn’t really know what I was saying. You’re amazing. You’ve been kinder to me than anyone in my life. If I was a different sort of man I’d like to marry you, look after
you, have children with you. But I’m not that sort of man. I’m a loner. I get irritated by another presence, however sympathetic and untroublesome that presence is.’

‘Does that mean you’re giving me my marching orders, now the cleaning’s done?’ asked Prue.

‘Good heavens, no. I love your being here. It’s changed everything. We seem not to get in each other’s way. It’s a perfect arrangement.’

‘It won’t go on for that long,’ Prue said. ‘I’ve got to get a job that I love. I’ve got to find somewhere permanent to live, settle down.’

‘Not too far from here, perhaps.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Don’t give up on me.’ Johnny took one of Prue’s hands. She expected him immediately to withdraw, as he had done several times, but he kept hold of it. ‘I’m
determined to get over this drink business. I’ve done it once – for five years – so I can do it again. I can do it for ever. What I have to guard against is flying to the bottle
when something unexpected, something disturbing, takes me unawares. Like the chickens. Thank God you were here, or who knows what might have happened?’ He released her hand.

‘I’ve tried to make a treacle sponge pudding,’ said Prue. It was so heavy, so dry, so lacking in syrup that they could only laugh, throw it away and make a pot of tea.

Later Johnny gave Prue her first lesson in backgammon. She went to bed feeling quite proud that she had understood a few of the rules, and relieved that the air between them was clear again. All
the same, the scene in the shed that afternoon had alerted her to a wild, alarming streak in Johnny. There was no guarantee that something unexpected would not trigger his drinking, or his temper,
again. That was unsettling. She did not fancy the idea of living with him for too long, for all that she liked the place and her fondness for him remained.

The novelty of spring cleaning had worn off by the end of the week and the urgent need for Prue to find a new and challenging job spurred her to look in the local paper for work. Nothing of
interest was advertised. She asked in the village if anyone knew of a Young Farmers’ Club: the idea of a strapping young farmer, and going to village-hall dances with his equally strapping
farmer friends, suddenly appealed to her. There was, indeed, just such a club, and they were to have an Easter Knees-up, as it was described on the posters, in a nearby village. Prue toyed
seriously with the idea of going to it, without Johnny, but her enthusiasm waned as quickly as it had come.

A letter came from Barry. Prue waited till Johnny – in a much happier mood for the last few days – had gone to his shed before she read it at the kitchen table.

Prue read the letter again. She smiled at the story of the co-respondent. During their marriage he had never told her funny stories. He never reported his private observations. Why hadn’t
he mentioned his misgivings about Johnny? And why had she herself not noticed warning signals beneath her friend’s agreeable but detached exterior? The only time she had been jolted was the
occasion in the barn. But that wildness had been driven by pure lust, and she had long ago forgiven him. Barry’s letter, Prue thought, was altogether surprising. Sometimes he had seemed so
coarse, dull, insensitive. She would never have guessed he could write such a letter, and began to question herself. Perhaps much of the blame for their marriage breakdown was hers. Come to think
of it, she hadn’t tried very hard either to discover things about him or to please him. She had always appreciated his generosity, but scoffed at his belief that endless presents were the way
to a wife’s heart. She had learnt very quickly, married to her rich man, that material goods did not make up for so much else that was missing. Perhaps if she had been more sympathetic she
would have unearthed a man of more value than she had imagined existed. There was nothing she could do now, of course: she had no desire to return to the claustrophobia of The Larches, and she and
Barry probably had too little in common to flame real happiness. His liking of older women meant Prue could never have satisfied him sexually, and his perfunctory approach to making love would
never have fulfilled her. All the same, this bright morning, daffodils jigging at the edges of the garden, Prue felt a kind of guilt, a patina of shame. She decided that the least she could do was
to write him another letter and try to convey a kind of apology.

Prue drove slowly to Marlborough – now she could no longer get Barry’s black-market petrol she had to try to be economical – to buy stamps. Then she went to the newsagent for
Picture Post
. On the way out of the shop she stopped to look at the handwritten cards in the window advertising for baby-sitters, gardeners and shop assistants. One card stood out from the
rest, thick, shiny, expensive, with a printed line at the top: ‘From the Hon. Mrs Ivy Lamton’. Beneath this, in sepia ink, her requirement was written in the most beautiful script Prue
had ever seen, rather like the writing in an old manuscript, reproduced in a magazine article that she hadn’t bothered to read. ‘Would anyone be willing,’ it said, ‘to spare
a few hours a week with an old lady? Companionship, conversation, potting out a few plants, nothing very taxing, agreeable surroundings. Please be kind enough to write.’