Put Out the Fires (28 page)

“Ta.” They were going to feed her!

In fact, the breakfast was delicious. Thick slices of crisp fried ham, two eggs and tomatoes, followed by toast and marmalade.

“Where on earth do you get the tomatoes from at this time of year?” she asked. They were in the kitchen, and Ted, who appeared to have already eaten, was sitting with her smoking a cigarette.

“Edna bottles ‘em.’ He nodded towards the silent figure at the sink with her back to them. Edna had made no attempt to acknowledge Eileen’s friendly ‘good morning’.

“And she made the marmalade and the bread.”

“It’s lovely, Edna, all of it,” Eileen said warmly. “I was never able to make bread as light as this.”

Edna gave no indication she’d heard. Eileen felt her heart sink. It was going to be very difficult over the next few weeks, living in the same house as someone who seemed unwilling to exchange the basic courtesies.

“It’s a lovely room, too,” she said to Ted. “Very homely.” Like the rest of the house, the big kitchen was painted white. There were copper pans hanging on the walls, along with several other utensils that Eileen had never seen the likes of before. The room had a comfortable, lived in look. There were two plump armchairs in front of the blazing log fire and a battery wireless on a shelf nearby. Three cats dozed on the hearth, one heavily pregnant.

“Edna keeps the place looking nice,” Ted murmured.

Eileen noticed Edna’s back stiffen and was aware of a tension between the two. “Now, as soon as you’ve finished, we’ll get down to work. I don’t normally stop for a break at this time of day.”

“I’m sorry.” Eileen gulped down the remains of her second cup of tea. She wouldn’t have minded a third. “I didn’t realise I was keeping you.”

“It’s what you call a mixed farm,” Ted said later as they tramped through the mud. “We have a bit of everything, ‘cept sheep, and it’s not what you’d call big. Three of us managed it afore the war, Horace, Bob and me, but the Ministry insist on every single inch being cultivated and we’re still at work clearing the scrub—that’s why we took on an extra hand - not that you’d call that bloody Peggy much help.’ His bluff red face creased in disgust.

“She’s less than useless, that girl.”

Eileen stopped at the sty to look at the pigs. She’d never realised pigs were so nice. You could almost cuddle the little ones. She kept her thoughts to herself, feeling Ted wouldn’t take kindly to pigs being described as cuddly.

They came to the stables, which contained two fine black and white horses with well-groomed manes and massive fluffy hooves. “This is Bessie, and that’s Warrior,” said Ted. He patted Bessie’s neck affectionately. “They’re the best workers we have.”

“They’re beautiful,” Eileen said admiringly. “I love horses. We have one living a few doors away down the street. He’s called Nelson. He can’t stand the raids.”

Ted was looking at her with astonishment, and she realised it probably sounded strange, a horse living in a street. “Nelson pulled the coal cart,” she explained.

“Where’s that bloody Peggy?” Ted frowned. “I put her to work cleaning this place up earlier on.”

Peggy Wilson came bouncing into the stables, her cheeks and the tip of her fine nose pink with cold. Dark curls spilled out from underneath the felt hat which was set somewhat precariously on the back of her head. She wore dungarees underneath her fawn overcoat, and hobnailed boots. “I’ve just been to the loo,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve nearly finished here.” She noticed Eileen and her eyes lit up. “Oh, hallo! Ted told me you were coming. I’ve been dying for you to arrive so that I’d have some female company.” She glanced at Ted. “It’s horrible working with nothing but men.”

“If you could call it working,” Ted said cuttingly. “Well, I’ll leave you in Peggy’s hands. Once the stables are finished, you can help Horace out with the beet on the west field.”

“Yes, sir!” Peggy saluted smartly and Ted’s red face turned even redder as he marched away.

“He hates me purely because I’m a woman and we aren’t supposed to work on farms,” Peggy said as soon as Ted was out of earshot. “I do my best, really I do, but he always finds something wrong.”

“No-one can do more than their best.”

“Tell that to Ted!” Peggy put her hands on her hips and looked Eileen up and down. “Are you warm enough in that get up?”

“Not particularly, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll have a proper uniform soon enough.”

“You must be keen to start work if you’re willing to live with that awful Edna. What’s she like at close quarters?”

She began to sweep the floor vigorously with a rush broom.

“Horrible!” Eileen told her of the reception she’d got the previous night. “I was dying for a cup of tea, at least.”

“Bitch! Most of the locals hate us land girls, Edna’s worse than most.”

“Why should they hate us? We’re all on the same side.”

Eileen asked in surprise.

Peggy shrugged. “Dunno. They’re awfully old fashioned here, and we seem like liberated women.

We go in pubs by ourselves which women aren’t supposed to do, and the young men like us better than the local girls.

Whenever there’s a dance, we always get asked first, particularly if we’re in uniform.” She put the broom away and slung a khaki haversack over her shoulder. “Come on, we’d better get going. Ted’ll have a fit if he finds we’re still here.”

Once outside the farmyard enclosure, the wind lashed even more keenly across the fields, which were surrounded by bare black hedges offering no protection at all.

The marshes could be glimpsed in the distance, and beyond the marshes, the North Sea glinted dully, like unpolished pewter. Eileen shuddered as she stuffed her hands in her pockets and reminded herself that only very recently she’d found herself drawn to this bleak scenery.

But it seemed different today, bleaker, more desolate and not in the least appealing. As they trudged over the broken, frozen soil, Peggy began to get on her nerves. She had a juvenile, gushing manner and chattered unceasingly, mainly about her mother. Eileen felt she would have preferred to be alone with her thoughts. Her heart sank for the second time that morning. Was it going to be like this every day?

She was an only child, Peggy informed her, and her widowed mother wouldn’t let her out of her sight for a single moment when she wasn’t at work. “Mummy’s only young, forty-nine,” she complained in her breathless, rather childish voice, “and I could see myself stuck with her for the rest of my life. Ever since the war began, I kept wanting to join up, the WRAF or the WRENs or something, but she practically had hysterics whenever I suggested leaving. In the end, I put my foot down and joined the Land Army. At least it means there’s no chance of being sent abroad - not that I would have minded.

Unfortunately, we’re less than an hour away from Ipswich by train, which means she keeps nagging me to come home for weekends.”

“I suppose she’s lonely,” Eileen said reasonably.

“So was I,” Peggy said bluntly, “stuck at home all the time with only Mummy for company. If I suggested going out, she’d feel too ill to be left. I brought a boy back once, years ago, and she nearly had a heart attack.” She stopped. “How old do you think I am?”

Eileen stared at the pretty, unlined face. “About twenty-five, I reckon.”

“I’m nearly thirty and I’ve never even kissed a man. Isn’t that terrible?”

“It’s not exactly the end of the world,” Eileen said brusquely. Peggy’s problems, real though they may be, seemed trivial compared to her own. She felt uncomfortable when Peggy lapsed into silence, clearly hurt at the putdown.

“Was I rabbiting on too much? I’m sorry,” she said after a while. “It’s just that Ted told me about your husband and little boy. I think he was scared I’d put my foot in it. I thought if I did all the talking it would take your mind off things. I must have sounded awfully selfish under the circumstances, concerned only with my own foolish affairs.”

Oh, God! Eileen instantly felt ashamed and full of contrition. It was her that should be sorry. Last night she’d been dead upset because Edna didn’t talk to her, and she’d nearly bitten Peggy’s head off for talking too much!

She apologised for being so short-tempered. “Don’t take any notice of me, luv,” she said. “I don’t know what I want or where I am at the moment. I’m afraid I’d have to ask you to put up with me until I’ve sorted me head out.”

Peggy smiled warmly. “Just tell me to shut up in future.

I’ll understand.”

“You shouldn’t have to. In fact, you’d have been better off with someone single like yourself” They seemed to be two women whose experience of life couldn’t possibly have been more different.

“I prefer someone older like you,” Peggy said comfortably.

“I’m the oldest in the hostel, most of the girls are in their teens. Anyway, there’s Horace hard at work. Now you’ll discover what it’s really like to be a land girl.”

They’d arrived at the edge of a massive field where the recently ploughed black soil was tipped with ice and covered with turnip-like vegetables. A very old man wearing a balaclava helmet and a shabby overcoat was bent double on the furthest side. He looked up as they approached and nodded amiably when Eileen was introduced.

She noticed his uncovered hands were badly twisted, the knuckles swollen to twice the normal size with rheumatism.

“Horace has worked on farms for over sixty years,”

Peggy said in awe. “I don’t know how he stands it.”

The old man’s incredibly wizened face creased into a gentle smile. “There’s no job better than working with Mother Nature. A man comes face to face with his maker every day when he tends the soil.”

Peggy made a face at Eileen over the bent, rather dignified figure of the old man. “He’s a bit touched,” she said later. “When he’s not on the farm, he’s in church, thanking God for letting him work for a pittance all his life for Mr Kinnear and others like him.”

“Poor ould thing. On the other hand, he seems happy, and I suppose that’s all that matters.”

“Perhaps. I’ll show you what’s to be done with this horrible sugar beet.”

Once the tops of the beets had been removed with a sharp knife, they were thrown into a barrow and wheeled to the edge of the field, where they were tipped in a heap for Ted or Horace to collect in the cart.

Kate Thomas had warned her it would be entirely different from Dunnings; the work was backbreaking and much harder. Eileen thought fondly about the factory and her old workmates as she toiled away, remembering the repartee and joking intimacy. She wondered who’d been made overseer now she’d left. She hadn’t seen any of the girls since the Friday night they’d been in and out to look at the red sky over Liverpool during the first of those terrible raids. Incredibly, that was less than a month ago.

At one o’clock, Peggy sang, “It’s dinner time.”

Eileen got painfully to her feet.

“Jaysus! I’ll never straighten me back out again.” She began to walk towards the farm, but noticed Peggy had begun to undo the buckles on her haversack. “Aren’t we going back for our dinner?”

“It’s too far. We eat on the spot.”

“But what about the lavatory?” She’d felt the urge to go for some time, but had been waiting for the dinner break.

“Are we expected to do that on the spot?”

Peggy replied, grinning broadly, “I’m afraid we are.

Either that or the nearest hedge.”

“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! Me belly could bust before I’d go in the open air.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Peggy assured her. “Haven’t you brought sandwiches?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you half of mine, and you can share my tea.

You’d better remind Ted that you’re supposed to have a packed lunch. After all, they take half our measly twenty-five bob a week for bed and board.” She opened a parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper and offered Eileen a sandwich.

Eileen looked at the sandwich warily. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but what the hell is it?”

“Ghastly, isn’t it? It’s beetroot, which soaks right through the bread. It’s all they seem to give us at the hostel.”

They munched in silence for a while. Horace sitting some distance away, seemed to be eating a raw onion. It was even colder sitting still than working and the damp sacks they’d been kneeling on began to seep through their backsides.

“We must be mad,” Peggy said with a giggle, “sitting in a frozen field in the middle of January eating beetroot sandwiches and having to pee in the hedge. All the girls have decided they must be mad.”

“Are you sorry you joined?” Eileen asked curiously.

Peggy shook her head emphatically. “We might be mad, but none of us are the least bit sorry. It’s so much more worthwhile than our old jobs. We’re doing our bit, you see. As for me, I feel free for the first time in my life.

Mind you, we’re too tired at night to do anything except throw ourselves into bed once we’ve eaten, but at weekends there’s all sorts of dances and things to do.” She sighed blissflilly. “Despite everything, I’ve never been so happy.”

“I’m glad,” said Eileen.

“What about you? D’you think you’ll stick it out?”

“Oh, I’ll stick it out whatever happens,” Eileen assured her. Unlike the other girls, she’d already been doing a worthwhile job, but her inspiration for joining the Land Army was quite different. The tedious hard work, the icy cold, her freezing room, Edna’s unfriendly attitude, all these took her mind off the things that really mattered. She didn’t care what job she was given to do or how many hours it took to do it, she’d take it all in her stride and stick it out until, hopefully, the pain inside her lessened, and, as Conor Kinnear had predicted, she’d learn to live again.

Eileen was about to go into the next stall, but found Ted already there. “You nearly got through half this morning, and I’d already started by the time you came.” He chuckled. “You’ll be better than me at this before you know it, and I’ll be out of a job.”

“It seems easy once you get the hang of it,” she said.

Just then, Peggy arrived on her bike and was curtly despatched to collect the eggs and have them ready for the man from the Min of Ag when he called later in the morning.