The Girls They Left Behind (24 page)

The old man stared at her, his jaw dropping open so that Betty wanted to giggle again. But the look on Mrs Spencer’s face warned her that it would not be welcome and she looked down at her plate instead.

Breakfast was always served after milking, and the kitchen table was crowded, with Mrs Spencer’s sister Iris Blake and her two children hurrying through their meal as well. Mrs Blake was married to an Army captain and had come to stay at the beginning of the war. It was already apparent to the girls that the two sisters didn’t really see eye to eye, especially over the behaviour of the children. But these days there were plenty of people having to live together who didn’t get on, and if you had the room you had to take in someone. It might as well be family as strangers. And at least the children went to school each day in Bishop’s Waltham.

The meal was soon over - no time to hang about, Mr Spencer said as he led them outside again. There was a harvest to be gathered, and more things to learn. And learning made everyone slow, so the sooner they got down to it the better.

‘It’s all the harder because the tractor can’t be used now,’

Dennis told them as they left the house. ‘It takes too much fuel so the horses have come back into their own. And some farmers who don’t have horses use oxen, or even cows.’

The girls looked at him blankly until he explained that the farmers were using self-binders, dragged round the fields by a team of horses, which cut the crop and bound it into heavy sheaves. ‘Then we come along and prop them up against each other in stooks,’ he said. ‘Given good weather, it’ll dry out and then we can stack it up ready for the threshers.’

‘What are the threshers?’ Betty asked, and old Jonas raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Well, it’s not our fault we don’t know,’ she told him indignantly. ‘I daresay there’s quite a few things about towns and ships that you don’t know!’

‘Don’t need to, neither,‘Jonas said, and spat out a piece of straw. Erica gave him a glance of disgust.

Dennis grinned. ‘The threshers aren’t a “what”, they’re a “who”. They go round all the farms in turn with a machine and thresh the stacks. Nobody’s allowed to have them for more than a few days, so they can only do a part of the crop each time they come. It could be March before they’ve finished.’

‘And meantime all my money stays tied up in the stacks,’

Mr Spencer said, joining them. ‘And I don’t want to see any of you smoking near them, understand? One of those stacks goes up in flames, and it’s my livelihood gone for a burton.

Now, are we going to harvest this corn or are we just going to let it stand there and rot?’

Dennis led the way over to the paddock and called to the two big horses. They ambled over and rubbed their noses against his sleeve. He fastened the head collars on and handed one to Betty to lead.

‘Will he come with me?’ She looked a little nervously up at the big head. She was quite accustomed to horses, for many of the tradesmen who called around the streets of Portsmouth still used them, but she had always been warned not to go too close in case they bit or kicked. This one had long yellow teeth and hooves as big as dinner-plates.

‘He’ll follow his mate.’ Dennis turned to go out of the paddock. ‘He’s called Boxer, and this one’s Shandy. They’re quiet as lambs, the pair of them.’

He harnessed them to the binder and the work began. At first, the girls watched and then, gradually, they began to join

The self-binder had a sharp reciprocating knife which cut the torn as the horses dragged it round the field. It was then guided on to the canvas bed by the ‘sails’ which prevented it from falling loose, and transported into the box where it was bunched and tied automatically with sisal string. Finally, the sheaves were cast out into rows, the whole procedure taking place continuously as the horses plodded round and round.

Jonas led the horses. It looked the easiest job, Betty thought, but probably it wasn’t -Jonas had been doing these jobs for so long that he could make anything look easy. And he was very particular about the knife, checking that it was razor-sharp. ‘Makes it easier to cut the corn, and easier to work the horses,’ he said, giving away the information as reluctantly as if it were a precious jewel. He hadn’t forgiven them for their blundering attempts at milking, Betty realised, nor for her answering back at the breakfast table. His look as Mrs Spencer had told him to mind his manners had been murderous.

She sighed and followed the others. Dennis and Mr

Spencer were now following the binder and building the sheaves into stooks, six or eight of them, propped together like a wigwam, with a couple more laid over the top like a roof.

‘That’s to let the rain run off,’ Mr Spencer explained.

‘Come the time they’re dry, we’ll load ‘em on to the cart and stack ‘em, like Dennis told you.’ He surveyed them. ‘Well, I reckon I’ll leave you to it now. You ought to be able to manage a simple job like that. I daresay Jonas’ll tell you when it’s time to knock off for half an hour.’

Half an hour! Betty thought as she laboured in the hot sun for the rest of the morning. Was that all the break they were going to get? Already, it seemed as if they had done a full day’s work. She thought of the dairy in September Street and how she’d grumbled if Mrs Marsh told her to clean out the big fridge. And Mr Spencer had thought they’d look on this as a holiday!

Still, exhausted as she was when she lay on her bed at the end of that first day, she felt a warm glow of satisfaction at what she had accomplished. Building stooks hadn’t been as easy as it looked, but she’d managed to get several standing unaided, although rather drunken-looking, and at afternoon milking she’d managed to draw off all the milk Buttercup had to give, and most of Daisy’s as well. Not bad for a beginner, however much old Jonas might look down his battered nose.

And tomorrow, she’d do better still.

But the next day the girls’ muscles were stiff and sore, and their fingers painful to use. There was no respite from their work, however; cows would be in a worse case if they weren’t milked, Mr Spencer told them shortly, and the country the worse off for lack of milk. And the harvest must be got in. Sun wouldn’t shine for ever.

Mrs Spencer was slightly more sympathetic, but Betty could tell that she was wondering if city girls could ever be up to the demands of farm work. Perhaps old Jonas was right, she thought, and you had to be bred to it. But Dennis hadn’t been, and he could tackle most jobs with a fair amount of efficiency.

‘It was just as bad for me when I started,’ he told them as they sat at the edge of the cornfield one day, taking what shade they could from the hedge for their midday break. ‘I found muscles I didn’t know I’d got and ached in places where I didn’t know I had places! But it all sorted itself out after two or three weeks and I’ve never felt fitter than I do now.’

‘Two or three weeks?’ Yvonne exclaimed. ‘I’ll be dead by then!’

He laughed. ‘No, you won’t.’

‘Well, I’ll probably wish I was,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t you reckon so, Betty?’

Betty smiled and shrugged. ‘I think Dennis is right. I’m feeling better already. My fingers hardly ached at all when I was milking this morning.’

‘That’s because you did hardly any milking,’ Yvonne grinned. She looked at Erica, who was sitting a little apart from them reading her latest letter from Geoffrey. ‘What d’you reckon, Eric? Think we’ll have snuffed it by the end of next week?’

The blonde girl glanced up. Her china-blue eyes were cold and as they moved over Dennis her lip curled slightly. Her voice was stony and bitter.

‘I don’t suppose so. I expect we’ll all be just as alive as we are now, even those who don’t deserve to be.’ She glanced down at the letter still held between her fingers. ‘But there’ll be plenty who will be dead, men like my Geoffrey, who’ve ready to risk their lives to save other people’s skins. Even the yellow ones who aren’t worth saving at all.’ With a sudden movement, she crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into her pocket, then scrambled to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s get on with the stooking. Let’s show what girls can do to help win the war.

It’ll make up for some of the company we have to keep.’

She strode away towards Jonas, who was removing the horses’ nosebags. Dennis gave them a rueful glance and followed her and Betty and Yvonne stared at each other.

‘Well!’ Betty exclaimed. ‘What d’you make of that? What did she mean about yellow skins? We’re not fighting to save Chinamen, are we?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Yvonne said quietly. ‘But I don’t reckon she meant that sort of yellow skin, anyway. She was talking about our Dennis. Didn’t you see the look she gave him - or the way he looked at us?’

‘Dennis? But why? He’s not a coward. He’s just doing farm work, same as we are.’ Betty frowned. ‘Ever since we arrived here, Erica’s had it in for Dennis. And I don’t understand why, do you?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Yvonne said slowly. She rose to her feet and dusted breadcrumbs off her dungarees. ‘But I think Erica knows a bit more about Dennis Verney than we do. And tonight I’m going to ask her just what it is.’

She walked away to join the others, and Betty collected up the greaseproof paper Mrs Spencer had wrapped their sandwiches in and smoothed it out carefully to be used again next day. She thought over the past week, trying to pick out things Dennis had done which could make Erica dislike him so bitterly.

There was nothing. All she could think of were his hazel eyes, so often laughing. His ready smile. The way he was always ready to help or encourage any of them who needed it.

The way he had folded his hands over hers as he showed her how to milk Buttercup …

I don’t think there’s anything suspicious about him, she thought, pulling herself to her feet. I don’t think there’s anything at all.

‘He’s a conchie.’

The word echoed around the attic bedroom and seemed to hang in the air as if waiting for someone to pick it up. Yvonne was the one.

‘A conchie? What’s that?’

Erica looked at her contemptuously.

‘Don’t you know what a conchie is? A CO. A conscientious objector. He won’t fight.’

Yvonne’s brow furrowed. ‘What do you mean, won’t fight?

Won’t fight who?’

‘The Germans, of course. He won’t go in the Forces. He probably won’t even help make aeroplanes or munitions, or anything to do with the war. He’d rather leave it to someone else. People like my Geoffrey.’

By now the girls had heard a good deal about Geoffrey. He was a pilot stationed at Tangmere and would be coming to the farm soon to see her, Erica promised. But at present, like all the other airmen, he was too busy fighting.

‘They have to be ready all the time. When the German planes are seen coming, they have to scramble ‘

‘Scramble?’

‘Run for their planes. It’s like a race, Geoffrey says, to see who can get into the air first. He flies a Spitfire, and they have to get right up above the Germans and shoot them down.’

Erica stopped abruptly, obviously wondering if she had said too much.

‘It’s all right,’ Betty said. ‘We’re not fifth columnists. We won’t tell anyone what Geoffrey does.’

‘It’s not you. It’s that Dennis. I still don’t trust him.’

That was just before she had discovered what he was. Now she despised him even more.

‘He’s a coward. He pretends he won’t fight because he’s got principles against it, but it’s really because he’s too frightened. Principles! Does he think he’s the only one with principles?’

‘What sort of principles?’ Betty asked. In the week that they had been at the farm, she had grown to like Dennis more and mote. Her dad would have approved of him, she thought. But if he was a CO …

‘I thought you had to go into the Services if you were called up,’ Yvonne said before Erica could answer. ‘I didn’t think there was any choice.’

‘There isn’t, unless you can prove you’ve got principles.

But some of these people will go to prison rather than fight for their king and country.’ Erica’s voice was bitter. She stared out of the window. ‘I’m going to apply to be moved. There’s still no sign of me having a room of my own, and I’m not stopping where there’s a conchie. I don’t see that anyone can force me to do that.’

Yvonne shrugged. ‘Suits us. We might get someone who’s not too toffee-nosed to speak to us. And I think Dennis is nice.’

‘You would.’ Erica turned her back and went back to the letter she was writing. She wrote long epistles to her Geoffrey and the other two wondered when he got time to read them, if he was so busy. And what could she be saying? It must be one long grumble.

Betty too was writing a letter. She wrote to Graham every day, and to Bob Shaw at least once a week. Now she had to write to her parents and Olive as well. But at least there was plenty to write about.

By the end of that first week, any romantic notions that the girls might have had about country life had been firmly dispelled. The weather was still fine, but there was little time to bask in the sunshine. Apart from the harvest there were cows to be milked twice a day, pigs to be fed and sheep to be dipped. Betty, who had been so eager on that first morning to learn to milk a cow, began to feel as if she had only to finish with one animal to turn and find a line of others awaiting her attention, and her dreams were a turmoil of milking, feeding and dipping.

‘I thought I was dipping Roger last night.’ she told Yvonne.

Roger was the bull and lived by himself in a pen close to the farmyard. He was black and white, and the girls had been told not to go anywhere near him.

Yvonne laughed. ‘I bet he put up a fight.’ She looked ruefully at her hands. ‘How are your blisters, Bet?’

All the girls had blisters on their hands from using unfamiliar implements, and sore muscles all over their bodies. They were scratched and bruised, and the sun had burnt their faces and arms. Betty’s nose was peeling and Erica was frantic about her red face.

‘Geoffrey said he’d come this weekend. I can’t let him see me like this.’

‘Go on, he’ll see you looking a lot worse than that when you’re married,’ Yvonne retorted. ‘How are you going to manage about your curls then?’