The Girls They Left Behind (25 page)

Erica twisted bandages into her hair every night to keep the ringlets in. Tight-lipped, she would turn her back on the other two and work in front of a small mirror which she propped on her bed. She applied a thick layer of cold cream to her face as well, and caused Yvonne to hoot with laughter the first time she saw her.

‘You look like one of those pictures of Hottentots! Only they’ve got black spiky hair and black faces. Doesn’t she, Bet?’

‘She looks like a negative of one,’ Betty said. ‘My brother Colin develops his own photos when he’s home and she looks just like the negatives.’

Erica scowled. But she continued to bandage her hair every night and to cream her face, and Betty had to admit that the fair girl’s skin was standing up to the ravages of long days in the sun better than hers or Yvonne’s. It was red, but it wasn’t peeling.

Erica didn’t answer Yvonne’s jibe about her curls. She peered at herself in the mirror and rubbed in a little more cold cream. Then she took Geoffrey’s photograph from the wooden box which served as a bedside table and gazed at it.

‘I hope he’ll be able to come over,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly three weeks since I saw him. And they got bombed there too, you know. He could be killed any day.’

Betty felt sorry for her. She was righ’I, Tangmere had been bombed. And Geoffrey was in danger every time he took to the air in his Spitfire. Every night the evening paper had carried reports of the battle that was going on overhead, the number of Germans shot down, the number of RAF planes lost. The Germans had always suffered more, but that didn’t make any difference. There were still British pilots being killed every day.

The sirens could be heard even here, out in the country.

Every day the girls could see the planes coming and watch the dogfights going on overhead. They heard the dull thud of the bombs in the distance. Sometimes the bombers came further inland and turned to fly back over Portsmouth in an endeavour to escape the harrying of the RAF, and once or twice they jettisoned their bombs over open country. One fell at Fort Southwick, on top of Portsdown Hill, and a plume of smoke rose into the air.

The corn was dry now and ready to be brought into the yard and stacked. This time Boxer and Shandy were harnessed to a wain, which was taken out to the field and moved slowly round while Dennis and the three girls loaded it with sheaves.

Jonas came with them, shaking his head at their efforts.

‘My sainted aunt, you’re about as handy as a cow with a musket,’ he said as Erica struggled to lift an unwieldy sheaf and pass it up to Dennis, who was acting as loader on the cart.

‘Don’t tell me that’s too heavy for you.’

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ Yvonne said. ‘It’s nearly as tall as she is. P’raps you’d be better on the cart, Eric’

‘On the cart? That’s bloody skilled work, that is.’ Jonas passed a disparaging glance over the sheaves Dennis had piled on top. ‘Here, let a man have a go, show you how it’s done.’

Dennis pulled a comical face and jumped down while Betty took the horses’ heads and Jonas clambered up to take Dennis’s place. He stood bent-legged on top of the untidy pile and swifdy dragged them around until they were arranged round and round the cart, butt outwards. Then he looked down at the ring of expectant faces.

‘That’s what they got to look like, see. Tidy. Always remember that everything oughter be tidy - it’ll work right then, see. And keep the middle full - you let that get hollow and it’ll tip, sure as ninepence, soon’s you start moving. Right, now start pitching.’

Dennis took the pitchfork Betty had left leaning against the cart and stabbed it into a sheaf. He swung it into the air and thrust it towards Jonas, who lifted it expertly from the prongs and laid it in position, then turned for the next. Dennis was just lifting it into the air.

‘Well, get a move on,’ the old man snapped. ‘Keep ‘em coming. It wastes time to keep the loader standing around with nothing to do. You girls, you oughter be pitchin’ in as well, not standing idle. It’s not a bloody ‘oliday camp.’

Hastily, the three girls began to do as he told them, stabbing the sheaves with their pitchforks and trying to swing them up as Dennis had done. But like everything else, it was harder than it looked. The sheaves slipped off the prongs and when Betty caught on to the idea of twisting the fork to keep them on, she could barely lift it to shoulder-height, never mind up to Jonas on the cart. And when she did manage to heave one into the air, it refused to come off the prongs again.

Exasperated and annoyed, sweat running down into her eyes, and irritated almost beyond bearing by the flies which had appeared from nowhere and begun to bite her neck and arms, she dropped the sheaf and stared at it helplessly.

‘It’s worse than stooking! I just can’t lift it.’ To her dismay, she felt the tears pricking her eyes and heard the tremor in her voice.

Dennis turned aside from the sheaf he had been about to lift and took her fork from her hands. ‘It’s not really that hard.

It’s just that there’s a knack to it. Look.’ He stood slightly behind her and held her hands over the fork, as he had done with the cow’s udder. ‘Hold it like this, twist it a bit - not too much - and then swing round. See?’ The sheaf rose in a graceful arc straight into Jonas’s arms. ‘Poetry in motion.’

Betty laughed despite herself. It was a comfort just to have Dennis’s arms around her, and his voice murmuring soothingly in her ear. ‘Maybe we should work together all the time,’

she said, and blushed. ‘I mean -I didn’t mean ‘

‘It’s all right,’ he said with a grin. ‘But I don’t think the boss’d like it. Anyway, you’ll be able to do it yourself with a bit more practice.’ He stepped away and thrust his fork into another sheaf.

The work went on. Gradually, the girls became accustomed to the rhythm and although Jonas still complained that they were slow they kept up a steady pace and the cart made several trips back to the yard, where it was unloaded and the sheaves built into a stack to await the thresher.

This was even harder work. The stack was to be built on a frame of poles laid between four rounded rickstones, like stone mushrooms standing about two feet high, taking up an area of about sixteen feet square. The first time that the wain, loaded almost twenty feet high with sheaves, drew up beside the framework, the girls gazed at it in bewilderment.

‘How on earth are we going to get them on?’ Yvonne asked.

‘Does the wain tip over, or something?’

Jonas snorted. ‘Course it don’t! Stack has to be built proper.’ He glanced at Mr Spencer. ‘I dunno why the bloody ‘ell you ‘ad to ask for Land Girls. This lot’d be better off pickin’ flowers.’

‘Give them a chance, Jonas,’ the farmer said. He turned to the girls. ‘It’s a fairly simple job, but like everything else there’s a knack to it. You have two men on the stack, see, one at each end, and two or three up on top of the load pitching down to them. The stack’s built from the outside into the middle, with the heads inside so they’re protected, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘All there is to it?’ Yvonne stared up at the sheaves towering above their heads on the cart. ‘You mean we have to stand right up there, on top? With nothing to stop us from falling?’

‘Don’t have time to fall,’ Jonas said with what they suspected might be an attempt at humour. Yvonne gave him a withering glance.

‘But how do we get up there in the first place?’

‘You climb up,’ the farmer said tersely, and indicated the ropes that had been slung across the cart, dangling down at each end. ‘I suppose you can climb?’

‘Should’ve asked for bloody monkeys,’ Jonas remarked, and for once Yvonne seemed inclined to agree with him. She looked at Betty and hesitated. And what about Erica? She was so small and dainty, she’d never manage a job like this.’

‘I think I can manage,’ Betty said, remembering how she had always liked climbing trees when she’d been a child, playing with the boys. And once someone had produced a long rope which he said had been given him by his father, who was captain of the bellringers at St Mary’s. They had found a tall tree to hang it from and used it as a swing until it snapped, dropping one of the boys in a pile of leaves. She’d often tried climbing that.

‘Well, come on,’ Mr Spencer said. ‘Someone’s got to be first.’

Betty stepped forwards. But to her surprise, Erica was there before her, her small hands already clasping the rope.

‘We used to do this sort of thing in gym at school,’ she said in her clear voice, and began to climb.

‘Look at that!’ Yvonne said. ‘I reckon she went to a different sort of school from what we did, Bet. We never had nothing like that down Rudmore.’

‘Nor at Copnor.’ They watched with admiration as Erica scrambled swiftly up the side of the load, bracing herself outwards with her feet and hauling herself up on the rope.

She had some difficulty in negotiating the overhang at the top, where the load was wider, but eventually she clawed her way over the top and looked down at them triumphantly.

‘Well, who’d ‘ave thought it?’ Jonas said grudgingly.

‘Reckon you did get bloody monkeys after all!’

‘Thanks for nothing.’ Betty grasped the rope and began to climb, copying Erica. But the rope was not like the thin, smooth bellrope she had used years ago. It was thick and rough, scratching her hands. And as she got closer to the top, it was pulled tight by her weight and almost buried in the straw, so that she had difficulty in getting her fingers round it.

The overhang was much harder to climb over than it had looked, too. From below, it hadn’t looked all that large, but when you were underneath it and trying to figure out how to swing yourself out and over the top, it looked immense. It’s like climbing Everest, she thought. However did Erica manage it?

‘That’s it,’ the clear voice came from above her. ‘Pull yourself away-well, not like that.’ She heard Erica giggle.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Betty thought crossly. In swinging herself away from the lower part of the load, she had lost contact with it entirely and was now swinging helplessly in mid-air. Jonas was cackling below, and even Mr Spencer and Dennis were chuckling. She had a sudden picture of what she must look like, and felt her own giggles begin.

Giving up, she let herself cautiously down the rope and stood getting her breath back before having another go. This time, she managed to clamber out under the overhang and scrabble her way over the top. She plonked herself down beside Erica and looked over the side.

‘We’re as high as a house!’

‘I know.’ Erica grinned at her. ‘It’s rather fun, isn’t it?’

Fun! Betty looked down at the others. Their faces were upturned and they looked small and distant. ‘Do we really have to stand on this thing and pitch sheaves?’ she asked dubiously.

It was soon apparent that this was exactly what they did

have to do. As soon as Yvonne, looking rather green, had managed to clamber up beside them, Dennis came up with the pitchforks and they stood up rather shakily, trying not to get too close to the edge as they pitched their first sheaves down to Jonas and Mr Spencer on the frame. Once again, as the farmer had warned them, there was a knack to be discovered. Pitch the sheaf wrong and you felt the rough edge of Jonas’s tongue. Pitch it just right, and the two men could be kept busy, working rhythmically to arrange the bundles of corn neatly on the poles, rapidly building up the stack.

‘At least it gets easier as we go,’ Betty remarked, for the load was lessening in height all the time and the stack growing bigger. But it didn’t stay easy for long. All too soon, they found themselves lower than Jonas and Mr Spencer, pitching upwards, and their arms and shoulders ached.

In the middle of the afternoon, Mrs Spencer came out with a jug of tea and then Jonas went back for afternoon milking.

The girls and Dennis continued to work, with Dennis now back in place on top of the cart. They were out in the field, loading up the last few sheaves, when the siren sounded, and a few minutes later a dogfight began a mile or two away.15

They looked at each other and hesitated. It was safe enough out here, surely? They’d heard of people being strafed by enemy aircraft, but these weren’t interested in a few farmworkers down on the ground, they were too intent on shooting at each other, and saving their own lives. And then Yvonne gasped, grabbed Betty’s arm and pointed.

One of the planes was out of control. It was spinning crazily and diving towards the earth - towards the very field in which they stood. Its engine screamed and little puffs of smoke were appearing in its sides. It was low enough to see the swastika painted on its wings, and above it, harrying it like dogs after a hare, were three RAF planes.

‘It’s going to crash,’ Yvonne whispered as they stared.

The plane’s engine stuttered, almost failed, then stuttered again. Betty could see the cockpit, see the movements of people inside it. She lifted both hands to her face, staring in horror. There was fire there - fire in the cockpit, where the people were. She saw the hood lift, saw a man struggling to climb out, saw the flames.

The horses were going wild. They reared in their harness, almost turning the cart over. Dennis rushed to their heads and began to unfasten the straps, shouting for help as he did so. Trembling with fear, Betty went to the other horse, terrified of his hooves as he plunged. His eyes were rolling with panic. She knew that if they were left in harness, they could easily kill themselves. Sobbing with frustration, she fumbled with buckles and collars, thankful when Dennis came round to her side and loosened the last strap. The horses bolted from between the shafts and galloped madly round the field, neighing with terror.

Overhead, the plane was still veering crazily about the sky, the three Spitfires still firing at it. She could see the rips in the sides as the bullets struck. The man who was trying to climb from the cockpit suddenly stopped and hung helpless, half in and half out. The plane’s engines stuttered again, then suddenly appeared to come back to life, jerking the aircraft out of its downward spin so that for a few seconds it looked almost as if it might recover and level out of its twisting descent.