The Land Girls at Christmas

by Jenny Holmes

  About the Book

  ‘Calling All Women!’

  It’s 1941 and as the Second World War rages on, girls from all over the country are signing up to the Women’s Land Army. Renowned for their camaraderie and spirit, it is these brave women who step in to take on the gruelling farm work from the men conscripted into the armed forces.

  When Yorkshire mill girl Una joins the cause, she wonders how she’ll adapt to country life. Luckily she’s quickly befriended by more experienced Land Girls Brenda and Grace. But as Christmas draws ever near, the girls’ resolve is tested as scandals and secrets are revealed, lovers risk being torn apart, and even patriotic loyalties are called into question …

  With only a week to go until the festivities, can the strain of wartime still allow for the magic of Christmas?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Jenny Holmes

  Read more

  Copyright

  THE LAND GIRLS AT CHRISTMAS

  Jenny Holmes

  In memory of my mother,

  Barbara Holmes, 1923–2008;

  a proud Yorkshire Land Girl

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  LAND GIRLS

  Brenda Appleby – worked at Maynard’s butchers before she became a Land Girl

  Dorothy Cook

  Hilda Craven – warden at Fieldhead House hostel

  Joyce Cutler – farmer’s daughter from Warwickshire

  Jean Fox – worked as a bank clerk before she joined the Land Girls

  Kathleen Hirst – former hairdresser from Millwood

  Grace Kershaw – daughter of Burnside’s pub landlord and blacksmith

  Ivy McNamara – former shorthand typist

  Una Sharpe – former worker at Kingsley’s Mill in Millwood

  Elsie Walker – former groom from the Wolds

  BURNSIDE VILLAGERS

  Maurice Baxendale – owner of a car repair garage

  Bob Baxendale – Maurice’s brother and caretaker at the Institute

  Lionel Foster – the local landed gentry, owner of Hawkshead Manor

  Alice Foster – his wife

  Shirley Foster – their daughter, in the WAF

  Jack Hudson – Bill Mostyn’s footballing pal

  Cliff Kershaw – landlord of the Blacksmith’s Arms and blacksmith

  Edgar Kershaw – his son, an RAF gunner recently shot down over Germany

  Thomas Lund – Bill Mostyn’s footballing pal

  Edith Mostyn – Land Girls representative

  Vince Mostyn – her husband, owns a tractor repair company

  Bill Mostyn – their son, works for his father and is thus exempt from call-up

  Geoffrey Somers – Master of the Burnside hunt

  BURNSIDE FARMERS

  Joe Kellett – farmer at Home Farm

  Emily Kellett – his wife

  Frank Kellett – their son, village misfit

  Henry Rowson – shepherd

  Peggy Russell – widowed three years before, her farm is growing run down

  Roland Thomson – farmer at Brigg Farm

  Neville Thomson – his son

  Horace Turnbull – farmer at Winsill Edge

  Arnold White

  ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR

  Angelo Bachetti

  Lorenzo

  TOMMIES

  Albert

  Jack

  CANADIAN AIR FORCE

  Squadron Leader Jim Aldridge

  Flight Lieutenant John Mackenzie

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Can you believe it? You need eighteen coupons for a decent winter coat.’

  ‘And seven for a pair of shoes.’

  ‘It’ll get worse before it gets better. I hear they’re thinking of cutting us back to forty-eight coupons for the whole year.’

  ‘Blimey – we’ll all be in rags by this time next year.’

  The bus from Millwood rattled along country lanes, up hill and down dale, while Una Sharpe listened to the humdrum complaints of other passengers. She swayed in her seat and looked steadfastly out of the window at the dull brown moors rolling away into the distance, trying in vain to put to the back of her mind memories of busy, bustling streets lined with cinemas and shops, of smoking mill chimneys overlooking snaking canals. It was wartime and it was goodbye to all that. Countryside, here we come.

  ‘Bye-bye, Una,’ her brother Tom had called as he saw her off from the bus station. ‘Be good!’

  Dressed in her new uniform of brown corduroy breeches and green jumper under her short khaki overcoat, she’d waved and tried her best to look cheerful for his sake. Inwardly, she quaked in her stout lace-up shoes. What have I done? she’d wondered.

  What had she done? The question still nagged at her as the bus trundled on. It gave way on a narrow, winding road to a lumbering tractor, paused to drop off passengers at the end of a farm lane and waited in a lay-by for a horse-drawn cart piled high with mud-encrusted turnips to pass. I’ve answered the call – that’s what I’ve done.

  ‘Calling all women!’ On a stifling hot day in the August of 1941, words on a poster outside the Millwood town library had drawn Una in off the dusty street. It had been the middle of a heatwave. Headlines in the Daily Mail crowed over HMS Severn’s sinking an Italian submarine in the Med. In smaller print, people were urged to dig for victory and not to mind about the shortage of razor blades, babies’ feeding bottles and frying pans – not to mention clothes to keep you warm once winter came.

  Why should it only be the Millwood men who join the war effort? she’d wondered. Why couldn’t it be the women, too? Why not her – Una Sharpe, twenty years old and the youngest of five? Three of her brothers had already enlisted – two into the Merchant Navy and one into the army – with only Tom at home because of a bad accident at work in Kingsley’s Mill that had left him with one arm paralysed. Apart from him, there was no one to object to her leaving home; no mother or father – they were both a long time dead – and no sweetheart either. In other words, she was fancy free …

  In a spirit of derring-do she’d marched into the library and asked to see the latest copy of The Land Girl magazine.

  ‘Here you are, love.’ The librarian had slid a copy of the magazine across the counter. ‘Calling All Women!’ shouted the front page. Inside there were photos of Land Girls in action – smiling girls picking apples and others atop hay wagons. The weather was sunny and everyone was smiling. ‘Give me a job where you can see results!’ was the clarion call. There were knitting patterns, too, a cake recipe using powdered egg, a short story and a crossword competition. It showed the enamelled Land Army badge with a wheat sheaf at its centre, inside a gold circle topped by a red and gold crown. Una remembered now that she’d been particularly smitten by that badge.r />
  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ the middle-aged librarian had counselled, having taken a good look at the small, slight girl with dark-auburn hair and lively hazel eyes standing across the counter from her. ‘It’ll be a while before you’re old enough to join up and do your bit.’

  Una had taken offence. ‘What do you mean? I was twenty in April just gone.’

  ‘You don’t look it,’ had been the dubious response. ‘More like fifteen, if you ask me.’

  ‘Twenty,’ Una had insisted before flouncing off. That’s it – I’ll show them I can do any of the work the Land Army throws at me, she’d decided then and there. I can climb up haystacks and pick apples along with the best.

  It was hard now for her to recall that summertime spirit. The good weather had broken and the air had turned crisp before Una had filled in her recruitment form and sent it off to Land Army HQ in West Sussex. Red tape delayed her acceptance until late October when she’d picked up the letter from the mat with trembling hands. She’d torn open the envelope and read its contents.

  ‘Tom – I’m in!’ she’d called up the stairs of the tiny terraced house that she’d shared with her brothers since the deaths of their parents from scarlet fever when Una had been just eight years old.

  Tom came down and took the letter from her. He read it slowly then returned it without saying a word.

  ‘See – the Land Army wants me.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said with downcast eyes. ‘That only leaves me not doing my bit.’

  ‘Tom, no one expects …’ She tailed off into an awkward silence. How could she explain without hurting his feelings that it felt like the right time for her to fly the nest? She took a deep breath then hurried on. ‘I’m to be paid a weekly wage of thirty-two shillings, minus fourteen for board and lodgings …’

  A week later, it was goodbye to 15 Wellington Street, goodbye to Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Bette Davis on the silver screen, goodbye to stone-flagged pavements and narrow alleyways. Hello, green grass and stunted hawthorn trees, black-and-white cows, grey sheep and dreary, rain-filled skies.

  ‘A penny for them,’ her neighbour commented as the bus plunged down a steep dip in the road. The woman who perched on the seat next to Una was not much bigger than her but her white hair was scraped back into a plaited bun and her thin face was lined. A wicker basket was balanced precariously on her knees, filled with a week’s meagre rations of butter, sugar, meat, tea and jam.

  Una pushed sad thoughts of home to the back of her mind. ‘They’re not worth it,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Get along with you,’ the woman persisted. ‘I can tell by your uniform that you’re doing your bit for King and country. That has to be worth crowing about.’

  ‘I’ve just joined up, so there’s not much to say yet,’ Una explained.

  ‘It’ll get you out of munitions work, at least.’ Her neighbour gave a knowing nod. ‘Give me work on the land above standing in a freezing-cold factory making bombs to drop on Jerry any day. That’s your only other option, unless you join the Wrens or the WAAF and that’s not my idea of fun either. I’m Emily Kellett, by the way.’

  ‘Una Sharpe.’

  ‘Well now, Una Sharpe, who’s meeting you off the bus when we get to Burnside?’

  ‘I’m expecting a Mrs Mostyn to meet me outside the Blacksmith’s Arms at four o’clock.’ She trotted out the details that she’d rehearsed in her mind during the long journey.

  ‘Ah yes, Lady Muck.’ Emily leaned across the aisle to poke a fellow passenger in the arm. ‘You hear that, Polly? Una Sharpe here has joined the Land Army and she’s been thrown in at the deep end, make no mistake. She’s being met off the bus by Edith Mostyn, no less.’

  ‘Good luck to her.’ The stout woman named Polly stood up from her seat and rang the bell. ‘This is where I get off,’ she announced as they came to some crossroads. She delivered a parting shot as the bus juddered to a halt: ‘Take it from me, lass – there will be far worse things than Edith Mostyn for you to worry about. Just ask Emily here – she knows what I’m talking about.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Una felt a dart of apprehension that she quashed with a strong dose of common sense. It was obvious that these two old women were enjoying putting the wind up a raw recruit.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Emily said stiffly as she cast a daggers-drawn look at Polly’s broad back view.

  Two boys in school uniform ran, satchels flapping against their thighs, from the back seat of the bus down the central aisle. They hopped off behind Polly and landed with a triumphant splash in a muddy puddle. The bus pulled away again, turning left at the junction, following a sign that read: ‘Burnside – 1 mile’.

  One mile to go. Una took a deep breath and stared ahead to discourage Emily Kellett from pestering her. They sat in silence until they came to the first houses in the village where three more passengers alighted. As the bus eased forward again, Emily gathered her belongings and started to make her way to the front, stopping to talk to a young man in RAF uniform.

  ‘Hello, Edgar, I wasn’t expecting to see you back home this side of Christmas,’ she said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  ‘Hello, Emily.’ The two-word reply was delivered in a monotone – a clear message for the old woman to mind her own business. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, fingers tapping the back of the empty seat in front.

  Thick-skinned Emily ploughed on. ‘I take it you’re home on compassionate leave? Isn’t that what they call it?’

  He scowled then looked away without answering and by now the bus had pulled up under an inn sign saying: ‘Blacksmith’s Arms’. All the remaining passengers, including Una, stood up and filed towards the front, leaving Emily no option but to alight into the pub yard. The RAF man sat in surly silence until the bus was empty. Then he got off and lost no time in making his way towards the pub entrance. He walked with a limp and paid no attention to the goings-on around him.

  A pale young woman appeared in the doorway to greet him. She was tall and her fair hair was swept clear of her face, kept in place by a green scarf tied turban-wise around her head. ‘Edgar,’ she said with a brief smile before taking his hand and ushering him inside.

  Intrigued by the subdued greeting and wondering who they were, Una turned her attention to the other people in the yard. She watched Emily hook her shopping basket over the handlebars of an old bike before stepping up spryly into the saddle and pedalling off down the main street. A broad-shouldered, balding man wearing a leather apron came round from the back of the low stone building to speak with the bus driver who gestured towards the pub entrance. The man in the apron then disappeared inside. So far as Una could see, there was no sign of Mrs Mostyn, the Land Army representative she was due to meet.

  She waited for five minutes, watching more comings and goings. A lad with a mop of floppy ginger hair led a shire horse up the street, the clip-clop of its hooves warning of their approach. Una had to step to one side as they crossed the yard and the boy tethered the grey horse to a post outside a wide entrance into what she guessed was the blacksmith’s forge, which formed an L-shape with the main building. He glanced at Una in her too-large, brand-new uniform and gave a smirk. Then he turned his attention to the rider of a motor bike who had screeched to a halt outside the pub.

  ‘Watch out, Malcolm Campbell!’ the boy yelled, as the horse tried to shy away from the engine’s throaty roar. ‘You’ll have Major yanking this post clean out of the ground if you’re not careful.’

  Una was surprised to see that the rider of the motor bike was a woman in faded overalls, mud-caked wellington boots and a black leather pilot’s jacket. Catching sight of Una, she ignored the farm lad, set her bike on its stand, then made a beeline towards her.

  ‘Una Sharpe?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I’m Brenda Appleby. Mrs Mostyn says to tell you she’s running late. You’re to hang on here until she arrives.’

  She rolled her eyes as she deliver
ed her message, as if to say sorry for the delay. ‘I told Her Ladyship I could give you a ride out to Fieldhead on the back of the bike to save her the trouble, but she was having none of it.’

  ‘Are you a Land Girl?’ Una couldn’t be sure, since Brenda wasn’t in uniform. She looked a real tomboy, with the fleece collar of her jacket turned up. Her dark hair was cropped short and her face still tanned from the long, hot days of summer.

  ‘I am,’ Brenda confirmed. ‘No need to look down your nose at me. I’ve been digging ditches out at Joe Kellett’s place since six o’clock this morning – that’s why I look such a sight.’

  ‘I never said a word,’ Una protested.

  ‘You didn’t have to – I saw your face. The Kelletts have never heard of the fifty-hour week and such like. They’ll work your fingers to the bone doing mucky jobs they’re too idle to do themselves.’

  Una decided on the spot that she liked Brenda, who was as fresh and keen as the air out here, with a cheeky expression and a cheerful disrespect for her employers. ‘I think I sat next to Mrs Kellett on the bus.’

  ‘Talked the hind leg off a donkey, did she?’

  Una nodded.

  ‘That’ll be Joe Kellett’s wife, then.’ At the sound of a car engine, Brenda glanced towards the crossroads. ‘Here comes Mrs Mostyn now, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know why she bothered sending me on ahead, except she likes to dish out orders every chance she gets.’

  The gleaming black car purred to a halt outside the pub and Edith Mostyn stepped out from behind the steering wheel – a trim, slim woman in a tweed jacket and matching skirt, well shod in soft leather shoes with small heels that clicked across the cobbles towards Una and Brenda. ‘Thank you, Brenda, that will be all,’ she said dismissively.

  Brenda shrugged and sloped off to kick-start her bike before riding off in a cloud of petrol fumes and blue smoke.

  ‘You must be Una.’ Edith’s tone was self-assured. Her arched eyebrows and high forehead gave her an aristocratic air. ‘I was expecting someone a little more robust. And you’re not very tall, are you?’