Nick ran to the group of people who were dipping milking-pails and buckets into a large cattle trough and rushing back and forth. ‘Form a chain, pass them hand to hand.’
Soon there were enough helpers to form two chains from the trough to the barn, but the trough was fast emptying so he shouted orders to re-form from the pump, telling the helpers to take turn and turn about at the exhausting pumping. Soon there was a rhythm to the passing of buckets, leaving Nick free to go to the head of the chain and direct the water where it would be most effective. The barn was old and dry and well creosoted.
Suddenly there was a roar as something inside the barn fired, blowing outwards at the fire-fighters. He felt the fierce heat and heard a frightening rush of air. ‘Your hair, your hair,’ he shouted to Georgia, and dashed water at her. ‘Here, can I have this?’ A land-girl, with her felt hat rammed down over her eyes, nodded as Nick ripped off her green neckerchief and plunged it in water. ‘Tie this round your head,’ he told Georgia. ‘See if you can find something to cover your arms and tell the others.’ To the tractor driver he shouted, ‘What’s in there?’
‘Not much except a few drums of tractor fuel and that.’
‘What else?’
‘A dozen or so gallons of petrol.’
‘Christ all bloody mighty! Get everybody back.’
‘Let him burn hisself out,’ said the farmer.
‘And take your house and dairy with it? Whereabouts is the fuel?’
The owner pointed out where the store lay hidden: the fire was still well away.
‘I’m going in, if somebody will back up the trailer.’
‘Nick, no!’
It was as though Georgia had not spoken, and in a minute one of the men had mounted the tractor, backed the trailer through the end door and, in a few minutes more, was driving out again with the drums Nick had loaded.
‘Now start pumping again.’
Like the others, Georgia pulled over her head a potato sack with slits hastily made in it and joined in pumping and passing buckets, bowls and milk-pails.
It was not an easy fire to quench, for scattered everywhere was bone-dry straw and hay. ‘Get shovels and spades to beat out the sparks,’ Nick shouted. ‘Find some rakes and get that bloody lot away from here.’ Automatically people obeyed him. It was a struggle. As soon as the flames seemed to be under control, something in the barn would pop or explode and feed the flames. Soon the flames had licked away one entire corner of the barn. Nick appeared to have an almost personal antagonism towards the flames: he attacked as though they were an enemy, not hearing the others shouting at one another, or their swearing and cursing as somebody slipped in the mud or stood on a charred timber – there was only the roar of burning.
He went closer and closer in towards the fire, hurling the water high so that it could cascade more effectively down the clapboard walls. Slowly, slowly the fire retreated. Then it was out, but Nick would not let the coming buckets stop until there was not a wisp of smoke. ‘I think he’s out,’ said the tractor-driver, and there was a united sigh.
‘It’s out all right,’ said Nick.
The shouting and noise faded and there was a peculiar silence, almost as though no one dared to breathe for fear of fanning a spark.
The farmer, black-faced and blistered, came forward and shook Nick’s hand. ‘I never gave it a thought, lad… you know, the tractor fuel and that.’
‘You aren’t the only silly bugger hoarding petrol,’ Nick said, almost genially.
The farm-wife said to Nick. ‘You done well, lad. I reckon you done that before today.’
‘Not with buckets I haven’t.’
‘Well, you got in some pretty good practice today.’
The pub landlady and some other women came up to the farm with jugs of beer. The land-girls and the men had dropped exhausted and shaken to sit on anything handy.
‘Here, gel,’ the landlady gave Georgia a tankard. ‘Give this to that man of yourn.’
‘I can do with that.’ As Nick put the tankard to his mouth he hissed through his teeth from unexpected pain. ‘Aah… my lips!’ He raised his fingers gingerly to feel; his hands too were covered with blisters and raw areas where others had burst. ‘Am I a sight?’
He too was black-faced and blistered from the searing heat. His shirt, and a flowery scarf bound around his head, were spotted with brown burn-rings, not much of his eyebrows or lashes remained, and that part of his hair which had been left exposed was singed.
‘Your face is burnt. And your hair.’
‘It’s not much.’
Someone brought out a bucket of salt and water for washing blistered skin.
Nick looked around him. The rickyard was a pungent, black mess, the farm labourers in singed and dirty shirts, soaked working trousers with yorks tied beneath the knees. The land-girls in khaki dungarees, soaked to brown with sweat and water, the farm-wife in old, drab, field clothes. Georgia, her summer dress grubby from the potato-sack and strappy sandals ruined, her face smeared with ash. For a moment, he wondered how these strangers saw her. It suddenly seemed an unreasonably important fact that she was a country girl. To anyone else, she probably looked as though she had never hiked a country lane or milked a goat in her life – he had a foolish urge to announce to them that she was not a town girl and that he loved her.
‘How does that feel?’ Georgia asked. The initial relief of having dipped his hands and soaked his face in saline solution was wearing off.
He flexed his rag-bound fingers and winced. ‘I’ll survive.’ He grinned at her and felt the soda-solution on his face crack and flake off.
As they walked away from the farmyard, the woman ran up to him and patted Nick’s arm. ‘Good luck, lad. Come and see us one day in your fireman’s uniform.’ To Georgia she said, ‘He tells us he’s off to Liverpool. If you asks me, we ought to thank God there’s men like him.’
Georgia nodded, a faint polite smile. ‘We do.’
1942
July
Quite late one evening, Ursula Farr, answering her door bell, was surprised to discover Connie Hardy in the porch.
‘I’m sorry… it is so late, but I have no one else…’Her usual coolness was disturbed, her emotions were close to the surface.
‘It’s not late for me,’ Ursula said, and without fuss took her through to a large old-fashioned conservatory and poured them both generous gins.
Connie struggled to retain what remained of her composure. ‘This is delightful. It catches the evening sun. Such an atmosphere – oh, you have a datura – the perfume.’
‘I brought the plant home myself from my travels. But you did not call to admire my datura.’
‘I’m sorry. Yes. It is hopeless. I have to go away.’
‘Are things so bad for you?’
‘You don’t sound surprised.’
‘I find fewer and fewer things surprising – alas. It is perhaps a sign of age… of the state of society. But it is surprising that you use such a word as hopeless.’
‘It is how I feel. I must go away. I’m already on my way to drinking myself into an early grave.’ She downed the contents of her glass, but refused any more.
‘It is your marriage, I suppose.’
Connie gave a soft snort. ‘Isn’t it always that which drives women to drink?’
‘A good marriage is worth everything. But a bad one? It is certainly not worth being driven to drink for.’
‘And Eve. It seems to me the worst thing that a mother can do is to abandon her child.’
‘Eve is what, twenty-three, twenty-four? And why does it mean that you must abandon her? Because one relationship fails, it doesn’t mean that every other one involving you fails with it.’
‘But the house… oh, everything!’
For a moment, Ursula thought that Connie would break down. She would have comforted her as she herself would have felt comforted, by close contact and arms, but Connie tensed at Ursula’s gentle touch. A woman who had never learned
how to deal with the contact of other women.
‘A house is nothing. Bricks and mortar only.’
‘But who will run it, if I go? I won’t leave Eve to do it.’
‘If the part you play in your house is as its custodian, then that isn’t a big enough part for any woman, a mere keeper of furniture and fittings. Is that what you are there?’
‘Yes. Except for trying to be something to Eve. I wish that I could have made a better job of it all-but you see… I had no idea… no idea at all. Perhaps Freddy would not have needed other women if I had been better at everything.’ She forced a cigarette into her holder and held it to the flame, drawing it into the tip; as she inhaled deeply her hand trembled.
Ursula felt both close to and distant from Connie Hardy, sensing that the younger woman might, at any moment, withdraw; so she merely nodded non-committally but said nothing.
Connie continued. ‘Freddy and I have always been poles apart. There was always that one thing… that was… was good between us. You understand? I hope that I don’t embarrass you.’
‘You don’t. Sex has never embarrassed me.’
‘I see now that our entire marriage was held together by brief moments of physical attraction. Then, about a year ago – it was during one of the night raids – as they say… the scales fell from my eyes and I was able to see us as we are. In the middle of the night, I was sheltering in the bowels of my house and searching for gin, whilst he was charming an ENSA girl. Eve… well, she was God knew where.’
‘If your marriage has failed, then it has failed you both… if you will only stop taking all the blame upon yourself…’
Connie stubbed out her cigarette and refilled her holder, using the action, Ursula suspected, to cover her emotions.
Eventually, she said quietly, ‘That’s right! I’m not entirely to blame. I have never been unfaithful.’
Soon after that she had left.
Having made the move to talk to Ursula that night, Connie Hardy was able to tell Eve something of how she felt. It was typical of Connie that she asked her daughter to meet her in the impersonal surroundings of a large, once-fashionable hotel out of town. They sat in its still-splendid restaurant talking quietly, as their training dictated, in controlled and unemotional tones.
‘It is now or never, darling. I have to go. I couldn’t bear the thought of the Markham gossips watching me slide downhill as people watched your grandmother. They probably say that I am a parasite and a social butterfly, and I may be; but I have my pride.’
‘Ma, don’t say such things, don’t put yourself down.’
‘I am down, Eve, but I do not intend to stay there.’
‘Have you told my father?’
‘No. I want to discuss it with you first.’
Eve looked at her mother. Why do we behave like this? If she were Dolly Partridge and I Dolly’s daughter, or Marie, we should be weeping or showing our anguish. Do I feel anything for her that I would not feel if any other woman sat there telling me that she was leaving her husband? Does she feel for me? Is this only a step away from the kindly way she dismisses servants – the informal interview in Madam’s sitting-room?
She remembered Trix, who used to work in the kitchens. ‘My Mum’s cleared off. I don’t blame her. D’you know what? She left the wash-boiler full on and cut the flies out of my Dad’s best trousers because he only wore them when he went off to see his floozie. He thought I was going to stop home and be skivvy. I told him (Christ! You could have heard us t’other end of town going hammer and tongs), I told him, Serves you right, you dirty old devil, don’t think I’m going to wait on you, if you was mine, I’d a cut off more than your flies. That’s when I cleared out and went to live with Pammy.’
And we sit on this expensive, neutral ground. If ever I have children, I shall touch them, hug them, shout and cry at them. There will be no holds barred when it comes to showing them I love them. Perhaps she doesn’t love me. Never has. Nanny Bryce was my surrogate mother from the day I was born.
‘What will happen… ? At home, I mean.’
‘That is what I wanted to discuss first – though your father may have other ideas once I have gone.’
‘He wouldn’t…’ Eve could not bring herself to articulate the thought.
‘Bring in his woman? Probably not, because if he did then she might be led to believe there was a commitment on his part. No, I rather thought that he might see you as hostess and Nanny Bryce or someone younger as housekeeper. I wanted to give you fair warning. He can be very persuasive… pressing, even, if he thinks that you owe him some due.’
Eve fiddled with her napkin. ‘I have been thinking about taking up nursing, or something more useful than driving the school meals van. Perhaps now I shall. I don’t think that I could live there.’ How to say it? ‘Actually… I shouldn’t like to live at home if… if you were not there. I should not think it was home.’ She blushed.
Connie twisted a new cigarette into her holder. How to deal with Eve being so emotional? ‘That’s sweet of you, Evie, but you must be practical… I mean about affording… We have both been used to not having to think about that. I have a little money still from your Uncle Douglas’s legacy.’
‘And I have never touched what he left me. You know, Mother, if you think about it, it has been Pa’s style of living that has made us expensive women. Georgia Kennedy never went skiing or sailing, she doesn’t give cocktail parties – so she needs none of the clothes or equipment. If I lived more simply, I should not need his allowance.’
‘I will not influence you. You are a grown woman, and must do whatever you decide to do. I am sorry that my actions will put you in the position of having to make any decision at all.’
‘I think Georgia Kennedy would be glad of someone to live with her – she has hinted at it once or twice.’
‘Are you sure that she meant another woman?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I shall not leave for two weeks – you have time to consider. Don’t do anything hastily.’
‘Why in two weeks?’
‘That is when I join my unit.’
‘Mother! A unit? What unit? You have it all planned?’
‘Yes. It is about the only thing I can do where age is of no importance. They are so short of aviators that they will take anybody who can fly anything.’
‘Fly, Ma?’
Suddenly Connie looked eager, became animated. ‘Collecting and delivering aircraft. I’ve had a full pilot’s licence all my life. I’ve had a try-out at Eastleigh – they welcomed me with open arms. It is essential work.’
‘Goodness!’
Had her mother said that she had joined a troupe of acrobats, Eve Hardy would not have been more surprised.
Connie blinked nervously and smiled with caution. ‘I thought of a hundred different ways of breaking the news to you, but there seemed to be no easy way.’
Eve’s hand crept across the table to take Connie’s. ‘Oh Ma, I’m so proud of you.’
1942
The outing that had been talked about came to fruition. The pre-war type of works’ outing to the seaside was out of the question. Charabanc hire was restricted, and many seaside towns in the south were badly bombed, their beaches inaccessible because of mines and barbed-wire or travel restrictions. But once Georgia had suggested that they should all go for a day out in London, there was nowhere else they wanted to go.
Dolly was the only woman in the Dinner Kitchen who had a man to answer to for her movements.
‘You must all be daft to go up there,’ was Sam Partridge’s opinion.
‘It’s what we need just now, to be a bit daft,’ Dolly snapped. ‘There’s still a bit of life going on up there, not dead like this place. We shall have our lunch, go to a matinée and be back home by bedtime, which isn’t any longer than you’re gone when it’s some Labour Party rally.’
‘There hasn’t been a rally since the war. But there, if Dolly Partridge has made up her mind to go traipsing off fo
r a day, then Dolly Partridge will go. It’s no good me saying anything these days. And what about Marie?’
‘And what about Marie? Paula’s going to look after Bonnie same as she always do.’
Paula now lived with Marie, an arrangement that worked very well for both of them. Marie saw to the house chores in the morning and got Bonnie off to school, and Paula, who had an early shift job at an engineering works, did the shopping and fetched Bonnie from school.
‘Charlie’s going to be upset.’
‘And just why, may I ask? And in any case, who’s going to upset Charlie by opening their big mouths about it? There isn’t anything wrong with Marie having a bit of fun. I suppose you think Charlie never goes out to a pub or to pictures.’
‘It’s different for him. And women on their own going round London isn’t nothing like going for a pint. Any case, he’s away from home.’
‘And living in lodgings in the lap of luxury. And being a man I suppose entitles him to gad about, but Marie mustn’t even have a day out with her workmates. To hear you talk, anybody’d think we was going to Brighton for a fortnight.’
‘It’s no use talking to you these days. You got an answer for everything.’
‘No, I haven’t, but I’m trying to find one.’
All of the women who worked in the old Chapel Hall buildings, the Restaurant staff, the WVS and Red Cross storekeepers, went by train to London. Even though they sometimes went shopping in the rubbled cities of Southampton and Portsmouth, they were shocked at the flattened area of London, but astonished to find that some of the boarded-up shops were selling luxuries that never seemed to reach them in Markham. Peering through the slits in some blanked-out shop windows they saw synthetic cream cakes or fancy coloured shoes, and one or two tobacco kiosks had a few real packs of cigarettes on display.
Astonishment. ‘The tobacconist says that anybody can buy those fags – Players or Craven A, ten per customer.’
‘Why don’t we ever see stuff like that?’
Trading furtively on the pavements were men with suitcases full of branded lipsticks, or stockings, or ear-rings, talcum powder, mascara, clockwork toys or tins of salmon or ham with strange foreign labels. Compared to Markham, London was an Aladdin’s cave of goods in short supply.
The Consequences of War Page 22