A Christmas Wish for the Land Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Or something to tempt them back into the yard.’ Joyce knew that Peggy kept a store of turnips in the stone barn at the far edge of the field. ‘Wait here,’ she told her bedraggled companion. She was gone for five minutes then returned with two choice-looking vegetables. ‘These should do the trick.’

  She was mistaken; turnips were not, it seemed, to Ivy and Ruby’s taste. Though Joyce and Una cornered and cajoled, made tweeting noises and offered what they thought was a mouth-watering treat, the recalcitrant pigs turned up their snouts and scarpered.

  ‘Try this!’ a voice called from the gate after a full hour of fruitless tempting. Peggy held up a bucket of pigswill that she kept at her kitchen door for just such emergencies.

  Una aimed her torch beam at the stern figure standing by the gate. Joyce trudged across the field and took the bucket. Within seconds, Ivy and Ruby smelt its sloppy contents and came running full tilt. At the last moment, Joyce hoisted the bucket high in the air and Una opened the gate. The pigs skidded through then came to a halt on the stone flags of the yard. Joyce and Una nipped in after them and slammed the gate shut. Now all that remained was for Joyce to rattle a stick against the side of the bucket as she guided the runaways back into their sty.

  When Joyce finally lowered the bucket to let the pigs feed, Una let out a long sigh of relief.

  An unsmiling Peggy looked on with arms folded. ‘About time too,’ she commented before shuffling back into the house and closing the door.

  Una and Joyce looked at each other in astonishment as they set off for home.

  ‘I’m saying nothing!’ Joyce broke into a loud laugh. Her round face was still wreathed in smiles when they came to the tall stone gateposts at the entrance to Fieldhead. ‘So, Una, what are you planning for the rest of your evening, now that we’ve accomplished our mission?’

  ‘I’ll write a letter to Angelo. He’s finally on the mend so they’ve moved him to a convalescent home near the seaside. I want to ask him about his new billet.’

  ‘And he’s definitely over the worst?’ Joyce was heartened by the news, knowing how much Una had fretted through the summer months and well into autumn.

  ‘Yes – for now.’ Una knew that, as yet, tuberculosis had no cure but if patients were well cared for and treated with modern medicines, the disease could be held at bay. Though unable to visit her beloved in the isolation hospital, she still dreamed of being with Angelo after the war ended – sitting with him amongst lemon trees and olive groves on the sunny slopes outside Pisa. She wore his gold cross around her neck, convinced that if she took it off, even for a single moment, it would bring bad luck.

  ‘That’s champion,’ Joyce murmured as they went round the side of the hostel and kicked off their gumboots outside the back door. ‘Actually, I have something of my own to tell you,’ she confided.

  ‘About Edgar?’

  ‘No, Edgar’s fine, touch wood.’ Joyce tapped her forehead. ‘But I’ve decided to move out of Fieldhead.’

  Una gasped at this bombshell news. ‘Oh, Joyce – you’re not leaving the Land Army?’

  ‘No, just the hostel. It feels like time for me to make a change.’

  ‘Where will you go, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘To a new billet, somewhere further up the dale.’

  ‘But why?’ Una couldn’t understand why Joyce would wish to move from the relative comfort of Fieldhead and forsake the company of the girls she worked alongside.

  Unbuttoning her coat, Joyce stepped over the threshold. ‘I want to be of more use,’ she explained. ‘I intend to ask Mrs Mostyn to send me somewhere where they really need me.’

  ‘But we need you here.’ Una guessed rightly that her protests would fall on deaf ears. ‘You’re the one who knows most about tractors and ploughing, threshing and milking. You’ve been farming all your life. What will we do without you?’

  ‘You’ll manage,’ Joyce said with a smile. ‘But don’t say anything until I’ve told Mrs Mostyn after work tomorrow. Promise?’

  ‘Hand on heart.’ Una padded down the corridor in stockinged feet. Fieldhead without Joyce would be hard to bear. Who would save her a place at the rowdy breakfast table? Who would dish out advice about matters of the heart?

  ‘It goes without saying that I’ll miss you,’ Joyce whispered as she entered the kitchen and went to the stove to warm her hands.

  ‘Likewise.’ Una was overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness. Change was afoot. Events near and far ran out of control.

  ‘Before we know it, it’ll be time to start sprout-picking for the Christmas market.’ Grace Mostyn stood behind the bar in the Blacksmith’s Arms. She was well into the third month of her pregnancy and had reluctantly taken her doctor’s advice to pull out of farm work due to severe morning sickness.

  ‘The Land Army will have to get by without you,’ Dr Hood had told her firmly across his wide, leather-topped desk. The sun had been reflected in the lenses of his heavy glasses but there was no denying the directness of his gaze. ‘Baby must come first.’

  Grace had suffered similar pressure from her mother-in-law, Edith Mostyn, who happened to be the local Land Army rep. ‘Bill agrees with me; he told me so in his last letter. We simply can’t have you digging ditches and mending walls in your condition.’

  ‘I could transfer to lighter duties,’ Grace had suggested without conviction.

  ‘Such as?’ Edith had run through the litany of winter jobs: sprout-picking, potato-lifting, hen- and goose-plucking and the dreaded mechanical threshing of this year’s wheat crop. ‘No, Grace; it’s too risky. I’ll telephone county office first thing in the morning and ask for your release.’

  Which is why Joyce found Grace serving in her father’s pub in the village of Burnside on the Monday evening after work. She took a slow sip of shandy from a half-pint glass. ‘Standing out in a frozen field picking sprouts will bring on the chilblains, no doubt.’ There was nothing like it to cause one of the most troublesome complaints of the winter. ‘Not to mention the frostbitten fingers and the backache and what have you.’

  Grace wiped down the already spotless bar then paused to take a long, hard look at her brother’s fiancée. Joyce’s shoulder-length brown hair was hidden beneath a green headscarf tied like a turban around her head and she sat on the stool in muddy brown dungarees, elbows on the bar, evidently exhausted after a long day digging ditches at the Kelletts’ place. Still, she managed to give off a pleasant, friendly air.

  ‘You’re not here just to pass the time of day with me, are you?’ Grace remarked at last.

  Joyce shook her head. ‘Well spotted, Sherlock.’

  ‘I know you, Joyce. There’s a reason why you didn’t go straight home after work.’ Grace slipped away to serve two Canadian airmen from the base on Penny Lane and when she came back she resumed the conversation. ‘Well?’

  ‘I called in to see your mother-in-law and ask for a change of billet.’ There; she’d said it! It was really happening.

  Grace’s oval face registered surprise. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘That’s exactly what Mrs Mostyn said.’ Whatever for? Has Hilda Craven upset you? Has one of the other girls? If so, I’m sure this is something we can easily sort out.

  ‘And what did you tell her?’

  ‘That I liked living at Fieldhead but I was ready for a change.’

  ‘A different challenge?’

  ‘Exactly. I thought perhaps I could retrain as a lumberjill.’

  ‘For the Women’s Timber Corps?’

  ‘Yes. Or I could study for a certificate as a mechanized operative then I could train other girls to drive and maintain tractors.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That she would enquire at head office on my behalf, but that meanwhile, if I was serious about wanting a move, I’d better be prepared to be sent wherever they need me the most.’

  ‘It could be in the back of beyond,’ Grace pointed out when she’d had time to digest Joyce’s news. ‘Would you mind b
eing billeted in a farm miles from anywhere, surrounded by nothing but bare hillsides and sheep?’

  Joyce thought she would not. ‘I’d have plenty of time in the evening to read my library books and write letters.’ To Edgar, she thought but didn’t need to say out loud. ‘I’ll miss Una and Brenda, of course.’ But not the hurly-burly of meals at the long dining-room tables, the scramble for the bathrooms and some of the silliness that resulted from a gaggle of young women from Yorkshire mill towns and factories all being thrown together in a run-down manor house that had been converted into a Land Army hostel to aid the war effort. ‘And you, Grace; I’ll miss you too.’

  ‘“For a healthy, happy job, join the Women’s Land Army!”’ Brenda wielded a pitchfork like a lance and charged at the tattered poster pasted on the door of one of the stables in the weed-strewn yard behind the hostel.

  She and Kathleen had spent the whole of Wednesday lifting potatoes from clamps in the top field at Brigg Farm. Each clamp was twenty-five feet long, made up of nine-inch layers of straw alternating with harvested potatoes. The girls’ job was to transfer the spuds into hessian sacks then sling the full sacks on to the back of a horse and cart before driving back to the farmyard. It was back-breaking, bone-chilling work, carried out in temperatures well below freezing, and now that the day was over, Brenda took out her frustrations on the familiar call to arms. ‘Join the flipping Land Army!’ She thrust the prongs of the pitchfork deep into the wooden planks. ‘Take that!’ she cried.

  Kathleen laughed as she wheeled her bike into the nearest stable. ‘Never mind, things are looking up. I took delivery of a Peek Freans Christmas cake this morning; one and nine from Stannings grocery shop in Northgate.’

  ‘Sent by?’

  ‘My ma, bless her. She thinks I’m starving to death out here.’

  ‘That adds up to a lot of coupons,’ Brenda remarked. ‘She must have been saving them up for weeks.’

  ‘Yes and I’ve got strict instructions not to open the cake until the week running up to Christmas – that means more than a month before we can break into it.’

  Their easy conversation took Kathleen and Brenda indoors and down the long, dark corridor into Ma Craven’s kitchen where they found the warden preparing to load the evening meal of boiled beef, potatoes and carrots on to a rickety trolley. While her back was turned, Brenda lifted the lid of the stew pot and picked out a steaming piece of carrot.

  ‘I saw that!’ Hilda warned.

  ‘Blimey, it’s true what they say – you really have got eyes in the back of your head.’ Brenda retreated with a wink. She was fond of the unflappable older woman whose job was to run every angle of household affairs at Fieldhead, including cooking, cleaning and generally keeping the girls in line. ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’

  Hilda huffed and puffed as she lifted the heavy iron pot. ‘Yes, you can carry those water jugs into the dining room, then you can set out the knives and forks.’

  ‘Trust you, Brenda. I was looking forward to hopping into a hot bath and having a good soak before dinner,’ Kathleen complained as they carried out their tasks. The two girls were well matched in personality and appearance. Both were tall with long legs, graceful figures and slender waists, though Kathleen’s hair was fair and wavy (thanks to a bottle of bleach and some perm solution, she cheerfully admitted) while Brenda’s was dark and fashionably short, giving her a cheeky, vivacious air that reflected her independent spirit. They were town girls born and bred, strong-minded and strikingly attractive, and on a Friday night out at the Blacksmith’s Arms, they had to fend off the attentions of Canadian pilots, POWs and local farmers alike.

  ‘What is it about you two?’ Joyce had asked them when they were setting off for work one foggy morning at the start of November. ‘Even togged out in dungarees and wellington boots, you manage to look as if you’ve just stepped off a Paris catwalk.’

  Ah yes, Joyce. Brenda rapped knives and forks down on to the bare trestle table while Kathleen lined up the glasses. Joyce will leave a bloody big hole when she’s no longer at Fieldhead. There’ll be no one with enough common sense and know-how to step into her shoes.

  ‘I’m moving on from Fieldhead,’ Joyce had announced the night before as she queued behind Brenda for the bathroom. ‘I’m waiting to hear where they’ll send me.’

  Brenda had flashed her a startled look but for once had held her tongue. It was Joyce’s business, after all.

  ‘Will you miss me?’ Joyce had asked over a late-night cup of cocoa.

  ‘Not a whit!’ Brenda had assured her with a wink.

  Oh, but I will! She finished laying out the cutlery and heard Ma Craven trundle her trolley down the uneven flagged corridor. I’ll miss Joyce Cutler more than I can say!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday came and there was still no word of where Joyce would be sent.

  ‘She’ll land on her feet, you watch,’ Brenda predicted on the bike ride back to Fieldhead with Una and Elsie. Worn out after a day-long stint of wringing chicken’s necks at Horace Turnbull’s farm, they rode into a biting wind, through Burnside then out along the single-track lane leading to the hostel. ‘What’s the betting the jammy beggar is sent to a manor house complete with live-in servants and a teeny-weeny veg plot for her to tend?’

  ‘I bet you a shilling that she won’t be!’ Elsie went on to swear that any girl would give her eye teeth for a soft billet on a lowland estate. ‘Feather pillows, clean sheets every week – the lot.’

  Una rode on in troubled silence.

  ‘What’s up?’ Brenda asked as they approached Peggy’s farm, with the first sight of Fieldhead in the distance. ‘Are you still thinking about those headless chickens running around in circles in Horace’s yard?’

  Una shuddered at the grisly memory but shook her head.

  ‘Wait, don’t tell me. Angelo hasn’t written back yet. Is that it?’

  Una didn’t reply. Instead, she cycled ahead.

  ‘Bullseye.’ It was clear to Elsie that Brenda had hit the mark. ‘Poor lamb, life is a waiting game when you fall for a POW – when you fall for anyone, for that matter.’

  ‘In this day and age,’ Brenda agreed. ‘Take me. I swore I would never be the type of girl who hangs out of the window waiting for the morning post to arrive. I would never count the kisses at the bottom of my fiancé’s letter and wonder if he still loves me as much as he did last week or the week before.’

  ‘And look what happened.’ Elsie watched Una turn off the lane into the hostel driveway. ‘You got yourself engaged to Les White and that was that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Brenda patted the engagement ring that she wore as usual on a ribbon around her neck. ‘For better or for worse.’

  Instead of carrying on as the free spirit of old, she now spent her days worrying about which convoy Les’s Royal Navy ship would be part of. Would it enter the Med under a barrage of enemy fire and sail safely through the Strait of Gibraltar only to be blown sky-high by an unseen U-boat or perhaps join the American fleet in the Pacific or else stay closer to home to guard their own British submarines off the west coast of Scotland? She spent her nights dreaming about Les, picturing his serious face and trusting blue eyes, his slightly furrowed brow and thatch of neatly parted fair hair. She had become that type of girl.

  ‘Any news about your move?’ Elsie called to Joyce as she and Brenda followed Una up the drive.

  Joyce was raking leaves off the front lawn, ready to make a bonfire at the back of the house. ‘Not yet. Only that for the time being the Land Army can’t spare me for retraining so Mrs Mostyn is looking for a fresh billet for me as soon as possible.’

  ‘Don’t go, Joyce!’ Brenda cried melodramatically as she screeched to a halt then dismounted. ‘Don’t leave us. We’ll be lost without you!’

  Joyce grinned and went on loading leaves into her wheelbarrow. ‘Anyone fancy roasting a few spuds in the bonfire later on?’ she called after them.

  ‘Yes, please; count me in,’ Elsie rep
lied.

  ‘No, ta,’ Brenda yelled. ‘Tonight I’m taking Old Sloper on a spin over to Dale End. Les’s sister Hettie is poorly. I promised I’d pay her a visit.’

  If there was one thing in this world that Brenda would never give up it was her beloved motor bike. They could take away her entire clothes ration for all she cared and she wouldn’t mind if she never stirred another spoonful of sugar into her tea ever again, but to be parted from Old Sloper would mean the end of the world had arrived.

  And now, as she rode along Swinsty Edge towards Attercliffe, she was reminded of the freedom it gave her, even though the blackout demanded that her headlight was dimmed and the country road was full of unexpected twists and turns. Along she sailed, her leather airman’s jacket zipped to her chin, with goggles to protect her eyes from the wintry wind – past the spot where Grace and Bill had found Frank Kellett frozen to death, on towards the tiny hamlet of Hawkshead, on again, over the ridge for a first glimpse of the gentler neighbouring dale where the hills were less steep and the valley more open. Brenda applied her brakes then snaked down the hill towards Dale End Farm. She turned into the drive and came to a halt outside the impressive entrance to the Georgian house that Arnold White and his family called home.

  Arnold himself came to the door at the sound of her engine. The widowed, well-to-do farmer greeted her without a smile, simply holding the door open and gesturing for her to enter.

  Brenda unzipped her jacket. ‘Hello, Mr White. How’s Hettie?’

  ‘Go in and see for yourself.’ He nodded towards the sitting room before turning away with a click of his heels and disappearing into his study.

  Brenda crossed the hallway and knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in, Brenda; do!’ Hettie called sharply. ‘There’s no need to stand on ceremony.’

  ‘Aye, aye, captain.’ Brenda opened the door to find Les’s thirty-three-year-old sister sitting on a couch facing the French windows. There was a fire in the grate of the Adam fireplace but only one dim table lamp illuminating the spacious room.

  Hettie didn’t stand to greet her. She wore a paisley patterned shawl around her shoulders and her dark hair was swept back from her high forehead, giving her the air of a school governess from a bygone age. ‘Come in,’ she said again. ‘And close that door.’