A Christmas Wish for the Land Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Ugh! How long did she stick it out, I wonder?’ The bus swerved to avoid two stray sheep, almost flinging Joyce and Brenda into the aisle.

  ‘Kathleen didn’t say. It does make you wonder, though.’

  ‘Fingers crossed there’ll be no dead sheep where we’re going.’

  ‘And no Pretty Polly either.’ Brenda had a phobia about parrots, developed when, as a small child, she’d been forced to visit a great-aunt who lived nearby. The bird had been a vindictive sod that had flown from its perch to land on Brenda’s shoulder and peck at her bare neck whenever her back was turned. ‘Nasty, vicious things.’

  ‘Think of it another way,’ Joyce said after the bus had pulled up at a crossroads to disgorge the two pipe-smoking farmers and the unhappy young woman. ‘This is a big adventure. We have no idea where we’re headed or what it will be like when we get there. Everything will be new.’

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ Brenda took a deep breath. ‘We have to look on the bright side.’ She fell silent for a while, swaying against Joyce whenever the bus negotiated a sharp bend. Then she began on a new tack. ‘What do you most hope to find at Black Crag Farm?’

  ‘I’m not fussy. As long as I can keep warm and have a bit of peace and quiet in the evenings. What about you? What would you wish for?’

  Brenda was more ambitious. ‘Hmm, hot water on tap would be nice. A room to myself with a cosy fire. A shed to park Old Sloper in.’

  ‘Yes, I forgot about your precious motor bike. What’s going to happen there?’

  ‘I’ll get used to the lie of the land first then see if Mr Huby will let me bring the old girl out here. If he agrees, I’ll catch the bus back to Fieldhead on my day off or else cadge a lift. I’ll get Sloper out to Garthside Farm somehow.’

  Again the sway of the bus and the chug of the engine silenced them until they were roused out of their daydreams by a curt cry from the driver. ‘Shawcross; everybody off!’

  Brenda wiped the steamed-up window to discover that they’d arrived at a small village green with a weather-worn Celtic cross in the middle. There was a row of low cottages facing on to the green, with an old coaching inn opposite and on the third side a church with a square tower. The church was surrounded on three sides by a graveyard and next to that there was a detached house with steep gables and arched windows and then a low, green-painted wooden building with a noticeboard indicating that it was used for village meetings, jumble sales, and whatever passed for entertainment in this remote community.

  Joyce stood up and passed Brenda’s suitcase to her. She was about to lower her own when she saw the schoolboy stand on his seat to reach for a bulging shopping bag.

  ‘Nay, take your mucky boots off my upholstery!’ The driver had caught sight of him in her overhead mirror.

  The boy jumped down in alarm then stood bewildered in the aisle.

  ‘Here; let me.’ Joyce lifted his bag down from the rack. Inside she spied a neatly folded jumper, a pair of socks and some clean underwear. She smiled at the boy. ‘Go on; you get off the bus first.’

  Too scared to smile back, he shuffled towards the door.

  Joyce descended the steps after him and took a quick look around the empty green. ‘Is someone meant to meet you?’

  The boy nodded. He couldn’t be more than eight or nine years old, wearing a navy blue cap to match his mac, with short grey flannel trousers and long woollen socks. Joyce noticed that his black shoes were polished to perfection.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The vicar,’ he managed to reply through a stammer brought on by the bus driver’s barked command.

  ‘Don’t worry; I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.’ Joyce could only hope that this was true. The rain was as bad as ever and the hill behind the inn rose steeply to meet dark grey clouds. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked. ‘No, let me guess; you’re an Alfred or an Alan. Yes, I’d say you’re an Alan.’

  His eyes widened. ‘How did you know?’

  She grinned. ‘I cheated. I read your name and address on your gas mask case. Alan Evans, 15 Station Street, Millwood.’

  With rain dripping from the peak of his cap, the little boy mustered a nervous smile while Joyce called to the bus driver. ‘Do you know the vicar here, by any chance?’

  ‘That’d be the Reverend Walter Rigg.’ The sour-faced woman sounded as if she would charge Joyce for the information if she could. ‘And this’ll be the third evacuee he’s taken in this year. The other two lasted less than a month. Work that one out.’

  ‘I see.’ Joyce thought it best to ignore this last remark and smiled again at the boy. ‘Well, Alan, we’re all in the same boat, standing here in the rain. I wonder who’ll be met first.’

  The answer came in the shape of a young woman in the regulation green beret and brown double-breasted coat of the Women’s Timber Corps. She hurried from a lane leading down the side of the churchyard, coat flapping, towards the small group. ‘Alan Evans?’ she checked with the boy.

  He nodded.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Evelyn Newbold. The vicar sent me. You’re to come with me to the vicarage.’

  Joyce and Brenda both nodded encouragingly before introducing themselves to the new arrival.

  ‘Brenda Appleby.’

  ‘Joyce Cutler.’

  The three women shook hands. Joyce and Brenda took straightaway to their lively comrade in arms, whose smile seemed genuine and whose handshake was firm.

  ‘Where are your billets?’ Evelyn asked.

  ‘Garthside Farm.’

  ‘Black Crag Farm.’

  ‘Phew, rather you than me,’ Evelyn said to both names. There were glimpses of rich, copper-coloured hair beneath her beret. Her face, dampened by the rain, was covered in faint freckles, her eyes flecked with green and grey. ‘Come along, Alan; best not to keep the vicar waiting.’

  Joyce and Brenda watched Evelyn hurry away with the boy, quick march.

  ‘It’s nice to know that at least one other girl has answered the call to work out here,’ Brenda commented wryly. Her first impression of Evelyn was that she was a whirlwind of non-stop energy; friendly enough but with a strong will to match Brenda’s own.

  ‘She didn’t mention where she was billeted,’ Joyce pointed out. ‘Still, I expect we’ll run into her again before too long.’

  By this time, Evelyn and Alan had disappeared up the path leading to the gabled vicarage, leaving Joyce and Brenda standing in the wind and rain. A net curtain in one of the cottages twitched, while a stout man in shirtsleeves and waistcoat came to the doorway of the inn and knocked out the contents of his pipe against the stone jamb.

  Then, just as Joyce and Brenda were starting to lose heart, a tractor rumbled into view. It emerged from the low clouds cloaking the hillside, trundling down a green lane then through an open, five-bar gate on to the flat village green, its thick tyres shedding clods of mud on to the tarmac road.

  Both Joyce and Brenda looked expectantly at the driver dressed in a black oilskin coat and flat cap.

  The man halted the tractor then jumped down from the cab. He was shorter than average, with a closed expression and a seeming reluctance to meet their gaze. ‘Brenda Appleby?’ he asked in a flat voice, eyes directed not at the two Land Girls but squinting towards the stone cross.

  Brenda stepped forward. ‘That’s me.’

  The farmer jerked his head back so that his chin retreated into folds of skin on his neck. It was a look that suggested that he would have preferred the stronger-looking Joyce.

  ‘Bernard Huby’s my name. Come with me,’ he said.

  Brenda grimaced at Joyce. ‘Wish me luck,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes. Good luck.’

  As Brenda rushed after Mr Huby and climbed up into the tractor cab, Joyce felt her heart sink on behalf of her friend. Not exactly the life and soul of the party, was her snap verdict on Brenda’s new employer. Still, first impressions didn’t always stick.

  She waited for a further ten or fifteen minutes. The
rain eased and the clouds lifted slowly to reveal a rocky, barren hillside intersected by a patchwork of low stone walls that were a feature of the Yorkshire landscape, so different to the lush, lowland pastures of Joyce’s native Warwickshire. She shivered and shook droplets from the rim of her hat, looking up to see Evelyn Newbold reappear on a bike.

  ‘That’s young Alan settled in at the vicarage,’ she informed Joyce as she rode towards her. ‘Still no sign of Mr Bradley?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he won’t have forgotten about you,’ Joyce’s new acquaintance promised. ‘He called in at the Cross Keys last night and happened to mention you were arriving today. I work behind the bar there during my time off,’ she explained in response to Joyce’s questioning look. ‘There’s not much else to do round here. Oh, and by the way, you won’t find Laurence Bradley easy at first. He takes some getting to know.’

  ‘Ta, I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Like most farmers around here,’ Evelyn added before she cycled on.

  Joyce frowned and stamped her feet to ward off the cold. She looked at her watch. Dead leaves from horse chestnut trees behind the cottages blew across the green.

  At last another vehicle drove into view: a grey Land-Rover towing an open trailer loaded with sheep. A bare-headed, grey-haired man lowered the driver’s window and beckoned for Joyce to join him.

  She picked up her suitcase and ran to do as she was bidden. ‘Joyce Cutler.’ She introduced herself breathlessly above a cacophony of bleating sheep. ‘You must be Mr Bradley?’

  ‘Get in.’ The question hung in the air and the two-word command wasn’t softened by a smile, though the man’s face had regular, straight features and Joyce judged that he would have been regarded as handsome in his youth. Her new employer hardly waited for her to shut the door before he set off.

  Joyce balanced her suitcase on her knees as he picked up speed, only risking an occasional glance at his clean, strong profile as they left Shawcross behind. She put his age at around forty-five. He was tall and straight-backed – a physique well suited to outdoor work. During the first ten minutes of the drive out to Black Crag Farm not another word was uttered.

  The silence didn’t bother Joyce; it gave her time to take in her surroundings, which had a raw, rough beauty. The dark millstone grit that had characterized the landscape around Burnside gave way here to lighter, fissured limestone that was criss-crossed by fast-running streams sometimes spilling over cliff edges in spectacular waterfalls that splashed on to rocks then ran on to join a slow, brown river snaking through the valley. As the Land-Rover and trailer climbed the hillside, she gained a bird’s-eye view of the hamlet that they’d left behind. Higher still, occasional silver birch trees found footing in the thin soil of the windswept expanse and provided shelter for small groups of hardy sheep with thick, matted coats, black faces and heavy, curled horns. Each was marked on their rump with a vivid patch of blue dye.

  Mr Bradley eyed the huddles, seemingly to check their condition and pick out any that limped. At last and still without speaking, he angled the trailer at a diagonal across the narrow lane, put on the handbrake then stepped down from the Land-Rover and swung open a nearby gate. Then he strode to the back of the trailer where he lowered a ramp and waited.

  The sheep emerged, bleating, blundering and jostling each other away from the gateway.

  Oh no, you don’t! Spotting the lead ewe’s proposed escape route, Joyce jumped out and blocked the way, spreading her arms wide and ushering the errant sheep back towards the gate. Working as a team, she and the farmer soon succeeded in herding them into the field.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ Laurence observed as he raised the ramp and bolted it shut.

  ‘Yes; I’ve worked with sheep all my life. I grew up on a sheep farm just outside Stratford. We bred Suffolks, mostly for meat.’

  He nodded a faint approval. ‘It’s Swaledales up here. Thick coats – they stand up to the weather better than most.’

  Joyce nodded back.

  ‘House is in the next dip,’ he informed her in his usual curt fashion as he ground up through the gears.

  Sure enough, as they reached the crest of the hill and passed a large outcrop of dark rock, Black Crag Farm came into view. The small, squat house nestled in a hollow, protected from the prevailing westerly wind by trees on one side but with a clear, open view of the sweep of the valley on the other. The sky above was still grey and stormy, the green hillside broken up into small fields by walls made from the local stone. There were two well-kept field barns in the valley bottom.

  Joyce sat forward in her seat. If this was to be her home, she wanted to take in as much information as possible. She noted the layout of the fields and their connecting stiles, a clear stream that sprang up to one side of the crag then made its wandering way down the hillside, a kestrel hovering close to the road. At the approach of the Land-Rover the sharp-eyed bird wheeled away on a current of air. Then two dogs ran out of the yard, yapping loudly. The Border collies charged so close to the wheels of the Land-Rover that Joyce closed her eyes and prayed.

  Laurence disregarded the dogs. He drove into a yard bordered by low outbuildings and backed the trailer into one of them. Then he got out of the car and walked on towards the house.

  Joyce followed with her suitcase, through a small front porch and into the kitchen. Then she waited for instructions.

  None came. The farmer sat by the fire to unlace his boots. He kicked them off then padded across the stone flags to hang his coat from a hook on the back of the door. Next he filled a kettle at a tap over the brown sink. He set it on an iron grid over the well-stoked fire. Finally he took a tea caddy from a shelf and spooned leaves into a teapot.

  Everything was shipshape, Joyce noticed. The floor was scrubbed, the furniture gleaming and there were no cobwebs hanging from the low beamed ceiling. The walls were freshly limewashed, the coal scuttle filled to the brim.

  ‘Tea,’ Laurence said.

  She took the monosyllable as an invitation to sit at the table and take the proffered cup. At close quarters she noticed that her employer’s eyes were slate grey and his brow lined. She remembered that he had a son who had recently joined the army and wondered if she would be allocated the young man’s bedroom. Meanwhile, she sipped her tea and went on observing.

  Green and cream tin canisters on the shelf were labelled ‘Tea’, ‘Sugar’, ‘Salt’, and so on. There was a dresser with blue and white willow-pattern crockery. A shotgun rested against the wall close to the door.

  Was there a Mrs Bradley? She supposed not. The house lacked a woman’s touch – there were no curtains, cushions or tablecloth, only one photograph on the mantelpiece of a severe-looking patriarch with a handlebar moustache. Yet somebody kept the floor clean and took out a tin of beeswax to polish the pine dresser. Perhaps the farmer was a widower who employed a daily help, or else there was a daughter or a sister who lived nearby.

  ‘Come this way.’ Laurence rattled his empty cup into its saucer then stood up.

  Joyce followed again, out of the kitchen and up some narrow stairs, along a short landing with two bedroom doors to one side then, unexpectedly, up some roughly fashioned steps into the attic where there was a skylight in the ceiling, an iron bedstead, a washstand with jug and ewer and a metal rail across an alcove, presumably to hang her clothes. There was no fireplace or electric light. Indeed, there was no light of any sort.

  So much for writing letters in my spare time, Joyce thought with a twinge of regret. But at least she had a room to herself.

  ‘Toilet’s outside in the yard,’ Laurence said as he descended the ladder. ‘Earth closet. You’ll fetch water to get washed from the kitchen sink. Unpack your things. Come down when you’re ready.’

  Brenda’s drive to Garthside was over almost before she knew it. Bernard Huby drove his tractor across fields, zigzagging up the steep fell side, and they were soon enveloped by the low-lying cloud, making it impossible for her t
o make out her surroundings. She plied him with questions: had he been farming here for many years? Did he employ other Land Girls? What were the worst and the best aspects of living this far out?

  The replies were short and plain: All my life. No; you’re the first. I never think about it.

  Like getting blood out a stone, she thought. Still, his answers, though brief, weren’t hostile. Maybe he’s shy, Brenda concluded.

  She risked a quick sideways glance at her wiry, middle-aged companion. Though swamped by the oilskin coat, he nevertheless gave off an air of unflappability. She guessed that the sharp, ruddy features beneath the peak of his grey cap rarely changed expression and that he seldom gave voice to what he was thinking. It seemed he would deal with whatever life threw at him without comment or complaint.

  ‘Is there a Mrs Huby?’ she blurted out.

  Bernard’s voice remained steady. ‘No. Not any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I hope you don’t mind my asking.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’ll meet my daughter, Dorothy. You two are around the same age. I hope you’ll get along.’

  ‘I’m sure we will.’ She felt the tractor veer to the right and peered through the thick mist to see that they had entered a farmyard. A dog barked, chickens clucked, light from an open door filtered through the fog.

  ‘Hop out,’ Bernard instructed. ‘Follow me.’

  In her attic room at Black Crag Farm Joyce opened her suitcase and took out her clothes, hairbrush, washbag and writing set. She decided she must ask Mr Bradley for a paraffin lamp or at least a candlestick, and perhaps an extra blanket for the bed.

  She tried not to let her spirits sink too low as she looked around her bare, cold billet. After all, it was the work that mattered. She thought of the Swaledales that they’d released into the field – many of the ewes were heavily pregnant and would start lambing soon after Christmas. She wondered whether they would be brought into the field barns to give birth or if they would stay out and it would be a case of her and Mr Bradley battling through snowdrifts to assist. In any case, she was glad that there were two dogs on the farm to help sniff out the sheep.