A Christmas Wish for the Land Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘I agree.’ Una wondered what to make of Dorothy Huby. She was like a splash of glorious Technicolor in a black-and-white film: out of place but impossible to overlook. ‘And I’m sure your dance will be a big success.’

  ‘Bigger than anyone realizes,’ she proclaimed.

  Grace, Brenda and Joyce broke off from their conversation. They looked expectantly at Dorothy.

  ‘It’s a secret,’ she added coyly.

  ‘Ooh, let’s guess.’ Brenda played along. She rubbed her hands together. ‘You’ve baked us a surprise Christmas cake? No? Then it must be an early visit from Father Christmas, complete with Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?’

  Dorothy held on to her surprise for as long as she could. ‘Any more guesses?’

  ‘You’re going to teach us all a new dance?’ Joyce suggested.

  ‘Wrong! Try again.’ She knew they would never get it.

  ‘You’ve saved up your clothing coupons and bought yourself a brand-new party dress. Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!’ This was Evelyn’s contribution as she split off from Cliff and came to join them.

  ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong!’ Dorothy almost burst with glee. ‘Shall I tell you?’

  ‘Yes, go on!’ they chorused.

  ‘And this had better be good.’

  ‘It is.’ She managed to hold her breath and hang on for fully five more seconds before she finally popped. ‘I’ve had another telephone call from the officer in charge at Rixley – a very nice man, as it turns out. His name is Squadron Leader Oates. The RAF lorry will bring twenty men, not twelve. And …’

  ‘Get on with it, Dorothy,’ Evelyn chided. She felt out of tune with the mood at the table, mistrustful of any fresh plans that Cliff’s sister might have arranged.

  There was another pause for effect, brown eyes twinkling, dimples appearing in rosy cheeks. ‘The squadron leader will send us a four-piece band! Two fiddles, a saxophone and an upright piano. Forget Geoff’s old gramophone; now we shall have real live music to dance to.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘It’s sod’s law.’ Brenda stood with Dorothy outside the church hall waiting for the vicar to arrive. She gazed up at the clouds that had dumped three more inches of snow on Shawcross overnight. Light flakes still drifted down on to the scene spread out before them: the row of cottages where Emma Waterhouse lived, the village green with its stone cross, the Cross Keys and the churchyard, vicarage and church itself were all magically transformed by the pure white covering.

  ‘What about the roads over from Burnside and Rixley?’ Dorothy fretted. ‘I’ll bet the fell tops are far worse than this.’ Her face was pinched by the cold, her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Oh, Brenda, what if we have to call the whole thing off?’

  ‘It’s early yet; try not to worry.’ Brenda used the boot scraper to kick lumps of snow from her wellingtons. They had to wait for Walter Rigg to bring the key before she could carry a bag of fairy lights into the hall. They’d been a last-minute suggestion from Geoff, who’d said he had plenty of spare ones and would leave them in the porch for Dorothy and Brenda to arrange. ‘Come on, Vicar, what’s keeping you?’ she muttered, stamping her feet to encourage her circulation.

  ‘I’ll drop them off first thing tomorrow, before I start my rounds,’ Geoff had promised in the pub the night before.

  True to his word, the bag of coloured lights had been waiting for them. Now all they needed was a key to get into the hall.

  Dorothy poked the snow on the path with the toe of her fur-lined boot. ‘But what if it carries on all day? Before we know it everything will grind to a halt. The roads will be blocked; there’ll be drifts six feet deep.’

  ‘Best not to think the worst.’ Brenda glanced at Dorothy’s woebegone expression. ‘Like I say, it’s only nine o’clock and the snow already seems to be easing off. Two or three measly, powdery inches won’t be enough to stop people coming to the dance of the decade!’

  ‘But all this build-up will be for nothing!’ Determined to turn the weather into a major villain in the drama of the Christmas hop, Dorothy ignored Brenda’s advice. ‘It’s all right for you; you haven’t put as much effort into it as I have.’

  ‘Hold on a minute! Who dragged the blessed tree all the way from Acklam?’

  ‘Yes, but what if we do have to cancel at the last minute? All that food will go to waste. Your Land Army pals will blame me.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ Get a move on with that key, Vicar! Brenda thought. Put me out of the misery of having to listen to this moaning Minnie.

  ‘It’ll all have been for nothing. We’ll be snowed in like Eskimos.’

  At last! Brenda saw Walter Rigg emerge from the vicarage with young Alan in tow. They came down the path together, the boy trailing a step behind the vicar, who was full of bluster and skin-deep bonhomie.

  ‘Good morning, girls! Or, in fact not so good as far as the weather is concerned. The mercury in my thermometer tells me that it’s three degrees below freezing. That’s the reason why we’re late; I made Alan put on an extra jumper. And then the silly boy found that he’d mislaid his gloves. They should have been on the hall table, but where did we find them?’

  Alan shrank under Rigg’s inquisitorial stare. ‘In the kitchen,’ he mumbled.

  ‘And where in the kitchen, pray?’

  ‘On the table, hidden under your newspaper.’

  ‘Where you’d left them by mistake. The kitchen table rather than the hall table, you see, ladies?’ He took a heavy iron key from his coat pocket. ‘I’ll do the honours, shall I?’ he asked as he unlocked the door then stepped inside.

  ‘Ta, Mr Rigg.’ Brenda shoved Dorothy ahead of her. ‘Don’t let us keep you, though. I’m sure you have plenty to do.’

  ‘We’re in no rush,’ he assured her as he stood in Dorothy and Brenda’s way, his bulk and pompous pronouncements making him impossible to ignore. ‘Well done, girls; the hall is looking suitably festive. That’s a splendid tree. Where did it come from? No, don’t tell me. Least said, soonest mended, eh?’

  This reference to the bending of an official ruling forbidding the felling of fir trees during wartime was a deliberate dig at Brenda in particular. Rigg considered her to be a bad influence on Dorothy, who was a harmless enough creature, if a little vain and silly. Brenda, on the other hand, was a born rule breaker; he could tell this by her bold, boyish way of dressing and styling her hair and by the fact that she rode a motor bike, of all things. He turned to Dorothy. ‘Remind me; what time is the dance due to start?’

  ‘At half past seven.’ She made a beeline for the Christmas tree. ‘Oh dear, the angel on the top is crooked.’

  ‘Half past seven, weather permitting.’ Rigg made a mental note that the boiler to heat the radiators should be fired up as soon as he got hold of Cliff Huby who acted as general handyman for church property in return for the odd shilling or two slipped his way.

  Weather permitting! If anyone else mentioned the dratted snow, Brenda swore to herself that she would down tools and go on permanent strike. She heaved a sigh of relief as Walter Rigg rounded up his young charge then headed for the door.

  ‘Come along, Alan. It’s time to start clearing snow from the church path. We must keep on top of it, ready for tomorrow’s morning service.’

  They were gone; Alan to shovel snow under Walter Rigg’s eagle eye, no doubt. Brenda sighed on the boy’s behalf as she lifted a tangle of fairy lights from the bag that Geoff had left. ‘Here, take this end,’ she told Dorothy, ‘and don’t be such a gloom merchant. Look on the bright side; tell yourself that a flurry of snow won’t beat us. This dance will go ahead regardless!’

  ‘Knock, knock; is anyone there?’

  From the top of her stepladder, Brenda heard a man’s cheerful voice call from the porch. ‘Go and see who that is,’ she told Dorothy, who promptly dropped her end of the flimsy fairy lights and dashed to the door. It stood ajar so she peered through the narrow gap.

  ‘It’s the RAF!’ she gaspe
d as she made out two figures in uniform and a smart air-force-blue van parked nearby. Flinging the door open, she invited the men in without ceremony. ‘Have you made it through from Rixley? How bad were the roads? Why have you come so early?’

  ‘Whoa, Neddy!’ The first visitor mimed a hard tug on a runaway horse’s reins. ‘My name’s Ernie – Ernie Black – and this here is my mate, Malcolm Dawes.’

  ‘Dorothy Huby; pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’ She shook both men by the hand. ‘That’s Brenda up the ladder. What’s in the back of the van? Is it something for tonight’s dance?’

  ‘Piano,’ Ernie confirmed. He came across as cocky but likeable, with a Jimmy Cagney grin, light brown, curly hair and a cheeky glint in his blue eyes. ‘Squadron Leader Oates ordered us to bring it over in good time.’

  Brenda draped the last of the lights across the ladder and came down to ground level. ‘How will you get it in?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Good question.’ Malcolm Dawes surveyed the room. He was beefier and paler than Ernie, with dark brows and lashes and a broad face adorned with the pencil-thin moustache that so many young pilots had adopted. ‘There’s a ramp at the back of the van to wheel her out.’ So far, so good, but there was an awkward step up into the hall and he said he doubted that he and Ernie could manhandle the Edwardian joanna into the room unaided. ‘Marie Lloyd’s bloody heavy,’ he warned, scratching his head.

  ‘Marie Lloyd?’ Dorothy echoed.

  ‘Alias our old pi-anner.’ Malcom put on a broad cockney accent.

  Brenda said she was more than willing to lend a hand. She went outside with them, relieved to see that the snow had eased off completely. Though she noticed Alan still hard at it with his snow shovel while Walter Rigg supervised, she quickly discounted the notion of asking the vicar for help. ‘We need a flat board or a couple of planks to make a temporary ramp,’ she decided. ‘That way we could wheel your Marie Lloyd up the step and in through the door.’

  ‘As luck would have it, I might have the very thing in the van.’ Ernie winked at Malcolm then let Brenda in on the joke as he strode to their vehicle. ‘Mal likes to pull the wool over a pretty girl’s eyes. But we always follow the Boy Scouts’ motto: “Be prepared”!’ Lifting out two stout planks of the sort that Brenda had suggested, he handed them to his Oliver Hardy pal who pretended to stagger under their weight.

  Within five minutes they had the piano out of the van and in place in the corner of the hall.

  ‘Further to your right, please.’ Dorothy stage-managed its final position. ‘We want people to be able to see the tree properly.’

  Malcolm and Ernie put their shoulders to the piano and shoved, grunting theatrically. ‘There; how’s that?’

  ‘Champion. How many chairs will you need? One for the pianist, naturally.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am – that’d be me.’ Ernie tipped her a mock salute.

  Dorothy dipped him a curtsey and smiled back sweetly. ‘But what about the others; will they want to sit or stand?’

  ‘Stand.’ Malcolm sawed in the air and tapped his foot on the floor as if playing the violin. He stopped when he noticed three girls armed with piles of table linen and cardboard boxes full of crockery enter the hall. ‘Aye, aye, here comes the cavalry!’ he joked.

  Evelyn led the way, ahead of Alma and Joyce.

  ‘Have you and Alma got time to lend a hand at the church hall?’ Evelyn had asked Joyce when she’d called in at Black Crag Farm soon after nine. She’d explained how the fresh snowfall had held her up. Everything took longer – from mucking out Captain’s stable to sorting out his hay-net then breaking the ice in the stone trough to fetch his water. ‘Cliff took Dorothy home after the pub last night,’ she’d explained. ‘Afterwards he must have decided not to battle through the snow and stayed over at Garthside instead.’

  ‘How about it, Alma?’ Joyce had asked, as if it were an everyday thing for her to drop what she was doing and come down to the village.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Fear of facing people flew out of its dark cave at the forefront of Alma’s mind. It hovered and flitted overhead. ‘What would it involve exactly?’

  ‘Picking up boxes of crockery and so on from Geoff’s house and delivering them to the hall.’ Evelyn too had made it sound like the most straightforward thing on earth. ‘But don’t worry if you don’t have time.’

  ‘No – I do!’ Alma had taken off her apron. Back into your cave you go! ‘I’ll come,’ she’d decided with a quick glance at Joyce for reassurance. She would write a note for Laurence, telling him where she’d gone.

  And this was how she found herself face to face with two strangers in RAF uniform.

  ‘Where do you want these?’ Evelyn rattled her box of crockery at Dorothy as Malcom and Ernie lit up two Woodbines and took a breather after the strenuous work with the piano.

  Alma felt her chest tighten. She stopped to let Joyce overtake her.

  ‘You can put them down on the floor for now.’ Dorothy hadn’t yet got round to asking her two new RAF pals to set up trestle tables for refreshments in the kitchen annexe. She didn’t hide her surprise at seeing Alma. ‘Hello, stranger!’ she called out across the room. ‘You’re the last person I expected to see.’

  Malcolm and Ernie stepped in like gentlemen. They stubbed out their cigarettes and rushed to take the boxes.

  ‘Here, give me that,’ Ernie told Alma as he flashed her one of his lopsided smiles.

  She waited for the click of repulsion; a split second’s hesitation followed by the inevitable pulling back.

  It didn’t happen. ‘Blimey, love; this weighs a ton. How far have you had to carry it?’

  ‘Not too far.’ Her face was burning and she kept her eyes on the floor, which seemed to spin uncontrollably under her feet. She wished that it would open up and swallow her. In a second he would notice. The grin would vanish.

  ‘I’m Ernie, by the way. This other layabout is Malcolm.’

  ‘Alma,’ she breathed.

  ‘We’re part of tonight’s band.’

  How had he not noticed? Alma flashed him a startled glance and found that he was looking straight at her, still smiling.

  ‘I take it that you three young ladies will be getting your glad rags on?’ He looked from Alma to Brenda and then to Joyce.

  ‘Oh yes, sirree!’ Brenda replied.

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Joyce agreed.

  To everyone’s relief, as the snow clouds cleared and the sun rose in the sky, a rapid thaw set in. By eleven o’clock, snow slid from the roof of the church hall and landed with a thud on the ground, narrowly missing Evelyn, Joyce and Alma as they carried in more supplies. Brenda, meanwhile, had stayed inside with Dorothy to blow up balloons and put the final touches to the decorations.

  ‘Shall we move Geoff’s gramophone out of the way?’ Brenda asked the commander-in-chief.

  ‘No, don’t bother. Cliff will do that when he comes to light the boiler.’ Dorothy looked at her watch. ‘He’s due here any minute.’

  Alma placed two boxes of biscuits on one of the tables set up by Malcolm and Ernie before they left. ‘It’s time I was going,’ she announced. ‘Laurence is a stickler for routine. He likes to eat at twelve on the dot.’

  ‘Surely he won’t mind getting his own dinner for once.’ Brenda ignored Dorothy’s instruction to leave the gramophone where it was. ‘Here; give me a hand with this. Let’s stow it in the annexe.’

  ‘All right, I’ll stay a while longer,’ Alma agreed. Brenda was right: Laurence could fend for himself.

  ‘Let me go backwards.’ Brenda waited for Alma to take her share of the weight of the heavy cabinet. ‘Easy does it. So anyway, Alma, I’m trying to decide what to wear tonight. I’m torn between two choices: my blue jersey knit or the pale lavender I wore when I was a bridesmaid at Grace’s wedding. What do you think?’

  ‘The pale lavender sounds nice.’ Alma steered Brenda through the door.

  ‘I wouldn’t be over-dressed?’ Br
enda checked with Evelyn.

  ‘I don’t know without seeing it. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Hum-ha!’ Brenda made a great show of indecision. ‘What about you, Alma? What are you planning to wear?’

  Alma frowned as they shuffled the gramophone into an out-of-the-way corner. ‘Me? I won’t be coming,’ she said in a quiet but firm voice.

  Brenda felt sorry but not surprised. ‘Fair enough. Come to think of it, I can’t see Mr Bradley being the type to trip the light fantastic.’

  ‘It’s my choice,’ Alma said.

  ‘Right, but if you change your mind—’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Rightio.’ Satisfied that Geoff’s gramophone was stowed in a safe place, Brenda was the first to react to a loud squeal from Dorothy from inside the main hall. ‘Oh Lord, what now?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’ Alma rushed ahead of Brenda to find Evelyn, Joyce and Dorothy staring in dismay at the Christmas tree.

  ‘We turned the fairy lights on to test them and bang – we blew the main fuse,’ Evelyn explained as she flicked a panel of light switches on and off. ‘There was a loud pop then nothing. See – no lights anywhere in the building.’

  ‘Oh, blimey.’ Brenda foresaw fresh disaster. ‘We can hardly go ahead without lights.’

  ‘Where’s the main fuse box?’ Ignoring Dorothy’s wails, Alma’s practical streak came to the fore. ‘It should be easy enough to fix a fuse.’

  So they tracked down the box to the front porch and immediately saw the cause of the problem. The sudden thaw had caused a downpipe to burst and water had seeped in and was dripping on to the wiring that led to the fuse box.

  ‘Oh, no wonder,’ Alma muttered. She looked apologetically at the others. ‘This isn’t so simple after all.’