‘But it’s the same thing, Chris! It’s damage! It’s a wound! Caused by fighting! Caused by the war! Not by something you have done or haven’t done! You were pushed too far! Anyone could see that.’
‘Everyone in the squadron was pushed, Georgie. They didn’t all crack up.’
‘You don’t know what they did! There are unexplained crashes, ditchings, mid-air collisions. Pilots crack up in different ways!’
While Georgina was only vaguely aware of these facts, Christopher knew them to be accurate. He had known men so exhausted and so consistently overexposed to danger that their basic instincts of self-preservation had become non-existent. He had seen them climb into fighter planes and fly like lunatics. Some had survived – so far. Many had not. He got to his feet.
‘Let’s walk,’ he said.
The once beautiful gardens of Axmount House, having been deprived of the team of gardeners who, until the outbreak of the war, had tended them, were rank after three years of neglect. The lawns were tussocky. Shrubs needed pruning and the herbaceous borders and the rose gardens looked almost surreal, draped and choked by rampant convolvulus. Hollyhocks and delphiniums lay flattened by the last gale while the autumn flowers, the marguerite daisies, dahlias and chrysanthemums, struggled through a tangle of brambles. An ornamental pool, embellished by its neo-Gothic bridge and its clustering mass of waterlilies, looked much as it had done in peacetime although the wild Dartmouth daisies, pushing through cracks in the paved terraces, would not have been tolerated by the men who were now in various uniforms and serving their country.
‘It’s supposed to be soothing, all this,’ Christopher said, staring across the pool and into the trees and green spaces of the parkland beyond it.
‘It’s probably doing you more good than you think,’ Georgina said. ‘You will get well, Chris. You know that, don’t you.’ But he had suddenly stopped. He took her by her shoulders, turned her to face him.
‘Let me look at you!’ he said, holding her. ‘Let me just have one long look at you!’ Her eyes, wide and steady, were inches from his. ‘I get these dreams, you see. The medics give me stuff to stop them. But it doesn’t stop them and they seem to come in the day as well as at night. They are the worst dreams, Georgie! You have no idea how awful! All the most horrific things that have happened since I’ve been flying. Over and over. And what I do, you see… What I do when the dreams start…is this!’ He was looking intently into her face, his eyes moving from feature to feature. ‘I conjure you! I put your face together. The shape of it. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. Until you are complete! And I hold you there, like I’m holding you now! So that you are between me and the dream! Between me and a cockpit full of flames in a plummeting plane. Between me and the flier I’m pulling out of an airstrip pile-up with his body coming apart in my hands and his eyes seared…’ To silence him she put her fingers briefly against his mouth. Then he continued more quietly. ‘Blocking it out… D’you see?’
Neither he nor Georgina had been aware of the approach of the white-coated male nurse.
‘It’s me, sir,’ the man said steadily, aware of his patient’s outburst. ‘John, sir. I’ve brought your medication.’ He held out the pill and watched as Christopher washed it down with a sip of water from the tumbler the man was holding out to him. ‘And it’s time for your afternoon nap, sir.’ John turned to Georgina. ‘Best come again another day, miss,’ he said evenly. ‘We’re a bit tired now.’
She repeated her visit after a fortnight. He seemed more rested and had regained some of the weight he had lost during the frantic weeks when he had been on the run. He told her about the day when he’d been scrambled and had been unable to move from the mess table where he had been sitting over an uneaten lunch. It hadn’t been that he had consciously refused the orders that were being shouted at him. He had simply found himself incapable of carrying them out.
‘I remember a medic being called,’ he told Georgina. ‘My pulse and blood pressure were checked and a torch beam was shone into my eyes. I just knew I had to get away. Anywhere so long as it was away. The next thing I remember was being amongst trees. I slept a lot and then I was hungry and then I was cold. I only had a few quid on me and by then I was in such shit order I couldn’t go into pubs or shops. I got chased a few times by the MPs. I found my way back home. God knows how. I got into the house at night and I stole food but I knew if I kept doing it I’d get caught. So I went up onto The Tops. There were mushrooms after the rain. I ate those. I walked about at night to stop the dreams. Then I couldn’t walk any more and I lay down in the straw in the byre. I was ready to die. The dreams took over. And then you were there. And that other land girl, Annie, was it? And the MPs of course. That’s all I can remember.’
They were sitting on a garden seat, the afternoon sun on their backs and shining full on the graceful face of Axmount House. ‘This place seems to be some sort of hospital. Did you bring me here?’ She told him she hadn’t and she realised that he had no recollection of what had happened to him since his arrest. Almost three months of his life had been obliterated, initially by the trauma and now, probably, by the drugs which were designed to stabilise him.
‘They tell me that my father will be coming to see me soon. He may have come before but I don’t remember. Have you come before? I think you have, haven’t you. I suppose I talked lot of gibberish. Sorry.’
She told him she had been to see him and that it hadn’t been gibberish. They entered what had been an orangery and sat down at a small table covered by a gingham cloth. An orderly brought them tea. Christopher held his cup in both hands. A woman from the local WVS went from table to table, offering a plate of scones and little cakes which she had obviously baked herself. When Georgina thanked her, the woman looked past her, smiled at Christopher and said it was the least she could do.
‘Everyone is very kind here,’ Christopher said. He was, it was true, very much calmer now than he had been on her earlier visit. But it was also true that the person sitting across the table from her, eating cakes and carefully lifting his cup of tea, bore little resemblance to the arrogant and dashing young man he had been six months previously. This depressed and scared Georgina. What she did not know was that Christopher’s drugs were being slowly withdrawn and that soon his doctors would begin to allow him to face the problems which the next phase in his recovery would deliver.
By now the harvesting of the arable crop was in full swing. Both Higher and Lower Post Stone farms were alive with activity. The weather was kind in the sense that it was dry and hot with no threat of the storms or damp weather which could have ruined the crop. Barley, wheat and oats went under the harvester and as it spewed out the bound sheafs the girls gathered them and propped them in rows of stooks, up and down the lengths of the fields to dry out in the warm wind, ready for threshing. Edward-John, now on his school holidays, joined in, working alongside the girls and, to his mother’s consternation, enjoying the pursuit of the rabbits, which, finally trapped in the last remaining acres of standing wheat, made frantic bids for freedom and were, only too often, clubbed to death by Fred and Ferdie and even, occasionally, by Edward-John himself.
The dry heat, which ensured the swift and safe gathering in of the harvest, took its toll on the girls who, dusty, hot, dehydrated and scratched by thistles, were, by the end of each long day, so exhausted they could barely speak. Even Rose was sympathetic when they limped and reeled into the farmhouse as dusk fell.
‘’Twon’t be long now, my pretties, till it’ll be over,’ she soothed, pouring cordial and then ladling onion gravy over plates piled with sausages and mashed potato. ‘Mr Bayliss allus give us a day off once the threshin’ be done and the ricks thatched! So that’ll be nice, won’ it!’
‘Only one rotten day?’ Gwennan’s voice was an agonised wail. ‘I’ll need a month in the cottage hospital after this!’
It was rare for Marion and Winnie to decline invitations when army trucks drew up outside the farmhouse and sounded their horns as t
he girls finished their supper. But on several nights during the harvesting, the trucks had driven off without them.
‘It’s not so much the goin’ out,’ Marion sighed wistfully, stretching out in her dressing gown, across a sofa in the recreation room, her sunburnt skin pink after her bath, her hair still dusty with chaff and several of her fingernails torn. ‘It’s the gettin’ dolled up ready for ’em I can’t be doin’ with!’
Hester, who in spite of Reuben’s continuing attention, wore very little make-up, remained fascinated by the fact that Marion, before she transformed herself with mascara, pancake foundation, crimson lipstick and powdered rouge and had rolled her hair into solid mounds which gave onto cascading curls and had caged her body in waist-cinching belts, above which frilled blouses suggesting irresistible roundnesses and softnesses, was an entirely different person from the frowsy, angular, pale creature with lank hair and thin lips who, at breakfast and during working hours, was familiar to all of them. ‘What you gawpin’ at then, Hester?’ Marion would demand as Hester stared spellbound when she tottered dangerously down the steep stairs in her high heels and what Annie called her ‘warpaint’.
‘Nothing, Marion. I’m not staring,’ Hester would smile. Winnie relied less heavily on the jars and tubes and bottles and brushes that crowded the dressing table she shared with her friend. Not because she disapproved of Marion’s complicated ritual but because, being an altogether prettier girl, she was more easily transformed into something eye-catching. Also, she knew better than to compete with Marion, who needed to be recognised as the more dazzling of the two of them and consequently the rightful recipient of the lion’s share of any available male attention that was on offer.
Annie, with encouragement from Georgina, had embarked on her studies for the series of Ministry of Agriculture certificates, which, if she was successful, would eventually qualify her for employment as an assistant farm manager.
‘What d’you want to waste your time on that for?’ Gwennan had asked curtly, when she heard about Annie’s plans. ‘That’s for posh girls, in’t it? An East Ender like you’s never going to get work as a farm manager!’
‘Why not?’ Georgina asked on Annie’s behalf.
‘’Cos she’s common, that’s why! ’Cos of the way she talks! It’s obvious, “Miss Webster”!’ Calling Georgina Miss Webster was Gwennan’s way of reminding her of the class difference between them. The girls were sitting over the cups of tea that rounded off their evening meal. Gwennan, leaning forward, reached for the pot and drained it into her cup.
‘Ta, Taffy,’ Marion said wearily, clattering her empty cup in its saucer. ‘I would like another cup, thanks very much!’ While Gwennan and Marion glared across the table at one another Georgina went to fill the kettle.
‘You’re talking rubbish, Taff,’ she called from the scullery, hoping to ease the tension by using the Welsh girl’s nickname. ‘Almost the only good thing about this war is that it’s kicked all that class rubbish out of the window!’
‘Rubbish, is it?’ Gwennan snapped back. ‘Then why is it that girls who get into the WRNS and the WRAF is all lah-di-dah and the ones in the munition factories or up to their necks in muck, like us, is board-school kids?’
Georgina stood the kettle on the stove and returned to the table. This was not the first time that the question of class had been raised in the hostel and would not be the last. Her own status as a pacifist also caused tension.
Annie had confided in Georgina that, after delivering his sister back to the farm after her second visit to Christopher, Lionel had drawn her aside and invited her out.
‘And are you going?’ Georgina had asked, smiling. Her brother’s obvious attraction to Annie had not escaped her and now, seeking Annie’s reaction to it, she scanned the girl’s face. She was easily the best looking of the Lower Post Stone girls. Her dark hair framed striking features. The lustrous eyes were huge and solemn, the jawline delicate, the mouth lush. Georgina had heard Annie speak of a boyfriend, Pete, with whom she had been ‘going’ since they were both at elementary school. His father ran a market stall off the Mile End Road where Pete, from when he quit school at fifteen until the day he was conscripted, had worked alongside his dad, in his shirtsleeves in the summers and blowing on mittened fingers in the winters as he weighed out the fruit and veg. Now he had progressed to a trainee aircraft mechanic in the RAF, writing letters to his girl and sometimes sending her small gifts. A pair of mother-of-pearl earrings had been his latest offering. But Georgina had sensed in Annie a desire to move on from Pete, just as she had yearned to move on from employment in her uncle’s garment factory.
‘Well?’ Georgina asked again and, when Annie hesitated, repeated the question. ‘Are you going out with my bro?’
‘I dunno, Georgie.’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘’Course I like him. He’s…well, he’s lovely, isn’t he! Good-looking and funny and everything, but…’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘I’m not…well, I’m not the sort of girl a bloke like him goes out with, am I? It’s no good you looking at me like that, Georgie! Or goin’ on about there being no class system!’
‘There isn’t! Well… Not as much as there was, anyhow.’
‘Enough though,’ Annie said. It was evening and the two girls were sitting on the garden wall. Bats were diving and wheeling above their heads and the August full moon, a soft rose-pink globe, was just clearing the eastern horizon.
‘Shall I give you a for instance?’ Annie offered and when Georgina nodded, paused for a moment before continuing. Then she said, ‘You remember that Sunday we got volunteered for church parade?’ Georgina nodded. A few weeks previously Margery Brewster had coerced a group of the Post Stone girls into attending morning service at Ledburton church.
‘It’s good for the Land Army’s image,’ she had explained to Alice over morning tea. ‘We need to be nicely represented from time to time, in public, in uniform and in church. There will be coffee and cakes in the vicarage afterwards. Don’t encourage Mabel Hodges to volunteer, Alice. And if she does, make sure she’s… Well, you know what I mean!’ Alice did know. Even after a bath and dressed in a clean uniform, Mabel was not quite the image of a land girl that Margery Brewster wanted to offer for public scrutiny. Fortunately for Alice, Mabel was not in the least inclined to spend the morning of her precious day off sitting in a church. So it was Alice herself, accompanied by Edward-John, Gwennan, Georgina and Annie who sang the hymns, sat through the sermon, said the prayers and afterwards filed across the churchyard and into the parsonage where they were introduced to the vicar and his wife.
‘Pleased to meet you!’ Annie had said and, ‘Ta very much,’ as she helped herself to a fairy cake.
‘So?’ said Georgina. ‘What was wrong with that?’
‘What was wrong, Georgie, was that you and Mrs Todd said “how d’you do” when you was introduced. And “thank you” when you took your cake!’
‘They’re only words, Annie!’
‘Yeah, but the ones I use is the wrong words!’
‘But the meaning was fine! You were pleased to meet them and you were grateful for the cake!’ But Annie was not convinced.
‘Then there was that time you and me had tea at the Rougemont!’ The two of them had, Georgina recalled, entered the prestigious hotel and, amongst the potted palms, ordered afternoon tea in the formal lounge. Annie, attempting to summon the waitress for more hot water, had called ‘Miss!’ The girl, immaculate in black dress, white apron and frilled cap, had approached their table and deliberately ignoring Annie, very pointedly addressed her ‘yes, madam?’ to Georgina. ‘I should of said “waitress”, shouldn’t I! “Miss” is what common people call waitresses, isn’t it!’
‘It doesn’t matter, Annie!’ Georgina laughed.
‘That waitress thought it did! If I went out with your brother I’d be scared to open me mouth lest I embarrassed ’im! You could give me lessons, Georgie! Te
ach me to say “how de-do” and hold up my hand, like you did, with your forefinger raised and your other fingers curled and say “Waitress! May we have our bill, please”!’ Annie’s faux accent, delivered falsetto and with a po-face, sounded so much like Margery Brewster’s when she summoned the girls to the recreation room for the regular six-weekly meeting, which always concluded with her looking from face to face and enquiring shrilly whether any of them had any questions, that one or two startled faces appeared at the hostel windows.
Annie did go out with Lionel. On Saturday afternoons she hauled up her skirt and climbed onto the back of his motorbike, wrapped her arms tightly round his waist and leant against his broad back.
‘I’m not being forward or nothing!’ she explained to Hester, who witnessed her arrival back at the hostel one evening, her face flushed by the rush of wind and her hair tangled. ‘But you has to hold tight like that, Hes! You’d fall off else!’
They made love among gorse bushes on cliffs above Branscombe Beach. It was not her first time. Pete had taken her virginity the year before. But it was Lionel’s. Annie taught him how to avoid making her pregnant by withdrawing from her before he ejaculated. He managed it, apart from the first time and after that was always equipped with what Annie called ‘preventatives’, which he had procured with only a minimum of embarrassment when his barber tactfully enquired whether he needed ‘something for the weekend, sir?’
For Alice the summer passed quickly. The routine she had established, together with the new layout of the kitchen, made her heavy workload at first possible and then tolerable. Edward-John’s uncle had visited the boy and his school and, being impressed by both, had offered not only to continue to pay the fees but to make funds available for other expenses. Letters passed between Alice’s solicitors and James’s but no date had yet been set for the divorce hearing. Oliver Maynard was attentive and charming though there had been a couple of occasions when she had to remind him that their relationship was one of friendship only. He was careful not to embarrass her, understanding, correctly, that to do so at this stage would be to lose her.
Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Page 18