The Land Girl

by Allie Burns

  ‘You’re to work through your lunch today,’ she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. She held her breath while the two women conferred quietly. ‘To make up for the time spent behind the hedge,’ she added to make herself quite clear.

  She waited what seemed like a day. The two women eyed her up and exchanged mutterings. Her stomach was rumbling so loudly it might startle the crows on the neighbouring field, but if she was in charge she couldn’t go and get her lunch either. She would have to stay with them, and try her best not to think about Mrs Tipton’s delicious bacon sandwiches.

  And then, finally, Olive moved forwards and lifted her pitchfork back up and Ada followed her. Martha kept walking, but two out of three was good enough for her. Emily smiled – she couldn’t control it. She had the urge to leap up and down, but a smile would do.

  Chapter Thirteen

  July 1916

  Dearest Emily,

  I hope you will accept my apology for not writing before. Patch was hit by shrapnel, not severely but enough to put him out of action. He is back with us now, but it left me queer for a few weeks.

  I am hopeful that I will be given some leave soon. It’s hard to believe I haven’t seen you since our wedding day. It will be wonderful to spend time with you again.

  Fondest love

  Theo

  Emily perched gingerly on her stool, ready to run for it should Lily pull another of her tricks while Mr Tipton led the cows along the straw-dappled cobblestones into their pen. She smiled at Martha, who ignored her. She was almost immune to her animosity by now, but she wouldn’t give up, because they might just get along if only Martha would give her a chance.

  The cows rumbled past them, eyes peeled wide. They grunted and stamped backwards, hooves scraping along the cobbles, butting one another.

  Martha worked silently, burying her head in Nancy’s side-hind and squeezing the teat as the stream of milk pummelled the zinc pail.

  ‘Any word from your mother?’ Mr Tipton asked, Sally the collie at his heels.

  Emily shook her head at Mr Tipton. She still wrote weekly with her adventures on the farm, inviting Mother to tell her how she was coping in London, and whether she found it helped to be away from the memories of HopBine. But the initial letters had stopped. She checked the post mat and found nothing from Mother, just a slicing draft through the letterbox.

  ‘And Cecil?’

  She shook her head again. He’d not written either, which was far worse than a letter telling her he was exhausted, because her imagination was a great artist and could sketch a worse scenario.

  She had such mixed feelings about Cecil. The worry about his treatment kept her awake at night; he might be as stubborn as a donkey, but he wasn’t as strong physically. He was used to his home comforts, to being pandered to by Mother, and it made her want to scream at the very idea of him locked in a tiny cell with no books and no light, growing more and more feeble on bread and water. That’s what they’d heard it was like; the German prisoners of war were treated better. But at the same time, she wanted to hide away from the people he’d hurt and cry for poor desecrated John’s memory. How would she ever look at him and not feel a fire burning within her?

  She came face to face with Martha and smiled. What else could she do but keep smiling?

  She adjusted her girl, Lily, this way and that for a better grip. She’d had another calf. This one had survived, but she was still a tetchy so-and-so and her thin teats didn’t help. She butted Martha now with her hind with such a force that she forced her from the stool.

  She offered Martha a hand up, but she ignored it.

  ‘Do you think you can control your cow, please?’ Martha spat.

  Every muscle and sinew tightened. As Martha dusted herself off, something inside snapped. They couldn’t possibly go on like this. If she didn’t encourage Martha to speak what was on her mind they would have to endure this uncomfortable silence for the rest of the war.

  ‘Do you think you could try to be civil towards me? After all, we have to live together.’

  ‘Just because you own this place, doesn’t make you any better than me,’ Martha replied.

  ‘I don’t for one moment think I’m better than anyone. But I also don’t believe I should be held to account for the actions of my brother.’

  Emily rubbed Lily’s side to warm her hands. She was trembling, giving her away. She focused on the job, willing her hands to stay steady so that she could curl her fingers as tightly as she could. Enjoying the discomfort of her nails biting into her palm, she pushed her hand against the soft udder, pulled the warm teat down in short, decisive tugs and out shot the jet of warm milk.

  But Lily wasn’t silly; she’d sensed she was in the care of an edgy milkmaid. The cow took another lurch backwards, this time knocking Emily clean from the three-legged stool.

  Martha didn’t offer to help her up; she just left her lying there. Emily pushed her sore hand into the cobblestones to lever herself up to sitting, just as Lily lifted her rear hoof and set it straight into the pail, sending it clanging to the ground and leaving a creamy puddle.

  ‘What a waste,’ Martha said. ‘Mr Tipton won’t be happy.’

  Emily said nothing. It was better that way. Her blood was surging through her veins, and if she said anything else, she’d regret it.

  Once they’d finished milking, they took their pails up to the separator and then let the cows out on to the meadow. Emily hung back to see which direction Martha took, and chose the opposite.

  *

  ‘Back to it then, my dears,’ Mrs Tipton said, as she massaged her calves to stop the cramp.

  The farmhouse heat, the low ceiling, the burnt coal, the cats’ damp coats and Mrs Tipton’s cabbage-soup steam had all made Emily quite sleepy. She pinned opened her eyes. She needed to stay awake so she could do the last of her jobs for the day, and because she’d do anything to avoid sleep these days.

  She woke most nights, her chest tight, her skin prickling with cold, gasping for air. In her dreams she drowned in dark, still water, or ran along the bank, John on the other side, but there was no bridge, never a way across.

  During the days she was consumed with her work, though the other girls kept their distance. The evenings made up for it; the Tiptons didn’t judge, and understood what she’d lost.

  After five hours of lifting crates at a neighbouring farm early on and a tramp there and back along a mud-porridge path, her arms, legs and back ached. Even her bones hurt and her heart did too. The shadows loomed in her mind. Mr Tipton had his eye on her, had done all evening, and so she didn’t get up when the others did. She was glad. She didn’t want to bed the horses down while the girls were engrossed in a conversation that didn’t include her, and she didn’t want to go back to Perseverance Place and take herself off to bed early, because her blankets were the only comfort and warmth she’d get there.

  She shook out her trouser legs – she wore a nice comfy pair of breeches to work now, and she didn’t feel quite so naked beneath her oilskin any longer – and adjusted her boots. She would wait as long as it took for Mr Tipton to speak.

  ‘As you’re doing well, I want you to take charge of our new workers,’ he said, closing the kitchen door so that it was just the three of them. Mrs Tipton dried her hands on her apron and sucked through her teeth.

  Emily waited. Something told her that this wasn’t going to be the good news it seemed to be on the surface.

  ‘We’ve got five German prisoners o’ war, coming to work here.’

  Mrs Tipton disappeared into the scullery with a shake of her head.

  ‘They’ll take one of the spare houses at Perseverance Place.’

  Hair prickled at the nape of her neck. ‘But no one will want them here.’ She shuddered. They might walk in on the girls at night, and do to them what they did to the women in Belgium.

  ‘You’ll have to work something out then,’ Mr Tipton said.

  She didn’t understand. Why was she responsible?
Hadn’t she been taken on to organise the women? And that was hard enough. She implored Mrs Tipton to step in, or to explain, to do something other than clattering about with a crock and refusing to meet her eye.

  ‘But Mr Tipton …’ she began, with no idea of how she might finish that sentence.

  ‘The army are also sending two men who aren’t fit to fight in the war,’ he added. ‘One of ’em’s deaf, the other’s lame. They’ll be with me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if those two were with me and the women?’ she asked.

  Mr Tipton shook his head and explained. ‘They’re sending us a Fordson tractor and they’ve trained one of the soldiers how to use it. You women can’t be trusted with a great machine like that.’

  ‘But the women will never work with the Germans,’ Emily said. This would only make things worse with Martha. She might as well ask her to call her the Kaiser.

  *

  ‘Work with the Hun?’ Martha said, the rest of the girls crowding behind her. ‘No way. No blinking way.’ They were up on the top field lifting stones ready for the plough. The deaf soldier had been out on the tractor, ploughing the half that they’d already cleared, but he’d stalled it, claiming it had a mechanical problem that he didn’t know how to fix, and it had remained stranded like a relic to the future in the middle of the field.

  ‘You’ve a brass cheek to even ask. I’m a volunteer, remember? I can go home and put my feet up if I choose,’ Olive said.

  She didn’t need reminding – she’d been thinking the same thing. She’d signed up wanting to make a difference, and to have a wonderful time working the land, not to work alongside the Hun and be treated as if she was the enemy by the other workers.

  ‘We can give them the jobs we don’t like,’ Emily reasoned, letting her heels sink into the ground. There was some marshy land down by the river that needed to be readied for the plough.

  ‘Well that would be all of it then.’ Ada sniffed. She staggered under the weight of a boulder. Stone lifting was monotonous, heavy going and for every rock lifted, half a dozen seemed to take their place, but it was better than readying marshland or cleaning out ditches.

  Emily dumped a heavy boulder into the cart.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mr Tipton that we must ask the men to stay in their lodgings at night. We won’t be mixing with them.’

  ‘What?’ Lottie’s eyes were wide. ‘They’ll be living amongst us, too?’

  ‘At Perseverance Place, yes.’ Emily trained her eyes to the ground. Mr Tipton hadn’t been silly giving her this responsibility, but he’d let her down. It seemed to her that he wanted the German manpower, with none of the aggravation that came with it, and it was unfair that she had to break it to them that the Germans were no longer being held in armed camps. ‘We will have to trust them.’

  Olive and Ada scoffed, shaking their heads.

  ‘You do read the newspapers?’ Martha asked.

  ‘We have safety in numbers,’ Emily reasoned. Why did she have to say such silly things? If those men decided to attack them in their beds at night they wouldn’t be strong enough to defend themselves, and their only hope would be one deaf and one lame soldier. ‘Perhaps we should sleep with pitchforks beneath our beds?’ she said.

  If only she could take the words back, but it was too late. The women tutted.

  ‘It’s as if we’ve been invaded after all.’

  ‘I won’t do it,’ said Martha, predictably. ‘I’ll go and get a job in munitions with better pay and no Germans.’ Martha threw her gloves onto the boulders in the wain, and then the others followed, and she was powerless to stop them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  July 1916

  The German voices travelled through the thin walls. Sharp, angular speech that landed like spears against her ears filled her bedroom and made her feel as if she wasn’t in her own home any longer, as if they were occupied, which was silly because those men weren’t soldiers, they were just trapped in a country that hated them and resented their very presence, that would find satisfaction in seeing them suffer.

  Her own home was so quiet. She and Martha mostly stayed in their bedrooms. She even ate in her own room now. They hadn’t spoken in days. In Martha’s eyes the Germans were just another example of Emily siding with the enemy. And Emily had given up trying to be reasonable with her. She’d sunk to the lows of being just as bad.

  The Germans took orders from her, a woman, better than the land girls did. They were friendly and kind and nothing at all like the picture painted by the newspapers. They’d accepted the task of turning over the marshy land, something that would have had her girls complaining every moment, and they worked just as long as the rest of them.

  Now in their second week she had them working in the ditches – long days without trouble. Meanwhile, Mr Tipton had already sent back the two men the army had given them.

  ‘Hopeless,’ he’d said. ‘But I told ’em we’ll keep the tractor, thank you very much, but they can have the men.’

  ‘Is the Fordson still up on the top field?’ she asked. A broken-down tractor that no one could drive wasn’t any use at all.

  ‘Aye. With that machine I’ll not need so many workers. And what a blessing that will be.’

  She kicked about some dust with her foot. She still couldn’t admit that she was having trouble, that the girls refused to work with the men and now journeyed to the lavatory together in pairs, one standing sentry at the door, while the other did their business. All except for her; they left her to brave the darkness on her own.

  Could she really make his day worse? Every day his skin was paler and more creased, his necktie hung around an increasingly scrawny neck. And what if she told him and he simply didn’t care about morale and only about productivity? Then she really would be on her own.

  If Father and John were there, they’d know what to do. Both would use their charm to bring everyone – German and English, men and women – together.

  In the dim lamplight her left hand caught her attention. Her wedding band had never turned up. It was all she’d had to remind her of Theo, and she’d lost it. And as if he’d known and was angry with her, he hadn’t written to her for a while either.

  It struck her then like a stick to the back of the head. Martha was always rushing to the doormat and checking for post too. When Martha got a letter, she sprinted to her room and shut the door, and she didn’t knock Emily’s shoulder quite so hard when they passed on the landing or slam her dinner plate down with so much force if it was her turn to serve the evening meal.

  Only their doormat had been bare every day for over a week now. They’d collided once or twice in the hallway, both of them empty-handed. The warmth those letters gave when they did arrive couldn’t be replaced with anything in the world. The silence in their place left only an aching heart and a desire to run and run until you found them safe, but there was always the knowledge that you might keep running and never find them.

  Later, she knocked on Martha’s door. But there came only silence. She called, and rapped again. Then Martha sighed. Heavy footsteps grew closer.

  ‘Yes?’ Martha opened the door just enough for her nose to poke through. The rims of her eyes were red, the skin around her eyes glistening in the lamplight.

  Emily swallowed, straightened her arms and said, ‘I just wondered, if you had someone at the Front, someone you missed, and whether it might help you to talk about them?’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘I found it helped to talk about my brother John when he was away fighting.’

  ‘Oh,’ Martha said. ‘I have, yes, a brother Frank. He’s my twin. And he was proud of me for doing this, but how can I write and tell him I’m living with the sister of a traitor and working with the Hun?’

  *

  The Germans worked so hard and such long hours that the village women had stopped hiding behind hedgerows. They took a short break in the morning and the afternoon together but they were too afraid t
o wander off alone and too ashamed to be outworked by the Hun.

  Now, once the horses were put to bed, instead of everyone going back to their own rooms in Perseverance Place they began to hang around the farmhouse kitchen after they’d bedded down the horses, to play cards on the hearth, warmed by the fire, while Mr Tipton told them stories or they sang campfire songs. Safety in numbers.

  Mother had finally written to her. She congratulated Emily on her marriage to her ‘officer chap’ and was sorry she hadn’t been able to make it. She’d accompanied Wilfred on a business trip to his paper mill and farms in the West Country. She didn’t ask about the farm, or comment on anything Emily had told her about her work so far. Mother sounded content enough. She had no desire to lay eyes on Emily and Wilfred appeared to be taking care of her.

  Then, Mr Tipton finally succumbed to Mrs Tipton’s badgering to take their first day off in years.

  ‘Our girl knows the ropes now. The men listen to her, and the girls respect her enough not to be getting up to any mischief,’ Mrs Tipton reasoned, and had harnessed up Bob to the pleasure trap before he could talk her out of it.

  ‘The ole man is taking me shopping and for a pot of tea for two somewhere nice.’

  Emily didn’t recall a time Mrs Tipton was ever out of her apron and she hardly knew the missus now dressed in a frilly blouse, her hair rolled around pads and filling out the canopy of a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with ribbons.

  What would Mr Tipton say if he knew that the women were still refusing to work with the Germans? He might not feel so free to leave, but it would be Mrs Tipton who missed out. It was only one day. She could keep them under control for that long. Couldn’t she?

  Once they’d waved them off, Emily pulled everyone together in the yard.

  ‘Now then,’ she said, standing at the centre of the two respective camps, which had a sizeable gap of farmyard separating them. ‘We’re going to work together today,’ she told them. ‘We’re going to check the sheep over for foot rot.’