Land Girls: The Homecoming

by Roland Moore

  Connie had a plan. Perhaps a last-ditch attempt to cement things back together.

  So she waited in their bedroom for Henry to come home from his visit to the ailing Dr Beauchamp. She had laid sandwiches and a bottle of cider on the bedspread, an impromptu “bed picnic”. As she waited, she listened to the sounds from the guest bedroom, hoping and praying that Vince would be asleep soon. At gone ten o’clock, she heard the latch on the front door lift and recognised Henry’s soft footsteps as he wiped his brogues on the door mat. She guessed that he was trying not to wake Vince either.

  Darting to the top of the landing, Connie attracted his attention before he went into the dining room.

  “Psst!”

  “Connie?”

  “Keep your voice down and come here.”

  Soon she had a confused Henry inside the bedroom and was hastily closing the door behind him. She helped him remove his coat and hat while fielding his questions.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing’s happened. Didn’t want you waking him, that’s all.”

  “What are you doing here?” Henry noticed the food and drink on the bed. Two tumblers had been placed either side of the cider bottle, and Connie had picked a handful of field flowers to decorate the bedside cabinet.

  “What’s all this?” Henry asked.

  “We haven’t had a supper to ourselves for ages, have we?”

  He took this in, considering. Since Vince arrived, Henry didn’t act spontaneously any more. Instead he evaluated everything before giving his response. And this was no different.

  “That’s a lovely idea, Connie,” he mumbled, without smiling. But inside he recognised the effort she was making; the effort against adversity.

  But even his taciturn compliment was enough to buoy Connie. Maybe it was worth it. Maybe she could reach him after all. Excitedly, she motioned for him to sit on the floor. She sat beside him and lit a candle between them.

  “We’re not going to sacrifice anything, don’t worry,” Connie said.

  “You need an altar for pagan services. And I don’t think the dressing table would cut it,” Henry said. A small smile broke through, turning the corners of his mouth up, if not illuminating his eyes.

  Connie felt her eyes welling with happy tears. For the first time, she hoped that they were strong enough to get through this. They could do it. She leaned in for a kiss. Henry seemed nervous, withdrawn.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What do you think?”

  “But even if he weren’t here. Would you want to, then?” Connie’s big brown eyes looked vulnerable. The question had come out without her usual brashness; instead a fractured, fragile thing loaded with hope.

  But before Henry could answer, there was a thumping at the front door.

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  Henry looked confused. “Amos!” Connie said, terrified. “Who else could it be at this time of night?”

  She ran out of the room, a dazed Henry following. “What are you going to do?”

  Connie burst into Vince’s room, where he was already pulling his large frame out of the bed and trying to stand on fever-drained legs. As he looped his braces over his shoulders, Connie could see the butt of the pistol sticking out from his pocket.

  “We just need to talk to him,” Henry stammered. “If it’s Amos.”

  “Yeah, give him a sermon, Rev, that’ll work,” Vince snapped. He took a step forward, the blood rushing to his head and making his legs buckle like a day-old foal. Connie steadied him.

  “But how could he even know you’re here?” Henry asked.

  “Just be quiet. I need to think,” Vince growled.

  “What shall we do?” Connie asked him.

  Vince rubbed the bridge of his nose, desperately trying to clear his head, to think straight.

  And despite the agitation he was feeling, Henry felt further irked by this turn of events. At the first sign of danger, Connie had run to Vince not to him. And now she was asking him what they should do. It was as if they had slipped effortlessly back into their old ways. The first sign of danger and it seemed they were reunited. Partners in crime. The old adage about being as thick as thieves seemed horribly true. Henry felt sick.

  Connie ran down the stairs, eyeing the normally cosy image of her front door as a new danger.

  “Open it,” Vince said, from half-way up the stairs, the gun in his hand.

  “You’re not going to shoot him in the vicarage,” Henry protested. “Let me past and I’ll talk to him.”

  Connie flashed a look back. “Might be worth a try.”

  “Just open it and I’ll blow his brains out. End of story,” Vince said, levelling the gun with an unsteady hand in the vague direction of the front door.

  “Please. I implore you not to use violence-”

  “Get out the way.”

  Having a semi-delirious man waving a gun in his general direction was enough to make Henry Jameson see the good sense of getting out of the way. Reluctantly, and with resentment, he pushed himself to one side of the stairs, allowing Vince to lumber down. Now the thug stood in his hallway behind Connie, his gun raised, ready. Connie moved her hand to open the front door.

  Henry’s blood was pumping through his ears, pushed by a rapidly beating heart. He imagined that Connie and Vince were equally fired up and on edge. Connie opened the door and flung it open. Vince levelled the gun –

  But it wasn’t Amos Ackerly.

  It was a terrified nine-year-old girl.

  Chapter 11

  Margaret Sawyer drank nervously from the mug. Henry had given her some hot milk and she was cupping it with both hands, desperate for both its warmth and comfort. Connie knelt on the floor at her eye level and was trying to work out how long she had been outside in the cold. Why had she even come here this late at night? But the main priority since her arrival wasn’t asking questions. It had been to calm her down, to get her to relax after being greeted by the sight of a sweating, bullish man waving a gun in her face. That wasn’t the sight you expected to see when you knocked on the door of a vicarage in a sleepy town.

  “Feeling better?” Connie smiled.

  “Yes,” Margaret squeaked, in the sort of voice that didn’t really convince either way.

  Vince, despite Connie’s hope that he’d go upstairs to make it easier to calm the visitor, was sitting at the dining table, staring balefully at the little girl. Connie assumed that his mind was whirring with questions too. Mostly concerning what he should do about this situation. Now someone else knew he was here. It wasn’t just Connie and Henry. Connie knew that this was when Vince could be at his most dangerous. He’d never been good at keeping his temper when things got out of hand, out of his control. She remembered the nights when she’d stroke his forehead as he sat in the flat, trying to calm him; trying to talk him out of doing something rash or dangerous.

  Yeah, she’d been good at that. Much better than she’d been as a vicar’s wife.

  Connie shut the thought out of her head. She focused back on the situation in hand. Vince’s eyes had narrowed and he was staring intently at the little girl. Something clicked into place in his head.

  “I recognise you,” Vince said. Margaret looked up, brushing her blonde fringe out of her eyes. “You was the girl in the newspaper photograph.”

  Margaret looked shocked at being spoken to by this man. With the nervousness she was feeling, she doubted her own name, let alone whether she had been in any photograph.

  “Which explains how he found us,” Henry added in an aside to his wife.

  “Don’t matter how he found us, does it?” Connie replied. “He’s here now.”

  “As if I could forget it,” Henry said, shooting a sour look at her. Connie felt instantly apologetic. She hadn’t meant her reply to be so dismissive; just meaning that the history wasn’t the most important thing right now. But maybe she’d somehow felt it was innate criticism. If she hadn’t been in that photograph, none of this would be
happening. It was her fault. Just like it was her fault that she couldn’t make a decent cup of tea. Or entertain the bishop without giving him a sing song.

  Now it was Connie’s turn to bridle. She was a good person. She knew she was. And she’d done the right thing saving those people on that train. Who did Henry think he was?

  Henry looked confused. Why was she glowering at him?

  Connie realised that she’d let her mind run away with her. All from one little comment. She put it out of her mind.

  “Please may I use the toilet?” Margaret said, suddenly nervous at the attention. It was a relief for Connie to have an excuse to leave the room. Connie guided her to the stairs, and pointed out the room to her. “Door on the left.”

  Margaret went upstairs. As she rose up, Connie noticed that one of her legs was badly scratched, a long, jagged red line as though a demented stocking seam running up her calf. It was like she’d been scratched by a thorn bush or a hedge or something. Connie returned to the dining room.

  “Make me a cuppa,” Vince growled.

  “Make it yourself,” Connie snapped.

  “Not you. Him,” Vince said. “Your tea is diabolical.”

  “You was quite happy to drink it.”

  “It was still diabolical.” They caught each other’s eyes. A strange moment of warmth and shared memory amid the tension. Connie heard a small laugh coming from her mouth. It was the stress of the last few minutes bubbling up and over into laughter. But laughing between two ex-lovers wasn’t what Henry wanted to hear. He went to make the tea.

  Letting him go, Connie pulled a chair out and sat at the table, nearer to where Margaret had been. She glanced as Vince stared at the embers in the hearth. He started to unwind the bandage on his hand, staring morosely as each layer of fabric spun away. Picking off the pad over the wound revealed a cut that was pink instead of the angry red it had been previously. The untidy stitching had held. Connie felt relief. It might mean that Vince would go soon. Hope upon hope.

  “You done a good job.”

  “I did me best.” Connie decided that she might as well be nice. It might be easier.

  “You can do the holes in my socks if you like.”

  “There’s an offer, innit?”

  In the kitchen, Henry found himself enraged. He didn’t understand how Connie could joke with him. It seemed that she could easily fall back into their old ways. When they had been together. The thoughts hurt Henry, welling bolts of hot tears into his eyes. He didn’t want to lose her. But he didn’t understand her and felt miles apart from her sometimes; unlike Vince who seemed to tap into her psyche with his rugged charm. If you could call it charm. Was it made worse because he was a man who was everything Henry wasn’t? A threatening and dangerous man without a concern for manners, etiquette or people’s feelings. Henry knew how to deal with people who were like him. But Vince was unpredictable, a continent of experience so distant from his own that he wouldn’t even know how to sail there.

  Before, this place had been a calm house: an oasis in the turbulence of war, a sanctuary for those who came here. Troubled souls would sit at the table, sipping tea, calmed by the reassuring tick of the mantelpiece clock and they would feel restored; perhaps feeling their troubles slightly eased, concerns lifted. But now there was something evil here. A malevolent presence that had stomped over the niceties of polite conversation and the gentle tinkle of china cups on saucers. And now the evil was spreading, affecting the young girl, who had come here for help. Would they be able to help her? Would they be allowed to help her? Margaret had sought sanctuary but what was here might be even worse than whatever she was running from. Henry knew he had to do something.

  But what?

  Meanwhile, Connie used the opportunity of being alone with Vince to ask the big question that was on her mind. The thing that had been gnawing away at her, placing a venomous ball of unease in her stomach since she had first seen the monogram on the handle of the pistol.

  “So what did you do to Amos Ackley?” Connie asked, as lightly as she could manage. She had to know the situation. “Am I in danger? I mean, are we in danger?”

  Vince gave a little snort and smiled at her, amused by her slip. She was thinking of herself first, not Henry and herself. Maybe she’d already mentally shut off from the marriage, leaving its wreckage to concentrate on personal survival. Vince hoped so. That was his Connie.

  Henry brought in an empty cup and saucer, annoyed at how his hand was shaking. The crockery was rattling, betraying any stern facade he was trying to muster.

  “It’s brewing. My wife – We just need to know what danger we’re in,” Henry stammered.

  Vince’s eyes became like granite.

  “You’re in plenty of danger, Reverend,” Vince said coldly. “From me. You see, she and I go way back. But you’re just an inconvenience to me. A random fella in the way of things. I’ve got to work out what to do about you. And the kid, for that matter.”

  Henry swallowed hard, trying to find some saliva in his mouth to speak. But he couldn’t find the words.

  “We’re in this together,” Connie said, rising and standing by Henry’s side. She knew she was over-compensating for her slip. But she had to stand by her man. Henry felt both comforted and oddly undermined by her support. The old-fashioned part of him knew that he should be the one making the stand, not his wife. He should have made a stand back in the hallway when Vince was pointing a gun at the door. And he should be making a stand now. But making a stand was hard when you couldn’t even find the words to speak and your legs felt like jelly.

  “He’s my husband,” Connie added, defiantly.

  “Indeed he is.” Vince raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Henry stuttered.

  “You two is hardly fish and chips, are you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Connie looked confused.

  “Things that go together naturally. Fish and chips. Tea and milk. Sausage and ma –”

  “I get the idea,” Connie snapped. “We go together just fine, don’t we?”

  Henry nodded feebly. And Connie hated him for that moment. Why couldn’t he bluff? Why did he have to be so damn honest the whole time? Where was his backbone?

  Before Connie had time to say anything, Margaret’s footfalls on the stairs made her change tack. She turned her attention from Henry to Vince.

  “Vince here would like to apologise for waving a gun in your face. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Thought you might be someone else,” Vince said, uncomfortable about having to apologise. He offered what he thought was a reassuring smile which, ironically, made everyone feel even more uneasy. “Don’t like people coming here.”

  “That’s okay. Michael always gets uptight if anyone comes to the cottage as well,” Margaret said.

  “Is Michael your dad?” Connie asked.

  Margaret pulled a face, her mouth contorting in the way that children do when they’re pondering how to answer a big question. The young girl was about to reply, but she stopped herself and looked at her feet. Connie tried a different approach.

  “Why did you come here, Margaret?”

  “I should go back,” the girl said, suddenly worried. What had she done?

  “It’s too late to be trekking back over those fields,” Connie said. “We’ve had crashed German airmen wandering about and all sorts.”

  “You should stay here tonight,” Henry said, kindly.

  Margaret nodded reluctantly.

  Vince arched an eyebrow, as if he should have perhaps have been consulted on this matter. Again, Henry enjoyed the small, empty, victory of apparently being master in his own house. A charade, of course, but it was all he had. Vince stretched. Both men knew that Henry was only the master on the surface. There was a different man in charge now.

  “I’ll take you back tomorrow on me way to work. We’ll make you up a bed down here,” Connie said, pleased to be taking action. This was one situation a
mid the madness that she could manage. The vicarage was a haven once more.

  Vince looked uncomfortable. Connie told Margaret to come with her to collect a blanket and a pillow and they disappeared upstairs. Henry set about putting some more kindling on the fire to keep the room warm enough for their new visitor.

  “Who is she?” Vince hissed.

  “The girl from the photograph,” Henry replied. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”

  Vince looked towards the door, perhaps mulling things over, perhaps planning what to do.

  Henry felt a sick fear rising in his throat. Could this man contemplate killing the child? With deep unease, Henry realised that he had no idea what Vince was capable of.

  But he knew one thing, categorically and without question. He knew he had to do everything in his power to rid them of this monster.

  After an uneasy night’s sleep, during which Connie had checked on their young guest a couple of times, she and Henry made breakfast for Margaret. Vince slept in upstairs. The young girl fell on the scrambled eggs and toast as if suddenly remembering how hungry she had been from her run the night before, colour returning to her cheeks. It was five-thirty in the morning and just as dark as it had been when she’d arrived. Connie put on her Land Army sweater and pushed her hat on her head.

  “You’re really beautiful,” Margaret said.

  “Ha. No one’s beautiful in a Land Army get-up,” Connie laughed. “I think the whole thing’s designed to make you as unappealing to the GIs as possible. Look at this chunky old sweater, makes me look the size of a house!”

  “But Connie isn’t trying to attract any GIs.” And shooting a look at his wife, Henry added pointedly, “Is she?”

  “No, ‘Course not,” Connie said, pulling a comical face for Margaret’s amusement.

  She realised that the young girl didn’t have a coat. She must have left in a hurry the night before. Connie opened her little suitcase, but it didn’t contain any rational packing: a collection of soft toys, the piece from the newspaper, a skirt and a dress, a single sock. Everything had been grabbed and thrown into the case in a hurry.