Land Girls

by Angela Huth

  ‘So I can only stay ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to ride like blazes to get back in time. It’s a good seven miles.’

  Prue exhaled very slowly. Stupid, it would be, to reveal any show of disappointment.

  ‘Pity,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a pity, all right. You’re so gorgeous.’

  Prue had never liked the word gorgeous, but it wasn’t Barry’s adjectives she was after. She looked up at him from under her lashes.

  ‘Moment I saw you,’ she said, ‘in the tea-room, I thought pretty much the same. I thought: he’s the one.’

  ‘I knew you thought that. It made me quite nervous.’ Barry laughed.

  ‘Couldn’t let a man like you get away,’ said Prue. ‘That’s why I made them all come to the dance.’

  ‘I saw through your planning, of course, and I was lost.’ He gave a small, contrite smile, like a schoolboy. ‘I thought: I’m a pushover. I’m going to say yes to whatever she suggests.’

  Prue smiled. She put a hand on her battering heart. Barry stretched down and put his hand over hers.

  ‘My loins are on fire,’ he said, solemnly.

  Prue giggled. ‘Oh, Barry,’ she said, ‘you’re the sweetest thing. Well: I’m here for the asking, aren’t I? I’m here for you to take, to do what you like with.’

  ‘We’ve only got eight minutes now,’ said Barry.

  Prue pouted. ‘We could just make a start,’ she said. ‘We’d have longer next time.’

  ‘But there’s so much I’d like to do to you. It’s been haunting me, all the things … Shall I tell you? I’d like to start kissing you at the top, go round and about, everywhere, very slowly …’ The blush had by now suffused his neck. He grasped the heavy wool of Prue’s jersey, that strained across her breasts, with a hand that was as red as his face. ‘I don’t know if I can wait, sweetheart.’

  Prue saw his desperate state. She removed his hand from her jersey.

  ‘You might have to wait, old cock,’ she said nicely. ‘Six minutes being really too much of a rush, trying to fit in everything you have in mind, as it were. You’d have to exceed the speed limit. We might not get the full benefit, such pressure of time.’

  Barry gave an agonized sigh. ‘You’re probably right.’

  They both stubbed out their half-finished cigarettes, threw them into a thorn bush.

  ‘What’s your actual job?’ asked Prue. Take his mind off the matter that was obviously causing him a lot of pressure would be the kindest thing, the best way to calm him down, she thought: though God knows that was some sacrifice, considering the wicked way she fancied him.

  ‘Mostly night flying.’

  ‘That’s terribly brave.’

  ‘I’m not brave. I’m terrified every time we take off. Every time, I think this is it. My number’s up. I could come again Friday,’ he added. ‘Two o’clock, free afternoon. Could you make it?’ Prue nodded. ‘It’s nice here in the woods.’ He looked at her, trying for calm. ‘That land girl uniform does something wicked to me. Christ, those breeches. Come here, sweetheart. I must kiss you again, at least.’

  Prue knelt up, startling a nearby blackbird which flew away with a thin hollow sound of wings. Barry’s face, against hers, was hot and damp. This time, kissing, she felt none of the excitement she had felt at the gate. Barry’s urgency was almost apologetic, as if life itself might be running out, chance must be taken. But in their very few moments together this afternoon Prue had worked out that, for all his sweetness, Barry was not to be her Philip. He was too young in his ways for her: he reminded her of a choir boy, the angelic blushing face and golden baby hair. In her post Joe afternoon in the tea-shop, and in her gin-fired dreams at the dance, enthusiasm had caused her to miscalculate. Still, he’d do nicely for a while.

  She could sense him raising his watch above his head, glancing at it through her hair.

  ‘Just under three minutes left,’ he said.

  Prue felt a kind of sadness.

  ‘No time for the actual,’ she told Stella and Ag later that night, ‘but a good beginning. He’s a real charmer, Barry, in his way – brave as anything. He’ll be my fourth pilot.’

  On the train next morning, cold in her third-class carriage, Stella thought about Prue. She pondered her gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may approach to men, and wondered at its benefits. She could not imagine herself flitting from one state of intense carnality to another, in Prue’s light-hearted way; she could not imagine the swift cutting off from one man, apparently no untidy trails left, followed so quickly by a new and untarnished keenness for another. Prue suffered no disillusions because she had no illusions in the first place. Her short-term goals were sex and fun. Conquering was the stimulus. Endings were of no consequence. She acted with the confidence of one who knows the ruling power of her own heart. Her heart would not be touched until it was convenient – until, when the war was over, it was the right time for the millionaire to provide marriage and security.

  Stella could not but admire Prue’s philosophy, even though the thought of quite so many casual men disturbed the depths of her puritanical psyche in a way she would never admit. She wondered if Prue ever missed the vicissitudes of other ways: the highs and lows of constantly being in love, the anticipation, the excitement of waiting for letters, for declarations, the general shimmering of daily life that love of a man can bring about. In her brief experience, if she had to be honest with herself – a difficult process Stella rather enjoyed – most of her own ‘loves’ were figments of an optimistic imagination. Her feelings, so eager to bestow themselves upon someone, were often – for lack of choice – bestowed randomly. She would stamp upon the love object the required attributes so clear in her mind. The reality behind the resulting picture, when it burst through, caused many a downward spiral in her heart. But she was not one to succumb to melancholy for long. She would never blame a man for letting her down. Rather, she would admit her choice had been mistaken. There would be others, she felt. And somehow there always were. To those who believe there is little point in being alive without being in love – Stella’s creed – there is no shortage of objects upon whom the cloak of fantasy can be flung.

  In her short acquaintance with Philip, Stella had had more rewards than usual. His heart-breaking handsomeness combined with a lack of vanity, his sense of fun balanced by a serious side of his nature, his prowess at dancing, his way of making her believe his declarations of love – all these things were new and wondrous to Stella, a spur to the idea that life ever after, with him, was a strong possibility. And perhaps his letters would improve. Their love was crystallized by the uncertainties of an insecure world: fear of an unknown future, an unknown amount of time, possible death that would snatch away their chances – such things were common to so many wartime lovers, Stella knew. All the same, she was convinced this was very different from the majority of desperate, unstudied wartime affairs. This had a lasting quality … didn’t it?

  Stella turned to look out of the window. Through the strands of rain, looped and pearled across the glass, she saw small hills of reddish earth. Devon, she thought it must be: names of stations were no longer displayed, just as signposts had been taken down. England had become a mystery place in which you had to find clues, guess where you were. But apart from that, here, as in Dorset, the only evidence of war was the sight of women working in the fields. She caught a glimpse of a row of land girls bent over hoes in a mangold field, and smiled.

  The guard who came to check her ticket said they were half an hour from Plymouth. Stella’s heart constricted. She thought for the thousandth time of Philip waiting for her on the platform, of his dear face breaking into a smile as she ran towards him. Except the face in her imagination was suddenly a blank. It had gone.

  In her panic, another picture came to mind, horribly clear – Mr Lawrence’s. His face, as he turned in the Wolseley to say goodbye to her, she would remember for ever. His look had been a mixture of anguish, sympathy, regret. He had briefly
patted her knee, wished her well, assured her he would be there to pick her up on her return. He had opened the passenger door, handed her the suitcase and said goodbye at the ticket office, his face so stricken Stella had been tempted to ask what troubled him. He was an odd one, Mr Lawrence, she thought, but she liked him. She then remembered that he had mentioned at breakfast his brother, terminally ill in Yorkshire, was worse. No wonder he had looked so unhappy, and the power of his unhappiness had touched her own high spirits.

  Stella took out her wallet, searched for the small Polyfoto of Philip. At the sight of the familiar features, her moment of amnesia was forgotten. Relief and rising excitement made her heart beat crisply, as if it was a razor-edged organ thumping with peculiar precision in her chest, hurting the parts nearby. She took out her silver compact – a legacy from her grandmother – and dabbed at her nose with a piece of swansdown fluff. No point in lipstick, she judged, and smiled to herself at the thought of the cosmetic preparations Prue would have been making in the circumstances.

  The rhythmic grunting of the train began to slow. Stella closed her bag, folded her hands on her knees. She studied the sepia photograph of St Ives, Cornwall, framed above the opposite seat. Maybe she and Philip would go there for a holiday one day. It looked an unspoiled place. Maybe she and Philip would travel the world. Then come back to a suburban house (they shared a love of suburbia) with spotted laurels, two cats, room for a piano so that she could give lessons … three, no, four, children.

  The train bucked, throwing her forward. There was a screech of steam. Through the rain-blurred window, a misted view of the large station, dozens of troops crowding the platform.

  Plymouth. Philip.

  Stella, trembling, stood up.

  Meeting can be like drowning. In the moments leading up to the encounter, a whole life can flash by. As Stella jostled her way through the army greatcoats, the stamping boots, the cloudy breaths gathered like small parachutes in the air, she realized she had only ever seen Philip at night. This would be her first view of him in daylight. Their three previous meetings (was it really only three?) had all been at parties: low lights, drink, dancing, the pitch dark of the old nursery. Any moment now she would see him in the cruelty of this grey light.

  His head was suddenly there in the distance, the familiar photograph coming alive, cracking into a semi-smile, the dark blue of his uniform handsome against the crush of khaki. They pushed towards each other, fell into each other’s arms like dozens of couples in wartime movies. Stella could taste rain on his cold lips, smell the damp of his hair, and the brown musky wood scent of his skin, peculiar to him, that she had forgotten.

  Outside the timeless cavern of their kiss, she heard the train pulling out and hundreds of cheers and calls of encouragement – envious laughter. Extracting herself from Philip to see what was happening, she realized that they were the objects of derision. Philip took a moment longer to realize this. His reaction was to laugh. But Stella saw his rain-smudged face had turned a raw red, and knew her own cheeks were the same colour.

  ‘Jealous bastards,’ he said, and waved back at the troops leaning from the train windows, a merry-faced lot who had latched on to an unknown couple’s moment of joy to hide whatever they themselves were feeling.

  Suddenly, the train gone, the station was quiet. Philip picked up Stella’s case from the damp platform.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Food. You must be famished.’

  He took her hand. The high tap of Stella’s shoes made small unsynchronized chords with the deeper sound of Philip’s boots. They made their way to the ticket barrier, and the city beyond.

  They sat in a small café, a place with none of the refinements of the tea-shop in Blandford. There was cracked oilcloth on the tables, covers of Picture Post stuck randomly on the walls to disguise a web of dirty marks. The place was empty, but for a slack-mouthed, greasy-haired waitress whose weariness, almost tangible, seemed to be smeared thickly over her like lard, hindering her movements. Philip ate scrambled dried eggs, so gritty and gristly-looking Stella wondered how he could swallow them. She herself, not hungry, toyed with two slices of bread and marge. They both drank strong cups of tea, which they sipped with great concentration, each waiting for the other one to choose a beginning.

  ‘We’re booked into quite a decent room,’ said Philip, at last.

  Stella smiled. She saw the hotel lobby of her dreams: chandelier, the ruby carpets soughing up the swirling staircase leading to their suite. And, somehow, a gramophone.

  ‘We’re asked to check in at five,’ he added.

  This was puzzling. But Stella imagined there were war-time rules in hotels. Regulations about which she knew nothing.

  ‘That’s fine. I’d like to look round Plymouth.’

  ‘We’ll go down to the harbour, take a look at the ship. Journey all right?’

  Stella nodded. The days of waiting for this moment, the agony of anticipation, had turned, like all past pain, to dust. She wondered if Philip had been through any of the same agonizing moods of impatience, and wondered whether she dared to ask.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ she ventured at last. ‘I thought I’d go mad, waiting, sometimes.’

  ‘It’s good to see you, too,’ said Philip, after some thought. ‘Very good.’ But he went no further, gave no clues as to how the wait had been for him.

  They ordered another pot of tea. Philip decided to try the jam roll. The single nicety of the café was a small china jug, patterned with morning glory, for the custard. While Philip struggled to hold back the skin with a fork, and encourage the thick flow of custard beneath with a spoon, he asked Stella to marry him.

  Stella stared hard at the jug, the delicate pattern of flowers engraving itself on her memory for the rest of her life. Such havoc of thought skittered through her mind she wondered if she had heard right, if she was imagining the question. This was so far from the picture of where and how the proposal would take place, she found herself in a silent, desperate struggle to appear composed.

  ‘I thought,’ said Philip, eventually alerted to Stella’s confusion, ‘if we made it clear marriage was on the books, things would be easier tonight …’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Tears skinned Stella’s eyes.

  ‘I didn’t want you to feel any guilt, any apprehension … any nervousness that I might be one of those chaps who makes love to a girl then leaves her.’

  ‘Nothing like that had entered my mind.’

  ‘No, well. We don’t know each other terribly well, do we? I wanted you to feel sure. Anyhow, what’s the answer to be?’ He sounded almost impatient.

  Stella put down her cup, blinked back the tears. She had only a few seconds in which to straighten out the surge of feeling that had rendered her physically useless. She looked down at her own shocked hands lying dead on the oilcloth, the nails painted a pale pink by the insistent Prue last night. She tried to sort out the muddle in her brain. The main factor was one of relief, an out-of-focus sort of joy that what she had been planning, hoping for, had happened so fast, so easily. But clambering about this main sensation were small, worrying shoots: the profound sense of bathos, the disappointment that Philip had not engineered so important a moment with more skill.

  ‘You look surprised,’ he said. ‘Surely it’s no surprise. I thought …’

  Stella braced herself, managed a small laugh. ‘I’m only surprised by the time, the place,’ she said. ‘Being a hopeless romantic I somehow thought the proposal was bound to happen with champagne and music.’

  ‘On bended knees, I dare say. You’ve seen too many films. I’m sorry, I don’t work like that.’

  Philip took one of Stella’s hands. The electric shock between them revived her. The familiar love that had so consumed her while hoeing fields, milking cows, spreading dung, returned. Ashamed at her sense of disappointment, she gripped Philip’s hands tightly, leaned towards him. The moment of her humility was accompanied by the sickly smell of suet and hot jam sauce.r />
  ‘Am I to be turned down?’ Suddenly anxious, Philip’s voice.

  ‘Of course not. Of course I’ll marry you. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too. That’s all right, then.’

  Philip extracted his hand from Stella’s, pushed away the plate of unfinished pudding. He signalled to the waitress for the bill, pulled a handful of change from his pocket with which he made three small towers of sixpences.

  ‘When I’m back at sea it’ll be good to know there’s a future wife waiting at home. Sometimes, on the night watch, especially, staring out at those miles of sea, you begin to think nothing else in the world exists. You think you’re the only ship on the only sea. Your mind plays all sorts of funny tricks.’

  ‘Hope the idea of a wife will make that better.’

  ‘I think it will. Let’s go.’

  Down at the harbour a thin sun was breaking through a taut, colourless sky. Gulls shrilled overhead, their indignant cries dying away into low, tattered, affronted notes. Small groups of sailors trailed back and forth with no apparent purpose. There was a smell of salt and tar, a suspicion of fishy depths to the wind.

  Stella and her sub-lieutenant stood looking up at the massive sides of HMS Apollo, a powerful ship built with the sharp sleek lines of an attacker. For some reason she reminded Stella of a pointer she had once seen at work when her father was out shooting – nose to the ground, cutting through a field of long grass. She could imagine the Apollo scything through the endless waves with the same sleek determination as a hunting dog – but that was a silly thought, not worth putting to Philip. She linked her arm through his, looked up at him, so handsome in his cap, the gold braid gently fired by the sun. His head was back, eyes on the White Ensign fluttering at the mainmast.

  ‘So lucky I got a destroyer,’ he said. ‘A lot of my friends were appointed to drifters and trawlers. I wouldn’t have wanted that.’