Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  ‘Reckon I’ll get up now,’ she added. ‘Grab the bathroom before the others get home, right?’ Alice smiled. It was typical of Gwennan to take advantage of her indisposition to snatch a hot bath from under the noses of the rest of the girls, who had been working all day.

  Dear Georgina, Alice wrote and then sat, tapping her fountain pen against her teeth, trying to decide how to say what she needed to say.

  It has been a long time since we had any news of you, although I have heard, in a roundabout way – from Jack, actually, who tells me that, when delivering supplies to Christopher, he often sees you at the woodman’s cottage and that you are no longer with the ATA.

  When you swore me to secrecy about your plans to marry Christopher and go out to New Zealand with him, I had no notion that it would be not even weeks but months before you discussed all this with your parents and, in Christopher’s case, with his father. Have you any idea how embarrassing this is for me, in view of my association with Christopher’s father? I mean with my professional association with him, as his hostel warden, as well as in terms of my acquaintance with him on a personal level?

  Alice thought this sounded very formal and slightly pompous but she was finding Georgina’s behaviour increasingly irritating, and after some thought she wrote on in the same vein.

  I do understand that it is a complicated decision for you both to make and that it will be difficult for Christopher to explain to his father his reasons for emigrating. I wish, believe me, that I did not know anything at all about this but, since you did confide in me and, in doing so, involved me in it, making me, in effect complicit, I feel you should consider my position. Frankly, I am surprised you have not had the courtesy to come and see me in order to discuss things. Perhaps you have not realised quite how long it has been but now that I have drawn your attention to it I hope to hear from you very soon. I’m sorry if I sound cross, my dear, but I am rather.

  Yours, Alice

  She gave her letter to Jack who, the next morning, took it with him, up into the forest where he found Christopher and Georgina working in a plantation of young hardwoods.

  In the afternoon of that day the pair of them arrived at Lower Post Stone, contrite and apologetic. Alice made a pot of tea and led them through to her room.

  ‘Alice, we’re so sorry!’ Georgina began. ‘We should have thought! Well, we did think, but mostly about ourselves!’ Christopher, carrying the tray of tea things, followed the two women and set the tray down on Alice’s low table. ‘At first we had to wait until Chris’s appointment was confirmed,’ Georgina explained, ‘then we didn’t know exactly when they want him to start work for them, and then there was all the emigration palaver … And we still hadn’t told my folks … and …’

  ‘And have you told them now?’

  ‘Well, most of it.’

  ‘Most of it?’ Alice echoed, starting to pour the tea. ‘And which bits haven’t you told them?’

  ‘We haven’t told them exactly why we’re going,’ Christopher said. ‘I mean the part about my problem with my father.’ Alice passed his cup of tea to him and indicated that he should help himself to milk and sugar if he wanted them.

  ‘They must find it hard to understand why you would even think of turning your back on the Post Stone farms, Christopher. On your inheritance, in fact. Everything your father and all the generations of the Bayliss family before him have built up and cherished. And to a great extent, on Georgina’s future too. And that of any children you may have.’

  ‘They do,’ Christopher told her. ‘They find it incomprehensible.’ He was trying, unsuccessfully, to make it sound like a joke. ‘They think their daughter is marrying a lunatic!’ He glanced at Alice, who was clearly not amused.

  ‘Would they understand if you told them the real reason?’ she asked him.

  ‘They would,’ Georgina said. She had accepted her tea from Alice, carried it to the window and was standing, staring out across the lane and into the cider apple orchard. ‘They would understand but Chris won’t tell them because he hasn’t told his father yet. He says it would be unfair on his father, for them to know while his father still didn’t.’ There was a pause before Alice spoke and when she did it surprised both Georgina and Christopher.

  ‘I think you’re absolutely right, Christopher,’ she said. ‘It would be outrageous.’ She resisted going on to emphasise that he owed it to his father to tell him what his plans for the future were and why he had decided on them. That he needed to be courageous enough to face his father with the way he had made him feel about his breakdown and that he needed to do it soon. Instead she controlled the temptation to give direct advice and confined herself to asking, rather sharply, what he intended to do. ‘Are you proposing to simply tell your father that you and Georgina are getting married, Christopher? And then add, “Oh and by the way, we’re emigrating to New Zealand so I won’t be around anymore and no, I don’t give a damn what happens to you or the Post Stone farms, now or ever”?’

  Georgina stared at Alice and was slightly affronted that the warden seemed to be viewing the situation more from Roger Bayliss’s perspective than from Christopher’s, who appeared to consider what Alice had said, but after a moment, shook his head and sat down heavily on the window seat.

  ‘I don’t think that telling Pa the main reason for wanting to go would work, Mrs Todd,’ he said. ‘He’s always been impossible to talk to on those sorts of subjects. Personal stuff … you know … it’s hopeless. Believe me, I have tried. If I told him I found his obvious disappointment in me intolerable, that I simply can’t face his obvious contempt on a daily basis for the rest of my life, he’d think I was behaving like a sulky kid. He wouldn’t say so, of course, but that’s what he’d think.’

  This, Alice realised, was almost what she herself was thinking and the realisation made her aware of how defensive of Roger she had become. She stared at her teacup and let the silence lengthen. A moment later the sonorous mechanism of the clock in the recreation room began to wheeze its way towards the striking of five o’clock. Alice got to her feet.

  ‘I have things to do in the kitchen,’ she said, quietly. ‘Bring the tray through when you’ve finished your tea, will you, Georgie …?’ They were both regarding her, their expressions like admonished children. She sighed. ‘I can’t advise you, my dears,’ she said. ‘You’re grown-up people now and you have to make your own decisions. But do try not to lose sight of the effect those decisions have on other people.’ From the doorway she turned to face them, put the tips of the fingers of both her hands to her lips and blew two kisses across the room to them.

  Dave Crocker’s demobilisation happened sooner than anyone anticipated and he arrived back at the Crocker cottage wearing the ‘civvies’ with which he had been issued by the Ministry of Defence. The trousers fitted reasonably well, but the jacket was tight across his robust chest and its sleeves were too short by at least an inch, exposing thick wrists and strong hands, confirming, if confirmation was needed, that here was a man designed more for corduroy, for overalls, oilskin waterproofs and rubber boots than for the double-breasted suits, lace-up brogues and trilby hats of Civvy Street. He transferred his gratuity to his post office account and was reabsorbed into the Bayliss workforce, relieving the ageing Jack and Fred of the excess workload they had been shouldering during his absence. Plans for several projects, shelved by the war years, were put into action. The dairy herd was to be increased, a larger poultry house would be constructed, the pigsties refurbished and a new breeding programme instigated. Dave shouldered these new challenges with an assurance he had not possessed when, an immature boy, he had left the farm three years previously. Now he confidently undertook his new responsibilities and was paid accordingly.

  With Dave’s wage coming into the Crocker home and the number of land girls at the hostel now reduced, Rose was free to develop her plan to open a café in the village. She had reached what she called ‘an accommodation’ with Roger Bayliss, who proposed leasing
the old bakery, rent-free, to her, on the understanding that she, with her son’s help, would undertake the interior decoration necessary to convert it. Planning permission for the café was sought and granted and if, after twelve months, the project was viable, a modest rent would be agreed upon.

  Rose purchased a bolt of blue and white checked gingham at a fire sale and, using her treadle sewing machine, soon had a pile of tablecloths hemmed and folded ready for use. Yellow crockery proved to be much more expensive than the plain white she settled for, and to begin with she would have to make do with two small tables and two long trestles. Six chairs, cast-offs from a local hotel, were hers, free of charge, provided she arranged collection, and she purchased two benches at an auction in Exeter for half a crown each. She used the remains of the gingham to make cushions for the benches and curtains for the windows.

  There was already a trickle of holidaymakers in the area, tentatively returning to pre-war habits, wandering round the village, buying postcards, their kids playing with bats and balls on the green or sailing their boats on the pond while the parents enjoyed a quiet pint at the Maltster’s. Yet Rose hesitated before officially opening her café for business. She still had her obligations to Alice, while Dave, returning home, famished, each evening, needed a proper dinner.

  ‘What are you waiting for, Mrs Crocker?’ Annie asked her.

  ‘It looks smashing, your little caff!’ Winnie added.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Marion announced firmly, ‘you open up Sat’dy afternoon and us girls’ll all come down for a cream tea! We will, won’t we?’ The girls agreed enthusiastically. ‘And we’ll pay! One and six each! Right?’

  Rose, glowing with pleasure, was touched by their support.

  ‘Ah …’ she said, regarding them with more affection than was usual. ‘But I couldn’t take your money off of you … Tell you what … a bob each for as much as you can eat! How does that sound?’

  On the following Saturday, dressed in their ‘going out’ clothes, the girls, Edward John and Alice arrived at the café, took their places at one of the trestle tables, spread the strawberry jam on the warm scones, topped them with cream and bit into them, sighing with pleasure and, with their mouths full, assuring Rose of their total approval. More scones appeared, more bowls of cream and more cups of tea were poured. Suddenly a silence fell, the girls stopped spreading and chewing and sipping and stared. A group of people had come in through the open door of the tea shop. Two women, a man and a little girl. Strangers. Holidaymakers. Trippers. Customers! Rose stood transfixed. The land girls continued to stare. It was Edward John who spoke.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, and smiling, got to his feet and approached the strangers.

  ‘The cream teas are very good here! Please sit down!’ He led them to one of the small tables, and by the time they were seated, Rose had risen to the occasion and was delivering plates of warm scones together with jam, cream and a large pot of tea to their table while Alice encouraged her girls to indulge in small talk and behave like regular customers.

  ‘And what about that Edward John!’ Evie exclaimed when, later, the events of the afternoon were being discussed. ‘Proper little gent he was! Showin’ ’em to their table! Sittin’ ’em down!’

  ‘That’s boarding school for you,’ Gwennan announced. ‘They get taught ’ow to conduct theirselves proper. It’s like that thing they say about the playing fields of Eton.’ The girls looked blankly at her.

  ‘You don’t half talk a lot of baloney, Taff!’ someone murmured.

  ‘It’s not baloney! It’s to do with the Battle of Trafalgar!’ Gwennan protested. ‘But what would you lot know about it! Dead ignorant, that’s your trouble.’ Then, being slightly unsure of her facts, Gwennan opted for silence.

  With the tea shop now up and running, Rose contrived to bake her scones and serve her cream teas every afternoon and, having met her costs, was encouraged by the small amounts of money she was regularly able to deposit into her savings account. Being a practical woman her concerns soon turned to the future of her son.

  ‘’Course, if you was to wed, Dave, I’d go and live over me tea shop. Ever so convenient, it’d be, and I’d like being back in the village. But I ’as to live ’ere for now, on account of ’avin’ to cook your dinner of a night, whereas if you was to wed, you’d ’ave your wife to cook for you.’ Dave agreed, without paying much attention to his mother, that this was so. But he was, after all, her baby boy. Her son and heir. So of course she would cook his meals, darn his socks and wash his clothes. If he had a wife it would be different. But he hadn’t. So it wasn’t. He took his chop bone in his fingers, and with his teeth, stripped it of its remaining meat.

  ‘So what about your Hester?’ his mother asked suddenly – Hester not having been much mentioned since Dave’s last attempt to fetch her from her home to his.

  ‘What about ’er?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, do you want her or don’t you, Dave? And if you do, what are you going to do about it, eh?’

  ‘Reckon there’s nothing more I can do about it, Ma. ’Er knows how I feels about ’er. I’ve told ’er more’n once as I’ll fetch ’er any time she wants me to. She on’y ’as to say the word. But she ’as to say it, Ma. It ’as to come from ’er now. I bain’t goin’ creepin’ over to ’er place no more, beggin’ ’er.’

  ‘So you’m gonna let pride stand in the way of ’appiness, is that it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be ’appiness, Ma! And it bain’t pride. More like a bit of self-respect, is all.’ She watched him lick the grease from the lamb off his fingers.

  Chapter Five

  Christopher dropped Georgina at the farmhouse gate, reversed the truck and drove away.

  ‘We’ve told my parents,’ she said when she found Alice in the linhay, folding the sheets and towels she had just brought in from the washing line.

  Apart from Alice the hostel was empty. Rose was at her tea room and the land girls were lifting the carrot crop on the far side of the higher farm.

  ‘Including the bit about you emigrating?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Georgina said. ‘Including that bit. And Chris is on his way to see his father.’

  Roger assumed, when his son tapped on the farm office door, that he had come to discuss arrangements regarding the harvesting of a plantation of softwoods which, when felled, would be delivered to a local sawmill and cut into lengths for use as pit props.

  ‘I can let you have Dave Crocker for a week,’ Roger told him. ‘Jack can do the driving and I might be able to borrow a couple of Lucas’s POWs if you think you’d need them.’ He glanced at his son, sensing that something other than the woodland was the subject of his visit. ‘Something on your mind, Chris?’ he asked, offering a cigarette, and when Christopher declined, lighting his own and inhaling deeply, almost, Christopher thought, as though bracing himself for whatever was to come.

  ‘Thing is, Pa, I have some rather big news.’ His father sat, his eyes on his son’s face, and listened as Christopher told him how his increasing interest in arboriculture had led him to study the subject, how he had successfully completed various required courses and reached a level that had resulted in the offer of a lucrative overseas contract as a forestry manager. He went on to give the details of what was involved and precisely where he would be working.

  ‘New Zealand?’ Roger repeated, understanding at once, from his son’s expression, that he had either already accepted the offer or that he intended to.

  ‘Yes,’ Christopher said. ‘Georgina and I are going to be married and then we’re …’ He was searching his father’s face. Trying to read him. Was he angry? Shocked? Or merely astonished? Whatever it was, the news had obviously taken him off guard. ‘Sorry, Pa. I realise this is a bit of a bolt from the blue …’ Roger was shaking his head, incredulously. ‘But everything started to move rather fast and it seemed pointless to tell anyone until we – Georgina and I – knew the details and had thought things over.’ Roger, his face blank, drew h
eavily on his cigarette.

  ‘And when is all this going to happen?’ he asked. ‘The wedding. The emigration. And what about the Brewster girl’s parents? How do they feel about it?’

  ‘I believe they rather think it’s up to her, Pa. I mean … they don’t want to lose her but they’ve brought her up to know her own mind and make her own decisions. They’re delightful people. I’m sure you’ll like them. They’re very keen to meet you.’

  Half an hour later Christopher was back at the lower farm where he sat down heavily at the kitchen table and thanked Alice for the cup of tea she put in front of him. She caught in his face a hint of the same tension that had dominated it when she had first encountered him, two years previously and only a few weeks before his breakdown. He looked as though he felt trapped in an impossible situation. But he caught her eye and smiled wryly.

  ‘Well … that went well!’ he said, carefully sipping the hot tea. He looked from Georgina to Alice. Then, setting down his cup, searched in his pockets for cigarettes and lighter. ‘D’you mind, Alice?’ She shook her head. He inhaled smoke and sat for a moment, staring ahead.

  ‘Well – are you going to tell us what happened, or what?’ Georgina asked him, with, Alice thought, a hint of impatience in her voice.

  ‘Not much to tell,’ he said, blowing smoke and relaxing slightly. ‘You know Pa. I would say he reacted exactly as you would expect him to. Just sat there for a while. Staring me down. Like he used to when I was a kid and broke his rules or displeased him in some way. Not exactly angry. Just … disappointed!’ Georgina raised both her hands in a gesture of exasperation.