Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  Later, at the higher farm, Roger – the morning suit, the silk shirt and cravat, the top hat and the chamois gloves all abandoned in favour of a lounge suit – was seated with Alice at the far end of the two trestle tables which, end to end, ran down the centre of the yard. At the top of the table Marion and Marvin were on their feet and about to break the white icing of the wedding cake by inserting into it the tip of Marvin’s regimental sword, when both of them became aware that they were losing the attention of their guests. Silence fell as heads turned, not in the direction of the bride and groom but away from them to where, below the yard, on the meadow that dropped down towards the lower farm, two figures could be seen approaching.

  One figure appeared to be much taller than the other, but as the wedding guests squinted into the light of the lowering sun they realised that the shorter figure was a young woman and the tall one, a man, carrying a baby on his shoulders. The laughing child rode with one plump leg on either side of the man’s neck. He had a hand round each chubby ankle while she, in order to steady herself, was clutching handfuls of his thick, dark hair in her small fists.

  ‘Dave?’ Rose’s voice was shrill with disbelief.

  ‘Hester?’ Annie breathed, getting to her feet from her seat next to her husband and standing, astonished, a slow smile spreading over her face. And then everyone, including the bride and groom, was exclaiming and cheering and moving forward to hug Hester, slap Dave on the back, touch Thurza’s soft skin and offer their fingers to her tiny hands.

  ‘Just look at you!’ Rose exclaimed, hiding her emotions behind a familiar, scolding tone. ‘You might of put on a clean shirt, son! Comin’ up yer all covered in paint! Whatever was you thinkin’ of?’

  Dave, confronted by Hester, fully and deliciously aware of all the implications of her arrival at his door and eager to communicate and share his good fortune with his mother and the community to which he had belonged all his life, had been eager, once Hester’s belongings had been carried into the cottage, to make the journey up the hill to the higher farm and join in the festivities there, now that, at last, he had so much to celebrate. He and his family had taken the short cut, following the steep footpath across the fields that lay between the two properties. The fact that he was wearing overalls that were torn and spattered with white distemper, to which had been added, that very day, splashes of pink, seemed to Dave to be an irrelevance.

  Very little had needed to be said in the Crocker cottage when Hester had appeared in the doorway with Thurza in her arms. She didn’t ask Dave if he still wanted her because she knew he did, and he didn’t ask her what her intentions were because he knew, as certainly as he had ever, in all his life, known anything, what they were.

  As he had unloaded his sister’s possessions – her carpet bags and a small suitcase, together with Thurza’s pram and folded cot – from his van, Zeke had found it unnecessary to instruct her to let him know if she ever needed his help. Instead he promised to visit her from time to time and to send her news of their father and mother. Then he had kissed her cheek, patted Thurza’s curls and driven away.

  Zeke had his own plans now. He would do the right thing by his parents. Before long, if he worked hard, the smallholding would yield enough to comfortably support the three of them. There was a girl he saw in Bideford whenever he drove into the town to sell his produce there. Polly had brown eyes and dark hair. Whenever he caught her eye she smiled and blushed in a way that made his heart lurch. He had taken her to tea at the café next door to her father’s hardware store. He had bought her an ice cream and they had shared a plate of fairy cakes. One day he would bring her home to meet his folks and then, in the distant, rosy future of his imagination, he would ask her to be his wife.

  The sun was setting by the time the bride, still in her wedding dress, climbed into Marvin’s jeep and, with her veil flying in the slipstream and the yard echoing with cheers, was driven off towards Exeter and the crowning luxury of one night of conjugal bliss in the bridal suite at the Rougemont Hotel. Within a week Marvin’s regiment was to be assembled in Portsmouth, ready to embark on its voyage back, across the Atlantic, to the United States. A handful of GI brides, Marion amongst them and with a brass band playing on the quayside, would wave them goodbye.

  ‘See you stateside, babe!’

  ‘Take it easy, now!’

  ‘Love ya, honey!’

  ‘Byeeee!’ But tonight it was a swift and romantic ride through the breezy dusk, along the familiar lanes, through the village, where people stopped in their tracks to stare and wave.

  ‘’Tis one of they land girls over to Post Stone!’

  ‘Married, she was, this afternoon, in the chapel at the base!’

  ‘A GI bride, she be!’

  ‘Marion Grice ’er name was!’

  ‘A flighty young madam she were, too, when ’er first come down ’ere!’

  ‘Two of ’em, there was, billeted at the pub! Right goings-on!’

  ‘Look at ’er now!’

  ‘Butter wouldn’t melt!’

  ‘Fifteen yards of lace was in the skirt of ’er dress, Rose Crocker says!’

  ‘Didn’t get that on her clothing coupons, I’ll warrant!’

  ‘Black market most like!’ And they shook their heads, rolled their eyes and clicked their tongues in indulgent disapproval.

  Christopher and Georgina, on their way back to the woodman’s cottage, would drop Dave, Hester and Thurza at the lower farm. Rose, who had already been slowly preparing the accommodation above the tea room for her own eventual occupation, was, now that Hester had arrived, to take up residence there that night.

  ‘But you’re not properly moved in yet, are you, Rose?’ Alice asked her.

  ‘I got all I need,’ Rose firmly assured her. ‘I’ll fetch the rest tomorrow. I bain’t goin’ back to the cottage tonight! Not with them two lovebirds in residence, I’m not! Proper gooseberry I’d be!’

  Dave, with Thurza on his lap, was sitting half-turned towards Hester, gazing into her smiling face. Rose’s pleasure at her son’s happiness was palpable.

  ‘Just look,’ Alice murmured to Roger, drawing his attention to the now complete Crocker family. ‘Isn’t that a lovely sight?’

  ‘Another wedding, I suppose?’ he smiled. ‘It’s becoming an epidemic!’

  ‘First Mabel and Ferdie,’ Alice laughed.

  ‘Then Georgina and Christopher,’ Roger said. ‘Then Annie and Hector!’

  ‘Now Marion and Marvin.’

  ‘And finally, you and me! Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alice said and she leant towards him and laid her forefinger against his mouth. ‘But no announcements today. You promised.’ He took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Discreet as he had been, both Winnie and Gwennan, from the far side of the yard, saw him.

  ‘Cor!’ Winnie breathed. ‘See that, Taff?’

  ‘Certainly did!’ Gwennan said, colour flooding into her sallow face. Winnie was about to move off towards a group of the girls when Gwennan put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘No, Win!’ she said. ‘Don’t say nothing, right? You can see they want it kept secret. They’ll tell us when they want to! When they’re good and ready. ’Til then you hold your tongue, right?’

  At Lower Post Stone Christopher had brought the truck to a halt. Thurza, having enjoyed the short, jolting journey down the hill from the higher farm, smiled at Dave and held out her arms to be lifted down.

  ‘She’s really taken to you, Dave,’ Georgina said.

  ‘She better ’ad!’ Dave replied, concealing his pleasure with a clumsy attempt at nonchalance.

  ‘Seeing as ’e’s ’er dad now!’ Hester added.

  ‘If that’s all right with you, young madam?’ Dave asked, settling the little girl on his hip. She smiled, exposing two newly acquired teeth.

  Georgina and Christopher watched as Dave, with his new family, crossed the yard and entered the Crocker cottage.

  ‘Ah!’ Christopher said, catching Georgina’s expre
ssion and teasing her. ‘Happy ever after, eh? How sweet! Want to borrow my hanky?’ Georgina shook off her mood, laid her closed fist against his arm and warned him not to be such a miserable old cynic.

  ‘I was just thinking what a rough ride it’s been for Hester,’ she said. ‘You didn’t see her when she first arrived here. She was unhealthily timid. Browbeaten by both her religious maniac father and her brother Zeke, who turned up here one day and threatened her with eternal damnation just because she’d had her hair cut and borrowed one of Annie’s frocks! Then, after a few months of happiness with Reuben, he got killed and there was poor Hester, pregnant and with her father breathing the wrath of God at her! You wouldn’t believe the things he said to her!’

  ‘Well … she’s survived, Georgie,’ Christopher said. ‘She came through it, as we all have, as though the war was a horrendous nightmare … And now we’re all awake again.’

  ‘More than just awake,’ Georgina said, her mind travelling back across the years since she had left home, initially to join the Land Army – a time which, although she did not know it then, would remain, vividly remembered, all her life.

  ‘More?’ Christopher asked. ‘Yep. You’re right I suppose. There is more to it than that. We are different people, aren’t we? It has changed us all, one way or another.’ After a moment he laughed and added, ‘You, for instance, were quite impossible when we first met!’

  ‘So were you!’ She was sitting on the low wall between the farmhouse garden and the lane, facing the building and idly following the fight of a pair of house martins who were feeding a late brood of young. ‘And some of us are dead,’ she added, thoughtfully. ‘Chrissie died. And Andreis. Margery Brewster. And the pilot of the plane that crash-landed behind the barns. He could very easily have hit the hostel and killed everyone in it.’

  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘No. He didn’t.’

  In a week the hostel would be closed. The few remaining land girls would be billeted, as they had been before it was opened, in rooms above the bar at the Maltster’s Arms. There was an air of impending desertion about the old building as the evening light played on the faded pink of the colour-washed walls and the low sun glinted off the small panes of its windows.

  ‘We could live here, you know,’ Christopher said suddenly, and they both felt his words spread, like ripples in a pond, around them. ‘If we decided not to settle in New Zealand, that is.’ For a while Georgina considered this in silence.

  ‘There are rather a lot of bedrooms,’ she said eventually, half-mocking him. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be proposing to fill them all, would you?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ he smiled. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of removing the hideous partitions Pa had put in to accomodate you land girls. Come on. I’ll show you.’

  They entered the quiet building, moving through the porch, along the cross-passage and up the narrow, curved staircases, he on one side, she on the other, emerging, laughing, on the landing above. Christopher showed her which were the original dividing walls of the upper floor and which had been hammered into position three years previously to convert the four large bedrooms into six smaller ones.

  They returned to the cross-passage and entered what had become known as the recreation room. The three large sofas, warped by heavy use, their cushions faded and flattened, stood round the wide fireplace where the land girls had used them. The piano, its keys yellowing, was as Annie had left it on the previous evening, with sheet music propped open on its stand. Glen Miller, George Gershwin, Cole Porter. The low ceiling was heavily beamed. The windows at one end gave onto the farmyard, and at the other onto the overgrown front garden with its tangle of unpruned roses and clumps of marguerite daisies. Each had wide, oak window seats. The large Persian carpet had once been beautiful. Now it was threadbare, its vibrant colours faded almost completely to a uniform mottle of dull greens, pastel blues, pinks and golds. Georgina and Christopher stood, visualising what the room might look like as a family sitting room.

  Through the open door to Alice’s room, her possessions were visible. Her books. The small writing desk which had been her mother’s – the only item of furniture she had brought with her to the farm – together with two large, paisley shawls which were thrown across the divans on which she and Edward John slept, he at one end of the room and she at the other. There was a model aeroplane on his bed and a scatter of comics. Alice’s was tidy, with its row of cushions arranged neatly against the wall.

  Georgina and Christopher did not intrude into the room but stood in the doorway, looking into it.

  ‘Dear Alice,’ Georgina murmured. ‘Whatever we do to this house, this room should always be known as Alice’s, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘Nice idea.’

  They left the farmhouse, conscious of the fact that, although Alice, Edward John, Gwennan and Winnie would return to it that night when the celebrations at the higher farm were over, it was only a matter of days before it would be deserted.

  ‘What an adventure it’s been for the old place,’ Georgina said, pensively. ‘Will it miss us, d’you think?’

  ‘Probably be glad to see the back of you all. Ten great girls lumbering about, clattering up and down the stairs …’

  ‘Fighting over the bathroom!’ Georgina said. ‘Quarrelling over the hot water! Wolfing our food in the kitchen. Caterwauling round the piano!’

  ‘Listen!’ Christopher said. They stood, quite still, while the silence settled round them and the half-light thickened. Then they began to hear the small sounds of the country evening. Sounds which for so long had often been drowned by the clatter and hum of the overpopulated hostel, by the rise and fall of the girls’ voices, the comings and goings of the farm trucks and the GIs’ jeeps, the rumble of the carts, the thud of the shire horses’ hooves and the rattle of the oily tractor. Now they heard only the occasional distant bleating of sheep, grazing the short, wiry grass on the high ground above the valley. Jackdaws and house martins fidgeted drowsily round the chimneys and from somewhere, way down the valley, a pheasant’s alarm call briefly reached them. Christopher took Georgina’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘It’ll still be here,’ he said. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know. I know it will be.’

  About the Author

  JULIA STONEHAM began her career as a stage designer before moving into writing. She was a regular writer on The House of Eliott and her radio series, The Cinderella Service, was nominated for a Sony Award and was commissioned by Granada TV.

  By Julia Stoneham

  Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings

  The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate

  Alice’s Girls

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2011.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.

  Copyright © 2011 by JULIA STONEHAM

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1293–9

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