Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

  Peggy smiled warmly. “Just tell me to shut up in future.

  I’ll understand.”

  “You shouldn’t have to. In fact, you’d have been better off with someone single like yourself” They seemed to be two women whose experience of life couldn’t possibly have been more different.

  “I prefer someone older like you,” Peggy said comfortably.

  “I’m the oldest in the hostel, most of the girls are in their teens. Anyway, there’s Horace hard at work. Now you’ll discover what it’s really like to be a land girl.”

  They’d arrived at the edge of a massive field where the recently ploughed black soil was tipped with ice and covered with turnip-like vegetables. A very old man wearing a balaclava helmet and a shabby overcoat was bent double on the furthest side. He looked up as they approached and nodded amiably when Eileen was introduced.

  She noticed his uncovered hands were badly twisted, the knuckles swollen to twice the normal size with rheumatism.

  “Horace has worked on farms for over sixty years,”

  Peggy said in awe. “I don’t know how he stands it.”

  The old man’s incredibly wizened face creased into a gentle smile. “There’s no job better than working with Mother Nature. A man comes face to face with his maker every day when he tends the soil.”

  Peggy made a face at Eileen over the bent, rather dignified figure of the old man. “He’s a bit touched,” she said later. “When he’s not on the farm, he’s in church, thanking God for letting him work for a pittance all his life for Mr Kinnear and others like him.”

  “Poor ould thing. On the other hand, he seems happy, and I suppose that’s all that matters.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll show you what’s to be done with this horrible sugar beet.”

  Once the tops of the beets had been removed with a sharp knife, they were thrown into a barrow and wheeled to the edge of the field, where they were tipped in a heap for Ted or Horace to collect in the cart.

  Kate Thomas had warned her it would be entirely different from Dunnings; the work was backbreaking and much harder. Eileen thought fondly about the factory and her old workmates as she toiled away, remembering the repartee and joking intimacy. She wondered who’d been made overseer now she’d left. She hadn’t seen any of the girls since the Friday night they’d been in and out to look at the red sky over Liverpool during the first of those terrible raids. Incredibly, that was less than a month ago.

  At one o’clock, Peggy sang, “It’s dinner time.”

  Eileen got painfully to her feet.

  “Jaysus! I’ll never straighten me back out again.” She began to walk towards the farm, but noticed Peggy had begun to undo the buckles on her haversack. “Aren’t we going back for our dinner?”

  “It’s too far. We eat on the spot.”

  “But what about the lavatory?” She’d felt the urge to go for some time, but had been waiting for the dinner break.

  “Are we expected to do that on the spot?”

  Peggy replied, grinning broadly, “I’m afraid we are.

  Either that or the nearest hedge.”

  “Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! Me belly could bust before I’d go in the open air.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Peggy assured her. “Haven’t you brought sandwiches?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give you half of mine, and you can share my tea.

  You’d better remind Ted that you’re supposed to have a packed lunch. After all, they take half our measly twenty-five bob a week for bed and board.” She opened a parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper and offered Eileen a sandwich.

  Eileen looked at the sandwich warily. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but what the hell is it?”

  “Ghastly, isn’t it? It’s beetroot, which soaks right through the bread. It’s all they seem to give us at the hostel.”

  They munched in silence for a while. Horace sitting some distance away, seemed to be eating a raw onion. It was even colder sitting still than working and the damp sacks they’d been kneeling on began to seep through their backsides.

  “We must be mad,” Peggy said with a giggle, “sitting in a frozen field in the middle of January eating beetroot sandwiches and having to pee in the hedge. All the girls have decided they must be mad.”

  “Are you sorry you joined?” Eileen asked curiously.

  Peggy shook her head emphatically. “We might be mad, but none of us are the least bit sorry. It’s so much more worthwhile than our old jobs. We’re doing our bit, you see. As for me, I feel free for the first time in my life.

  Mind you, we’re too tired at night to do anything except throw ourselves into bed once we’ve eaten, but at weekends there’s all sorts of dances and things to do.” She sighed blissflilly. “Despite everything, I’ve never been so happy.”

  “I’m glad,” said Eileen.

  “What about you? D’you think you’ll stick it out?”

  “Oh, I’ll stick it out whatever happens,” Eileen assured her. Unlike the other girls, she’d already been doing a worthwhile job, but her inspiration for joining the Land Army was quite different. The tedious hard work, the icy cold, her freezing room, Edna’s unfriendly attitude, all these took her mind off the things that really mattered. She didn’t care what job she was given to do or how many hours it took to do it, she’d take it all in her stride and stick it out until, hopefully, the pain inside her lessened, and, as Conor Kinnear had predicted, she’d learn to live again.

  Eileen was about to go into the next stall, but found Ted already there. “You nearly got through half this morning, and I’d already started by the time you came.” He chuckled. “You’ll be better than me at this before you know it, and I’ll be out of a job.”

  “It seems easy once you get the hang of it,” she said.

  Just then, Peggy arrived on her bike and was curtly despatched to collect the eggs and have them ready for the man from the Min of Ag when he called later in the morning.

  “Why don’t you go indoors and start on breakfast,” Ted said to Eileen as Peggy collected a bucket and trudged away. “I won’t be a minute.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said hastily. She always tried to avoid being alone with Edna. She watched Ted’s expert fingers as he worked away underneath the cow.

  “What’s this one called?” he asked.

  “Maud.”

  “Come into the garden, Maud,” he warbled. He always seemed much more cheerful outside the house than in. He glanced in her direction and she smiled.” Y’know,” he said, “the way Edna acts, it’s nothing personal.”

  “I guessed that much.”

  “She’s had a lot of disappointments in her life and she took them hard, too hard.”

  “Lots of people have disappointments,” Eileen felt bound to say, though didn’t add they don’t usually take it out on everyone else.

  “Aye, that’s true, but I suppose they affect different folk in different ways.”

  “I suppose.”

  Ted began to pour the milk into metal churns. One would be placed outside the gate to be collected along with the eggs, the other delivered to local customers as soon as he’d had breakfast. “How’s your back?” he asked.

  Eileen made a face. “Bent.”

  “It looks straight enough to me.”

  “It feels bent.” She was convinced her spine would remain curved for the rest of her life.

  He screwed the top on the second churn and gave it a satisfied slap. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

  She sometimes wondered if she could have stood it under normal circumstances; the mind-numbing, finger-numbing work, the sheer tedium of much of it. The worst job of all was clearing the land which had turned to scrub. One patch in particular, adjacent to the marshes, was virtually a swamp, and she and Peggy waded into the thick stagnant water to drag out rotting trees and other rubbish. One day they came across the skeleton of some other farmer’s sheep. In no time, the stinking, freezing water would
spill over the tops of their boots and they would be soaked for the remainder of the day.

  It was a wonder to Eileen they didn’t catch pneumonia.

  Instead, apart from numerous aches and pains, they both decided they felt unusually healthy.

  “At least we’re doing this particular job in winter,”

  Peggy said cheerfully. “Imagine what it would be like in the hot weather! The insects would bite us to death.”

  Eileen admired Peggy enormously for her stoical, uncomplaining willingness to tackle everything, despite the fact the results were usually met with churlish criticism from Ted. She would hold up her once-white hands, hands which had done no more than manipulate the keys on a typewriter until recently, which were now red and sore, a mass of blisters and scratches, the nails grimy and broken.

  “Just look at these!” she would crow. “Mummy would have a fit if she could see them.”

  War, decided Eileen, brought out the very best in most people.

  There were days when it rained, but no matter how heavy the downpour, they still had to work, and the rain would run down their necks and they would feel damp all over. On other days, it snowed, yet still they worked.

  According to Ted, it was an unusually mild winter, and both women tried not to think what it would be like if the weather had been worse.

  It was the sheer inevitability of farmwork that Eileen found particularly daunting. How on earth could people like Ted and Horace spend their entire lives planting things at a certain time, pulling them up at a certain time, terrified there’d be too much rain or too much sun or not enough of either? The same old thing year after year after year, a sort of uncertain and precarious renewal, knowing exactly what you would be doing in May or July or September, not just in 1941, but in five years’ time or ten. There was always something that had to be done—ploughing, sewing, reaping—then the whole thing would start all over again, like a never-ending circle.

  Laura Kinnear arrived at the farmhouse, windswept and shabby, on Eileen’s first Saturday there. “Have you got anything to do?”

  “Nothing all weekend, apart from Mass tomorrow morning.” Eileen had been wondering how to fill the two free days. Originally, she had planned on taking long walks, perhaps venturing even further than she’d done before, but felt bone weary, too tired to walk an inch, too tired even to stand. On the other hand, she didn’t fancy spending the whole time in her room. Ideally, she would have liked to sit in the warm kitchen listening to the wireless, but that was out of the question. Ted rarely seemed to be in the house except for meals. He disappeared every night as soon as he’d eaten.

  “I thought you might be feeling a bit lost,” Laura said, which surprised Eileen, as she’d imagined the woman to be entirely unaware of her existence. She couldn’t remember them speaking, apart from being introduced, when she’d stayed at the house. “Conor’s back in Cambridge,” Laura continued, “the children are back at boarding school or university or the Army. The house is dead. I sometimes wish there was a place for me to go to. I wondered, would you like to join our sewing circle? It’s the Women’s Voluntary Service, actually, the WVS. We always meet on Saturday afternoons, New members are very welcome.”

  “I’d love to help, but I’m not much good at sewing.”

  “Then you can stuff palliasses or something. Don’t worry, we’ll find something for you to do.”

  Eileen wasn’t sure whether Laura was merely being kind or genuinely wanted assistance. She hoped it was the latter. Either way, it seemed churlish to refuse. She agreed to go and was told to be ready at two o’clock. The afternoon was spent in a delightful stately home stuffing straw into palliasses made from flour bags.

  “They’re for the evacuees,” an elderly lady, the home’s owner, informed her. “Poor little things, some of them are so unhappy they still keep wetting the bed. Do you have any children, dear?”

  Eileen had known the question was bound to be asked someday, though had never been able to work out what she would reply.

  “Yes,” she said, “I have a little boy of six, his name is Tony.” Then she moved away, just in case the old lady asked where Tony was.

  Chapter 12

  Eileen had been living on the farm less than a week when the letters began to arrive from home. She seemed to get at least one every day; from her dad, from Kate Thomas, from several of her Pearl Street neighbours. Apparently, after a lull over New Year, the raids had begun again, but although some were heavy, none were as bad as those before Christmas. There was a long funny letter from the girls at Dunnings relaying all the latest dirty jokes and including love from the entire workshop. Lil had been offered the job of overseer but had turned it down and Mona Dewar had been appointed, much to Doris’s disgust as she felt the job should be hers.

  Sheila had some good news: Sean had begun his training as an airframe fitter, “which means he’ll remain safely on the ground, thank goodness, even though it mightn’t be in this country”. There was a PS: “You’ll never believe this, but Brenda Mahon’s got a sort of boyfriend. He’s a bus conductor, but don’t mention it if you write to anyone, as no-one else knows except me and that Carrie woman.”

  Another letter arrived from Sheila before Eileen had a chance to reply to the first, this time enclosing an envelope addressed to 16 Pearl Street. Eileen recognised Nick’s untidy scrawl immediately. Sheila had written on the back, “The girl from your house, Alice Scully, brought this over this morning.”

  “I’ve felt so hopeless since Christmas,” Nick complained, and she imagined his dark handsome face twisted bitterly as he wrote. “Please write back straight away and assure me you love me. Please say we’ll be together one day. It’s all I live for. It’s all that keeps me going throughout this damn bloody war.”

  Eileen sighed. She felt equally hopeless, and, remembering the promise she’d made to Nick on Christmas Day, wondered if the time would ever come when the promise would be kept. She put the letter to one side and opened the one from Jacob Singerman which had arrived in the same post.

  He’d been to see Goodbye, Mr Chips, though he’d had to stand in a queue which was longer than for his weekly rations. “The whole country wants to go to the pictures nowadays to escape from the horrors of war. Even if you are killed, as several were in the Gaiety and the Ritz, what a way to die, with one’s eyes fixed on Laraine Day or Greta Garbo! As for the film, it was rather sad. All in all, I think I prefer a musical. I kept hoping Robert Donat would burst into song, or at least give us a tapdance.” Snowy, he went on, was becoming more agile by the minute. “He can jump on the mantelpiece and sits there making faces at me. I wonder why I never thought of having a cat before. He’s such good company and keeps me amused all day long.”

  “Because it took you all your time to keep your own belly half-full, let alone having a cat to feed as well,” Eileen said to herself. There was a letter from Ruth in the same envelope. Dilys Evans was enormous and her time must surely be near. “She’s determined not to keep the baby, so as I know nothing about how you go about such things, I shall get in touch with Miss Thomas as you suggested.”

  She assured Eileen there was nothing to worry about.

  Dilys was absolutely fine.

  Ruth Singerman got off the tram at Spellow Lane feeling more than a little weary. It wasn’t that she was physically tired, but calling on Dilys, which she’d done every single day since Christmas, was becoming a trial. Ruth would be accosted by the landlady on the way in and again on the way out. Was there nowhere else Dilys could go, no-one else who would take her? She was driving the whole house mad with her noisy, hysterical behaviour.

  “It’ll be over soon,” Ruth would assure her patiently.

  The woman would then demand to know where Dilys intended to live when the baby arrived. “If you’ve got somewhere lined up, why can’t she go there now?” But Ruth had no idea what plans Dilys had for herself once the baby had been born and taken, Ruth supposed, to an orphanage. The girl was too busy bemoa
ning her fate, cursing herself for being “sinful, just like me mam said”, to consider her future.

  Ruth opened the door of the off-licence and the landlady appeared immediately in response to the bell. “Oh, it’s you,” she said coldly. “I thought it might be. Well, the girl’s gone. She left this afternoon.”

  “Gone!” Ruth felt her jaw drop. “Gone where?”

  “I’ve no idea, she wouldn’t say.” The woman looked at Ruth with a mixture of contempt and indignation.

  “You’ve got a nerve, telling us she was married. We had quite a little talk today and she told us she didn’t have a husband. I would never have taken her in if I’d known the truth.”

  Ruth’s anger rose. “You have no idea what the truth is,” she snapped as she went over to the door. There was no need to kowtow to the woman any more. “You should be ashamed of yourself, throwing the girl out when her baby could be born any minute. I suppose you call yourself a Christian!”

  The woman flushed. “What do you take me for? I didn’t throw her out. I merely told her to find somewhere else and she immediately said she had a place to go. Anyroad, what’s it got to do with you? You’re not a relative.”

  “I’m not a Christian, either, but I know where my duty lies when a young unmarried girl needs help.” It sounded rather pious, Ruth thought as she slammed the door and began to walk back towards the tram stop, particularly in view of the fact she’d been only too keen to have Dilys dumped in a home -when she’d first discovered she was pregnant, but she’d grown fond of the girl over the last few months, though there were times when she could be intensely irritating. She felt worried sick throughout the journey home. Where on earth had Dilys gone and what would Eileen Costello say if she knew what had happened? She’d let both of them down, Ruth thought miserably. It had been wrong just to let Dilys rot away in that gloomy room. She should have spent more time with her, but she’d always been only too selfishly eager to escape from the poor girl’s endless weeping. She supposed it was even more selfish to wish the whole affair would be soon be over; that Dilys would have her baby and continue with her life and Ruth would be left with nothing else to do except go to work, look after her father, and save for America.