The Land Girls

by Victoria Purman

  Flora felt a swell of something unfamiliar inside her. When Charles turned to her, she couldn’t look away from his soft eyes and his smile, directed at her now too.

  Her mouth was dry. Nervous, she reached a hand to the back of her neck where her thick hair was still damp and ruffled it. He crossed the room to her and stood by her side, watching the girls jiggle and move.

  ‘They love to dance,’ he said.

  ‘I can see. Do they learn piano or take ballet lessons?’

  Charles smiled at his shoes. ‘There’s not much of either around here, Miss Atkins. We’re a long way from anything. I expect it’s not much like Melbourne.’

  ‘That is true, which is sometimes not a bad thing. Your family is safe here. A long way from the city. I think that’s a good place to be these days.’

  He searched her face, his brow furrowed. ‘You must be missing your family.’

  ‘Yes. I’m hoping to receive some letters soon. That’s all people seem to do these days, wait on letters. Although I’ve been rather tardy and haven’t had much time to write myself. I must get on to that tomorrow.’

  Charles shifted, turned his body towards her. She’d only been this close to him when he’d crouched by her side demonstrating how to trim bunches of grapes from the vine on her first day. Now he was leaning in to be heard above the music.

  ‘Didn’t my mother mention it to you? We go to St Andrew’s in Mildura on Sunday mornings and this weekend there’s a morning tea afterwards in the church hall. The Country Women’s Association are putting it on for all you Land Army girls. My mother’s quite involved, has been for years.’ He stopped talking and his breath was warm on her cheek. ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Although …’ She paused and wondered how best to say it. In the end, she was a practical, straightforward sort of person so she told him as it was. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not a regular churchgoer, Mr Nettlefold.’

  He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t go either if the morning tea wasn’t so good. And …’ He paused and glanced at his daughters. They were doing the Charleston, their hands on their waists like flappers, kicking their legs back and forth. ‘It’s an opportunity for the girls to play with other children their own age, especially during the school holidays when they haven’t caught up with their friends for a while.’

  ‘Of course it must be. They really are the most delightful girls, Mr Nettlefold.’

  ‘You’ll come then?’

  Flora’s cheeks felt hot and she put her hands behind her back so he wouldn’t see her fingers fidget.

  ‘Cards, Daddy. Cards!’

  ‘Miss Atkins?’

  ‘Yes. I’d be delighted.’

  Chapter Ten

  Betty

  January 1943

  After Betty Brower arrived at the Stocks’ property just outside Mildura in north-western Victoria, she had cried herself to sleep every night for two weeks straight.

  She’d spent each day on the verge of tears, rethinking every moment of her decision to sign up to the wretched Land Army. What had she done? With each step there were more grapes to search for and snip and place in the tin buckets, and then the tins kept arriving, more and more of them, and she felt like Mickey Mouse in that movie she’d seen at the Apollo, but here buckets kept arriving instead of brooms.

  How on earth had she ever believed she was cut out for this kind of labour?

  Her parents had been right and that realisation made her want to cry even more.

  It was even harder to accept her own failings when every other girl seemed to be having such a jolly time. Of the twenty of them, she was the youngest by six months, something they’d figured out on that first day, when they’d played a fun game and lined themselves up in order of their birth. She was at one end and twenty-five-year-old Peggy was at the other. From then on, they’d called her the baby of the group. And she’d gone and proven them right by sobbing into her pillow each night.

  Her sobbing could be heard by every single girl sleeping in the long corrugated-iron shed they called their quarters. Ten beds on each side, divided by makeshift hessian curtains, with a dining table at one end near the front door; her sobs easily carried from front door to back and over every cot in between.

  Their work days were long. Picking all day then returning at supper time for a wash from the hot water in the always-boiling copper outside. Once they’d tidied up, they sat down to a meal prepared for them by the Land Army matron who had been assigned to the group. Betty had tried to keep her eyes open, listening in as the other girls chatted happily among themselves about the day, the rumour of a goanna in the vines, the incessant flies and the sunburn. After that, some of the girls laid outside on the grass to enjoy the cooler twilight and look up at the stars. Others sat around the dining table playing cards or listening to the wireless the Stocks had provided for them, and the rest went straight to their beds to relax for a while, to read a magazine someone had been sent from home or to write their letters. They worked six days a week, and they were long days, so there wasn’t much time or energy for anything else. They hadn’t even had time to make their temporary home feel like a home. Inside the bare privacy of their little bedrooms, each girl had a bed with a straw-filled palliasse to sleep on, a chair, a nail hammered into the frame of the shed for hanging a wet towel, and space under their bed for a suitcase. Most of the girls kept keepsakes to a minimum simply because there wasn’t anywhere to put such sentimental things.

  That night Betty was feeling her homesickness particularly keenly and it so overwhelmed her that she couldn’t even find the strength to put on her cheery shopgirl face and engage in the banter flowing all around her. She was a long way from Woolworths now.

  ‘Buck up, baby Betty,’ Gwen in the next bed along called out, trying to sound cheery. She was from Griffith in New South Wales and had bright, coppery red hair which she tied up in a scarf when she worked, like Betty Grable.

  ‘Think of something else, baby Betty.’ Peggy, the oldest of them all, was a Land Army veteran with eighteen months and scores of assignments under her belt. ‘Think about, I don’t know. Think about what you’re going to do when the war’s over.’

  There were exclamations and laughter from the other girls in the quarters. This was a popular and comforting conversation, in which they let themselves imagine that the war might really be over soon and everyone would return safe and sound.

  ‘I’m going to make a home with my husband,’ Nancy said. ‘Back in Adelaide. Somewhere near the beach, like Grange. Or perhaps Semaphore.’ She sat cross-legged on her bed, writing a letter to her beloved, which she did every night, even though she knew she wouldn’t have enough money to post them all until payday and even then, considering Land Army girls didn’t get special rates on postage like the troops did, she might not be able to afford to post them all unless one of the other girls donated a stamp.

  ‘Oh, the beach,’ Dorothy cried out from her bed. She tossed her latest copy of the Women’s Weekly to the end of her bed. Betty heard the pages flap against each other like birds’ wings. Dorothy’s mother faithfully sent her every Saturday’s issue and she shared it around once she’d finished. ‘There are new bathing suits in the shops. Wait until you see the pictures.’

  ‘What’s the point of a bathing suit when we never seem to have time to swim? You wouldn’t think the river was a stone’s throw away, would you?’

  ‘Maybe we can organise a picnic on our next day off?’ Nancy suggested.

  ‘A day off?’ Helen laughed. ‘What’s that?

  ‘When the war is over,’ Gwen sighed, ‘I’m going to kiss my fiancé for an entire year.’ Gwen’s Reginald was a soldier in the AIF and they’d been separated since July 1940. ‘And then we’re going to get married. Him in his uniform and me in mine. Gosh. I’m already twenty-two. Everyone will think I’m an old maid if the war doesn’t end soon.’

  ‘How many children are you and Reg planning, Gwen?’ Nancy asked. She
slept directly across the aisle from Betty. Her voice was always croaky, as if she’d smoked too many cigarettes.

  ‘Three. Two boys and a girl. John and Peter for boys and Margaret for a girl.’

  ‘Oh, Margaret. Now there’s a name!’ Peggy laughed.

  Betty turned her wet face on her pillow. Her tears had created a damp patch, cool on her cheek in the stifling evening heat. The high windows in the shed didn’t open, even if any of the women could have reached them, and the single doors back and front didn’t let any breeze in at all. If there was any breeze. The nights so far had been still and stifling.

  Betty tugged at the sheet that was wrapped around the straw-stuffed mattress and wiped her face.

  ‘I’m never getting married.’ Enid, a girl from Newcastle, leapt off her bed and stood at the foot of it. She held her hands together in front of her waist, as if she was holding a bouquet, and took one step, then another, then another. The girls around her hollered and clapped. Enid threw her imaginary flowers behind her into a nonexistent crowd. ‘And give up all this? Three meals a day, luxury accommodation, a measly thirty shillings and you girls for company? Never!’

  They were such terrific girls, Betty could see that. She just didn’t feel like one of them yet. She missed home and she missed Michael. It had been a month since he’d left for the army. She’d kept the promise she’d made to him on their last night together, and had stayed home instead of going to the station to wave him goodbye. That last night. When he’d kissed her and she had, just slightly, a little bravely, kissed him back. It had been their last night as Betty and Michael from King Street, before they’d put on their uniforms, left home and were forced to grow up too fast.

  His last words were imprinted on her.

  ‘Don’t get too lonely,’ he’d said and kissed her, his lips full on hers, his arms around her and squeezing the air from her lungs and all sense from her brain.

  She’d been so shocked that she hadn’t uttered another word to him as he’d walked away, turning left through his front gate and up the path and the two steps to his front door.

  Did he love her? Is that why he’d kissed her? Was it his way of showing her how much he would miss her? Or was she just there? She hadn’t had the chance to be alone with him to ask these burning questions, even if she’d been brave enough. She’d given him his birthday present that next week, on the day he turned eighteen, surrounded by his family, and he’d smiled and said thank you for the Biggles book. ‘I don’t have this one,’ he’d told her. She’d kept her promise to him to make that their farewell, and she’d hated that she’d agreed to it, for she’d never had the chance to give him a final wave. She wasn’t there to see him step onto the train with a smile and a tip of his uniform hat.

  That had been a month ago. And in a few weeks, on February fourteenth, it would be her eighteenth birthday and this year there would be no Valentine’s card from Michael. There wouldn’t be a birthday party with her mother and father, nor a celebration with the girls from Woolworths after work.

  She was stuck here, in the hot middle of nowhere, with red and swollen eyes and hands full of blisters from the stiff secateurs and the work gloves that were too big for her shopgirl hands. All she had left of Michael was the memory of that surprise kiss and his lips on hers.

  ‘I’ll try not to get too lonely, Michael,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll try.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Flora

  The first person to approach Flora on Sunday morning in the street out the front of St Andrew’s was Mr Henwood, the curmudgeonly old man who’d greeted her at the train station the day she’d arrived in Mildura. The man who’d told her she wouldn’t last and that she would be back on the train to Melbourne within a week. She felt a little pop of pride that she’d proved him wrong.

  ‘Mr Henwood.’ Charles reached his hand out for a shake. He’d walked with Flora up the path to the front steps and they were standing in the shade of the portico. They were in the sun too long during the week to want to be standing in it on a Sunday as well. People were already milling about, women and children, high school–aged boys and girls, and older ladies and gentlemen, all wearing their Sunday best. When Mr Henwood had told her that Mildura had sent more than its fair share of men off to the war, he’d been right. About that one thing, at least.

  ‘Charles,’ Mr Henwood replied. ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘She’s well, thank you. She’s here, I believe talking with Mrs Hawkins and her daughter-in-law.’

  The old man cast a sideways glance at Flora, studying her official Land Army uniform with rheumy eyes, taking in her smart skirt, shirt and tie and hat. She’d been determined to make a good impression on the local townspeople during her first official outing. She’d polished her regulation court shoes that morning although the dust had already dulled a little of their gleam. She looked smart. Like a real Land Army girl.

  Mr Henwood lifted his walking stick to point it at Flora. She stepped back or it would have flicked her on the hip. ‘That girl had enough yet?’

  She sensed Charles stiffen. When he was cross, his shoulders broadened and he seemed to grow six inches. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your girl. That one. She sick of the hard work yet? I bet she is. No, you can’t trust this woman labour, not one bit.’

  Flora bit the inside of her lip.

  ‘And look at that uniform. Trying to be a soldier. The Land Army’s not an army. It’s a gaggle of city girls looking for husbands, that’s what it is.’

  Charles slowly adjusted his tie. He flicked her a quick look, as if to say leave this with me. A rage flickered and burnt deep inside her, an anger she hadn’t felt since Jack had come home back in December with the white feather.

  ‘As a matter of fact, she’s working out just fine, Mr Henwood. As hard a worker as I’ve ever seen.’ Charles stepped forwards and pushed the old man’s stick to the side so it didn’t hit anyone. Mr Henwood took a faltering step back and poked the ground with it.

  ‘If you ask me …’ Charles raised his voice and people turned their heads. ‘These Land Army girls are worth their weight.’

  Charles tipped his hat to Mr Henwood and Flora felt his hand on her elbow. ‘I see the Kavanaghs. Let me introduce you, Miss Atkins.’

  Flora didn’t hear a word of the service. She sat respectfully at the back of the church—she wasn’t any particular kind of religion but this was Church of England and she had been half-heartedly raised a Methodist by her mother—and thought over every single word Charles had said to Mr Henwood when they’d arrived.

  As hard a worker as I’ve ever seen.

  These Land Army girls are worth their weight.

  So he had noticed how hard she’d been working. She had believed he’d either ignored her limping from the blisters on her heels, and the groans of agony those first few days when her back was stiff and sore, or had been oblivious. But when she thought it over, she started to put the pieces together. When Daisy had brought her the hot water bottle after her first back-breaking day, the little girl had whispered, ‘Daddy said I should give this to you.’

  Daddy said.

  She was tall enough in the pew to see over the heads of the parishioners. Charles was up in the second row. His short hair was smoothed down with some kind of hair potion, so different to its ruffled state at Two Rivers. He sat with his arms around his girls, one on either side. She couldn’t see Mrs Nettlefold, no surprise given her size, but she knew she was there with her family, forming a tight little group.

  After hymns had been sung and prayers had been whispered for those away fighting, the pews emptied and a low hum of chattering swept from the pulpit to the church doors. Flora waited for the Nettlefolds under the filtered shade of a ghost gum that towered over the stone church, its grey-green leaves swaying in the hot wind. It was a charming old building with sandstone walls and a corrugated-iron roof, rusty in spots but it looked well cared for. It might have been lonely on its own, with no other buildings
close, but people had brought life to it. They’d tended the flower beds that ran either side of the stone path leading to the portico. In winter, they would cut the grass all around the church, which was dry now and dusty. It was loved, and when Flora saw what was behind it she understood why.

  To the rear of the church building, on the left side, a low stone fence extending out a hundred feet or so was interrupted by a wrought-iron gate swung wide open. The crosses and stone columns of headstones inside the cemetery reached for the blue sky.

  She felt her arms prickle with goosebumps in spite of the heat. How many new graves had been dug there for lost locals since 1939? And for the war before that? When she’d arrived she’d believed this part of the world to be a long way from danger but, in truth, war’s ghastly tentacles reached everywhere.

  A gust of wind caught Flora’s hat and almost blew it from her head. She clamped her hand down on her head and repositioned it. Frank would blame her big head for the fact that it didn’t sit tight. Full of brains, she thought to herself, brains that did too much thinking and worrying.

  ‘Excuse me.’ It was a girl’s voice, tentative.

  Flora turned. It was indeed a girl—another Land Army girl. ‘Why, hello!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Hello. I’m supposing you’re in the Land Army too,’ the young woman said, waving her hand up and down. ‘The uniform’s a clue.’

  ‘Yes.’ Flora held out a hand. ‘My name’s Flora Atkins. I’m so pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Betty Brower. Where are you from, I mean, originally?’ Betty was a sweet-looking girl with brown eyes and a broad smile. Flora judged her to be perhaps eighteen. So many years younger than she was.