‘Is there a cup of tea while we’re waiting?’
‘
Tea
, Ratty Tyler? Don’t you listen to a word I say? I told you last night: I said now there’s rationing we’ve got to cut down to three cups a day. There’s a war on.’ She began to scrape carrots. ‘We’ve got to do our bit. There’ll be rewards. A week or so ago, when that Spitfire flew over, I left the shop to watch it. Noisy thing. Still, I thought, Spitfires are defending our country, and if it hadn’t been for my own very small effort – just the six saucepans and cooking pots – that very Spitfire might not be there now. It might have been held up in the factory, waiting for a bit more aluminium to make the tip of the wing. For all I knew, my saucepans were a small part of the undercarriage of the plane that was going over our house. That gave me a good feeling, I can tell you. That made me more determined than ever it’s not our business to grumble if the carrots have to take their turn with the potatoes. Trouble is, you’ve got no vision. You can’t see things like that.’
‘I’ll go and deal with the blackout,’ said Ratty. ‘
My
war effort,’ he muttered under his breath.
Later, sensing the vegetables were still far from ready, Ratty went to sit in the chilly front room to listen to ITMA on the wireless. But, distracted, he turned the sound down low, hardly listening. Instead, his eyes fell on the framed photograph of Edward – Edward Tyler, their only son, killed in action in the last war.
Stored in boxes in the attic were bundles of letters from Edward, written from the trenches, many of their envelopes mud-splattered. Strangely, neither mud nor ink had faded. Ratty knew most of these letters by heart. The descriptions of a soldier’s life were so extraordinarily vivid that Ratty felt he had shared the experience of every sensation with his son: sometimes he used to think Edward would be a writer when the war was over. He had the talent, surely. Ratty never mentioned this to Edith: she would have scoffed at so unmanly a suggestion. She probably had no idea the letters still existed. Unsentimental woman. Ratty had found her screwing up Edward’s letters as she read them. If it hadn’t been for Ratty’s secret hoarding, there would be no voice, no words from Edward left. Edith even threw away the official letter that came to announce Edward had been mentioned in despatches. Ratty would never forgive her for that. Her lack of pride in her own son’s courage was proof of her paucity of imagination: she was unable to understand or picture the horror, the fear, the bravery of a life unknown to her. She had never been able to read a face, a heart, a soul.
And what a funny old war, this one, compared with the last one, thought Ratty. So much of it, to date, had been spent in suspense and anticipation since the Polish invasion. The Battle of Britain had meant a little excitement and anxiety for six weeks: the Blitz in London, for all its horrors, had little effect on the rest of the country. Raids on the south coast were rare. In rural areas what you were left with were the frustrations of wartime regulations: rationing and blackouts, shortages of farm workers and clock menders – Ratty’s broken alarm clock caused him great sadness when he discovered every clock mender for twenty miles had been called up. Indeed, here in Dorset you could be forgiven for thinking the war did not exist. The only thing that never faded, through every waking hour of the day, and troubled the dreams at night, was the tension, the constant anticipation of unknown possibilities. If Edward had lived, Ratty would have enjoyed discussing the two wars, the philosophical aspects of the loathsome thrill of danger, the peculiar pulling together of people by a common cause.
Ah! Ratty would have enjoyed discussing that and a thousand other subjects that held no interest for his wife. If Edward had lived – wife and family nearby, maybe, grandchildren coming to their grandfather to learn the ways of the land – life might have been very different. As it was, all Ratty could do was to try to carry out his son’s last wish. In a letter that Edward had not known would be his last, in which he had been full of his usual humour, optimism and hope, he had ended with the binding words
Take care of Mum till I come back, Dad
… Which meant, when Edward was blown up a week later, take care of Edith for ever.
‘So there you are,’ she scoffed, standing at the door, interrupting his reflections. ‘One moment you’re grumbling because the food’s not ready, then when it’s on the table you’ve vanished.’
Ratty got up. He was no longer hungry.
‘What’ve the girls been up to?’ Edith sniffed.
‘The tall one was hedging with Mr L. That’s all I know. There was a bonfire this evening.’
‘Huh! Trust you not to miss a bonfire.’
‘I didn’t stay.’
‘I should hope not. Standing round bonfires when there’s work to be done.’
Ratty, tired, tried to deflect her mind from the girls. By now he had learned to his cost that they were a lethal subject.
‘It’s been uncannily quiet for a week or so, hasn’t it?’ he offered. ‘I’ve got a feeling in my bones there’s going to be a raid, soon. Something’s going to happen.’
‘If your bones are as full of silly feelings as your head, then there’s nothing to fear,’ said Edith. ‘All gloom and doom as normal. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She handed him a plate of bacon rashers, boiled potatoes and carrots. She watched eagerly as he pushed his knife into the underdone vegetables, testing. Just as eagerly she waited for him to complain, her answer about Spitfires all ready to shout him down. But Ratty, no fight left in him this evening, had his own, small revenge.
‘Very good,’ he said.
At supper that night at Hallows Farm, Stella thought she detected a smell of thorn smoke that clung to them all, more powerful than the smell of rabbit stew and mashed swede. By now she was used to the dining-room, with its clumsy dark furniture and ugly light, and, during the day, often found herself looking forward to the suppers there, Mrs Lawrence’s huge plates of food filling their hungry stomachs. There were still silences at meals, but they were easier. Sometimes a proper discussion flowered, and there was laughter. Mrs Lawrence would reminisce about her childhood on a farm in Devon; her husband would sometimes mention his concern for his brother Robert, who farmed in Yorkshire, and was suffering from terminal cancer; Prue would spend time between courses examining her hands, which she claimed were a dreadful red from the Lavalord that went into the bottle-washing water.
‘Blow me down if I don’t end up a
fright
, all this manual labour,’ she would complain. ‘Raw hands, filthy nails,
weather-beaten
skin, stinking of cow muck … Will there be a man in the world left to want me?’
This last question, with a slight cock of the head in Joe’s direction, observed by Stella and Ag, was ignored by Joe who always made the minimum contribution to the meal.
Tonight, Mr Lawrence, after a day at his favourite occupation, and filled with the agreeable thought of further hedging tomorrow, was in rare good humour.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘it’s time to be rewarded for your first week’s good work with an entirely new sort of job – the kind of job every land girl in the country most probably dreams of. Can you imagine what that might be, Prue?’
Prue, in a pink crochet jersey with tiny crystal beads sewn to its collar, blushed.
‘Why you should pick on me for an idea, I can’t think,’ she smiled back. ‘Still, if I had to say … I’d say a day on a tractor with a nice little shelter to protect me from the wind and rain, and a velvet padded seat.’
Mr Lawrence laughed. ‘Out of luck, I’m afraid. No: tomorrow it’s dagging, and checking for foot rot. Sheep.’
‘It’s
what
? And what?’ Prue’s expression of horror was comical.
The Lawrence family exchanged glances. Joe tried to suppress a smile.
‘It’s not one of the pleasantest jobs, and it doesn’t have to happen that often, but everyone should know how to do it,’ explained the farmer. ‘You have to keep a check on the sheep’s feet, pare the hoof if necessary. Don’t worry: I’m an experienced instructor. Got young Joe down to the job at twelve or thirteen, didn’t I, son?’
‘And what’s the other thing?’ asked Prue.
‘Dagging,’ said Joe. ‘I was doing that not long out of my cradle, wasn’t I, Mother? Dad found me some special small shears.’
Joe, Stella could see, was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘I think,’ said Mrs Lawrence, handing round plates of steamed ginger pudding, ‘you could explain that, John, when the time comes. I don’t want people put off their food.’
There was a moment’s silence, then Joe cast his eyes towards Prue. She met his glance at once.
‘I can see you’re dying to know,’ he said. ‘So here goes. Dagging, in a word, is cutting the dried shit off a sheep’s backside.’
The shocked silence was quickly broken by the laying down of astonished spoons. Ag laughed, but was at once cut off by a whiplash look from Mrs Lawrence.
‘Joe!’
‘Sorry, Mother.’
Prue was smothering a giggle in her hands. ‘Well, I tell you what, Joe, Mr Lawrence,’ she said. ‘Count me out. A girl has to draw a line somewhere, and if you think I’m going to cut shit off a sheep’s bum you can think again. I’d rather …’ she tried to think of some slightly less horrendous task – ‘I’d rather
clean out the pig.
’
‘You do what you’re told, my girl,’ snapped Mr Lawrence, his good humour suddenly gone. ‘If you’re so keen on cleaning out the pig, you can take that job over from Faith once you’ve finished the dagging.’
The girls had never known him so stern and darkly flushed. He picked up his spoon and plunged it into his pudding again. The others, all but Prue, followed his example. She looked down at her uneaten sponge, suddenly pale, and gasped.
‘Oh my God! I’ve forgotten something.’ She stood, addressed Joe. ‘I’ve forgotten to put the sacking over the tractor engine.’
‘Did you remember to drain the radiator?’
‘’Course I remembered to drain the radiator.’
‘Then it’s not that serious,’ Joe said.
‘Sit down, it can wait till we’ve finished eating.’ Mr Lawrence’s anger still simmered.
‘I’ll give you a hand.’ Joe was less brusque than his father.
‘I don’t want a hand, thanks.’
Prue left the room at a run.
‘Stupid girl,’ said Mr Lawrence, and shouted through the door that there was a torch on the dresser.
The night was cool and hazy. A diluted moon cast greenish light over sauntering clouds, too feeble to light the farmyard. Prue hurried across to the barn, the beam of the torch paddling like a single oar over the muddy ground and piles of dung.
Even in the darkness the security of the barn touched her: the smells of hay, chaff, sacking; the scurrying of mice in the straw, the purring of sleepy pigeons in the rafters. The tractor, in silhouette, was an enormous queenly hunk in this softly shining kingdom, old mudguards spread like proud but ailing skirts. Prue put a hand on the engine. The metal was icy cold, but not frozen. She found two or three sacks and covered it. She’d remembered everything else: how could she have forgotten this last, essential act?
Prue switched off her torch, moved towards a dim bank of stacked straw. She climbed until she was higher than the tractor, could look down on it and the farmyard beyond. In her hurry she had forgotten her coat. Although she had changed out of her working shirt and jersey for supper, she had kept on her breeches, thick socks and shoes. So only her arms were cold. But she didn’t want to go back. Not just yet.
She clutched her arms under her breasts, rested her head on her corduroy knees. The feeling that prevailed was anger – anger with herself. The last thing she had wanted to do was make Mr Lawrence angry: her reaction to the dagging had been half in jest – surely he could have seen that? Of course she would have cleaned the blinking sheep’s bum without a murmur when the time came – but a girl is entitled to make a protest, even if there is a war on. She wanted very hard to prove herself, guessing what farmers must think of hairdressers. But it wasn’t easy. She’d spent ten hours ploughing that field, no stop for lunch or tea, furrows straight as a die – and what praise did she get? None. Not a word. Great reluctance on the part of the Lawrences even to come and look at her handiwork. Mr Lawrence had just stood by the gate, muttered ‘Looks all right to me,’ and had moved away when his wife had nodded, supposedly in agreement. They were cross with her, of course. Cross about Joe. And Janet. But if it hadn’t been for Stella and Ag, almost too extravagant in their praise and amazement, Prue would have burst into tears. Just the tiniest bit of appreciation from the Lawrences was all she had wanted: the understanding of what it took for a girl used to doing permanent waves, in a warm and cosy salon full of chattering customers, suddenly to spend a whole day carving up acres of bitter earth, alone. At the thought of the salon, Prue began to cry.
She realized, in this first moment really to think since she had arrived, that she was homesick. She missed her mum: that funny, warm, bleached-haired, spoiling lady, buoyed by eternal
optimism
and nightly gin, never quite sunk by disillusion. She missed the local gossip, the northern jokes, the laughter, the intricate schemes for making do – her mum was a genius in that respect. Just before leaving home, Prue had been asked to a charity tea-dance in aid of the Home Guard: in a trice Mum had run up a beautiful dress made from left-over blackout stuff. She had stuck it with sequins and Christmas tree tinsel, swore it would look almost like ostrich feathers under the electric light. The next morning, when Prue presented the blackout dress ripped of its decorations (an impatient pair of RAF hands had quickly seen to that) – well, they’d had a laugh.
They had agreed, Prue and her mother, not to say in their stilted, badly spelled letters how much they missed each other: it would be too painful. But they both knew. God, how Prue longed to hear her voice, to be back in the
smallness
of things at home: the salon, the small terraced house, the back row of the picture palace just down the road. Here, there were such houseless miles, such silence – except for the tractor, whose grunting Prue found a comfort. And indoors, for all Mrs Lawrence’s hard work, there were no … what Prue would call
nice touches
: no aspidistra in a copper bowl, no crochet antimacassars, no wooden clock carved to look like a setting sun, no Victorian tins with their Christmas pictures of ruddy children with toboggans and holly, or coaches and horses. For some reason, Prue missed the sterile little kitchen with her mother’s collection of biscuit tins more than anything.