Land Girls (21 page)

Polishing finished, she stood up, restless. No task appealed to her. What she would like was to see the girls, join in a little of their fun. She might be needed, she thought: a placket to be done up, a necklace fastened. Surely they wouldn’t mind her asking if they wanted any help …

Climbing the stairs, she heard music coming from Joe’s room. The song, on his old gramophone, was scratchy, shaky. But it did something to her limbs, her head.

Mrs Lawrence caught herself half smiling. Joe’s door was ajar. She could see him grimacing into the small mirror on the wall, struggling with a tie.

‘You look smart, son,’ she said.

‘Mustn’t let them down,’ he said.

He had not complained at all about his job as chauffeur. Mrs Lawrence privately thought he was rather looking forward to the evening. Well, he didn’t get out much, deserved the occasional break. And this dance caused no worries. Joe may have been quite the ladies’ man in his time, but with three girls to chaperone him there was no danger. Prue, the wicked little flirt, had done nothing but talk about some RAF lad she had seen in the tea-shop – her sights were clearly not on Joe tonight. It was only a pity Janet wasn’t here.

She stood in the shadow of the girls’ doorway, unnoticed for a while. The attic room was hilariously untidy, unrecognizable from the neat and spotless place it had become after days of scrubbing and painting before the girls had arrived. Now, it was like a communal dressing-room in a theatre, ravaged by a series of quick changes. Clothes were flung everywhere – signs of several dresses being tried on and rejected, Mrs Lawrence guessed. Coloured shoes and shiny stockings were strewn over the floor. Lipsticks clustered on the top of the chest of drawers, and every surface was sprinkled with a fine dust shaken from a box of Pond’s powder decorated with its comforting design of floating puffs. The war seemed to have made no difference to the extravagance of youth, thought Mrs Lawrence. She remembered the meagreness of her own wardrobe even when she was young.

Ag sat on a chair under the central light, feet together, hands folded primly on her lap. Prue twittered round her, dabbing and pulling at Ag’s transformed hair – a mass of scatty curls and waves that twinkled in the light from the low-watt bulb.

‘We’re getting somewhere at last,’ assured Prue, tottering on her high-heeled black suede sandals, their ankle straps fastened with ruby buckles. ‘You won’t know yourself. No, you can’t look till I’ve finished.’ Ag gave a trusting smile. She touched a thin gold chain round her neck, from which hung a small gold heart. ‘That doesn’t do much for you,’ said Prue. ‘Haven’t you anything
sparklier
?’

‘No,’ said Ag. ‘I like this. It was my mother’s.’

‘Very well.’ Prue gave the small sigh of one who knows best but is forced to agree to less sure taste for tactical reasons. ‘Tell you what, then: I’ll lend you my chiffon leopard scarf – cheer your shoulders up a bit.’ She tweaked the dark green stuff of Ag’s quiet dress.

‘Thanks,’ said Ag. Prue passed her a hand mirror. Ag studied herself in silence before handing it back. ‘Good heavens, what
have
you done to me?’

‘One more thing,’ said Prue, ‘and the transformation’ll be complete.’ She moved to the chest of drawers, picked up an open lipstick. ‘
Fire and Ice
,’ she threatened, holding it dagger-like towards Ag’s mouth.

‘
No.
’

‘
Cherries in the Snow,
then?’

‘No! Prue, please. I’m not going to wear lipstick. I never do.’

‘
Spoilsport!
It’s yourself you’ll be letting down. No hope of wowing the RAF without a bit of lipstick.’ Prue pouted. Her own mouth was a squealing pink, designed to seduce an entire squadron, thought Mrs Lawrence, smiling. ‘How about a touch of Vaseline, then?’

‘Just for you,’ agreed Ag.

Prue giggled, rummaged through a tangle of scarves in an open drawer. Ag stood, saw Mrs Lawrence at the door. She was immediately embarrassed.

‘Mrs Lawrence! Goodness knows what I look like …’

Mrs Lawrence came further into the room. Prue leapt at her.

‘What d’you think of my handiwork, Mrs Lawrence? God, do I need a fag.
Shine on, shine on harvest moon,
’ she shrilled a tuneless snatch of song. ‘There.’ She knotted a wisp of chiffon round Ag’s neck, searched her dressing-gown pocket for a packet of cigarettes. ‘And what about Stella, here?’

Stella, sitting on the edge of her bed, concentrated on putting on her own lipstick. A red spotted skirt was drawn up over a pair of sharp little knees, pressed together as if for comfort. Her legs splayed out like two sides of a triangle: the feet, in pink slippers, turned in, ankles bent. There was something childlike in the pose, thought Mrs Lawrence, as if Stella had no interest in trying for sophistication when Philip was away at sea. Stella looked up, blotted her lips, smiled.

‘You all look very nice,’ said Mrs Lawrence. In this scene of frivolity she felt herself a symbol of dourness, awkward. She did not know where to put her hands, wished she had taken off her apron. ‘I wondered if there was anything I could do to help …’

‘
Please
, Mrs Lawrence.’

Prue flung off her dressing-gown, which sank into a foam of blue on the floor behind her. With a shimmy of her wiry little body, she defied them all not to observe the breasts that swelled above the peach petticoat, the lean hips to which the bias cut of the satin skirt clung. She stepped out of the foam, ankles jigging in their straps, waved a thin arm above her head.

‘Who would believe this very arm has spread ten acres of muck, milked five hundred cows, fought a pig, frightened a rat?
Land girl, you’re
barmy
,’ she sang.

The others laughed. Encouraged, Prue stubbed out her half-smoked Woodbine, and stepped into her dress with a single fluid movement whose natural grace Mrs Lawrence could not but admire.

‘Please, Mrs Lawrence.’ She presented her back. Faced with a plummet line of small gold buttons, Mrs Lawrence raised her hands, wondering at the sudden clumsiness of her fingers.

‘All this just for the RAF,’ said Stella. She looked admiringly at Prue. ‘Now, if it had been the Navy …’

‘I’m not fussy,’ said Prue, bending about, impatient.

‘Keep still,’ said Mrs Lawrence.

‘Army, Navy, Air Force, Home Guard, anything. Ag, give me that bottle and I’ll treat you all to a spray.’

Ag handed Prue a cut-glass bottle of scent. ‘Not for me, thanks,’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft, Ag. You don’t want to smell of sheep.’

Prue pressed the small bulb in its filigree cover of golden thread. A spray of vapour hit Ag’s chest. She laughed, backed away, clutching at herself. Prue swerved round to Stella, sprayed her, too.

‘I said, keep
still
.’ Mrs Lawrence found herself smiling.

‘And last of all, me. Ears, throat, cleavage, wrists. There.’ With each steamy puff the smell of tuberose thickened the air. ‘No: not quite last here, Mrs Lawrence!’ Prue snapped round on her heels, aimed a squirt of scent at Mrs Lawrence’s apron.

‘No! Not for me – please, Prue.’

Mrs Lawrence, to her own surprise, joined in the others’ laughter. She tugged Prue round again to finish the last of the buttons. A picture came to her mind of dancing in a summer barn, years ago: a harvest supper, perhaps. John coming up behind her, putting his arm round her waist. Streamers looped from the rafters, a small band that made her feet tap long before they reached the dance floor.

‘It’s magic, I’m telling you,’ giggled Prue. ‘It’ll
do
something for you, Mrs Lawrence.’

There was a shout from downstairs to hurry. With one accord, the girls swerved about the room gathering up scarves, bags, coats. Mrs Lawrence moved about trying to keep out of their way. The sugar smell of powder, combined with the sickliness of Prue’s favourite scent, could not quite disguise a sharp, sour smell of sweat.

‘Excitement!’ shouted Prue, the first to run to the door.

Mr Lawrence and Joe stood side by side in the hall, waiting. They heard the patter of feet on the stairs, saw three pairs of silky legs make a brief moving trellis among the stair bannisters, followed by flashes of coloured skirts. Then they were there, swirling about in the dim milky light of the hall, filling the air with the overwhelming sweetness of cheap scent. Stella’s hand clutched a dark oak bannister as she paused for a moment, laughing, catching her breath. Mr Lawrence, staring at her, met her eyes, more visible than ever before now her hair had been caught back each side in combs. He quickly looked away. The curve of a pearly lid, the curl of thick lashes, seared in his mind. Ag – he vaguely noticed something different about her – was struggling into an old grey coat. Joe was helping her.

‘I’ve brought the Wolseley to the door,’ he said.

‘Joe, you’re wonderful.’ Prue spun over to him, kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘What would we do without you? Can I sit next to the driver?’

Mr Lawrence undid the bolts on the front door. He meant to wish them all a good evening, but could not manage it. As they crowded past him to the car, Stella saw the sudden paleness of his cheeks.

‘Good night, Mr Lawrence,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the use of the car. Have a peaceful evening without us.’ She put a hand on his arm, brief as a bird touches water, sees nothing there, and soars away again.

‘’Night, Stella,’ he said.

When they had gone, Mr Lawrence shut the door. Mrs Lawrence came downstairs quietly in her slippered feet. Fearful she would recognize his infidelity in the murky place full of horrible scents that the hall had become, he hurried into the kitchen. His wife followed him.

‘Just eggs and bacon, tonight,’ she said.

Mr Lawrence took a bottle of ale and a glass from the dresser. He sat down at the table. Mrs Lawrence leaned up against the range, the dogs at her feet. She undid her apron, took it off, folded it, hung it over the back of a chair. Such a pale, worn thing, the binding coming unsewn round the edges.

‘Did we have anything like that, in our youth?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly, no.’ Mr Lawrence stood up. ‘Can smell that filthy stuff even in here. Don’t say you …?’

Mrs Lawrence smiled. ‘Prue squirted it over all of us: very generous …’

‘God forbid. You’ll have to have a bath.’ He moved over to his wife, lowered his head to sniff at the brown wool of her shoulders. ‘It reeks.’

Mrs Lawrence half raised her arms, as if to encircle her husband’s neck, then thought better of it. It wasn’t Sunday, after all. Instead, she undid the top button of her cardigan. Mr Lawrence watched her, puzzled. Their eyes remained locked for several moments, the disparity of their thoughts almost tangible.

‘Reach me down a frying pan, will you,’ said Mrs Lawrence at last.

‘You’re a good woman,’ her husband said. ‘You’re a good woman, you are.’

* * *

A plane squawked overhead, shredding the sound of the RAF band. They did not miss a beat, but a few of the dancing couples gripped each other more tightly. Stella, at a small table with the other girls and Joe, clasped her glass of ginger beer.

‘It feels more as if there’s a war on, here, somehow,’ she said.

She looked round the large, rather cold hall. The organizers had tried to disguise its dreary walls with paper chains and clumps of tinsel. Flakes of cottonwool snow had been stuck to the blackout stuff over the windows. At the far end of the hall, next to the bar, someone had struggled to make the buffet look tempting. Coming in, Stella had noticed piles of bridge rolls filled with fish paste, and plates of sliced Spam lay with an exhausted air on lettuce leaves. There were several bottles of salad cream and what must have been a pre-war jar of French mustard. A second table was reserved for a small townscape of castellated jellies. Bright primary colours, some flecked with tinned fruits; they rose out of dazzling white imitation cream skilfully piped to look like shells.

Prue had no interest in the surroundings: her eye was busy on the crowd of uniformed pilots at the bar with their soft, young faces, red necks and noisy laughs. The cheering thing was there were at least three men to every one girl in the room. Prue tossed her curls, tapped a foot under the table – quite Glenn Miller, really, she thought – impatient. She would have to make a break soon, waste no more time. Finish this first gin and lime, kindly bought by Joe, then she’d be off. But there was no time to finish the drink –
for there he was
, the tea-room flight lieutenant, even more handsome without his cap. Prue jumped to her feet.

‘Sorry, folks,’ she said, ‘but I have to go. Don’t want to miss my chance. See you.’

The others watched her spraunce off towards the crowd at the bar, hips waggling, hair bouncing, hands on hips. Many heads, they noticed, joined in observing her progress.

‘Same performance as in the milking shed the first morning,’ said Joe. Stella and Ag laughed, then they fell into the awkwardness engendered by a trio. Ag, conscious that Stella was looking extraordinarily attractive in a very different way from Prue, folded her hands. tried to assume a settled sort of look.

‘If you two want to dance,’ she said, ‘I’m quite happy sitting here just looking.’

‘I don’t want to dance,’ said Stella, without conviction.

At that moment, a short, heavily built wing commander approached their table, gave a little bow in Stella’s direction.

‘Might I have the honour,’ he said, with a teasing smile, ‘of the next one?’

Stella hesitated.

‘Go on,’ said Joe. ‘You can’t rely on me.’

‘Very well, thanks. I’d love to.’

‘My name’s Stephen,’ said the wing commander.

‘My name’s Stella.’

‘You look to me like a girl who
can
dance.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’