On the evening of the news about Barry, with unspoken consent – perhaps to show support for Prue – they reverted to their old pattern and converged round the fire after supper. Prue, pale but calm, played Solitaire in a corner. She wore an unusually dark lipstick which, she had earlier told Stella, she thought appropriate to the occasion. When, on the wireless, there was news of a bombing raid on London, Mr Lawrence quickly changed to a symphony concert. Behind the music they could hear the single, persistent note of rain shredding against the windows.
The telephone rang. Mrs Lawrence, to whom it could only ever mean bad news, physically started. She put down her darning and ran from the room. A moment later she returned, flustered by relief that it wasn’t the call she dreaded from Yorkshire, but confused by another concern.
‘Prue, it’s for you. Robert. He wants to know if you’d like to go out for a drink.’
Prue’s back still ached, her eyes stung, an appearance of small appetite at supper had left her hungry. She would have done anything for a drink with Robert: the smoky warmth of The Bells, his cold fingers on her neck, his awkward comforting ways. But there were rules that had to be observed when your ex-boyfriend had been killed. She was aware of disguised glances towards her. Her answer was awaited with curiosity.
‘Not tonight, Mrs Lawrence,’ she said at last. ‘If you could explain …’
Further relief softened Mrs Lawrence’s face. She went off with her message. Prue returned to her game.
Joe, who had been restless all evening, stood up.
‘Ag,’ he said, ‘it was weeks ago you promised me some tutoring. I don’t know where to begin on all those books. Could I ask you … could we mark a start?’
Ag’s surprise was evident. Pleased to think that here was a sign at last that Joe was emerging from his gloomy mood, she jumped up, eager to help. The memory of their one strange afternoon was skeletal in her mind. She knew nothing like that would ever happen again. Joe had merely been obliging. She had no fear of going alone to his room and looked forward to their evening.
They left the room, causing Prue a private smile. She liked the thought that she had been the
first
of the girls invited to Joe’s room, albeit for different reasons.
Later, alone in the attic waiting for the others to come up, Stella was conscious of the kind of restlessness that physically chafes. She hurried into bed without kissing Philip’s photograph, lay listening to the slurry sound of rain against the windows, the whining of the wind. Why this feeling of discomfort? She put it down to the events of the day: the puzzle of Joe’s behaviour was not resolved – if it hadn’t been for the appearance of Barry’s friend, Stella would have probed further. The news that Barry had been killed. Prue’s distress. The endless rain. And now Joe’s invitation to Ag. Stella supposed, of all the disparate characters under this roof, Joe and Ag probably had the most in common. And maybe a little communing with books would cheer Joe up. All the same, for some reason she felt quite cross. She would like to talk to him – about music. Well, Prue and Ag had gratified him in their different ways. She would not like to be the only one who did not contribute to his life. Since she had been freed of the mists of romantic love of Philip, she had noticed Joe more often, and discovered she liked him.
His literary evening must have been a success because Ag came to bed unusually late. Stella pretended to be asleep.
It was long after midnight and still Edith had not come upstairs. Ratty, unable to sleep in a half-empty bed, stumbled to the kitchen. He found his wife standing at the table, as she had been most of the day, regarding a landscape of dozens of paper towers, made of hundreds of small squares of cut-up paper. The room was lighted by a single candle on the table. Shadows stretched darkly across the walls. The table of towers, each with its matching, paler shadow, was a picture of mad geometry, thought Ratty: something he couldn’t understand. Any more than he could understand the look on Edith’s face. Bent over the candle, her turnip skin pocked and scored in the halo of the flame, she seemed to be going through some kind of private mystic experience.
‘You’ll have us burnt to the ground,’ said Ratty at last.
‘That I’ll not,’ Edith replied, her voice quite normal.
‘Come to bed, Edith. It’s nearly one in the morning.’
‘Our country needs our paper,’ she said. ‘I’ll come by and by.’
With extraordinary calm – Ratty had feared his interruption would mean one of her funny outbursts – she began to knock over the paper towers. She flicked each one with a finger, watched it tumble. He regarded her for a while. Soon the table was covered with a thick layer of paper squares. Still Edith went on standing there, running her hands through them. Ratty could bear the scene no longer. Afraid, he turned and went back up to bed.
None of the land girls could remember a time when, if they came upon Mrs Lawrence by chance, she would not be engaged in some form of work. She never grumbled about her endless duties. In fact, the disparate jobs that occupied her, both indoors and out, from early morning till late at night, seemed to give her pleasure. She was an example of a married woman totally preoccupied by the narrow confines of her life, and happy within them. This gave all the girls food for thought. Prue, whose respect for Mrs Lawrence was infinite, was not for one moment deflected by her example: to swap such a life for her own dream of servants and cocktails did not occur to her. Ag had been romantically tempted by the thought of ironing Desmond’s future shirts (all that white linen, so Lawrentian). But of late she had begun to think about becoming a barrister: she would be willing to undertake household duties, but they would have to be arranged around a post-war life at the Bar. Stella, too, was inspired by the loving energy Mrs Lawrence put into every loaf and pot of home-made jam: something her own mother, a useless cook, had never instilled into her. But, like Ag, she was determined to go out to work when she and Philip married. Life would certainly not consist entirely of looking after his needs. Perhaps, she thought, when the war was over, a new and enlightened breed of women would feel much the same.
On a cold February morning – rain had given way to bitter frosts – Ag came into the kitchen to fetch a carrot for Noble. She had spent half an hour trying to catch him – Stella was the only one to whom he came at a call. Mrs Lawrence was sitting at the table, unoccupied. This was so unusual a sight Ag felt a sense of shock, as well as surprise. On the table was one of the small churns in which milk for the house came straight from the dairy. Also, two opened letters.
Mrs Lawrence looked at Ag, unsmiling. There was a tide-mark of milk on her top lip, a comic moustache quite out of keeping with her grave demeanour.
‘Oh Ag,’ she said, ‘good news and bad.’ She patted the letters. ‘John will have to go to Yorkshire tomorrow. He’s been putting it off for ages. But they can’t cope much longer. Things have to be sorted out.’
Ag sat down.
‘What it means, of course, is deciding
when
… when we have to leave here and take over up there. John’s brother will stay to the end. He won’t go into hospital. But then we’ll have to go. It’s much bigger than here, several hundred acres, mostly arable. God knows how we’ll manage.’
‘Perhaps we could be transferred with you,’ said Ag, touched by Mrs Lawrence’s despair.
‘Perhaps, perhaps.’ Mrs Lawrence looked out of the window. ‘We’ve been here all our married life.’
‘It won’t be easy, going.’
‘No. Some people don’t mind about houses, places. I wish I could be like that. Rootless. A happy mover, a wanderer, with a desire to see new places. But I’m not. I love our small world. I love this place. John loves this place. Joe, I think, too.’
‘Understandably.’
‘Still, there’s time left. Till the end of the year, I should think. We must warn you all. Give you plenty of notice so that you can make up your minds about what you want to do next. The immediate problem, John having to go tomorrow, is the lambing. We need all the hands we can get.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll help all we can,’ said Ag. ‘I expect Ratty wouldn’t mind—’
‘Ratty?’ Mrs Lawrence smiled at last. ‘Ratty wouldn’t miss lambing for anything in the world. He more or less camps in the shed. We’ll manage. Now: the good news.’ She picked up the second letter. ‘I’ve been in correspondence with the district commissioner. Believe it or not, you’ve been here six months: reward time, if the authorities think rewards are in order. Anyhow, there’s to be a little ceremony next week. Nothing very much: tea and badges. I was asked for a private report of your progress, naturally. Apparently there have been quite a few problems with land girls round the country. One Agricultural Executive Committee had to take disciplinary action against fourteen girls who refused to thresh in twenty-five degrees of frost. I said, nothing like that here.’ She paused to smile again. ‘My girls will do anything, I said … I don’t know what we’d do without them … But what am I up to? Sitting here chattering, the lunch not on. Go and tell the others, Ag. Best bibs and tuckers, four o’clock on Wednesday. Lardy cake, would you like? Egg sandwiches? Glass of ginger wine? We’ll try to make it a small celebration, if I have a moment.’
She hurried to the stove, her old self again.
* * *
Mr Lawrence left for Yorkshire early the next morning. As his wife waved goodbye, Ag noticed a small pulse began to beat in her neck. In twenty-four years of marriage, the Lawrences had never been apart for more than a couple of nights.
Joe drove his father to the station. Mr Lawrence had planned a complicated and slow journey by train. He hoped to return in a week.
There was too much extra work to allow time for much reflection on his absence. Lambing had begun. The night frosts were so hard that Joe worked to divide the lambing shed into many small folds. As the entire flock of ewes and lambs was to be sold in the spring, it was essential to make sure as many lambs as possible survived. Other years, only problem ewes or sickly lambs were given shelter. This year, Mr Lawrence believed, cosseting was the best policy.
Ratty and Joe set up the folds. Prue tossed wheat straw on the ground, filled troughs with water. She had already seen a lamb born, an experience which had inspired a long letter to her mother concerning Nature’s miracles: by comparison, she had said, even the most beautiful permanent wave was no great shakes. (
By that I don’t mean I won’t always admire your talent and skill, Mum,
she had added in brackets.) Her greatest excitement was for the forthcoming birth of Sly’s last litter. Although Joe assured her they were not due for at least another week, Prue kept running to the sty to judge for herself the pre-natal state of the sow with whom she had come to have a very good understanding. She was determined to be present at the birth.
For all their fitness and strength, the girls found themselves tired by the extra work and went to bed earlier than usual. Joe, having completed the night check straight after supper, did likewise. Frequently he was called out by the indomitable Ratty in the middle of the night to help with a ewe. A few hours’ early sleep was essential to the maintenance of his efficiency and temper.
At three o’clock one morning, Stella, eyes on her clock, happened to be awake. There was a bang on the attic door.
‘Could one of you come and help? There’s a lot going on. Sorry.’
Stella sat up in the dark. Silence from the other two meant they were deeply asleep. She fumbled as quickly as she could into her clothes. Crept out. What help did Joe need? She had no experience of lambing … She put on her coat and scarf, hurried across the freezing yard.
In the shed, she found biblical light from a few lanterns that hung from the walls, and were secured to the pens. There was a smell of hay, earth, blood. A discordant chorus of bleating filled her ears: tremulous notes from the ewes in labour, piteous high squeaks from one or two newborn lambs. In one pen Ratty was huddled over a ewe who lay on her side, mumbling comforting words to her as he dug a syringe into her hindquarters. He was watched by a tiny black lamb, its wool skin glistening like broken cobwebs. In another fold Joe was kneeling on the straw, one arm deep in a ewe’s backside. Stella made her way towards him. He looked up for a moment.
‘Oh, it’s you. Ewe in the far corner over there: turning on her lamb. See what you can do. I’ve got a nasty mess here.’
Stella hurried away, wondering what she was supposed to do.
The lamb needing her help lay on wet straw, its head tipped back, alarmed eyes a milky blue. It was still covered with a translucent skin, silvery over the dun-coloured wool, that its unmaternal mother had felt disinclined to lick clean. Stella stroked its neck, watched the flaring of the small black nostril. She felt helpless, useless. But the lamb, encouraged by her presence, struggled to rise. On tottering legs it made a precarious journey to its mother who stood sulking in a corner. She sighed deeply, twitched her ears.
The lamb gently butted its mother’s stomach in search of milk. With extraordinary speed the ewe lashed out with a hind leg, making the lamb jump back in fright. Then she turned and lowered her head towards her offspring with all the aggression of a ram. The lamb fell back on the straw from the fierce butt of its mother’s head. Stella saw a flash of dun-coloured teeth: the ewe was going to attack further. She quickly bent and picked up the squealing lamb. The slime of its skin slobbered down her greatcoat. The lamb felt cold and tense. It struggled. Stella, keeping a tight grip, swung herself back over the side of the pen and returned to Joe.
He was standing now, fiddling with a syringe. His bare right arm and hand were skeined with blood, as was the straw on which the ewe lay panting on her side. Beside her stretched the unmoving body of a lamb, obviously dead.
‘First one we’ve lost,’ said Joe. He glanced at Stella holding the rejected lamb, which had grown quieter.