Authors: Annie Groves
When Dr Flint reappeared he smiled in a kind way at Paolo, who had been placed on the narrow hospital bed in the surgery by his friends.
‘Now, let’s have a look at that leg, young man.’
Swiftly Rosie translated what he had said for Paolo, who was looking very apprehensive.
She stood back whilst the doctor lifted back the leg of Paolo’s trousers and looked at his wound.
‘Mmm…perhaps you would be kind enough to come and stand beside our patient, my dear, and face me,’ the doctor told Rosie in a calm voice.
When Rosie had done so, he told her quietly, ‘This is a very serious wound indeed. He will be
lucky if the leg does not become gangrenous. By rights he should be taken to hospital to have it attended to, but you see this red line?’ He indicated the line Rosie had already noted. ‘If that were to reach his groin I doubt that anything could save him, not even this new wonder drug, penicillin, I have been reading about that we are told will combat all manner of infections. It is my belief that we cannot risk the delay involved in transferring him to a hospital. The wound needs to be lanced and as much of the poison removed as possible. Have you done any nursing, by chance?’
Rosie shook her head, her stomach tensing.
‘Never mind. You are a stout-hearted, sensible girl, I am sure. Mrs Beddows,’ he called, raising his voice.
When the housekeeper appeared Dr Flint instructed her to bring boiling water and clean cloths.
‘I would like you to tell our patient that I must lance his wound. It will be painful for him but there is no help for that, I am afraid.’
By the time the housekeeper had returned, the doctor had put on a white coat and scrubbed his hands with carbolic. The smell of it stung Rosie’s nostrils. She tried not to betray what she was feeling when she saw the sharp little knife the doctor had removed from a locked case and cleaned with some liquid that also smelled very strong.
‘Now, first you must come over here and scrub your hands as I have done.’
When Rosie had obeyed his instructions to his satisfaction, the doctor told her, ‘Right, now I want you to hold the lad’s hand and keep him as calm and still as you can, please.’
Rosie did as she had been told, fixing her gaze on Paolo’s face rather than on what the doctor was doing, although she knew the moment that he lanced the wound, not just from the sharp cry of pain Paolo gave just before he passed out, but also from the stench.
‘Now quickly, Rosie, go and scrub your hands again and then come and help me here. Watch what Mrs Beddows is doing and copy her,’ the doctor instructed.
The housekeeper, her own hands scrubbed, was laying piping-hot cloths on Paolo’s leg whilst the doctor stroked firmly down it so that a thick yellow pus spurted from the wound.
Rosie felt light-headed with nausea but she fought it back, working as swiftly as she could to keep up the supply of fresh hot cloths.
Paolo had come round and was moaning and crying out for his mother.
‘I will give him a draught of something to ease the pain once I have done what I can to clean his wound. He will have to be hospitalised, of course.’
‘Will he be all right?’ Rose asked anxiously.
‘It is too soon to say. The infection is very bad and has been neglected for too long. Had the cut been properly cleaned at the time he received it, but even then…His leg was cut by a spade you said?’
‘Yes,’ Rosie confirmed.
‘I intend to telephone the commander in charge of the POW camp and request that an ambulance is sent to take this young man to hospital. He is very fortunate that you had the gumption to act on his behalf,’ the doctor told her approvingly.
Rosie smiled with relief. She was glad she had taken action but should she have done something sooner, she worried. Should she have let on that she could understand Italian beforehand? She would never forgive herself if Paolo didn’t make it because of her reluctance to help an Italian. Paolo was just a sick boy, and helping him to get better was what mattered, not what nationality he was, Rosie decided, discounting any thought of disloyalty to her father.
It was late when Rosie eventually returned to the hostel, having waited with Paolo for the ambulance that took him to the nearest military hospital. Rosie had been relieved to see how carefully and competently the stretcher bearers had dealt with their patient and, having assured herself that she had done all she could, she had thanked the doctor and his housekeeper for the tea and toast she had been given and made her way through the village back to the hostel.
Of course, she had to relate to everyone everything that that happened, and then she had been summoned to see the warden, who wanted to hear the whole thing too.
‘I am afraid that the foreman at the farm was rather cross with me,’ Rosie told Mrs Johnson carefully. She did not want to be accused of snitching on George Duncan, but she wanted the warden on her side in case there was any further trouble.
‘There is no reason why he should be, my dear. You acted very properly and promptly. Just as I would expect my girls to do. That poor young man was very lucky.’
Rosie felt warmed by Mrs Johnson’s praise. It reminded her of how she had felt as a little girl when her father had praised her for what he had called ‘doing right by others’. Her father had held strong views about ‘doing unto others as you would be done by’. He had taught her always to recognise a kindness others had done to her and to ‘pass it on’ by doing a kindness to others herself. Rosie remembered how he would smile at her when, as a young girl, she had told him earnestly that she had run down to the shop for an elderly neighbour, or helped carry their washing down to the local wash house for them, and how he would tell her that he was proud of her for thinking of others.
As she grew older there had been no need for him to repeat the little homilies of her childhood because she was already acting on them and understanding them properly. It had lifted her heart so much and made her feel so proud to know that her father was such a kind and good man, and it still did. She wanted so much to prove herself
worthy of being his daughter and to make sure that everything she did underlined and reinforced her pride in that. It was as though somewhere deep inside herself she had wanted to prove to him that whilst her mother had put her relationship with an Italian before her relationship with him, she would never ever do so.
But suddenly she was seeing her behaviour in a different and confusing light. Would her father really praise her for turning against all Italians? She knew how he had always shaken his head when anyone had started talking nastily about ‘foreigners’; saying peaceably that there were good and bad people in every country. What would he think of her behaviour if he could see into her heart now? Rosie asked herself uncertainly. Would he be proud of her for trying her best to ‘dislike’ and distance herself from everything and everyone Italian, or would he say quietly, ‘Do as you would be done by, Rosie lass, allus remember that’?
Rosie knew the answer. ‘But I’ve been doing it for you, Dad,’ she whispered sadly. ‘Because I want to be your daughter, not Aldo’s, and because I want you to know how proud I am of you being my dad.’ Her thoughts were so painful and confused that Rosie wished she could run away from them. She had been guilty of behaving in a way her father wouldn’t have liked, she could see that now. She felt that she had let her father down, not just once but twice over. She missed him so much. Just thinking about him made her heart ache. If only he was still
here for her to turn to with her troubled thoughts. But the war had taken him from her just like it could have taken poor Paolo from his family. A family who loved him just as she loved her father. War was a dreadfully cruel thing, but that did not mean that she should let it make
her
cruel, Rosie recognised soberly.
‘Well, I don’t care who he is, one more word from him about “ruddy land girls” and I’m not doing no more work until he apologises.’
‘It’s all my fault,’ Rosie said uncomfortably, as she listened to Audrey’s determined statement. ‘If I hadn’t helped Paolo, then George Duncan would never have picked on us and made us do this.’
The girls were standing at the edge of one of the farm tracks where, for the fourth morning that week, they had been sent to repair its potholes using the store of cinders and stones kept for that purpose. It was heavy, dirty work, with the girls having to load and push heavy barrows of cinders and then clean out the potholes before repacking them with the cinders and making them flat. None of them was in any doubt that this was the foreman’s revenge for the manner in which they had defied him over Paolo.
‘He ought to be grateful to us, not acting like this,’ Peggy said fiercely. ‘Because if it hadn’t been
for Rosie that poor lad would be dead and Mr Foreman Duncan would be having to explain to someone in authority how he came to have the injury wot killed him.’
‘He’d have lied about that to save his own neck, just like he lies about everything,’ Sheila joined in, stamping viciously on the cinders. ‘Pig!’
‘Well, he won’t be bossing us around for much longer,’ Mary announced smugly, ‘because last night I had a word with my chap and told him what was going on, and since he’s off duty today he’s going to come by later and have a word with Mr Bullyboy Duncan.’
Everyone turned to look at Mary.
She and Peggy had been seeing their RAF boyfriends just as often as they could, and Mary had already given everyone to understand that she and Ian were now courting seriously.
‘That’s all very well, Mary, but why should someone like George Duncan pay any attention to your Ian?’ Audrey demanded.
‘Because my Ian’s squadron leader is the duke, that’s why, and our foreman is employed by him. Ian’s going to have a strong word with him about mistreating POWs and bullying poor sweet land girls, not to mention giving his own wife a black eye.’
‘Well, if that’s the case, I just wish that your Ian had come and had a word wi’ him on Monday instead of waiting until Thursday,’ Jean grumbled. ‘One of the girls that’s bin here a while was telling
me that this is the worst job on the farm and that everyone hates it. Mind you, she says that when it comes to haymaking we’ll know all about it. She reckons we’ll be working sun up until sun down to get the hay in.’
‘If I could have me choice I’d prefer to work with the chickens,’ another girl piped up. ‘Easy they are. All you have to do is just chuck a bit of mash down in the troughs and give them a bit of grain and then collect the eggs.’
‘Oh, yes? What about when you have to wring their necks and pluck their feathers? And cleaning out the boxes is disgusting.’
‘Pooh, you think that’s bad? The last place I was, I ended up having to help to ring one of the young bulls,’ a girl from one of the other gangs told them, grinning when she saw the look on their faces. ‘Yes, and check to see when the bull had been with the cows as well. Of course, it was lovely when the calves were born. Suck on your fingers that strong, they do…I’d have bin there on that farm yet but for my mate,’ she added regretfully.
‘Why, what happened?’ Sheila asked.
‘After we’d done the milking we had to load the milk churns onto these floats pulled by a carthorse, and take them to where the Milk Marketing Board would collect them. One day two of the other girls bet my pal to a race to see who could get to the drop-off point first. Word got round and someone set up a book, running bets, you know, and we were the favourites on account
of my pal knowing a thing or two. Anyway, when the day came we set off and we were out in front and would have won if this ruddy dog hadn’t come from out of nowhere and run barking at old Billy, the carthorse. Didn’t like dogs, Billy didn’t, not one little bit. So he set off down the hill like he was running the Grand National, me and my pal pulling on the reins and yelling at him to slow down. Then he saw the fence at the bottom of the hill and turned off so as not to run into it, that sharp, like, that me and my pal and the milk churns were thrown off the float. Fined over a month’s wages apiece, we were, and put on other duties,’ she concluded with a heavy sigh just audible over the noise of everyone’s laughter.
At dinner time, just as Mary had predicted, George Duncan arrived, glowering at them as they sat on the bank in front of the hedge eating their beetroot and cheese sandwiches.
‘You should be doing better than this,’ he snarled at them. ‘Lazy buggers, especially you,’ he told Rosie, kicking out with his heavy studded boot at her legs.
She had just managed to move them out of the way when they all heard the sound of a lorry chugging up the road. It stopped and Ian, Mary’s chap, got out and came strolling over, looking very handsome and stern in his RAF uniform. Rosie could see the suspicion darkening the foreman’s face.
‘Is this the chap, Mary?’ Ian asked.
Mary nodded.
‘Here, what’s all this?’ George Duncan demanded. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, mate,’ Ian spoke up briskly. ‘My girl here has been telling me that you’ve been picking on her and her friends, and it’s got to stop, do you hear? And another thing. We do not treat POWs badly in this country, and anyone that does is going to get himself into serious trouble.’
It was plain to Rosie that the foreman wasn’t used to being told what to do. His face was burning dark red with temper; his anger glittered dangerously in his eyes. Although he hadn’t raised them, his hands were bunched menacingly into fists.
‘Says you, mate,’ he challenged Ian. ‘What do you think you’re going to do about it?’ he demanded threateningly.
It was plain, though, that Ian was ready for him, and Rosie could only admire the way he said firmly, ‘I’ve heard that you’re pretty handy with your fists – when you’re using them on women. There are a couple of chaps in the squadron who box and they would be very happy to show you just how good they are with theirs. Besides,’ Ian warned him, ‘I dare say that His Grace won’t be too happy to hear that one of his employees has been mistreating POWs and nearly killing them.’
The foreman’s face suddenly lost all its colour. ‘You won’t be going saying nothing to His Grace,’ he blustered. ‘You’re all talk. The duke will be going back overseas any day, so I’ve heard.’
‘He’ll be home on leave at the end of the month and, being the decent sort he is, he’ll be making it his business to come into the mess and have a word with the chaps. So remember, you leave these girls alone and pick on someone your own size in future.’
Ian stayed with the girls until the foreman had lumbered away, laughing when they all crowded round him to thank him for what he had done.
‘Bossy Boots Duncan won’t dare try it on with us now,’ Mary boasted, unable to keep her pride in ‘her’ Ian out of her voice.
‘I hope not,’ Rosie agreed, but she wasn’t convinced.
‘There, that’s them done,’ Rosie said feelingly as she finished darning the lisle stockings that were part of the girls’ uniform.
‘Thank heavens that it’s warm enough now to go bare-legged,’ Mitzi Fellowes, one of the girls from another gang, said happily. ‘I hate them lisles; they itch me to death.’
‘Well, you’ll get scratched to death if you go bare-legged once we start harvesting,’ another girl told her warningly.
‘Not if I get to drive the tractor,’ Mitzi replied smugly.
Rosie and the others had spent the week on dairy work, much to their delight. Rosie enjoyed milking and it surprised her just how much she liked living in the country. She had told herself that it was probably because Liverpool held such unhappy
memories for her. If there had not been a war she would have continued to live happily in her home city, and perhaps once the war was over she would want to return there.
Once the war was over…That seemed so hard to imagine. When she thought of Liverpool now she thought of the warning wail of air-raid sirens, of searchlights crisscrossing the night sky, of the heavy bomb-filled drone of German aeroplanes, of the sickening few seconds’ silence between the whine of a bomb dropping and the terrible noise of it exploding. But more than the danger she thought too of all those who had been lost, not just her own father and mother, but everyone: those children in the shelter with her, who would never now grow up; the men who flew the planes; the firefighters like Rob; and the ordinary men and women of the city for whom each night might be their last. The city she had left behind wasn’t the city of her childhood any more, but nor had she deserted it as some might think. She wanted to do her bit for the war, but she wanted to help people to live. Working on the land did that. Every bit of food she helped to grow was contributing to keeping the country and its people going, just as her father had helped when he had stuck it out at sea. He would be proud of her for what she was doing here in the country, Rosie knew, and he would be pleased too that she was finding a new sort of happiness and peace here, away from her sadness.
‘I suppose Mary and Peggy are out with their chaps tonight, are they?’ Audrey asked. ‘Only they’re cutting it a bit fine. It’s ten now.’
The girls were supposed to get in for ten o’clock unless it was the weekend and they had been given special permission to stay out later.
‘Mary said that she’d throw a bit of gravel up at the window when they got back so that one of us could go and let them in,’ Rosie answered.
‘Mrs Johnson won’t be pleased if she catches you. She’s nice enough, generally speaking, but she’s a bit of a stickler over timekeeping,’ Audrey warned, adding, ‘Has anyone got a ciggie, only I’m desperate?’
Rosie shook her head, but Sheila, although she grumbled about it, produced one for her. Although they were allowed to smoke in the common room, smoking in the dormitories was strictly banned.
‘I wouldn’t mind finding a nice handsome chap meself,’ Sheila sighed.
‘Why don’t you get Mary to ask Ian if he’s got a friend you could make up a foursome with?’ Rosie suggested.
‘Wot, and have our Mary looking over me shoulder all the time to mek sure I was behavin’ meself? That’s the last thing I’d want to do if I was with a good-looking lad,’ Sheila told her with a wink.
Rosie couldn’t help but laugh. There was something about Sheila’s frankness that made it hard not to do so.
‘So what would you be wanting to do with him then?’ Audrey challenged her. ‘Just in case I get one meself and need a few tips, like.’
The next morning the girls were driven out to a farm to start helping with the haymaking and when they got there the Italians were already jumping down from their army transport.
‘There’s your admirer, Rosie,’ Mary laughed, digging her in the ribs.
Rosie pursed her mouth and shook off her friend’s hand.
‘What’s up with you?’ Mary asked.
‘There’s nothing up with me,’ Rosie answered her shortly. ‘It’s him that there’s something up with.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that he’s a prisoner of war, an enemy, that’s what, and I don’t want anything to do with him,’ Rosie told her flatly. She was nearly beside herself with anxiety and misery, her angry words tumbling over themselves in her haste to distance herself from the Italian. ‘And I’ll thank you and the the girls not to go making out that he’s interested in me or that I want him to be. Because I don’t.’
Mary was looking at her in astonishment. ‘Well, what side of the bed did you get out of this morning? I don’t know what’s got into you, Rosie. I’m sure there are innocent lads of ours in camps all over Europe. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
But Rosie wasn’t going to take back what she had said. Keeping her head held high, she marched into the field, ignoring the perplexed and slightly disapproving looks Mary was giving her.
A steam-driven machine was used to cut the hay and the girls and the Italians had to follow behind it, lifting the cut hay into stooks. There was an art to making the stooks properly and at first Rosie struggled with hers, but by the end of the morning she was beginning to get the hang of it.
It was hot, dusty, hard work, but no matter how hard Rosie concentrated on what she was doing, she was still sharply conscious of the handsome Italian watching her, and trying to attract her attention.
‘
Bella, bella
,’ another young Italian close to her teased her admiringly. ‘Ricardo thinks you are much
bella
, pretty girl,’ he added, gesturing towards the tall, broad-shouldered figure who worked several yards away. Like the other men he had removed his shirt and was working in boots and a pair of army trousers, his olive skin warmly tanned. Rosie hadn’t intended to look at him, but now that she was doing so, somehow she couldn’t drag her gaze away and even worse, there was a funny aching feeling in her tummy that was both pleasurable and a bit frightening.
‘Ricardo, he wants to talk with you,’ the other man told her. ‘You speak with him when we have our dinner, yes?’
‘No,’ Rosie refused fiercely. She felt all quivery
inside and her heart was jolting about inside her chest so much she could hardly breathe.
‘Come on, Rosie, you’re falling behind,’ the girl she was working with called out warningly.
It was just the strength of the sun that was making her feel so peculiar, Rosie told herself, as she turned her back resolutely on the Italians and got on with her work.
‘Watch out for us, will you, Rosie? I’m just going to nip behind the hedge.’
Tiredly, Rosie agreed. Trying to find somewhere private to relieve themselves was just one of the many hazards of being a land girl, and the girls all rallied round one another to keep cave at such times.
She swatted at the flies buzzing irritatingly in the heat, and closed her eyes.
‘Hey, Rosie, your admirer is on his way over.’
Jean’s words brought her to her feet in a speedy if ungainly movement as she looked round warily to see the handsome Italian picking his way through the newly stacked stooks of hay towards her.