The Land Girl: An unforgettable historical novel of love and hope
‘Oh,’ Cecil whined. ‘Do you have to make that din?’ Deftly he turned the attention to himself. He hadn’t looked up from his book since he’d sat down. He’d even read it at the dinner table.
‘It’s a piano, Cecil,’ she retorted. ‘Not a brass band.’
‘Emily won’t play if you find it distracting,’ Mother said. ‘Emily dear, can’t you find a less invasive occupation?’ Mother’s gaze remained trained on her lap.
She sighed and slammed the lid shut. She could do no right. As it was, within a few moments Cecil had lost interest in his books and wandered out of the room in search of something new.
‘I would like to hear you play,’ said John. ‘Cecil?’ He called down the hallway. ‘Will you come back shortly for a game of charades?’
Cecil returned momentarily to poke his head around the doorway. ‘Anything for you, dear brother,’ he said.
Emily straightened her back and prepared to play. She hadn’t sat on this stool since before the war, before John had joined up, when they all came together in the evenings for piano music, song and laughter. They hadn’t done any of these things when it was really Christmastime, and John was away. It would have been wrong to carry on as usual without him. They hadn’t sung or played charades, either.
Grandmother and Mother stood beside Emily, while John leant an elbow on the body of the baby grand before them, where Father had done the same when he was alive. He warbled in a silly false tenor, his arms stretched out to accentuate his notes.
John took Mother’s hand. Emily had warmed up now, switched to a show tune, and John and Mother glided together to a foxtrot. Emily glanced up every now and then. Mother wasn’t hamming it up – she really did have style and grace. She gazed into her dance partner’s eyes with unbidden pride. Mother’s slim waist and hips meant she could pass for a woman John’s age, from behind. Her energy too. She was so often in her armchair these days it was a jolt to see her out of it and dancing and to recall how full of verve Mother had been when Father was alive, especially when she entertained.
Emily smiled to herself in the hallway later that evening. Home really was home when John was there. How did he do it? He was the glue that bound them together. It gave them the confidence and freedom to be and please themselves. To prove the point, Cecil was in his room with his books, while Mother, Grandmother and John talked in the library. On her way upstairs, she passed them, the door open a crack to reveal the light inside.
‘I don’t think you should ask him for help,’ she overheard Grandmother say. ‘Too much has passed.’
‘But what choice do we have?’ Mother said. Emily stopped and held her breath. ‘Things can’t go on as they are for much longer.’
‘I know,’ said John. ‘We’re approaching a point where we’ll have to shut HopBine House up.’
‘Or sell …’ Mother said. Emily put a hand to her mouth. Sell their home? No wonder Mother was so keen for her to marry someone from a good family; she must be hoping she’d save them.
Why hadn’t John said anything when they’d been on their own, digging up the rose garden? He’d had plenty of opportunity to tell her they had problems. Where would they go, and what would happen to the farm? Her legs lost their strength beneath her.
‘He’s offered help,’ John said. ‘I suggest we hear what he has to say.’
Emily took a light-footed step back towards the door, straining to hear whether John would reveal who this ‘he’ was.
‘What are you doing lurking about in the hallway?’
She jumped clean into the air and clubbed herself on the chin with the back of her own hand; Cecil had appeared on the stairs out of nowhere. ‘I was just getting a glass of water,’ she said loudly enough for John and Grandmother to hear her in the library, and then strode purposefully towards the kitchen.
She was about to chastise him for creeping around, but to her surprise he’d joined the others, too. She back-tracked. It must have been a family meeting and she’d not realised. As she reached the door, she caught a glimpse of John. He smiled, but just then Mother came into view, and snapped the door shut in her face.
‘Should I come in too?’ she called.
‘Take yourself off to bed, dear,’ Mother said turning the key in the lock. ‘It’s getting late.’
Chapter Five
July 1915
Dearest Emily,
I am moving up the queue and it will soon be my turn for leave. I ought to go to Yorkshire to see my mother, but I wonder could you meet me at King’s Cross station when I break my journey and pick up the train for Wakefield? I keep the photograph you sent me in my pocket, and look at you before I sleep – often you’re illuminated by shell light. But I long to see that determined chin for myself, your lively, mischievous eyes alight on me in person, my love.
What do you say?
Fondest wishes
Theo
‘You and John have had a lot of clandestine meetings in the library.’ She probed Cecil two days later under the shade of the monkey puzzle tree on the lawn, the brim of her sun hat low. Cecil lounged out on the other side of the trunk, reading, as usual. The soporific heat pushed her eyelids shut. ‘I waited up for you both last night but in the end I had to go to bed.’
‘We were playing chess.’ Cecil’s tone was falsely flippant. He was no more going to let her in on what was going on than Mother.
‘And who won?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to think I thrashed him, but I think he let me win.’
‘He always lets you win.’ She chuckled. ‘Has he ever beaten you or I at anything?’
Cecil reflected for a moment and then groaned. ‘All that effort to try and outwit him and all for nothing,’ he said banging his book against his thighs.
She hadn’t written back to Theo in the end. It would be difficult for her to travel to London without a chaperone. And after the conversation she’d overheard when Grandmother was visiting, it seemed she might need to a find herself an officer, not a corporal.
Her gardening journal slid from her grasp and her lap, but her hand was too heavy to move and catch the book. The buzzing of the bees and the collared dove in the canopy above all faded away …
She woke much later with a start, heavy still with sleep. A car door had slammed shut, footsteps on the gravel.
No one had mentioned that they were expecting guests.
Cecil had gone. She carried on where she had left off with her journal for the vegetable garden, planning which new crops she would plant and where. She hated afternoon tea and polite conversation with strangers, but it was nearing the end of John’s leave and there was no telling when he might next be back.
Now that the stinging heat of the sun had faded it was safe to emerge from the shade and cross the lawn to the borders she had helped Mr Flitwick to plant. Taking the secateurs from her pocket, she snipped the stems of some cosmos for Mother.
Declining Daisy’s offer of help, she placed the blooms into a vase in the kitchen and made her way through to the sitting room so she could casually drop by and determine whether the guest was someone she wanted to stay for.
‘Hello …’ She stopped on the threshold to assess the scene of John and Cecil flanking Mother, who perched on the edge of the sofa, wringing a lace handkerchief with her fingers.
A man with his back to her in the armchair by the door turned to face her. Her hand froze around the vase as she placed it on the bookcase. The man was the ghost of her father yet greyer, sterner, leaner. In a smarter, tailored suit, with neater hair. Altogether more groomed than her father, Baden.
The man held out his manicured hand to Emily.
‘I’m your Uncle Wilfred,’ he said. ‘Your father’s brother.’
‘How do you do,’ she said. Her mother and brothers’ faces were a mask of blank politeness, betraying no clue as to what she should think of this unexpected visit.
‘I’ve come to see your family to talk business.’
So, this must be what she’d overheard them talking about. Why had they excluded her from that?
‘You didn’t speak to my father for years, did you?’ she asked. John shook his head at her for being so frank. He was clearly intent on making a good impression.
‘No,’ Wilfred said. ‘Twenty-five years to be precise. And …’ he pointed a finger at her ‘… don’t forget – he didn’t speak to me either. I regret the whole business terribly.’
It’s a little late now, she wanted to say, but the anguished smile pinned to Mother’s face stopped her short. ‘We used to come to your house in London,’ she remembered, ‘without Father.’
‘A long time ago now. Cecil was just a baby the last time we visited,’ Mother said.
‘Yes. It was a shame you couldn’t come again. Well, if you wouldn’t mind excusing us …’
‘I’ll come too,’ Mother said, her hands twisting and turning again.
‘It’s fine, Mother. Leave it to us,’ John said.
Cecil ambled out of the room and down the hallway whistling to himself.
‘What have I said to you about wearing those boots indoors!’ Mother snapped once the men were out of earshot.
Mother stared at her hands while the conversation took place on the other side of the wall. After a while, Emily realised Mother’s hands were trembling and that she was trying to still them. Within ten minutes voices rose in the room next door. Mother joined them then, and then Cecil, and the conversation continued for a while longer. Emily hovered outside the door, hoping to overhear something, but the voices were quiet.
She sat in her bedroom, the door open. She would demand to be told what was going on. It was ridiculous to exclude her in this way as if she was nothing more than a child.
Voices, sharper now they were out of the library, travelled up from the hallway. She scampered down the stairs, but before she could join the others on the front step, Wilfred’s car was already approaching the cedar avenue.
Mother marched straight back into the sitting room and poured herself a brandy, which she swallowed down in one.
‘Whatever is going on?’ Emily asked. ‘Is he giving us money?’
Mother set her glass back down on the table as if Emily hadn’t spoken.
‘Mother.’ John appeared in the doorway. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Of course,’ Mother said. She followed John into the library, leaving her once again on the wrong side of the door.
Chapter Six
July 1915
Dearest Emily,
They have delayed my leave – they can’t spare us. I’ve been promised it should be next week now if I am fortunate enough to escape, or there is a shell with my name on it heading my way first.
I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed that I won’t see you at King’s Cross. Your letters have been the only good thing to come my way since I’ve been here, but I understand the reason why. I’ll linger outside the Telegraph Office just in case you change your mind and can meet me there.
Try not to be too hard on your mother – I’m sure she’s being truthful when she tells you that she thinks it’s for the best if you don’t work, even though you may disagree.
Yours
Theo
The chickens scattered to escape the sizeable boots of Mrs Tipton as she stepped out of the farmhouse door and grabbed John by the shoulders. She pulled him close, thumping the air out of him by patting his back with the palm of her hand, even though she’d only seen him the day before. ‘Ah, what a sight to see the three of you together again at the farmhouse. In you all come now,’ she said as she tugged John over the threshold.
Mrs Tipton poured them each a tea. ‘I’ve been working on him,’ she said.
Emily’s back straightened. It was the first time Mrs Tipton had mentioned the idea of Emily helping on the farm in weeks. ‘The more those women run circles around him, the more his resolve is weakening. Sometimes with men you just have to wear them down – it’s the only way.’
Before their tea had cooled enough to drink, Mr Tipton crashed into the kitchen shouting. Mrs Tipton raised her eyebrows at Emily.
‘Blasted women, blasted women!’
‘Whatever’s happened, dear?’ Mrs Tipton slid a cup of tea in front of him.
‘I thought those cows were temperamental.’ He threw his brown felt hat across the room. ‘Those beasts have nothing on women. I should never ha’ taken them on. They’re either jawing …’ he mimicked a busy mouth snapping up and down with his four fingers against his thumb ‘… or booing …’ he mimed rubbing his eyes with his fists.
‘You upset one o’ them again, have you?’ Mrs Tipton asked, tight-lipped.
‘S’not hard, it really isn’t,’ he said, kicking the table leg with his boot. ‘Another one, Annie, I think she called herself, has just packed her bags. They’re strong enough to lug their cases to the station when it means they can get out of here. You noticed that too, have you?’
Mrs Tipton nodded in reply. ‘What you need is a ganger,’ Mrs Tipton said with a wink to Emily. ‘And look who the wind has blown in for us, eh?’ She gestured with raised eyebrows towards Emily.
Mr Tipton furrowed his brow. ‘No disrespect, but what I need is more men. Cecil, you’re home for the summer. Couldn’t you help us out a bit, lad?’
Cecil’s gaze shifted about in the uncomfortable silence that followed. Cecil? Mr Tipton couldn’t be that desperate for help, surely to goodness. John caught Emily’s eye behind Cecil’s back; despite her disappointment at being overlooked again, it was too much to imagine Cecil milking cows and they both crumbled into laughter.
‘What?’ Cecil straightened his back, and his tie. ‘I think I’d command respect rather well amongst the workers.’
‘A good farmer leads from the front,’ Emily told him, clutching her stomach and grinning. After the drama up at the house, and John’s looming departure for the Front, the laughter warmed her insides.
‘It’s not that ludicrous a prospect, surely?’ Cecil asked.
John and Emily nodded at one another and said in unison: ‘Oh, it is.’
‘I really don’t see what’s so funny.’ Cecil frowned.
‘Oh, come on, Cecil,’ John said. ‘Can you really see yourself muck-spreading, digging, weeding …’ Cecil’s mouth had wrinkled up. ‘My point exactly. You won’t have time to loll around with your book, or write a thesis about the land ownership of the upper classes and the plight of the serfs. Whereas Emily here worked alongside me on the vegetable garden and I was tired and ready for a rest long before her.’
‘Exactly,’ Mrs Tipton agreed.
‘I’d like to try,’ Emily said. ‘Perhaps a trial?’
‘I appreciate you wanting to help,’ Mr Tipton said. ‘And you know I’ve always enjoyed having you around the place and you have a better understanding of the land than most, but I’ve had so much trouble. I don’t want any more. I can’t even risk you, Miss Cotham.’
‘It is her farm,’ Mrs Tipton reminded him. ‘She has every right to take good care of her family’s assets.’
She had been bending her husband’s ear for months now, and he was beginning to cave in.
‘Won’t you give me a chance to prove myself?’ Emily pressed on. ‘If you’d like, I can sign up with the government’s scheme and get some training.’
‘But she won’t need it,’ John added. ‘She knows these fields and this farm well enough. She’s watched you since she was a girl.’
‘And I can supervise the girls – you won’t need to bother yourself with chasing them about.’ It would be wonderful if that was true. Just as John had said, she mustn’t listen to the naysayers. She had to believe in herself; that was half the battle.
‘This war isn’t going to be won any time soon,’ said Mrs Tipton. ‘You’ll have to take on more women. You won’t have any choice in the matter.’
Mr Tipton’s shoulders sagged at the prospect.
‘And Master John is the head of the household,’ Mrs Tipton continued. ‘His wishes have to be respected.’
Emily was impressed at Mr Tipton’s resolve, but he was definitely showing signs of succumbing – all three of them could sense it.
‘I know the land and the animals, Mr Tipton. I love this farm. Who better to be by your side?’
‘Mmm.’ He scratched his chin.
‘If it turns out that I’m not any good at it then I’ll leave,’ she said.
‘You’ll have lost nothing,’ John said. ‘But you’ve everything to gain.’
Mr Tipton narrowed his eyes, suspecting he’d been ambushed. ‘And what does your mother say?’
Emily exhaled. He had them there.
‘She’s coming around to the idea,’ John said. Even without the financial problems, Uncle Wilfred storming out and John returning to the Front, Mother wouldn’t have given a moment’s thought to Emily’s desire to become a land girl since she dismissed the idea months ago. But Mr Tipton didn’t need to know that.
‘If only those new girls had half your stamina, but I can’t go against your mother’s wishes. If she says no, then the answer’s no.’
‘Very well, it’s a deal then.’
Emily searched John’s face for a clue as to what exactly he knew that she didn’t. Had John managed to persuade Mother too?
‘That’s sorted then.’ Mrs Tipton rubbed her hands together.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ John whispered. ‘We’ll win Mother over, you’ll see.’ He cleared his throat and raised his voice.
‘Go on then. Shake the man’s hand.’ She spat on her hands like she’d seen men do in West Malling on market day, clenched his fleshy palm tight and pumped it for all it was worth.
‘She has all the makings of a land girl this one,’ said Mrs Tipton.
They were halfway there. Please, oh please, let John be right about Mother.
*
Dearest Emily,
I have been told I go on leave tomorrow. I know what you said, my dear, but I am ever hopeful of an encounter with you, no matter how brief, to brighten my spirits and warm my heart for my return to Blighty. I will be passing through King’s Cross between one and two o’clock on Thursday, I shall pin a hankie to my lapel, so that you might recognise me.
Fondest wishes
Theo
‘Do you realise what time it is?’
Emily held her breath and froze at the top of the ladder, steadying her brimming basket of cherries. She’d lost track of time. Working did that to her: the whole day flew by and she didn’t notice.
‘Is it just you?’ she called down.
‘Of course,’ John said with amusement in his voice.
‘You aren’t going to tell Mother on me, are you?’
‘Have I ever yet?’ John asked as she steadily clambered down from the canopy of the red-dotted tree and jumped the last few steps, only noticing now that all of the other workers had emptied their baskets and finished up for the day.
‘You’re running out of time to convince her,’ Emily said, lugging her cherries to the large bathtub-shaped bin and tipping them out. ‘I might just borrow your old work clothes, register with the Corps, and let her try and stop me.’
‘Better I think if you have her blessing,’ John said. ‘One war is quite enough.’
Emily propped herself on a rung of her ladder. She’d never volunteer without Mother’s approval and they both knew it. She didn’t have it in her to disappoint or disobey. She might tug and pull at the apron strings and sneak about on the farm when Mother wasn’t looking, but she wouldn’t cause problems when the family already had enough.
John examined a cherry. ‘You do know that Mother needs you more than she lets on. She’s never been good at putting these things into words. But I can’t see a reason you couldn’t work on the farm and go home to her at the end of the day.’
‘She says it won’t look good to the young men she invites over to meet me. Apparently being outspoken counts against me as it is, I need to at least look the part.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose if we need the money I will have to assist the search for a husband.’
John popped a cherry into his mouth. She examined his face, waiting for him to say more, but he was checking his watch again. ‘John, Mother isn’t the only person who can’t put things into words. Are you going to tell me what went on with Uncle Wilfred the other day?’
‘Nothing. A reunion,’ he said. ‘We ought to go.’ For his last night John had invited some guests over for supper at HopBine. ‘You know Lady Radford is always the first to arrive. We can’t have her steering the conversation.’
He didn’t catch her eye. He was too brave to admit it, but it was obvious he would stay on with them if he could.
She put a cherry into her mouth and savoured the burst of sweetness. She contemplated asking him about the conversation she’d overheard, but she didn’t want him to know she’d been sneaking around listening in, and her hurt at being excluded from the discussions might seep through and with so little of his leave left there was no place for recriminations.
They walked back across the paddock towards HopBine in silence, but as they approached the cut-through in the hedge by the cedar avenue, she pulled him back.
‘If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all … I don’t like to think you’re carrying a burden, or that I’m being left out because you think I can’t cope, because I can.’
John ran his hand through his hair and cast a lingering glance towards the gables of the house their father had built. ‘I know. But you mustn’t worry, everything has been taken care of. There’s no urgency to find a rich husband.’ He winked. ‘And besides, you’re looking after Mother for us, which is a huge weight off my mind, I can tell you,’ he said. But there was something else, he was searching her face as if trying to decide whether to say it, and then he blurted out: ‘If anything should happen to me … once I’ve gone …’
‘No!’ she said. ‘Please don’t start with that, John. Nothing will happen to you. Do you hear me?’ He’d never admitted to his own mortality before now. ‘You’re to come home safe and sound.’
‘I’ll do my best. But if I’m injured I need you to promise me that you and Mother will pull together and accept the decisions that have been made. It won’t do to have the family divided, and Mother will count on you. I have said much the same to Cecil, and as much as I love my brother, I recognise that he is too caught up in changing the world to ever put the family first – so it will fall to you. You have a good sense of responsibility and the family will depend on that.’
‘John,’ she said, ‘you’re scaring me. The way you’re talking, it’s so final. Please stop.’
‘Emily, the war is worse than I’d ever imagined. I believed them when they said it would be over by Christmas, that I’d be home by now, but there really is no sign of it ending, or even easing off.’
Emily had read the Bryce Report about German brutality in the papers and the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat, killing more than a thousand people. All the news was so remote though, surely the danger wasn’t so great for her capable brother.
He reached inside his suit jacket and removed a small diary. ‘In these book pages, I’ve recorded the name, number and trade of every man I’ve lost.’ He held the small, dog-eared book aloft. ‘Their faces come to me in my dreams, memories of a joke they once made, their nickname, a habit. I harbour the knowledge that I censored their letters, read their personal messages, tried to check but not intrude. All are dead or lost now. I’m sorry.’ His voice had reduced to a whisper. ‘I’ve shocked you.’ He took hold of her hand. ‘You shouldn’t know any of this, how bad it really is – it’s best that you don’t, but it’s why I have to ask you to promise me to take care of Mother and make the best of the situation that befalls you.’
She levelled her gaze, her own body stiff as if trying to repel the truths John had just shared.
‘We’re in trouble, aren’t we?’ she asked, doing her best to match her tone with his own determined and brave one.