The Land Girl: An unforgettable historical novel of love and hope
‘We should have sold up, before the war. I’ve made mistakes.’
‘Well, I’m glad we didn’t. This is our home.’
‘That’s as may be, but we have to be practical now.’
‘And is that why Uncle Wilfred came out of the woodwork?’
‘He offered to help, yes.’
At least John had told her the truth, and not excluded her again. He saw her as an adult and an equal, even if Mother didn’t.
‘Was it wise to take from Wilfred, do you think?’ Father had feuded with his brother for a reason; surely they couldn’t overlook that.
He shook his head. She wouldn’t push him. A tear ran down his cheek as he slid his diary back in his pocket, and she was crying too. It was no secret that war was awful. Theo had been more candid in his letters though much of what he wrote was censored. But John had been so cheery, he’d given the impression that he was living the charmed life he so deserved. None of the men should endure what John had just alluded to.
She offered him her handkerchief, swallowed the huge lump of emotion in her throat. ‘You mustn’t lose hope,’ Emily told him. Her voice broke; her bottom lip trembled. ‘You’re terribly brave. And I want to match that by taking care of things here as best I can. You just concentrate on staying safe, and I’ll keep things going until you come home.’
*
The primrose yellow hallway at HopBine was already buzzing with guests when they returned. Emily announced their ‘hero’ and a round of applause broke out. The guests shrunk to the edges to make way for him.
Emily’s mother pinched her arm, and hissed into her ear to get changed. The blood-red cherries had stained the front of her white skirt.
‘And put on stays.’ Mother shook with rage. ‘Do you think nobody can tell?’
When Emily came back down, Lady Radford and her red-haired daughter, Clara, had cornered John. Clara had always been sweet on John, and Mother had always liked the idea of John marrying into a titled family, but John hadn’t felt the same way. He’d said she was too timid and willing to let her Mother speak for her, that a relationship with her would be a marriage with his mother-in-law. Interesting then, that with their financial problems Mother still placed her brother’s wishes above the family’s need, whilst encouraging Emily to marry anyone who came along.
‘Finch Hall is quite transformed. You must visit,’ Lady Radford was telling Mother and John. ‘The billiard room is a store. The smoking and drawing rooms are wards. I have to remind myself that it was once my home and not always a hospital.’
‘It’s wonderful to put the house to such good use,’ John said, though they didn’t need any encouragement and Mother was craning backwards, trying to attract the attention of Norah Peters.
‘Lady Clara is responsible for book-keeping,’ Lady Radford continued. ‘And you’re in charge of dispatching packages, aren’t you?’ she said, addressing Clara.
‘Mother has even conceded that I can push the soldiers around the lawn.’ Lady Clara raised her eyebrows.
‘We’re quite a formidable team aren’t we, dear?’
Emily forced a smile. ‘How wonderful,’ she said. Clara was so much more confident now she was a war girl. Even John was looking at her anew as if he didn’t recognise this new independent woman before him. He’d better not fall in love with her. She didn’t want to spend any more time with Lady Radford.
‘Although much smaller, you could volunteer HopBine House as a convalescent home for the men recovering from their treatment up at Finch Hall.’ Lady Radford surveyed the hallway and the upstairs. ‘You’d be able to offer ten beds here, quite easily.’
‘Oh no. I don’t think so,’ Mother said flatly. ‘I think we’ve done enough for this war – what with John amongst the first to join up. And I’m terribly busy with the knitting and sewing parties and putting together packages.’
John mouthed ‘go on’ to Emily, but anything she might say would only antagonise Mother for putting her on the spot in front of Lady Radford.
‘Mr Tipton is also cultivating more land for crops,’ John reminded Lady Radford. ‘He’s reducing the land given over to hops and setting more by for important crops like potatoes. For which he will need more manpower.’
Womanpower, was on the tip of Emily’s tongue, but Mother was tugging at a brooch that had become enmeshed in her lace trim and the look on her face forced Emily’s mouth shut.
‘And how is he managing without his labourers?’ Lady Radford asked, either oblivious to the tension or because of it. ‘You took many men with you when you joined up, did you not?’
Mother’s face was set while John explained that Mr Tipton wasn’t as young as he was, and they’d not been able to find enough help, how he was struggling to keep up with the demands from the government, and how the village women had proved troublesome, but that the Board of Trade were training up educated women to lead the volunteers and supervise them on the farmer’s behalf.
‘Tremendous idea,’ Lady Radford said. ‘The village women will be an asset, I’m sure, with the right leadership.’
Emily dared to meet her Mother’s gaze. Her lips were tightly pursed. She’d been right – it would never be that easy to convince her.
Lady Radford turned towards Emily, the penny finally falling into place with a clunk they could all hear. ‘Emily! A young, strong girl like you, who isn’t afraid of getting dirty, should be put to work. You shouldn’t be knitting, you must leave the lighter, less taxing work to the older women.’
Mother’s back straightened, her arms folding across her stomach. ‘I couldn’t spare her,’ Mother said.
‘Really?’
‘And she has a sweetheart of course,’ Mother added. ‘A charming young officer, by all accounts, from a good family.’
Ah. Emily’s white lie came back to haunt her. Mother thought she was busy solving their problems by finding a respectable husband, rather than corresponding with a corporal.
But Lady Radford wasn’t the least bit interested in affairs of the heart, only of war.
‘And what about Cecil?’ Lady Radford asked, forgetting about Emily now that Mother had sewn her into a pocket of domesticity. Cecil had been talking to Mr and Mrs Peters – the village solicitor and his wife – just next to them, and he turned now.
‘And what about Cecil?’ he asked.
‘Will you volunteer?’
Emily noticed how the crowd around them fell into hush as they waited for this answer. Mother became flustered, asking Lady Radford if she needed another drink, but their neighbour wasn’t to be put off, and Cecil wasn’t going to give her a fudge of an answer either:
‘I just haven’t been stirred by the call to fight,’ he confessed, as if casually telling them he wasn’t all that partial to something as trivial as caviar. The conversation around them died. It was always the sort of thing he might say, just perhaps he might have told the family first rather than announcing it to a room full of people who had loved ones at the Front right then.
Lady Radford’s eyes were wide.
‘I wish I could stand beside my friends, my brother. But I can’t.’
‘My dear boy,’ she began, ‘your country needs you. Now is the time to stand up and be counted, like your brother. Other men will follow your lead.’
‘Stand up and be blown to smithereens is more like it,’ Cecil retorted. ‘This war is for the capitalists, and it’s the average man on the street who is paying the price.’
‘Louisa,’ Lady Radford turned to Mother. Apart from one or two oblivious guests in the far corner, the entire party had abandoned their own exchanges now. ‘Like the Radfords, you are in a position to set an example to the rest of the village.’
Mother’s grey-blue eyes were wide, the colour completely drained from her face.
John stepped in, when it was clear that Mother was lost for words. ‘Cecil isn’t nineteen until January.’ Emily often forgot there was only a year between them. Cecil behaved as if he were so much younger. ‘And he doesn’t have to fight if he doesn’t wish to. The country needs men like Cecil to challenge points of view and make us think.’
‘Yes, well conscription will change all that. And they say it’s inevitable. One really can’t do enough.’ Lady Radford smiled sweetly. ‘John and Emily are commendable, but this war calls for everyone to do their bit. Everyone.’
The chatter slowly returned to the room and Cecil’s revelation, on the surface at least, had been glossed over. But there was no avoiding it. Cecil would go back to university the next morning and he wouldn’t be enlisting. Several guests slipped out early without even saying goodbye to John. Mother mingled for the rest of the evening, not once catching Emily’s eye. When they’d waved off the last of the guests and her brothers had gone to bed, Mother called her into her room where she sat propped up in bed.
‘Oh, my days,’ Mother said. ‘They will lock Cecil up you know. The way this government is enlisting men they’ll make an example of those who refuse. Oh my, two sons to worry about, on top of everything else. I can’t cope, I can’t breathe. Emily, will you help me up? My chest is quite tight …’
Mother’s skin had a tinge of blue to it. ‘Please drop your ideas, for your Mother’s sake. Don’t leave me, dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me.’
Chapter Seven
July 1915
The morning John was to return to the Front the rain fell in stair rods, and the temperature was so cold they had to light the fires again.
John sat in the chair, biting his nails to the quick while Mother’s gaze never left him, trying to store away every detail.
Emily had also woken up earlier than usual, jolted into consciousness at the realisation that John was departing that day. Unlike Mother, she couldn’t look at him and instead gazed out the window. Her stomach lurched whenever she returned her attention to the room and saw him shifting about in his seat, checking his watch, his mind already back there, with his men.
No one had mentioned the previous evening’s events. Cecil’s revelations hadn’t been in the script and weren’t discussed now. Mother had lines on her face that weren’t there the night before. Her usually impeccable appearance was tarnished with unkempt hair and few of her signature finishing touches. She wore no earrings or brooches. Cecil’s defiance of convention was brave and he was being true to himself, but he didn’t give a single thought to the impact it would have on the rest of the family.
Cecil came into the room, just as Emily was thinking about him. Mother’s anguished eyes lifted from John and alighted on her younger brother. Emily avoided his eye, shifted her shoulder away from him as he reached out for her. Perhaps he ought to be made to realise how much this would change their lives too. Hoping and praying that the rumours of a conscription bill for the first time in British history were wrong wasn’t much of a position of optimism.
Mother said nothing about the cherry stains on her skirt or the conversation with Lady Radford about the need for land girls. If it had even registered with Mother that everyone else was in support of her working on the farm it had all been swept away by Cecil’s shock announcement and John’s imminent departure.
Then her heart stopped. The whole world stopped.
Mr Hughes’ car crunched across the gravel.
‘Time’s up then.’ John’s smile was feeble as he pushed himself out of his chair.
Emily stared at her shoes as Mother clung to him so tight that, in the end, he had to wrench her hands from his arms.
She, Cecil and John travelled to London together largely in silence and at Charing Cross they accompanied him to his train on Platform 5.
‘I love you, brother dear,’ she said, her voice muffled against his neck.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t convince Mother to let you work on the farm, but you mustn’t give up,’ he said as he slammed his carriage door shut.
‘Just come home safe,’ she called as his train pulled away.
The two of them stood and waved until the train had disappeared off over Waterloo Bridge and snaked around a bend and into the grey gloom of the day. They remained in silence, a safe distance between them, lost in their own thoughts. John had been ripped away and they were powerless to prevent it.
The crowd on the platform was thinning out when Cecil told her he’d better be off, if he was going to catch a debate in a pub’s back room. Through clenched teeth she declined his offer to escort her back to the platform while she waited for her train back to Chartleigh. He dashed away, his kiss skimming her cheek, as he left her on the platform, awaiting the twenty-eight past twelve. That suited her just fine.
Once he’d disappeared down the staircase to the underground, she checked her watch, left the platform and the station and, on a wet Strand, she joined a taxi rank. If she was quick, she would still make it in time.
*
A wave surged through Emily’s stomach every time a man in khaki strode past. She waited by the Telegraph Office entrance with a beating heart, louder than the station clock on the tower outside. She couldn’t shift Mother’s voice from her mind. She’d be confined to knitting for a month if Mother learnt that Emily had met a man, a stranger no less, unchaperoned, in London. Then her mind flitted to what Theo would be like in the flesh. Would he think she was fast because she’d come without a chaperone?
It was ten past two and her concerns might be for nothing if she’d already missed him.
‘Emily?’ A voice came, just as she crossed the concourse. She jumped clean into the air, her stomach still twisting and turning as she turned and gasped at him. He was a good-looking young man, as his photo had suggested, better perhaps in the flesh. His sandy hair was parted to one side, and he had warm brown eyes. Nothing within her stirred though. Her knees didn’t go weak; butterflies didn’t hatch and flap their wings in her stomach. She’d had a silly hope that she’d fall in love and they’d get married and he would take her away from her worries.
She gasped as he lifted her up from the ground and spun her around, her cheek pressed against his, the sandalwood scent of his cologne wafting by. People stopped to admire the soldier and what they probably thought was his sweetheart. She smiled as if she held some secret knowledge.
He set her back down and now it was her turn to admire him. He was a vision in khaki; stiff cap, brown belt. His shoulders broad, capable and safe.
‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Your letters have been a real tonic.’
‘I’m glad too,’ she said. ‘It’s been a sad day, and I’m glad of the chance to brighten it up. Now, how long do you have until your train?’
He checked the clock. ‘A couple of hours. I was wondering if we might take a stroll beside the Thames, see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.’
Together they walked out of the station into the driving rain and joined the taxi rank, the people waiting in front moving aside to let the returning soldier go ahead of them.
The taxi was soon held up in the traffic.
‘It’s the women’s march,’ the taxi driver told them. Emily couldn’t believe her luck. She’d read in the newspaper about the march for women’s right to serve their country, to work in the munitions factories and on the land.
‘Gosh, we might see Emmeline Pankhurst,’ she said. She suggested they hop out and walk the rest of the way. Theo had on his trench coat to protect him from the rain, and sheltered her with an umbrella, inviting her to steady herself on his outstretched arm.
‘I was going to suggest that we change our plans and avoid this part of town,’ he said, ‘but I can see you’re excited by the march.’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’
He said that he didn’t, of course not. She’d never walked out with a man before. She found she couldn’t quite keep up with him. His strides were longer than hers and she found herself scurrying to keep under the comfort of his umbrella.
The crowds were thickening up and a brass band moved closer. As they approached Westminster Bridge the spectators were four or five deep, the view obscured by top hats and umbrellas. Emily left Theo’s side to thread her way through the crowds, pushed her way to the front. Theo joined her.
‘Would you look at them,’ she said, pointing at a group of women marching with purpose down the centre of the road, undeterred by a little thing like rain.
‘Three cheers for our gallant soldiers,’ she read aloud and smiled at Theo. ‘Oh, I like that one: mobilise the brains and energy of women,’ Emily said, reading the next banner. The word brain was underlined. Quite right.
‘There’s a shortage of ammo,’ said Theo. ‘That’s what’s triggered this march, and it’s not the lack of women volunteers that’s the problem but the unions standing in their way, and the idea of women doing a man’s work, I suppose.’
‘Do you think women can make shells?’ she asked, and then waved at the women who marched by. She was being pulled by an invisible force to burst out of the crowd and walk alongside them.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Theo said. ‘But why not? We won’t win this war without shells and with empty stomachs, that much I do know.’
‘I still want to work on my farm,’ she said.
‘Good for you,’ he said.
‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never said.’
‘Sorry?’ he said. The crowd had cheered and drowned out her voice.
‘Your living, what do you do?’
A shadow passed over his face. ‘That’s all a long time ago now …’ He focused on the passing crowds. ‘It’s as if I’ve only ever been Corporal Williams.’
‘But you must have a trade, or a family business?’
He tutted, but he was smiling at her, amused by her persistence. He took her arm and led her back through the crowds to a Lyons’ Corner House. Once they were sitting down and had ordered afternoon tea he asked her about her farm.
She told him all about Lily, and how she’d rescued the village women from being trampled. She told him about the cherry harvest, how kind Mr and Mrs Tipton were to her, and how they let her help out on the farm and kept it a secret from Mother.
‘And your family own the estate and the farm. Just the one, is it?’
‘That’s right, my father owned a cement works but my brother John sold that when Father died.’
‘So, your Mother has enough to go around then, should you ever need it?’
She smiled and drank her tea. Their predicament was family business. John had trusted her enough to tell her that Uncle Wilfred had come to their rescue and she wouldn’t betray that trust with a loose tongue. Besides, Theo had chosen not to tell her about his past, which meant she could opt not to talk about money and spoil a really lovely end to what had promised to be a rotten day.
‘Those women were quite a sight today, weren’t they?’ he said.
She remembered the large float, garlanded with plants and flowers; behind it followed women in white smocks holding their hoes aloft. ‘It’s clear the country needs educated girls, girls just like you,’ he said. ‘I feel rather proud to have a girl like you writing to me at the Front.’
‘There’s nothing I would like more than to be a land girl,’ she confessed. She waited for him to snort, or say something to belittle her, but he didn’t. He leant in, interested. He beckoned her closer. Her mind raced with the things she could tell him about her ideas and plans for the future.
‘There’s something I would like more.’ His hot, damp breath blew into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer than was decent. She tried to stare him down, but his eyes were so brimming with desire that it was she who had to break away. And she wasn’t comfortable with the way her stomach betrayed her by curling at the edges and threatening to flip right over.
Thankfully the waiter appeared at her shoulder with a tray of tea things. Her cheeks were burning so much that she excused herself and hid in the lavatory until the heat had subsided and her skin had settled back to its normal colour.
He missed his next train, and the next. When the tea rooms were closing and the streets were too wet for walking he suggested they rent a room, spend some time alone together. Her speechlessness was enough for him to promptly come up with another idea.
‘What about if I travel back early at the end of my leave? We could have the day together in London,’ he said.
She nodded. She’d like that, but she wouldn’t be able to come to London without a chaperone. Mother might never let her out again if she caught wind of what she’d been up to today. And that animalistic look in his eyes had made her want to run for the door. He’d been a gentleman in the end, but he might expect more from her next time.
Back at the station he handed his ticket to the guard. He opened the train door and, then, leant in and without warning or reaching out to hold her, he kissed her. His lips pressed against hers while she steadied herself by gripping his arms, sinking into his embrace. His cologne, his skin soft, his shoulders broad and strong. Her eyes were pinned open, close up to his eyelids and the bridge of his nose, until he opened his eyes and his pupils contracted.
‘You were watching me?’ he said.
Two men whistled and laughed to one another, breaking the spell. Emily gave the soldier looking over his shoulder at them a stern shake of the head that made him turn away, and then trained her gaze fully back to Theo.
‘You could marry me,’ he said, a huge grin on his face. ‘Don’t look like that.’ He searched her face. ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said. What was the right thing to say? She didn’t want to hurt him or send him away with a bad memory. He had been so sweet and kind to her today, and hadn’t complained once about watching the women’s march. ‘It’s just … we have only just met.’ Train doors slammed shut on the platform. The atmosphere shifted to one where time was speeding up, running out.
‘What about our letters?’ he asked. ‘I feel I knew you before I’d even met you.’
He was a romantic. It was sweet but one of them had to be sensible.
‘Why rush?’ she said.
‘The war, that’s why. I might not get the chance to ask you again.’
‘You said I’d see you at the end of your leave,’ she said with a wry nod.
‘And if you don’t become Mrs Williams then, it might be months before we get another chance.’
Goodness. He was right; as with John this morning once they went back to the Front she was left with no idea of when or if she would ever see him again.
She waved as he leant out of the window, his face serious, receding from view as the train glided away from the platform.
‘Think about it,’ he called. ‘I’ll write.’
For the second time that day, she waved as a young soldier disappeared from view.
*
HopBine was dark and silent when she returned that night. There was no thin light shining beneath Mother’s bedroom door. The tales of her last sight of John would have to wait until the morning.
When the sun came up, Emily raced down to find Mother at breakfast, but Daisy reported that the mistress was sleeping in. Emily assumed it was John’s return to the Front that had stirred up her anxiety, but in a hushed voice she told her that Mother had taken a pill from the doctor.
‘She slept all day,’ she said.
When Mother did eventually surface after lunch, she made slow, careful movements. Her skin was as pale as milk and the skin beneath her eyes purple and bruised. Emily steeled herself for a telling-off for coming home so late. They’d agreed she’d say farewell to John and catch the very next train home. It was the most freedom she’d ever been granted, and she’d violated it terribly. She had prepared her excuses; she was going to say that she’d joined Cecil and his friends for their debate, and would hint at a young officer friend of Cecil’s to test the waters, so that Mother couldn’t accuse her of becoming unduly politicised.
But she needn’t have gone to the trouble of being so creative with the truth. Mother shuffled through to the sitting room, eyes glazed, and sat in an armchair that faced out onto the terrace, and the Victory Garden she and John had begun.