‘Have you?’ Winnie smiled brightly. ‘I’ve brought mine an’ all.’
Abby was walking between the two girls and she found herself inwardly smiling as she listened to their conversation. Rowena and Winnie might be from opposite ends of the social scale, but she rather thought they had plenty in common.
By the time they reached Hill Farm every one of the ten girls knew how it had got its name. Situated on the top of a low hill which had meant walking up a steady incline for the last three miles, the training institute sprawled in front of them. The large farmhouse was surrounded by barns and pigsties and paddocks, all enclosed within drystone walls and appearing well cared for.
It was probably the bleakest of places in winter, Abby thought, but today with the air heavy with the sweetness of warm grass and the summer breeze carrying the fragrance of wild flowers and every growing thing, it was magnificent. Some of the group had been complaining their feet ached during the walk, but Abby had enjoyed the march. It was hard to believe a war was going on and men, women and children were dying every day when you were in peaceful surroundings like this.
She touched her engagement ring which she now wore on a chain round her neck, her eyes darkening. It felt wrong to be appreciating the scented air and the lovely hot summer’s day when James would never experience such things again.
As they all walked into the farmyard in front of the house they were met by a tall handsome woman who came striding out of a barn to their right. ‘You found us then?’ she said briskly. ‘Good, good. The rest of the girls are already here. There’ll be about thirty of you altogether. I’m Phoebe Taylor and your personal representative of the Land Army. It’s my job, along with others, to train you to be tough and resilient in what has technically been a man’s world, although over the years I’ve been involved in farming, farmer’s wives and daughters do just as good a job in my opinion. As you can imagine, this is not a popular sentiment with the men,’ she added, smiling. ‘You will be subjected to what you might feel is a somewhat harsh regime here but, believe me, it’s for your own good. Not every prospective land girl is chosen to come here; you’ve all been hand-picked by your recruiting officer for your mental as well as physical capability.’
‘The crème de la crème?’ drawled Rowena languidly.
‘Possibly.’ Mrs Taylor eyed her stolidly. ‘Time will tell. But you’ve passed your first test, you’ve made it to the farm by shanks’s pony. Of course you’re all unsuitably shod, unsuitably clad, and make-up and high heels finish from this day on, as does any finickiness about food or sleeping quarters. So . . .’ Again she smiled, this time drily, ‘enjoy your stay at Hill Farm, girls.’
‘Flippin’ heck.’ As they trailed after the tall manly figure, Winnie nudged Abby in the ribs. ‘Whatever have we come to, lass?’
The ground floor of the farmhouse was divided into a sitting room, an enormous kitchen and a scullery beyond, all with stone-flagged floors, gaunt black ceiling beams and heavy, ill-fitting doors. After placing their luggage and gas masks in a corner of the sitting room where several girls were sitting, the group were ushered through to the kitchen and told to seat themselves at a great scrubbed pine table flanked by long oak forms. Along with two high-backed, angular settles on each side of the fireplace which sheltered fireside sitters from the fierce draughts drawn in by the wide chimney, the only other large item of furniture was a massive, dark old dresser bearing a load of crockery.
The hearth was commanded by a big, cast-iron range and on its ample top stood saucepans and frying pans. A side boiler provided hot water.
‘We eat breakfast and dinner in three shifts,’ Mrs Taylor said once they were all seated. ‘Lunch is taken out as a packed meal and consumed in the fields or wherever you are working at the time. Once you’ve eaten you will be shown upstairs where you’ll see the two rooms have been converted into dormitories, with three-tiered bunk beds and shelves on the far walls for your belongings. Space is at a premium so tidiness is the order of the day. You will make your beds before you come downstairs in the morning and everyone pulls their weight from the smallest job to the biggest. No slackers. Understood?’
They all nodded and Abby felt she was back at school. That Winnie felt the same was evident when her friend whispered, ‘I reckon we’ve met Miss Ramsbottom’s sister, lass, and of the two I prefer Miss Ramsbottom, cane an’ all.’
The meal dished up by three red-faced middle-aged women was excellent. Huge wedges of steak and kidney pie with roast potatoes and carrots, followed by apple crumble with gallons of creamy custard, all washed down by as much milk or cider as they could drink.
‘The cider is a welcome to Hill Farm, girls,’ Phoebe Taylor said at the beginning of the meal. ‘You won’t get that every night so make the most of it. You will be well fed though, and despite the rigours of your new life you’ll all gain weight, I can guarantee it. It’s a healthy working environment.’
Winnie made a face. ‘I was hoping to end up as a sylph-like little scrap of a thing,’ she said with comic forlorn-ness, causing laughter all round.
By the time Abby was tucked up in her narrow bunk bed, Rowena in the bunk above and Winnie in the one below, she was too tired to do more than say a quick prayer for the safety of those at home before she went to sleep. This in itself was surprising. Ever since she had heard the news about James she had found the night hours long and tedious, often lying awake half the night and desperately trying to dismiss the pictures in her mind of how James had died. But this night she was asleep almost as her head touched the pillow.
The next morning she fully appreciated Mrs Taylor’s groundwork the previous day. Up at 5.30 a.m., they all washed in cold water before donning the uniforms handed out the night before and making their way to the cow byres for their first lesson in milking cows. Breakfast was at eight, by which time everyone was starving. Then they were off to the fields at eight thirty until four o’clock, with half an hour’s break for a midday meal which they ate wherever they were, careless of filthy hands and dirt-encrusted clothes. After the evening milking they sat down to dinner, and then the cattle sheds and the dairy had to be cleaned. By nine o’clock the girls were quite literally falling asleep on their feet.
‘I can’t believe I’m getting into bed without cleaning my teeth,’ Rowena yawned, flinging her clothes to the bottom of her bunk and pulling on red silk pyjamas. ‘I mean, that’s absolutely the pits, isn’t it?’
‘The start of a downward spiral,’ Abby agreed solemnly from the bunk below.
‘But there was such a queue in the scullery and after washing in freezing cold water before dinner I’d had enough.’ Rowena yawned loudly again. ‘And it all starts again tomorrow. Do you think we can stand it, girls?’
‘Think of the station master.’
‘We can stand it,’ Rowena decided immediately. ‘Anyway, it’s not as bad as what Mrs Taylor had to do in the First World War. She was telling me she was detailed to do rat-catching at a farm in Devon apparently, and on her first day had to stand in a smelly dyke and put her arm down a rat hole to see which way the hole ran. I mean, can you
imagine
? They killed rabbits, crows, moles and tons of mice besides rats, using all sorts of poisons - arsenic, red squill, cymag gas and others. I’d hate that.’ Her head appeared over the side of the bunk. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t think I could do it,’ Abby said truthfully.
‘What about you, Winnie?’ Rowena said, still leaning over the bunk at a precarious angle. A loud snore from the bottom bunk answered her, and both girls grinned before saying their goodnights.
By the middle of September when their training was finished, Abby had ploughed and weeded, hoed and spread dung, sawn logs, stacked hay, milked cows, lifted potatoes and turned crops, and a thousand other jobs as well. She had also made some good friends, and now she, Winnie and Rowena were a trio who stuck together whenever they could. Rowena described the Aertex blouses they had to wear as dishcloths and the wavy felt hats as reminiscent of boarding school, and insisted on milking with bright crimson nail varnish and plenty of rouge, but she was tougher than she looked. She was also a party girl who had a knack of finding out about village dances miles away and then bribing one of the lads who drove the farm lorries to take them there. In civilian life one of the idle rich, she had more than shown she was capable of anything she put her hand to, as were the others. Their group included a die stamper, a wine bottler, a comptometer operator, a chocolate-box maker, two factory workers and office girls, all of whom had proved they had the makings of capable agricultural workers. Of the original thirty girls, four had left within the first week but the rest had been determined to win through. And they had.
Abby leaned back in her chair in the crowded sitting room. They were due to leave the farm the next day and had all received their official Land Army cards with their name and number printed on them, and as they waited for Phoebe to come and talk to them she glanced again at hers.
‘You are now a member of the Women’s Land Army. You are pledged to hold yourself available for service on the land for the period of the war. You have promised to abide by the conditions of training and employment of the Women’s Land Army; its good name is in your hands. You have made the home fields your battlefield. Your country relies on your loyalty and welcomes your help.’
There followed the official signatures of the Honorary Director and Chairman of the Committee of the Land Army, after which and above her own signature were the words, ‘I realise the national importance of the work which I have undertaken and I will serve well and faithfully.’
‘We did it, lass.’ Winnie grinned at her, her good-natured face rosy with the sun and the wind. ‘I just hope we’re sent to the same place now, that’s all.’
‘I asked Phoebe to keep the three of us together if she could but she couldn’t promise anything,’ Abby said quietly.
‘I offered her a bribe,’ Rowena whispered from her seat at the side of Winnie, ‘but she’s made of strong stuff, our Phoebe.’ The cider had flowed again, it being the last night, and Rowena gave a loud hiccup. ‘But it might do the trick. I said she could have the last of my face cream - I’ve got a little bottle of glycerine and rosewater which holds powder marvellously - and the curlers I made out of copper wire. They’re just as good as the shop ones that broke.’
‘How could she say no to an offer like that?’ Winnie said with thinly veiled sarcasm.
‘Exactly.’ Rowena was in the happy state of being more than a little intoxicated and was oblivious to any irony.
In the event the three girls were detailed to a farm not very far away, between Pickering and Scarborough. ‘It’s not a huge place,’ Phoebe told them, ‘a five-man job normally, I understand, but they’re in something of a pickle. One of the farmer’s two sons and his two farm labourers have been called up within a week of each other. Apparently he thought he was being clever employing young lads of nineteen or so, less to pay out on wages at the end of the week than if he’d got older men with families, but of course not being over twenty-one and thus exempt from conscription, the inevitable happened, ironically just a couple of weeks before the government lowered the age at which farming becomes a reserved occupation to eighteen. They’ve struggled on but he hasn’t been able to find men to take the places of the lads who have gone, hence his call to us.’
‘Do I take it we’re his last resort?’ Rowena asked wryly.
‘I rather think it might be a little like that,’ Phoebe admitted. ‘But don’t stand any nonsense when you get there, girls. He’s very lucky to have you, bear that in mind.’
‘Oh, we will.’ Winnie grinned at her. ‘I’m just the person to remind him if he forgets.’
They stayed up late chatting and drinking with the other girls, eventually falling into bed in the early hours, but for the first time in four weeks Abby found herself unable to sleep. Thoughts of James kept her wide awake, and after she had stared at the photograph Dr Benson had given her for some minutes her mind turned to her family. The week before, Wilbert had written that an enemy bomber had dropped a number of bombs around the railway station and town centre in the middle of the night, just a couple of hours after a German aircraft had been shot down over Hendon with tragic consequences for some of the folk living there. The town was bracing itself for more attacks by the Luftwaffe, Wilbert had written, although they were getting off lightly compared to London and Coventry.
Abby wished Clara had stayed in the country with Jed, far away from the bombing. She turned over, cracking her elbow on the hard edge of the bunk-bed rail. The shipyards were a target for the bombers, everyone knew that, but then if Wilbert wasn’t working in the yards he would be away at war and that was even worse. He would be eighteen in a couple of weeks’ time, and there was talk of the call-up age being lowered from nineteen, although as yet nothing had happened. This terrible war . . .