Once a Land Girl (31 page)

She had not been in her childhood bedroom for a long time. The sight of the small dusty photograph in its disintegrating frame made her pause for a moment. A flicker of old regret went through
her, but then she was steady again. She swung her feet above the rag-rug by her bed, its scraps of material clotted and stained, to avoid it with her bare feet. Funny how she had never had anything
against it as a child. She had thought it rather nice, the bright colours. She had liked her room very much, she remembered. It was her refuge, the place she could write her secret diary and try
out nail polish, but she could no longer see it with a child’s eyes.

Prue went to the window, looked out at the narrow strip of garden. As usual there was not a flower in sight (her mother preferred artificial), and the pattern of nearby roofs was so familiar
that they slotted instantly back into her visual memory. She sighed, grabbed a skirt from the top of her open suitcase. It smelt powerfully of Rudolph. A bath was needed.

In the grim little bathroom, a threadbare mat twisted on the brown linoleum floor, both anger and sadness came upon her. She lighted the geyser. As always, it needed several attempts before the
flame took hold. She listened to its tuneless wheezing, a sound she had hated for years, as she watched a thin spittle of brackish water peter out of the taps. She touched one of the aged white
tiles that covered the walls and gave the room the air of a public lavatory. Then she looked at a strange version of herself in the freckled mirror above the basin, and at the well-remembered
cracks in the basin. A lump of soap sat in its own slime. Prue picked it up. Blimey! Her mother’s wartime habit of sticking together old bits of soap still went on . . . She examined the
disgusting clutch of cream and peach scraps, hard, cracked, jammed together. What was her barmy mother up to, such useless economy? Soap was still rationed, but not hard to find if you were willing
to pay a few extra pence. A flame of irrational anger seared through Prue. She vowed that she would buy a bar of Imperial Leather, out of her own rations, in Brighton and send it . . . Even as the
idea came to her, melancholy replaced anger, guilt as her mean thoughts followed irritation. Her mother, after all, had had a hard time bringing up Prue on her own. She had done her best. Her
economies were understandable. All the same, Prue had no wish to spend a moment longer in that bathroom. She couldn’t bear to wash in the grimy tub, whose bottom was still scarcely covered
with the tepid, sluggish water.

She went slowly down the steep staircase, its pre-war carpet deadening every familiar step, and into the kitchen, half wondering why she did not rush straight out of the front door. But
something made her want to pause for a last moment, remember why she was glad to be going. She sat on a chair at the small square table. The unusual silence made her uneasy. She had once thought it
a perfect kitchen, with its constant music of clattering saucepans and a steaming kettle. Now, deserted by her mother, the life seemed to have gone out of it. Still, Prue thought, she was leaving
Manchester
for good
this time. She would resist ever returning here, to the obsessive neatness, the poppies on the china . . .

Mrs Lumley had inherited the house from her own parents and lived there all her life. Familiar to Prue were myriad stories of how, until she had become the owner, the lavatory was in the yard,
which was now the small garden, and heating was provided by one small fire in the front room. Her parents had also left her their scant life savings, which she had spent on modernizing the house in
1938. It was then she had given up her job in the cotton mill, where she and ‘the girls’ had enjoyed working for many years. Always in search of a husband, she had decided that a
position in the old Ford factory in Trafford Park, reopened to make engines for fighter planes, might be just the place to run into a good bunch of young men. But by the time she applied there were
no vacancies left.

‘Fate,’ she had said to Prue, one day at the kitchen table. ‘If I’d got a job there I wouldn’t have thought of following my heart’s desire, would I?
Hairdressing.’ She had just enough money to rent a small, dingy shop, some way from the centre of the city, which she named Elsie’s Bond Street Salon. Surprisingly, it had done well,
and Prue had enjoyed helping out in the school holidays.

But she could never share her mother’s love of Manchester. In Mrs Lumley’s view it was a glamorous place: dance halls, huge shops, banner-waving marchers keeping in time with the
trumpet players, trips to the Zoological Gardens with a sandwich lunch on Sundays, the marvellous Christmas circus at Belle Vue. Prue’s recollection, above all, was of darkness – the
perpetual smoke hovering over the rooftops, the vast buildings of blackened stone, the cold, the dank, the endless rain. There were just a few things she did remember with some awe: the handsome
cathedral, so solid in the murky dusk, its lighted clock looking no bigger than a watch-face: the grandeur of the town hall, whose windows, when lighted by occasional sun, enlivened its sooty stone
walls, making it fleetingly cheerful. And the Ship Canal. Prue loved that. Often she had gone with friends to watch the great liners, pulled by tugs from the sea, cutting through water thick as
melted chocolate. Her most vivid childhood memory was of an afternoon walk with her mother through a field of buttercups near the canal. A vast ship appeared to be approaching them through a sea of
yellow.

‘How’s it sailing in a field?’ she had screamed.

Her mother had clutched her, laughing. ‘It’s on the canal, you silly thing,’ she had explained. ‘Just looks as if it’s coming through the field. It’s what you
call an illusion.’

That had been a bright moment. Frightening, then funny. Prue had made Rudolph laugh with the story. But mostly she remembered bombs, fires, the gut-splitting wail of sirens. In the 1941 air
raid, when buildings had crashed down on the corner of Deansgate and St Mary’s Gate, she and her mother had stood at the kitchen window watching terrifying monster flames roar into the sky.
No fireman’s ladder would reach beyond their base. The Manchester of her distant past she could not love, would not miss. She felt no affection either for the richer, more genteel part where
she had lived with Barry. She was ready, now, to leave for good. She stood up. The chair squawked one final time. She hurried to the front door.

Her journey to Brighton was complicated. She was lost several times, but did not mind. Once she stopped in an agreeable-looking village, bought fish and chips and ate them in
the back seat of the Sunbeam, parked by a pond a-flutter with ducks. She liked the warmth of the seats with their gentle smell of leather. Random thoughts jangled through her mind. Did her mother
have breakfast with Barry? And, if so, would it be in her old pre-war dressing-gown, as was her custom at home? Would Barry take to giving her extravagant presents, now there was no longer a wife
on whom to bestow them? Would her mother resist flirting with him? Would he resist shagging the kind of older woman he apparently fancied more than a young one? These were not disturbing questions,
just questions.

But then came Rudolph. Where was he now? Zooming through the sky, his entire concentration on his piloting, no thought for her? They had left it that he would not contact her for a week. If he
heard nothing after that, he had said, he would presume she had chosen to turn down his offer of life in America. What was she going to do? Go, or stay? Either decision would be alarming.

Once she arrived in Brighton, Barry’s considerate, hand-drawn map helped Prue find her way to the old cinema with no trouble. As she got out of the car she could smell the sea, a sharper
smell than she remembered in Norfolk. There was a breeze, too. It blew her skirt about as she stood looking up at the fine old building with its peeling paint and boarded-up windows: she could see
that if Barry spent a fortune it could once again be a handsome place.

She followed his instructions to the side door, unlocked it, carried her suitcase up a single flight of steep stairs. The door to the flat opened into a small dark passage, but there was light
from the sitting-room window at the end. Prue sniffed. There was a strange, hard-to-place smell. A combination of fish, soot, stale air. She went into the sitting room: one sofa covered with
hideous cretonne flowers, one hard chair, small pictures hanging high on wallpaper the texture of solidified porridge. ‘Blimey,’ she said.

The view from the window wasn’t bad: a slab of grey sea, a great slash of matching sky, a distant pier, a single boat. Prue moved to the minuscule kitchen, painted a deadly green. The
surprise there was that in every drawer she opened she found knives and forks, and tins of food in the cupboard. There were a few plates, cups and saucers and bowls – enough for a host and
one visitor if they washed up between courses – and in the fridge there was milk, bread, butter, six eggs, a yellowing cabbage and a lamb chop. The final surprise was half a bottle of
champagne. How on earth . . .? Who could have . . .?

Prue went to the bedroom at the back where light meshed through a coarse net curtain. The bed was made up, the bedside lamp worked. Prue dumped her suitcase on the floor, opened the narrow
cupboard. At least two dozen hangers were on the rail. Were they a message from the husband who knew about her collection of clothes? Prue sat on the bed, confused and a little alarmed. She did not
consider unpacking her case.

A deep growling telephone rang in the sitting room. Prue ran back there, found the hefty old black instrument, identical to the one at The Larches, on the floor.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’

‘Oh, Barry—’

‘I’ve been ringing a lot. I was expecting you to arrive much earlier. I was getting worried. Everything all right?’

‘Fine, fine.’

‘I made arrangements – food and that. Should tide you over till you can go and explore the shops tomorrow.’

‘Thanks. Thanks. But Barry, what do you imagine I can do here?’

Barry paused. Prue could hear familiar indrawn breath as he inhaled on his cigar. She wondered how her mother would put up with the permanent smell of smoke.

‘Well, you can have a nice peaceful time. You could find a job, if you insist, though you know that’s not necessary. You’ll fall in with people, I’ve no doubt –
your looks. Soon you’ll be out dancing every night. You could learn to swim. All that sea, so convenient, isn’t it? You could learn to cook . . . I don’t know. But you’re a
woman of plenty of initiative. You’ll make something happen.’

‘I don’t know where to begin. And besides, I don’t want to live in a town, you know that.’

‘It’s only temporary, sweetheart. I just thought it was somewhere to go while you work things out. Staying on at The Larches, the divorce going through, might have meant
problems.’ There was a catch in his voice – guilt? Regret? Prue wondered. ‘And now with your mother here—’

‘Quite.’

‘But you could start looking for a cottage, roses round the door, couldn’t you? Don’t worry about the money. I’ve said I’ll take care of that. I’ve just put
two hundred pounds in your bank account to last you till we come to an arrangement.’

‘Thanks. You’re very generous.’ Prue felt weak, almost faint. Two hundred pounds.

‘So, I’ll be letting you go now. We’ll keep in touch. Take care of yourself, sweetheart. It’s still quite strange, here at home without you.’

Prue drew the chair up to the window, sat looking at the sea, listening to the thick silence. She had not brought a book with her. There was no wireless. She hated the smells, guessed that if
she opened the window even the sea breeze would not banish them.

So this was being alone: this was the solitude Ag had recommended. Hours as long as days. Silence that weighed on your head.

At five o’clock, fearing she was heading for a trough of self-pity, Prue decided to go out. She wandered up and down a few streets, bought a magazine, looked in shop windows –
livelier than those in Manchester, but not exactly tempting. Curiously, knowing she had an unbelievable amount of money, she had no inclination to spend it. She liked the idea of it sitting in an
untouched lump in the bank.

She came to the Ship and Gull, a shabby pub on a corner. Go to a pub, Barry had said. Make friends. Well, she’d give it a try.

Judging by the lack of customers, the place had been open only a short while. There was a soldier at one end of the bar, gazing into his beer, an old woman at the other end, headscarf tied under
her chin, coat sagging almost to the ground. Although Prue doubted there was much future of lasting friendship with the sad old thing, she chose to stand next to her, far from the soldier. He had
already interrupted his meditations to greet her with a lascivious look.

The old woman, who could scarcely see over the bar, asked for a ginger beer. The barman poured her one, pushed it across. She took the glass in both unsteady hands, put it to her grey lips. Prue
asked for a gin and lime: she badly needed an instant silvering of the mind. A middle-aged couple came in, sat at a table and took out a pack of cards. The man shouted that he wanted the usual.
Prue stayed beside the old woman who took small sips of ginger beer: streams of it ran down her chin.

‘New, here, are you?’ she ventured, when the drink was finished.

‘I am, yes. Just arrived this afternoon.’

‘I was new here thirty or forty years ago. Place’s changed.’

The barman, quite roughly, asked if the old woman would pay for her drink. There was much scuffling in an over-f bag, then fumbling in her purse. ‘I haven’t got it tonight,
George,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

‘I’m sick of waiting, Nancy, truth be known. It’s pay-up time. I’ve been patient for weeks, but it can’t go on like this.’

‘No, it can’t, can it?’ The old woman was now showing there was still spirit within her, a proud cheekiness. She turned towards the door. Prue quickly slipped a ten-shilling
note from her purse and put it into one of the gaping pockets. The old woman swung round to her. ‘You can’t do that, dear,’ she said, clearly not quite certain as to what Prue had
done, ‘but God bless you all the same.’ She hurried to the door and went out.