Once a Land Girl Read online

  ‘Well I never,’ Mrs Lumley was saying. ‘Talk about the unexpected. But there again, surprises do turn up once in a while. It was nice he – Ba-rry – noticed the shop.’ She went to her pile of souvenir biscuit tins and chose the top one which housed a precious store of gingernuts, only brought out on special occasions. There was lightness in her step. Prue recognized a flame of hope. The pathos in her mother’s small toss of her head was alarming.

  ‘You never know,’ Mrs Lumley went on, dithering among the biscuits. ‘He knows the salon. He might drop in one day.’

  A week later there was still no sign of Barry Morton. Mrs Lumley never mentioned him after the night they had met, which Prue guessed was an act of considerable self-will. She knew her mother could think of little else. In silence as she stirred tinned soup in a saucepan, her lips would move into the familiar provocative pout and she would run a hand through her thin, decorous hair. She had started to paint her nails scarlet, a new colour by Peggy Sage.

  One evening she turned from the saucepan to Prue. ‘I shouldn’t really be saying this to you, Prue,’ she began, ‘but sometimes I don’t half fancy lying back and thinking of England again under some nice fella.’

  ‘Oh Mum. Something will happen.’ Prue had no wish to be party to her mother’s private yearnings. She put an arm round her shoulders, felt the bone of the blades through the skin.

  ‘I hope so.’

  The next afternoon there was no one booked into the salon. Prue and her mother sat on the two chairs placed in front of mirrors, contemplating their own faces. They waited patiently for a surprise appointment. Occasionally someone one would drop in on a whim, attracted perhaps by the photographs of Margaret Lockwood and her Drene-brilliant hair in the window.

  ‘I wonder, Mum,’ said Prue, who was so bored that even the act of wondering tired her, ‘if anyone actually thinks Margaret Lockwood gets her hair done here?’

  ‘Must do. Else they wouldn’t come in, would they?’

  Mrs Lumley, exhausted by hope, moved her eyes from her own reflection to the door of the shop. Thus she was the first to see the delivery man knock, not in reality but in the mirror image. He held a large bunch of flowers. Then Prue saw his reflection in her mirror. As Mrs Lumley leapt up, knocking hairbrushes, combs and tongs to the ground, Prue kept her seat. This was her mother’s moment: she had no intention of detracting from it.

  At the door Mrs Lumley gave the delivery man the sort of smile she had not exercised for a week. ‘Those’ll be for me,’ she said. ‘Thank you, dear.’ She signed a receipt with a shaking hand, returned to her seat. Then everything went into slow motion. She pulled at a red bow of pre-war satin ribbon, let the tissue paper fall in a cloud onto the floor. She buried her head in a bunch of pink roses, searching for scent that did not exist, but the surprise caused her to cry out with joy.

  ‘Who can they be from, Mum?’ Prue asked, knowing how much her mother would enjoy the answer.

  ‘Who do you think, silly?’

  ‘Where’s the card?’

  ‘The card? Oh yes. Silly me, this time.’ She bent down, ruffled through the tissue paper, noting in the still practical part of her mind that there was a lot of hair on the floor that Prue should have swept up. She found the small envelope. ‘Here, take these while I open it.’ She handed the roses to Prue.

  Mrs Lumley slit open the envelope with her best cutting scissors. To Prue, impatient to know what Barry Morton had said, her mother’s every movement was maddeningly slow.

  The card was pulled from its miniature envelope by two scarlet nails – chipped, now, sign of fading hope. Then there was a pause while Mrs Lumley found her glasses in the pocket of her apron. Finally she held up the card so slowly it might have been a great weight, and turned it towards the grey light in the window. Prue watched, horrified, as her mother’s slow eyes trudged back and forth over some short message, and the skin round her rouged cheeks turned a deadly white.

  ‘They’re for you. They’re not for me.’ She handed Prue the card.

  ‘Oh, Mum. There must be some mistake.’

  ‘No. Read it.’

  Prue scanned Barry’s politely phrased invitation to a ‘proper ride’ in the Daimler and a drink on Friday evening. He added that he would be honoured, should she accept. ‘It could still be a mistake,’ she said. ‘He may have meant Mrs.’

  ‘No. The handwriting’s quite clear.’

  Prue could see her mother was beginning to disintegrate. Her feet were shuffling on the floor among the unswept hair. She kept licking her lips.

  ‘Well I won’t go,’ said Prue. ‘Of course I won’t go. Who’d want to go for a drink with a strange man just because he has a bloody great car?’

  Mrs Lumley looked her daughter in the eye, suddenly fierce. ‘You will, my girl,’ she said. ‘You certainly will. I want to know what game Mr Barry Morton’s playing. You’ll go.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Prue. Concerned by her mother’s disappointment, she was in no state to anticipate what the date with Barry Morton might bring.

  Mrs Lumley watched Barry’s arrival from her bedroom window. She had been waiting behind the net curtain for twenty minutes and was surprised when the Daimler drew up at precisely six thirty for she had begun to think he might be a cad rather than a punctual man of honour. After all, he had been so friendly to her that rainy night, scarcely exchanging a word with Prue in the back seat. He couldn’t have caught more than a glimpse of her.

  As Barry strode down the front path she could see that he was a man of means: camel-hair coat, carnation in his buttonhole, box of Black Magic in hand – well, obviously a man who could pull strings even in these days of sweet rationing. She could also judge better, in daylight, his age: definitely a touch older than she had supposed. If things had turned out for her and Barry she would have been accused of cradle-snatching. If possible romance came to fruition (she had found the phrase in a romantic novel and it had stuck in her mind) for Prue and him, it would be said her daughter was associating with (marrying?) an older man.

  She heard voices downstairs but could not make out the words. Prue had begged her to be there to greet Barry, to ‘make things easier’. But Mrs Lumley had been insistent. She certainly wasn’t up for making conversation with a man who had shown his colours so strongly, then changed his mind. All the same, when Prue and Barry, halfway down the path, stopped, turned and waved up at her window, Mrs Lumley relented. She waved back, knowing the gesture would be unclear behind the net curtain. After that, she observed Barry put a hand under Prue’s elbow and guide her to the car.

  Several faces peered from neighbouring houses. This Mrs Lumley noted with satisfaction. Her sense of vicarious importance increased when several children ran up for a closer look at the car. One stretched out a hand and touched its bonnet. That, too, was gratifying. Mrs Lumley had always been accused of bringing a touch of class to the neighbourhood – though the accusation was never voiced, she was positive it existed. She had always been able to feel it. And now here was proof. Rich man, swanky car, pretty daughter taken out. Curiously soon, considering her dreadful week, Mrs Lumley found that she was able to transfer her hopes for herself to hopes for Prue. She came downstairs, sat in the kitchen surrounded by her precious souvenir tins, and as she ate several of the best biscuits – surely extravagance was permissible on such an occasion – she imagined the couple fox-trotting in some posh hotel in the city centre.

  Barry Morton made no suggestion about fox-trotting, but drove instead to a large pub on the outskirts of the city. There, Prue felt overdressed. She had chosen – encouraged by the mother – the dress she had worn at Buckingham Palace for the tea party the King and Queen had given for land girls. It had been perfect on that unforgettable day. Several of the other girls, who had had to alter their mothers’ pre-war dresses or run something up from lace curtains and parachute silk, had congratulated her. An almost bluebell blue (not quite dark enough to Prue’s keen eye for colour, but no one else noticed this
imperfection) with a sweetheart neckline and a flirty skirt, the dress had, as she recounted back at the farm, dazzled their Majesties.

  In the smoke-filled bar, at the table Barry chose, furnished only with a tin ashtray advertising Colman’s mustard, she feared it was too much. On the way to the table she was conscious of many turning heads – mostly of men, some in uniform. When she crossed her legs her knees were more exposed than she would have liked, but the shortage of even artificial silk meant the skirt had to be short. Still, she was wearing her only pair of nylon stockings, which gave her legs a burnished sheen, a sight that Barry Morton was able to admire as he lit his cigar.

  ‘So, Prue,’ he said, ‘where do we begin?’

  Several ideas skittered through Prue’s mind, rendering her silent. In truth she was aware of a clutch of disappointment in her stomach. She had imagined that a man with a Daimler would head straight for the poshest hotel in the area, not this dreary pub. Perhaps, she thought, he was putting her through some kind of test.

  ‘Here’s to . . .’ he said, breaking the silence at last. He held up his glass of champagne, urging Prue to do the same with a nod. Their glasses clicked.

  ‘Here’s to what?’ asked Prue, with a smile.

  ‘Who knows?’ Barry smiled too. Somewhere towards the back of his mouth there was a very large gold tooth. So perhaps he had gold taps as well, thought Prue. He leant back in his chair, allowing a spread of light from a corner lamp to illuminate his heavy but adequately proportioned features. Prue guessed he must be forty, or thereabouts. A touch young for her mum but, she reckoned, if he gave her some sort of opening, she’d try to find out what he had made of her, though she had little hope for this plan. What mattered was that he had a nice face, kindly. The wide-apart, frog-like eyes blinked slowly, taking her in so intensely she felt herself blush. She fixed her eyes on his maroon tie – not, she knew, artificial silk but the real thing. Then they moved over the pin-stripe suit, stripes a little too wide for her taste but a fine bit of cloth. Pre-war, she supposed. Everything about Barry Morton, including a visible paunch, indicated money.

  ‘What a lucky man I was,’ he said, ‘finding you like that the other night. I was only being a good Samaritan. The bonus was that you and your mum turned out to be a couple of good-lookers. I thought, They’ve got something, those two. Took me a week to decide whether I should follow up our meeting. Then I decided, what the hell? Go for it, Barry. They can only say no. When I say “they”, of course I meant you. Threesome’s aren’t much fun, and I’m a touch on the young side for your mum, lovely lady though she is.’

  ‘Yes.’ The idea of recommending her mother’s qualities was quickly blasted.

  ‘But I imagine what you’ll be wanting to know about is me.’

  Prue nodded, hoping her expression was suitably enthusiastic. She finished her drink quickly. Barry Morton waved at a woman behind the bar, signalled that she should bring two more glasses. It seemed he was the only man in the bar who did not have to get up and fetch his own drink.

  ‘Born and brought up in Manchester. Father a scrap-dealer. Not a bean to begin with. My two brothers and I shared a bed, outdoor toilet, all that. But did that man work! My dad? Ended up with a bit of money, took my mother for a Southend holiday, tried to make up for all the years of hardship, bought a nice bungalow – all that. Left each of us a small lump sum, enough to buy my first car. I’d always been car mad. I resprayed it, sold it for a profit, and I was off. Ended up buying a house, then another for rent, and now I own most of a street. Well, I exaggerate, if the truth be known. I own a couple of other houses in my street. But twenty, thirty years from now they’ll be worth a fortune. Prue, I tell you, I’ll be a very rich old man. When the country’s back on its feet again the housing market will shoot up, mark my words.’

  In the next two hours Barry furnished Prue with many details of cars he had bought and sold, the size of the profit he had made on each one. He went on to describe his house: ‘Lovely place, wall-to-wall carpets, chandeliers, three-piece suite in the best leather money can buy—’

  ‘Gold taps?’ Prue, who had not spoken for so long, put the question with a laugh in her voice so that he should not think she was serious.

  Barry paused, fussed at his dying cigar with a new match. ‘Ah. There, Prue, you’ve caught me out.’ He laughed. ‘No gold taps so far, though there could be one day if ever I find a wife who wants such things. I’ve got a nice line in brass taps, mind. Take a bit of cleaning, but worth the effort.’

  Prue cast him a look of profound understanding – the kind of look that would indicate she would never be that kind of wife. She glanced at the clock above the bar: time for Barry to ask his first question.

  ‘And you, Prue? What’s been your life?’

  As the question did not reverberate with an aura of deep interest, she decided to mention just one era. ‘I was a land girl,’ she said.

  Three glasses of champagne had made Barry’s cheeks a lively red – a cranberry red, Prue thought.

  ‘Very interesting,’ Barry said. ‘Admirable, admirable. I used to look at photos of land girls in Picture Post. Sexy, weren’t they?’ The tip of his tongue slithered halfway along his bottom lip, making it glisten.

  ‘I don’t know about that. We were just ordinary girls, really.’ ‘Was it a good life? Better than munitions factories, I dare say.’ Prue sighed. The champagne had made her sleepy. Barry’s interest did not seem keen enough to spur the energy for a proper reply. Here, in this doleful pub, the lights an ugly orange, the air thick with smoke, she knew she could not begin to convey to this stranger the highs and lows of the time at Hallows Farm. And she didn’t want to. They were private, stored in her mind for revisiting when hours in the salon became almost unbearable. ‘It was a good life,’ she said at last.

  That was enough to satisfy Barry. He suggested it was time to take her home.

  They did not speak in the car. Prue found it hard to keep her eyes open. He took her arm as they swayed up the garden path, and when she faced him to thank him for the evening, he put a hand round her wrist. It was warm and encompassing as a muff – Mrs Lawrence had once given her a muff made of rabbit skin – which Prue found reassuring. She had vaguely imagined there might be a tussle. But there was not so much as a peck on the cheek. Barry merely said that if it suited her they could go out again some time. Plainly, as Prue told her mother next morning, he was a gentleman.

  For several months they went out once or twice a week, to different pubs that all suffered from the same lighting and smoke. Champagne was not offered again, but Barry urged Prue to try various cocktails. Proud of his cocktail knowledge, he would give strict instructions to the barman, whose pursed lips indicated instructions were not necessary, he knew his job – and Prue grew to love White Ladies. The first cocktail would lull her into a mood of rather odd contentment. Barry Morton was not an exciting man, but he was easy to be with – Prue simply had to ask a question about his rise in the world and she could sit back for an hour or so while he described his progress in unsparing detail. It did not occur to her to be offended by his lack of reciprocal interest: it was a relief. She felt no inclination to talk about herself. There were no jokes, as there had been with Barry One. No laughter, except when Barry came to a part of his story in which some woman had behaved so badly that he had been obliged to give her a comeuppance she was unlikely to forget. At these parts of the story – and there were quite a few – Barry growled with laughter, but he laughed alone.

  The outings always ended in the same way: a decorous goodnight in the porch, the muff-grip of his hand on one wrist.

  ‘I can’t think what he gets from our evenings out,’ Prue said to her mother. ‘He doesn’t fancy me, that’s plain.’

  ‘I wonder what he’s up to?’ Mrs Lumley had kept this question to herself for several weeks. ‘Perhaps he just wants companionship.’

  ‘No man in his right mind just wants companionship,’ said Prue. ‘Most of them don’t want co
mpanionship even after they’ve had their way.’

  ‘Dare say you know best,’ replied her mother, who had always secretly wondered whether her daughter had clung to her virginity during her days as a land girl.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Prue assumed a look of such total innocence that Mrs Lumley quickly chided herself for ever having thought badly of her daughter. They both laughed for their different reasons.

  The evenings had begun to lighten. One Saturday, as Prue climbed into the passenger seat of the Daimler (the grasp of its huge front seat was by now wonderfully familiar) Barry Morton looked at her and frowned. ‘Not that blue again,’ he said. ‘You’ve worn it every time. I’m not partial to blue, though I’ve kept it to myself. Haven’t you anything else?’

  Prue tilted up her head, caught his eye in a defiant glare. ‘It’s my best dress,’ she said. ‘I wore it at the Palace. And no, I haven’t anything else that’s suitable. I mean, what if one evening you decided to take me somewhere posh?’

  Inadvertently she had delivered a punch below the belt. Barry blew out his cheeks, amazed to discover what had been going on in Prue’s mind. All these weeks she’d seemed to be quite happy, now she was confessing she’d been hoping he’d take her somewhere better. Why hadn’t the thought occurred to him? He had no idea. But he was full of remorse. His hand searched for her wrist and took it in the usual soft grasp. ‘I’m sorry. I really am. I never thought – well, I thought we were quite happy having a drink, chatting, getting to know each other . . .’

  ‘Oh, we’ve been quite happy. It’s been good going out with you . . . just a bit different. But then I’ve never been out with an older man before.’