Chapter Two
Grace, the new Land Girl, was sitting down to eat supper with them for the first time, and it seemed to Caroline, stealing fascinated peeks at her between mouthfuls, that everything had changed in the space of a few hours.
Even the cluttered farmhouse kitchen, littered with shepherd’s crooks and muddy dogs, looked different and more interesting now that Grace was sitting among them.
Her laughter trilled out, so quick and infectious that Caroline found herself grinning every time she heard it.
And she wasn’t alone in being mesmerised.
Her fellow Land Girl, Tilly, seemed enchanted too, twining her red hair round her finger and staring as they listened to the new Land Girl holding forth on every topic, from the weather to her previous work on farms …
As the war had dragged on, though, things had begun to fall apart.
Penny, the other Land Girl who’d originally been drafted to the farm with them, had grown tired of their well-aimed barbs, and moved away to Bude with Alice, the youngest niece of the farmer’s wife, who’d been offered war work there.
Then Penny, with her homely charms, had married a rugged Bude fisherman, and Alice had gone away to London on some hush-hush business. The old gang had broken up for good.
For a spell, she and Selina had worked the land alone together, growing closer than ever.
But that very closeness had worked against them in the end.
Over time, Caroline had developed feelings for her best friend, and they had not been reciprocated.
It had all become rather hurtful and embarrassing, and also difficult to hide from Joan and Tilly, the other two Land Girls who’d eventually joined them at Postbridge Farm.
Then Caroline’s heart had been shattered to pieces when Selina left the farm for the wilds of Bodmin Moor to care for her dying sister.
It had been months since Selina had left. After her sister Bella had sadly died, Selina had resolved to stay on and look after her nephew and two young nieces. Caroline had visited, but had found Selina much changed since her sister’s death, more mature and focused on her new family.
It had been hard at first, but Caroline had gradually made peace with the idea that there would never be anything between them now but friendship.
She was trying to stay happy and busy all the same, and to be a reliable member of the farming team.
She wrote to Selina weekly, to tell her what they were doing on the farm, about the weather and the pigs, and all the goings-on in Porthcurno.
And although Joan had now left the farm to get married, there was still fun, lively Tilly to keep her company and make her laugh.
But inside her heart was broken.
One day, she would be over Selina and able to move on with her life. That day had not yet arrived. Until it did, though, she would keep smiling and carrying on with her duties as though everything was fine.
The list of her tasks was long and included mucking out the pigsty and the chicken coop, brushing down old Barney, the sturdy shire horse who did the work of Joe’s old tractor when it was off the road, digging muddy trenches and mending fences, chitting potatoes and harvesting cabbages, and sometimes even helping with the sheep shearing, though Joe usually did that himself with the help of a few stout boys from the village, as it demanded great physical strength.
But she knew her job inside out, and could almost have dug a ditch in the dark. Indeed, Caroline could scarcely remember a time when she hadn’t been a Land Girl.
Of course, it was only about four years since she’d first enlisted in the Women’s Land Army and received her draft papers, sending her to Postbridge Farm, here on the wild and rural south-west coast of Cornwall.
Yet it felt more like a lifetime. Her happy childhood, spent at the family home in Ealing, West London, seemed far-off and dreamlike now.
Then the war had miraculously ended in 1945. Everyone had been so overjoyed. She and the other Land Girls had danced in the fields and drunk wine out of wellington boots, foolishly expecting their lives to revert overnight to how they’d been before war broke out.
But nothing had changed, not essentially.
The soldiers had mostly stayed abroad to clean up the mess from the carnage left behind by the war machine, while here at home, their work on the farm had continued just the same.
Except now they weren’t digging for victory, they were digging for the survivors.
She’d begun to think her life would be one long, dreary round of early mornings and digging for potatoes.
So it had been a strange shock to hear Violet Postbridge, the farmer’s wife, talking to someone on the landing outside her attic-room door, and to poke her head round the door, expecting to see Tilly there, only to be confronted with a girl she had never seen before in her life.
And what an unusual girl! Dark-skinned, dark-haired, with eyes that sparkled with friendly humour when Caroline stopped dead on the threshold, staring.
‘Hullo,’ the young woman had said.
‘Oh, erm, goodness, hullo!’ Caroline had heard herself stutter. ‘I’m sorry … I thought you were Tilly. She went out to feed the pigs and she’s been gone ever so long. I thought she must’ve fallen over in the mud again …’
She’d blushed, seeing Mrs Postbridge stare at her in astonishment, but the girl had merely grinned at this stammering nonsense, seeming unfazed by it.
‘Sorry,’ Caroline had repeated breathlessly.
‘I don’t usually lollygag about the farmhouse like this in the middle of the day.
It’s just I’d finished my chores for the morning and Mr Postbridge – that’s the farmer – said I could come back to write a letter to my friend Selina before lunch.
’ Then she’d blinked, realising she ought to introduce herself. ‘I’m Caroline Ponsby.’
‘Grace Morgan, pleased to meet you.’ The young woman’s handshake was bold and confident, her grin widening.
‘I know, I’ve got a strong accent. It’s not my fault, though.
I come from a village near Liverpool. There must be something in the water there, because we all talk like this thereabouts.
Well, my dad does, because he was born on the banks of the Mersey, or so he’s always saying, and I suppose I got the accent from him.
You get used to it after a bit. At least, I hope you will …
Otherwise, we’ll be having some very short conversations. ’
Taken aback by that flood of information, Caroline had laughed, and then had stood and listened intently as Mrs Postbridge showed the new Land Girl into her room next door. It was the room that Joan had occupied before she’d left to get married. Now a new girl would be living there …
None of them had wanted Joan to leave the farm, though she’d been quieter than a mouse and rarely joined in with their expeditions to the picture house in Penzance or to any local dances. But she’d always pulled her weight and never said a mean word to any of them.
But Joan’s young man, Arthur Green, had needed her more than they did. Not to grow crops or muck out pigs, but to be his ‘friend and helpmate’, as Joan herself had described it a few days before their wedding, while poor Arthur struggled to get past his awful experiences in the war.
After Mrs Postbridge had shown Grace her room, and discussed rent, uniforms and the rules of the house, she’d left Caroline to show her about the rest of the farm.
They’d walked across the farmyard, Grace telling a funny anecdote about her train journey to Penzance, and met young Tilly leaving the pigsty, empty swill bucket in hand.
‘Who’s this?’ Tilly had asked in blank astonishment, and then beamed when she discovered who she was. ‘Gosh, how marvellous …’ She’d pumped Grace’s hand enthusiastically before realising her glove was filthy. ‘Oops, sorry.’
‘That’s all right,’ Grace had insisted, wrinkling her nose while producing a hanky to wipe her dirty palm. ‘Farms are all about muck, aren’t they? Can’t have one without the other.’
‘I suppose not.’ Tilly had bitten her lip, looking contrite.
‘I say, why don’t you come and meet the pigs?
They do smell dreadful, but they’re awfully good fun.
’ As they’d hung on the iron gate, gazing down into the pigsty at the young pigs grunting and snuffling, she’d added joyfully, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.
Caro and I have been doing the work of three for absolutely yonks. Now the time will just fly by.’
To Caroline, though, it seemed as though time were standing still.
At least, that first evening meal with Grace went on far longer than usual, with everyone reluctant to leave the table even after they’d finished their dessert of bread and butter pudding, too entertained by lurid tales of her previous experience as a Land Girl to stop listening and head up to bed for the night.
‘It’s quite rural where I was brought up,’ Grace explained, leaning both elbows on the table, without Mrs Postbridge telling her off even once for bad manners, ‘so it wasn’t too much of a shock to find myself on a farm for the first time ever.
But I was only just out of school, and I swear, I had no idea how to milk a cow.
’ She looked round at them all. ‘Now don’t laugh.
But, to be honest, I didn’t even know that’s where milk came from. ’
‘Eh?’ Joe scratched his head, clearly perplexed. ‘Where did you think it came from, then?’
‘A bottle,’ Grace told him, chuckling at her own naivety.
‘Well, you can imagine my surprise when the farmer handed me a bucket and a three-legged stool and pointed me towards a ruddy great cow, saying, “Milk her!” I was that confused, I was tugging on the poor animal’s tail for the first half-hour. ’ And everyone roared with laughter.