Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga

“But would it be forward to ask if I could see you sometime?” Joe said.

Iris hadn’t been expecting that. She felt flustered. “All right,” she said. “I’m stationed at Pasture Farm.”

“I’ll swing by sometime. If that’s okay?”

“That’s okay,” Iris said.

Joe Batch nodded and smiled, clearly pleased with the outcome. He tipped his head to her and made his way out from the hall. Feeling giddy, Iris returned to her seat with her half-finished drink, where her friends were keen for the gossip about what had happened. After Iris filled them in, Joyce and Connie were pleased for her. She found all the attention a bit bewildering and was grateful that no one else came over to ask her to dance. The experience had exhausted her. She contented herself with thinking about Joe Batch, finishing her cider and watching what else was going on in the room.

Near the door, enjoying the cooler air from outside, were a few people that Iris had never seen before. One of them was a glamorous but understated woman in her early fifties with blonde hair. When these people had arrived, Iris had asked the others who they were. But Connie and Joyce didn’t know. Iris had pointed the glamorous woman out to Joyce, and Joyce, being a hair-dresser before the war, had commented that it was natural blonde hair. She was lucky. A lot of her clients would pay money to have their mousy hair turned that colour.

The woman sipped at a small glass of rhubarb wine and winced at the taste. Iris noticed that she was scanning the room, like the soldiers were. But unlike the soldiers, with their scattergun approach to seeing what available talent was out there, she seemed to be looking for one particular person. Searching, she would turn quickly away from unwanted faces before eye contact could be returned. From her vantage point across the room, Iris was mildly amused when the woman found herself staring directly at Mrs Gladys Gulliver. The sour face of the town busybody and self-appointed moral compass of Helmstead stopped the woman in her tracks. Mrs Gulliver frowned at the stranger in front of her. The fact was that Gladys Gulliver was perhaps only five years older than the blonde woman, but the choices they had made in life, not to mention differing approaches to fashion and makeup, showed that they were on very different paths. Mrs Gulliver had made a typical, snap judgement about the blonde woman before her. A judgement that, knowing Mrs Gulliver, probably involved an inner monologue including the words ‘brassy’ and ‘tart’.

But then Iris noticed something unusual happen.

The stranger spoke to Mrs Gulliver and the busybody cracked a smile and actually laughed. The woman held Mrs Gulliver’s arm as she added something to the joke and Mrs Gulliver laughed again. Iris was shocked that this had happened. She’d never seen Mrs Gulliver smile like that. She tended to smile only if it involved someone else’s misfortune.

“Here look, Mrs Gulliver’s made a friend!” Iris said to Joyce.

“It’s her long-lost sister.” Joyce looked over and smiled.

“Really?”

“No!” Joyce laughed. “You’ll believe anything, you will. I’ve no idea who that woman is. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m sure Mrs Gulliver will tell us!” The girls laughed.

Iris couldn’t hear what was being said between Mrs Gulliver and the other woman. She turned back to Joyce, who continued their conversation, forgetting about the momentary distraction. So Iris didn’t notice the blonde woman again that night, and promptly forgot about her; just another face in the crowd. Iris found that her attention was taken by two American servicemen, who were engaged in a heated argument on the dance floor. A young woman, caught in the middle, looked sheepishly at the pair of them, wishing she was anywhere else.

At the bar, the blonde woman was busy charming her new friend, Mrs Gulliver. She had bought her a sherry and they were raising a glass together. And then the woman leaned in close.

“I suppose you know everyone here?”

“What do you mean?” Mrs Gulliver bristled a little, taking it as an insult. She was aware of her own reputation in the village, and whereas she liked to think of her inquisitive nature as a way of cementing community life through vigilance and sharing information, she knew that others viewed her as plain nosey.

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by that.” The stranger smiled. “Just that you’ve been in the village a while and know these people.”

“That’s right.” Mrs Gulliver smiled back, dropping her defensiveness. “That man over there -” She pointed to a dishevelled man in a badly fitting tweed suit. “He’s the village doctor. Dreadful drunk. I won’t let him examine me. His hands are everywhere.” And then she pointed out a thin, statuesque woman standing on the periphery, dressed more expensively than anyone else present. “And that’s our ladyship. Lady Hoxley. This is her idea, this dance.”

“To raise money for her Spitfire Fund?” The blonde woman asked, glancing at the refined beauty of Ellen Hoxley.

“That’s right. She’s a good woman. Lost her husband. Terrible business. It’s too long a story to go into now, but suffice to say it involved another woman.” Mrs Gulliver mouthed the words ‘other woman’ for reasons known only to herself. Then the older woman sipped her sherry and took a deep breath. She was about to embark on the details of that ‘terrible business’ anyway, but the stranger realised that the story might take some time. And time wasn’t something she had.

“And who’s that? Is that Freddie Finch?” The blonde woman said, pointing across the room.

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“No. I know of him.” The woman laughed. “I’ve heard stories.”

“Yes, well,” Mrs Gulliver said, looking with disdain as Finch worked the two pints in his hands, alternating a sip from each as he lost himself in the music. “Everyone knows him. He’s a disgrace, that one. Ran over my vegetable patch in his tractor, he did. He’d been sleeping in the pub. Blind drunk, he was. I made him repair the damage, mind.”

But the blonde woman wasn’t listening any more. She was already setting off across the room. “I’ve got to meet that man,” she muttered under her breath, earning a baffled stare from Mrs Gulliver. But then Mrs Gulliver knew that people were strange.

The stranger straightened her blouse and gave her hair an imperceptible lift with her hand as she got nearer to Freddie Finch. He was watching the events on the dance floor, so he didn’t notice her approaching. She was only two feet away from him, and about to speak, when the two soldiers who had been arguing flew in a messy heap of fighting limbs into a nearby table. Finch held his pint glasses high, out of harm’s way, as other people scattered while the two men fought on the floor, knocking over chairs and tables. The girl who had been with them was screaming at them to stop. Connie and Joyce rolled their eyes. This was a fairly typical event thanks to the combination of alcohol and high spirits. Lady Hoxley ran across the room to the fracas, two military policemen in tow. She wasn’t going to stand for it. The band stopped playing and the lights were turned up, the party over in an instant.

The blonde woman stood for a moment, contemplating the situation. Finch was edging away from the fracas, pints in hand, as if he was expecting to get the blame somehow.

It wasn’t the right time to meet Frederick Finch. Not now.

No one noticed as the blonde woman turned on her heels and disappeared out of the door. By then Iris had returned to thinking about her own problems, as if the bubble of the dance had been burst by the fighting. The real world had come flooding back, bringing with it familiar feelings of unease and fear. Iris felt a chill, despite the warmth of the room and the contented giddiness in her head from the cider. She’d half-hoped that the soldier might be waiting for her, but he wasn’t.

Iris trudged back towards Pasture Farm. The other girls were singing and laughing, but she felt lost in her own thoughts. The shadows in the fields taunted her, while the girls seemed oblivious. Thoughts of Joe Batch had receded, to be replaced by her more usual preoccupations: thoughts of Vernon Storey and his promise to return for her. She wished with all her heart that she could put it out of her mind. When her head was woozy with cider, it all seemed a bit easier to cope with. Iris wondered whether she needed another drink when she got back to the farm. She decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea. Instead she listened to the humourous conversation between Joyce and Connie behind her and tried her best to join in.

Chapter 2

The outbuilding stood alone in a corner of Pasture Farm; a crumbling rectangle of red bricks capped with a corrugated-iron roof and a green wooden door with more holes in it than one of Frederick Finch’s moth-eaten old jumpers. It was one in a large number of dilapidated buildings, seemingly positioned at random positions around the nexus of the farm cottage, as if they were seeds from a wind-blown dandelion clock. But despite the building’s basic construction, it looked welcoming, thanks to a soft-orange light emanating from within, visible through the single, tiny, grease-smeared window. In the daytime, it was a place where the Land Girls mended their tools. But in the evenings, it was a place of learning. Iris would go there to meet Frank and he would try to teach her. Their progress was slow and sometimes their nightly meetings would be mocked by the other girls with taunts about Iris meeting her fancy man. But she hoped that the dilapidated rectangular outbuilding would also be a place that would change her life.

“DeEr MUm”

The pencil scratched out the words with half a dozen spidery lines. And then the letters started to form again, better this time.

“Dear MUm”

Iris was aware that her tongue was sticking out as she painstakingly scrawled the letters on the notepaper that Frank had given her. The large, flat carpenter’s pencil seemed strange in her hand, hurting her fingers as she pressed it on the page. But then she wasn’t used to writing and coordinating the pencil was hard work. It always looked easy when other people did it, but when she tried, she struggled to steer it across the paper. She didn’t realise that she’d made a spelling mistake, but even she could see that the letters were an uneven bag of uppercase and lowercase, written in a size that bore no correlation to whether they were capitals or not, as if it was a ransom note made from glued newspaper letters. But she’d done it, and she felt a small sense of pride welling up in her heart.

And to cap it all, Frank seemed impressed with Iris’s handwriting. “Not bad, Miss Dawson. Not bad at all.”

“Did I spell it right?”

“Near enough.” He cracked a smile, kindly fissures erupting around the corner of his mouth and his eyes. He didn’t want to dampen the enthusiasm in his young trainee, but Iris was smart enough to know when she was being soft-soaped. Frank spotted the slight grimace on her face as she put the pencil down on his workbench.

“Hey, come on. You’ll get there. That’s two more words than you were writing before.”

It was true. When she came to Pasture Farm as a member of the Women’s Land Army, Iris Dawson couldn’t read or write a word. She had a sweet nature, which meant she always brought out the maternal and paternal instincts in older people. This was why she also had a good relationship with Freddie Finch, who seemed protective and kind.

Such was the case with friendly odd-job man, Frank Tucker, who worked on Pasture Farm doing many of the chores that the tenant farmer was too lazy to do. Their friendship had been cemented long before Iris had saved Frank from the gallows. They had struck up a relationship after Frank had spotted Iris’s reading shortfall when she had failed to read a tractor manual. The contraption had very nearly ripped her arm off when she attempted to start the thing. He wasn’t going to let her make such dangerous mistakes on account of the fact that she couldn’t read instructions. So Frank had taken her under his wing, happy for the company, and he had started to teach her to read and write. They had begun with some of the children’s picture books that had belonged to Martin, and now they had graduated onto books with fewer pictures. Iris was currently stumbling her way through Enid Blyton’s Five On A Treasure Island, but it was hard going. She liked the fact that she was reading Martin’s books; turning pages that he had turned, connecting with him, somehow, across time.

The writing was just as arduous as the reading.

“Why is it all so difficult?” Iris had complained.

“Nothing worth doing is easy.” Frank smiled.

It was Iris’s ambition to be able to write a letter home to her mother. Margot Dawson knew that Iris couldn’t read or write, but she also knew that some kind soul would read out the letters that she sent to her daughter. So Frank had found himself providing a mouthpiece for the missives from home. He related to Iris about how her grandfather’s leg was getting better (‘It doesn’t really play up much now. Mainly when he has to get coal in. Funny that!’). He told her about the gossip caused when a new racy neighbour moved in (‘She only wears crimson. And I don’t want to say she’s fast, but the milkman spent a long time in her house the other day.’) But as well as the light-hearted information, Frank had broken the sad news that her beloved dog, Neville, had died. He’d also told her about how her siblings were getting on, since they’d gone to stay with an aunt outside the city. And in return, Frank would dutifully write replies to Margot Dawson, dictated by Iris. She would search for a word and Frank would painstakingly suggest one. They had spent many an evening hour together with him reading and writing and her learning. Sometimes she would censor her thoughts when dictating. Certainly she wouldn’t mention anything about how she felt about men, in particular Martin. So her letters home were mostly about the mundane matters of farm life; how hard she was working, the blisters she was collecting, the odd mention of a dance or a film she had seen in the village hall. She wouldn’t dictate anything that gave away her troubled, inner thoughts either. They were best locked up until the time came when she could write them down herself. Or when she could go home and talk to her mum face to face.

She missed home. It was a comforting and familiar two-up, two-down on a terraced street in Northampton. With her dad gone, Iris felt guilty about having to leave her mother on her own while she was doing her duty in the war. But Margot Dawson understood. She was doing her own work towards the war effort too. And she was proud of what Iris was doing in the Women’s Land Army. And if she needed proof, Iris remembered going to see her grandfather after she had enlisted. She would always relish his gappy, proud smile as she showed him her uniform. He reminisced about his own war, the one they called the Great War, and how his own mother had been just as proud when he first turned up in his uniform. Iris couldn’t wait to wear her uniform, so she had put it on almost immediately. The shirt was too big, seemingly made for a woman with arms six feet long. And the trousers needed hemming. As she and her mother had set about pinning up and sewing at her grandfather’s house, her grandfather remarked that there was no time to measure people. They had to just wear what they were given and get out there. But Iris had taken an instant dislike to one part of her uniform. The pullover was itchy and it smelled of mothballs, and despite her mother’s best efforts with the scrubbing brush, the smell had prevailed. Even now, months later, it was Iris’s least-favourite item of kit. When the alterations were finished, and Iris could walk around without treading on the hems of her trousers, the family had thrown a little going-away party for her. A few neighbours and the girl from down the road, whom Iris used to play with, were invited. Everyone drank tea from the best china and ate a sponge cake that her mother had made. And then, with many stoic faces holding back tears, Iris had taken her suitcase and headed off to catch a train to Helmstead, via Birmingham. That had been the last time that Iris had seen her mother and grandfather, and she couldn’t wait until she was given some leave so she could go back home, see them and sleep in her own bed. But that wouldn’t be for a while as she had to complete six months of service first.

Frank handed back her efforts at writing.

“It’s a good start, Iris.” Frank rubbed his eyelids down as if they were shutters on a shop front. “But I’m worn out. Would you mind if we picked it up tomorrow?”

Iris shook her head. It was fine. She would write some more tomorrow. She’d already decided it would be a short note home, but as it would be one she’d written entirely on her own, a short one would be a monumental achievement. She felt warm thoughts about her mum opening the letter and realising what she was looking at. A hand would go to her mouth; tears would probably well in her eyes. But Iris had had another idea. What if, instead of writing a letter full of everyday thoughts, she wrote the one letter she had always wanted to write? The one that spoke the words she couldn’t say to her mother’s face? She knew she would have to learn to write first so that she could write that one on her own, without Frank’s watchful eye. She struggled not to cry at the thought. Those words she longed to say to her mother …

No, that would have to wait. One day.

An image came without warning into Iris’s mind.

Black patent shoes running over cobbles.

She shut the image out. It wasn’t the time to think about that. Go away! She pulled herself together.

“You all right, Iris?” Frank asked, noticing something was wrong, spotting the look of concern on her face.

“I’m fine.”

As Iris headed to the door, she hesitated. She hadn’t realised that it would be nearly dark outside. How could she have been in the shed for so long?

“Hurry on up, then, Miss Dawson. You’re letting a cracking draught in here.” He was keen to get on and fix one of the rabbit traps that had seized up. But then he realised why she was hesitating, why she had changed. He recognised that she was afraid.

“It’s all right. I’ll see you over there, to the farmhouse,” he said, warmly. And he rose from his chair, his thin gangly legs swamped by his ill-fitting, baggy grey trousers. “But there’s no need to worry. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that, Mr Tucker. In my head, anyway. But in my heart it’s a different matter.” She squinted into the fading light as the familiar shapes of the hedges and outbuildings turned into sombre silhouettes. Each one could promise her overactive imagination some dreadful threat or surprise. “In my heart, I think Vernon’s coming back for me.”

But before Frank could offer further reassurances, Iris left his shed and crossed over the yard to the farmhouse. By the noise of her feet on the gravel, he could tell that she was running. Running fast.

Iris didn’t have far to go. Within moments, she was in the warm kitchen of the farmhouse, sliding the bolt on the door behind her; aware of the heat and light from the kitchen stove even before she turned around. Nothing could prepare her for the sight that greeted her. Frederick Finch had his leg propped up on the kitchen table. Esther Reeves, the warden for the Women’s Land Army, was wincing as she tried to cut his gnarled, yellowing toenails. It was clearly a job far beyond her comfort zone or job description.

She looked relieved at the sight of Iris. Iris knew what was coming and sought to wage a counter-attack before anything could be asked of her. “I’d love to help, but I’ve got an early start.”

And Iris was bounding up the stairs before Esther could finish saying, “We’ve all got an early start.”

Iris paused on the landing, listening to the sounds from the kitchen. A smile had returned to her face. Although it turned to a look of disgust as she heard Finch ask Esther, “Do you think that’s a bunion or a big old splinter?”

It was time for bed.

Since Dolores O’Malley had moved rooms, Iris was temporarily on her own in the small bedroom at the front of the house. It used to belong to Finch’s son, Billy, before he went away to fight for his country. A stack of beer mats on the bedside table and a brown suit hanging in the wardrobe were the only reminders that he’d ever been there. Iris wasn’t allowed to decorate the room, but she felt at home in her little corner of Pasture Farm. Especially as the room had a lock on the door.

Iris closed the door and bolted it. She took off her thick jumper and unhooked her dungarees from her shoulders. She could feel the welt marks on her skin from where the straps had been digging in all day. Then she pulled off her blouse. It was too small for her, so she felt like a snake shedding its skin as she pulled it free. Then, as was customary in a house without fireplaces in the bedrooms, Iris scurried into her nightgown as quickly as she could. In under a minute she had gone from a fully dressed member of the Woman’s Land Army to a woman ready for bed.

She thought about the handsome soldier at the dance. The one who had asked her to dance to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. Several days had passed since then and he hadn’t shown up at Pasture Farm. Iris had gone through every option in her head. Perhaps he had forgotten the name of her farm? Perhaps he had been called away on army business? Or perhaps he wasn’t really interested in her. She tried not to feel depressed about it, trying to let it go. Her grandfather always said ‘what will be, will be’ and that’s the philosophy she tried to adopt now. If the soldier showed up, that would be great. If he didn’t, well, she would move on. Iris yawned.

But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

She risked a look through the small window. It was frosted with condensation, so she wiped it clear with the cuff of her nightdress. The lights from downstairs illuminated the lawns at the front of the farmhouse. An old children’s swing creaked in the night breeze. Iris hated that swing. It would keep her awake at night with its constant noises. And in her wilder flights of fancy, she sometimes dreaded looking out of the window in case she imagined someone sitting on it, staring balefully up at her. She wished that Finch would sell it as scrap for the war effort. But he was attached to the old relic.

Iris pulled her curtain across to block out the sight. The unseen swing gave a final creak of defiance, as if it was determined to have the last word. She sat on her bed and flipped back the sheets, sighing as she felt the night closing in on her. A lonely room in a strange place. And here she was grabbing a few hours’ sleep until Esther shouted up the stairs for them all to get up.

“Come on, you bunch of layabouts, let’s have you down for breakfast!”

Iris closed her eyes and stretched her aching limbs. She could hear a muffled soundtrack from downstairs. Finch laughed at something. A cup or glass smashed on the floor.

She could hear Esther exclaim, “Oops, look what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do it. It was me cardigan.”

“And who’s your cardigan attached to? Oh, mind your feet on the glass!”

Unable to sleep, Iris swung out of bed with a sigh. An owl hooted somewhere off in the fields, a late-night hunter ready to start its day. Iris’s body felt exhausted, but her mind was racing.

The swing creaked outside.

It was as if it was taunting her through the thin curtain. Her fingers edged towards the fabric to pull it back, to look outside. But she was scared; her fingers touching the fabric but not having the courage to move it. The swing creaked again. Iris could hear her breathing, her heart pounding in her chest.

Then she remembered something else that Billy Finch had left in his room. Iris opened her wardrobe and moved a wicker box. It contained letters and photographs from back home and a couple of torn magazine pages from Picturegoer magazine showing hairstyles she’d one day like to try. Behind the wicker box was what she wanted: a clear, tall bottle, half full of a bright- orange liquid. Finch’s carrot whisky. From the reactions of the others to the whisky, she knew it was a revolting drink that had the sole redeeming feature of being very strong. Should she do it?