Land Girls: The Homecoming Read online

  “I leave you for ten minutes and all sorts happen. What’s going on here?” Joyce asked.

  Connie shook her head. It was nothing.

  “That’s what you said when you smashed the pub window.” Joyce smiled.

  Connie smiled at that memory too, a little embarrassed and amazed that she’d had the brass neck to do that. But the landlord had diddled them out of change one too many times. And he was a lecherous old sod, who made them all feel uncomfortable with his roving eyes. Henry had been annoyed about that, drifting into a sullen sulk for several days until Connie blurted out an apology. He’d given her a lecture about turning the other cheek. Connie had found herself drifting off as the words washed over her; annoyed that Henry was patronising her as if she was still a little girl at the children’s home.

  In the early evening sun, the two weary friends stretched their aching backs and Connie ate her apple. Behind them, a poster warned housewives not to take the trains after four o’clock so that factory workers could use them. Another showed two women chatting, not realising that a sinister man in a hat and coat was ear-wigging. Careless talk costs lives. Some more RAF pilots from Brinford Air Base decamped on the platform, their bodies laden with kit bags and great-coats. Connie scanned all the faces on the platform. She and Joyce were the only two Land Girls heading back. But there was an assortment of other travellers – service men, factory workers, a policeman and a middle-aged woman, who was clutching the hand of a nine-year-old girl. The little girl, her blonde hair in ringlets in a style that had been popular ten years ago, had been crying. Connie noticed the snaking lines of old tears on her chubby face and the way she was sniffing as she tried to control the flow. Before Connie could look any more, a portly man obscured her view – his shirt stretched tight over his large belly like the tarred cloth around Finch’s haystack. The man’s eyes darted to the distance in search of the train. He wore a trilby hat and a camera dangled around his neck, resting on the cushion of his stomach.

  Suddenly the guard blew his whistle and everyone perked up as the plume of smoke from the steam train was glimpsed from behind a hill. Slowly the train chugged into view and Connie forgot the other passengers on the platform. Now it was all about getting a seat in one of the carriages. She needed to sit down. And from the weary look on Joyce’s face, she did too. The two friends walked to the edge of the platform, trying to predict the position where the carriage doors would be. This was a routine that they had perfected since their secondment to Brinford. Each evening they would wait for the train. Each evening they would try their best to secure a seat in one of the crowded carriages. The train came to a halt, the smell of soot thick in the air. The passengers already on-board flowed out of the carriage doors like water from a colander. And, with the train vacated there was the relatively good-natured but nonetheless urgent rush of the new passengers to find a seat. Some soldiers held back, allowing Connie and Joyce to get on first. Connie smiled charmingly back – thank you, kind sirs – and then suddenly darted, with little hint of any ladylike grace, along the carriage corridor to find an empty compartment.

  They ducked under an RAF flyer’s arms as he hoisted his kit bag up into the baggage rack and found themselves in an empty six-seat compartment. Mission accomplished! Connie and Joyce sat nearest the windows – until Joyce quickly changed her mind and sat next to Connie.

  “Forgot, I don’t like going backwards.”

  As the carriages filled up and the guard’s whistle became more impatient, Joyce asked Connie whether Henry would be at the vicarage when she got home. Connie didn’t know. Often Henry would cycle around the village in the evenings, administering succour and support to his parishioners.

  “I told him, he wants to kick those needy old biddies into touch, he’s a married man now,” Connie said, partly to make Joyce laugh and partly to shock the middle-aged businessman who had entered their compartment. The businessman sat down and defensively rustled his newspaper open, a makeshift shield of the Times crossword to block out such coarseness for the duration of the journey.

  The compartment filled up. The young girl who had been crying and her stern-looking mother entered. And then a fresh-faced young soldier arrived to make up the six. He sat down and studiously attempted to roll a cigarette for the first ten minutes of the journey. He obviously hadn’t been smoking long and was all fingers and thumbs, with more tobacco ending up in his lap than in the cigarette paper. Connie was itching to snatch it from him and do it herself, but figured that wouldn’t be the sort of thing a lady would do.

  Joyce and Connie settled down for the journey as the train wheezed its way out of Brinford, the station guard diminishing to the size of a speck on the platform. He could be alone with his concourse now.

  “Why are you still calling yourself Carter?” Joyce asked, breaking Connie’s idle thoughts. “Heard you introduce yourself twice today.”

  “Had that name all me life. Not got used to being a Jameson yet, I suppose.” Connie shrugged. “Connie Carter’s got a ring to it.”

  “She’s got a ring on her finger,” Joyce retorted.

  Why hadn’t Connie been using Henry’s name? It was an odd thing for her to do. Married women happily took their husbands’ surnames. Secretly she knew that her explanation to Joyce was a lie. She didn’t use the name of Jameson because she didn’t believe it would last. Nothing ever did in her life. Part of her thought that her happy marriage would be a blip. Best not to get too comfortable with the luxury of Henry’s surname. Another part of her hated herself for hedging her bets and not fully committing. She should dive in rather than just dangling her feet in the pool. But that’s what came when you were buffeted from a lifetime of disappointment and rejection.

  Connie shut out the thoughts and concentrated on the stern-looking woman and her tearful daughter. Connie offered a consoling smile to the girl, but the girl didn’t acknowledge it. Was she too upset to notice? Or was it fear making her reluctant to smile back?

  “My John’s supposed to be on this train,” Joyce said, interrupting Connie’s thoughts. “But I didn’t see him on the platform.”

  “Difficult to see anyone in that scrum, wasn’t it?” Connie offered.

  John Fisher – an RAF flier – had been to the airbase in Brinford today and Joyce had been hoping to see her husband before they got back to Helmstead. He was Joyce’s rock – her childhood sweetheart and the only part of her family that she hadn’t lost in the brutal bombing of Coventry at the start of the war. It had been a lucky accident, which had meant they were in Birmingham on the night the bombs dropped. A sliver of serendipity that further cemented their relationship and their belief in their shared destiny together.

  “Do you want to go down the carriages and find him?” Connie asked. “I’ll keep your seat.”

  Joyce looked at the corridor outside their compartment. It was crammed with soldiers, pilots and factory workers. It would be nearly impossible to move down the train. Joyce decided to stay where she was. “I’m sure I won’t forget what he looks like if I don’t see him until Helmstead.”

  The young soldier dutifully finished his roll-up with an audible gasp of satisfaction. But the victory was short-lived as he raised it to his lips and lit it; it promptly unrolled, dropping tobacco onto his trousers. He cursed and hastily patted his crotch to put out the burning embers before they scorched his uniform. Connie couldn’t resist letting out a small laugh. The boy looked back and smiled. He scooped up the tobacco and started to try again.

  “Want me to do it?” she offered. Sod it if it wasn’t the sort of thing a lady did.

  “Can you roll them?” the soldier said in surprise, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  “No. But I can’t be worse than you, can I?”

  Joyce nudged Connie to stop messing with the poor lad. “What? I’m just being friendly,” Connie said, under her breath. The middle-aged woman with the tear-streaked daughter shot her a disapproving look.

  The soldier sucked in his cheeks a
nd doggedly resumed his rolling.

  The businessman already had a pipe in his mouth – unlit at the moment and being sucked on like a baby’s dummy as he contemplated the crossword.

  The train snaked across the countryside. Fields of cows and fields of corn moved past the windows like frames at the flicks. The evening sun glinted low through the carriage windows, dappling the occupants with patchworks of light.

  Connie entertained fragmented thoughts: Henry waiting with a cup of tea; Joyce joking in the fields with her; the snotty guard at Brinford station. The images washed over her in a hazy, comforting blur as the motion of the train and the evening sunlight flickered over her face. Sleep was a moment away.

  The fields trundled by in a blur.

  Connie tried to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to sleep now. She sat up, breathed deep and thought about Henry waiting at the vicarage with his warm smile and trusting eyes. He was a decent man, a man who loved her despite her faults. He loved her despite her troubled past. It was too good to be true, really, but she had to accept it and hope it wouldn’t turn out to be some massive joke.

  She glanced at Joyce – who was biting her lip. Connie didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Joyce was thinking about. She was thinking about her man too.

  Joyce was worried about John. He’d been to the base to finalise his leaving the RAF. It would be a big moment for both of them. Suddenly, John would be close to the home of Pasture Farm, where Joyce was billeted; he’d be finally safe from harm; but would it mean he’d lose his sense of purpose? Both Joyce and John held on to their roles in the war – as it made sense of the carnage and loss they had experienced in Coventry. Connie often wondered what Joyce would do when the war was over – if it ever finished. Would she feel lost without it?

  But Connie was too tired to ask about such things tonight. A bath. A cuppa. And Henry. Those simple things were keeping her going.

  So instead, Connie offered a less emotionally taxing conversation.

  “I won’t miss this journey,” Connie said.

  True, it was pleasant enough if you got a seat away from the scrum, but it still added a long journey to an already-long day in the fields.

  “Me neither,” Joyce said, munching the cheese from her parcel. “Only good thing was not having to work with Dolores.”

  “Don’t be ‘orrible. Just ‘cos she never says nothing.” Connie thought about the near-monosyllabic Dolores, who had joined them recently. But the thought drifted out of her head, sleep threatening to cover her.

  “I wish Finch would pick us up sometimes,” Joyce said.

  Connie wished he would to, as she bit her lip, trying to stay awake. Freddie Finch was the tenant farmer who lived in Pasture Farm. A ruddy-faced man with keen, smart eyes, he’d loaned out some of his Land Girls for the work on Brinford Farm. But despite having a tractor with a trailer that could easily give the girls a lift home, Finch wouldn’t stretch his meagre petrol ration to pick them up unless he had to. It was fair enough, but it didn’t stop Connie and Joyce from wishing.

  Connie looked at the young girl again.

  The whites of her mother’s knuckles were showing as she gripped the girl’s hand. Why was she holding on so tightly? That must hurt.

  Connie offered a sympathetic smile to the girl. Nothing. She flashed one to the mother.

  This time, she got a reaction. The stern-faced woman shot her a look that said stop staring and mind your own business.

  This was like red rag to a bull. Connie didn’t avert her gaze.

  The girl was looking at the floor.

  “Is she all right?” Connie asked, poking her nose in even further.

  Joyce looked around – this was the first she’d registered the young girl and her mother. She played catch-up quickly and registered Connie’s concern.

  The mother frowned and shook her head – containing her fury at this interference.

  “Of course she is.”

  The soldier looked up from his rolling. The business man buried himself deeper in The Times.

  “Yeah?” Connie asked the girl directly.

  The girl raised her sad face, her eyes vulnerable and moist.

  “What business is it of yours?” the mother asked Connie.

  “Connie …” Joyce warned, about to tell her friend to pipe down.

  But Connie wouldn’t let this lie. Maybe it was hard to let go when she saw something of herself in the haunted eyes of this youngster.

  “It’s just that she seems –” Connie was about to say ‘sad’, but she would never finished the sentence.

  BANNGGGGGGG!

  There was a deafening bang from the front of the train, accompanied by the ear-splitting wrenching of metal. Everyone was jolted off their seats, the world folding in on itself. The businessman’s newspaper flew into Connie’s face as she fell forwards. And then there was a loud crunching noise from behind and the sound of twisting metal. Slowly, the compartment shook and rolled, tossing over and over. Bodies bounced around the carriage as the floor became the ceiling and back again. Connie felt herself sliding across the floor. Joyce’s elbow hit Connie hard in the neck as Joyce rolled on top of her. Connie could hear muffled screams. All the sounds were somehow distant, as if they had been muffled by cotton wool.

  Connie thrust out a hand and grabbed the metal frame that secured the seats to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed onto Joyce to try to stop them being tossed around the tumbling carriage.

  The windows of the compartment shattered and there was a squeal of brakes. The outer door flung open and the young soldier was thrown into the air, rolling on the ceiling and then the floor, over Connie and Joyce, and finally spewing out of the opening to the outside world.

  The businessman flew across the floor and hit the open door frame with a thud. Arms and legs and bodies intertwined as screams filled the air and the carriage tumbled.

  Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

  Finally the nightmare seemed to end and the carriage came to juddering rest. It was almost the right way up again. The sounds suddenly became clearer. Screams. Connie slowly let go of the seat support and slid to the new floor. The first thing she focused on was the businessman’s pipe. It was inches from her nose, resting in a sea of diamond-like fragments of broken glass. The businessman himself was behind Connie, sitting in a heap of Saville Row tailoring and blood; shocked and confused, but probably all right.

  The little girl was crying, her leg wedged under the seat. A seat that had been mangled almost flat in the crash. Her mother was face down on the floor, knocked unconscious.

  Connie could hear her own heart thumping in her chest.

  The taste of blood was in her mouth.

  “What-?” She struggled to talk, but her words didn’t seem to come together; drunken sounds in her head.

  Dust settled. Joyce looked up, her face bruised and slightly cut; her tight-permed-hair messed in all directions.

  “Are you all right?” Connie finally managed to ask.

  Joyce stared at her, as if she wasn’t hearing the words. She’d gone into shock.

  “What happened?” Connie asked. “Joyce?”

  Again, Joyce had no answers. Or even acknowledgement that her friend was talking to her.

  Connie knew she wouldn’t get anything from her. She glanced towards the exterior door. Outside was grass. They had rolled down a bank and come to rest at the bottom of the incline. Connie got shakily to her feet, her balance slightly wobbly. She rubbed her neck and glanced quickly to check that Joyce wasn’t badly injured. She guided her shocked friend towards the exit, their boots crunching on the broken glass as if they were walking on fresh snow. With Connie’s help, Joyce jumped down onto the grass. It was a long drop without a platform. For some inexplicable reason, Connie saw an image of the guard back at Brinford station sweeping the platform. Or concourse, or whatever he called it.

  “Flaming vandals,” he muttered in Connie’s head.

  Joyce staggered a few feet a
cross the grass, before falling softly onto her bottom. A soldier came over from another carriage to check she was okay and they sat together.

  Still inside the carriage, Connie poked her head out and looked along the length of the carriage. Many passengers were dropping from their compartments onto the grass, where they struggled to come to terms with what had happened. Three-quarters of the train had been derailed and had tumbled down the bank, a wrecked and hissing snake in the long grass.

  Connie put her head back into her compartment and turned her attention to the injured. The businessman was groggily coming round. He’d bitten through his lip in the crash. Connie reassured him that his injury wasn’t as bad as it looked. He might need a new shirt, though.

  She helped him to the door and he jumped down onto the grass.

  Next Connie found the mother. She was unconscious. Connie got close and listened to the woman. She was breathing. She was alive.

  “Help me!” the little girl said, her leg trapped under the twisted seat.

  “I’ll just get your mother first,” Connie replied, as she flung the woman’s arm around her shoulders and edged her towards the door. The dead weight was difficult to shift and Connie found herself buckling under the woman. Finally she managed to wedge her into the door opening and cry for help.

  “I need some help! Someone come and help!”

  Suddenly, behind her, a strange rustling noise attracted Connie’s attention.

  She turned to the source of the noise. It sounded oddly familiar.

  “Fire!” the little girl shouted. “Help me! It’s on fire!”

  The whole corridor of the carriage outside their compartment was ablaze; thick black smoke billowing behind the glass. It wouldn’t be long before it broke through the door and engulfed the compartment itself.

  The girl was struggling to free her leg from the metal of the seat. But it wouldn’t budge.

  Connie tried to move the unconscious woman, who was wedged in the door. She realised she didn’t have time for any more niceties.