Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland MooreЧитать онлайн книгу.
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