The Land Girl: An unforgettable historical novel of love and hope. Allie Burns

       Chapter One

       March 1915

      Emily held her breath as she stood at the top of the stairs. When she was sure it was safe she tiptoed down, which was not that easy in her brother John’s work boots, even with the gap in the toes stuffed with balled-up newspaper.

      The muffled chatter from her mother’s knitting party flooded the hallway. She quickened her pace to reach the safety of the door that led through to the kitchen, only to narrowly avoid colliding with Daisy – the housemaid – and a platter of crustless sandwiches. They greeted one another and before Emily could remind her, Daisy nodded and said, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t seen you.’

      Emily opened the back door and the dazzling sunlight caressed her skin. She would have to make it up to Mother later because she couldn’t sit in that stifling sitting room, knitting socks for the soldiers at the Front when the sun shone.

      ‘By the way,’ Emily called back to Daisy who was straightening out the sandwiches again. ‘Did you leave this on my pillow?’ She waved a newspaper cutting that she’d found on her bed in an envelope addressed to her.

      Daisy shook her head. ‘I found it on the doormat, hand delivered.’

      Emily shrugged. She would thank whoever the sender was when they made themselves known.

      Outside, she leant back against the scullery door, and admired the plump, carefree clouds, shifting their shapes and rushing onwards against the backdrop of the heavenly blue sky.

      She held up the notice cut from the Standard, reading it slower this time to take it in. Her heart began to thump.

       Women on the Land

       Highly trained women of good birth and some country-bred women, hitherto working in service, or in trade, will make themselves useful in any way on a farm to gain experience.

       May we make known that we wish to hear from farmers, market gardeners and others wanting the services of women for work on the land.

      The notice went on to say that educated girls would act as a shining example to village and city girls – encourage them out in their numbers to do their bit for the war effort.

      But whoever posted this through the door must know that she wasn’t ‘highly trained’ in anything other than English literature, and that wasn’t an easy situation to fix. She did spend far more time on the farm and outdoors than was usual for a girl like her, as Mother was always reminding her, but that didn’t mean she could turn her hand to farming so easily; she’d need to be trained and the notice in the Standard said that took six weeks.

      She couldn’t in all good conscience leave her Mother to attend a course. Mother hardly slept and was afraid to be left alone since Father had died two years ago, and it was even worse now Emily’s older brother, John, had received his officer commission, turning Mother a ghastly pale whenever the delivery boy came up the path.

      At the tool shed, she lifted Mr Flitwick’s hoe and carried it back to the kitchen garden – humming to herself while she worked. She tilled three neat rows width-ways in the fine, crumbly soil of the raised bed. Mr Flitwick, their gardener, had generously given the bed over to her and her experiments, along with access to his stash of seeds. She came out here when Mother thought she was resting, reading or writing letters. It was a secret between her and the few trusted staff, and her little winged friends. She scattered the black dots, buried and then sprinkled them with water from the can.

      ‘Hello there,’ she said to her usual companion, a robin, who watched her from his favourite spot on the espaliered pear tree that spread its arms out along the wall. ‘I see what you see.’ She lightly pinched the flailing worm that she’d exposed with her hoeing, scooped a hole with the bare fingers of her other hand and tucked the worm inside, blanketing him with the soft soil. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own afternoon tea,’ she told the robin. ‘My crops need this one.’

      The bird whistled back at her, probably an admonishment for not doing as she was bid.

      Emily started as Edna, the cook-general, opened the door.

      ‘The mistress is asking where you are,’ Edna said. ‘She was expecting you to join her and her guests.’

      Emily contemplated her boots – John’s boots – her mud-lined fingernails, the hem of her skirts that had been steeped in the soil and were now a sepia brown. She would usually dash upstairs, clean, change her clothes and be back down in the sitting room knitting, awaiting Mother’s approving nod. But the newspaper article had fired her up, given her dreams a shape, and now she simply couldn’t bear to be parked on a sofa cushion while the conversation drifted around like pregnant rain clouds.

      ‘Could you say I have a headache? It’s a lot to ask, but I’d let her down if I went in there today.’

      And if it was anything but knitting … Mother’s stitches were always perfect and uniform; Emily’s always too large and loose. ‘The men will have cold feet wearing those,’ Mother would say. Always pointing to the spot where Emily had dropped a stitch. And as for the yarn, it went on forever; no matter how many hole-filled pairs of socks she made, no matter how many stitches she dropped, or how unevenly they grew, the yarn kept on coming.

      As she wiped her brow with her sleeve the sun came out from behind a cloud, rooting her to the spot. She sighed. How on earth would she ever persuade Mother? When Father was alive he’d wanted nothing more than for the HopBine Estate and its four-hundred-acre farm to be the epicentre of village life. He’d dreamt of the family living the rural idyll that he’d moved them out of London to enjoy.

      She’d asked once, when Father was alive, if she could take a course at a horticultural college. Lots of educated women were doing it, and Mother hadn’t objected then. She’d even believed it would be good for Emily