Land Girls: The Homecoming: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland Moore
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 and 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