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

Chapter 6 (#u39b21249-e310-564f-84fc-462fa4024aaa)

As dawn added a purple tinge to the retreating night sky, the ambulance slowed to a juddering halt. The petrol tank finally empty with even the fumes that had sustained the last few miles gone. As the engine clattered to a bone-dry, choking standstill, the driver managed to use the last of the vehicle’s momentum to tuck it onto a long-grassed verge. At the wheel, Vince winced as he wrapped the makeshift bandage tighter around his injured right hand. It had been bleeding badly, and it was only now that he noticed that the steering wheel was slick with redness. But it was a small price to pay for his escape. He staggered out from the cab, a gun butt sticking out from the belt of his trousers, and found his legs as he scanned his surroundings. It seemed to be the edge of a village: a fork in the road by some picture-postcard idyll of sleepiness. The place was called Thatchford Green, but the name meant nothing to Vince. He was simply relieved to be as far away from London as possible.

Walking along the road as the darkness finally lost its cyclical battle with day, Vince found himself in the village. He glanced up the main street and saw a pub. It was four in the morning, but maybe they would have a room for him to sleep things off.

He straightened his jacket, buttoning it to hide the gun and made his way towards the pub, bracing himself as he rapped on the door. After a moment, a bedroom light switched on above his head.

As Vince waited for a response, he noticed a newspaper vending stall next to the pub. The headline behind the mesh caught his eye.

“Courageous Connie Carter Saves Day”.

Vince was surprised. He knew that name.

It couldn’t be the same girl, could it? Vince plucked a newspaper from the pile behind the stall and leafed through it in disbelief. He was so engrossed, he didn’t hear the angry voice of the pub landlord behind him. He didn’t see the man standing in his vest and pyjama bottoms.

There was a photograph of Connie Carter and Margaret Sawyer on page three. He stared at the face of Connie Carter: her familiar smile. Her full lips. Bleeding hell, it was the same girl! He couldn’t believe it. As he tried to make sense of it, Vince picked out a jumble of salient words as he scanned the page: train crash, vicar’s wife, Helmstead.

Vicar’s wife? What the hell? Was this some sort of joke?

“’Ere, I’m talking to you.”

Vince finally realised that the landlord had appeared and was giving him daggers. Vince flashed his best approximation of a charismatic smile. It wasn’t something that came naturally.

“Got any rooms?”

“Not for your sort,” the landlord growled, spotting Vince’s makeshift bandage and bleeding hand. This along with his sharp suit and dark demeanour, meant he had trouble written on him as clearly as words through a stick of rock.

Vince smiled.

“Just one question, then, and I’ll be on my way, yeah?”

The landlord pulled a face. He wasn’t about to serve alcohol at this time in the morning. Not to this fellow. But the question wasn’t about getting a crafty whisky or a breakfast pint.

“How far am I from Helmstead?” asked Vince.

A wailing scream came from elsewhere in the large house.

Connie ignored it. Hard as it was to listen to, she was used to the unpleasant background noise. One of the downsides of working in a hospital. Instead she got on with her work and pulled the white sheet taut. The tucked end came loose from the other side of the bed. Just as she got one end sorted, the other would always do this. Connie thought it was some sort of secret test to see how long it would take her to swear. But since Hoxley Manor’s East Wing had been turned into a makeshift ward for the sick and injured, this was a regular part of her work when she wasn’t toiling in the fields. Digging ditches and trying to get sheets to stay on beds. That made up her whole life, it seemed sometimes.

Joyce came over and pulled the other side of the sheet taut. Connie tucked it in and smiled thanks.

“Dr Channing said we can finish when we’ve made the beds,” Joyce said.

This made Connie smile even more. With three more beds to make, and with Joyce helping her, she might be able to leave in about twenty minutes if she got a wriggle on. Then she might be able to see Henry before he went off on his evening visit to see the ailing old Frenchman, Dr Beauchamp. Perhaps she could cook him dinner and make him see that she could do all that sort of thing as well.

With new purpose, Connie unfolded a fresh sheet and moved to the neighbouring bed.

When she finished, Connie scampered home. Dusk was beginning to fall as she ran through the village, past the pub and down the hill to the vicarage. In the distance, far away, she could see a figure riding away on a push bike. Oh blast! It was Henry. Connie stopped in her tracks, annoyed to have missed him by such a narrow margin. One less bed and she’d have made it! But again, this disappointment was tinged with a slight relief. There would be no arguments tonight. Was that the way she should be viewing her marriage after only a month? It felt wrong, but she couldn’t hide her feelings from herself.

The wind knocked from her sails, she trudged towards the front door; her legs suddenly feeling very heavy and tired. She entered the hallway. No old biddies there tonight. No Henry. The house was still and quiet without Henry inside it. A house, not a home. Connie closed the door and entered the parlour, where her spirits lifted in pleasant surprise. There was a note on the table next to a china plate covered by another plate. Connie read the note:

“I caught you some supper! Love Henry”

Connie’s hand reached towards the plate and lifted the cover. What would it be? What could Henry have caught for her? Not a rabbit, surely –

Under the cover was a cheese sandwich. Connie grinned, warmed by his playfulness. He was trying his best. She would try hers too and have things spick and span for when he came home. She slipped off her boots and sat in front of the fire in the big armchair. Henry had left the embers burning, with a fire guard on the hearth. Connie placed some new wood onto the embers and watched the fire slowly catch hold as she sat there and ate her sandwich. The spoils of the wild.

After Connie had eaten she looked at the clock above the fireplace. It was half-eight. Henry should be back soon. Putting on her apron (Connie felt like a proper vicar’s wife when she did this), she decided to busy herself with some chores until then. She unbolted the back door and went into the small vicarage garden to collect the eggs from the chickens. There were two deck chairs that she had put at the far end of the plot. The chairs faced away from the house, and Henry and Connie sometimes sat there in the evening, chatting over a cup of tea. On one side of the garden was a narrow chicken run that stretched the length of the grass. Part of the wooden frame had been broken and, as it awaited a proper repair, a large amount of mesh had been used to ensure the occupants didn’t escape. Inside were two chickens, whom Connie had nicknamed Esther and Gladys (after warden Esther Reeves and local busybody Gladys Gulliver). Esther had laid an egg and Connie picked it up and shook it free of the hay that had stuck to it. Carefully she placed it in her apron pocket and looked around to see if Gladys had produced anything. Suddenly something caught her eye. Cigarette smoke was rising from one of the deck chairs. Connie looked closer. Although the chair was turned away from her, she could see the definite indentation of a weight on the canvas. And on closer inspection: two silhouetted legs going to the ground.

“Who’s there?” Connie said, in as commanding a voice as she could muster.

It wouldn’t be Henry, would it? Playing a joke? No, he wouldn’t smoke a cigarette, even for a lark. No reply came from the chair, although Connie could sense that the occupant had heard her and was now motionless, on edge and waiting.

“It’s not funny,” Connie said, looking for some weapon. But Henry was such a stickler for putting the few garden tools they owned into the shed that there was nothing to hand. She spotted a small earthenware flowerpot and picked it up. Anything would do.

No head was visible, which meant the occupant was either slouched down in the seat or was very short. Her heart was pounding as she neared the side of the chair.

“You’ve had your fun.” Her mouth was dry and it was hard to swallow.

She reached the edge of the chair. Finally she could see the occupant. A big man, slouched down. The angular good looks of his face, his slicked hair, the cheap, dark suit. Eyes glinting in the night air. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Jesus, no …

And yet, Vince Halliday was sitting, as bold as brass, in her garden smoking a cigarette.

“Looks like you’ve had your fun too,” Vince said, fixing her with his deep-blue eyes. “Nice set-up, Con. Vicar’s wife, eh? Who’d have thought? I laughed when I saw that.”

At first she couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? How had he found her? She couldn’t even really hear his words as her head swam with a seasick-like queasiness, half-hoping that this was some hallucination caused by too much sun in the fields.

“So what’s the angle with you being a vicar’s wife?”

“No angle,” she stammered. Connie steadied herself. She felt as if she wanted to throw up. This situation was so wrong. A sickening juxtaposition of two things that shouldn’t ever meet. This grubby bull wasn’t part of her world of jam-making, tea-drinking and church fund-raising. Wearing her apron, Connie suddenly felt like a fraud, a silly girl playing at being a vicar’s wife. It added to her own deepest fears that this was all some silly role-play. Who was she kidding thinking she could be a genteel lady? Who was she kidding thinking that she could escape?

As her mind focused and she snapped back to the moment, she knew one thing. She didn’t want this. She didn’t even want to ask what he wanted here, what he was doing. She just wanted him to go so she could pretend he’d never been here. Pretend he’d never soured the milk of her supposedly perfect life. But she found herself asking nonetheless.