Christmas on the Home Front

John pulled down the carriage window so he could crane his neck out to give Joyce one last kiss. She hooked her arms around his neck and pushed her lips softly against his.

‘You take care, you hear?’ Joyce tried to stop herself welling up.

‘You too!’ He smiled back.

The train remained stationary for a moment. Joyce and John looked at one another, with a moment of amused awkwardness, as they waited for the train to leave.

‘It’s never like this in the pictures, is it? The train always goes straight away after they’ve kissed, doesn’t it?’ Joyce was enjoying a few extra seconds with her husband.

‘Or sometimes it goes as they’re kissing, and they have to stop halfway through. Lovers torn apart and all that.’

The small delay, the shared joke, had helped. Joyce felt herself relax. It was all going to be alright. John would chivvy Teddy to a speedy recovery and then they’d share Christmas dinner together back at the farm in a few days.

‘See you very soon!’

‘You’re seeing me now. Given the time this takes to go, I’ll probably still be here next week!’ John replied. As if John’s comment had been overheard by the driver, the train started to edge forward.

The guard blasted a final volley on his whistle to warn people to stand back and the train belched out smoke as it crawled out of the station. Joyce watched the other women running alongside, waving goodbye. But she remained still, waving from where she stood. She was struck by a sense of déjà vu, remembering the other times John had left on the train from this station; usually with a brow furrowed with worry and a kit bag full of his RAF uniform and home-made cake for the journey.

Joyce watched as the train receded into the distance, aware of the other people drifting away around her like ghosts disappearing from view. She pulled her cardigan around her shoulders and braced herself for the walk back to the farm.

A starling swooped down low in front of her as she ambled along the country lane, a light drizzle adding to the already wet ground and making the leaves of the evergreen hedgerow glisten. Lost in her thoughts about the impending Christmas celebrations, Joyce walked the well-remembered route without really thinking where she was going. She’d done it so many times, it was automatic. She could recite it with her eyes shut: the walk across the road from the station; the town square, the vicarage, the little bridge by the newspaper office leading to the fields beyond. It had been nearly forty minutes since Joyce had seen him off at Helmstead train station and she assumed he’d be well into his journey by now.

The blue sky was fading to grey as evening fell. She rounded a corner and trudged across a muddy path to the stile that would lead her to the back of Pasture Farm. She remembered when she had first made this journey, burdened with suitcases and a complaining Nancy Morrell. What had happened to Nancy? She’d been her first roommate in the Women’s Land Army; a cantankerous sometimes entitled young woman who didn’t enjoy getting her hands dirty. She’d even tried to get Joyce to carry her suitcase from the station. Flaming cheek! Joyce had flatly refused. She smiled to herself at the memory. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. She had seen so many things in her time here, found solace in her new family of Esther, Finch, and the other girls. She had seen great, life-affirming times of friendship. Even through the bad times the resilience of her friends, her surrogate sisters, had helped her pull through, finding her inner strength to face whatever problems came her way.

The grey sky continued to half-heartedly drop its drizzle. Joyce thought the chances of snow this Christmas would be slim. There had been freezing fog in the lead up and some of that still hung around, but there wouldn’t be snow. That would be fine. John would have more chance of getting back in time if there wasn’t any snow on the tracks.

Joyce reached the back door of the farmhouse. She could hear muffled voices from within along with the sound of the radio. She sloughed off her muddy boots on the step like a snake shedding its skin and opened the door to the kitchen, enjoying the warm air as it greeted her.

‘Did he get off all right?’ Esther asked, her hands in the sink, washing some carrots. The stalks and leaves were spilling over the edge of the basin, leaving trails of muddy dirt on the top of the counter.

‘Yes, that’s him gone.’ Joyce sat at the table, pulling off her sock to deal with a small stone that had got lodged inside her boot.

‘Don’t you worry, I’m sure as soon as he’s spent a couple of days with his brother, he’ll be back on that train,’ Esther remarked. ‘And we’ve still got eight days until Christmas day.’

Eight days.

‘Better put the sprouts on to cook soon then.’ Joyce was making the best of the situation and finding her humour. Esther threw a tea towel at her in mock outrage.

‘Flaming cheek!’ Esther let the rebuke land and then added, ‘I’ll have you know they went on last week.’ The women giggled, good-naturedly.

The sky was a bruised purple colour as night fell outside the window, the colour refracted and warped into hallucinogenic patterns via the large raindrops on the pane.

Shortly, Esther and Joyce put on their coats and boots and left the warmth of the kitchen to walk into the village. As they crossed the bridge into Helmstead, Joyce could see the lights of the village hall. The small rectangular building with its corrugated iron roof seemed designed to be too hot in summer and too cold in winter.

‘Is Martin already here?’ Joyce asked as they approached.

‘No, I don’t know where he’s gone,’ Esther replied. ‘He went off mooning after Iris. He’s wasting his time with that one. Thinks he might start courting her. He’s got his hopes up because they’ll be at Shallow Brook Farm together.’

‘While John’s away?’

‘Yes, Martin and Iris are going to take up the slack until he’s back.’

‘Ah it’s going to be quiet at the farm without them both,’ Joyce had reached the door to the village hall where Connie Carter was talking to two American soldiers. From the men’s postures – one holding the door frame, the other primping his hair – Joyce could see they were flirting with her. She could also tell from Connie’s posture that she was having none of it.

‘Why can’t we come to the party?’ One of the soldiers drawled, to the amusement of his friend.

‘I never said you couldn’t come.’ Connie spotted Joyce and Esther and shot them a smile of sufferance. ‘And you boys are welcome to come along, providing you’re both over sixty.’

‘Sixty?’ The American looked bemused.

‘Yes, it’s a party – a meal – for the old folk.’

‘I don’t think I’m that old.’ The soldier smiled before changing tack. ‘But how about I take you out for our own party?’

‘Yeah, sounds good. I’ll just ask my husband,’ Connie grinned. Knowing when they were beaten, the Americans shrugged and walked away. Connie turned to the watching Joyce and Esther.

‘Can’t blame them for trying, can you?’ Connie raised an eyebrow archly, ‘You coming inside then?’

Esther nodded.

‘We thought you could do with some help.’ Joyce unfastened her coat.

‘Henry could, that’s for sure.’

Inside, they found her husband, the Reverend Henry Jameson. The good-looking and earnest young man was struggling to move a trestle table. ‘Where have you been, Connie?’

‘Some people wanted to know if they could come along.’ Connie raised her eyebrow slightly in Joyce’s direction. It was technically true, Joyce supposed. ‘But I don’t think they were quite old enough yet.’

Connie turned her attention to sticking up a piece of bunting that had drooped. Joyce grabbed the other end of the trestle table and they lifted it together. Esther and Connie started to put out chairs. Each year, Lady Hoxley would donate money to a fund run by the church to organise a Christmas meal for the old people of Helmstead. Local business people and good Samaritans would contribute beer, wine and food; a lot of it grown on the fields and houses around Helmstead. A lot of people in the village, from Mrs Gulliver and the other busybodies to the local butcher would pitch in to arrange the meal. Finch had promised them a bag of spuds to help them along.

And the meal wasn’t the only attraction for the old folk in the village. There would be songs at the piano and maybe a little dancing. Sometimes the event happened on Christmas Day itself, but this year it was happening earlier. The lunch was organised by Henry Jameson for anyone who wanted to spend the day with the community. With so many loved ones away overseas, Christmas could be a lonely and sad experience, so this event distracted everyone from their problems for a day. And Henry liked to think he’d gain a few new parishioners at the Sunday Service as a result too.

As Esther, Connie and Joyce helped Henry set up the hall, their conversation turned to who would be at Pasture Farm for Christmas.

‘Connie and I hope to have the day together – after I’ve finished my service and my visits to parishioners.’ Henry placed a beer mat under a wobbly table leg.

‘That means he’ll be home at five in the evening and I’ll have been on my tod all day.’ Connie rolled her eyes to her husband’s amusement.

‘So what about Dolores?’

‘Oh, she’s got nowhere to go, so she’ll be there,’ Esther replied. About twelve years older than the other girls, Dolores O’Malley kept herself to herself. Joyce remembered Connie playing a game over the summer, to try to find out details – any details – about Dolores’s life. Connie would try every trick she knew to get Dolores to divulge even the smallest detail. What colour did she like? What was her home like? Was she courting anyone? But as skilful as Connie was in digging, Dolores proved equally adept at deflecting. She was as closed as a clam in deep water. Joyce felt that Dolores deserved her privacy.

‘At least I don’t think she’s got anywhere to go,’ Esther mused. ‘You never know with that one.’

‘And that’s the point, innit? We’ll never know.’ Connie laughed.

Joyce stood on a chair to put some more bunting up. The streamers had been cut and assembled from strips of old magazines, giving the bunting a colourful and varied effect.