Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Read Online Free Page B

stockings.
     
    Margery Brewster’s ‘office’ was a desk in the corner of a small ante-room in Exeter Town Hall. There was a sign that read ‘Women’s Land Army’, a telephone, an in-tray and an out-tray, stacks of papers, tidily clipped together, and an immaculate blotter. She invited Alice to sit in the chair opposite to her own and sent a girl for two cups of tea. She knew, from Roger Bayliss, that Alice had accepted the job and had been asked to report to the Land Army office to complete the formalities.
    ‘So your son’s needs made up your mind for you, did they?’ Margery Brewster asked when Alice had explained the reasons for her decision. ‘I was almost sure you would turn us down!’ Alice took the cup and saucer in her hands and declined sugar.
    ‘I’m hoping he will be happy on the farm,’ she said. Margery looked at her sharply.
    ‘And will you be?’ she asked, sliding Alice’s contract across the desk and indicating the places that required her signature. Alice felt that she was unlikely to be happy anywhere but she told Mrs Brewster that she thought she would be. The interview was obviously over. The tea was too hot so she left half of it in the cup, got to her feet and shook the proffered hand.
    ‘Monday week,’ Margery said. ‘At the farmhouse. As early as possible.’
    A thin girl, dressed in a long dark coat, thick stockings, lace-up shoes and with her felt hat in her hand, approached Margery’s desk and stood uncertainly, her eyes on Margery’s face, as though awaiting a command. Her face looked scrubbed, the skin stretched and almost transparent. She wore no make-up. Her pale auburn hair was drawn back into a bun on the nape of her neck. Alice, as she moved away, heard Margery say ‘Next!’ and saw the girl creep forward.
    ‘Name?’ demanded Margery.
    ‘Tucker, Miss,’ whispered the girl. ‘Hester Tucker.’
     
    Roger Bayliss sent a man in a truck to fetch Alice and her belongings. The man, Ferdinand Vallance, was a labourer who, in his late teens, had been injured in an accident on the farm. One leg, so badly crushed that it was barely saved, remained twisted. This gave Ferdie a weird, gyrating gait and prevented him from working as fast or as efficiently as he had done before the injury. It also made him unfit for active service. All this information was imparted to Alice when, after delivering Edward-John and his luggage to the preparatory school where he was to spend weekday nights, Ferdie drove the truck out through the suburbs of Exeter and onto a minor road which wound over the hills to Ledburton.
    ‘Baint that I doan wanna do me bit in the forces likeany other fella,’ he had told Alice, almost unintelligibly. ‘Mean, no one ud choose to ’obble ’bout the place like I ’as to do!’
    Her leave-taking from Edward-John had been easier than Alice had expected, due in part to its rushed and peculiar circumstances. They had hugged. On Friday night he was to be put on a bus to Ledburton where he would be met. She promised him two whole days on the farm and left him smiling at the prospect.
    Her few pieces of furniture were unloaded from the truck and installed in her room. Two threadbare Persian carpets had been spread, one in each of the floor areas and, as well as her mother’s desk and the two armchairs, there was a low rosewood table and a bookcase, presumably contributed by her employer. A fire was burning in the grate and another roared up the wide chimney of the recreation room.
    ‘Mr Bayliss says as we’re to keep ’em in day and night till the place dries out,’ Rose informed her. ‘These walls has got a dozen years of cold stored in ’em! Once they’m warm ’twill feel better, he says but ’twill take weeks, I reckon!’
    In the kitchen the range had smoked sulkily, refusing to draw until Roger himself climbed to the chimney and removed the generations of jackdaw nests that were blocking it. After that the kitchen too began to heat up, steaming as