The Land Girl: An unforgettable historical novel of love and hope. Allie Burns
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Название: The Land Girl: An unforgettable historical novel of love and hope
Автор: Allie Burns
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780008262730
isbn:
As Lily’s nuzzle reached Emily’s palm, the cow stopped, dead. Emily relaxed her hand and patted the cow’s nose as Lily panted. So did Emily, her heart boom, booming in her ears. Lily nudged Emily’s hand out of the way, her round gelatinous eyes close to Emily’s, then her fleshy tongue dragged itself across her face. Emily giggled.
‘That tickles, Lily,’ she said, scratching playfully at the sparse fur above the cow’s nose. Lily mooed in appreciation.
‘It’s wonderful to see you look after your new calf, Lily,’ she said, backing away now, but still facing the cow. Still holding the stick aloft, she took careful, steady strides back, and back, until finally she gripped the solid surface of the stile, and hopped to safety.
Emily took a deep breath; her heart was just about settling down now.
‘Well, that was close.’ She leant over the stile to catch her breath. Lily had forgotten all about her charge already, she glanced over at the innocent calf and chewed her cud, watching them with a disinterested gaze. ‘Are you both all right?’ she asked the women.
Both of them had been struck dumb by the whole event.
‘Th-thank you, Miss Cotham,’ Olive Hughes said in the end, and Ada then found her voice too.
‘How did you do that? How could you be sure that the cow would stop?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Emily confessed. ‘Be careful next time. If she can trample her own calf to death, she won’t think twice about flattening you.’
Just as she was about to find out what the women had been running from in the first place, dear old Mr Tipton waddled around the edge of the paddock, waving his finger at the women and shouting something that Emily couldn’t quite make out.
The two women gawped at one another, thanked Emily again and shot off in the opposite direction to Mr Tipton.
Emily waited, trying to hide her amusement from Mr Tipton at his pink-faced exertion. When he caught her up he tipped his brown felt hat. But as Olive Hughes and Ada Little disappeared over the horizon he put his hands on his hips and kicked a clod of soil with his crusty old boots.
‘Whatever is going on, Mr Tipton?’ she asked him.
‘Those two are skiving off again.’
‘Mrs Hughes and Mrs Little?’ she asked, confused as to what they might be skipping.
‘Aye. Those two are what the Board of Trade calls help. I’m supposed to have the same yields from the farm even though my men are all gone, and in their place, they’ve sent me two village women who run off whenever my back’s turned.’
‘You need a supervisor for your new workers, Mr Tipton,’ she said.
‘Women,’ Mr Tipton said with a shake of his head, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘No disrespect to you, Miss Cotham, but we’re never going to win this war if we have to rely on the likes of those two. The government’s lost leave of its senses if it thinks it’s so.’ He put his hands together in a prayer. ‘Please Lord, don’t send me any more of your women,’ he said, face upturned to the heavens, before he trudged back to the farm.
That was another thing the person who sent her the newspaper notice didn’t realise. She could be as highly trained as any man, but Mr Tipton would never view her as anything other than the owner’s daughter.
April 1915
She marched across the lawn on her way back from the farm. She’d start with Mother, simply show her the newspaper notice from the Standard and explain how she needed to take the training so that she could help Mr Tipton keep the women in order. They owned the farm, and as the family depended on its profits she might just see it as a solution. It was wildly optimistic. Her pace slowed as she pictured Mother frowning as she read the article.
Once she reached the terrace her courage began to fail her. Mother’s knitting-party guests stood at the floor-length sitting room windows. There were two smaller figures – her mother one of them, the other most probably Norah Peters, the village solicitor’s wife. And there was a woman with a stout gait, which must belong to Lady Radford from Finch Hall. Members of the titled upper class like the Radfords and the industrial middle class like the Cothams mingled frequently in the countryside, which was a shame because Lady Radford was at their house far too often and always telling Mother how to think.
At the French door, Emily muttered, oh dear. The stout hips weren’t Lady Radford’s at all. Neither was Norah Peters standing beside Mother. Instead, a clean-shaven, smart young man in a suit, and an older woman, wearing one of the widest brimmed and heavily feathered hats Emily had ever seen, waited with smiles on their faces. Mother glared at her daughter’s muddy and torn skirts and her brother’s large work boots protruding from beneath her soggy hem.
She remembered then: it hadn’t been a knitting party at all. It was afternoon tea with Mother’s friend’s son. It was another of the faceless young men from good families that Mother kept inviting for her to meet – someone who might take care of the both of them. His family were something in construction, middle-class industrialists like them, but he was in banking. Would this one be any more interesting than the others? They were always a little cold, and distant, superior even, and their favourite subject was usually themselves.
‘Goodness me, Emily!’ Mother exclaimed, as she opened the door, blocking Emily’s path. ‘Your head is much better then?’ Behind her, Daisy bit her lip and pretended to focus on replenishing the teacups. Emily pulled an errant leaf from her hair and straightened her skirt.
‘I always said that the expression “being dragged through a hedge backwards” was custom-made for you.’ Mother’s voice was false, raised with an edge to it that kept up appearances whilst telling Emily she’d be in for it later.
‘Use the back entrance, dear,’ Mother said with a steel and tightness in her tone that only Emily could detect. ‘Smarten up and then you may join us.’
Emily tried to smooth some of her hair back into its chignon, but so much had fallen loose it was hopeless; just like her. What had she been thinking, running off to the farm like that? No wonder Mother was never satisfied with her.
In her bedroom, she made an extra effort to smarten up. She put on a hideously frilly dress that Mother liked best, shook her hair loose and tugged the brush through it again and again until it had the sheen of a sweet chestnut. Then she backcombed and pulled her locks over a pad to create a respectable, curved pompadour. For the finishing touch, she lifted a fuchsia-coloured camellia bloom from the vase on her dresser and tucked it behind her ear.
Downstairs, the man, whose name she couldn’t remember despite Mother having talked about him all week, had left the women to talk and was on the terrace admiring the view.
‘Lovely day,’ he said, as she approached him. He was quite handsome, she supposed. СКАЧАТЬ