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

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       Chapter 2

      The outbuilding stood alone in a corner of Pasture Farm; a crumbling rectangle of red bricks capped with a corrugated-iron roof and a green wooden door with more holes in it than one of Frederick Finch’s moth-eaten old jumpers. It was one in a large number of dilapidated buildings, seemingly positioned at random positions around the nexus of the farm cottage, as if they were seeds from a wind-blown dandelion clock. But despite the building’s basic construction, it looked welcoming, thanks to a soft-orange light emanating from within, visible through the single, tiny, grease-smeared window. In the daytime, it was a place where the Land Girls mended their tools. But in the evenings, it was a place of learning. Iris would go there to meet Frank and he would try to teach her. Their progress was slow and sometimes their nightly meetings would be mocked by the other girls with taunts about Iris meeting her fancy man. But she hoped that the dilapidated rectangular outbuilding would also be a place that would change her life.

      “DeEr MUm”

      The pencil scratched out the words with half a dozen spidery lines. And then the letters started to form again, better this time.

      “Dear MUm”

      Iris was aware that her tongue was sticking out as she painstakingly scrawled the letters on the notepaper that Frank had given her. The large, flat carpenter’s pencil seemed strange in her hand, hurting her fingers as she pressed it on the page. But then she wasn’t used to writing and coordinating the pencil was hard work. It always looked easy when other people did it, but when she tried, she struggled to steer it across the paper. She didn’t realise that she’d made a spelling mistake, but even she could see that the letters were an uneven bag of uppercase and lowercase, written in a size that bore no correlation to whether they were capitals or not, as if it was a ransom note made from glued newspaper letters. But she’d done it, and she felt a small sense of pride welling up in her heart.

      And to cap it all, Frank seemed impressed with Iris’s handwriting. “Not bad, Miss Dawson. Not bad at all.”

      “Did I spell it right?”

      “Near enough.” He cracked a smile, kindly fissures erupting around the corner of his mouth and his eyes. He didn’t want to dampen the enthusiasm in his young trainee, but Iris was smart enough to know when she was being soft-soaped. Frank spotted the slight grimace on her face as she put the pencil down on his workbench.

      “Hey, come on. You’ll get there. That’s two more words than you were writing before.”

      It was true. When she came to Pasture Farm as a member of the Women’s Land Army, Iris Dawson couldn’t read or write a word. She had a sweet nature, which meant she always brought out the maternal and paternal instincts in older people. This was why she also had a good relationship with Freddie Finch, who seemed protective and kind.

      Such was the case with friendly odd-job man, Frank Tucker, who worked on Pasture Farm doing many of the chores that the tenant farmer was too lazy to do. Their friendship had been cemented long before Iris had saved Frank from the gallows. They had struck up a relationship after Frank had spotted Iris’s reading shortfall when she had failed to read a tractor manual. The contraption had very nearly ripped her arm off when she attempted to start the thing. He wasn’t going to let her make such dangerous mistakes on account of the fact that she couldn’t read instructions. So Frank had taken her under his wing, happy for the company, and he had started to teach her to read and write. They had begun with some of the children’s picture books that had belonged to Martin, and now they had graduated onto books with fewer pictures. Iris was currently stumbling her way through Enid Blyton’s Five On A Treasure Island, but it was hard going. She liked the fact that she was reading Martin’s books; turning pages that he had turned, connecting with him, somehow, across time.

      The writing was just as arduous as the reading.

      “Why is it all so difficult?” Iris had complained.

      “Nothing worth doing is easy.” Frank smiled.

      It was Iris’s ambition to be able to write a letter home to her mother. Margot Dawson knew that Iris couldn’t read or write, but she also knew that some kind soul would read out the letters that she sent to her daughter. So Frank had found himself providing a mouthpiece for the missives from home. He related to Iris about how her grandfather’s leg was getting better (‘It doesn’t really play up much now. Mainly when he has to get coal in. Funny that!’). He told her about the gossip caused when a new racy neighbour moved in (‘She only wears crimson. And I don’t want to say she’s fast, but the milkman spent a long time in her house the other day.’) But as well as the light-hearted information, Frank had broken the sad news that her beloved dog, Neville, had died. He’d also told her about how her siblings were getting on, since they’d gone to stay with an aunt outside the city. And in return, Frank would dutifully write replies to Margot Dawson, dictated by Iris. She would search for a word and Frank would painstakingly suggest one. They had spent many an evening hour together with him reading and writing and her learning. Sometimes she would censor her thoughts when dictating. Certainly she wouldn’t mention anything about how she felt about men, in particular Martin. So her letters home were mostly about the mundane matters of farm life; how hard she was working, the blisters she was collecting, the odd mention of a dance or a film she had seen in the village hall. She wouldn’t dictate anything that gave away her troubled, inner thoughts either. They were best locked up until the time came when she could write them down herself. Or when she could go home and talk to her mum face to face.

      She missed home. It was a comforting and familiar two-up, two-down on a terraced street in Northampton. With her dad gone, Iris felt guilty about having to leave her mother on her own while she was doing her duty in the war. But Margot Dawson understood. She was doing her own work towards the war effort too. And she was proud of what Iris was doing in the Women’s Land Army. And if she needed proof, Iris remembered going to see her grandfather after she had enlisted. She would always relish his gappy, proud smile as she showed him her uniform. He reminisced about his own war, the one they called the Great War, and how his own mother had been just as proud when he first turned up in his uniform. Iris couldn’t wait to wear her uniform, so she had put it on almost immediately. The shirt was too big, seemingly made for a woman with arms six feet long. And the trousers needed hemming. As she and her mother had set about pinning up and sewing at her grandfather’s house, her grandfather remarked that there was no time to measure people. They had to just wear what they were given and get out there. But Iris had taken an instant dislike to one part of her uniform. The pullover was itchy and it smelled of mothballs, and despite her mother’s best efforts with the scrubbing brush, the smell had prevailed. Even now, months later, it was Iris’s least-favourite item of kit. When the alterations were finished, and Iris could walk around without treading on the hems of her trousers, the family had thrown a little going-away party for her. A few neighbours and the girl from down the road, whom Iris used to play with, were invited. Everyone drank tea from the best china and ate a sponge cake that her mother had made. And then, with many stoic faces holding back tears, Iris had taken her suitcase and headed off to catch a train to Helmstead, via Birmingham. That had been the last time that Iris had seen her mother and grandfather, and she couldn’t wait until she was given some leave so she could go back home, see them and sleep in her own bed. But that wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ