The Land Girls Read online

  Lily hoped the next letter from Susan might mention how delicious it was. She didn’t know when that might arrive though. Susan’s letters had been sporadic since she’d been away in the Middle East. Sometimes there was nothing for two months and then three letters all on one day. She’d been sure to write to Susan about her wedding. Had she received the news yet? Would she be excited and proud of her younger sister?

  Lily was still surprised to see the wedding band on her finger. It felt unfamiliar and strange, as did calling herself Mrs David Hogarth.

  Her mother had tried to convince her to leave the ring at Buxton Street.

  ‘You don’t know who those other girls are. It might not be safe. I know it’s not much of a wedding ring but if it truly means that much to you, for goodness sake leave it behind here for safekeeping.’

  She would grow used to it. She hoped she would have the chance to become familiar with being a wife as well. She had tried to imagine when that might be and what married life with David might be like, but it was unimaginable. She and David had shared a bed but never a house. Was he the kind of man who left his socks on the rug when he undressed? Would he hang his suits at night or leave them for her? Did he prefer eggs or porridge for breakfast or nothing at all? And where would they live? She blinked away all those thoughts of the future. The only certainty they had was their marriage, her ring, and the letters they had promised to write to each other for as long as he was away. David had already written to Lily from Mildura, where he was training. All she knew was that he was safe for now. He loved flying—his favourite was the Spitfire—and he’d told her how pretty the River Murray looked from high up in the clouds, edged by vines and fruit blocks and orange groves.

  It sounded picturesque—and safe —but Lily knew that David wouldn’t stay safe there forever. As much as she’d been able, she had prepared herself for the reality that it might be years until she saw him again. Their life together hinged on a bullet or a bomb or a mortar missing him, over and over and over. It was predicated on his plane staying in the air, on him landing safely, on his equipment not failing, on other people saving him if he was injured. So many variables that neither of them could control.

  She had vowed to keep the home fires burning in her heart for him, and her home for now was Norton Summit. It would take another three weeks before the Playfords’ orchard would be stripped of all the different varieties of cherries.

  That meant more picking.

  Lily blew out a breath to distract a fly from landing on her lip. Her basket was full once again and she trekked up to the top of the hill to empty the fruit into one of the wooden cases. The way down was always easier and when she reached the spot she’d left, ready to finish the tree, she saw that Kit had got there first.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ The ladder they called King Dick was still flat on the grass in between the trees. Lily was still scared of it. It was twenty-five feet long and she feared if it wasn’t positioned properly on hard ground it would topple over, leaving her dangling in midair from boughs that could snap in the wind. Kit had clearly decided she didn’t need it at all. She’d unfastened the bucket from her waist and hung it on a strong bough, and had climbed right up the tree where they had just picked from the lower branches. It must have been more than thirty feet tall but Kit didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

  ‘Looking for bananas,’ Kit laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been climbing trees with my brothers since I was a wee thing. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘But you might fall,’ Lily exclaimed.

  ‘Then you’d better get ready to catch me, hadn’t you?’ Something bounced on her head. Its soft plop made her laugh and she propped her hands on her hips. She reached for a cherry, tugged it free and then threw it up the tree at Kit.

  ‘Missed!’ Kit called back and Lily breathed in the orchard and the earth and the blue sky and her freedom.

  Chapter Sixteen

  That night, after a dinner of meatloaf and salad, Lily politely declined the offer of a game of cards downstairs in the sitting room of the old stone house. She left some of the other girls listening intently to 5CL for the latest news from the war, and wearily took the steps upstairs.

  She wanted to go to bed so she could be alone and dream about David.

  There wasn’t really any privacy on the orchard. She missed the quiet solitude of her room at Buxton Street. She was with all the other girls all day, from their early breakfast in the kitchen downstairs to dinner at night and picking every hour in between. The Land Army matron who’d been assigned to cook and look after them, Mrs Holland, hovered in a motherly fashion whenever they weren’t busy. They shared a bathroom that thankfully had running water, a dining table of a trestle with folding chairs all around it, a living room featuring four worn tapestry sofas, a ping-pong table and a wireless, and they all shared bedrooms upstairs, which were situated on either side of a long and wide hallway running the length of the building.

  Lily lay between her crisp sheets, staring out her window to the night sky. The gully breeze cooled her bare shoulders and she shivered a little. While the war was still raging in theatres unknown and far away, she would work. She’d promised herself that. For every day that David was away, she would toil and labour and remember that wherever he was, and wherever Susan was, she was better off by a country mile. Lily could do more than sew and host functions like her mother, or make pretty gowns for events she didn’t want to attend. She wanted to make a difference. She would do her bit alongside the shopgirls and the secretaries and the hairdressers because no matter the differences in their manner of speaking, their social skills or their background, death, if it came, would touch them all just the same.

  The next day when the girls trooped in from the orchard in the evening, Mrs Holland met them at the front door with a cheering smile.

  ‘I have good news for you all.’

  ‘Are there letters?’ Edith called out eagerly, pushing her way to the front of the crowd.

  ‘Please tell us there are letters,’ Bernice begged.

  ‘Yes, there are letters. The post—’

  Mrs Holland’s announcement was drowned out by whoops and cheers, which echoed through the cherry trees and down the valley and back to them. She held up a hand to quieten her girls, which took a moment or two. ‘The post arrived today and there are some parcels too. I dare say Father Christmas has come late for some of you. Perhaps he couldn’t find his way up and down all these winding roads through Norton Summit, hey? Anyway, dinner’s ready. Tonight it’s lamb chops and veg, and we have some fresh bread, too. Clean up and I’ll see you at the dining table.’

  There had been no discussion about it, but a collective consensus had developed among them that their mail always waited until after dinner. Perhaps it had been Mrs Holland’s idea, Lily wasn’t sure, but they’d slipped into that routine as easily as they might have put on a pair of slippers back home in their old lives. They always came in from the orchard starving hungry, and letters needed to be read slowly and repeatedly in a considered fashion. This was especially important if there were words of love handwritten on the pages. Who would want to rush through such a missive?

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Holland,’ Lily said as she filed past. ‘That sounds just delicious.’

  ‘Hard work means a big appetite, Lilian,’ Mrs Holland winked. ‘There’s plenty of food.’

  The young women formed a line and went inside, chatting as they waited impatiently in line at the bathroom door to wash up for dinner. Some were trying to guess how many letters had arrived, others were silent. Lily expected some were wary of receiving any news, and she could understand that. No news was good news, as people said. Some of the other girls in the house hadn’t received any letters at all in all the weeks Lily had been there at the orchard. She wondered if they didn’t have family or weren’t close.

  Lily fought hard not to feel like an outsider. The other girls were from a different world, she had realised. One of them had left
a job as a cleaner in a factory to join the Land Army. One had been a hairdresser. Another had been the lift operator in David Jones on Rundle Street. Lily had looked closely at Mavis, trying to remember if she’d ever noticed her announcing ‘first floor, Ladies Wear’ during any of the hundreds of times she’d visited the store with her mother. Two of the girls had worked in houses just near Buxton Street. Waiting in line for the bathroom the first week after she arrived, Lily had overheard them talking about the families they’d worked for. Lily’s ears had pricked up: she knew both.

  ‘I’m earning three times as much here picking cherries as I was working in that house,’ Noelene told Annette.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Annette had replied with a huff. ‘Ten shillings a week to fetch and clean the house from top to bottom and polish shoes and wash dishes and everything else. Cup of tea, miss? Like the paper, miss? Hem needs stitching? I don’t have none of that any more. Here? Thirty shillings a week and no one to tell me what to do all the livelong day. And there’s sunshine and fresh air. I know where I’d rather be.’

  Lily had thought of Davina and turned away.

  The post didn’t come quicker for her than it did for the other girls because of who she was. She waited in the queue for the bathroom, just as everyone else did. Here, they were all in the same boat.

  ‘Who are you expecting a letter from?’ Lily looked over her shoulder and asked the question of Nora, a curvaceous girl with a button nose and a wide smile.

  ‘My mum and dad,’ Nora replied happily. ‘They’re up in Gawler. They’ve got a drapers shop but my three other sisters work behind the counter so they didn’t stir up too much fuss when I told them I wanted to join the Land Army. And I wish I could say I was waiting on letters from a sweetheart but no such luck.’

  ‘You? No boy who’s crazy about you? I can hardly believe that,’ Lily said.

  Nora laughed. ‘I expect when all the boys come home they’ll be desperate for some good old Aussie girls, don’t you reckon? I’ll have the pick of the crop.’

  Lily joined in with Nora’s laughter, her hands in the pockets of her overalls, her fingers crossed for luck. What news was waiting upstairs for her?

  ‘And what about you, Lily?’

  ‘You mean my letters?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh. I would love to hear from my sister, Susan. She’s in Egypt.’

  Nora gasped. ‘What’s she doing there? Is she a nurse or something?’

  Lily cleared her throat nervously. ‘She’s a doctor, actually.’

  ‘A lady doctor? I’ve heard of those but I’ve never met one. My doctor went off to the war too and now we’ve got some old coot who should have retired before the first war.’

  And before Lily could explain about her family and about David, Nora had nudged the girl on her other side and Lily heard the words ‘lady doctor’ and they both glanced over their shoulders at her, looking her over.

  Lily looked away. Perhaps they weren’t all in the same boat after all.

  Later, with clean hands and faces, the young women gathered around the dining table downstairs and Mrs Holland served dinner. There was chatter all around her, but Lily didn’t feel in the mood to say much of anything that evening. She ate her lamb chops in silence, declining the offer of more mashed potatoes, suddenly feeling more tired than she’d ever been. She watched the other girls and played a guessing game. Who would get letters? And how many would bring bad news?

  When dinner was done, Lily went upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, good-naturedly racing Edith, Kit and Bernice to the top of the landing and the door of their room.

  They all ran to their beds and on hers Lily found a pile of mail. She clutched at it, tugged the string away and dropped the letters on her blanket. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six letters! She scanned the array. When she saw her name in David’s handwriting, her heart leapt in her chest and she had to blink back the happy tears.

  Mrs David Hogarth.

  She smiled at the surprise she still felt at thinking of herself as his wife. Lily slipped off her shoes and climbed up on her bed, making herself comfortable with her back pressed against the cool stone wall. Her mother had forwarded on a Christmas card from Clara, her acquaintance from Miss Ward’s, which was rather sweet. Lily set it on the windowsill by her bed. Her mother had written twice, dated just a few days apart. Lily stilled. She checked the post marks and opened the oldest one first. She tried not to scan ahead, tried to calm herself for any news.

  ‘We’ve received a letter from Susan, dated late November but it only arrived here today, in which she wrote of seeing the pyramids and a Bedouin camp, of all things. She says she is well and very much looks forward to our letters so, Lily, you must write to her again. I’ve almost forgotten to say that Susan was thrilled to receive the cake you made. She says it arrived safe and well but sadly didn’t last very long. It’s hot, apparently, but she is still finding time for some entertainments among all the hard work.’

  Lily began to daydream. What did a Bedouin camp look like?

  ‘Oh my,’ Edith exclaimed from across the room. She giggled behind her hand and then burst into laughter. ‘Listen to this, girls. It’s a letter from my Ernie. Or should I say, Lance Corporal Ernest Harmon, AIF.’ A proud smile lit up her face. ‘He says he saw a monkey!’ She bit her lower lip as she read on, her eyes squinting at the pages. ‘He’s in Malaya somewhere, I think. He says here that it came out of the jungle and took some food from his hand. How’s that?’

  Kit rolled over on her stomach and propped her chin in her hands. ‘How long’s he been away, Edith?’

  ‘Ern’s been away since February 1940. He was in the Middle East first and then he came back to Darwin and now he’s in Malaya.’ Edith’s bottom lip quivered and she bit it. ‘Wherever he is, it’s too far away. Honestly, it feels like forever.’

  ‘That’s almost three years, Edith. I’m not surprised it feels like forever.’

  Edith wiped her eyes. ‘Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten what he looks like.’

  ‘Wait, let me guess. Tall, dark and handsome?’ Kit suggested.

  ‘He’s short, blond and handsome and that’ll do me,’ Edith replied. ‘What about you, Kit? Do you know anyone who’s abroad? A young man or two?’

  Kit frowned playfully. ‘No. And with all the blokes away, my chances have gone from Buckley’s to none, don’t you reckon?’

  Edith looked across the room at Lily. ‘What about you, Lily?’

  ‘Me?’ Kit, Edith and Bernice were all looking at her, waiting for a reply.

  ‘We know you’re married,’ Kit said. ‘It’s not half obvious the way you play with the ring all day and night. What’s his name then?’

  ‘His name is David. Hogarth. I’m Mrs David Hogarth.’ Lily’s cheeks were suddenly hot. She pressed her cool hands to her face.

  ‘Well, well, well. Mrs David Hogarth,’ Kit said.

  Lily had the distinct feeling Kit was mimicking her voice, her diction, her North Adelaide accent. Her cheeks flushed even deeper.

  ‘Tell us all about him,’ Bernice called out. ‘Is he tall?’

  ‘As tall as me?’ Kit laughed.

  That made Lily smile. ‘He’s quite tall. A head more than me.’

  ‘And is he a looker?’

  ‘Yes, he is quite. He’s very handsome.’

  ‘Which service, Lily?’

  ‘The air force. He’s in Mildura at the moment, training.’

  ‘How long you been hitched?’ Bernice asked.

  ‘Did you have a honeymoon? I hear Victor Harbor is where all the fancy young couples go these days.’

  Lily’s throat tightened. She missed him so much she wanted to cry.

  ‘David and I married just before Christmas. It was in the paper. Would you like to see?’

  Kit, Bernice and Edith scurried to Lily’s bed. She leant down and pulled out her suitcase from underneath her bed, reaching for her notebook. She flipped it open and the girls cro
wded around. Lily pointed to the classified ad pressed between the pages.

  There was silence as the girls read it.

  ‘You’re from North Adelaide?’ Kit asked, propping her hands on her hips.

  ‘Yes.’ Lily’s heart cracked. She wanted nothing more than to be one of them, just like any other Land Army girl.

  ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing with us in the Land Army? Places I’ve been, girls like you don’t do work like this.’

  Lily heard the challenge in Kit’s tone. ‘My husband’s serving so I’m doing my bit too. Isn’t that why you enlisted, Edith? Because of Ern?’

  Edith glanced at Kit and Bernice. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m no different. I get the same wages as you do. I’m trying to work just as hard. David will be abroad soon and I’d much rather be up here being useful, doing something, than being home and …’ Lily struggled to find the right words. ‘Than being home and waiting.’

  Edith’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘I understand, Lily.’

  ‘And my sister is serving too.’

  ‘In the AWAS?’

  ‘No. She’s a doctor. She’s in the Army Medical Corp in Egypt at an army hospital.’

  Edith’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. ‘Cheers to her, Lily. She’ll be patching up our boys and we should thank her for it.’

  ‘I’ll pass that on. I’m going to write to her tonight.’

  ‘Good for you, Lil,’ Kit said as she walked back to her own bed. Edith and Bernice followed.

  Lily picked up David’s letter. She held it to her mouth, pressing her lips against it, inhaling deep to see if it smelled like him. There was nothing. She carefully tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter.

  Four pages.

  My dearest Lily,