CHAPTER VI

THE FARMHOUSE MEAL

"Thank God and the Land Army for my good dinner; Amen."--GRACE (revised).

Dinner! At the word there invaded me an extraordinary feeling, to which I'd been a stranger for months in town. What was it?--hunger, ravenous and primitive--fervently I hoped that this summons meant dinner for everybody!

I glanced at my filthy forearms and hands. Remembering my "blunder" about the bedrooms in camp, I did not look for anybody to tell me where the bathroom was.

I made for the pump in the yard. And then, as I dried my arms and face as well as I could on a comparatively clean piece of my smock, I heard a good-natured Cockney voice behind me say:

"Oh, look at Celery Face sluicing herself in a young cataract!"

Turning, I found big Vic coming up with Elizabeth. My chum's small face was redder than I had ever seen it. It wore an "in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound" expression, and her uniform (though not filthy like mine) was no longer the immaculate fancy dress that it had seemed on the road to work.

Vic grinned.

"This little 'un is going to shape fine, only for breaking her back nearly," she told me. "How've you been getting on, young Joan? Let's have a look at your shed. Yes, that's the style. This 'ere job will be part of your cowman's test, you know. Cleaning out shed, maximum 10 marks. Seventy-five per cent. marks you've got to get in the tests before you pass out of here and get a swanky post somewhere, and be a credit to your instructress, don't you forget it!"

I couldn't help laughing as we followed her up to the farmhouse.

"Instructress, indeed!" I exclaimed. "I was expecting some 'instruction,' and you never came! You never even showed me how to hold the spade."

Vic flashed upon me her most teasing grin.

"I did come," she said with a nod. "Only you weren't wanting any 'instruction,' I noticed, from little Me. Went away again, I did--hooked it. You were all right. Never even saw me. You and your landowner!"

Before I could ask what Vic meant by "my landowner" we were all in the big front kitchen, with its dresser, its tridarn (or three-decker oaken chest), its grandfather clock, and its long table set for seven.

This was the first time Elizabeth or I had sat down to dinner in a kitchen. Much we should have cared had it been in the scullery, the barn, or the hen-house! There is no appetite like that which comes from physical toil!

Glorious greed was a delicious sauce--if any sauce had been needed--to the plentiful and savoury farm-house meal that was provided for us of boiled bacon, potatoes, greens, butter, bread, buttermilk, fruit tart, and cheese.

At the risk of writing myself down a glutton--or of reading like an advertisement for somebody's cocoa--I must dwell on the taste of that loaf, that butter, those other wholesome and delicious things with their suggestion of building healthy bodies and reddening rosy cheeks--the food with which England should be fed.

"Everything home-grown!" we were smilingly told by Mrs. Price, the farmer's wife, who took one end of the table, while her husband carved at the other. Their own dining-room in the front of the house was exquisite with old oak and the silver pots of two generations of agricultural prize-winners; but they elected to share their Land Girls' kitchen dinner because it seemed more hospitable and homely.

"There's nothing here that hasn't come off the farm," Mrs. Price added. "Those black currants in the tart are my last year's bottling, of course. But they were straight out of the garden here. I expect you find it dreadfully countrified fare after London--those of you that come from there."

* * * * * * *

Elizabeth and I here spared a moment from revelling in our second helpings of those home-grown vegetables, so efficiently cooked, to look up and laugh. What we were both thinking of was our last, farewell, midday meal in town.

It had consisted of:

(1) Hors d'œuvre, highly vinegary and suspect--tasting of nothing on earth.

(2) A morsel of sole that had distinctly not come "straight" out of the sea, and tasting of the fact.

(3) Escaloppes de veau with tomato sauce. I don't know what they tasted of, though they cost us a meat-ticket; they smelt, too, forbiddingly of the substitute fat in which they'd been fried.

(4) A small greyish roll, tasting of sawdust.

(5) One half peach, tasting of tin.

(6) Black coffee, tasting of dish-cloth, with a virulently green liqueur that we hoped might drown the tastes of the other courses, and a cheap cigarette.

England's lunch!

* * * * * * *

Certainly life was a succession of contrasts. From the dark fugginess of that crowded little Italian restaurant--which I'd loved because Harry "discovered" it--to this spotless Welsh kitchen where the kindly farm people "mothered" the five girls in farm-kit--Vic, Elizabeth, myself and the other two more advanced pupils. One of these was "Sybil," who had played the piano at the Hut last night, and who took her dip in the pool before going to work; the other was a bright-looking girl they called "Curley," though her hair was the straightest imaginable.

That gentle giant, Mr. Price, had a word for each as he carved.

"I like to know something about all you young ladies who've come down here to work," he said to me. "A lot we've had down here since the start. Twenty, I think, coming and going; splendid girls--good little workers, all. And some were one thing and some another. From South Wales the two last were who were here; fathers in the collieries. Then there's Curley," he nodded at her, "all her people in works, Birmingham. And Sybil here," with another nod, "from Buckinghamshire, never been away from home before without a maid, she told my wife. Father a general. May I ask if your father was in the Army too, perhaps?"

"No; my father wasn't in anything particular," I said. "He used to do a little bit of farming himself."

A gleam of interest lighted up the giant's blue eyes.

"Dear me! Farmed himself, did he? How big a farm, missy?" he asked.

"Oh, not big at all. Nor at all successful!" I told him ruefully. "I'm afraid he just lost money over it about seven years ago."

More interest from this other, prosperous-looking farmer.

"Farming," he told me gravely, "was no life for a man in this country until just lately. An existence, that was all. All the food we ought to have grown came in from over the sea. Agriculture, before the war, was simply hand to mouth, hand to mouth." He looked at his wife and added: "If it hadn't been for pedigree poultry and shire horses the farmers would have starved."

His wife nodded across the table; she was the sort of small, dainty little woman that you would expect that great-framed man to choose; her thick hair was prematurely grey, and her well-cut and tiny features, though composed, seemed as if they had looked on struggles in her time.

Then came something that, though it was only talk at a farmhouse table, was significant. It made me think. This new problem of my life on the land was full of old problems to others. Across that liberally-spread board that farmer's wife launched an astonishing remark.

"We nearly starved," she said, "when we were children in my father's time. One New Year he made up his accounts and he was down a thousand pounds. The next year again he was down a thousand. And the third year again he had lost another thousand. That January, I remember, he did not speak for a week."

Her soft voice shook. The faces of the Land Girls were all turned towards her, listening, surprised.

"Then," continued Mrs. Price, "he came into our nursery and said, 'Children, I'm broke. The dear old home will have to go.'"

Here the Land Girl Sybil put in gently:

"But you told me your brother had that farm now. So you didn't have to leave, Mrs. Price?"

"No! Because of my father fighting for it. He borrowed money at very high interest and went in for shire horses. In ten years he was just feeling his feet again. It was twenty years before he paid off everything. That was a struggle. Those were the hard times for farmers. It makes me feel bitter now, girls, when they say farmers are 'grasping,' and 'make money hand over fist,' just because the tide has turned at last, and farming isn't the terribly losing game it was!"

"Well, it'll never be so again, I hope," her husband assured her. Then he beamed about the table and added: "Not with all these young ladies here turning out to help like this! And that one," nodding at me, "a farmer's daughter herself! Where is your father living now, then?"

I told him the name of the village on the borderline between England and Wales.

"Not so far from here, then. Fifty miles off, perhaps. They'll be able to come down and see how you are getting on."

But here Vic broke in mischievously over her bread and cheese.

"Don't you worry, Mr. Price. She isn't going to bust herself with any homesickness. She don't want any more people. She's got off with a young man of her own down here already."

Here Elizabeth must needs turn her head sharply, to glance at me with an inquiry full of rebuke; uttering it aloud as well. "What young man?"

I took no notice of her. I looked at the others; the others who did not think (as she did) that I was far too fond of the whole Repulsive Sex.

"There was no young man--I mean, not in that sort of way at all--Vic's talking nonsense to tease me!" I assured the party, definitely.

"It was simply that Captain Holiday--whoever he is, he seems to think he can go anywhere and do anything--came into the shed where I was working and gave me a few tips about my work."

"Ah, Captain Holiday. Yes. It was him you were asking about, Vic," said Mr. Price, his blue eyes interested again. "Yes, he's our landlord here now that poor old Mr. Holiday's gone. Most of the property about belongs to him. The hospital, and your camp, and this farm, and all. A great interest he takes in all of it. All over it he was this morning. So he went and showed this young lady how to set about her job? Very obliging of him."

Vic again retorted teasingly.

"Oh, I don't know so much! I haven't noticed that young men are so nice and 'obliging' over helping girls with their jobs without they're interested in the girls themselves!"

I really failed to see why every one of the other girls should seem to take such a vivid interest in this argument--particularly Elizabeth, who ought to have known better!

Quite nettled, I put in quickly:

"Personally I shouldn't call this Captain Holiday a very 'obliging' young man." I was thinking of the way in which he'd trundled that wheelbarrow back with its noisome load, instead of emptying it for me, and I concluded, "Rather annoying, I should call him."

Then I was sorry I'd said that. Mr. Price, who had unfolded his long legs from under the table and was rising to his feet at the end of the meal, looked grave and gave me a quick glance.

"Indeed?" he said seriously. "I am sorry to hear it. I can't have anything like that, landlord or no landlord. If Captain Holiday was annoying one of my workers, I shall have to tell him----"

"Oh, please don't," I put in hastily. "I didn't mean that kind of 'annoying' at all. I only meant I was rather annoyed that any one should see I was such a raw beginner at my job. That was all."

In common fairness to the young man I felt I had to speak up for him to that extent. On returning to my cow-house I forgot all about him, forgot even that it was he who'd saved me from half the difficulty of my task. It was not all drudgery, when one found out the best and quickest way of doing what was so new to me--manual work.

Thankful enough was I, though, to knock off!

But on the way home Elizabeth brought up Captain Holiday again.

"Joan," she began, "what do you think of that young man?"