大象传媒

In their letter the Land Army had given me full instructions for reaching Feldon. I was to take the one-thirty train from Birmingham to Stratford-upon-Avon and then catch the two-thirty Stratford Blue bus to Feldon. But my father, who was a wizard with timetables, looked puzzled.
"You can't do it, 鈥楧o鈥�," he said after a brief consultation with his Bradshaw. "You'd better go on the train before."
It was with some astonishment that I found myself on the verge of tears as I waved goodbye to my parents from the train. Where was the hard-boiled young lady of twenty two I thought was me? Telling myself not to be so feeble I hurriedly drew up the window strap, giving my nose such a smart tap that it bled for the rest of the journey.
In spite of this I enjoyed the bus ride through the autumn countryside and the conductor set me down at Nether Feldon Post Office, the nearest approach to a shop that the village possessed. As there was no sign of the Manor I pushed open the door and ventured into the dark interior.
"Can you tell me the way to the Manor?" I asked, thinking what a good address it sounded.
"First right, up the hill. Through the white gate." The fair young woman behind the counter returned to her conversation with an old man in a greasy black suit. I was to find out later that he was known as 'Spider'.
"Yon's a jammy Scrib," he remarked as I closed the door behind me, and I wondered uneasily whether he was referring to me or to the Land Army hostel.
As I walked along the lane my spirits rose. There was a pungent smell of wet leaves and wood smoke, and up in the tall elms behind the Norman church the rooks and jackdaws were cawing and chattering. Here was I, deep in the heart of Shakespeare's Warwickshire!
Beyond the white gate a drive led down to the Manor House, which was built in grey stone in a pseudo-Gothic style. A path led round to the servants' quarters and, hoping they wouldn't be as cold and uncomfortable as they sounded, I knocked on a door which stood ajar and entered a large stone-flagged kitchen.
"Are you the only one? There should be four of you." A bony middle-aged woman with red hair looked at me accusingly, and I murmured apologetically that I was indeed the only one.
"Never mind, have a cup of tea: I expect the others will be on the next bus. I'm Mrs. Coker, the warden. The girls call me Cokey."
"They must have caught the train the Land Army suggested," I volunteered, and she sighed heavily.
"They never allow enough time for getting across Stratford to the Bus Station. Would you like to see your room?"
With some excitement I followed her up the stairs to a bedroom on the first floor. It contained six beds and I had just noticed that the one pushed across the fireplace was in an ideal position to catch all the draughts from the chimney when she pointed to it.
"That's yours, and there's your uniform done up in the oilskin."
She left me unpacking the bundle of uniform. There was a fawn drill milking coat and dungarees, two aertex shirts, six pairs of thick woollen socks, canvas gaiters as a substitute for gumboots, and the green jersey and khaki breeches which were the walking out uniform of the Land Army. I was disappointed to find the greatcoat was missing, and shuddered as I took out the black boots. Would I ever be able to walk in them?

"There you are!" called Rita suddenly as we reached a farm gateway. "It's just down there. Don't forget to ask the farmer to sign your time-sheet before you go home. Can you find your own way back?"
I nodded and turned down the muddy farm track. Now I was really on my own. I envied the other three new girls who were going out together with another gang from the hostel. What was threshing anyway? I never seemed to have come across it in books about country life, and I hoped I would cope.
A thin man in riding breeches left the sack of corn he was watching at one end of the machine. He was the farm manager.
"You from the hostel? Ever done this before?"
"No. It's my first day."
"Then you'd better look after the chaff. Come round here."
He led me to the side of the machine and picked up a wooden rake. "See that pile of chaff? Don't let it mount up to the machine. Keep raking it into this sheet. See?" With a couple of swift movements he had most of it in the centre. Then he flung the rake aside and stooped to pick up the four corners, slinging the bulging hessian sheet over his shoulder.
"This way." I followed him across the field to a wooden cattle shed which was divided in two. There was obviously some sort of animal on the other side of the partition and I hoped fervently that it wasn't a bull.
鈥淛ust drop it in the corner," he instructed, and a cloud of golden chaff spilled out as he released the bundle.
Is that all?" I asked innocently.
"I think you'll find it'll be enough," he said drily.
I followed him back to the thresher and was amazed to find a mountain of chaff had already piled up. I had just time to spread out the sheet and rake frantically before it touched the underside of the machine. There was a good deal of dust mixed with it, and it all came my way, getting in my mouth, my eyes, my nostrils. Where was my dream of an open-air life?
I watched fascinated while the machine shook out the chaff underneath, poured out the grain into sacks one end, and produced boltings of straw at the other. Beside me a tall youth was raking short pieces of straw known as cavings into another sheet. I didn't realise then how lucky I was, for at many farms one person has to cope with both chaff and cavings. As it was I felt I'd got my work cut out keeping the chaff under control. I picked up the hessian sheet and tossed the bundle over my shoulder, praying I wouldn't drop it. It was quite heavy enough, and very awkward.
It was a relief to get away from the noisy throbbing of the machine and the dust, and I felt refreshed as I shook out the chaff in the shed and walked back. My boots were beginning to make themselves felt, but that was a detail. I was able to watch the two men on the top of the rick pitching sheaves to the bond cutter on the top of the machine. His job was to cut the string round the sheaves while the man beside him fed the loosened corn into the drum with a pitchfork. If he let too much go down at once there would be a groan in the rhythm of the machine.
We were well under way now, with chaff and cavings pouring out. The boltings of straw clicked down steadily to be carried away on pitchforks by two men who were building the straw rick. Every time I came back from the shed there was a positive Everest of chaff waiting to be flattened. It was warm work and chaff spilled down the neck of my shirt every time I flung the bundle over my shoulder. It clung to my hair and I realised now why most of the girls from the hostel had been wearing headscarves turban-wise when they set off for work.
I glanced at my watch. Only ten o'clock! Sweat was running down my face and I could taste the dust on my tongue. I began to understand Edna's tirade in the bedroom last night. What sort of farmer would grudge workers a drink on a job like this?
Mercifully, the thresher began to slow down. It wasn't just that the noise was decreasing, the cogs and wheels were slackening speed too. The only snag was that while everything else had stopped the chaff continued belching out. I was still raking when the manager came up.
"You can leave that now," he said. "If you go up to the farm my wife'll give you a drink. We have ten minutes' break.鈥�

"Where" asked Gwen, "are we going rabbiting?" We looked at her in dismay. All morning the four of us had been busy muck-spreading. Our fruity forkfuls were surprisingly heavy, and difficult to throw very far. At eleven o'clock the farmer had driven up to see how we were getting on, kindly bringing with him a large billycan of tea, and again at lunchtime. This was the cause of our problem.
We鈥檇 just eaten our cheese sandwiches and drunk our tea. Muck-spreading had given us a good appetite, despite the stench, and now we were looking round for a haystack to disappear behind, or a thicket from which we could nonchalantly emerge. A farm worker seeing a crowd of land-girls trooping back from the far end of the field after lunch had once asked, 鈥淵ou girls been rabbiting?鈥�

As Christmas Day fell early the next week, most of us spent the week-end at the hostel. There was a much better atmosphere after the party, as though the communal effort had 'made us jell. A request came in late Friday night for four girls to go threshing at Marsden on the Saturday. We all groaned, but as few were going home for the week-end we didn't much mind having to work. The afternoon would be paid for as overtime. Our weekly wage was twenty-two shillings and sixpence when board and lodging had been deducted, for a working week of forty-eight hours in the winter, and the extra money would be useful.
It was settled that Gwen, Rita, Freda and I should go. The farm was in Marsden village, and as we passed the farm where I had done my first day's work on the land I reflected how differently I felt from that day only two months ago.
When we arrived they were already threshing beans at a smart pace, to I avoid finishing off on Sunday. Thistledown blew about and clung to the pieces of hair which escaped from our turbans. The farmer was a small stocky I man who stumped about in baggy breeches, swearing at everybody. However, in spite of all the bad language, there was an enormous jug of cocoa at break, and we swapped jobs promising ourselves a visit to the Post Office and General Store across the road at lunch-time.
This made a welcome change from sitting around under hedges and in barns, and we started again refreshed by this brush with the world commerce. I was unricking and had a good view of the main road, which was a pleasant change from working at the back of beyond.
The swearing continued, but at three o'clock a large jug of tea was set out to us. When our official knocking-off time came at five-thirty there was still some of the rick left to thresh, and we hoped we wouldn't be expected to stay until it was finished. However, the farmer signed our timesheets and let us go. As we were cycling out of the farmyard he called us back, but we pretended not to hear him.
"He wants us to work over after all," said Gwen. "Put your skates on girls!"
Freda as the novice cyclist was the last through the gate, and the farmer caught up with her. "Here, take this over to the Post Office,鈥� he said roughly, handing her a note written on the inside of a cigarette packet. In the road outside we crowded round her and read, "Pay bearers five shillings each" Five shillings! It was almost a quarter of our weekly take-home pay. Bubbling with delight we went to cash the most unusual cheque we were ever to receive.

One morning I had just collected the post from the box by the main road when I saw a small woman approaching on an enormous hunter. She was in full riding habit and drew rein when she saw me.
"Is that you, Abbott?" she called.
I was a little startled at this mode of address and gazed upwards with a yokelish stare.
"I'm your Land Army representative. Do you want to see me about anything?" .
"Only about my gumboots," I replied. "I still haven't had them."
"You're not a milker, are you?"
"No," I said, "but I get some wet jobs."
"They're only being issued to milkers at present," she said, "but I'll see what I can do for you. What's your number, Abbott?"
"104076", I said, feeling like Convict 99.
She noted this down and as an afterthought added, "I hope you're not getting too much housework."
I smiled inwardly. I would hardly have had time to fit in any housework, and I didn't see Mrs. Seal wanting to let me loose in her immaculate cottage.
"Oh no. I don't have time, anyway." She looked at me a little doubtfully and rode off. I was left wondering how, if I had had any personal problems, I would have managed to confide them to her at a height of sixteen hands!

While I was still on the farm, two years later in February 1945, the ritual murder on Meon Hill hit the headlines of the national press, and was the talk of the district for miles around. Joe was full of it when I met him in the village. "Old fellow from over Quinton way's been moidered. Had a pitchfork stuck through his throat into the ground."
"Go on."
"Ah, and a cross had bin slashed on his ribs with one o' them bill-hooks. He were found on his back under a willow tree. Folk says 'twas a witchcraft murder!"
"Are the police on to it?"
"Ah. But folks aren't telling them nothing. They knows, but they're not telling them chaps from London."
Although Fabian of the Yard visited Lower Quinton every year until his retirement in the hope of finding further evidence, he found people as wary and unhelpful as at first. There were several indications that this murder was connected with Black Magic. Fabian himself saw a farmhand chasing a black dog down Meon Hill but when he questioned the man afterwards, he went pale and denied there had been any dog. A few days later a black dog was found hanged on Meon Hill and a black dog was supposed to have been the dead man's 'familiar'. The murder had occurred on February 14th which was not only St. Valentine's Day but an important date in the Druidic calendar. It was never solved.

Now that the season of mists was upon us I began to feel like a recluse myself. Although the working day was shorter, there was not such a variety of jobs, and the chill grey afternoons seemed to wear on endlessly as I creosoted fowl pens and greasebanded fruit trees. I was not alone in contracting this seasonal melancholia which afflicted landgirls, for one day I met one who lived in at a farm. The last time I had seen her she had been on top of the world; now she said "I've applied for a transfer to a biggger farm. There are times here when I could just howl from loneliness and boredom"

Soon after that, the Boss came home from Birmingham and threw the evening paper down in front of me.
"There's been a real row over the Demob, terms for the Land Army," he announced. "Lady Denman, the director, has resigned in protest, and over two hundred M.P.s are taking up the case."
It was true, a grant of 拢170,000 to the W.L.A. Benevolent Fund and the retention of one shirt, her shoes and her greatcoat did not seem much to cushion a landgirl's return to civilian life. The Women's Forces and Civil Defence workers were being given gratuities, but this was perhaps only symptomatic of the treatment the agricultural worker has always been accorded. For all that, there were few landgirls who would have preferred any other sort of service, and public sympathy did much to alleviate what was felt by many people to have been an injustice.
I had been in the district for over three years now, and VE and VJ Days had come and gone. Men were being demobilised and drifting back to 'Civvy Street'. It was time for me to leave the land and exchange buckets for books.
I went around saying goodbyes to my friends. They were such real people, and in leaving them I was also saying goodbye to a vanishing way of life, for the days of the small farm were numbered.
Some relatives had recently bought a farm in North Devon, and I thought it would be rather fun to retain a stake in agriculture by investing in a cow which they would look after for me.
Returning from Switzerland one summer, a facetious Customs Officer looked at my list of items to declare.
"One Cowbell! Have you got a cow?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," I said.

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