Read Land Girls for Free Online

confusion of the ginger wine was draining away. The compulsion to confess the matter of her name had come so powerfully upon her: now, having done it, she wondered why.
    ‘I think that’s wonderful ,’ said Stella. ‘Agapanthus! You could be famous with a name like that.’
    ‘Wouldn’t be bad for a salon, to my mind,’ said Prue. ‘Have you ever told anyone before?’
    ‘Just one friend at Cambridge. Desmond.’
    ‘And here you are telling us the first night we meet? I’d say we’re flattered, aren’t we, Stella? Any trouble, and I’ll be shouting it from the haystacks. “Agapanthus!” I’ll shout!’
    They all laughed.
    Ag got into bed, sat with arms round raised knees. The feeling of the first night at a new school was overwhelming: on the one hand it was all so familiar, on the other there was the strangeness of being grown up in what felt like a child’s world.
    ‘I don’t know what came over me. I just felt I had to tell you. Good night.’
    At school, they always bade each other good night, no matter how sleepy. She lay down and in a practised way shuffled about until she found comfort in the unyielding mattress. In a moment she was asleep.
    Prue, in her bed, tossed about in search of softness: she doubted she’d ever get used to a mattress like this. Still, the ginger wine had cheered her, and she had to admit there was something intriguing about Ag’s confession. The tears her mother had warned her she would probably shed on her first night did not come. She, too, was quickly asleep.
    Stella reached for Philip’s photograph on her chair, as soon as she judged the others would not hear. Terribly awake, she kissed his face in the dark. She replaced it, but could not sleep. After a while – it was too dark to see her watch, and Ag’s clock was too far away – she slipped out of bed and crept to the nearest window. There was a full moon. It shone hazily through dark clouds, fraying their edges. She looked down into the farmyard: looming black sides of barns and sheds, a huge pile of dung whose acrid smell just reached her. The night was so ominously quiet she feared bombs. Fighter planes often zoomed out of the deepest silence. What would they do in a raid? Mrs Lawrence had said nothing about a shelter …
    Stella saw a man ride into the yard on a bicycle. He braked with a rather dashing little turn; had anyone been watching, she’d have thought he was showing off. He dismounted, pushed the bike into the barn. She could see he was tall, large. When he came out of the barn he paused, looked up at the moon, scratched his head. Now Stella could see he wore enormous muddy boots. Instead of moving towards the house, he turned back to the barn, leaned heavily against it, face to its wall. He protected his forehead with a bent arm, shoulders hunched. For a long while he did not move – two or three minutes, Stella thought it must have been.
    She could be imagining it – he was a long way off – but his position struck her as one of despair. Eventually he moved, drew himself upright and took long mournful strides back the way he had come, towards the gate. Cold now, Stella returned to her bed. She picked up the photograph of Philip again, and clasped it in her arms. Under the bedclothes she kissed his icy glass face, and swore to love him till she died.

Chapter 2
     
     
    W hen the wind was in the right direction, the church bells at Hinton Half Moon could be heard at Hallows Farm. The hamlet was no more than a straggle of stone cottages, one of which had been converted into a small sub-post office. It offered little in the way of provisions: Bird’s custard, Horlicks, Bovril, a few pads of Basildon Bond, soggy from their long shelf-life. These basic provisions were sometimes enhanced by a few luxuries which appeared according to the mood of Mrs Tyler, who ran the shop. On a good day, she would be up early, baking, and set a few brown loaves on a sheet of greaseproof paper in the cloudy front