was a tweed flat cap.
“Do you not have a mirror in your house, Reverend?” Finch joked. This was Finch’s pressing appointment, the reason he couldn’t help the girls in the fields. He was teaching Henry the fine art of hunting.
“If we could just get on, Mr Finch,” Henry replied. “I’ve got a christening in an hour and a half.” He didn’t see what was so funny in his appearance and he felt that Finch’s laughter was further emasculating him after Connie’s mockery. He just wanted to catch a rabbit and prove Connie wrong. That would show her once and for all.
“Now, where are the guns?” Henry asked, keen to move things along.
“Guns? You don’t need a gun to catch a rabbit.”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, you could, but it wouldn’t leave much of it for your pot,” Finch explained. “No, we use traps for those little fellas. Here’s your weapon.”
And Finch delved into the pocket of his ample cardigan and produced a ball of twine. He placed it in the soft hands of Henry Jameson.
“String?” Henry asked in confusion.
Finch tapped his nose in a you’ll-see kind of way. Then he rubbed the back of his neck – mild concern filtering into his chubby features.
“You might have to delay that christening,” he said. “Can’t see how we’re going to do all this in an hour and a half. I bet it’ll take that long for you to learn the knot.”
“This is the first lesson. That’s all,” Henry said, regaining his enthusiasm. “As long as I can catch my own rabbit, eventually, and prove Connie wrong, I don’t care how long it takes.”
Finch exhaled. “All right. First thing is to tie a slip knot on the end of that twine.”
“A slip knot?” Henry hesitated.
“Let me show you,” Finch said, taking the ball of twine. This was going to take a long time.
A big blue bottle flitted annoyingly around Connie’s nose. She batted it away with a muddy hand. Connie and Joyce were digging manure. It was one of their least-favourite jobs – but at least they were back on Pasture Farm. Their secondment had come to an abrupt end after the train crash. The track needed repairs and it would take over a week to fix them. And without the track, there was no way to get to Brinford Farm, other than in Finch’s tractor and trailer. But he didn’t have sufficient petrol rations to take the girls every day and bring them back. So the arrangement was curtailed. The girls were back on the farm they loved. It was just a shame that a tragedy had had to occur for that to happen.
Connie eyed Dolores O’Malley with annoyance. The older woman was resting on the handle of her shovel. Her third break in ten minutes. If she stopped any more often she’d start to develop roots.
“Come on, Lore, pull your weight,” Connie said.
“I’m finding it’s hurting my back,” Dolores admitted.
“You need to get your shoulder behind it,” Joyce offered. “Then it won’t hurt your back. Lift from the knees.”
“Really? How do you know all that?”
“Painful experience,” Connie replied. “We’ve shovelled more sh-”
“She’s right,” Joyce chipped in.
Dolores reluctantly put her shovel back into use, cutting through the rich manure and transferring a load to the cart nearby. She was a prickly woman, hard to engage in conversation and quite shut off from opening herself and her feelings up. It wasn’t that she judged the other women, just that she had no real desire to interact with them. This seemed odd. A strange way in which to make the time fly by at Pasture Farm. Joyce thought that this would make her war a lonely experience, so she and Connie had taken bets about who could get Dolores to open up the most. They’d both repeatedly tried different gambits, from Connie trying to find out her favourite dessert to Joyce talking about her husband in the hope that Dolores would share something of her private life. As it was they didn’t know what her favourite dessert was (“I don’t mind really”) and they didn’t know whether she was married or not (“It’s nice that your John has left the RAF and is out of danger”). She was a very private person. The facts they did know were scant: Dolores had arrived on Pasture Farm a month ago from Reigate in Surrey (although she was from Dublin originally). Before being conscripted as a Land Girl she’d been working at the American airbase at Redhill as a nurse. And it was her experience as a nurse that was why she ended up at Helmstead as the Land Girls often had to take shifts at the military hospital at Hoxley Manor on the estate. Dolores’s experience meant that she was given the position of ward sister when she did a shift there. It also meant that Connie and Joyce would have to take orders from her at Hoxley Manor: something that Connie, in particular, resented as Dolores would become very judgemental. She knew best when it came to nursing and she wasn’t afraid to show it.
As they dug the manure, Connie winked at Joyce. To pass the time, she was going to try another gambit to find out more about Dolores.
“What’s your favourite colour, Joyce?” Connie asked.
Joyce saw where this was going and replied, “Yellow is nice.”
“Dolores?” Connie asked. Surely this couldn’t fail? Something as innocuous as a colour. But it wasn’t to be.
“I don’t know really. They’re all nice.”
“But you must have a favourite.”
“Not really. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well what colour’s your bedroom back home, then?”
Joyce could hardly contain her smile at how Connie had managed to get the conversation onto something quite personal from such unpromising beginnings. But maybe Dolores noticed the smile, because she clammed up even more than usual, portcullis defences coming down.
“What a strange question,” Dolores muttered, continuing with her digging. “Why are there so many roots down here?”
Connie looked at Joyce and the two women shared a small shrug. Good try, Connie, but that one didn’t work either.
“That’s another penny you owe me,” Joyce whispered, returning to work.
“I’m going to be broke at this rate,” Connie grumbled.
Henry checked his watch. He had fifteen minutes before he was due in church for the christening. He calculated he could stay here for another five minutes before he had to rush back to the vicarage to prepare everything. It was annoying that Connie wasn’t at the vicarage to put things in order. But he knew she had her duties as a Land Girl. However, there was a nagging feeling that even if that work didn’t exist, would she be there helping him? He put the thought out of his head and stared at the trap.
He had just five more minutes to catch a rabbit. It had taken him ages to tie the knot. As fumbled attempt built on fumbled attempt, Finch had waited with glee for the vicar to let loose with a swear word. But like Connie and Joyce waiting for Dolores to say something personal, he’d been disappointed. Henry had kept his cool and eventually managed to tie it.
Now,
