crammed with soldiers, pilots and factory workers. It would be nearly impossible to move down the train. Joyce decided to stay where she was. “I’m sure I won’t forget what he looks like if I don’t see him until Helmstead.”
The young soldier dutifully finished his roll-up with an audible gasp of satisfaction. But the victory was short-lived as he raised it to his lips and lit it; it promptly unrolled, dropping tobacco onto his trousers. He cursed and hastily patted his crotch to put out the burning embers before they scorched his uniform. Connie couldn’t resist letting out a small laugh. The boy looked back and smiled. He scooped up the tobacco and started to try again.
“Want me to do it?” she offered. Sod it if it wasn’t the sort of thing a lady did.
“Can you roll them?” the soldier said in surprise, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“No. But I can’t be worse than you, can I?”
Joyce nudged Connie to stop messing with the poor lad. “What? I’m just being friendly,” Connie said, under her breath. The middle-aged woman with the tear-streaked daughter shot her a disapproving look.
The soldier sucked in his cheeks and doggedly resumed his rolling.
The businessman already had a pipe in his mouth – unlit at the moment and being sucked on like a baby’s dummy as he contemplated the crossword.
The train snaked across the countryside. Fields of cows and fields of corn moved past the windows like frames at the flicks. The evening sun glinted low through the carriage windows, dappling the occupants with patchworks of light.
Connie entertained fragmented thoughts: Henry waiting with a cup of tea; Joyce joking in the fields with her; the snotty guard at Brinford station. The images washed over her in a hazy, comforting blur as the motion of the train and the evening sunlight flickered over her face. Sleep was a moment away.
The fields trundled by in a blur.
Connie tried to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to sleep now. She sat up, breathed deep and thought about Henry waiting at the vicarage with his warm smile and trusting eyes. He was a decent man, a man who loved her despite her faults. He loved her despite her troubled past. It was too good to be true, really, but she had to accept it and hope it wouldn’t turn out to be some massive joke.
She glanced at Joyce – who was biting her lip. Connie didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Joyce was thinking about. She was thinking about her man too.
Joyce was worried about John. He’d been to the base to finalise his leaving the RAF. It would be a big moment for both of them. Suddenly, John would be close to the home of Pasture Farm, where Joyce was billeted; he’d be finally safe from harm; but would it mean he’d lose his sense of purpose? Both Joyce and John held on to their roles in the war – as it made sense of the carnage and loss they had experienced in Coventry. Connie often wondered what Joyce would do when the war was over – if it ever finished. Would she feel lost without it?
But Connie was too tired to ask about such things tonight. A bath. A cuppa. And Henry. Those simple things were keeping her going.
So instead, Connie offered a less emotionally taxing conversation.
“I won’t miss this journey,” Connie said.
True, it was pleasant enough if you got a seat away from the scrum, but it still added a long journey to an already-long day in the fields.
“Me neither,” Joyce said, munching the cheese from her parcel. “Only good thing was not having to work with Dolores.”
“Don’t be ‘orrible. Just ‘cos she never says nothing.” Connie thought about the near-monosyllabic Dolores, who had joined them recently. But the thought drifted out of her head, sleep threatening to cover her.
“I wish Finch would pick us up sometimes,” Joyce said.
Connie wished he would to, as she bit her lip, trying to stay awake. Freddie Finch was the tenant farmer who lived in Pasture Farm. A ruddy-faced man with keen, smart eyes, he’d loaned out some of his Land Girls for the work on Brinford Farm. But despite having a tractor with a trailer that could easily give the girls a lift home, Finch wouldn’t stretch his meagre petrol ration to pick them up unless he had to. It was fair enough, but it didn’t stop Connie and Joyce from wishing.
Connie looked at the young girl again.
The whites of her mother’s knuckles were showing as she gripped the girl’s hand. Why was she holding on so tightly? That must hurt.
Connie offered a sympathetic smile to the girl. Nothing. She flashed one to the mother.
This time, she got a reaction. The stern-faced woman shot her a look that said stop staring and mind your own business.
This was like red rag to a bull. Connie didn’t avert her gaze.
The girl was looking at the floor.
“Is she all right?” Connie asked, poking her nose in even further.
Joyce looked around – this was the first she’d registered the young girl and her mother. She played catch-up quickly and registered Connie’s concern.
The mother frowned and shook her head – containing her fury at this interference.
“Of course she is.”
The soldier looked up from his rolling. The business man buried himself deeper in The Times.
“Yeah?” Connie asked the girl directly.
The girl raised her sad face, her eyes vulnerable and moist.
“What business is it of yours?” the mother asked Connie.
“Connie …” Joyce warned, about to tell her friend to pipe down.
But Connie wouldn’t let this lie. Maybe it was hard to let go when she saw something of herself in the haunted eyes of this youngster.
“It’s just that she seems –” Connie was about to say ‘sad’, but she would never finished the sentence.
BANNGGGGGGG!
There was a deafening bang from the front of the train, accompanied by the ear-splitting wrenching of metal. Everyone was jolted off their seats, the world folding in on itself. The businessman’s newspaper flew into Connie’s face as she fell forwards. And then there was a loud crunching noise from behind and the sound of twisting metal. Slowly, the compartment shook and rolled, tossing over and over. Bodies bounced around the carriage as the floor became the ceiling and back again. Connie felt herself sliding across the floor. Joyce’s elbow hit Connie hard in the neck as Joyce rolled on top of her. Connie could hear muffled screams. All the sounds were somehow distant, as if they had been muffled by cotton wool.
Connie thrust out a hand and grabbed the metal frame that secured the seats to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed onto Joyce to try to stop them being tossed around the tumbling carriage.
The windows of the compartment shattered and there was a squeal of brakes. The outer door flung open and the young soldier was thrown into the air, rolling on the ceiling and then the floor, over Connie and Joyce,
