wasting an acre of land, kept also a small herd of Friesians which roamed every summer up and down the margins of the Lode, and sent their milk to a dairy in Apton. Thus it was not only mother’s milk but Farmer Metcalf’s milk which Dick and I drank when we were boys. And it was her father’s milk – but, alas, never her mother’s – that Mary Metcalf grew up on.
For Mary was a farmer’s daughter. Her father owned the fields, thick at that moment with creamy-flowered potatoes, which she could see if she looked to her left, across the narrow ditch dividing pasture from ploughland. And away in front of her, hidden by poplar spinney and twisting banks, lay Harold Metcalf’s brick farm-house and clustered farm buildings, looming abruptly and starkly amidst the flat fields, as is the manner of Fenland farms, and in no way nestling or huddling like the farms of picture-books. A Polt Fen Farm had existed since the days when Thomas Atkinson drained Polt Fen, and the Metcalfs, who built the new farmhouse in 1880, were the second family to own it.
Polt Fen Farm, like many farms of the region, was not large but made up for size with intensity of yield. Harold Metcalf employed three permanent hands and an additional contingent of cursing raw-fingered temporary labourers during the long and malodorous winter beetharvest. But now, in the summer of 1943, neither permanent nor temporary hands, excluding the lame or one-eyed variety, were available. Instead, into Farmer Metcalf’s farm, as into other neighbourhood farms, fluttered coveys of Land Girls, in boiler-suits and dungarees and tightly fastened head-scarves, their forearms growing muscular and sunburnt, their urban decorum evaporating in the summer heat. Broken-down trucks ferried these creatures from their hostels in Apton and Wansham to the scenes of their labours, to the leers and jeers of the local inhabitants. It was said that the land girls brought to our Fenland byways an atmosphere of subversion and simmering sexuality. But simmering sexuality – as you may well know, children – is always there.
Freddie Parr claimed that he had enjoyed the utmost favours of one of these female migrants – an auburn-haired beauty called Joyce, whose well-formed rump, upturned as she worked in the fields, Freddie spent many hours watching from the banks of the Hockwell Lode. And it was true that after they shed their initial ladylike airs, the land girls would often wave to us local kids, tell us their names and share their field-side lunches with us (though they persistently declined our invitations to bathing parties in the Hockwell Lode). And it was even true that this same auburn-haired Joyce used to wave with smiling condescension at Freddie in particular (for perhaps she was touched by his moony attentions); and only stopped one day when she saw that Freddie (who was barely fourteen at the time) was not only vigorously waving back with one hand but with the other doing something of unmistakable import in the region of his trouser buttons. After which Joyce was seen no more in the fields around Hockwell.
So, doubtless, Freddie Parr was lying.
And now, in any case, Freddie Parr was dead.
And the land girls, anyway, were not for us. At night, healthily exhausted, they were swooped up by roamingairmen from the bases, whom bad weather kept from their missions. And if the girls gave themselves readily to these heroes of the skies, then it was not for anyone to protest and was even regarded as proper, since these same brave fliers might be dead tomorrow.
But Freddie Parr was dead too.
Farmer Metcalf had no idle fancies about acquiring for the length of the war a temporary harem. A grave, reserved, hard-headed man, he regarded the land girls as replacement labour and made no concessions either to their sex or to the patriotic motives which brought them to his acres. Nor did he look upon them as fit companions for his only daughter. For years, with the earnestness of a good
For Mary was a farmer’s daughter. Her father owned the fields, thick at that moment with creamy-flowered potatoes, which she could see if she looked to her left, across the narrow ditch dividing pasture from ploughland. And away in front of her, hidden by poplar spinney and twisting banks, lay Harold Metcalf’s brick farm-house and clustered farm buildings, looming abruptly and starkly amidst the flat fields, as is the manner of Fenland farms, and in no way nestling or huddling like the farms of picture-books. A Polt Fen Farm had existed since the days when Thomas Atkinson drained Polt Fen, and the Metcalfs, who built the new farmhouse in 1880, were the second family to own it.
Polt Fen Farm, like many farms of the region, was not large but made up for size with intensity of yield. Harold Metcalf employed three permanent hands and an additional contingent of cursing raw-fingered temporary labourers during the long and malodorous winter beetharvest. But now, in the summer of 1943, neither permanent nor temporary hands, excluding the lame or one-eyed variety, were available. Instead, into Farmer Metcalf’s farm, as into other neighbourhood farms, fluttered coveys of Land Girls, in boiler-suits and dungarees and tightly fastened head-scarves, their forearms growing muscular and sunburnt, their urban decorum evaporating in the summer heat. Broken-down trucks ferried these creatures from their hostels in Apton and Wansham to the scenes of their labours, to the leers and jeers of the local inhabitants. It was said that the land girls brought to our Fenland byways an atmosphere of subversion and simmering sexuality. But simmering sexuality – as you may well know, children – is always there.
Freddie Parr claimed that he had enjoyed the utmost favours of one of these female migrants – an auburn-haired beauty called Joyce, whose well-formed rump, upturned as she worked in the fields, Freddie spent many hours watching from the banks of the Hockwell Lode. And it was true that after they shed their initial ladylike airs, the land girls would often wave to us local kids, tell us their names and share their field-side lunches with us (though they persistently declined our invitations to bathing parties in the Hockwell Lode). And it was even true that this same auburn-haired Joyce used to wave with smiling condescension at Freddie in particular (for perhaps she was touched by his moony attentions); and only stopped one day when she saw that Freddie (who was barely fourteen at the time) was not only vigorously waving back with one hand but with the other doing something of unmistakable import in the region of his trouser buttons. After which Joyce was seen no more in the fields around Hockwell.
So, doubtless, Freddie Parr was lying.
And now, in any case, Freddie Parr was dead.
And the land girls, anyway, were not for us. At night, healthily exhausted, they were swooped up by roamingairmen from the bases, whom bad weather kept from their missions. And if the girls gave themselves readily to these heroes of the skies, then it was not for anyone to protest and was even regarded as proper, since these same brave fliers might be dead tomorrow.
But Freddie Parr was dead too.
Farmer Metcalf had no idle fancies about acquiring for the length of the war a temporary harem. A grave, reserved, hard-headed man, he regarded the land girls as replacement labour and made no concessions either to their sex or to the patriotic motives which brought them to his acres. Nor did he look upon them as fit companions for his only daughter. For years, with the earnestness of a good
Similar Books
