THE FARMHOUSE MEAL
"Thank God and the Land Army for my good dinner; Amen."--GRACE
(revised).
Dinner! At the word there invaded me an extraordinary feeling, to
which I'd been a stranger for months in town. What was it?--hunger,
ravenous and primitive--fervently I hoped that this summons meant
dinner for everybody!
I glanced at my filthy forearms and hands. Remembering my "blunder"
about the bedrooms in camp, I did not look for anybody to tell me
where the bathroom was.
I made for the pump in the yard. And then, as I dried my arms and
face as well as I could on a comparatively clean piece of my smock, I
heard a good-natured Cockney voice behind me say:
"Oh, look at Celery Face sluicing herself in a young cataract!"
Turning, I found big Vic coming up with Elizabeth. My chum's small
face was redder than I had ever seen it. It wore an
"in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound" expression, and her uniform (though
not filthy like mine) was no longer the immaculate fancy dress that
it had seemed on the road to work.
Vic grinned.
"This little 'un is going to shape fine, only for breaking her back
nearly," she told me. "How've you been getting on, young Joan?
Let's have a look at your shed. Yes, that's the style. This 'ere
job will be part of your cowman's test, you know. Cleaning out shed,
maximum 10 marks. Seventy-five per cent. marks you've got to get in
the tests before you pass out of here and get a swanky post
somewhere, and be a credit to your instructress, don't you forget it!"
I couldn't help laughing as we followed her up to the farmhouse.
"Instructress, indeed!" I exclaimed. "I was expecting some
'instruction,' and you never came! You never even showed me how to
hold the spade."
Vic flashed upon me her most teasing grin.
"I did come," she said with a nod. "Only you weren't wanting any
'instruction,' I noticed, from little Me. Went away again, I
did--hooked it. You were all right. Never even saw me. You and
your landowner!"
Before I could ask what Vic meant by "my landowner" we were all in
the big front kitchen, with its dresser, its tridarn (or three-decker
oaken chest), its grandfather clock, and its long table set for seven.
This was the first time Elizabeth or I had sat down to dinner in a
kitchen. Much we should have cared had it been in the scullery, the
barn, or the hen-house! There is no appetite like that which comes
from physical toil!
Glorious greed was a delicious sauce--if any sauce had been
needed--to the plentiful and savoury farm-house meal that was
provided for us of boiled bacon, potatoes, greens, butter, bread,
buttermilk, fruit tart, and cheese.
At the risk of writing myself down a glutton--or of reading like an
advertisement for somebody's cocoa--I must dwell on the taste of that
loaf, that butter, those other wholesome and delicious things with
their suggestion of building healthy bodies and reddening rosy
cheeks--the food with which England should be fed.
"Everything home-grown!" we were smilingly told by Mrs. Price, the
farmer's wife, who took one end of the table, while her husband
carved at the other. Their own dining-room in the front of the house
was exquisite with old oak and the silver pots of two generations of
agricultural prize-winners; but they elected to share their Land
Girls' kitchen dinner because it seemed more hospitable and homely.
"There's nothing here that hasn't come off the farm," Mrs. Price
added. "Those black currants in the tart are my last year's
bottling, of course. But they were straight out of the garden here.
I expect you find it dreadfully countrified fare after London--those
of you that come from there."
* * * * * * *
Elizabeth and I here spared a moment from revelling in our second
helpings of those home-grown vegetables, so efficiently cooked, to
look up and laugh. What we were both thinking of was our last,
farewell, midday meal in town.
It had consisted of:
(1) Hors d'œuvre, highly vinegary and suspect--tasting of nothing
on earth.
(2) A morsel of sole that had distinctly not come "straight" out of
the sea, and tasting of the fact.
(3) Escaloppes de veau with tomato sauce. I don't know what they
tasted of, though they cost us a meat-ticket; they smelt, too,
forbiddingly of the substitute fat in which they'd been fried.
(4) A small greyish roll, tasting of sawdust.
(5) One half peach, tasting of tin.
(6) Black coffee, tasting of dish-cloth, with a virulently green
liqueur that we hoped might drown the tastes of the other courses,
and a cheap cigarette.
England's lunch!
* * * * * * *
Certainly life was a succession of contrasts. From the dark
fugginess of that crowded little Italian restaurant--which I'd loved
because Harry "discovered" it--to this spotless Welsh kitchen where
the kindly farm people "mothered" the five girls in farm-kit--Vic,
Elizabeth, myself and the other two more advanced pupils. One of
these was "Sybil," who had played the piano at the Hut last night,
and who took her dip in the pool before going to work; the other was
a bright-looking girl they called "Curley," though her hair was the
straightest imaginable.
That gentle giant, Mr. Price, had a word for each as he carved.
"I like to know something about all you young ladies who've come down
here to work," he said to me. "A lot we've had down here since the
start. Twenty, I think, coming and going; splendid girls--good
little workers, all. And some were one thing and some another. From
South Wales the two last were who were here; fathers in the
collieries. Then there's Curley," he nodded at her, "all her people
in works, Birmingham. And Sybil here," with another nod, "from
Buckinghamshire, never been away from home before without a maid, she
told my wife. Father a general. May I ask if your father was in the
Army too, perhaps?"
"No; my father wasn't in anything particular," I said. "He used to
do a little bit of farming himself."
A gleam of interest lighted up the giant's blue eyes.
"Dear me! Farmed himself, did he? How big a farm, missy?" he asked.
"Oh, not big at all. Nor at all successful!" I told him ruefully.
"I'm afraid he just lost money over it about seven years ago."
More interest from this other, prosperous-looking farmer.
"Farming," he told me gravely, "was no life for a man in this country
until just lately. An existence, that was all. All the food we
ought to have grown came in from over the sea. Agriculture, before
the war, was simply hand to mouth, hand to mouth." He looked at his
wife and added: "If it hadn't been for pedigree poultry and shire
horses the farmers would have starved."
His wife nodded across the table; she was the sort of small, dainty
little woman that you would expect that great-framed man to choose;
her thick hair was prematurely grey, and her well-cut and tiny
features, though composed, seemed as if they had looked on struggles
in her time.
Then came something that, though it was only talk at a farmhouse
table, was significant. It made me think. This new problem of my
life on the land was full of old problems to others. Across that
liberally-spread board that farmer's wife launched an astonishing
remark.
"We nearly starved," she said, "when we were children in my father's
time. One New Year he made up his accounts and he was down a
thousand pounds. The next year again he was down a thousand. And
the third year again he had lost another thousand. That January, I
remember, he did not speak for a week."
Her soft voice shook. The faces of the Land Girls were all turned
towards her, listening, surprised.
"Then," continued Mrs. Price, "he came into our nursery and said,
'Children, I'm broke. The dear old home will have to go.'"
Here the Land Girl Sybil put in gently:
"But you told me your brother had that farm now. So you didn't have
to leave, Mrs. Price?"
"No! Because of my father fighting for it. He borrowed money at
very high interest and went in for shire horses. In ten years he was
just feeling his feet again. It was twenty years before he paid off
everything. That was a struggle. Those were the hard times for
farmers. It makes me feel bitter now, girls, when they say farmers
are 'grasping,' and 'make money hand over fist,' just because the
tide has turned at last, and farming isn't the terribly losing game
it was!"
"Well, it'll never be so again, I hope," her husband assured her.
Then he beamed about the table and added: "Not with all these young
ladies here turning out to help like this! And that one," nodding at
me, "a farmer's daughter herself! Where is your father living now,
then?"
I told him the name of the village on the borderline between England
and Wales.
"Not so far from here, then. Fifty miles off, perhaps. They'll be
able to come down and see how you are getting on."
But here Vic broke in mischievously over her bread and cheese.
"Don't you worry, Mr. Price. She isn't going to bust herself with
any homesickness. She don't want any more people. She's got off
with a young man of her own down here already."
Here Elizabeth must needs turn her head sharply, to glance at me with
an inquiry full of rebuke; uttering it aloud as well. "What young
man?"
I took no notice of her. I looked at the others; the others who did
not think (as she did) that I was far too fond of the whole Repulsive
Sex.
"There was no young man--I mean, not in that sort of way at
all--Vic's talking nonsense to tease me!" I assured the party,
definitely.
"It was simply that Captain Holiday--whoever he is, he seems to think
he can go anywhere and do anything--came into the shed where I was
working and gave me a few tips about my work."
"Ah, Captain Holiday. Yes. It was him you were asking about, Vic,"
said Mr. Price, his blue eyes interested again. "Yes, he's our
landlord here now that poor old Mr. Holiday's gone. Most of the
property about belongs to him. The hospital, and your camp, and this
farm, and all. A great interest he takes in all of it. All over it
he was this morning. So he went and showed this young lady how to
set about her job? Very obliging of him."
Vic again retorted teasingly.
"Oh, I don't know so much! I haven't noticed that young men are so
nice and 'obliging' over helping girls with their jobs without
they're interested in the girls themselves!"
I really failed to see why every one of the other girls should seem
to take such a vivid interest in this argument--particularly
Elizabeth, who ought to have known better!
Quite nettled, I put in quickly:
"Personally I shouldn't call this Captain Holiday a very 'obliging'
young man." I was thinking of the way in which he'd trundled that
wheelbarrow back with its noisome load, instead of emptying it for
me, and I concluded, "Rather annoying, I should call him."
Then I was sorry I'd said that. Mr. Price, who had unfolded his long
legs from under the table and was rising to his feet at the end of
the meal, looked grave and gave me a quick glance.
"Indeed?" he said seriously. "I am sorry to hear it. I can't have
anything like that, landlord or no landlord. If Captain Holiday was
annoying one of my workers, I shall have to tell him----"
"Oh, please don't," I put in hastily. "I didn't mean that kind of
'annoying' at all. I only meant I was rather annoyed that any one
should see I was such a raw beginner at my job. That was all."
In common fairness to the young man I felt I had to speak up for him
to that extent. On returning to my cow-house I forgot all about him,
forgot even that it was he who'd saved me from half the difficulty of
my task. It was not all drudgery, when one found out the best and
quickest way of doing what was so new to me--manual work.
Thankful enough was I, though, to knock off!
But on the way home Elizabeth brought up Captain Holiday again.
"Joan," she began, "what do you think of that young man?"