Land Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

stomachs. It warmed their hands, and their heads spun with new ease and expectation.
    The glasses were emptied, the cork put back with no invitations for more, the bottle returned to its cupboard. The girls helped Mrs Lawrence take the dishes through to the kitchen. Her husband stayed for a while in the empty room, made unfamiliar to him by the new presence of strangers. The wine still burned his lips, the ticking of the clock soothed. Perhaps he would get used to it, the full house. Might not be so bad after all. Even the film star looked as if she might shape up. In a moment, he would summon the energy to go out again. With Joe still not back, there was plenty to do before nightfall. He allowed himself a moment with his eyes shut, head thrown back. Behind the heartbeat of the clock he could hear laughter across the passage.
    The kitchen was blurry from the steam of hot water from the sink. Mrs Lawrence’s arms were deep in murky bubbles, from which she produced shining white plates. The girls fluttered round her, competing to snatch each plate from her first. They had tied dishcloths round their coloured skirts. In the near dark they fumbled through strange cupboards guessing where to put things. They bumped into each other. The ginger wine surprised them with its strength. It made them laugh.
    As they were all tired, and eager to be alert on their first morning, they agreed on early bed. Mrs Lawrence warned them not to put on the light unless they pinned the black-out stuff across each window. None of them had the energy to do this: they undressed beside their beds, turning their backs to one another as they slipped nightdresses over their heads. Prue, the only one to have been denied these lessons at boarding school, copied the modest gestures of the other two. She had difficulty in seeing her face clearly in her hand mirror: it took her some time to wipe the mascara from her eyes and the lipstick from her mouth.
    She watched, fascinated, as the other two brushed their hair with short, strong, dutiful strokes as if it was a ritual they had performed for many years. Ag’s hair was dull and heavy. It needed thinning, shaping. Stella’s could do with a restyle, too. When Prue knew them better, she would introduce them to her scissors, persuade them to allow her to make improvements. The plans in her mind diffused the small feelings of homesickness.
    ‘Funny, me a hairdresser’s daughter and never brushed my hair at night,’ she said.
    ‘Very odd, that,’ agreed Stella.
    Ag sat on the edge of her bed rolling up her stockings. She wore a flannel nightdress with a bodice of lace frills, and carpet slippers. So grandmotherly , thought Prue, slipping off her own pink velvet mules with their puffs of matching swansdown. And now the grandmother figure had laid the small neat bundle of stockings on her chair, beside a pile of books, and had turned to face Stella and Prue.
    ‘I think I must tell you something,’ she said quietly, folding her hands like a nun. There was a long pause. ‘That is, my name isn’t really Agatha.’
    ‘Oh?’ Prue was prepared to be surprised by any announcement this prim girl liked to make.
    ‘No. It’s much worse than that. It’s Agapanthus.’
    ‘ What? Aga – what?’ Prue doubled up with giggles. ‘There’s no such name.’
    ‘Well, there is,’ said Ag. ‘It’s both the name of a flower and the name of my grandfather’s … boat.’
    Prue studied her own incredulous face, with its mascara-streaked cheeks, in her hand mirror.
    ‘Fishing boat, or what?’
    Ag hesitated. ‘More of a yacht, really,’ she said at last. ‘Just a small one. My father insisted I should be christened Agapanthus. He’s a strange man in some ways. But he also agreed I’d have a bad time at school with a name like that. So we settled for Agatha – which isn’t actually that much better, is it? Anyhow, in the end everyone called me Ag, so I never had to explain.’
    She bowed her head. The warm