Bob Hazel greeted Mrs Love, who stood before the great iron range, stirring something appetising, and then he turned to the men who sat on either side of the long wooden table. ‘This here’s our land girl, Grace Paterson. She’s not had much farming experience but was highly recommended and we’re lucky to have her. Don’t have to ask any of you to give her a hand when you see as it’s needed.’ He ushered Grace to the seat on his right. ‘Sit yourself there, Grace, and I’ll work down the table and back up t’other side. First, Walter Green, head dairyman and does pigs, too. Dave Semple, Esau Youngman and Maurice Fox, general farm work. There isn’t anything they don’t know about the land, so don’t be shy of asking. Jack Williams and Harry McManus, you knows already; they’re doing a grand job and we’re all pleased they’re ’ere.’
Did Grace detect a stern note of warning in the older man’s voice and, if so, who was he warning?
Three of the four men whom she had not met before appeared to her to be older. Each one had to be fifty at the very least but, like Hazel himself, had a look of physical strength. The dairyman, Walter Green, who nodded to her with a shy smile, was younger, but he too looked so healthy that it was difficult to calculate with any real accuracy.
No one spoke while Mrs Love put a large plate of thick vegetable soup in front of each person. In the middle of the table were two round crusty loaves, which Hazel cut into thick slices. Grace was delighted to see a plate of golden curls of fresh butter; someone, probably Mrs Love, had made a real effort to make the table appealing. She remembered her arrival at the nearest station where she had surrendered a half-coupon for a sandwich that was spread with butter. Mrs Love, however, had taken her ration book without comment. Happily, Grace helped herself to a piece of the fresh bread when the plate was passed to her. After the soup, almost a meal in itself, came a dish of minced sausage meat, onions and dumplings. This too was tasty. They finished with tea and a slice of sponge spread thinly with marmalade.
Grace was to be very glad of the filling meal as, immediately after dinner, she spent two hours weeding a field of young corn. Hazel gave her a short hoe called a paddle, explained how to use it, reminded her that she needed to be back at the milking parlour at half-past three for the afternoon’s milking and left her alone. She stood at the edge of the seemingly endless acres of corn and looked around. Row upon row upon row stretching out on all sides. She had a fantasy that she would become lost in the field and never be seen again.
‘Well, you’ll jolly well have to be found by three thirty, Grace Paterson,’ she told herself, ‘or Lady Alice will be looking for you.’
She spat on her hands as she had seen Hazel do and began. Some time later, her complaining back forced her to stop. She yelped in pain as she forced herself to straighten up. A quick glance at her watch told her that she had thirty-five minutes to find her way back to the byre, where at least thirty cows would be waiting for her. She longed to be sitting down, her head pressed close to the warm side of a healthy cow.
‘I have never been so tired in my entire life,’ she said aloud, and was startled to hear her voice in the vast stillness. All afternoon she had heard nothing but the sound of her paddle raking the weeds from around each plant, and the occasional hum of a flying insect.
Grace looked down the row she had been weeding. She was distressed to find that she was scarcely more than halfway along. Did her schedule state that she should return to her weeding after the milking or was she involved in a second milk delivery? If so, when was she supposed to weed the field? The days were growing longer. She could weed before tea, and after, too, she supposed. Apart from the ache in her lower back, Grace had felt only happiness as she weeded in the soft spring air, but now a frightening vision of weeds growing faster than one girl could pull them out stretched before her. Hazel would be angry – had he not already said the work would be too much for her? And what would Lady Alice say?
*
‘You look tired, Grace,’ was what she did say when Grace met her in the dairy. ‘Weeding can be hellish but, on a brighter note, believe me, it would be so much worse if you were taller.’
‘Yes, Lady Alice.’ Grace replied without thinking, but Lady Alice merely walked to the head of her line of healthy cows and began to work.
For the rest of the afternoon there was no noise apart from the swishing sound made by the milk as it was directed into the pails, the shuffling of hoofs, the constant chewing from the animals and the clatter of filled pails being moved around on the stone floor.
At last, all the cows were milked.
‘We’ll drive them down to the east field, Grace. Walter will take over in here. How much of the weeding did you get done? Finish a line?’
Grace felt a blush of shame spread across her face and was surprised to hear Lady Alice laugh.
‘Poor Grace. I’m teasing. Two of the men are already there. Get yourself a cup of tea and then give them a hand until dinner.’
What did she mean? They had had dinner hours earlier.
‘Tea, Grace, the evening meal,’ said Lady Alice, who had obviously correctly interpreted the puzzled look on her land-girl’s face. ‘My family talks about breakfast, lunch and then dinner, with afternoon tea, of course, between lunch and dinner. Don’t worry, you’ll learn a great deal more here than how to poleaxe a pig. Go on, girl, a cup of tea will revive you and there’s a piece of chocolate, not much, in the pewter beer mug on the right-hand side of the mantelpiece; help yourself.’
Chocolate. When had she last treated herself to some chocolate? Just the thought of it was making her mouth water. Grace hurried off to the kitchen and was delighted to find it empty. As always, the heavy teapot was on the hotplate, together with a spluttering kettle of boiling water for those who preferred a weaker brew. Above it on the carved stone mantel stood a very old and very large beer mug. Had Lady Alice been teasing or was there indeed a delicious treat inside?
She reached up and took down the beer mug. She lifted the lid, looked inside, and, yes, there at the bottom lay something in a paper wrapping. Tentatively, Grace put her hand in and pulled out the paper. She smelled it. Chocolate. What did she want it to be? Cadbury’s Whole Nut, Milk Chocolate, or their Coffee Cream, or, no, even better, Duncan’s Hazelnut? She unfolded that paper to find two sections of Barker and Dobson’s Fruit and Nut.
‘And just what do you think you’re doing?’
The unexpected voice surprised Grace so much that she flinched, dropping the chocolate almost into the fire.
Mrs Love was glaring at her and for a second Grace quailed before her. She shook off her fear, bent down and picked up the chocolate. ‘I was helping myself to her ladyship’s chocolate to have with my tea but, as it happens, I loathe fruit and nut.’ She dropped the chocolate and the paper into the waste bin that stood under the sink and walked out of the kitchen without another word.
Her bravado lasted until she got outside and then her legs started to tremble. ‘I’ve done it again,’ she muttered. ‘I am really good at annoying people. Where will I end up this time?’
As she walked quickly back towards the cornfield, Grace fought back tears as the realisation hit her that she did not want to leave this place, that already she liked Hazel and Lady Alice, even if she did have her dinner at teatime.
To add to her feelings of isolation, it started to rain and, by the time she reached the field, the rain was so heavy that she could barely see. She had learned on the training farm that ‘inclement weather’ was not an acceptable excuse for stopping working and so she tried to count down the rows to see where she had started and where she had left her paddle.
‘It’s here, love.’ One of the older men had appeared out of the deluge.
Grace, trying desperately to remember which one he was, took the paddle and thanked him.
‘Esau