Grace agreed with Betty but, after only a few minutes, she found that her attention wandered to the hospital bed where Olive lay. Was there anything she should or could have done earlier? If she had noticed Olive shivering, if she had insisted that the girl wear more underwear, if they had been given their promised heavy coats – would she now be lying in a hospital bed?
She pulled her wandering mind back to the lecture: wheat followed by potatoes … or did potatoes follow wheat … or did it matter?
‘You didn’t make many notes, Grace,’ one of the roommates pointed out as they left the lecture.
‘None that make any sense,’ said Grace, looking at her lined notebook.
They linked arms and began to walk along to the dining room, where a fire was smouldering in the grate and mugs of hot Oxo or surprisingly strong tea were waiting on the long wooden table. Grace and Betty helped themselves to tea and moved away from the fireplace just as the door opened and Miss Ryland appeared. The room went silent.
Miss Ryland stayed near the door and looked around the crowded room. ‘Would the women in room eleven please come to my office?’ She moved as if to walk out, stopped, turned and with an unsuccessful attempt at a smile, said, ‘Do bring your hot drinks.’
Grace and Betty, in the act of lifting their mugs, immediately replaced them and walked to the door, followed by their roommates. No one spoke as they headed for the manager’s office.
It was not a large room: a smallish fireplace – where a meagre fire failed to defeat the chill – an enormous desk, two armchairs, a metal cupboard with a key in the door, and two folding chairs leaning against the wall. There was scarcely enough room for the land girls.
Miss Ryland surveyed them, avoiding direct eye contact, and, at last, straightened up. ‘There is no easy way to say this, ladies, but the infirmary rang and … Olive Turner died early this morning.’
Grace stood transfixed. Dead? How could Olive be dead? She had had cold feet. Her pre-war liberty bodice had been left at home as she had left off her childhood. She heard a voice ask loudly, ‘Why?’ and realised it was her own. The voice – her voice – went on: ‘Why did she die? She caught a cold, a simple cold. Why did it suddenly become this pleurisy?’
The other land girls began to murmur and the murmurs rustled through the room like leaves falling from a tree. Miss Ryland appeared to take a deep, calming breath.
‘We women of Britain are all in the army, soldiers fighting in our own way. In another time, it’s likely that Miss Turner would not have been accepted into the Land Army. Yes, she had a cold, but it developed very quickly into pleurisy … with added complications.’
The girls released a collective gasp, looking at one another in horrified disbelief.
Miss Ryland continued, speaking even more quickly, ‘The hospital staff did everything they could, everything, but—’
Grace interrupted, ‘We didn’t. You didn’t. You as good as killed her.’ Grace could hear her own voice, strident, shaking with emotion. She wanted to stop but the voice – her voice – went on. ‘You didn’t listen. Why? Because—’
She got no further.
Betty Goode was there, holding Grace in her arms, explaining, making excuses.
‘Enough. You are dismissed, except you, Paterson.’
Grace, feeling as if every ounce of strength had left her body, watched the others leave; some sent her sympathetic looks, others looked away as if perhaps afraid of being associated with her and her uncontrolled outburst.
For a time, Miss Ryland said nothing. Grace looked straight ahead. She remembered standing in terror in front of Megan and, before that, surely a long time ago, she had stood in an office like this one – but who had stood talking to her? No matter; pieces of memories came and went and they would perhaps come again and become clearer. She waited as the manager moved to the window, stood there looking out, returned, fiddled with some pencils on her desk. Several needed to be sharpened.
‘I would throw you off the course if I could, Paterson, but somehow you have made a better impression on Mr Urquhart, and he is likely to vote in your favour. Unfortunately, galling as it is, he has more clout.’ She moved closer to Grace and stared into her face. ‘Listen to me. You go to your room, stay there until teatime, say nothing to the other girls and, for the remainder of the course, keep out of my way, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll pass. Now get out.’
Grace walked out, her legs trembling. Had she ever before seen such hatred in anyone’s eyes? Megan had looked at her in annoyance but surely never with hatred. She stood for a moment at the foot of the staircase, holding on to the banister, and a small nervous giggle eventually escaped. Who on earth was her champion, Mr Urquhart?
Room 11 was empty. Grace walked over and sat down on her bed. Dead. One moment alive and the next dead. Poor, poor little Olive. Grace could not let Daisy Petrie go out of her life so easily. She got up, took out her notebook and quickly, without conscious thought, scribbled a note to Daisy:
Dear Daisy,
I’m all right. Tell everyone I’m sorry and please forgive me. Hope everyone is well.
G.
She had been thinking of a special Petrie as she wrote.
I’ll tell them everything soon,
Having written at last, she felt a great weight had been lifted from her, and she stretched and looked around the room.
Next to her bed was Olive’s, with its large pile of extra clothing donated by the others. Poor Olive did not need them now.
‘Senseless not to take them back,’ most of the others said when they returned to the room after tea. ‘Who knows what kind of digs we’ll get next month? Might well be grateful for an extra vest.’
Grace left her spare vest and thick stockings on Olive’s bed, and sighed with relief when, somehow, a few days before graduation, they disappeared.
By the time the last day of the course came round, daffodils had sprung up all over the farm and a lilac tree near the front gate promised to burst into perfumed full bloom.
‘Sorry I won’t see that,’ said Betty.
Grace and Betty were walking together towards the bus that was to take them to the nearest railway station, where they were to begin their first journeys as fully accredited land girls.
Golly, Betty, I’ve done it – we’ve done it. Stupid, but sometimes I believed it was all too good to be true. We’re land girls, qualified, and I can almost believe I smell lilac.
‘Happen there’ll be plenty of lilac everywhere in the next few weeks,’ a male voice interrupted them. It was George, the dairyman. ‘I’m taking a heifer over to Bluebell Farm, ladies. Station’s on my way, if you don’t mind squeezing in.’
‘Fantastic,’ the girls chorused.
‘Even prepared to squeeze in beside the heifer,’ Betty said, laughing, but she was quick to scramble up in the front of the dependable old Austin K3, beside Grace.
They drove in silence for a time and it was only when they were on the main road towards the town that George spoke: ‘Nasty business over that lassie.’
Their euphoria evaporated and the girls nodded quietly.
‘Learn us all to err on the side of doing too much too early rather than too little too late.’ He leaned forward and wiped an imaginary speck off the inside of the window. ‘Happy with your assignments? Together, are you?’
‘Unfortunately, not,’ Grace spoke first. ‘Betty did really well and is off to a lovely farm in Devon. Me? I didn’t cover myself in glory and so I’m off to some farm no one’s ever heard of.’ She did not add