Allie Burns - The Land Girl

He checked the clock. ‘A couple of hours. I was wondering if we might take a stroll beside the Thames, see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.’

Together they walked out of the station into the driving rain and joined the taxi rank, the people waiting in front moving aside to let the returning soldier go ahead of them.

The taxi was soon held up in the traffic.

‘It’s the women’s march,’ the taxi driver told them. Emily couldn’t believe her luck. She’d read in the newspaper about the march for women’s right to serve their country, to work in the munitions factories and on the land.

‘Gosh, we might see Emmeline Pankhurst,’ she said. She suggested they hop out and walk the rest of the way. Theo had on his trench coat to protect him from the rain, and sheltered her with an umbrella, inviting her to steady herself on his outstretched arm.

‘I was going to suggest that we change our plans and avoid this part of town,’ he said, ‘but I can see you’re excited by the march.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’

He said that he didn’t, of course not. She’d never walked out with a man before. She found she couldn’t quite keep up with him. His strides were longer than hers and she found herself scurrying to keep under the comfort of his umbrella.

The crowds were thickening up and a brass band moved closer. As they approached Westminster Bridge the spectators were four or five deep, the view obscured by top hats and umbrellas. Emily left Theo’s side to thread her way through the crowds, pushed her way to the front. Theo joined her.

‘Would you look at them,’ she said, pointing at a group of women marching with purpose down the centre of the road, undeterred by a little thing like rain.

‘Three cheers for our gallant soldiers,’ she read aloud and smiled at Theo. ‘Oh, I like that one: mobilise the brains and energy of women,’ Emily said, reading the next banner. The word brain was underlined. Quite right.

‘There’s a shortage of ammo,’ said Theo. ‘That’s what’s triggered this march, and it’s not the lack of women volunteers that’s the problem but the unions standing in their way, and the idea of women doing a man’s work, I suppose.’

‘Do you think women can make shells?’ she asked, and then waved at the women who marched by. She was being pulled by an invisible force to burst out of the crowd and walk alongside them.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Theo said. ‘But why not? We won’t win this war without shells and with empty stomachs, that much I do know.’

‘I still want to work on my farm,’ she said.

‘Good for you,’ he said.

‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never said.’

‘Sorry?’ he said. The crowd had cheered and drowned out her voice.

‘Your living, what do you do?’

A shadow passed over his face. ‘That’s all a long time ago now …’ He focused on the passing crowds. ‘It’s as if I’ve only ever been Corporal Williams.’

‘But you must have a trade, or a family business?’

He tutted, but he was smiling at her, amused by her persistence. He took her arm and led her back through the crowds to a Lyons’ Corner House. Once they were sitting down and had ordered afternoon tea he asked her about her farm.

She told him all about Lily, and how she’d rescued the village women from being trampled. She told him about the cherry harvest, how kind Mr and Mrs Tipton were to her, and how they let her help out on the farm and kept it a secret from Mother.

‘And your family own the estate and the farm. Just the one, is it?’

‘That’s right, my father owned a cement works but my brother John sold that when Father died.’

‘So, your Mother has enough to go around then, should you ever need it?’

She smiled and drank her tea. Their predicament was family business. John had trusted her enough to tell her that Uncle Wilfred had come to their rescue and she wouldn’t betray that trust with a loose tongue. Besides, Theo had chosen not to tell her about his past, which meant she could opt not to talk about money and spoil a really lovely end to what had promised to be a rotten day.

‘Those women were quite a sight today, weren’t they?’ he said.

She remembered the large float, garlanded with plants and flowers; behind it followed women in white smocks holding their hoes aloft. ‘It’s clear the country needs educated girls, girls just like you,’ he said. ‘I feel rather proud to have a girl like you writing to me at the Front.’

‘There’s nothing I would like more than to be a land girl,’ she confessed. She waited for him to snort, or say something to belittle her, but he didn’t. He leant in, interested. He beckoned her closer. Her mind raced with the things she could tell him about her ideas and plans for the future.

‘There’s something I would like more.’ His hot, damp breath blew into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer than was decent. She tried to stare him down, but his eyes were so brimming with desire that it was she who had to break away. And she wasn’t comfortable with the way her stomach betrayed her by curling at the edges and threatening to flip right over.

Thankfully the waiter appeared at her shoulder with a tray of tea things. Her cheeks were burning so much that she excused herself and hid in the lavatory until the heat had subsided and her skin had settled back to its normal colour.

He missed his next train, and the next. When the tea rooms were closing and the streets were too wet for walking he suggested they rent a room, spend some time alone together. Her speechlessness was enough for him to promptly come up with another idea.

‘What about if I travel back early at the end of my leave? We could have the day together in London,’ he said.

She nodded. She’d like that, but she wouldn’t be able to come to London without a chaperone. Mother might never let her out again if she caught wind of what she’d been up to today. And that animalistic look in his eyes had made her want to run for the door. He’d been a gentleman in the end, but he might expect more from her next time.

Back at the station he handed his ticket to the guard. He opened the train door and, then, leant in and without warning or reaching out to hold her, he kissed her. His lips pressed against hers while she steadied herself by gripping his arms, sinking into his embrace. His cologne, his skin soft, his shoulders broad and strong. Her eyes were pinned open, close up to his eyelids and the bridge of his nose, until he opened his eyes and his pupils contracted.

‘You were watching me?’ he said.

Two men whistled and laughed to one another, breaking the spell. Emily gave the soldier looking over his shoulder at them a stern shake of the head that made him turn away, and then trained her gaze fully back to Theo.

‘You could marry me,’ he said, a huge grin on his face. ‘Don’t look like that.’ He searched her face. ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said. What was the right thing to say? She didn’t want to hurt him or send him away with a bad memory. He had been so sweet and kind to her today, and hadn’t complained once about watching the women’s march. ‘It’s just … we have only just met.’ Train doors slammed shut on the platform. The atmosphere shifted to one where time was speeding up, running out.

‘What about our letters?’ he asked. ‘I feel I knew you before I’d even met you.’

He was a romantic. It was sweet but one of them had to be sensible.

‘Why rush?’ she said.

‘The war, that’s why. I might not get the chance to ask you again.’

‘You said I’d see you at the end of your leave,’ she said with a wry nod.