Roland Moore - Christmas on the Home Front

Seven days to Christmas.

It was chilly in the fields with a winter frost covering the ploughed soil as Joyce, Connie, and Iris trudged out to repair a fallen fence; the earth cracking under their feet like frozen chocolate on ice cream. They competed to see who could produce the biggest bloom of cloudy air from their lungs until they all felt dizzy and had to stop. Iris wanted to find out who had the widest stride and started taking huge steps on her way to the field. Connie tried too. Joyce thought this was unfair as her legs were shorter than both the other women, but they joked and cajoled her into having a go.

‘Well, make sure you’re watching!’

‘Go on, Joyce. See if you can beat Iris’s record.’

‘Yes, I managed to get all the way from that furrow to this one.’

‘It was never that far.’ Joyce suspected they were trying to put her off by fibbing. This was psychological warfare. ‘You’d have to be on stilts to do that.’

‘Excuse me. My legs are exactly like stilts.’

‘Hush now, I’ve got to focus.’

Joyce concentrated as the other women watched expectantly. She lifted one foot and pushed it forward as far as it would go before planting it on the ground. At the last minute she realised she’d overstretched, and while Connie and Iris had managed to do the manoeuvre elegantly, Joyce lost her balance and fell over. Connie helped her to her feet, and they walked the remaining distance across the field giggling at the ridiculous competitions they invented. It was a way to pass the time; a way to have fun in these difficult times.

Reaching the fence, they started to sort the planks of wood and posts on the ground into a rough approximation of the fence they planned to build. Joyce counted out nails as Connie idly swung the mallet round like a gunslinger from a western.

‘Here, do you think I could test your reflexes with this, Iris?’

‘Not flaming likely. You’d break my leg.’

Iris and Connie dissolved into a fit of giggles.

‘Will you two stop mucking about? I want to finish this job before Christmas day.’ Joyce was grinning too as she placed the nails into different pockets ready for the assembly.

They had lived through five wartime Christmases and it was getting hard to remember the ones before. Or at least it was getting hard to remember them without them being painted as halcyon days when everything was perfect. But there was no denying that those pre-war Christmases had plenty of food and presents; they were times you didn’t have to scrimp and save your rations for the big day; when turkeys and chickens hung in the butchers’ windows and you could take your pick; times when you could put on a pair of stockings without having to think about faking them with an eyebrow pencil to draw the seams.

Each Christmas since had seemed to present more challenges. As people became adept at scouring the shops for sought-after rations, basic goods for Christmas became harder to source. You really did have to be an early bird. This year, like the ones before that she’d spent on the farm, Joyce had put aside some of the sixteen shillings she was paid by Finch since September. This nest egg, together with money from the other girls, could enable them to buy a decent ox heart or some beef cheek from the butchers – plus other food and drink for the Christmas period. But it wasn’t always easy to save.

‘Sorry I haven’t put any into the pot for a few weeks,’ Joyce looked apologetically to the others. ‘Finch said there’s been a delay in getting the wages from the government.’

‘Ah there’s always a delay.’ Iris shook her head. ‘But we’re all in the same boat. Finch pays some of us one week, and the others the next. He’s always catching up with himself.’

‘I think he’s betting it on the horses.’ Connie offered a devilish smile. They laughed, but in reality they knew that the one thing Finch would never be dishonest about was their wages. He valued what they did on the farm and was happy that it didn’t personally cost him anything to have them doing it.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, concentrating on excavating the holes for the fence posts. It was hard to dig down into the frosted soil; the clay underneath was solid and unyielding.

‘Oh, I had a look for some dried fruit,’ Joyce said, apropos of nothing. ‘For the Christmas cake. We’ve got enough sugar put by for the icing, but there will be no point doing it without fruit in the middle.’

‘If there’s none around, my mum cuts up apple and puts in a few raisins.’ Iris mimed the act of cutting an apple, just in case they didn’t understand what she was saying.

‘Where did we get it from last year?’ Connie asked.

‘Finch got it from Birmingham. Mind you, he had to wait forty minutes in the queue for it. Do you not remember all the swearing when he got back? Very festive!’

Connie laughed, shaking her head. ‘I don’t listen half the time.’ She lodged a fence prop into the first hole.

‘Very wise.’ Iris held the base of the prop. ‘Some of those words were an education.’

‘So can we send him over to Birmingham this year?’

‘There’s no way he’ll do it.’ Joyce hammered in the post as Iris and Connie kicked in earth around the base. ‘Is that vertical? It doesn’t look very vertical.’

‘Yes! It’s vertical.’ Connie squinted at the post. ‘It looks wonky because your head’s at an angle!’

Joyce smiled and straightened her neck and assessed her handiwork with a fresh perspective. The post stood proud and upright in the hole. She watched as the other women finished tamping the earth down around it.

‘Maybe there will be dried fruit in the village?’ Iris ventured; her open and childlike face full of hope.

‘No, Mrs Gulliver and all those harpies will have snatched it all by now.’ Connie frowned. ‘Face facts, one of us will have to go to Birmingham at the weekend.’

‘Sounds like you’re not volunteering?’ Joyce smiled.

‘You’re correct. I don’t mind drawing lots though. Loser spends all day waiting in the queue.’

‘Deal.’ That sounded a good arrangement to Iris.

Joyce considered for a moment and nodded. ‘Go on then.’

Connie scoured the ground for some twigs and found three of a similar size. She broke one of them, so it was shorter and bunched the three in her closed hand for the others to pick.

‘Whoever gets the short one has to go.’

‘Who goes first?’ Iris asked.

‘Shall I do it?’ Joyce volunteered.

‘Go on, Joycie, be lucky!’ Connie proffered her hand with the sticks clenched in her fist. ‘Or don’t! Actually don’t be lucky at all. I don’t want to be lumbered!’

Joyce took a deep breath and pulled out a twig. To her relief, it wasn’t the short one.

‘Thank goodness for that.’ She jumped up and down and taunted Connie and Iris with her twig.

‘Look at her! It’s like she’s won a flaming Oscar!’

‘Just you and me then, Connie.’ Iris’s face was taut with concentration.

‘You and me, Iris.’ Connie moved her closed hand towards the youngest Land Girl. Iris mumbled to herself as she looked at both the twigs. For her part, Joyce had no idea which was the shortest but she was just glad she was out of the running.

Iris cautiously plucked a twig from Connie’s hand.

It was the short one.

Connie laughed and Iris’s face fell in mock anger. Joyce suspected that Iris didn’t really mind the prospect of a trip to Birmingham. It would be a chance to look in the shops. She could queue for the dried fruit and then perhaps stop for a cup of tea and a cake in Butler’s Tea Rooms near the station off Stephenson Street.

Butler’s Tea Rooms.

Joyce hadn’t thought of that place in years.