Roland Moore - Land Girls - The Homecoming - A moving and heartwarming wartime saga

The girl shook her head. “Not allowed tea. But thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Margaret Sawyer,” the girl replied.

“I’m Connie Carter. Well, Connie Jameson. Keep forgetting. Married.” Connie reached into her pocket and pulled out the parchment parcel. She opened it up, considered eating it, but then offered the piece of cheese to the girl. “Do you good to eat something, you know.”

The girl looked uncertain. Connie wondered whether she had been told not to take things from strangers.

“It’s all right. Your mum’s over there. And I’m a vicar’s wife.”

Margaret overcame her reticence and took it. She gobbled it down, taking another chunk before the first one was swallowed. Connie was surprised at how ravenous she seemed. “Blimey, doesn’t your mum feed you?”

“She’s not really my mum,” Margaret said.

But before Connie could enquire further, they were interrupted. It was the portly man with the trilby hat and the camera that Connie had seen at Brinford station.

“Hello, ladies,” he wheezed. “I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald .”

“About time someone told us what was going on,” Connie replied. “Why did the train come off the tracks like that, then?”

Roger was slightly wrong-footed. “No, I was hoping to ask you some questions.”

“Well I don’t know nothing,” Connie said.

Margaret, with a mouthful of cheese, stifled a giggle at their exchange.

“They think there was an explosive on the line,” Roger said in a hushed voice, hoping that the explanation might enable him to get on with his line of questioning.

“What, the Germans?”

Roger didn’t know. The bomb could have been planted by Nazi sympathisers or communists or any group allied with the German cause. There had been several instances of terrorism in Helmstead and the surrounding areas in the last few months. The air base at Brinford had been bombed mercilessly in a raid by German bombers, and while that action wasn’t terrorism, most locals thought someone had tipped off the secret location of the base to the enemy. And a sympathiser had even been shot dead at Hoxley Manor when Lady Ellen Hoxley had discovered him transmitting secret messages from the stables. The enemy was closer than anyone wanted …

Roger Curran explained that an explosive had been detonated as the train engine went across the track. The bomb must have been on a timer. It would have been common knowledge that, due to its proximity to the air base, the evening Brinford train would have had a large number of military personnel on board.

Connie hid her shock. Part of her had hoped the crash had been the result of a random accident. A rock on the line or something. It was terrifying to think that someone, or some group, was behind it. Terrifying that it was an act of war.

“Anyway, tell me what happened to you,” Roger said, pulling out a small notebook. He licked the end of his pencil and poised it over the page to write. Connie didn’t understand why people licked pencils. What was the point of that?

Connie wasn’t sure she wanted to tell the story, playing down any suggestion that she had been heroic. But, despite her efforts at modesty, Margaret piped up:

“She saved my life. She saved the lives of everyone in our compartment. She was brilliant.”

Connie blushed. She tried to downplay it, but was reluctantly forced to reveal that this was more or less the truth. She related the tale of what happened and Roger took a few pages of notes, his smiles of encouragement becoming more frequent. He sensed this was a good story for his paper. It might even give him his first front page since the Land Girls’ Tractor Race. He ended by asking Connie where she lived. Proudly Connie told him that she lived at the vicarage with her husband.

“This will be a lovely piece for the paper. ‘Vicar’s Wife Saves Lives’,” Roger said. Then he turned to the young girl. “And where do you live?”

“I don’t know if I should say,” Margaret replied, offering a worried glance in the direction of where the middle-aged woman was.

“It’s all right,” Connie encouraged.

“Jessop’s Cottage,” Margaret admitted, hesitantly.

As Roger tried to place it, Margaret informed him that it was in the middle of a valley, miles from anywhere. The nearest landmark was Panmere Lake and Helmstead was the nearest town. Roger couldn’t place it.

“Don’t worry. Nobody knows it. Nobody comes there.”

“Not even your friends?” Connie asked.

Margaret shook her head quickly, keen to close down all these intrusive questions.

As Connie mulled this over, Roger unhooked his camera from around his neck and started to frame a shot of Connie and Margaret.

“Perhaps, if you don’t mind getting closer …?” Roger said, wafting his hand for them to scrunch together.

Connie and Margaret shuffled closer over the grass – Margaret still wrapped in her blanket. They smiled weary smiles for the camera.

Roger clicked the trigger. “Cheese!”

He let the camera bounce back onto his ample stomach.

“Thank you, ladies.”

And then he tipped his hat and moved to another group. Even though he knew their story would take some topping. “Excuse me, I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald .”

Connie turned to Margaret. “How you feeling?”

Margaret looked subdued and thoughtful. Connie tried to cheer her up. “Here, I let him take my photograph and I was covered in soot.”

“It’s all right. So was I.” Margaret laughed. A nurse came over and helped Margaret to her feet.

“Your mum is being taken to the hospital. She’ll be fine. But we need you to come as well,” the nurse said.

Margaret looked back at Connie. The unhappy look had returned to the young girl’s face. Connie felt concerned. What was she going back to? Why did no one ever go to the little girl’s house?

“Thanks again,” Margaret said.

“Take care.” Connie watched the young girl as she was marshalled away. And then she was aware of Finch waving at her to get a move on. He wanted to leave now. Tipping the last remnants of her tea away, Connie picked herself up and scurried up the bank towards the waiting tractor.

When she reached it, the trailer was nearly full and people were shivering as dusk turned to night. As she hauled herself up, Connie was surprised to see John Fisher sitting next to Joyce. It turned out he had been on the train after all, squeezed into a carriage further down, just as Joyce had predicted. John had become a navigator for the RAF until he was shot down in France. The experience had been traumatic and he had left active duty soon after his recovery. Now he worked at Brinford Air Base as a clerk, his flying days over (to Joyce’s immense relief).

“I saw Finch before I saw Joyce,” he admitted.

“Flaming cheek,” Joyce joked.

“He probably blocked her out. Like one of them eclipse things,” Connie said.

Finch, at the front of the tractor with a starting handle, popped his head up. “’Ere! You can walk if there’s any more of that.”

Connie sat with Joyce and John as Finch cranked up the tractor.

It spluttered to life.

“Right, anyone not got a ticket? It’s tuppence each for the ride.” He chuckled, knowing full well that he was going to get a barracking for his cheek. But you couldn’t blame a man for trying.

“With your driving, you should be paying us!” Connie replied.

“One more insult and you’re out, Connie Carter!”

Everyone laughed, enjoying the catharsis of letting it out after the trauma they had faced. This was the Blitz spirit. You could bomb these people, derail their trains, take their homes, but they would still end up laughing, somehow.