Free Land Girls by Angela Huth Page A

listened to the rhythmic hiss of the milk she was drawing from the cow’s abundant udder, calculating her answer.
    ‘I woke as usual. Thought you’d be glad of the help.’
    ‘You did, did you?’
    She could hear Joe moving away with surly tread. Why had her kind act so annoyed him? She felt the sickness of having made a bad decision. There was nothing she could do but carry on: she managed to avoid him each time she finished a cow and had to collect an empty bucket. The two hours went by in a frenzy of speculation. What had she done wrong? How could she put matters right? Usually, she could rely on the soundness of her instincts. This morning no answer came.
    When Prue finished milking the last cow she stood up and saw that Joe was no longer in the shed. Well, bugger him, she thought: he hasn’t half taken advantage of my kind offer. Leaves me most of the work, then buggers off early to breakfast.
    She stomped crossly up the aisle, swinging her last full bucket. Milk splashed on to the floor, mixing with streaks of chocolate-coloured water, paling it to a horrible khaki, that warlike colour Prue so hated. Bugger everything, she thought. I’m off back to bed.
    Joe was standing by the cooling machine, arms folded, blank-faced, impervious to its insinuating whine. Steam, escaping from the sterilizing machine, blurred the handsome vision. Prue, nose furiously in the air, inwardly quaked. She sensed there was to be some kind of showdown, and dreaded it.
    Then through the steam she saw – she was almost positive she saw – a tremor of a smile break his lips, though his eyes were hard upon her.
    ‘Little minx,’ he said.
    In her surprise, Prue lowered her bucket to the ground too hard. Wings of milk flew over its edges, curdling on the concrete: she didn’t care. Nothing mattered now except that she should conceal her sense of triumph.
    ‘And careful , for Pete’s sake,’ she heard him say.
    He bent and picked up the bucket, threw the milk into the cooling machine with something of her own carelessness. He could blooming well deal with the sterilizing, Prue thought, heart a mad scattering of beats as she hurried out without speaking, pretending to ignore all messages.
    In the short march from the cowshed to the kitchen – smell of frying bacon quickening the early air of the yard – Prue reflected on her good fortune. She thanked her lucky stars she had made the right decision. Joe’s earlier behaviour, she had somehow failed to understand, was merely a form of teasing. He was no longer a problem. Her path was clear, Janet or no Janet. It was now just a matter of when and how , and at what point she should tell the others how right she had been.
     
     
    While Stella and Ag helped Mrs Lawrence in the kitchen, Prue spent an hour of luxurious contemplation in the empty attic room as she re-did her nails, chose combs for her hair instead of a ribbon, and finally decided to wear her red crepe dress with its saucy sweetheart neckline.
    Coming downstairs – heavy skirt of the dress flicking from side to side, not without impact – she found Joe and his father in the hall, both dressed in tweed suits. Mr Lawrence carried a prayer book. Christ, one Sunday it would probably be to her advantage to go to church with them, she thought – though she hoped it would not have to come to that. She’d never exactly seen eye to eye with the church, all those boring hymns. But she didn’t half fancy Joe in his posh suit, despite the egg on his tie. She smiled. Mr Lawrence, with a look of faint distaste, hurried towards the kitchen. That left her and Joe alone in the hall. She carried on smiling.
    ‘Been praying ?’ she asked eventually.
    ‘None of your sauce,’ said Joe. He swung past her up the stairs, banged the door of his room.
    None of your sauce … Prue went over the words carefully. He’d said them with such lightness of tone, in a voice so mock serious as to be transparent in its meaning, that for the second time