You’ll have to be bridesmaid of course. Or maybe we can have a double wedding when you marry your Lieutenant Hutchins. Does he write to you faithfully? Robbie isn’t the best correspondent, but I can quite understand that he can’t tell me what he is doing, and post from the front lines doesn’t always get through safely to England.

So I am counting off the days, and I bet you are, too. One of the girls has acquired a Brownie camera and has taken snapshots of us haymaking. When they are developed, I’ll send you one so that you can see what a brawny farm girl I have become.

Do take care of yourself,

Your friend,

Emily

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The haymaking coincided with a dry spell. The work no longer seemed hard after the baptism of fire with the potatoes. The women laughed and sang as they worked. The farmer’s wife and daughters appeared with pasties and jugs of lemonade. Alice, who had been to the music halls in London, sang them all the cheeky songs of Marie Lloyd.

“Oh, you don’t know Nellie like I do, sang the naughty little bird on Nellie’s hat.”

Daisy and Ruby were shocked, but the others chuckled and joined in the chorus, even Mrs Anson, who certainly hadn’t heard such things before. Emily realized that she had seldom felt so happy before. Her happiness was perfect every time a note arrived from Robbie. As she had said to Clarissa, he wasn’t much of a letter writer, but at least the notes were positive. He was being trained to fly a Vimy bomber, which was much bigger than the small fighter planes he’d flown before. He’d taken to it instantly, he said, and he was thinking it would be the perfect aeroplane to take back to Australia to carry cargo and passengers.

When Emily lay in bed, she pictured herself in an empty red landscape, waving to Robbie as he flew off in his aeroplane. Would she worry about him? Would she be lonely? Doubts crept in, but she pushed them aside. She’d be Mrs Robert Kerr, and that would be enough.

When the hay was all gathered and successfully stacked, and as there was no rain in sight, the farmer held a party. There was cider, and sausages were cooked on a bonfire. They sang in the firelight “Keep the Home Fires Burning” and “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.”

“I wonder where we’ll be going next,” Daisy said to Emily as they rode back to the training centre in the back of a van.

“I don’t know.” Emily thought about this. “It’s getting towards the end of the season, isn’t it? I wonder what they’ll do with us when winter comes and nothing grows.”

“Send us home, most likely,” Daisy said. “They won’t want to pay or feed us when there’s no work. Oh Lord, I don’t want to go home. Do you?”

Emily couldn’t say that she didn’t have a home to go to. “We’ll think of something,” she said. But in bed that night, she lay staring at the ceiling. What if the war went on and it was another year before Robbie was released from service? Where would she go? What would she do? Her parents would hardly be likely to take her back.

The next morning, they waited to hear their fate. Miss Foster-Blake came in while they were still eating porridge at breakfast.

“The farmer tells me he was satisfied with your work, girls,” she said. “Most satisfied. Well done. I am proud of what you have accomplished, and you should be, too. And as we have no requests for your service for the immediate future . . .” She paused.

“We’re going home?” Ruby asked excitedly.

“No, Ruby, you are going to make good use of that time with extra training. You never completed the course, so there were items that were not covered. The handling of sheep, for one thing. And methods for improving the quality of the land . . .”

A sigh could be heard amongst the women.

“She means dung spreading,” Maud muttered.

“Be ready to report for duty in twenty minutes,” Miss Foster-Blake added. Then, in a quieter voice, “Emily Bryce, I’d like a word with you.”

Emily’s heart leapt into her throat. What had she done wrong? And then, worse than that: she’d had news about Robbie. She could hardly make her feet follow the woman across the room. When they were outside in the hallway, Miss Foster-Blake turned to her. “We have had a rather unusual request, Miss Bryce. Do you happen to know Lady Charlton?”

Emily reacted with surprise. “Lady Charlton? I’m afraid not.”

“I thought you might move in the same circles.”

“Much as my mother would love it,” Emily said, “we do not mix much with titled people.”

“No matter,” Miss Foster-Blake said. “As I said, we have had a request. Lady Charlton owns an estate not far from here, at the edge of Dartmoor in the village of Bucksley Cross. Her gardeners all enlisted in the army, leaving the grounds to run completely wild. She wondered if we could spare any of our land girls to bring the estate back to its former state. I thought of you, naturally. You are a good worker, a quick learner, and you know how to behave with a person of her class. So I’d like you to select two girls to accompany you—girls you know will work hard and conduct themselves well.”

“Alice and Daisy,” Emily said immediately.

Miss Foster-Blake raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised at your choices. Not Mrs Anson, with whom I presume you have more in common?”