Land Girls by Angela Huth

Author:Angela Huth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780312171957
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Mrs Elliot, the widow who ran The Guest House in Hamilton Road, was a woman of such deep suspicions that she was not ideal material for a landlady. Her pessimistic imaginings were fired at the very sight of strangers walking up the concrete path, and lingered long after they had gone. Her mind, filled with the possible activities of past guests, was thus always ready to come up with some point of reference. When Philip had come round to book the room, Mrs Elliot was able to inform him that not only had she had many lads from the forces staying under her roof but also, of particular coincidence, a sub-lieutenant from the Apollo had once stayed two nights. Her veneer of friendliness was calculated to make the new incumbent forthcoming with the sort of information she could pass on to the guests of the future.

As Stella and Philip walked in uneasy silence up the street of identical semidetached houses, Stella struggled to put aside her picture of a uniformed doorman ushering her through huge glass portals into a hotel lobby of rococo magnificence. Approaching Mrs Elliot’s establishment up the sterile little path, she had her misgivings – but then put them quickly to one side, because nothing, she told herself, now mattered except that she was here with Philip at last. While they waited for the door to open, Stella studied the grey stucco walls of the house, the windows veiled with thick net curtains, the highly polished brass knocker on the nasty green paint of the front door. She was aware that a kaleidoscope of material images was collecting in her mind where they would retain a significance for the rest of her life, simply because they were part of the weekend when, as Prue would say, she finally Did It.

The door opened. Mrs Elliot, from her superior position in the hall, was able to look down on Philip and Stella on the path. Her glance told them she was well appraised in all tricks of human nature – there was no point in any pretence. Stella was curious to know how Philip would deal with her censoriousness: silly old bat, she thought – what we are has nothing to do with her. The woman’s silent, instant disapprobation was intrusion into a privacy that meant much to Stella. She felt sudden anger, but said nothing.

Inside, they were greeted by smells that had never escaped the tightly closed windows: years of soup, cabbage, gravy, tea, had combined to thicken the airless atmosphere like invisible cornflour. The place was spotless, immaculate: the front room was crowded with a three-piece suite covered in rust rep, a material Stella’s mother had always sworn she would never resort to, no matter how long the war lasted. Starched white lace antimacassars hung over the back of the chairs and sofas indicating their owner was a connoisseur of such refinements, and woe betide any brazen member of the forces who dared lean his head against them.

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