her mouth dry and her throat tighten. Why did it have to be a Clydesdale and not a donkey? The memory of her encounter with the rag-and-bone man’s massive beast, Charlie, was making her pulse race.
But no, she was not a child anymore. She was a lumberjill now, and she could handle being beside a horse without bursting into tears.
At least, she hoped she could.
“Do you two like horses then?” Nancy said as she waved them inside.
“Actually,” Maisie said as she passed Nancy, “I’m not much of a horsewoman. I’d rather stick to my ax and saw.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re scared of an old horse?” A strident voice came from the far end of the hut. “How silly!”
Looking around the gloomy room, Maisie saw a dozen or so neatly made beds lined up on either side, iron headboards against the walls. Two small windows let in only a little of the bright sunshine from outside. In the far corner, in the low light from a paraffin lamp, a woman was sitting in an upright chair at a table, shuffling several pieces of paper into a pile in front of her. As Maisie watched, the woman brought a rubber stamp down with two emphatic thumps—once on an inkpad and once on the top sheet of paper—and thrust the papers into a large envelope, winding the little string around the button with perfectly manicured fingernails to close it up. She was exquisitely made up, with perfect lipstick and primped blond hair neatly rolled, suggesting that she might not spend as much time with an ax and saw as Maisie and Dot had been. Maisie tucked her own cracked and crusty hands into her pockets and wondered what she should say in response.
Before she could decide, the woman stood up and consulted a typewritten sheet on a green metal clipboard before approaching Maisie and Dot.
“So, you’re my new recruits, are you?” she drawled, reaching out a hand, giving Maisie no option but to shake it, blisters or not. Closer up, Maisie could see that the woman was probably only in her midtwenties. “My name is Violet Dunlavy, and I’m the WTC officer in charge around here. So as long as you girls do exactly what is expected of you, we’ll all get along nicely. Isn’t that right, Nancy?”
Nancy was now leaning against the doorjamb, and Maisie got the distinct impression that she was trying not to roll her eyes.
“That’s right, Violet,” Nancy replied, her friendly tone sounding only a little forced, “we’re all one happy family here.” She walked up to the other end of the dormitory and set Dot’s suitcase next to a pile of linen at the foot of a bare bed.
After a moment, Violet continued, her cut-glass accent betraying barely a hint of Scots. “And you must be, um …” She ran a long nail down her paper.
“That’s Maisie McCall,” said Dot, peering at the list on the clipboard. “And I’m Dot, I mean, Dorothy Thompson.”
“Yes, here you are. Margaret and Dorothy.” Violet noticed what Dot was looking at and snapped the clipboard tight to her chest. “Well, your timing is perfect, because I’m filling out the work schedule for the coming week. Generally, we all pitch in together at Auchterblair. Some of us are specialists, like me as the team leader; then we have Agnes in the kitchen, and you’ve met Nancy, who sleeps in the stables,” Violet chuckled as she waved her pencil vaguely in Nancy’s direction. “I’m only joking about that, obviously, though sometimes I think she would, if I let her. You rather enjoy spending your life ankle-deep in muck, don’t you, Nancy?”
“At least it’s honest muck,” Nancy replied tartly as she disappeared through the door.
“Each to his own, I suppose,” muttered Violet as she began to scribble on her paper. After a moment, she looked up again, giving them a beatific, but not quite believable, smile. “Get acquainted with everyone this evening, and you’ll start work at dawn tomorrow. I’ll post the schedule shortly, but bear in mind that it’s for this week only, since next Monday, we’ll be joining the noh-foo chaps for something big.”
“Noh-foo?” asked Maisie. “What’s that?”
“Noh-foo. N. O. F. U.” Violet spelled it out with a sigh, and Maisie recalled the painted sign she had seen down on the road. “Canadian lumberjacks. They’ve a camp toward Carrbridge, and they call themselves the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit. But that’s such a bloody mouthful. Noh-Foo’s so much easier.”
“And do they—” began Maisie.
“Please!” snapped Violet. “You must stop interrupting me so I can inform you of your duties.”
Maisie did as she was told, though not willingly, as Violet pulled her fallen smile back onto her face and turned to Dot. “This week, Dorothy—”
“You can call me Dot if you—”
“This week, Dorothy,” Violet said, clearly determined to ignore Dot, “you will be helping Agnes, our cook. Breakfast preparation begins at four a.m., so don’t be late. And you, Margaret—”
“It’s Maisie, actually.”
“You, Margaret, will be—”
This woman’s manner was already riling Maisie, and seeing Dot shrink back from her sharp tone was more than Maisie would put up with.
“Violet,” Maisie said, being overly polite, “I think you might have misunderstood. Please call me Maisie, and please call her Dot.” Maisie couldn’t remember ever being so assertive before, but she knew she could not let this snooty woman win even such a petty argument. “Thank you so much.”
Violet stared at Maisie for a moment, her nose lifted as if to avoid a bad smell. “As you wish,” she said eventually, then cleared her throat as if what she was about to say would choke her. “Dot, you’ll be in the kitchen, as I said, and Maisie, you will be with Nancy in the stables. You’ll only stay with them this week, just until you can follow the camp routine. Then you’ll be out working with all the other girls in the woods. And Maisie, I do not want to see you wearing anything but your WTC uniform. Nancy is already on a daily warning about that hideous leather ensemble of hers, so please do not think you can copy her.”
Maisie cringed. She certainly did not like Violet. Not only was Violet being rude to them, she had assigned Maisie to work in the stables even after Maisie had said she was uncomfortable around horses. Well, she could always ask for a change.
“Violet, about the stable duty, would it be possible for me to switch—”
Maisie’s earlier assertiveness dried up under Violet’s glare, as if she were trying to decide if Maisie was daring to be insolent yet again.
“Stables first, trees later. That’s what it says on my schedule,” Violet trilled, her voice tight and brittle. “And at Auchterblair, we never argue with the official schedule.”
“But you only just wrote the—”
Violet dismissed Maisie’s comment with a wave of her hand, and then pointed her clipboard toward the bed where Dot’s case lay. “Pick any of the empty beds down there, and get yourselves unpacked. The rest of the girls will be back in about an hour or so, and dinner will be served at six on the dot.”
She immediately looked at Dot and let out a loud, horsey laugh. “On the dot! And you’re Dot! How funny! Oh, you know, I can be quite
