LITMIR.BIZ

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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 hilarious sometimes.”

      Violet tucked her clipboard and the fat envelope under her arm and looked at them, her face stern again. “By the way, HQ would not be happy to know that there was any fraternizing going on between a lumberjill and a NOFU chap. And neither would I.” She frowned for a second longer, then her face brightened and she let out another horsey bray. “Especially if you were trying to fraternize with the particularly handsome chap with the dreamy brown eyes. Consider yourselves warned, ladies—he’s mine!”

      With a strangely tinkling giggle at her own hilarity, Violet disappeared out of the door, leaving Maisie and Dot to stare at each other before bursting out laughing.

      “Well, she’s not quite what I was expecting to find in a shabby wooden hut on the side of a hill.” Maisie said. “Perhaps all the Swiss finishing schools are closed for the duration. I’m sure she’s very efficient, but does she really have to be such a cow?”

      “She’s as bossy as Phyllis,” replied Dot, “but without any of the charm.”

      “And if we’re lucky, without the calisthenics too.”

      Maisie followed Dot down the room to the black metal bedstead with the bare blue-ticking mattress where Nancy had dropped Dot’s suitcase. Beside it stood a wooden nightstand and small metal locker, also bare. Maisie glanced around, looking for another empty bed, but the nearest one was on the other side of the hut, two beds down. For a moment, Maisie was tempted to find Nancy or Violet to ask if there was any way that someone would swap, so that she and Dot could have beds side by side, as they had done from their first night in Hut C. But realizing that sounded childish, as if she were afraid of the dark, she carried her own case over to the other bed and lifted the pile of linen—two off-white sheets, one rather flat pillow, and the thinnest blanket that she had yet seen—onto the rough wooden nightstand.

      Around the room, all the other pieces of furniture sported random selections of photographs of family and of movie stars, as well as fashion pages cut from magazines. Some colorful quilts and blankets hung over the ends of beds, and for a second, Maisie wished that she had brought from home the lovely patchwork quilt that Mother had made for her shortly before Beth was born. But carrying a quilt on the train to Brechin in midsummer would have been ridiculous, so it was still on her bed at home, or at least it should have been, assuming Beth hadn’t stolen it the second Maisie walked out of the door. Beth loved the quilt as much as Maisie did. They’d cuddled under it for years, telling each other stories on cold nights. At least, they had until Beth had turned into a whiny pain in the neck when Maisie was about thirteen.

      Suddenly the yearning for Mother’s quilt, and for Beth’s silly stories, overwhelmed Maisie. She had felt so strong and so grown-up this morning, but now, the thought of the soft padded quilt, with shiny silk ribbons around its edge, made her want to crawl into bed—even this rickety bed—and pull her quilt up over her head.

      But Nancy appeared through the door, and Maisie’s fleeting homesickness vanished.

      “Has she finished with you then? And you’ve both found a bed? Good. Your driver’s already guzzling down his second cup of tea, so you’d best come quick or he’ll have drunk the whole pot.”

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