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Over the next two hours, Maisie watched Betty closely as she taught the group to adjust and feed big tree trunks into the big table and routing saws, and showed them how to use the edger, the jointer, and the plane. After a tea break, they were split into pairs, and Maisie worked alongside Helen at one station, then another, until they reached the routing saw. They both stood baffled for several minutes, until Betty came and gave them instructions again.
Just as Helen finally managed to get the engine turning over, though, a sharp scream rose above the din, and then another. Maisie shouted to Helen to shut off the saw again, waiting only until the blade started slowing before she ran to see what had happened. The others were already grouped around the big headsaw, and even from the back, Maisie could hear Dot’s voice above all the others.
“Catherine! Press down hard on this, would you? Harder! Someone give me a belt. I need a tourniquet on her arm. And a cloth, I need another cloth. No, something cleaner than that. Your shirt’ll do. Come on, give me your shirt, we need to get it wrapped quickly.”
Maisie peered over the crowd. Lillian was lying flat on her back on the sawdust-covered floor, groaning and panting, her face ashen, her eyes squeezed tight shut. Dot crouched at her side, wrapping a bundle of green cloth around Lillian’s hand—Catherine’s blouse by the look of it—and as Maisie watched, the fabric slowly darkened as blood seeped through.
Betty shoved through the crowd, carrying a metal box painted with a red cross. Throwing open the lid, she grabbed a large paper packet and thrust it at Dot.
“Thanks, Betty,” said Dot, her voice strong and decisive, “but I can’t let up the pressure yet. Can you tighten the tourniquet around her upper arm to limit the blood flow first? And then carefully open that packet, but try not to touch the gauze as you hand it to me. I need to get the cut wrapped so it’s kept clean. I’m sure they’ll be able to stitch it up, but if the gash gets infected, then … well, let’s just keep it clean, all right?”
Lillian whimpered at Dot’s words, and Maisie tried to push past the people in front so she could give her some comfort. But Anna had already dropped to her knees and was laying her hand gently onto Lillian’s forehead while she whispered soft words of reassurance.
Maisie glanced up at the saw table behind Dot, where the circular saw sat innocently still. Its guilt was clear, however, from its red-smeared teeth. A few inches away, a tan leather work glove lay abandoned, empty fingers curled as if in supplication. It was just like the ones Maisie had on, except that this glove’s palm had been torn wide open—no, not torn, sliced. The cut across the smooth brown leather ran very neatly in a straight line from the bottom of the index finger to the heel. Its gaping edges were sharp, and were marred by dark-red staining of the pale leather all along their length. Someone beside her gagged, and Maisie realized that Lillian’s glove had been no match for the cold steel of the headsaw, exactly as Betty had warned.
Within thirty seconds, the tourniquet belt was tight and Dot was wrapping the injured hand in its fourth layer of bandage. And then the truck was there by the open door of the mill shed, and Phyllis, Mairi, Helen, and Maisie were lifting Lillian onto the flatbed at the back while Dot kept applying pressure on both the well-wrapped hand and the pulse point on Lillian’s wrist. As they laid her down, Maisie tried to reassure Lillian that everything would be fine, but the words felt hollow. After all, what did Maisie know about these things?
Once Lillian was settled, with her head lying in Anna’s lap and with Dot still at her side, the truck pulled away. As she watched it go, Maisie heard someone say, “Well, still waters run deep, don’t they? Who’d have thought mousy little Dorothy would step up and take over like that?”
“Just as well she did,” another voice replied. “I was close to fainting at all that blood.”
Maisie felt a rush of pride knowing she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the transformation in Dot. She’d looked so confident and in charge, and Maisie knew that Dot had finally found her place as a lumberjill. But what about poor sweet Lillian? If the cut was as bad as it looked to Maisie, perhaps Lillian’s days in the Timber Corps had just come to a sudden and sorry end.
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The next morning, Betty Harp brought them news of Lillian, who was apparently doing well. She had been transferred from the cottage hospital in Brechin to the much larger Dundee Royal Infirmary, where surgeons had operated on her hand overnight. Betty praised Dot’s quick thinking and determination, and told the group that because Dot had kept pressure on Lillian’s hand all through the journey to the hospital, the doctors were hopeful that Lillian would not lose the use of her fingers, though only time would tell.
Once the lumberjills had applauded this good news, Betty repeated her lecture about safety in the mill, about wearing their gloves at all times—“Lillian might have cut her hand, but she’s kept her fingers because she was wearing her gloves”—and about doing exactly what they were damn well told.
Once the lecture was over, all the girls gathered around Dot, patting her on the back and congratulating her. Dot tried to say it was nothing, that anyone else would have done the same, but Maisie could see that under the pink flush, Dot was thrilled.
And all through the rest of the week Dot was like a new person; rescuing Lillian had provided her the confidence to take on any number of tasks. And there were so many new things still to learn in the sawmill that even Maisie felt rather overwhelmed.
By Friday afternoon—the end not only of their sawmill training but of their Timber Corps training too—everyone was sick and tired of the work, as well as the stifling heat in the shed.
The unusually high temperature rather spoiled what should have been an exciting day. They had come to the end of their training at last, even if they were now looking at unknown futures. In fact, the weather was so unbelievably hot for September that at knocking-off time there were no cheers at all. Everyone just drifted wearily toward the track up to Shandford Lodge, wiping the dust and sweat off their faces and necks with scarves and handkerchiefs, not even bothering to congratulate each other for finishing the grueling training.
“Ladies!” Phyllis shouted from behind them, bringing them all to a stop. She was standing by the same Bedford truck that had carried Lillian to the hospital days before. “To mark this auspicious day, the end of our lumberjill training, we will be taking a little detour to do something we should have done days ago. Come on, up you get, and we’ll be on our way.”
With that, Phyllis pulled herself up into the driver’s seat and beeped the horn twice as the ignition roared.
Maisie looked around for the truck’s usual driver, a man named Eddie, but there was no sign of him. She clambered aboard the flatbed anyway, sitting down just as the truck lurched off toward the main road.
For the first time in hours—days even—Maisie felt cool, fresh air ruffle her sweaty hair and blouse. Was this what Phyllis had planned? A refreshing breeze for the trip home? But then Phyllis drove past their usual turnoff, and they were almost to Forfar before she suddenly swung the truck off the road and down a rutted dirt track. Maisie grunted involuntarily as she was thrown around with the other girls, bouncing on the hard truck floor every time Phyllis hit a bump. Fortunately, Phyllis soon slammed on the brakes, cut the engine, and jumped down from the cab.
“Follow me!” she cried, and was over a gate and off down a footpath beside a recently harvested field before anyone could ask her where they were going. Soon, Maisie was picking her way with Dot and the other lumberjills along the side of the barley stubble toward a wooded area at the far side of the field.
Maisie had long since given up trying to guess where they were being led when she heard excited cries followed by a splash. As she and Dot came through the thick curtain of young larches, an expanse of dark-blue water extended away from them. The sun dappled silver onto the surface, and ripples extended out across the long and slender loch. Suddenly, a naked Phyllis rose up from the surface, spraying water around her, and Maisie found herself clapping and laughing with delight.
“Come on in, everyone!” Phyllis cried through the sheet of water pouring over her face. “It’s glorious!” Then she turned away and, bending double, gave a neat surface dive back into the water, a move that brought her bare buttocks up to the surface for a split second before they vanished again, followed by her legs, with a neat scissors kick of her feet.
Catherine, Mairi, and Mary clearly needed no second invitation, because they were already tearing off their sweat-soaked uniforms and charging over the soft grass into the water. The older women, Cynthia, Anna, and Helen, were a little more genteel, folding their uniforms neatly on top of their boots before tiptoeing down to the edge and easing themselves into the water with gasps and giggles.
“This is fantastic!” Maisie cried to Dot, as she tried to undo both bootlaces at the same time. “Why did no one think of doing this before?”
One boot came off, then the other, and Maisie was undoing the buttons on her blouse when she realized that Dot was still standing, fully dressed, staring at the women in the water, who were all splashing each other and laughing like children.
“Come on, Dot,” said Maisie, “let’s get in there quick. We’re all so hot, I reckon we’ll set the loch to boil like a kettle.” Maisie was down to her underwear when Dot turned away from her, gazing instead into the trees behind them.
“Don’t be embarrassed.” Maisie lowered her voice a little. “It’s only us girls.”
Still Dot didn’t move.
“Can’t you swim?” Maisie asked gently.
“No, it’s not that.”
“If you can’t swim, don’t worry, it doesn’t look deep. At least come in as far as your waist, so you’ll get cool. I’ll stay beside you, in case.”
“It’s not that I can’t swim.” Dot was now fingering the top button of her blouse. “It’s … well, I don’t have a swimsuit.”
Maisie almost laughed, but stopped herself in time when she saw Dot wasn’t joking, and it struck Maisie that she had never seen Dot get dressed or undressed in front of anyone else. Maisie, like all the others, got her uniform or her pajamas on beside her bed, without really thinking who else was around, but Dot never did. In fact, Maisie couldn’t work out where Dot did dress—under the blankets, or in the ablutions block behind the dormitory huts? Wherever, she was always dressed ahead of everyone else.
“Well, neither do they,” she said kindly, indicating the girls already swimming. “And neither do I.”
“I know, but …”
Maisie was torn. She desperately wanted to swim, but Dot looked so upset. Either way, she was standing on a loch shore in nothing but her underwear, so she really ought to decide—
That was it!
“We can swim in our bra and knickers then.” Maisie suggested. “It’s so warm today, they’ll dry out again in no time.”
Dot glanced back at the cool water of the loch, and a faint smile began to break through the worry.
“I know I’m being ridiculous, but—”
“You’re not being ridiculous, but you are wasting valuable swimming time. So come on, get those boots off!”
A minute later, Maisie grabbed Dot’s hand and led her to where the soft mud at the water’s edge cooled their feet even before the chilly water could make them gasp as it wrapped around their ankles, then their knees. There was a chorus of catcalls from the other women as Maisie took a deep breath and plunged into the water.
It felt wonderful, as if the water was sloughing off every bit of dirt and sweat that had caked her skin over the last few weeks, cleansing her in a way that no five inches of tepid bathwater ever could.
From somewhere a bar of soap had appeared—a very ladylike pale lilac soap that smelled wonderfully of lavender—and eventually, it was passed to Catherine, who then passed it to Maisie. For months now, the only soap they’d been able to get with their ration books was carbolic, harsh, bright pink, and sold in utilitarian blocks. So being able to rub this soft and silky, sweet-smelling lather over her skin and into her hair was sheer luxury, even if there was mud oozing between her toes, and pond weed—at least she hoped it was pond weed—grabbing at her ankles.
Tempting though it was to linger with the soap, Maisie offered the bar to Mary, who was chatting nearby to Dot and Mairi. Dot, Maisie noticed, was looking relaxed now, but was also making sure everything below her shoulders stayed under the water.
Mary took the soap, sniffed it, and pulled a comically disgusted face. “What a choice to make,” she said. “I can stay stinking like a sweaty cesspit, or I can use this soap and smell like my granny instead.”
“Well, I thought it smelled lovely,” said Maisie as she eased herself back under the water again, moving her head from side to side to clear the soap from her hair.
As Maisie surfaced again, she saw that Phyllis and Helen were now standing on the grass beside their clothes. Helen was squeezing the water from her long brown braid as Phyllis rubbed her short hair into a messy crown with her undershirt. Although Maisie wouldn’t have hesitated to strip off to swim if it hadn’t been for Dot, she was still struck by Phyllis’s and Helen’s complete lack of embarrassment. Neither seemed to find it the slightest bit unusual to be standing naked in the open air, whereas Maisie knew that she would soon be rushing to get her clothes on as quickly as possible. Even though her belt was these days pulled two notches tighter than when she’d first arrived at Shandford Lodge, proving how much flatter her belly had become from all the physical work, Maisie was still self-conscious about her size. Hadn’t her parents been telling her she was fat—or “hefty,” to use her father’s expression—all her life? Perhaps Phyllis and Helen were lucky enough to have kinder, more sensitive parents.
Just then, something caught Maisie’s eye from the trees beyond where Phyllis and Helen stood. A face peeked out, then another, and then a third. Maisie distinctly heard giggling and realized that they were being watched by three young boys of perhaps eleven or twelve.
Instinctively, Maisie ducked down into the water until her shoulders were covered, and called to Mary and Mairi, who were already wading out of the loch. “Girls, wait!” She pointed her finger toward the peeping toms in the trees.
There was a squeak from behind her, as Dot saw too, and within a second, Mary and Mairi were back under the water.
“Phyllis!” Mary called, her hand cupping her mouth, “Phyllis! We have visitors!”
Phyllis looked at Mary, and then at the boys Mary was pointing to. Helen grabbed her uniform and held it up in front of herself, apparently discovering her embarrassment at last. But Phyllis simply glanced back toward the women in the water with a wide grin.
The boys didn’t seem to notice they’d been spotted until Phyllis was already heading toward them. One of them let out a shriek and ducked behind his tree. The others followed suit, but none of them reappeared from the other side to run away.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” called Phyllis in a singsong voice, and Maisie had to laugh. She’d bet these boys had never played a game of hide-and-seek quite like this one. “If you’re so interested in female anatomy, lads, you might as well come and have a really good look while you have the chance.”
There was the sound of a skirmish, and suddenly a boy was shoved out from behind the tree and held there by his friends as he tried desperately to fight his way back into cover. This boy was older than Maisie’d first thought, more like thirteen, though she guessed he had yet to hit the true growth spurt that came with puberty. Right now, however, he looked like a young deer caught in the beam of a ghillie’s flashlight, quivering yet hypnotized.
“So, what’s your name then, young man?” Phyllis asked in her best schoolmistress voice, as if she weren’t standing stark naked in front of a boy young enough to be one of her pupils.
He swallowed before he croaked, “Davey,” but when Phyllis placed her hands on her hips in what would have been a stern gesture in other circumstances, he corrected himself. “I mean, David Matheson, Miss … erm … Mrs …”
Phyllis nodded at him, the motion of which sent her breasts swinging, something that Davey seemed to find quite hypnotic. “You may call me Miss Cartwright. And now, young David, will you introduce me to your friends too?”
Davey continued to stare at Phyllis’s chest but vaguely beckoned to his friends with one hand, in the manner of someone half-asleep. Five seconds of noisy shuffling later, the two other lads appeared. This pair, however, had no courage to look at the naked woman; they kept their eyes studiously on their boots. Glancing at them, Davey followed their example and dropped his gaze too.
“Poor little sods,” chuckled Mary from where she was mostly submerged next to Maisie.
“This experience could scar them for life,” replied Mairi.
“I think it’s scarring me for life,” joined in Dot, and they all laughed, sending out ripples around them. The movement of the water against Maisie’s shoulders made her shiver, the delicious relief of cool water on her skin now turning into shivering cold, as goose bumps broke out on any skin that was still exposed to the afternoon breeze. She really wanted to get out of the water now, but there was no way she would stand up with those boys there.
“So, is it polite to spy on other people?” Phyllis was saying in a clear voice.
All three boys shook their heads solemnly without lifting their eyes.
“Then perhaps it’s about time you got off home. I’m sure your mothers will be very keen to hear what you’ve been up to this afternoon.”
Davey nudged his elbow against his friend, who did the same to the third boy, and all three of them shuffled sideways toward the tree.
“I’m sorry, boys, I didn’t quite hear what you said there,” Phyllis sounded very stern.
“Thank you, miss. Sorry, miss. Good-bye, miss,” mumbled the boys as they moved.
“That’s better,” said Phyllis, as she shooed them away with one hand. “And good-bye to you too.”
Sensing that they had been released, all three boys suddenly pelted behind the trees, reappearing three seconds later as they dashed toward the thicker bushes beyond. Maisie heard one of them let out a triumphant whoop, which was followed by a succession of cheers and yells, the boys clearly delighting in their narrow escape from the spitting venom of a naked Medusa.
Hearing the exultant cries, Phyllis put her head back and guffawed. “I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon, do you?” she crowed.
“No, but their big brothers will be,” called Mary.
“And their dads,” added Mairi.
With relief, Maisie and the other girls left the water and pulled their clothes over their soaking bodies. Maisie wasn’t about to let the presence of the boys disrupt her pleasant afternoon.
Walking back to where the truck was parked, Maisie tugged at the back of her trouser leg, pulling the fabric off her damp skin. With soaking underwear under dry clothes, it wasn’t going to be the most comfortable ride home, but the swim had been worth it.
“Thank you for not laughing at me,” Dot said suddenly.
“Why would I have laughed at you?” Maisie replied.
“You know, with the swimsuit thing. It’s only that, well, I’m not used to being so open and uninhibited. I’m not very good around other women, I suppose.”
“But that’s nonsense—you’ve made loads of friends here.”
“No, Maisie, you’ve made loads of friends, and they all let me tag along because they like you so much.”
“That’s not true, and you know—”
Dot put her hand on Maisie’s arm. “I’m serious. I’ve got four big brothers, and their favorite sport is to make my life miserable. My whole life they’ve been shoving me, and stealing my things, and tearing my clothes, and so I spent my time at home trying to be invisible. But then they started picking on anyone I tried to be friends with. It took a while, but in the end, no one at school or in our street dared talk to me because of what my brothers would do to them.”
Maisie felt heartsick for her friend. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
Dot shrugged. “It’s not something I’m all that proud of.”
“But didn’t your mother—”
“She died when I was little. I don’t remember her much.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Maisie felt a sudden wave of shame, never having considered herself lucky to have her mother and sister. They had always just been there.
Maisie and Dot were almost at the truck now, and everyone else was already clambering on board.
“I always wanted to be one of those pretty girls,” Dot continued, “like Anna and Lillian. Or outgoing, like Phyllis, or someone who makes friends so easily, like you. But that was impossible. My brothers saw to that.”
“But didn’t your dad stop them?”
Dot slowed her steps. “My dad,” she said quietly, “well, my dad’s not a very nice man.”
Maisie almost replied that her dad wasn’t a very nice man either, but Dot’s lowered eyes and stillness told her that her own family problems could not compare, so she said nothing.
“I’ve never really had a best friend before I met you, Maisie, or any friend actually. And before coming here, I’d never really been around any women either, so I was terrified on the journey here.”
“But if the idea of being with a large group of women scared you so much,” Maisie asked, “then why would you join what is basically a large group of women?”
Dot looked at Maisie for several seconds, seeming to consider her answer very carefully.
