In Another Time

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“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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It turned out that despite Violet’s haughty demeanor, Nancy and the other women of Auchterblair were great fun to be with, and Maisie soon wondered why she’d been so worried about arriving at a new camp knowing no one. Of course, she was thankful to have Dot there with her, but it felt good to know that if she ever had to move camp again, she’d probably fit right into life there, too, without much worry.

However, she still didn’t like Violet, and had also decided to avoid Violet’s two cronies, Evelyn and Claire. That wasn’t difficult, though, since the three of them would rather have dyed their hair purple than spent time in the stables, and Violet had clearly arranged the schedule to make sure they never had to.

Maisie, on the other hand, had found that she was happy to help Nancy in the stables, mucking out, changing straw, mending and polishing the tack, and even brushing down the huge Clydesdale’s hide.

And Clyde the Clydesdale was vast.

“He’s bloody enormous!” she’d declared nervously when she’d entered the stables on her first Monday at camp.

“Gosh, I’d never noticed that,” Nancy had laughed, clapping Clyde’s shoulder. “But you don’t need to worry—he’s a big baby really. By the weekend, he’ll be eating out of your hand. Literally.”

Remembering her awful horse bite of years before, Maisie was not convinced, but sure enough, with Nancy’s guidance, she soon felt confident enough to let Clyde nibble carrots and apples from her palm. Nancy also showed Maisie how to lead Clyde by the reins—though he mostly led Maisie—up the hill to where the other girls were working on an area of larch forest. Since larch trees were so tall and straight, and the wood so durable, they were mostly used for telegraph poles, so once the lumberjills had cut a trunk to the right length with the cross-saw, they used Clyde to drag the eighteen-foot log to the collection point for the large trucks to pick up. As Maisie became confident in attaching Clyde’s harness and chain to each trunk, she was sure that she and the huge horse were already developing an understanding, or even a friendship.

It had been nice to get to know Nancy this week too. She loved pointing out interesting things about the trees, plants, and animals around them as they worked, all things that would have passed Maisie by otherwise.

Sitting under the stable lean-to on Saturday afternoon, polishing the mud off the harnesses, Maisie asked Nancy to tell her more about her life growing up on the Floors Castle estate, where her grandfather was head groom for the Duke of Roxburghe.

“But why on earth would you want to leave a real-life fairy-tale castle?” asked Maisie, only half joking.

“Fairy-tale castle? Hardly!” Nancy replied, “I’d always loved helping Grandpa with the horses, but as I grew older, the estate became quite … claustrophobic. So, when I heard the Timber Corps needed girls who could handle workhorses like Clyde, I signed up straightaway.”

“And will you tell me about your leather jerkin?” Maisie reached forward and rubbed the soft, supple leather between her fingers. “Not exactly standard issue.”

Nancy seemed quite pleased that Maisie had asked about it.

“It was my grandpa’s, actually. He wore this jacket most of his adult life. But when I told him I was leaving, he gave it to me. It’s far too big, of course, but he said that if I was going to work with horses like he did, I should wear his jerkin. He’s such an amazing horseman, I suppose it’s become a talisman for me. If I’m wearing it, Grandpa’s looking after me.”

“That’s lovely,” Maisie replied, just as a whistle blew. Three short bursts, the camp signal to call everyone to the yard in front of the huts. As Nancy and Maisie hurried to clear away the harnesses, Violet could be clearly heard shouting for people to “come along quickly, please. The post is here!”

Maisie heard Nancy muttering something under her breath. Maisie didn’t understand quite what Nancy had against Violet, nor what Violet had against Nancy, for that matter. Of course, Violet hadn’t been very kind to Maisie or Dot, either. While not being outwardly nasty, Violet had spent their first week making very certain that the newcomers knew their place in the group, and that was clearly, in Violet’s opinion, on the lowest rung. And she also made it clear that she believed Nancy sat barely any higher.