In Another Time

Maisie glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed her untimely abandonment, but everyone seemed to be paying attention only to their dance partners or to the friends they were gossiping with.

Luckily for Maisie, that had been the final number, and as soon as it ended, everyone clapped and the band began to pack up for the night. All the dancers made their way back to their tables, with much laughing and promises of more dances next time, and gradually they all crowded out the stained-glass front doors and into the mild evening.

Out on the street, however, it was clear that what had happened hadn’t gone unnoticed by the other lumberjills after all, and Maisie found herself subjected to an inquisition from Dot and Mary. All the way back to the waiting truck, they demanded details.

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then, what did you do to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he step on your foot?”

“No.”

“Did you tread on his foot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he really as bad a dancer as it looked?”

“I don’t know! Actually, yes. Yes, he really was. Simply terrible,” Maisie said sadly, which caused much merriment for her friends.

“Talk about having two left feet!” chuckled Dot.

“You certainly pulled the short straw,” added Mary. “Such a shame—he was good-looking too.”

Even as they teased her, simply knowing that her friends were as indignant as she was that her partner had walked away like that made Maisie feel a little better.

On the drive home to the lodge, Dot and Mary delightedly shared with the other recruits the story of Maisie, the American, and their disastrous dance. At first, it was quite funny, even to Maisie, but as more and more of the women joined in, offering ever more hilarious comments at John Lindsay’s expense, Maisie found herself becoming defensive. He didn’t deserve this treatment. He’d been nice enough before they’d started dancing, even funny, and he was handsome, and until he had walked out on her, he’d been scrupulously polite and had shown such concern about her hands. It was only when they started dancing that he became … odd. Even so, he didn’t deserve ridicule from people who hadn’t even seen what had happened.

“Stop it!” she burst out. “Stop saying things like that.”

After a moment’s silence, somebody started a teasing “woo-hoo,” and soon everyone was joining in, making jokes about Maisie having found herself an eligible bachelor at last, Maisie being in love, Maisie and John sitting in a tree.

Maisie put her head down and tried to ignore them. She knew they were only having fun, still riding their own wave of excitement from the dance, but still, she could do without a second, no, a third bout of humiliation in one night.

Only Dot, sitting next to Maisie, was not joining in the ribaldry and teasing. She nudged Maisie and laid her head on Maisie’s shoulder, as the other women’s conversation moved on to discuss their own dance partners instead of Maisie’s.

“It’s all right,” Dot said so only Maisie could hear. “If he was thoughtless enough to walk away from a lovely girl like you, then it was his loss, not yours.”

Maisie nodded, but couldn’t force any words in reply past the knot that was tightening in her throat. Why had she let herself start to think that perhaps he might like her? And she might like him back?

But Dot was right. Walking away from her had been his loss.

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Maisie awoke with a start. A drum! Some blighter was beating a bloody drum inside their hut, and on the morning after a late night too!

The usual routine of being woken up at dawn by Old Crabby’s incessant whistle blowing from outside the dormitory was bad enough, but being dragged from deep sleep after a dance by an apparent crash of drums from inside the hut was a hundred times worse.

And now there was shouting too.

“Come on, ladies of Hut C, up you get! Sooner you’re up, the sooner it’s over.”

Maisie was still trying to cling to the last threads of a dream about dancing in the strong arms of a dark-haired man.

“What time is it, for goodness’ sake?” Dot croaked from the next bed over, and Maisie’s dream dancing was done.

“No idea,” replied Maisie, lifting her head blearily from the pillow and squinting toward the far end of the hut, where she saw Phyllis Cartwright, the tallest, strongest, and most athletic of all the WTC recruits, striding along, banging on the end of each bedstead with a stick. So, no drums, after all, just Phyllis with a bloody thunderstorm on a stick. “But whatever time it is, Phyllis has clearly taken leave of her senses.”

“We’ve all had enough of these aches and pains,” Phyllis bellowed, “so from now on, we’ll start each day with some calisthenic exercises to warm up the muscles and get us all ready to work.”

Maisie dropped back onto her pillow with a loud groan.

“But why today? We didn’t get to bed until after midnight.”

“None of that now, Maisie.” Phyllis was standing over her now. “This was your idea, after all.”

The groaning spread quickly around the room.

“My idea?” Maisie protested. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Yes, you did, Maisie. Yesterday, you said to me how everyone was still aching, and how hard Dorothy here was finding the physical work each day because of her weak muscle tone.”

“You said I was weak?” Dot glared at Maisie. “I’m not weak.”

“No, of course I didn’t say you were weak,” Maisie said quickly, “I only said that you’d never done this kind of intensive physical activity before, you know, because you didn’t play sports at school. That’s what you told me the other day, that your school didn’t even have hockey or tennis or anything.”

“No, I didn’t have much tennis during my childhood,” replied Dot, and Maisie caught a very un-Dot-like bitterness in her voice. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m—”

“Dot! Honestly, I didn’t tell anyone that you’re weak. This is just Phyllis—”

“This is just Phyllis doing her job,” Phyllis interrupted, striding off around the room again, banging on any bed with an occupant still buried under the blankets. “I’m making sure you are all given the chance to develop your strength now, so that you won’t struggle with the heavier stuff later, once you are out in a real camp, taking down real trees. I’m a fully trained physical fitness instructor, remember—five years teaching at Morrison’s Academy in Crieff, then another six at the Edinburgh Ladies’ College—so don’t go thinking I’m only a pretty face.”

Phyllis gave one of her wide rumbling belly laughs, and most of the women in the hut joined in. Phyllis’s face would never be described as pretty—handsome, yes, even striking, but not pretty—but that was something she seemed quite proud of.

Phyllis’s enthusiasm was infectious, because despite the early hour, soon everyone from Hut C was standing in uneven ranks on the wide expanse of driveway outside Shandford Lodge, stretching and jumping, bending and running on the spot.

Women from some of the other huts must have been disturbed by the rumpus, because they appeared up the hill in ones and twos to see what was going on, and some even joined in.

Finally, after half an hour that felt to Maisie like a week, Phyllis took pity on them and released them to get breakfast.

To Phyllis’s credit, the atmosphere in the dining hall was far livelier and more engaged than it had been any morning so far. The women were chatting and laughing, and some were singing along to music from the wireless in the corner. Again, Maisie realized that the exercise, like the dancing, had warmed her muscles to the point where she wasn’t even feeling the aches and strains that had been her constant companion since training began. Now, if she could just work out where to find some pig fat for her hands …

Just then Old Crabby appeared at the door, interrupting the merriment, her very presence demanding silence. She held up a wide, flat basket, tipping it forward for everyone to see.