In Another Time

Later that morning, Maisie and the others followed Mr. McRobbie for their final chopping lesson through the paths of the estate to where the old woods butted up to a wide stretch of pine plantation. Here the trees stood like soldiers on a parade ground, set at regular intervals, in rows and columns, each about five yards away from its neighbor. Maisie was pleased to see that here there was almost no underbrush or scrubby grass below the trees to get in the way of her ax, only a carpet of fragrant brown needles.

On Mr. McRobbie’s order, the lumberjills all lined up along the first row of sturdy trees, one girl to each trunk, and set to work to chop it down. Although she was gradually figuring it out, chopping hadn’t turned out to be as easy as Maisie had expected. But it was early days, she kept telling herself, because by the end of the course, she would know how to chop and saw, how to fell a tree, how to clear all the small branches off it—that was snedding—and also how to roll the logs using their cant hooks, and then haul the timber away with hooks and chains. They were also learning the uses for the different woods, and how to cut to a specific measurement. The trees the girls were chopping today were Scots pine, so they would probably end up sawn to short lengths as pit props for coal mines, or perhaps as fence posts, with the wastage going for charcoal. But for any of that to happen, the lumberjills had to get the trees down first.

“Don’t swing so wildly, lassie!” Maisie heard Mr. McRobbie shout at someone farther down the line. “You’ve to let it sing. Hear the music in your head, and let it flow through your arm and into your blade. I told you that yesterday. Have you still not found yourself a chopping song yet?”

Maisie was relieved Mr. McRobbie had started at the other end of the line, because she hadn’t found her chopping song yet either. Mr. McRobbie had been telling the girls for days now to find a song with good rhythm that helped them to time their ax swings. But Maisie was struggling to come up with a tune that worked. Nearby, Lillian had clearly found hers. She was humming a short musical phrase over and over as she lifted her ax away from the tree, one, raised it high on two, rounded it over above her shoulder on three, and brought it slicing down into the wood on four. Perfection, exactly like Mr. McRobbie had shown them last week. The motion was smooth and controlled, and Lillian’s tree trunk was growing narrower at the waist with every cut.

“That’s it, lass, you’re doing a grand job,” said Mr. McRobbie as he spotted Lillian’s easy action. “Now get those cuts down as close to the ground as you can, so we don’t waste that bottom foot of wood, not while there’s a war on.”

He stepped back a little and raised his voice to address the whole group.

“So, there’s a bunch of Canadians”—Maisie stopped to listen, ax above her head—“working up the road right now, and do you know how they’ve been cutting down the trees over there?” Mr. McRobbie glared around him. “At knee height! And even, some of them I saw, at waist height. I couldn’t believe how much they were wasting, so I went to have a wee word with them and I put a stop to it.”

Canadians. Up the road. Not Americans then.

Lillian began to hum and swing again, and Maisie groaned in frustration. When he’d demonstrated what he meant by a chopping song, Mr. McRobbie had sung an off-tune “Auld Lang Syne” as he’d swung again and again in rhythm to the music, but when Maisie had tried the same tune, it didn’t fit her action at all.

“Find some music that means something to you,” he’d exclaimed passionately to the assembled recruits, “a song that flows from your breath to your ax, to your blade, to the tree.” The old man had looked like he could have started to dance with his ax, right there, and a few of the girls had mocked him quietly from behind.

And yet, his strange method seemed to work. Each day more and more recruits were swinging and chopping like professionals, and now the clearing was a cacophony of harmony and counterpoint, half-hummed dance tunes from Anna and Mary, and a medley of fully sung operatic arias from Phyllis. Everyone seemed to be singing except for Dot and Maisie.

As Maisie wondered about borrowing a tune from Phyllis, a thought popped into her head.

What song would John Lindsay hum as he was swinging his ax? Suddenly a tune came into her mind. It was the one she and John had danced to, albeit briefly and disastrously, last night, and it had been playing on the wireless in the dining room this morning too. What was it called? She could hear the tune quite clearly now, though she couldn’t recall all the words.

Keep smiling through, just like you always do,

Something blue skies something something far away.

It was one of Vera Lynn’s songs, she was sure … “We’ll Meet Again,” that was it!

Before the music escaped her mind, Maisie lifted her ax and weighed it in her hands for a second or two. Then, as she began to sing the opening words of the song under her breath—“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when”—she hefted the ax away, curved it up and around behind her head, and brought it down sharp into the bark of the log.

Amazingly, it did the trick, and the blade cut cleanly through the bark. She kept singing quietly to herself, and although her movements were not exactly effortless, they were certainly more synchronized, as if she and the ax were suddenly one effective machine, not two engines pulling against each other.

Maisie let out a cry of delight as the ax bit sliced cleanly again into the flesh of the tree.

“You’ve found it at last, have you?” Mr. McRobbie laughed as he approached, though he stayed a safe distance from Maisie’s swing arc. “I knew you’d get it soon enough. And what about you, Miss Thompson?”

A grunt of effort, a thick slap of metal hitting wood, and a groan of frustration came from behind Maisie, as Dot failed yet again to make even so much as a dent in her tree.

“Well, lass, you maybe haven’t found quite the right song yet,” said Mr. McRobbie as he walked away. “But keep on trying.”

“Grrrrrrr!”

Dot was holding her ax handle as if she wanted to throttle the life out of it.

“Did you just growl at your ax?” Maisie snorted.

“It’s so bloody frustrating!” Dot cried. “How am I the only one who can’t do this?”

“Oh, come on, you’re not that bad.”

Dot pointed at Maisie’s log, and then held out her hand to her own, the surface of which could best be described as a little scuffed.

Dot suddenly lifted her ax up high over her head—not the way they’d been taught at all—and brought it down hard on the tree in fury. The impact ripped the handle from Dot’s grasp, spinning it straight at Maisie, who hopped to the side just in time. The ax buried itself in the ground close to where Maisie had been standing.

“Be careful!” she cried, but seeing Dot’s torn face, she felt more sympathy than anger. “Remember to treat your ax ‘as if it were your first-born bairnie, with love and with care.’” Maisie was mimicking their instructor’s strong Angus accent so well that Dot eventually gave a wry smile.

“Sorry, Maisie. But I’m serious. I’m so rubbish at this, they’re going to send me home.”

“Oh, nonsense. They will not. We’ve got plenty of training yet before we get posted to a camp to do this for real, which is more than enough time to sort you out.” Maisie put an arm around Dot’s shoulders. “Anyway, you and I have our first lesson this afternoon, and I’m sure you’ll be much better at that than me.”

“Well, I’ll have to be,” replied Dot, “or you’ll be looking for another friend by the end of the month.”

Driving, however, proved just as elusive to Dot as swinging an ax. That afternoon, Maisie found herself pitched violently around in the back of an old Morris car as Dot did her best to coax it along. But just as Dot got it going, the engine’s roar spluttered and died into judgmental silence. Dot smacked her hand onto the steering wheel and muttered “damn it” under her breath over and over.

Mr. Taylor had come up from his garage in Brechin to teach the recruits, two by two. He sat next to Dot with his hands on his knees, arms braced, as if he expected the car to take off again. Then he slowly exhaled, making his bushy black mustache flutter.

“Perhaps your pal should do the drive back, eh?”

Dot slumped forward in despair. “Why can’t I get anything right?”

“It’s fine, Dot, really.” Maisie reached forward to lay her hand onto Dot’s back. “Driving’s a complicated thing to learn. I’m sure Mr. Taylor took ages to learn to drive too, didn’t you, Mr. Taylor?”

The instructor turned to stare at Maisie with indignation, but eventually said, “Aye, well, maybe not quite as many problems, but I suppose it took a wee while.”

Maisie flashed him a grateful smile. “See? So don’t be down. It’s really not easy, you know.”

“But you took to it like the proverbial duck!” exclaimed Dot. “You only stalled the engine twice, and you certainly didn’t almost put us in a ditch like I did.”

“You didn’t put us in a ditch, Dot—”

“Almost in a ditch, I said,”

“No, not even almost in a ditch.” Maisie was trying not to smile. “We were still a good three feet from the actual ditch. Well, perhaps two feet. All right, we were six inches away …”

There was a peculiar snuffling noise and Maisie realized that Mr. Taylor was chuckling, and though she didn’t want to hurt Dot’s feelings, it was hard not to join in. But then Dot began to giggle as she clambered out and opened the back door for Maisie.

“Get in the front then, Flash,” Dot said, as she and Maisie swapped places, “and show me how it’s done.”

Maisie settled herself into the driver’s seat and grasped the steering wheel again, careful not to bump her blisters. Thinking hard about everything Mr. Taylor had told her, about the steering and gear changes, she started the engine and moved the car forward. Thankfully it didn’t stall, but after twenty yards, the engine began to whine and Mr. Taylor tapped his knuckle against the gear stick. “Come on, lassie, you can’t stay in first gear all the way.”

“Oh, right, yes, sorry,” said Maisie, pushing down on the clutch and wrestling the gear stick into second as the car continued up the lane toward the lodge, and then into third.

“That’s it, lassie, you’ve got it now,” said Mr. Taylor, “which makes one of you anyway.”

“I’m not sure I’ve really ‘got it,’” said Maisie with a proud smile, “but with a little more practice, I might. Will we see you again tomorrow?”

“No, that’s your instruction finished,” said Mr. Taylor. “Miss Cradditch says you’ve got a lot to learn in a short time, so this is all you’ll get from me.”

Maisie braked a little too hard and the car slammed to a halt in front of the lodge. “But we’ve only had one afternoon’s instruction. And on a car, not a truck.”

“If you can drive a car, you can drive a truck,” he said. “It’s all just a matter of scale, after all.”

“Scale?” Maisie could not believe what she was hearing. “A three-ton Bedford truck is not the same size as this car.”

Mr. Taylor gave another mustache-ruffling sigh. “As I said, it’s just a matter of scale. Now, don’t you fret, lass. It’s clear that you’re smart and strong, and if you concentrate, you’ll do just fine.”

Smart and strong? Those were two words she’d seldom ever heard used about her. Quite the opposite. For years, her father had been telling her she was weak willed, lazy, and stupid. And her mother always said that while Maisie was handsome enough—“handsome” was Mother’s word for Maisie; “pretty” was reserved for Beth—she’d have to shed some weight before she got too much older, if she wanted to marry. That was Maisie in her parents’ eyes, lazy and fat, certainly not smart or strong.

Maisie turned and offered Mr. Taylor her hand.

“Thank you,” she said, “I mean, for today’s lesson. I enjoyed it, though I’m not sure if I could ever do it—”

“I told you, you’ll do fine,” he replied, taking her hand in his meaty fist. Then he leaned closer and whispered, “But perhaps your friend ought to take the train or the bus instead.”

He gave Maisie a conspiratorial nudge and pulled a watch from his pocket. “I’d best be off. Mrs. Taylor will have my tea on the table at five o’clock sharp, and if I’m late, she’ll feed it to the dog.”

“If we get no more driving lessons,” moaned Maisie as she and Dot walked back to the hut, “I won’t have a clue how to do that again in a week’s time, let alone four weeks, when we get sent out to our new postings.”

“Well, as long as you remember enough by this Friday, you’ll be able to drive me to the station when they send me home,” Dot replied, misery clouding her usually bright voice.

Maisie nudged Dot’s elbow. “Come on, mopey. We’ve got first aid training on Monday, which’ll be interesting, won’t it?”

Dot looked unconvinced. “I fainted when we dissected a frog in school,” she groaned. “First sight of the blood, and I—” She mimed toppling over in a dead faint.

Maisie laughed.

“I’m serious,” Dot said. “I might as well pack my bags right now.”

“But first aid’s not all about mopping up blood,” countered Maisie, “or even bandages and slings. It’s helping people, and that’s what you’re best at, after all.”

Which was true. On their first day at Shandford Lodge, Dot had offered to help Maisie make up her bed with the stiff white sheets and thin gray blankets issued to them. By the time they had folded the corners in tight and smooth, and had helped some of the others too, Maisie already liked Dot very much. Dot had a genuine desire to get along with other people, though Maisie couldn’t quite work out why such a shy and slight girl would have volunteered for this very physical lumberjill life.

“I suppose,” replied Dot. “Just don’t send me any injured frogs!”

The following week, even before the end of their first aid training, Maisie could see that Dot was a gifted first-aider. The visiting tutor, a retired nurse from Dundee, recommended that Dot do additional training so she’d be fully certified. Since every camp was required to have someone with a first aid certificate, Dot was thrilled. It meant that not only would she stay a lumberjill, she’d also earn an extra shilling a week in her pay packet once she was out in the field.

Maisie was delighted for her friend too, and had to smile when she overheard Dot reassuring one of the other more squeamish recruits over breakfast the next day.

“Oh, don’t worry. First aid is more about helping people than it is about mopping up blood. I’m sure you’ll be absolutely fine.”

And suddenly it was the sixth and final week of training. This time next week, Maisie wouldn’t be a recruit, and she wouldn’t be at Shandford Lodge. She’d be a real lumberjill, working in a real camp, at last. The one thing, however, that dulled her excitement was knowing that she might be there alone. There was no guarantee that anyone from this group would be sent to the same place as Maisie, let alone a close friend like Dot, and they wouldn’t find out where they were all going until the postings were announced on Friday, the day before they all departed.

Maisie tried not to think about it, and hoped that the coming week’s sawmill training would distract her from the uncertainty of what was coming next.

On Monday morning as they trekked to Mitchell’s Sawmill in Tannadice, there had been nice breeze, but once they’d arrived it was clear that the cool air was certainly not finding its way inside the mill shed, even when the huge shed doors were propped open. It was hot, and it was loud.

Maisie stood with the others around an enormous bench saw and strained to hear the barked instructions from Betty Harp, who said proudly that she had been one of the very first WTC recruits, and would now teach them all her six months’ worth of sawmill wisdom.

“There are four rules you must follow in any sawmill,” Betty shouted. “One. No smoking. Cigarettes and sawdust are a bad combination.”

Everyone nodded.

“Two. No hair. Your hair must be tied back at all times. You do not want this little beauty”—she slapped her hand down inches away from the vicious whirling vertical blade of the saw—“to be your next hairdresser.

“Three. Gloves. Please wear your leather gloves at all times. But be careful—gloves can give you a false sense of security around these blades, and even thick leather is no competition for spinning steel, so you still need to be careful. And remember, you’ll never get to enjoy a manicure again if you have no fingers.”

Maisie winced and immediately pulled her work gloves out of her pockets.

“And four. Communication. By that, I don’t mean chatter and gossiping. In this mill, you are responsible not only for your own safety, but for the safety of all your team. If you tell them exactly what you are about to do before you do it, you’ll all stay safe. Got it?”

The girls all nodded their agreement and followed Betty to the first machine.

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.