The House at Mermaid's Cove(17)

I heard a low buzzing sound and spotted beehives in among the trees. Chickens and ducks were pecking about in the grass at the other end of the garden. Brock went over, sniffing at a cockerel with a ruff of iridescent feathers as green as a peacock. The bird pecked the dog’s nose, and he came scurrying back with his tail between his legs.

“Almost there now.” Jack opened a small wooden door in a wall that had several bricks missing at the top. The remaining ones stood out like broken teeth. “I just need to get something from the potting shed.” He disappeared inside a hut with a thatched roof, Brock at his heels. Through the open door came a smell of tobacco mixed with earth, onions, and turpentine. He came out with a length of rope slung over his shoulder.

“The cowshed’s just across the yard.” He gave me a sideways glance. “I’d better come in with you. You’ll have to make allowances, I’m afraid—they’re a rum lot.”

I tried not to gag at the stench of dung wafting out of the milking shed. Above the lowing of the animals I could hear a high-pitched cackle that could have come from a duck or a chicken. But as I followed Jack through the door, I saw a woman in a blue-striped turban holding her sides as she emerged from under a cow.

“Well, I told him straight,” she said, still laughing as she talked over the animal’s flank, not seeing us in the doorway. “Do you think I’m going to drop my knickers for a pair of nylons and a pint of shandy?”

Jack cleared his throat, cutting short the muffled giggles coming from behind the cows. “Good morning, ladies. This is my cousin Alice. She’s come to help us out. Alice, this is Edith—she’ll introduce you to everyone.” With that, he turned and left me.

I stood on the threshold, feeling like Daniel about to walk into the lions’ den. “Hello, Edith,” I began, stretching out my hand. She didn’t take it. She stood with her hands on her hips, looking me up and down.

“His cousin?” She pursed her lips, which were a waxy purple, like tulips. I’d never seen anyone with lips that color, other than a patient with severe heart failure I’d nursed in Africa. She looked as if she was sizing me up, trying to decide if I’d be an ally or an enemy. I hoped she didn’t think Jack had sent me to spy on them.

She caught me staring at her mouth. “Cowgirl’s lipstick.” She gave a theatrical pout. “You want some?” She cocked her head toward the door of the cowshed. “Beeswax. From the hives. Mixed with beetroot juice.” She wiggled her shoulders, making her bosom wobble under the bib of her dungarees. “You have to look your best, don’t you? Never know who you might bump into.”

One by one the other Land Army women emerged from under the animals they’d been milking. There were five of them. The youngest looked about the age I’d been when I entered the convent. Another looked old enough to be that girl’s mother. Edith and the other two looked like they were in their midtwenties. None of them looked pleased to see me.

Edith reeled off their names so fast I couldn’t take them in. Then she said: “Have you ever milked a cow before?”

“Yes—but not since I was a child.” That was true. When I was very young, and my mother was still alive, my parents had taken me to stay on a farm in Kilkenny. My attempt at milking had ended in tears when the cow trod on my foot.

“We don’t need another milkmaid.” The older woman, whose name was Mary or Marjorie—I couldn’t remember—folded her arms across her chest. “What we need is someone to clean up the muck in this place.” Her eyes darted left and right, casting sly glances at the others. “But we can’t ask His Lordship’s cousin to do a thing like that.”

I took a step toward her. “Of course you can. Where’s the shovel?”

I felt their eyes on me, like X-rays, as I worked. I wondered if it was just because I was a newcomer—and a relative of Jack’s—or whether they thought I was odd for offering to do the job none of them could stomach.

I was used to doing things I didn’t want to do. It had been ingrained in me for so many years. I hoped that shoveling muck would make them like me. But after I’d spent an hour heaving it into piles at the end of the yard, not one of them had said a word to me. It dawned on me then that if I wasn’t careful, this habit of doing what I was told without protest would mark me out with a certain strangeness. I was going to have to unlearn behaving like a nun.

My foot began to throb a little. It made me limp as I carried the slippery dung from the shed. I knew they’d noticed I was struggling—but it was only when we stopped for a tea break that one of them spoke to me. It was the youngest one, whose name was Janet. She had thick brown braids pinned up like a halo around her head and wire-rimmed glasses whose thin arms curled right around her ears and stuck up like tiny horns.

She came up to me as I stood alone, leaning against a wooden fence, and asked me if I was all right. When I said yes, she asked me how old I was. I saw a flicker of disappointment when I said that I was thirty. Then she asked me if I was getting paid the same amount as she and the others were: twenty-eight shillings a week.

“I’m not getting paid anything,” I replied. “I’m working in return for food and a place to sleep.”

Her eyes widened. “But you’re his cousin—you shouldn’t have to do that.”