This Cold Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

their priorities straight.
    â€œI’ll ask Rosemary,” Daisy said, intending to ask her employer a good deal more than permission to take a clump of her days off all at the same time.
    Among the first questions—and there would be others—were why had she been asked, should she accept, what should she wear, how would she get to the North of England? And an implicit unspoken question: How did Rosemary feel about Daisy’s accepting an invitation to stay with Rosemary’s relatives, to respond to interest shown by a male member of that family? Daisy felt that such a question was not premature; if Rosemary disapproved, or if she even had reservations, to refuse the invitation now rather than to beat a social retreat later would be simpler for all concerned. Even though the prospect of a house party and a ball and the attention of a handsome young man was a treat and adventure more thrilling than Daisy had ever before been offered. Even in peacetime.
    Rosemary’s reaction was flattering. Daisy silently and gratefully compared it with the conversation she would have had with her mother had she still been living at home. Girls serving in the Land Army apparently weren’t asked questions containing words like “chaperone.”
    â€œOf course you must go. It’ll be an outing for you and you’ve been cooped up on the farm for far too long. It’s just a matter of logistics and even they aren’t so very complicated. You’ll have to look up the train connections and make sure you have what you need to wear. I’ll help you. It’s not the warmest house in England, and I’d better fill you in on the family eccentricities before you go. The thumbprint, I take it, is yours, not Aunt Hilda’s?”
    â€œMy thumb—rabbit blood.”
    â€œHow many did you get?”
    The cows were milked twice a day. The washing of the dairy and milking machinery took place afterward. Then there was a longish stretch of time when Daisy had no regularly defined duties. Work, changing with the season, was found for her. Now, once a week, she and the shepherd picked up a couple of ferrets from the gardener’s shed and carried them and a large net up to the rabbit warren on the hill.
    If the day was warm, despite a certain sympathy for the rabbits and a reluctance to cause pain, Daisy enjoyed these outings. Frank was English and friendlier to Daisy than most of the Welshmen who worked on the farm. They were suspicious of strangers and although they could, when they had something to say to Daisy, speak perfectly good English, while conversing among themselves in her presence they usually spoke Welsh. They let her know, without resorting much to either language, that a girl had no business working on the farm. Her position was not simplified when one day a small dark woman, her face contorted with vituperation, screamed abuse at her. It took Daisy some time and a grudging, embarrassed partial explanation from one of the milkers to understand that the woman was accusing Daisy of having seduced her husband. Even after asking Rosemary which of the farmworkers was husband to the shrew, Daisy did not immediately understand that the woman suspected, or claimed she suspected, Daisy of carrying on with the painfully shy dairyman with the slightly twisted spine. Rosemary and Valerie were sympathetic, but Daisy suspected they thought the incident, on some level, funny; Daisy did not. She knew it to be ridiculous but so sad and squalid she would not have been amused even if it were not she who had been humiliated. Daisy was snubbed, ignored, or put in her place, but Frank, the shepherd, was a pariah. He was an Englishman, a foreigner. He came from Herefordshire, a county that shared a border with Wales. Rosemary reminded Daisy that historically the Welsh—and the Irish and Scottish—had more often considered England the enemy than they had Germany.
    When Daisy and Frank reached the