A Dangerous Act of Kindness

by L.P. Fergusson

before the Land Girl? Cursing, she pulled her clothes out from under the bedding, still warm from her body and hauled them on over her pyjamas. She struggled with the buttons; she’d always thought only old people got chilblains but this morning her fingers itched like hell. Downstairs she tugged on one of her husband’s overcoats, pausing momentarily to press her nose into the collar in the hope she might catch the faintest scent of him. There was nothing but the dusty smell of wool. She sighed and wrapped it round her, tying a piece of binder twine several times round her waist and pulling it tight. Struggling to bend, she pulled on her boots, snatched her gloves off the line above the range and tied a headscarf around her ears before heading out into the darkness. The light from the milking shed seeped out along the base of the blackout baffles. Not a cow in sight. Brigsie had rounded them up into the byres all on her own. Millie stood for a moment, composing herself, fighting down her unreasonable irritation. She ducked into the shed and called out, ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ Brigsie’s head popped up over the back of a cow. ‘I thought you needed your sleep,’ she said, and that, thought Millie, is the impossibly irritating thing about my darling friend Brigsie; her intentions are kind but she makes me feel utterly inadequate. ‘Thanks, Brigsie,’ she said. The head disappeared again, Brigsie’s voice floated up over the animals into the steamy air. ‘Mrs Wilson saw a plane com...