Chapter 2

Laura quickly mastered the trick of milking impatient cows in the wee hours of the morning and managed to overcome her uneasiness at grasping and squeezing the long shafts in her unpracticed hands. The sensation of the spurts of liquid shooting through her fingers made her thoughts turn to the guilty feelings she always had when she was on a date and her escort pleaded with her to "help him out" since she was not inclined to do anything of a carnal nature. It had certainly seemed to be a sticky mess all around and not one that she would volunteer for, but she carried on out of a sense of duty and not wanting to attract the label of being a "cold fish".

At least in the barn, she was in complete control of everything and the cows were ever so grateful for her ministrations no matter how unskilled. The other girls were making dirty jokes about this innocent routine chore that led her to shutting her ears to their silly cracks and focus on just getting the job done. She managed to easily milk the most cows much to the chagrin of other girls who had been on the job for a much longer time.

She discovered the shy girl's name was Beryl and that she had been a virgin when she first reported to duty in the WLA. Beryl sheepishly reported to Laura that she had been "broken in" the very first night she arrived on the farm by the farm owner Mike. After that, she had been his "regular" nocturnal friend taking care of him as well doing all of her assigned chores as a Land Girl.

Laura was astonished at the girl's lack of deviousness and her sense of submissiveness that bordered on obscene by not denying any request no matter how degrading. She wanted to educate the shy young thing into the nasty ways of men but knew she was really not an expert either.

Apparently, the farmer had been sending food parcels to her extended family in gratitude for her cooperative attitude and she was quite at ease with the whole set-up. She asked Laura if she wanted to "take care" of one of the sons but Laura just laughed as if it were a joke and told her,

"I think there are plenty of other girls more willing and more capable than I."

Besides the milking duties, Laura and several of the bigger girls were assigned to a tractor and flat-bed truck to see if they might be able to fell a couple of the older trees in the forest above the North pasture. They needed the lumber for fencing to keep the cows from crossing out onto the road and also for the construction of a pig pen to house a large incoming litter from an adjoining farm with no room or workers to tend to their needs.

She hoped that she would not get the assignment of tending to the pigs because they struck her as "dirty" animals and not a species she wanted much to do with unless it was to eat either bacon or ham. After the evening meal, they both went outside to catch the last gleams of daylight to play cards for fun and not for money.

Mike the farmer approached them and told Beryl that he needed to talk to her in private. They both went into the now deserted eating shed and she heard them wrestling with each other in a frenzied embrace that needed privacy to achieve success. Beryl came back outside and told her to go back to the sleeping barn and that she would be there in a "minute".

About an hour later, she drifted off to sleep with never seeing Beryl come in the door.

Beryl was nowhere to be found the next morning and no one seemed to be in the least bit disturbed by her absence. After the cows were milked, she went with the "tree felling" detail to the back forest and they did not get back until mid-afternoon. Still, she could find no Beryl in evidence anywhere.

When she went into the main house and accosted the farmer, he was sincerely perplexed claiming that he had been most of the day down in the village trying to arrange a market day for the local townspeople to buy some of the their produce before they shipped it off to the big city. They both searched all the barns and even checked the sheds and the animal pens and pasture areas. There was not a single trace of her anywhere. None of the other land girls had seen her since the previous afternoon. Since there was not telephone at the farm, Mike sent his oldest son to the nearby post office to use their official telephone to call for the police in the town to send out a constable to investigate the strange disappearance.

The call came into the police office at a time when both of the local constables were tending official matters some distance away. The only person at the office was the visiting Detective Chief Inspector Griffin who was merely organizing some procedural investigative routines for the local offices in the district. It was hoped the adherence to the guidelines would manage to save important evidence on serious cases prior to the arrival of specialized teams from the main office. It was boring work but someone had to do it and Sidney Griffin was always one to set the example for others.

Unfortunately, both of the police vehicles were engaged and that left him with only the ancient bicycle with no brakes and the most uncomfortable seat he had ever encountered. Shrugging away the embarrassment of using the archaic mode of transportation to a crime scene, he managed to make it to the farm within the hour and found all of the workers and the family in panic mode looking for the missing Land Girl.

Mike was a bit out of it since he had started drinking the hard stuff when he realized his nighttime buddy and obedient employee was truly missing and nowhere to be found. Laura found him sitting in the eating shed working on his third glass of brandy patting the long table that he had often used to cushion Beryl's passion. She was not certain if it was genuine regret at the situation or an expression of guilt at his inappropriate behavior with a young woman in his care.