“They need someone who speaks good Polish. You won’t have to go the whole way—just as far as the first station over the Czech border.”
“Well . . . I . . . ,” Kitty faltered. “If you want me to go, of course I will. But won’t it make things hard here, with just the two of you doing everything?”
“It’s only for a few days,” Martha said. “And we’ll have two hundred and six less mouths to feed.” She got up and took the jug from Kitty. As she spooned Nescafé into the mugs, her words rang in her ears. Two hundred and six less mouths to feed. And one of them was Stefan. She hadn’t seen him since the meeting with the DP leaders. Throwing herself into the preparations for the departure, she’d tried to block out the painful reality that, in a matter of days, he would be gone. But his face was always there, on the margins of her mind’s eye, slipping into full view as she lay down in bed at night, invading her dreams, appearing again in the no-man’s-land between sleeping and waking.
On the morning before Kitty was due to board the train, a letter came from Vienna. She ran to find Father Josef.
“They have a new address for Clara Schmidt,” he said, handing over the letter for her to see.
“Oh! I remember this street; it’s near my old school.” Kitty stared at the few lines of type. Her brain was going at a hundred miles an hour. “I must write to her—straightaway. I’ll have to get it posted before tonight.” Kitty turned to the priest, thinking aloud. “There’s so much still to do before we leave. Do you think I could post it at Fürstenfeldbruck in the morning? But it’d be too early, wouldn’t it?” She blew out a breath. “If I could just jump on a magic carpet and fly there . . .”
“Well, you could, in a way—if that’s what you really want.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could go to Vienna on the way back from Poland.”
Kitty stared at him, open-mouthed. “How?”
“The route you’ll be following takes you close to the Austrian border. Once you’ve handed the passengers over, you could make a detour south, to Vienna.”
“Is that really possible?”
He nodded. “There used to be a direct line to Vienna from a place called Brno. I don’t know if the route is still operating—you’d have to check.”
“You think I could do it? That they’d let me?”
“You’d have to get permission, of course—and some sort of pass from the military, I imagine. Would you like me to come and talk to Mrs. Radford?”
“No, it’s okay, but thank you for offering.” As she walked away, Kitty hoped she hadn’t sounded ungrateful. But she’d been fighting her own battles since she was twelve years old. She didn’t need anyone to make a case for her—she was perfectly capable of doing it for herself.
Martha had mixed feelings when the plan was explained to her. She could see how eager Kitty was. She’d waited so long for a chance like this. But Martha couldn’t help worrying how Kitty would cope if Clara had bad news about Kitty’s parents. Would it be better to find out by mail that your parents were dead? Kitty had to find out one way or the other. At least meeting Clara face-to-face would allow her to ask questions.
“You’d have to have an escort,” Martha said. “I wouldn’t want you traveling alone. But I think we could arrange for one of the GIs to go with you; after all, they won’t have much to do once the DPs have been handed over.”
Kitty nodded.
“Let me make a phone call,” Martha said. “You go and carry on with getting the food organized—I’ll come find you.”
It was late afternoon before Martha managed to get an answer from Major McMahon. He said that he was reluctant to allow any of his men to go off on what he described as a “jaunt” to Vienna. But one of the officers assigned to escort the train had leave accumulated and had volunteered to accompany Kitty.
Martha found her loading boxes of canned milk into the truck that would form part of the convoy leaving the camp at first light the following day.
“Good news.” Martha was a little breathless from running all the way from the office. “They’ve agreed to provide an escort—and you can stay overnight at the army HQ in Vienna if you need to.”
“Thank you!” Kitty looked close to tears. She put down the box she was carrying and sank down on the tailgate of the truck.
“You’re clearly popular at the base.” Martha smiled. “One of the GIs volunteered to take some leave to go with you.”