“Quick!” Martha jabbed her thumb toward the kitchens. “They’ll be here any minute!”
The door opened and Martha caught sight of Charlie in nothing but boxer shorts, his hair sticking up in a black spiky halo.
“What’s happening?” He grabbed his trousers and tried to put them on, almost falling over as he missed the leg hole.
“There’s an army jeep headed this way.” Martha glanced back over her shoulder.
“What? How?” Charlie pulled on his shirt as Kitty darted past him, through the door. Her blouse was buttoned up crooked and her trouser zip was undone.
“There’s been a thaw overnight—the roads must be open.” Martha made a grab for Kitty. “Come here—you look as if you’ve wandered off of skid row!”
By the time the jeep came careening around the corner of the building, Kitty looked just about respectable.
“Good morning, Mrs. Radford, Miss Bloom. Long time no see!” It was Corporal Brody who jumped out of the driver’s seat.
“Good morning! Are we glad to see you!” Martha stepped forward, blocking the view through the open door. “Poor Sergeant Lewis must be sick of the sight of this place. We were just dropping off some clean laundry for him—he only had the one uniform when the snow cut us off.”
“Hey, Sarge!” Corporal Brody yelled. “You can come out of your hidey-hole! You’re due about three weeks’ R and R!” He shot them a sideways grin as Charlie appeared in the doorway.
“Wasn’t expecting you.” Charlie raked his hair with his hands.
Whatever Brody thought of his rumpled appearance, he kept it to himself.
“We’ll leave you to it,” Martha said. “I’ll be in the office if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Kitty breathed when they were far enough away to be out of earshot. “It would have been awful if you hadn’t come—we’d never have heard the last of it.”
“Let’s not dwell on that,” Martha said. “Just get yourself tidied up and come help me sort things out. There’s going to be a mountain of stuff to catch up on now that the roads are open.”
“You’re not cross?”
“Why would I be? I mean, it’s not the first time, is it?”
“You knew?”
“What was I supposed to think when I saw that your bed was empty? That you’d gotten up early for a bit of bird-watching?”
“I’m sorry. I should have asked you if it was okay.”
“Listen, you’re an adult—it’s none of my business what you get up to in your free time. I just hope you and Charlie have been . . . sensible.”
Kitty clicked her tongue against her teeth. “No need to worry about that. I take it you don’t know about the ten boxes of French letters in the warehouse?”
“French letters?”
“It’s what they call them in England. Charlie calls them jimmy hats.”
“Why on earth do we have those in the warehouse?” Martha was trying not to smile.
“He said the army brought them here before we took over. They wanted to give them out to the DPs, but no one was interested.”
“Well, that explains the continuing baby boom, I guess.”
“He says they all want babies because they’ve lost their families. It gives them a reason to go on living.”
“Well, that’s understandable,” Martha said.
“It’s not how I feel.”
Martha kept walking. For Kitty, this was a sensitive subject. She was still in the grim no-man’s-land of not knowing if her family was lost. If she wanted to explain why she felt that way, it would have to come out without any prompting.
“It was having all those babies living next door when we first got here.” Kitty turned to Martha with a rueful smile. “It was the best advert for birth control. I think it’s probably put me off for life!”
The day after the snow melted, a heap of mail arrived at the camp. There was too much for Martha to carry on foot. She had to drive down to the gates and pile it all into the car. Kitty came out of the office to help her unload it. She didn’t say anything, but Martha could see the tension in her face.
They started sorting the mail into piles. Most of the letters were marked with the insignia of UNRRA or the US Army. But there was the odd one with foreign stamps in the top right corner. Martha’s heart skipped a beat with each one she spotted, but none were from Poland. There were three from France, addressed to Delphine, and one from America—a Christmas card from her cousin in New Orleans.