It hadn’t helped that Maud, being Maud, had put on a fake German accent and tried to convince their British guests that they were all spies.
But for the moment, the women were still here. And they intended to stay.
“Kate!” Emmie hailed her from just outside the gates, where a truck was stuck in the ditch, a morose French driver smoking a nasty-smelling cigarette standing by. “It’s Dr. Clare’s trunks. Eight of them—and he says there are three loads equally big in Noyon, but it’s not worth the trouble to his truck coming all the way out here.”
“Better give him double the usual tip,” said Kate in English, before turning to the driver and thanking him in her by now nearly local French.
Triple the usual tip persuaded him to help them unload the trunks and several duffel bags containing Dr. Clare’s personal effects, which included a load of bricks—or possibly medical reference works.
The driver took the trunks over the moat. It was left to Emmie and Kate to manhandle the baggage under shelter in the Orangerie.
“There can’t really be more, can there?” Kate collapsed onto a trunk, stretching her sore arms. “Three more loads! I can’t even imagine. Did she bring her whole house with her? Good thing we’ve got the basse-cour cellars now. I’ve asked Anne to give them a whitewash and then we can move all this in there.”
Emmie nudged a duffel with her toe. “The driver said it was Hague trunks full of relief supplies—twenty-seven of them.”
“Hague trunks?” That was enough to give Kate the energy to lift her head. This was proper aid, under the aegis of the Hague Convention, not the usual amateur rubbish. “Glory be. We can replace what’s been soaked in the cellars. Thank heavens it’s Hague supplies and not more parcels from the Bangor Committee.”
An alumna from Maine had posted a doggerel verse in the alumnae magazine, urging everyone to empty their attics for the Smith Unit, and since then they’d been inundated with moth-eaten fur stoles, calico bonnets, and other items both unsuitable and unusable. Some of it, Anne had managed to convert to rags for the growing rag-rug industry she was fostering among the villagers, but much of it was simply absurd. Who needed someone’s great-grandmother’s nubia? Kate wasn’t even sure what a nubia was—whatever it was, her great-grandmothers hadn’t owned one. She’d had Alice sorting through the rubbish.
Which reminded her . . . Kate looked up at Emmie, who was trying to drag Dr. Clare’s duffels into a neat line where they wouldn’t impede Anne’s classes. “Do you know what’s bothering Alice? She looks like she’s been crying.”
“She’s missing Liza and Maud, I think,” said Emmie carefully, not meeting Kate’s eyes. “They’re the closest she had to friends here. And there’s the shelling. The shelling is getting on everyone’s nerves.”
“Except Florence,” said Kate, wondering what it was Emmie wasn’t telling her. “As far as I can tell, she’s completely nerveless. She even slept through that bombardment last night. Are you sure that’s all that’s wrong with Alice?”
Emmie considered for a moment. “Don’t say that I said anything, but she’s had some news from home.”
“No one’s died, have they?” Kate asked, alarmed. With Liza gone, they were down to two drivers, at least until the new girls arrived.
“No.” Emmie shook out her skirts, trying to decide how much to say. “Her sister is having a baby.”
“But isn’t that good news? I would think that was good news.”
Emmie sank down on the trunk next to Kate. “It would be, but Alice’s sister’s husband used to be Alice’s beau, and Alice feels it rather. She wants to be happy for them, but it’s hard. And now, with the baby—well, you see. It makes it all feel so much more final.”
Kate would have thought it would have been final from the moment of “I do” but refrained from pointing that out.
“She’s not thinking of leaving, is she?” If Alice left—they’d have to take Liza up on her offer to put off her canteen work and come back and drive for them.
“No, quite the contrary. She can’t bear to go home. I think that’s why she joined in the first place,” Emmie added, lowering her voice and looking over her shoulder, just in case Alice might enter. “So they wouldn’t know she minded.”
“We’ll just have to keep her too busy to fret. That shouldn’t be a problem once we finally get some essence—we’ll be short-handed until the new people finally get here.” Anne, Gwen Mills, Nell, Florence, Alice, and Julia had all signed back on; Kate had their contracts on her desk. “Oh, that reminds me. I need your contract.”