Emmie took a deep breath. “Can we fit everyone on, do you think?”
The sun was setting already, the village abandoned except for the Philippots, back there in their marriage bed, waiting for the Germans to come. Emmie just managed to cram everyone on, the jitney riding low on its sorely pressed springs. Somehow, it moved. Slowly, but it moved. The road from Verlaines to Ercheu had never been so lovely. It seemed unfair that it should be so beautiful, just now, when they had to leave it, when a German army was coming to wreck it all. The sky was rose and gold and purple over the fields they’d worked so hard to plow, those fields with all their promise.
It was twilight, that most melancholy hour of the day. Her crazy rush of energy was gone; Emmie felt her spirits plummeting with the sun, as the warmth of the day waned, leaving her cold and spent, here in this broken-down truck filled with people who had lost their homes yet again, who they had tried so hard to help, only for it to come to this.
“Mademoiselle Aimée?” It was one of her students, nine years old but suddenly very young again. Emmie could see she was trying not to cry, hugging a makeshift sack to her chest like a doll. “Mademoiselle Aimée, will we come home again?”
“As soon as the English get rid of the Boche for us,” Emmie said, trying to sound as encouraging as she could.
But it was hard. It was so hard. She’d never seen anything so weary as the British troops they passed as they made the achingly slow journey from Verlaines to Ercheu.
They were lovely, those troops. They moved aside to let the jitney go through, lifting their hats when they could, waving, and raising ragged cheers.
“Good old America!” called out one officer, lifting his cap to them as he and his men rumbled past in an open truck, and Emmie waved back, trying not to cry.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, to cheer herself as much as Alice.
“Ye-es,” said Alice, looking worriedly over her shoulder. There were shells whizzing overhead, English shells, aimed at the Germans. “But I’ll be very glad to get back. They won’t make it as far as Grécourt, will they?”
“They can’t,” said Emmie, but they’d only just dropped that last group at Ercheu, painfully late, nearly nine, when they heard the rumble of a big gun coming from quite the wrong direction.
It was dark now, full dark, the night broken only by the flashing lights of airplanes overhead, battling to the death. Emmie squinted into the darkness, feeling cold to the bone. “Was that—did that come from Grécourt?”
“It can’t be,” said Alice, but she coaxed the jitney as fast as it could go. She made a little noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’d go faster if I could, but I’m not sure the poor old jitney could take it.”
“They’re all right—I’m sure they’re all right.” It was impossible to think of the Germans at Grécourt, their Grécourt. This was their little bit of Smith in France, and to think of it being invaded was like trying to imagine the Germans marching their way into Northampton. Emmie harbored a momentary fantasy of a phalanx of professors fighting off the Germans, beating them off with umbrellas and Latin textbooks.
There was an army camion stuck in the ditch by the gate—a British one. Emmie felt light-headed with relief. She’d half expected to find the Germans there, ready to march them off into a German prison. This was a Grécourt transformed, dotted with lights, like something out of a fairy tale, people moving about, carrying flashlights, striking tents. The area around the moat was so thick with vehicles Alice could barely get the truck through. It was like every tea and every dance they’d ever had multiplied by ten, the courtyard swarming with uniformed men, except that their guests didn’t usually bring a giant antiaircraft gun with them.
Kate came hurrying out. “As you can see, we have visitors, about two hundred of them.” She paused by the side of the jitney, working very hard at refraining from expressing alarm or concern or relief. “Alice said you were taking villagers from Verlaines. You got them all out?”
“All except Monsieur and Madame Philippot. They wouldn’t go.” Emmie lowered herself out of the jitney, feeling about a hundred years old, every muscle aching. “Poor Anne—we had to abandon her curtains. And I gave away Nell’s books.”
“They’ll understand,” said Kate. She started to reach for Emmie and then let her hand fall. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you back. Both of you.”