“To buy milk for the babies,” she said imperiously when Kate tried to give it back.
Alice and Florence would swoop in, drop off a load of people, check with Kate for directions, and drive off again, bringing with them news of the outside world, of troops on the move, of villages filled with soldiers preparing for one last stand. Alice came back all excited because a group of French gunners had taken her to their emplacements to see their guns in action, which had been deafening but thrilling; Florence was indignant about the animals she found abandoned en route.
Sunday bled into Monday, Monday spilled into Tuesday, feeding and sorting and getting people onto trains, opening tin after tin of milk, slicing loaf after loaf of war bread. The camions rumbled past, endless rows of them, and the cannonading grew louder and closer, but their work had taken on a kind of rhythm, everyone doing their best, so it came as a dreadful shock when the Unit stumbled in to breakfast Tuesday morning to find a delegation composed of a British major and two Red Cross officials with orders that they were to evacuate at once.
“At once?” echoed Emmie. She looked to Kate for support. “But we couldn’t possibly, not right away. We have a house full of people who can’t be moved, most of them children.”
They’d gotten most of their able-bodied refugees onto trains, but the hotel was crammed with the sick and the wounded, ranging in age from a two-day-old baby to a ninety-seven-year-old grandmother. And Zélie, thought Kate, with a sick feeling in her stomach. Zélie with her badly fractured leg.
“And there’s my livestock!” protested Florence. “All of our cows and goats. I’ll need to see them moved.”
“And the station canteen . . .” began Anne.
Mr. Jackson, the Unit’s Red Cross delegate, looked hunted. “You can have until the afternoon, and then you really must go.”
“Right. We can set up again,” said Kate, rallying her troops. “We’ll simply move on and keep going, just like we did when we left Grécourt.”
“About that . . .” said Mr. Jackson.
“Where are you sending us?”
“We don’t know. But you can’t just keep on. It’s not safe.”
“But—” Nell looked from one man to the other, furious. “We’re doing absolutely useful work! We could keep on doing the same. Just move us a few miles west and we can go on getting people out. We can keep doing what we’re doing.”
“No. I’m afraid you can’t,” said the major calmly but firmly. “Fritz is moving much faster than anyone expected.”
That was the British Army speaking. It was no use, Kate knew.
“Then we’d better do as much as we can with the time left to us,” said Kate.
“I’ll get breakfast for everyone and tell them they’re going to be moved,” said Emmie bravely.
The morning was a disaster. Florence stormed in fuming because someone had filled her gasoline can with water and she’d poured it into the truck without noticing and now the truck wouldn’t start and the whole engine had to be overhauled. Anne scalded herself heating milk and had to be tended to by Julia, whose bedside manner was even more acerbic than usual, a sure sign that she was worried. Kate, meanwhile, had the job of getting all their patients into Red Cross trucks, seeing them settled on mattresses on the beds of the trucks, trying to think what to tell them when they asked, again and again, where they were going.
Zélie clung to Kate’s neck, refusing to go. Kate was half-frantic with knowing there were a million things to be done and not wanting Zélie to hurt her leg. Marie had promised faithfully to stay with Zélie, wherever they were sent, and Kate had to be content with that, because there was no other way.
“Please,” she begged the little girl. “It will just be for a little while. We all have to go. I’ll find you once this is all done, I promise.”
“Why can’t you go with me? You promised you’d stay with me.” Her face crumpled, a five-year-old driven beyond endurance. “I want Minerva.”
That, at least, Kate knew something about. Florence had gone to see the cows and goats rerouted to Clermont, on the grounds that they would need them when they went back to Grécourt. When. Not if. Kate wasn’t sure she believed it, but she had to try. For everyone’s sake.
“Minerva is being sent to someplace safe.” Kate tried to pry Zélie’s arms from around her neck, as the Red Cross driver waved frantically at her, anxious to be off. “You can see her again once the Boche have gone. Once the Boche have gone, we’ll all be together again. We’ll all go back to Grécourt and be together again.”