“Do you have relatives here?” the woman asked.
“None at all,” said Kate, feeling a little silly. “I’m not even French. My family is mostly Irish.”
No need to mention that her father was Bohemian. It was a little too close to German. To be Irish was bad enough, but at least not Boche.
To her surprise, the woman put a hand on her shoulder. “You are a good girl. One moment. Marie, wait with the lady.”
Kate and the little girl were left regarding each other. The girl couldn’t have been more than six, and Kate had no idea what to do with her.
“Do you live here?” asked Kate.
“Yes, now.” The girl took her thumb from her mouth. “I used to live somewhere else, but then I came on a train with Madame Lepensier. How far away is America? Did you come on a train?”
Mercifully, at that point the grandmother returned, her arms laden with packages. “For you,” she said, shoving half a chicken, a basket of peaches, and a whole cheese into Kate’s arms.
Kate, surprised, grappled with it to keep it all from falling. “But this is—there was no need—”
The old woman rescued a peach and pushed it firmly back into Kate’s hands. “My granddaughter—she was evacuated from the occupied zone last year, when the Germans let some go. If she had stayed . . .” She shrugged, a Gallic gesture indicative of all manner of ills. “She was one of the lucky ones. What you do—it is good. Que le Bon Dieu vous bénisse, maintenant et à l’avenir.”
“What did she say?” Liza, drawn by the lure of food, came up as the woman was departing, leaving Kate, dazed, cradling a roast chicken, probably the woman’s supper for the week.
“She said—” Kate’s voice felt husky. She cleared it and tried again. “She said, may the good Lord bless you, now and in the future.”
“That’s so kind of her! Oh, is that cheese?”
While the soldiers debated the best methods of tire maintenance, the girls fell on the food, plunking down on the steps of the mairie and tearing into the chicken and cheese.
“My mother would be appalled.” Alice Patton tried to wipe the chicken grease off her shirtfront. “She says a lady never eats in public.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks as long as there’s more of this cheese in the world,” said Liza. “I’m surprised they’re being so nice to us. Maud says the French are pretty down on us for not coming in before and feeding the Germans through neutrals. You can see how it would make them bitter to see all these strong men in new uniforms coming in tooting around in big cars all the time. Dr. Foster, you know the Red Cross man, said there was a pretty serious mutiny in the French army this spring, and that all that kept them from throwing the towel in was our coming in, but that we probably left it too late.”
Fran grimaced at Kate behind Liza’s back. Liza’s news bulletins, they called her rambling digests of intelligence gleaned from Maud, some of which were contradictory and most of which had Germany victorious within the month.
Kate craned her head, looking back in the direction the woman had come. She wished she could thank her. She wished she could pay her. With rationing and meatless days, and the lean days of winter so close, that was a ridiculous amount of bounty to press on a stranger.
You are a good girl, the woman had said. And she’d given her chicken.
All because Kate had said they were bringing supplies to the formerly occupied zone.
“—that our troops won’t be ready to go in until spring, and the French are just holding on by sheer nerve—”
“Excuse me,” said Kate to the others, and pushed up off the steps, to where Mrs. Rutherford was sitting on the side of the Ford, meditatively munching a chicken wing.
“Why did she do that, that woman? Why did she give all this to us?”
“When the soldiers marched off to war,” said Mrs. Rutherford, “the women lined the streets, handing out bread and wine. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have much to give.”
“But we’re not soldiers.” Kate pressed her fingers to her temples. They smelled like ripe cheese. It made her feel vaguely queasy. “I don’t understand. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“You’re here,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “That’s doing something.”
She said it so matter-of-factly.
Kate looked at her askance.
Mrs. Rutherford wiped her greasy fingers daintily on her handkerchief. “It is, you know. It’s not all grand gestures. Just the fact that you came overseas.”