It was only ten o’clock. It felt terribly strange to be left at Grécourt while the others were out. They had been here ten days now, and, except for the mass, Emmie had spent every day “visiting,” making the rounds of villages with Kate, calling on each local mayor, looking in on families. Most days, they didn’t even make it back for lunch, dining on bread and cheese as the White truck bounced between ruts.
She really should have just gone with Kate. Fran didn’t want her. But it was too late now, so she would just have to make the best of it and try to find something useful to do in between checking in on Fran.
Emmie hurried down to the cellar, where Maud and Liza were bumping boxes around, sorting out goods to put on the truck for the inaugural journey of their traveling store.
“—today?” Liza was asking, her voice muffled by a large pile of linens.
“I don’t know. It depends what they—oh, Emmaline! We didn’t see you there.”
Maud made it sound like an accusation.
Emmie looked around the newly whitewashed room. The poilus had done a thorough job; she couldn’t see where the chicken wire or the rude German inscriptions had once been. “Fran is writing letters, so I thought I’d come and see if I could help you down here.”
“Yes, it’s too terrible about her mother. But at least she gets to go back to Paris. You don’t mind playing porter, do you? We’re just about ready to haul everything up to the truck.”
Emmie carried armloads of pots and kettles up the stairs to the truck, juggling rakes and scrubbing brushes, papers bristling with pins, spools of thread in serviceable blacks and browns, boxes of nails, shovels and trowels in all lengths and sizes, and even a consignment of axes, which Emmie held very, very carefully as she navigated the uneven treads.
“I never thought I’d turn peddler,” said Maud. “Lord, what they’d say at home if they could see us now!”
The truck backfired and finally started. Emmie waved farewell to them, watching as Liza narrowly avoided smashing one of the gates on her way out. She could hear Maud’s protest all the way over the moat.
Overhead, a plane wheezed by, and then another, circling each other, emitting puffs of smoke. Those little cotton-colored clouds looked so innocent until one remembered they were ammunition, meant to bring a plane down and end a man’s life. Another plane joined in, way up in the clouds, puffing away like anything. Forty puffs, like candy floss, and the high, whining sound of the motors overhead.
Dr. Stringfellow stuck her head out of the room where she was in conference with Dr. Rutherford. “Where’s Kate?”
“She went to Courcelles,” said Emmie, surprised that Dr. Stringfellow had forgotten. “Is something wrong?”
The doctor didn’t bother to answer. “When she gets back, send her in to us.”
Dr. Stringfellow’s head disappeared again before Emmie could ask why they wanted Kate. She hoped Kate wasn’t in trouble. She wasn’t sure why Kate would be in trouble. Unless it was something to do with . . .
But no, as long as the money was being paid, it shouldn’t matter where it was coming from.
They were laying the table for dinner, Emmie trying to remember not to set places for Fran and Alice, the table looking so much emptier with their chairs removed from it, when the White finally lurched over the moat.
Emmie left Anne Dawlish and Miss Baldwin laying out plates and ran out to greet them. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Did you have a puncture? You’ve missed Alice and Fran. They left an hour ago.”
“It’s Margaret,” Kate said without preamble, sliding down out of the White into a patch of mud. “She’s not well.”
Emmie hurried to the other side of the truck, where Margaret sat curled up on the bench, her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands, her thin back shaking.
Emmie looked back at Kate with concern. “Oh goodness, what happened? Is she ill? I can get the doctors—”
Kate lowered her voice, forcing Emmie to bend to hear her. “She’s been like this since Courcelles. She had a fit of hysterics, and then threw up by the side of the road, and she hasn’t spoken since.”
“That pot-au-feu did taste a little off last night. . . . Poor thing, I think I have some bicarbonate left.”
“It’s not the food. I think she’s having what the French would call a crise de nerfs.”
“An anxiety attack?” It sounded so much better, so much more elegant, in French, but the result was the same in either language. “What happened?”