“You don’t really have a revolver, do you?” asked Kate as they loaded the parcels into the White truck.
“Why not?” Even in the grips of some strong emotion, Julia was careful with the precious parcels. She saw the last one secured and then looked defiantly at Kate. “Maybe, like Maud, I have an ambition to ‘pot a German.’”
A German—or her old classmate? Julia, Kate remembered, had always been insanely competitive. She’d been first in their class at Smith and never let anyone forget it. Kate squinted at the road, or what had once been a road before the rains had got started on it. Army trucks had carved deep ruts in the mud. What had happened? Had Dr. Stapleton come out tops in an exam? It would be just like Julia to hold a grudge. Kate entertained herself thinking of various possibilities. A thwarted romance? A scholastic competition?
She couldn’t resist needling Julia just a bit. “That Dr. Stapleton—do you think he’d help out with the infirmary once a week? If you went to school with him . . . We could use the extra pair of hands.”
“We don’t need the help,” said Julia flatly.
“Oh, don’t we?” One of Kate’s innovations had been to have all the committees submit weekly reports. She knew exactly how many patients Julia and Dr. Stringfellow had seen last week and how many remained to be seen. The numbers were staggering.
“Not his help,” said Julia fiercely.
Kate looked at her askance. “Is he that bad a doctor?”
“That’s what I should judge, isn’t it?” There was a strange note to Julia’s voice. She took a deep breath, choosing her words very carefully. “His value as a doctor. That’s what matters. As to that . . . I don’t know what kind of doctor he is now. He was an ambitious student. Whether that translates to success in practice, I can’t tell you.”
It was dusk already, a rainy-day dusk, casting Julia into shadow. But Kate could see Julia’s hands clenched on the edge of the bench, as though holding on for dear life. Kate didn’t think she was that bad a driver. They hadn’t hit a pothole for at least a mile.
“I imagine any doctor is better than none,” said Kate, looking sideways at Julia. “Out here.”
“No.” The word exploded from Julia. “You don’t want him at Grécourt. He’s a pig. A vile, rutting pig. He can’t be trusted—”
Julia stopped, closing her lips on the words.
“All right,” Kate said. “No dinner invitations.”
They drove in silence, the dusk thick around them, the rain weeping down off the roof of the White. Kate concentrated on making her way past a cart that had stuck in the mud and been abandoned. A plane whined overhead, a noise so commonplace they barely noticed it now. The night was alive with the distant sound of the guns at the front.
Next to her, Julia was very still. It was a brittle, haunted silence. Like a mouse in a hole, although it was really absurd to think of Julia in those terms. There was no one less mouse-like than Julia. But there it was. Not hauteur. Wariness. Worse than wariness. Fear.
Kate thought of the way Julia had looked when Dr. Stapleton had hummed “Auld Lang Syne.” He had made it seem a joke. But Julia had looked—terrified. Sick. She’d never seen Julia look like that before.
Or had she? Uncomfortably, Kate remembered the way Julia had stiffened when the doctor in Paris had patted her arm, her insistence on not spending the night where men might walk through her room in Noyon, the way she had frozen when Dr. Stapleton approached them. As if trying to decide whether to fight or run.
But this was Julia. It wasn’t that Kate hadn’t heard of such things—especially here, where Dr. Stringfellow had delivered at least five Boche babies already. But Julia was one of the golden ones. It was the unprotected women who got taken advantage of. The maids and the shopgirls. Not the Julias of the world.
It was probably just an academic rivalry, Kate told herself. She’d probably got the wrong end of the stick. Julia would laugh at her. No, Julia would be offended. And then she would laugh at her.
“You don’t need a revolver,” Kate said before she could think better of it. “Not if you know where to hit. The best place to strike a man is the nose. He won’t expect it, and if you hit hard with the palm of your hand, you can break it fast. Nails to the eyes also work.”
Julia’s head jerked toward Kate. “Were you also—”
“No.” The single syllable felt like a betrayal. She hadn’t really thought—but there it was. That word also. Everything she hadn’t believed could happen to Julia. Kate swallowed hard. “My stepfather taught me. Just in case. He felt it was something I ought to know.”