It was cold in their makeshift dining room, but the cold didn’t bother Emmie as it had in New York. Maybe it was because here they were always doing, always busy, always moving. There was always a visit to make or animals to feed or something to be repaired or crates to be stacked or beds to be delivered to villagers. They could do duty as furniture movers when this was all done, Maud complained, but Emmie loved the feeling of her muscles stretching, of walking distances she never would have contemplated at home, of being able to be really, truly useful.
Even if she did worry, sometimes, that her use was limited to fetching and hauling and bandaging scraped knees, the sort of thing anyone could do. She didn’t have Julia’s medical training or Kate’s grim determination; she couldn’t even drive the cars. When it came to bullying bureaucrats, she was, Emmie had found, rather ineffectual.
Yesterday in Amiens, for example. They’d got word of some school benches, stored away in an attic somewhere, a find so rare that Kate had agreed to take the jitney and drive Emmie up. But after ten minutes of the official from the department of education telling them how sad it was the benches were just sitting there and how impossible it was for them to be moved, Kate had taken over. The benches couldn’t be moved? Why not? They had been promised to four other villages? Well, clearly, they were going to none of those, so why not the Smith Unit? Haulage? They would deal with haulage. Really, they were doing the department a favor, taking these benches off their hands.
There was something about the way Kate spoke that made Emmie think of building blocks: each phrase a stone in an indestructible wall. The poor Inspector of Education had been so cowed, he’d not only promised them the school benches; he’d stayed past his lunch hour. They’d left him muttering something about “les Américaines,” looking thoroughly unnerved by the whole experience.
But they’d got the benches. Glorious, glorious benches, which would furnish the schools at Hombleux and Canizy and, most particularly, Courcelles, Emmie’s own special village. Kate had promised she’d have first pick of the benches for Courcelles. Emmie had already wrangled a temporary building that they could use as school and town hall, over the objections of Miss Mills, who had protested that the nearer and larger villages ought to be served first. But the nearer and larger villages hadn’t been so thoroughly decimated as Courcelles, and Emmie was determined, determined, that her people there, her fifty children, none of them well, would get their due in buildings and benches, tools and schoolbooks.
She couldn’t wait to tell them. Wednesday, perhaps. Her visits to Courcelles were limited by the number of cars in service at any given time, and right now the White was in Paris having hard rims put on and the old Ford truck was sounding decidedly rheumy, leaving only the jitney. Sometimes, Emmie rode with Maud and Liza and the store, but they never stayed quite long enough for Emmie to visit all of her families, not properly. With the cars constantly out of commission, it was a struggle to find someone who would take her. Even the doctors were doing their rounds on foot, hiking miles across muddy fields with their medical bags strapped to their backs.
So she supposed she shouldn’t complain, not really. It was just that the need in Courcelles was so great. . . .
“What on earth is this rubbish?” Kate took the paper from Alice. “Ah. This must be that pest who came the day we went to get medicine, Julia. ‘I would have turned back, thinking I had mistaken the way, had I not then perceived two female figures in black oilskins and rubber boots. Their quick muscular movements left no doubt these were Americans.’”
Alice looked down at her arm, in its rather ragged gray wool casing. “I wouldn’t say we were muscular, would you? It just sounds so . . . mannish.”
“At least the engineers don’t seem to mind,” said Liza cheerfully through a mouthful of war bread.
“Yes, because we’re the only women for fifty miles,” said Nell. “Unless you count the French.”
Kate flapped the paper to get their attention, and Emmie couldn’t help noticing how naturally she took charge. “There’s a bit about you and the chicken coop, Emmie—‘the noble descendant of one of our first families, not too proud to wrestle with menial tasks in the thick mud of the Somme.’”
“I suppose it’s a good thing I’m muscular, then,” said Emmie, feeling a bit as though she’d been reduced to the role of cart horse. They’d had such a conversation, she and that reporter, all about the children and their needs and the work they were doing—but all he remembered was the hammer and the mud.