Page 100

“Yes, but we can always use more. We started out with Fran and Margaret and Liza as well as me and Kate—and now look. We’re down to two of five. It really wouldn’t hurt to have an extra.”

If she left . . . but that didn’t really matter, Emmie told herself. She’d promised Kate she’d stay at least until the new people got here, and the new people showed no signs of getting here. They were all still in Paris, waiting for the British authorities to issue passes. Given the way the British felt about women in their war zone, that might be quite some time.

Florence knew how to drive, but Florence was fully occupied with the spring planting, moving from village to village on a two-day schedule to make sure the crops were put in properly with a combination of community and government effort.

The store needed to be taken out at least two times a week; the doctors needed to be driven (or would, once they had doctors again); the social workers could walk to the nearer villages, but not the farther ones, not the ones that needed help the most. And it really wouldn’t be fair leaving Alice and Kate doing all of that on their own.

She would go see Mrs. Barrett before she lost her resolve.

Unlike Kate, who was generally fifteen places at once, one always knew where to find Mrs. Barrett. She ran the Unit from the living room of the new building, which doubled as both the Unit meeting room and the director’s office.

“Mrs. Barrett?”

It wasn’t until she was inside that Emmie realized they had visitors. A coffeepot and three cups sat on the table that held the framed portrait of George Washington. Mrs. Barrett, in a spotless uniform, sat across from the British colonel with the exceedingly bushy mustache who had attended their Christmas party. And behind him stood Captain DeWitt.

“You remember Miss Van Alden, Colonel?” said Mrs. Barrett.

Chapter Twenty-One

Over the months of January and February, the social service department reports the distribution of more than 800 articles to 165 families in 12 villages. Among the articles distributed were: 72 beds, 8 mattresses, 16 armoires, 9 tables, 60 chairs, 28 buffets, 238 sheets, 138 blankets, 91 quilts, 10 stoves, and 118 articles of clothing. These distributions are relief work unrelated to supplies sold from the store. The sale of supplies in January and February amounted to $3,264, approximately 2/3 the cost of the articles to the Unit. Under the guidance of Miss Dawlish, 40 women in our villages were given material to make 986 garments, which they sold to the Unit for $714.45. More material has been purchased.

Miss Baldwin reports that the library contains more than 700 volumes, and now includes books for adults. An effort is being made to find the right person in each village to take charge of their circulation, most likely through the schools. At Grécourt, a house will shortly be opened at specified hours for a reading room, lending library, game room, and center for sewing classes, children’s classes, and mothers’ meetings. Another house is to be fitted as a workshop for the boys. A portable cinema machine has been purchased for the instruction and amusement of the children, who walk miles to see these pictures. An average of 320 children are being reached weekly through these channels, not counting the children reached through the creation of similar social centers in the villages of Canizy, Courcelles, and Verlaines.

When reading the medical report, it should be remembered that since January 24, there has been only one junior doctor at Grécourt, so the medical work has been greatly limited. Over the past month, with the assistance of one nurse (Miss Mills), Dr. Pruyn has made 364 house visits and received 160 patients in the dispensary for a total of 524. In the absence of our doctors, in serious cases we have the assistance of Dr. Stapleton of the American Red Cross hospital at Nesle, who holds dispensary at Grécourt three times a week, and also of Dr. Cooney of the AEF. Getting the proper pass from the British authorities for Dr. Clare and renewing the pass for Dr. Pruyn is of the highest priority for the ongoing success of the Unit’s mission. . . .

—From a report by Miss Katherine Moran, ’11, Assistant Director, to the Paris Committee, February 1918

February 1918

Paris, France

“I would like to see the general,” said Kate, for approximately the twenty-third time.

“Ce n’est pas possible,” said the very minor official to whom Kate had progressed via a series of other minor officials. “Monsieur le General only grants audiences on Saturday afternoons from half past three until five and on Wednesday mornings from nine until half past ten.”

It was Wednesday afternoon. The clock on the official’s desk read three thirty.

“I was here at nine in the morning,” said Kate, channeling her fury into withering politeness. “I was here before nine in the morning. I was told I needed a pass to enter the building. I went to another office and acquired the pass. Then I was told I needed another pass to proceed up the stairs. That was ten thirty. It has taken me six and a half hours to get to this office and I. Am. Not. Leaving.”

She spoke very slowly and clearly, just to make sure he understood.

He didn’t. “It is not the time at which Monsieur le General receives visitors.”

“Well, he’ll receive me,” said Kate firmly. She fumbled in her pocket. “Look. This is a letter of introduction from the Marquise de Noailles. Tell Monsieur le General that the assistant director of les Collégiennes Américaines is here to see him at the express request of the Marquise de Noailles.”

“Ah, les Collégiennes Américaines.” He looked at her as though it explained a great deal, not necessarily in a good way, more in the way of suddenly being confronted with a zoo animal who might or might not bite. “One moment.”

Kate didn’t wonder he looked at her strangely; she probably looked like a madwoman. She was wearing her uniform, the new one that Mrs. Barrett had brought for her, but it was slightly too large and already stained. Her red rubber boots, de rigueur for the mud of Grécourt, were entirely out of place on the streets of Paris and even more out of place on the elegant marble floor of the ministry. After six months of boots, it had never occurred to her to bring shoes. She’d practically forgotten what they were. Or what it was to walk on solid flagstones instead of sinking knee-deep in mud.

There was a chair in the anteroom, a spindly gilded thing, so different from the stout wooden ones they’d been distributing to their villagers. Kate had been standing all day in one way or another, standing in line to get passes, standing in line to be admitted to the building, standing in line to be admitted to this office. She should sit, she knew, and muster her strength, but she was fizzing with nervous energy.

It had been nearly a week since she’d been in Paris, and she hadn’t accomplished a single thing she’d set out to do.

It had been an unnerving and largely silent train ride with Julia, who was officially in Paris to get her pass renewed. When Kate had delicately tried to broach the question of whether the presence of Dr. Stapleton at Grécourt might have something to do with her sudden desire to go to Paris, Julia had simply looked at her—one of her Medusa looks, designed to turn the unlucky into stone—and looked away again.

It was a moot point anyway, Kate had told herself as they sat in stony silence for the rest of the journey, Julia’s gigantic duffel bag wedged on the seat between them. As soon as Dr. Clare got her pass, they’d have no need for Dr. Stapleton and therefore no need to discuss it.

She and Julia had gone straight from the train to the hotel on the Quai Voltaire, which had become a sort of dormitory for the Smith Unit in Paris. They’d found the new girls there. They looked disconcertingly clean. Clean and pressed and entirely unprepared. Had she looked like that once? Kate supposed she had, but it was hard to remember. Their nails were smooth and white, not jagged with the stains of earth under them that never quite came out. They wore clothes that hadn’t been pounded by Marie, and their faces had a city smoothness to them, not windburn from months spent riding in an open truck with the wind and rain and snow howling through.