Page 33

Paris, France

They left for Grécourt on Tuesday.

They’d meant to leave by ten, but noon saw the three trucks belonging to the Smith College Relief Unit still sitting stranded outside the hotel on the Quai Voltaire, occasioning a great deal of comment from passersby. It turned out that even when limited to one suitcase and one duffel bag apiece, there was a remarkable amount of luggage, particularly when one added in such sundries as rakes, hoes, crockery, portable stoves, eighteen cots, blankets, and all relevant bedding. Not to mention six loaves of war bread and one very precious tub of jam.

“Maybe if you put the confiture there . . .” suggested Alice, fluttering around, trying to rearrange packages and generally confusing matters.

“Where, on my head?” demanded Julia, who was wedged in between a spare tire and half a dozen folded cots. There were four of them in the White truck, crowded in among miscellaneous crates and packages, rakes sticking out the sides like pikes at the Battle of Agincourt, only with fewer men in doublets.

“It has to go somewhere,” said Kate.

“I’ll hold the jam,” said Emmie, wondering if it was too late to suggest that Kate and Julia go in separate cars. She juggled the bucket of jam from one knee to the other, trying to find a comfortable spot. “Doesn’t confiture sound much tastier than jam? Just like framboise sounds a million times more elegant than plain old raspberry.”

“They’re French raspberries; naturally, they’re more elegant,” said Kate, grinning back at her, and Emmie felt like old times, like setting off for a picnic on a borrowed sledge. “Can you grab the oil can, Alice?”

Alice Patton obediently clamped the oil can between her feet and Emmie shifted sideways to give her more room, eliciting a sharp cry of distress from Julia, who plunged forward to protect her medical bag, at the expense of her own kidneys, if necessary.

“Emmie! Watch your foot! If you squash my bag, we’ll have no medicines at all.”

The doctors had returned from their tour of hospitals only the night before and had been incensed to find that their medical supplies still hadn’t been forwarded from the port—and that the chauffeurs hadn’t thought to look for them.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Emmie tried to wedge her feet in between the oil can and the petrol crate. Her aunt May, Julia’s mother, who had dainty, tiny doll feet, had always said Emmie’s feet were too big. She could feel her cheeks flushing with old shame as she tried to hide her boatlike boots. “It’s a tight fit.”

“If the bag is so precious, hold it on your lap,” said Kate from the front of the truck.

“If anyone had thought to look for our supplies—” said Julia.

“If anyone had bothered to tell us to look . . .”

“How far is it until Grécourt?” asked Alice, wiggling uncomfortably between the spare tire and the petrol crate.

“Eighty-five miles,” said Kate. “But goodness only knows what the roads will be like once we get out of Paris.”

“Are we ready to go? Once I start this, I’m not stopping it again until I find a hill pointing down,” called out Fran Englund from the Ford truck. She and Margaret Cooper were driving the long truck, loaded with parts of portable houses and miscellaneous farm equipment. In front, leading the way, Liza had the jitney, with their duffel bags, suitcases, Mrs. Rutherford, Dr. Stringfellow, Miss Dawlish, and Maud. Emmie wondered if Mrs. Rutherford was following the old adage of keeping one’s enemies close.

Three members had been left behind in Paris. Miss Ledbetter, who wrote features for magazines, had been detailed, on the strength of her journalistic credentials, to coordinate with the press. Miss Mills, who had been working at the Villier hospital, was being allowed a week’s rest before starting for Grécourt, which Emmie really hoped wasn’t code for her having picked up something terribly contagious. Miss Baldwin, their librarian, had stayed behind to try to beg, borrow, and cadge books for the children.

Alice Patton turned the crank of the White and Kate did something—Emmie supposed she really ought to learn how it worked at some point, although she wasn’t sure it would be fair to inflict her lack of direction on the world at large—and the truck started rolling forward, past the hotel, across a bridge, over the Seine.

They were on their way; they were truly on their way. At last, at last.

The French sun shone down on them, blessing them in their endeavors. Everyone waved to them as they passed, old women in black veils, women in overalls sweeping the streets, soldiers in gray and soldiers in khaki, mothers wheeling babies in carriages and men limping on crutches. It felt like a parade, like a festival day, like a Roman triumph, like Ivy Day at Smith.

“Fair is the earth today / Blooming over the lea, / And June is calling,” Emmie sang, unable to contain herself.

It was their Ivy Day song, the one they’d sung together as they processed around the campus in their white dresses, escorted by the alumnae in their colored sashes, helping to launch them away into the world.

After a moment, Kate’s careful contralto joined in, “Away! Ah, come away with me!”

Then Julia’s trained soprano, carrying over them all, “Away, away! To the world so bright and free . . .”

Auntie May used to make Julia practice for hours with a voice teacher, then trot her out to sing at parties, posed with a harp. Julia had hated it and had staunchly refused to sing in any of the college musical societies, no matter how they’d begged. But she was singing now; they were all singing together, and it felt absolutely as it should be.

Emmie’s spirit thrilled to the words. “We hear her magical call / And we follow the world around . . .”

Her voice wasn’t beautiful, not like Julia’s; she tended to slide between notes and she was often flat, but she felt like the words were drawn straight out of the very marrow of her bones. Away, away, the world around. She’d always wanted to go off on a quest like the knights in a romance, and here they were, here they were at last, even if it wasn’t, as she’d told that British officer, anything heroic, only something practical and decent. But right here, right now, she felt like all the heroes of romance rolled together, armed with a rake instead of a sword and a bucket of jam in place of a buckler.

“Leave we our love behind / As the low winds softly croon . . .”