Emmie’s hair, that indeterminate color between blond and brown that looks gray in the wrong light, was already frizzing out of its pins, frothing around her face. She shook the strands out of her eyes, like a horse shaking its mane.
“You’re losing your pins,” said Kate, sticking one back in for her.
“I know,” said Emmie ruefully. “I expect I’ll be entirely shed of them by the time we get to France and have to wear my hair in a long tail and all the Frenchmen will make mock of me.”
“‘Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down,’” said Kate without thinking, slipping back years in a moment. They’d put on Henry V together their junior year, bit parts both, but the dialogue had become part of their personal lexicon. Any use of the word mock meant an immediate recitation of the tennis ball speech.
“What are you on about?” demanded Maud.
“It was our junior play,” offered Emmie in her conciliatory way. “Henry V. The tennis ball speech.”
“A very long time ago,” said Kate, before Maud could ask her if she played tennis. It felt like a different lifetime. Back when she and Emmie had been inseparable. Back when Kate still thought she was one of them, could be one of them. Back before Newport.
How do you like the latest charity case?
So long ago, but those casual words still stung.
Maud asked Emmie, just a little too avidly, “Did your people come to see you off?”
“My father and three of my brothers came—that’s why I was so long, Kate, or I would have found you sooner.” Emmie was unconsciously twisting her handkerchief between her fingers as she used to, at Smith, when she had to do a recitation. “My mother wasn’t able—there were so many meetings—you know how it is. So many committees! But she sent a basket, all full of woolens and wooden toys for the children. And my father brought sherry and crackers!”
“What kind of crackers?” asked Liza with interest.
“DeWitt’s, I think,” said Emmie. “There’s also a twenty-pound box of Bailey’s candy and some other things. My father said he’d rather thought we would need them, off in no-man’s-land. He was only joking, of course.”
“We’re hardly going into the trenches,” protested Maud.
“Oh, no, he means it as a joke, really. He says he feels quite small in the face of our nerve.” Emmie paused, looking a bit uncertain. “And it is marvelous, isn’t it? To be going abroad and doing something about this horrible war?”
Or about one’s trousseau, thought Kate, but didn’t say it. Emmie had assured her that there had been an extensive vetting process for applicants, including a written questionnaire, reference letters, and a doctor’s note. Perhaps Maud had been a mistake. Or perhaps the mistake was Kate’s, letting herself get swept up in one of Emmie’s schemes after all these years, when she was old enough to know better.
Debutante nonsense, her mother called it. Good enough for those that don’t have to worry about getting their living.
But this was work too. She might not be paid for it, not exactly, but the Unit was covering her room and board, and how else was she ever to see France, even a France at war?
“But I nearly forgot!” Emmie gave her head a little shake, losing another pin in the process. “Mrs. Rutherford asked me to help gather everyone together. We’re to meet in the saloon. I’m meant to be chivvying everyone. Shall we?”
“We haven’t much choice, have we?” said Kate. “Unless we mean to swim to shore.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but it came out a little flat. Maud looked at her just a little too hard, with those bright eyes that saw too much.
“I didn’t bring my bathing costume,” said Emmie, bravely making a joke of it. “And I don’t think this uniform would hold up awfully well in the water, do you?”
Kate grimaced at her uniform. “I don’t know. It seems pretty indestructible.”
“Just like us!” Emmie grabbed Kate’s hand, just a little too hard. “Let’s go before we miss anything.”
“Did you know nearly everyone on the boat is concerned with the war in some way?” Maud angled in between Emmie and Kate as they hurried to the saloon. “I hear there’s a whole unit of ambulance men on the boat, and also one of engineers.”
“Don’t forget the aviators!” added Liza, puffing along behind them.
“Did you know Nick Penniston’s gone for an aviator?” said Emmie to Kate.
“Really?” said Kate, as though she hadn’t seen the articles in the papers, millionaire’s son takes to the sky, as if she hadn’t stared at the grainy features half-indistinguishable in the newsprint, cursing herself for a fool.
He’d been kind to her, that was all. Sometimes, the girl who got to go to the ball wasn’t Cinderella at all; sometimes, when midnight chimed, the prince didn’t bother to give chase. She wasn’t a princess in disguise. As far as the people in Emmie’s world were concerned, she was just another Bridget: Irish, Catholic, and poor.
“The president of Andover is here too,” said Maud importantly. “We met him in Montclair last year, didn’t we, Liza? He’s frightfully nice. Do you know him? And there’s Dr. Denison of Boston College, and the president of a university somewhere in Oregon—goodness only knows, but they say he’s up for the presidency of Smith, so I suppose we oughtn’t to dismiss him. Oh, there are the ambulance men. Halloo! Those two tall ones seem rather nice.”
As Maud waggled her fingers at them, one of the ambulance men elbowed his friend, pointing to them. “What are those?”
“Women, Hank,” drawled the second man, taking a slug from a flask with Harvard’s “Veritas” emblazoned on it and handing it to his friend. “They’re women.”
“No, but what are they doing here?”
The second man shrugged. “They tell me it’s a unit from Smith College.”
“College girls?” Hank choked on whatever was in the flask and had to be pounded on the back. “D’you think they’ll send a platoon from Radcliffe?”
“I’d like one from Gimbels,” quipped the second man, snagging the flask.
Kate felt two patches of color high in her cheeks. She resisted the urge to stamp on their feet in passing.
“Harvard men,” said Emmie, whose family had all gone to Yale.
“They think we’re a joke.” It would help if she didn’t feel so much like a joke. The uniforms, which had been designed especially for the Smith Unit, were a cross between the military and the archaeological, crammed with pockets wherever a pocket could be put, an embarrassing display of utility. Kate’s was too big on her, which made it even worse. It had been tailored for the girl who had left, who had been built on heartier lines. Kate was, like her mother, short and small-boned. Easy to overlook.
“We just have to show them otherwise, then,” said Emmie bravely. “That’s what my mother would say.”
And when Mrs. Livingston Van Alden spoke, people listened. If they didn’t, she chained herself to railings. Or invited senators to tea and harangued them. Or both. Neither of these skills seemed quite applicable to their current situation.