Page 78 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure
“Oh Mavis,” Dora said. “I’m sure most Arabic men would look similar to you.”
“But no, listen,” Mavis went on excitedly. “Remember when we were at the pension and Yvette came into the room and acted startled? She claimed it was because she had never seen the sea before. Well, what if it was because she saw their picture? Those blokes were her mates? One of them was that Pierre, and another was that bloke. And she was part of the gang. And when we picked her up, she was on the run, so she played up to us so that we’d hide her and keep her out of sight until everything blew over.”
Ellie and Dora stared at her, digesting this.
“So her lover wasn’t an innocent young man who only stole to allow them to be married. He was a crook, a gangster,” Dora said. “That makes sense. That’s why she always hid away when we had guests. In case she was recognized.”
“You mean we’ve let Jojo go off with criminals?” Ellie said.
“We had no choice, and frankly, my dear, we are well rid of them,” Dora replied. “What if Yvette had stayed and they had decided this villa would be a perfect hideout? We could have done nothing. They might have conveniently killed all of us and taken over. Frankly I think we might have dodged a bullet here, both for ourselves and for Saint-Benet.”
Chapter 31
Even though she told herself it was all for the best, grief continued to consume Ellie by day and plague her dreams at night. Memories of holding Jojo on her lap, having her nestle against her shoulder, felt like a physical wound. Mavis and Dora were concerned for her. They quietly packed up all of Jojo’s things and stored them in a trunk where Ellie wouldn’t see them. But Ellie kept the stuffed dog and slept with it, hugging it to her. Tiger, the cat, also sensed her mood and curled up beside her on the bed or on the lounge chair. The loss was like a hole in her heart, and she dreamed, night after night, of the little girl being hit or abandoned by the roadside. It was awful to feel so powerless. As she lay, unable to fall asleep, she’d go over and over the scene in her mind, wondering what she could have done to have reached a different outcome. If she had offered them money to go away? But then they’d know she had money available and might come after her. And Yvette was the child’s mother, she told herself. Maybe she would love Jojo and treat her well. She tried to believe this.
On the first Sunday of May, the ferry boat showed up as usual to take visitors to the abbey. When Ellie went to board, she found the quayside crowded—some trippers newly arrived from the north and curious to see the abbey, others to check on sons and brothers and yet others to buy what produce they could from the monks to preserve for a potentially barren winter ahead. Ellie found herself holding her breath as the boat neared the island. She so wanted to see Abbot Gerard again.She wanted to hear his comforting voice and was sure he’d have words that would help sooth away the hurt she was carrying. But apart from a brief nod and how-are-you pleasantries, she never got a chance to speak to him. It seemed that someone was claiming his attention every second, and she boarded the boat back angry and frustrated.
Then there were bigger things to worry about. On May 10 the Germans swept around the north of the Maginot Line and poured into France from the north. The French army was unable to resist them. Gradually they moved further and further into France, pushing the Allied troops west until they were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. Ellie and the women listened, horrified, on the radio as the evacuation was reported and, miraculously, almost all the soldiers were brought across to England in small boats.
“Well, there goes our escape route,” Dora said as she turned off the radio. “The Germans now hold the Channel ports. If we wanted to leave here, it would have to be Spain or Portugal.”
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Ellie said, “And I don’t agree at all with how Franco has behaved against his fellow countrymen. And I don’t want to start all over again. I think we have to hope that we live in a small village and nobody would be interested in us.”
It seemed this might be true. Visitors arrived from the rest of France, earlier than usual, some fleeing from Paris and the North, hoping they’d be safely far away from conflict, as they were in the last war. Henri and the Adamses were happy they had more than enough customers. Ellie sat at the piano, trying to remember pieces she had known by heart, her fingers stumbling with lack of practice. She’d have to see if the doctor’s wife had music she could borrow. She had hoped that the music would soothe her but found that the tunes she remembered were loaded with indescribable longing. She threw herself into work, tending to the chickens and goat, which she continued to milk even though she and Dora did not care for the taste of goat’s milk. She planted as many vegetables as possible, coaxing the tomatoes and lemon tree back into production. One day Mavis came out to help her, finding her puttingup strings against the trellis for the beans and peas. They were quiet for a while, then Mavis said, “I’ve been waiting to tell you this, but there never seems to be a good time.”
Those echoed Lionel’s words when he announced his intention to divorce Ellie. She looked up sharply. “What?”
Mavis gave a little smile. “Louis has asked me to marry him. He wants to make sure I’ll be taken care of if it comes to being a French citizen.”
“Oh Mavis,” Ellie said. “I suppose I’m happy for you.”
Mavis had gone pink. “He asked me quite a while ago, but I didn’t like to leave you in the lurch. But now you don’t have all that extra work with the baby I thought it was the right time. I’ll come over and help you with the house and the chickens ...”
“Mavis, you don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Of course I do,” Mavis said. “You’ve given me a whole new life. You’ve let me be happy for the first time ever. I can never repay you for that. And I wouldn’t want to just walk away, but Louis is a good man, and I think I could be happy with him.”
“I think you could, too,” Ellie said. “Well, God bless you. When are you planning to do this?”
“As soon as possible now,” Mavis said. “I thought you and I might go into Marseille and see if I can find some fabric to make a wedding outfit. Oh, nothing daft like a long white dress, but something special. Something to celebrate when everything around us is gloom.”
“Yes,” Ellie said. “Good idea.”
Dora gave her blessing right away. “I am delighted for you, my dear,” she said. “If any of us deserves happiness, it’s you. You’ve spent your life taking care of other people. Now it’s your turn.” And she gave Mavis a nice amount of cash—“for your trousseau, if people still have trousseaus in wartime.”
So Ellie drove Mavis into Marseille, and they picked up some pale-blue silk dotted with flowers for the dress and some white silk for undergarments, because, as Mavis said, “I wouldn’t want to show himmy flannel bloomers.” And some heavier fabric for a smart suit. Then they added shoes and a handbag. Mavis stared at it all in wonder. “I ain’t never seen such lovely things in my whole life. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve them.”
She went to work, sewing feverishly. The result was most satisfying, and she stared at herself in the mirror. “Blimey. If Reg could see me now,” she said. “He’d realize what he lost, poor bugger. I suppose I can feel more charitable towards him now. He was a soldier in the trenches. He must have seen plenty of things that unsettled him and made him how he was.”
Ellie also bought herself a new dress and hat, plus a hat for Dora, because she feared there might be no new clothes for a long time. On June 14, the German tanks rolled into Paris. Everyone in Saint-Benet listened to the news in stunned silence, then wept and embraced.
“Those English soldiers let us down,” one of the men said. “They ran for the coast with their tails between their legs and abandoned us to the Germans.”
“At least they lived to fight another day,” Ellie replied. “Better than all being killed or taken as German captives. Everyone expected the Maginot Line to hold.”
“Those Nazis had been planning this for years,” someone else added. “They’ve been rearming secretly while we were caught unprepared—both of us. France and England.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do now,” the doctor’s wife said. “Let’s just hope that they are only interested in the industrial north, and we have nothing for them down here.”
