Page 90 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure
But it was not to be. The Italians stopped short, in the town of Toulon, while the Germans swarmed into Marseille and trickled into Saint-Benet.
The first sign was a German staff car that pulled up at the harbour. An officer in highly polished black knee boots got out and looked around, nodding with pleasure at what he saw.
“You!” he beckoned Henri. “Are there hotels in this place? I wish to billet my men.”
“There’s only the one small pension,” Henri said. “Very simple. Very primitive. We are a fishing village, not a tourist destination.”
“So the only properties here are the ones I can see?”
“That’s correct,” Henri said.
“Too bad. It’s a pretty little place. My men would like to relax after a taxing time in the North.” Henri was about to let out a sigh of relief when the officer added, “Perhaps I will just take a look at the pension ...” And he strode over to it. Apparently it was not too primitive, and the next day twelve German soldiers were billeted there. Mrs Adams didn’t seem as worried as Ellie was for her husband.
“They won’t make trouble as long as we take good care of them,” she said to Ellie. “They are simple foot soldiers, happy to be at the seaside. They asked me about bathing and whether it was too cold at this time of year.”
Immediately after they had moved in, they got to work putting in barricades and barbed wire around the harbour, making it hard forthe fishermen to reach their boats. They blocked off the path to the little beach.
Tommy and Clive sprang into action the moment they received the news.
“We need to hide the chickens and the goats,” Tommy said. “Those Huns will take them without a second thought.” So they set to work constructing a new chicken coop behind an arbour of wisteria and staked out the goats during the day outside the property on a section of hillside where they could not be seen from any footpath. “Just as long as the chickens don’t make too much noise,” Tommy said. “Thank God the last rooster died and we never got a new one from the farmer.”
“And the motor car,” Clive added. “We should hide the motor car so that they don’t take it.”
“But if we need it to get away?” Ellie asked.
“There’s nowhere to go, is there?” Tommy said. “We’re sitting ducks here. And no way to get petrol.”
Ellie thought that Nico could probably find some for them, but she did realize that a British motor car, spotted on any road, would be too obvious. They went down to the garage. Ellie drove out the Bentley, and together they managed to manoeuvre it into the space behind the garage and shed, covering it with a tarpaulin and letting the bougainvillea spill over it. Then Clive and Tommy placed old rubbish bins and pieces of trash around it. The result was satisfying.
Ellie wrote to Abbot Gerard, warning him that Germans were now in occupation. He wrote back that he had assurances that the abbey would be safe and allowed to continue but warned her to be very careful. It didn’t seem that the Germans were going to make life difficult, apart from establishing a curfew at ten p.m. This upset the fishermen. “We often go out at night or in the very early morning,” they said, appealing to the officer in charge. “That’s when the best fishing is. So if you’d like a good fish supper, you have to let us fish.”
“You will now fish during the daytime when your boats can be inspected,” the officer told them. “We cannot risk any kind of smuggling of goods.”
Ellie’s thoughts went instantly to Nico. She hadn’t seen much of him in recent weeks. If he had come to the villa, it must have been in the middle of the night. Then one night Ellie had just gotten into bed when there was a rattle of something at her window. She opened it, looked out and saw a dark shape of a man below.
“It’s me, Nico,” he called up to her in a whisper.
“I’ll come down.” Ellie hurriedly put on her robe and came down the stairs. She opened the front door, and he slipped inside, glancing around before he closed it behind him.
“I have to ask a favour,” Nico said. He was breathing heavily, as if he had run up the steps.
“Yes?” She looked at him uncertainly.
“I had to make a dash for your little harbour,” he said. “Luckily my speedboat can outrun them, but I can’t get back into the town. There are Germans everywhere,” he said. “Guarding the harbour. Can I perhaps stay here tonight?”
“Of course,” she said.
He smiled then, and she realized how harried he had looked.
“Come into the kitchen,” she said. “I have cognac.”
He nodded. “That’s good. I am really cold.”
She led him through and poured him a glass from the decanter. He took a sip, then gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for taking me in.”
Ellie nodded, not sure what to say.
“I may need to make this request more often,” he said. “Would that be all right? That I could spend the night here when I need to?”
