Page 11 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure
“Then I’d better go and have my holiday without delay, hadn’t I? And return to the comparative safety of an English village.”
“Quite right,” he said. He put out a hand and covered hers. “I do still feel responsible for you, Ellie. I’m very fond of you in my own way, and you’ve been a good wife to me.”
“Not good enough, apparently,” she said. She pulled her hand away and left the room.
“Is that the lot, then?” Mavis was helping her to get the last items into a trunk. It was a blustery autumn day, and rain was peppering the window.
“I hope so,” Ellie replied. “There’s not another inch of space. I couldn’t even take more hair clips. Gosh, I hope there really are porters everywhere. I have to make my way to Paris before I take the train to the Riviera.”
“You ain’t backing out now, I hope,” Mavis said. “You don’t want to let him feel that he’s got the better of you.”
Ellie pushed a strand of hair back from her face. “No, I won’t back out. I’m just trying to face the realities of the journey.”
Mavis leaned over to try and close the lid of the trunk. Ellie went to help, then stopped and stared. “What did you do to your arm?”
“Oh, that?” Mavis went red. “I bumped into something.”
Ellie could recall other occasions when Mavis had accidently hurt herself. Bumped into something, brushed against the stove and burned her arm. Before, in the true British way of minding one’s own business, she had said nothing, but today she couldn’t help herself. “He did that to you. Your husband. Didn’t he?”
Mavis turned away. “He’d had a drop too much again, and I hadn’t kept his dinner hot enough for him.”
“He hit you.”
“No. He shoved me into the stove,” Mavis said.
“Let me take a look at it.” Ellie took her arm.
“It’s just a bruise,” Mavis said, backing away. “I’ll live.”
“This time, yes. But what about next time? It always escalates, Mavis. When he finds he can get away with it once or twice, it gets worse.”
“He don’t mean it,” Mavis said. “It’s just when he’s had a drop too much.”
Ellie put her hands on Mavis’s shoulders, turning the other woman to face her. “Do you love him?”
“Love?” Mavis gave a bitter laugh. “I can’t say I ever did. He was a soldier in the war, quite good-looking in his way in those days, and he was going off to the trenches and I was keen to get away from home—I was eldest of six kids in our house and not enough food. I didn’t know he’d turn out to be a worse bully than my old dad.” She gave a big sigh.“It might have been all right if kids had come along, only they didn’t. He blamed me for that, of course. Called me a barren cow. I once said it might be his fault, but I got a black eye for saying that.”
“Mavis, you’ve got to leave him,” Ellie said. Her grip on Mavis’s shoulders tightened.
“Leave him?” Mavis frowned. “And where do you think I’d go, eh? I don’t have no nice fat bank account. I couldn’t even afford to rent a room somewhere new. I’m trapped, that’s what I am.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” Ellie said impulsively.
Mavis stood staring, facing Ellie. “What, abroad? To the Continent? You must be joking.”
“No, you’d love it. It’s so beautiful, and the food is so good, and it’s warm. I’ll pay your way. It will give you time to think about what you want to do next, just as I’m doing.”
Mavis stared out of the window. A big gust of wind rattled the frame and blew leaves from the apple tree. “I suppose you will need help with your things ...,” she said hesitantly. “Someone to do for you over there ...”
“No, don’t think you’d come as a servant, Mavis. Come as a friend. You’ve always been a true friend to me.”
“I ain’t coming if I can’t be useful,” she said, but her voice cracked with emotion. Ellie could see tears in her eyes. “I’m going to do my share.”
“Then you’ll come?”
Again Mavis hesitated. Ellie could see she was torn between the desire to escape and the worry about what her husband would say.
“He ain’t going to like me going away,” she said. “He’s used to being waited on hand and foot.”
