Page 14 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure
Ellie saw Mavis about to open her mouth and stepped in hastily.
“Mavis is coming with us as a friend, Miss Smith-Humphries. As my guest, not as my maid.”
“Oh.” Miss Smith-Humphries froze, staring at the car. Ellie could see she was deciding whether to come with them or not.
“That’s rather irregular, isn’t it?” she said.
“Not at all. Mavis has been my faithful helper for many years, and she needs a good holiday. I’m treating her to one. Now, would you like us to bring out your bags for you?”
“Don’t worry, Mrs E., I’ll get them.” Mavis emerged from the back seat, went up the path and into the front hall. Miss Smith-Humphries made eye contact with Ellie. “But what does her husband think of this?”
“Mavis is much better off without her husband.” Ellie mouthed the words as Mavis emerged with a large pigskin suitcase in one hand and a Morocco leather train case in the other.
“Oh, so that’s it, is it?” She gave Ellie a knowing look. “One has heard, of course ...” And she left the rest of the sentence unfinished.
They managed to squeeze her suitcase into the trunk. Mavis took the back seat, with a hatbox and train case beside her. Miss Smith-Humphries was seated in the front.
“And off we go!” Ellie said.
“You did settle things with your husband about taking his motor car, I hope,” Miss Smith-Humphries said as they left the village behind and green countryside stretched out on either side of them. It was a pleasant autumn day with slanting sunlight making the turning leaves glow amber. The smell of bonfire smoke hung in the air.
“Not exactly,” Ellie said. “But I did leave him a note, making my position clear. Besides, we’ll be across the Channel and past Paris by the time he gets home. I don’t think he’d know how to track me down in France.” And she laughed. She had laughed a lot recently, she realized. It felt strange after years of not smiling much. Almost as if her face was being reborn.
I am being reborn,she thought. She came to the junction of the main road and headed south, to the coast and the car ferry to France. They drove the Bentley on to the noon ferry to Calais. As they stood on the deck, the stiff breeze in their faces, watching the white cliffs move away in the wake, Ellie stared in wonder. It was actually happening. She had escaped. She was free. She felt triumph surge up inside her. But at the same moment, Mavis gave a wail.
“I can’t believe I’ve been and gone and done it,” Mavis said. The receding coastline had suddenly made it real to her. “Now I can’t never go back, can I? He’ll kill me for running off like this.”
“That’s precisely why you can’t go back to him, Mavis,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “If you’d stayed, he might have eventually killed you. When we’ve all had a good rest we’ll help you decide what you wantto do and where you want to be. But in the meantime this cold wind isn’t good for us. I suggest we all go down to the saloon and have a decent meal.”
And so they did. As they boarded Mavis had expressed her dismay about being on the sea but barely noticed they were moving and ate a hearty meal. The crossing could not have been smoother. Their arrival in France could not have been smoother, either. The customs and immigration men looked at the Bentley, the distinguished lady driving it and glanced into the back seat.
“My aunt and my maid,” Ellie said in her good French.
“Welcome to France, my lady,” the man said, barely glancing at her passport as he handed it back to her. “Have a good holiday.”
The women exchanged a giggle as they drove away. It almost felt like being naughty schoolgirls getting away with a prank. They stopped first at the bureau de change, where Ellie and Miss Smith-Humphries exchanged money. They then filled up with petrol, bought a map and set off.
“It don’t look much different from back home,” Mavis commented. She had been staring out of the car windows as they crossed a dockside area and then drove through the town of Calais.
“What did you expect, people with two heads?” Miss Smith-Humphries said in her usual cutting fashion.
“No, but I thought, you know, I’d heard about abroad and how the people were different from us, so I thought ...”
“This is a dockside town, Mavis,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “Lots of commerce. Once we’re in the depths of the countryside, I expect you’ll notice the difference.”
They left the port behind and found themselves in the French countryside. The afternoon was warm for late September. The grains had been harvested and piled into small haystacks to dry as they drove past fields. The road was lined with poplar trees, giving pleasant shade. They drove through a village: cream-coloured houses with brown andgreen shutters, a shop with vegetables in baskets outside and a café with old men sitting at a table, smoking and nursing glasses of wine.
“Look at that. Drinking wine and it’s not yet three o’clock,” Mavis exclaimed.
Miss Smith-Humphries gave a sigh of pleasure. “How delightful it all is. I remember it so well. This is going to do me good; I know it is.”
Ellie was just thinking that it was doing her good, too. All the tensions of the past weeks were already slipping away. In two or three days’ time, they’d be on the Côte d’Azur.
Having consulted the map and questioned the petrol station attendant, they took the road that skirted Paris to the north. There would be a faster road leading out of Paris, but then she’d have to navigate the city, and she wasn’t prepared to do that. After a while the road veered around to the south, and the flat grain fields of the coast gave way to rolling hills, their slopes covered with vines. The road had been fairly empty thus far, for which Ellie was grateful, as she had worried that driving on the wrong side could be a challenge. But as they moved into the region of Burgundy they saw plenty of activity. Women working in the fields wore colourful kerchiefs around their heads. Some of them wore aprons over full skirts.
“Now they look different,” Mavis said. “What are they growing in them fields?”
“This is a wine-growing region, Mavis,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “You’ve heard of Burgundy wine, haven’t you? They are harvesting the grapes.” As she was speaking, a tractor pulled out in front of them, towing a trailer piled high with dark-purple grapes, making Ellie apply the brakes rapidly, her heart beating fast. A little later they came to a small town. Half-timbered houses with red tiled roofs lined the narrow cobbled street. The Bentley bumped its way forward. There was a suspicious lack of activity, however. Nobody sat at the corner café, and the shops were shuttered.
