Page 42 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure

Yvette took one look at Jojo and ran towards her, arms open. “My little child,” she called. “My precious little child. Look at you. How beautiful you are. How you’ve grown. Come to maman, ma chérie.”

And she swept up the little girl into her arms, covering her with kisses.

“I’ve come to take you home,” she went on.

Jojo tried to squirm out of her embrace and let out a loud wail, holding out her hands to Ellie. “Maman!” she cried.

“This lady is not your maman,” Yvette said, swinging her away. “I am Maman. She was just looking after you until I came back.”

“What were you doing, Yvette?” Ellie demanded, her voice taut. “A whole year and we hear nothing from you. Then you show up as if nothing has happened and want to take your child back?”

“Of course,” Yvette said. “Before, I could not look after her. Now I can.” She glanced back, and Ellie saw that a man had entered the garden behind her. He was lean and dark skinned, and he moved with an animal stealth. He stared at Ellie with utter contempt as he came towards them.

“Is this Pierre?” Ellie asked.

“No,” Yvette said. “I tired of waiting for Pierre. This is Ali. He will take good care of us.”

“No!” Ellie said loudly. “I can’t let you take her. You’ve shown yourself to be irresponsible before. What’s to say you won’t decide a baby is an annoyance and leave her? Abandon her somewhere? She has a good home here. Everything she needs.”

“But I am her mother. You can’t keep her. By law she is mine, and I can prove it,” Yvette said. “The doctor signed the birth certificate with my name on it. You can’t stop me from taking her.”

“I can go to the police and prove that you are not a good mother,” Ellie said.

“They will laugh in your face.” The lean man joined Yvette. “She is the rightful mother. It is her child. You were just the nursemaid. There is no more to be said.”

“Absolutely not,” Ellie said. “I will fight for her.”

The lean man moved forwards until he was a few inches from Ellie’s face. “It is not wise to cross those you don’t know and who might be more powerful than you. Bad things can happen. So go back to your house and do your knitting with the other old women.”

Ellie was afraid, but she wasn’t about to back down. “Very well,” she said. “But then you owe me for all the money I have spent taking care of this child for a year—nappies, formula, clothing, bedding. And the jewellery you stole from us. I expect to be compensated. I can take you to court.”

He stared at her, an insolent smirk on his face. Then he reached into his pocket, took out some banknotes and flung them at her feet. “There,” he said. “And you should go back where you came from before it’s too late. You are not wanted in France.” He turned to Yvette. “Come. Let us go.”

“Don’t you even want any of her things? Her toy dog? Her nappies?”

“We came on a motorbike,” Ali said. “We can’t carry unnecessary items. She will have new ones.”

“Do you even know how to feed her? How to bathe her?” Jojo was still squirming in Yvette’s arms, holding out her little hands to Ellie.

“Maman,” she cried piteously.

“Do you think my family has never raised a child before?” Ali said.

“She will lack for nothing. Let’s go.” He put an arm on Yvette’s back and steered her towards the gate.

Ellie wanted to run after them, to snatch the child from her arms, but she was all too aware that this man was dangerous and probably violent.

She stood like a statue as she heard a motorbike roar to life and then the sound fade as it went down the long driveway.

Tears were running down her cheeks as she went back to the house. Dora and Mavis were standing there, having witnessed the whole thing.

“It’s what you wanted, my dear.” Dora put a hand on her shoulder. “You always hoped that her mother would come for her again.”

“But not like this. Not with that man. I feel so helpless, Dora. There’s nothing I can do. She is the mother. She does have the birth certificate. I’m afraid that man was right. We were just the nursemaids.”

“Come on in and have a cup of tea.” Mavis reached out for her. Ellie shrugged her off.

“Just leave me for a moment,” Ellie said. “I need to be alone.”

She rushed out into the garden. There was a bench against one wall, with wisteria spilling around it. She collapsed on to this, and putting her hands up to her face, she sobbed. She was not conscious of someone standing over her until a voice said, “What is wrong?”

She looked up to see Nico standing there. He sank to the bench beside her. “What has upset you so?”

“The girl came back—Yvette. She took Jojo, and I couldn’t stop her.” The words came out in gasps between sobs.

“But didn’t you want her to come back? Now you don’t have responsibility for the child.”

“But she’s with an awful man. And I’m afraid Yvette will find Jojo a nuisance and just abandon her again. And I loved her so much. She was the little girl I never had ...”

“There now.” He took her into his arms, and she continued to sob against his rough jacket front. He stroked her hair. “You did your best. You gave the child a good start. She would have wound up in an orphanage if you hadn’t cared for her.”

She looked up, realizing now who he was and how they were sitting together so closely. She straightened up instantly. “I’m so sorry. I’ve made your jacket wet.”

He laughed. “I’m a fisherman. I’m used to wet jackets.”

“But what are you doing here during daylight hours? Isn’t your activity normally in the nighttime?”

“If you want to know, I am stocking up on oil and petrol for my boat. In case there are shortages. I may store some of the oil cans in the garage here. I am going to put in a big tank down by the dock and keep it full of petrol. It is well hidden down there, I think.”

“Does the dock actually belong to this house?” she asked. “Does the owner know?”

“He does. And fully approves,” Nico said. “You need not worry about me or what I do. For now it is all legitimate. If things get worse later, who can say?”

“Do you think they will?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I think there is no way that France can come through this unscathed.”

Ellie stood up, now horribly self-conscious at the intimacy. “I shouldn’t keep you,” she said. “You’ve been most kind. Thank you.”

“What else are friends for?” he said, rising, too. “You are my friend, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” Ellie replied.

“Then that is good.” He put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her towards him and kissed her forehead. “Go back to your ladies. All will be well.”

He watched as she walked back to the house, then went on his way.

Inside Ellie found that Mavis had made tea.

“Come and sit down, love,” she said. “I expect it’s all for the best. If there’s going to be rationing, and that’s what they are saying, we couldn’t get a ration card for her, could we?”

“Or for ourselves,” Dora said. “Maybe this is the time to reconsider and go home while we can still cross the Channel.”

“Maybe it is,” Ellie said. She looked around her. I love this place, she thought, but now every day will remind me what I have lost.

“Oh.” Mavis stared, shook her head. “You really want to go back there? Where would we go?”

“I have my cottage still,” Dora said.

“Oh Dora, I wouldn’t want to live in the same village as Lionel and that woman,” Ellie said. “I do have a flat in London. It’s rented now, but we could always ...”

“London would be the worst place to go,” Mavis said. “It’s bound to be bombed, isn’t it? If you want my opinion, I don’t want to go back there. In England I was nothing. The charwoman. Mop your floors and get treated like dirt.”

“I hope I never treated you that way, Mavis,” Ellie said.

“Of course not. You were lovely. But here it’s different. People treat me as one of them. I feel like I belong more than I ever did in England. And then there’s Louis ...”

“You’re fond of him, aren’t you?” Dora asked.

Mavis went pink. “He’s a lovely man. Kind. Gentle. All the things Reg wasn’t.”

“I don’t really want to go home, either,” Dora said. “I want to die here, looking out at this view, not in some grim English hospital.”

“I agree. I’m not keen to go back there,” Ellie said. “This feels like home to me now. Should we look into applying for French nationality, just in case?”

“Give up being British, you mean? I don’t think I’m prepared to do that,” Dora said. “Besides, I believe that Mr Tommy said you had to have been a resident here for five years before you could apply. So that’s not going to work.”

“I’m just worried what might happen when rationing starts. There is already a mention of it in the newspapers.”

“The newspaper!” Mavis said out loud. “That’s it! That’s where I saw that bloke before.”

They both turned to her as if she had gone crazy. She was waving excitedly. “Remember when we were first staying at the pension, and we were looking at a newspaper, and it had the picture of a gang of bank robbers? One of them looked just like him.”

“Like whom?” Ellie asked.

“The bloke that came with Yvette just now. I’d swear it was him.”

“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.”