Page 9 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure

“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 and green 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 C?te 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.

“Where is everyone?” Miss Smith-Humphries voiced Ellie’s concern.

“I don’t know. It’s not siesta time, is it? And they don’t go in for siestas this far north. Could it be early closing day? It’s almost as if—” Ellie broke off speaking and stopped the car.

“Oh no,” she said. There seemed to be some kind of barricade ahead of them. “It looks as if the road is closed.”

Miss Smith-Humphries had assigned herself the role of navigator. She studied the map. “It would be most inconvenient to go back. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way around this village.”

Ellie was thinking more of trying to reverse back up this narrow street. She wound down the window, hoping to find someone to ask for directions. They were immediately aware of the sounds behind that roadblock. People shouting, a baby crying.

“Is it a revolution going on, do you think?” Mavis asked, gripping the seat in front of her. “Are we going to be murdered?”

“Don’t be silly, Mavis. France is a civilized country,” Miss Smith-Humphries said, but she too sounded alarmed.

“I think we’d better ...,” Ellie began, but before she could put the car into reverse two men appeared. They saw the motor car and came towards it. Mavis gave a little whimper.

“Mille pardons, mesdames,” one man said. A thousand pardons. “You wish to pass. We will remove it instantly.” He stared at them with interest, noting the English car. “You are from England?”

“Yes, we are,” Ellie answered, also in French. “We are driving south to the Riviera.”

“Ah, how nice. A good way to spend the winter, I think.”

The other man called something to him. He turned back, then addressed the women again. “We are celebrating. The harvest is in. It’s the Feast of Saint Michael. My friend says you should join us for a glass of wine.”

“How very kind,” Ellie replied, “but I’m afraid we need to keep going. We must find a hotel before it gets dark.”

“But you can stay here, in our town,” the man said.

“Yes. Here is good.” The other man had joined him now, and several more were coming around the barricade. “See—just a small way along that street. Auberge de la Reine. Very good. Very clean. And then you come and join us, eh?”

“It will be dark soon,” Miss Smith-Humphries muttered, having understood the French. “It might be wise to stay here.”

“Come.” The first man motioned to the others. Two of the men picked up what had been the barricade but now turned out to be a trestle table on its side and moved it away. They beckoned the car through. Ellie edged forward as the men accompanied her, shouting to each other.

“What do they want?” Mavis asked. “Are they taking us somewhere?”

“It’s all right, Mavis, they are friendly,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “They are inviting us to have a glass of wine with them. It’s a feast day.”

“But you’re never going to go drinking with them men, are you, missus?” Mavis sounded alarmed.

The street opened into a central square, lined with ornately half-timbered houses, each with a sloping tiled roof.

At the far end of the square was an impressive grey stone church.

More tables had been set up, covered in red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and women were busy putting out bowls of food.

Families were already seated at some of the tables.

Most of the women were in some kind of local costume with flowing red skirts, white blouses and bright scarves tucked in at the waist. They wore white lace caps on their heads.

So did the small children. Some of the men, Ellie noted, wore wooden shoes.

It was all so delightfully different, so foreign.

Lionel would hate this. The thought passed through her head and made her smile.

“Look, there are plenty of women, too, and children. Whole families,” she said, turning back to Mavis. “It’s a festival. It would be rude not to join them for a few minutes.”

“If the hotel proves to be suitable,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “I have no wish to catch fleas.”

Several of the men took it upon themselves to escort the Bentley down the street to the auberge and demanded that the landlady give these visitors from England the best rooms for the night.

They insisted on carrying the small suitcases upstairs.

Miss Smith-Humphries was given a tiny room to herself, Mavis and Ellie a twin.

It was simple in the extreme—two narrow beds, each with a comforter, a washbasin with a mirror over it and a crucifix over the beds, but it seemed clean, and the price was more than reasonable.

As Ellie worked out the francs in her head, she was pleasantly surprised.

Was all of France going to be as cheap as this?

In which case they could live quite well.

Two of the men were still waiting, lounging against a wall, smoking thin black cigarettes, when they came down again. “Now it’s time for a drink,” one of them said. “Leave your vehicle. It will be quite safe.”

“Are you sure?” Miss Smith-Humphries asked. “We have our large bags still in the boot.”

“Pierre will guard it, do not worry,” the man said. “And we are not thieves here. Everyone knows everyone else in this village. We respect the stranger. Do not worry.”

They allowed themselves to be escorted back to the square, where lights had now been turned on and sparkled festively.

Bunting fluttered from the church. One of the men called out something, and immediately room was made for them at one of the tables.

Wine bottles were passed down, and glasses were poured for them.

These were followed by plates of bread, cheeses, paté, sausages, tomatoes, various salads and bowls of grapes.

“Is it all right to eat this, do you think?” Mavis whispered. “I’m famished, but.”

“I’m sure it’s quite all right, Mavis. Go ahead.

Enjoy yourself.” Ellie helped herself to a piece of bread and handed over the basket.

She took a sip of the rich red wine, feeling its warmth instantly flowing through her.

She sat as if in a trance, taking in the scene around her: the twinkling lights, the unfamiliar smells of grilling meats, onions and garlic, the sounds of music, the shouts of children, the laughter.

And she felt a bubble of happiness rising within her, as if years of frost and loneliness were already starting to melt.

Everyone at the table wanted to know all about them—where they had come from, where their husbands were, how many children they had, where they were going. Ellie’s head was spinning as she tried to answer them in her rusty French, but the villagers listened patiently and nodded as she spoke.

“You have our language. That is good,” an old lady said, patting Ellie’s hand.

They all expressed dismay that two of the women had no children and that none of them had a husband. “Madame Girard here, she is also a widow,” the woman opposite Ellie said. The woman gave a sympathetic nod. They think we’re widows, which is good, Ellie thought.

A band assembled in the square—a fiddle, an accordion and motley instruments. Music started playing, echoing out through the evening air. People got up to dance, holding hands in a circle, moving faster and faster until they broke apart laughing.

More wine and food were pressed upon them. They were told that the harvest had been a good one this year. God had been good to them.

The church clock was striking ten as they walked back to their inn, leaving the celebration still in full swing.

Ellie was feeling the effects of the wine as well as the constant conversation in a foreign tongue, but she was also feeling a deep contentment that the decision she had made had been the right one. The risk had already paid off.

“Those people know how to have a good blowout, don’t they, missus?” Mavis said. “You don’t see them having a good time like that in England.”

“No, Mavis, you don’t. And I’m sure English people would not take strangers to their hearts the way these people did.”

“I was quite touched,” Miss Smith-Humphries said. “They treated us like long-lost kin. If the place we eventually stay is like this, it will be most interesting.”

“If a little exhausting,” Ellie added.

Miss Smith-Humphries smiled. “That is true, of course. One would not like this type of thing to happen every night, but I’m glad we experienced it as our introduction to France. It reminds us why we have such fond memories from our youth.”

Up in their room Ellie listened to the distant sounds of laughter and singing.

So far from home, she thought. Lionel would have found her note by now.

Would he be fuming about the car, or would he actually be missing her?

He’s no longer my husband, she thought. It doesn’t matter what he feels or thinks.