Page 108 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure
He put one arm around Ellie and the other around his mother, and together they walked away from the harbour.
Chapter 44
Nico and Ellie climbed the hill to the villa together with his mother.
“What will your husband say about my coming here to live?” he asked.
“Poor Mr Tommy was taken away by the Germans and is probably in a prison camp,” she said. “The viscount betrayed all of us, I’m afraid. You, the abbot and Mr Tommy.”
“The nasty little rat,” Nico said. “Where is he? I’ll knock his head off.”
“He went back to Paris when I threw him out. He did it because he hates Jews, and he thought he could parlay his way back into his château. So naïve.”
“Let’s hope that destiny meets up with him in Paris,” Nico said. “So they took Mr Tommy. How lucky they didn’t take you, too.”
She nodded. “Tommy kept insisting that Clive and I were innocent and knew nothing. He probably did this under torture. He saved us, Nico. We don’t even know where he is or if he’s still alive.”
“Poor man.” Nico paused on the steps, looking down at the village. “So much suffering.”
“But you’re here. And the Germans have retreated. That’s all that matters at this moment,” Ellie said.
Nico stepped through the gate into the garden and stared at the villa. “I never thought I’d be happy to return to this place,” he said. “I was so bitter, all those years. But I had a lot of time to think, and Iunderstand now that I had the best childhood possible, running around barefoot, swimming, helping my dad on the boat. If I’d stayed with my real mother, I would have been dragged around from place to place while she performed or left somewhere with a nanny. And who would have wanted to be part of that world?”
He looked across at his mother. “And I had the best parents a boy could have. Taught me everything. Cared about me.” He put an arm around his mother and hugged her to him.
Clive had not attended the feast. He told Ellie he couldn’t be present where other people were happy. Ellie quite understood. She had felt the same way. He came out of the house, hearing voices, then stopped and stared in amazement. “Nico? How is this possible? So there are miracles after all. I can go on hoping that Tommy will come back to us.”
That night, after dinner, when Nico headed for Ellie’s bedroom with her, his mother stopped him. “Where do you think you are going? That’s not the right thing to do, my son. You might be fond of her, but you are not married to her.”
Nico looked at Ellie and winked. She blushed.
“But Mama, officially she’s still married to Mr Tommy,” he said. “Even if it was just a marriage on paper to give her an identity card. We have to hope he is still alive.”
“But it’s a sin,” Madame Barbou insisted. “What would Father André say?”
“He’d say it was a miracle that I returned to you. And I’ll go to confession if you like, but tonight I am going to be with the woman I love.” He took Ellie’s hand, led her into the bedroom and closed the door firmly behind them.
Now that Marseille was in the hands of the Free French army, Ellie went with Clive and managed to speak to the Red Cross, asking for news about Tommy. They were able to find out that he was at a campcalled Natzweiler-Struthof, in the Vosges Mountains in the annexed territory of Alsace. Not one of the worst, according to the Red Cross. Not known as a death camp, and mainly for French civilians. So there was hope. They immediately made a package of nourishing foods for him and asked for the Red Cross to deliver it. Over a month later they received a letter from Tommy, heavily censored. They read it and cried. He was alive. Able to write.
Nico settled back into life at home. One day he walked through the grounds with Ellie and noticed the lock on his shed was broken.
“Did the Germans search my shed?” he asked.
“They did,” she replied. “At least they opened it. I told them a local fisherman kept his tackle there. They smelled the fishy stink, saw the nets and lines and went away again.”
“You were lucky they didn’t search more.” He went into the shed and pulled aside the pile of fishing nets. Underneath he unearthed a box of rifles and another of grenades.
Ellie recoiled in horror. “We might have been blown to kingdom come,” she said.
“Worse still, you’d surely have been carted off to the Gestapo and deemed to be with the Resistance if they’d found these. I worried about this a lot when I lay there in Corsica. And your car?”
“Is now back in the garage, thank you. They never found it. We hid it well.”
The sound of loud bleating made him look over at the pen. He smiled. “And what’s this? Baby goats? That’s good. All is well again.”
All seemed to be getting better by the day. The Allies had landed in Normandy the previous June and pushed up through Italy. The south coast of France returned to its previous peaceful state. But all was not well. Further attempts to send Tommy a package through the Red Cross were not successful. And then the news trickled through: the occupantsof that camp in the Vosges had been moved to a camp in Eastern Europe as the Allies approached. A camp called Auschwitz. It was much later that they found that Tommy had not survived the transport there. Clive gave a great wail of anguish.
“I think I knew all the time that I’d never see him again. Oh my poor sweet, kind Tommy. How could they do this to him?”
