‘Well, I’ll keep an eye out for him. There can’t be that many English businessmen operating in Nice at the moment.’ He stood up. ‘Right, I’ll go and see about that soup. Hungry?’
She smiled at him, trying to keep the relief out of her voice. ‘Yes, I am. Thank you, Douglas. You’re so kind to me.’
Gwen looked perplexed. ‘But I thought all that nonsense about James Blackwell being alive was over and done with months ago, Oliver, after you sent Diana the RAF report.’
Her husband sighed. ‘Perhaps it was. Perhaps I’m imagining things. I just think something’s wrong down there. It could be anything, I suppose, but all my instincts tell me it’s something to do with him – with her first husband, I mean.’
Gwen folded her hands in her lap. ‘Surely she’s not clinging to the belief he’s still alive, somehow, and floating around Nice?’
He gave a helpless shrug. ‘You wouldn’t think so, not after she’d finally made herself read the report,’ Oliver said. ‘But looking back, I think we – I should say I – missed something when she telephoned to talk about it.’
‘What do you mean?’
He had taken the call that chilly April morning, which seemed so long ago, now the warmth of June was here. On the face of it, Diana had seemed to accept the RAF’s formal conclusion that James had died in his Spitfire.
‘You’re obviously right, Daddy,’ she had said. ‘I must have had some sort of delusion the other morning in the market, however convincing it seemed at the time.’
But there was something else about their conversation; something that hadn’t seemed important at the time.
‘You know what she’s like with words and language, Gwen – so picky and precise. It’s one of the reasons she was doing so well at Girton until . . . until . . .’ He paused.
‘Until the two of them were killed. Come on, Oliver, what are you trying to say?’ Gwen asked bluntly.
‘Bear with me, Grace, I hardly understand it myself.’
He sat deep in thought.
‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘Diana agreed that the man in the taxi couldn’t possibly have been James. But then she asked me why I thought the RAF had used the word “presumed”, you know, in the part that says he must have been killed.
‘I said I’d never really thought about it but it was probably because no actual body was ever found. I told her I didn’t want to upset her, but that James’s remains were probably still in the wreckage of his aircraft, buried a few feet under some French field. You know how they keep digging them up, Gwen, crashed fighters, British and German, with the pilots still at the controls. Anyway, I can’t remember exactly what she said to that, but looking back, I do recall how she sounded, the tone in her voice.
‘It was hopeful. She sounded hopeful. Even as she agreed that James must be dead, there was a kind of disbelief at the same time. I didn’t pick up on it then, I suppose I didn’t want to. I just wanted the whole rather disturbing business over and done with. And she hardly ever rings us any more, does she? She used to call at least once a week. Now, whenever we telephone her, she seems preoccupied, and she’s always making excuses to cut the conversation short. Half the time she’s not even there. Douglas says she’s signed up for classes in French, some kind of intensive course, he said. And she’s completely stopped writing letters, hasn’t she? We haven’t had one in as long as I can remember.’
He fell silent and looked at his wife expectantly. Gwen appeared to be lost in thought.
‘Well?’ he asked at last, a touch impatiently. ‘What do you make of it?’
Gwen sighed. ‘She’s hiding something. That’s obvious, and it’s extremely unusual for her. Her life’s always been an open book, hasn’t it? Diana’s never been able to keep a secret, not since she could talk.’
He nodded in agreement. ‘Absolutely. Something’s happened to make her so distracted and withdrawn. On the rare occasions we do speak, I can hear something in her voice I’ve never heard before. It’s hard to describe . . . it’s sort of part-fear, part-elation. She’s totally off-balance.’
Gwen looked at him directly. ‘Do you think she’s having an affair?’
‘Completely.’
‘So do I.’
They sat without speaking for several minutes.
‘What makes you think it has something to do with James Blackwell?’ she asked.
Oliver weighed his reply carefully. ‘All right . . . here’s what I think has happened. I think the illusion that she saw and heard him had a profound effect on her. It was a particularly vivid hallucination, by the sound of it. I think it’s reminded her of her feelings for him, how passionate they were for each other.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘Remember how they thought we didn’t know they had slept together on the top floor, the week before their wedding?’
She smiled back. ‘Yes, well, Stella was proof of that, if there’d been any doubt about it.’
‘Quite. Anyway, I think that her illusion or fantasy, or whatever it was, that day in the market has reignited something within her. Some deep need. Let’s face it, Gwen, Douglas may be a wonderfully kind and generous man, but he’s no Romeo, is he? I always worried about that for Diana.’
Gwen nodded. ‘So did I, but I never admitted it to myself. I was so keen to see her and Stella settled.’
‘Me too. But we didn’t push her into anything, Gwen? Diana made her own choices. Anyway, we are where we are. I suspect her search for James, her refusal to fully believe he’s dead, is really a search for someone like him – someone who’ll excite her and romance her again. And I think she’s found her man.’
Gwen leaned forward, both hands around his face. She held his gaze.
‘You’re a clever man, Oliver. You know I’ve always thought so. Everything you’ve just said is almost certainly true. But listen to me, my dear; listen to me very carefully when I say this to you:
‘It’s got absolutely nothing to do with us.’
When she woke up next morning, lightheaded and dizzy after her migraine, Diana spent a few muzzy moments wondering if the events of the previous day had been anything more than an extraordinarily vivid dream. Had it really happened, any of it?
She sat up. The other side of the bed was unslept in; Douglas must have used one of the spare rooms in order not to disturb her.
After a few moments’ thought, she reached down for her handbag at the side of the bed. She fished through a side-pocket, found the piece of paper, and read what was scrawled on it.
James – Nice 4673. Villa Raphael, 24 Rue de Palmes, Nice.
47
She would use the phone in the kitchen. Douglas had already left for work when she came down from their bedroom, but she felt more comfortable making the call from here, not the lounge. She wasn’t sure why. She told herself she didn’t want Sophia blundering in while she was on the phone. The kitchen had already been serviced – it was the maid’s first port of call in the mornings – and Stella was even now outside on the terrace with Maxine. Diana could hear the tutor’s voice drifting through the open kitchen windows. ‘Non, non, Stella, encore, s’il te plaît,’ and heard her daughter dutifully repeating an exercise in tenses. It was the future that tended to confuse her. Diana smiled ruefully to herself. Like mother, like daughter.
She poured herself a cup of coffee from the electric pot that Sophia had filled before leaving the kitchen, and sat down at the bleached wooden table. She was fully awake now, and realised she had a lot to think about.
Foremost was Stella.
Diana had married Douglas principally for her daughter’s sake. She knew Douglas understood and accepted this. He had once said to her: ‘I treasure Stella because I fully realise that if it were not for her, I wouldn’t have you.’
Yesterday, James had said he wanted to see his daughter. What did he mean? Just ‘see’ her – a glimpse from a safe distance – or actually meet her, talk with her?
Diana shook her head, almost violently. ‘Impossible,’ she muttered al
oud. ‘Impossible.’
How to explain to Stella the very fact of her father being alive? It couldn’t be done, at least not without being brutally frank. James was a deserter and – Diana realised this with a little jolt – he was technically still on the run. If the authorities in England discovered he was still alive, he’d be a wanted man.
A fine father for a young daughter to be introduced to, out of the blue.
Granted, James had only learned of Stella’s existence yesterday. But if he had made the effort to get in touch once he’d settled in Nice, he would have known years ago that he had a daughter. Back then, perhaps something could have been worked out. Now, it was simply too late.
Stella had grown up believing her father died a war hero. She slept with his photograph by her bed. To tell her the truth now would be unbelievably cruel. And of course, there was no question of introducing her to James under the pretence that he was someone else. The child would recognise him at once from the photograph. He had barely changed over the last eleven years.
Even if she could see some way to bring Stella and her father together, there was Douglas to consider. He would have to be included in any arrangement.
Diana knew with complete certainty that Douglas would be appalled at the arrival of this fugitive in their midst; a man who had lived under so many false identities that even James himself probably couldn’t remember them all.
Then there was the whole question of the validity of her second marriage. Was she technically a bigamist? She pushed the thought away.
To Douglas, Stella’s father would be a criminal. And he’d be right. James must be breaking multiple French laws, masquerading as he was on forged papers. But if he went home to England, anything could happen. What if someone recognised him? One of his former RAF comrades, for example? The game would be up: James would almost certainly be arrested for desertion and, if he was using a false identity, fraud too.
Then a new fear came to her. It occurred to Diana that Douglas might turn James in to the authorities. She wouldn’t put it past him. Of course, he was a man of scrupulous morality: he’d genuinely believe it was his duty to make sure justice was served. But he’d also do it because he felt threatened by the reappearance of his wife’s glamorous first husband. He would conceal the motive behind a screen of Calvinist moral rectitude, but they’d both know the truth.
Which was a very good reason not to tell Douglas anything at all about this. She couldn’t compromise James’s safety.
‘Why can’t I?’ Again, Diana had spoken aloud. She considered the question. It was a good one, and she lit a cigarette, the better to think it through.
James had been remarkably honest with her, she decided. He had admitted murdering a man, and making off with a small fortune. He had confessed freely to living completely illegally here in France. He had trusted her to listen with an open mind to his reasons for deserting, and for not coming home after the war. He had placed his fate in her hands.
He had trusted her.
And she, Diana now realised, had been honest with him. She had meant it when she told him that in war, she thought every man had his limits. James had been pushed very, very hard. He clearly hadn’t plotted to desert. He had, in fact, gone down fighting. Literally. He’d destroyed three enemy aircraft before a terrifying ambush and encounter with violent death. It was the second such ordeal for him – he’d almost been killed over Dunkirk, his plane so badly shot up it had to be scrapped.
He hadn’t gone AWOL after that first brush with death, had he? And on the day they got married and he and John were summoned back to their base, he’d gone without a murmur.
Running away later that same day after such a traumatic experience had been an instinctive, animal response to extreme circumstances. And by the time he’d established himself in Nice, there was no road back. The die was cast.
But he was still James – her James. He might have a new name – she realised with a slight shock that she had no idea what it was – but he was just the same as on the day he’d married her: charming, full of zest for life. Incredibly, he had even made her laugh despite everything.
And – she had to admit this to herself – she was hugely attracted to him. She tingled slightly when she recalled one of her recent dreams about the two of them. Those hands . . .
She decided that she was simply going to have to see him again. But the moment the thought occurred, fear and anxiety instantly followed. The consequences of discovery were appalling. The repercussions on her marriage to Douglas, to begin with. What would the effect be on Stella, if her mother’s secret came out? And what would her own parents think of her?
Diana was so immersed in her thoughts she didn’t realise the phone was ringing until Stella rushed past her and snatched the receiver from its cradle.
‘Hello? I mean bonjour,’ she said, looking at her mother with raised eyebrows. ‘Qui est là?’ Stella paused a moment before saying: ‘Oh, hello! No, don’t start talking in French, I’m getting quite enough of that from Maxine, thank you very much. By the way, you realise you forgot your hat this morning, don’t you? You left it on the hall table, I came running out after you with it but you’d driven off. Yes . . . she’s here. Yes, I think so, although she seems to have gone a bit deaf.’
Stella held out the phone to her mother. ‘It’s Douglas. He wants to know how you’re feeling.’
Diana took the receiver. ‘Hello?’
Douglas’s deep Highland brogue burred down the line. ‘Hello, darling . . . Stella says you’re feeling better. What’s all this about being deaf?’
‘Oh, she’s just trying to be funny. I’m fine. Thanks for letting me sleep in this morning.’
‘Yes, well . . . now look, Diana, I’ve just been doing some ringing around here in Nice, speaking to my wine people. I have to tell you that I think this Peter chap of yours might be . . . well, not quite as advertised. A wrong ’un.’
Diana’s heart hammered. Had she and James been seen at the Negresco? What on earth had Douglas discovered?
She tried to keep her tone neutral. ‘Really? In what way?’
‘Well, it turns out I was right. There is no British chap trading in Provençal wine, or any other kind of wine, here in Nice. Apart from me, that is. The last fellow packed up a couple of years ago when he retired, and he wasn’t even English. He was from Scotland, too.’
Diana’s heart slowed. She managed to keep the relief from her voice. ‘I see. So you mean he was telling me a story?’
‘Yes, it looks like it, and one has to ask oneself why, Diana. I’ve told you before what Nice is like: it’s a nest of vipers. You’ve got the Italian Mafia, the local gangsters and the smugglers too. They’re all mixed in together, and the police are hopelessly corrupt. There are only a few of us trading legally and above-board. This Peter chap may be mixed up in something; in fact, he probably is. I don’t want you seeing him again.’
Diana controlled a spurt of anger. This was one of the prices she paid for her marriage to Douglas; every now and then, he felt he had the right to tell her what or what not to do – for her own good, of course. It made her feel as if she were one of his possessions, something that had been bought and paid for.
She swallowed hard before replying. ‘Of course, Douglas. You’re quite right. I’ll steer clear if I see him again.’
‘Good . . . Well . . .See that you do. Are you going out today?’
‘I wasn’t going to.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But, do you know? Now I think I shall.’
James, so gifted at lying to others, was always brutally honest with himself. Now, sitting on the balcony of his apartment on a street just behind the Promenade des Anglais, he sipped his orange juice in the morning sunshine and reflected on the extraordinary events of the day before. He was trying to evaluate the situation and work out how to turn it to his advantage. Sentiment or misplaced romanticism had no place in his thoughts.
He had always known he would see Diana again; for some reason it h
ad been an abiding certainty for years. But when it had actually happened . . . he shook his head slightly. It had taken all of his self-control not to step back into the taxi and tell the cabbie to drive away. For a few moments he had been completely at a loss as to what to do or say.
Now he offered himself congratulations on the speed with which he had recovered his poise. And on his decision to tell Diana the truth about his life since the day he was shot down. Well, most of the truth. The business of the bedridden woman in the doctor’s house . . . that had ended rather differently from the way he had described it.
If only the old girl hadn’t opened her eyes as he was taking the pillow from under her head, he would have left her unharmed, really he would. But he’d seen immediately from her expression that she’d emerged from her earlier confusion and now realised there was a stranger in the room – one she could probably later describe to the police.
He didn’t know if she recognised his RAF uniform as such, but it was a chance he just couldn’t take. His only emotion as he smothered her was irritation that his escape from the house was being delayed.
Diana would want to know how he was supporting himself here in Nice, and in such style. His apartment was one of the most expensive in the city; he’d bought it outright for cash and furnished it beautifully. Somewhat to his surprise, James discovered he had an eye for antiques, and the apartment’s spacious drawing room and four bedrooms looked more suitable for a titled Grimaldi in nearby Monaco than an ex-RAF fighter pilot on the run.
He decided to tell her he dealt in antiques. He had enough knowledge and genuine interest in the subject to get away with that for a fair while; certainly long enough for him to execute the plan that was beginning to form in his mind as the morning traffic surged four floors beneath his sunny terrace.
James’s thoughts were interrupted by his maid. ‘Telephone, monsieur.’
‘Thanks, Roberta.’ He walked into the salon and picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’
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