‘I can’t bear to look at you a second longer. I can’t stand to be in the same room as you, or breathe the same air as you. You revolt me. But I’ve one more question and then we’re never going to speak again.’
‘If it’s about the money, I’ll—’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Save your breath, James. I know I’ll never see a centime of that again.’
Infuriatingly, she felt tears beginning to prick her eyes once more, but with an enormous effort, she managed to blink them back.
‘When we first met – before the war, I mean – and when we married, did you love me at all? Or was I just a poor little rich girl, someone you wanted for her daddy’s money? Tell me the truth, James. For once in your depraved life, try to do that.’
He nodded. ‘Very well. I suppose I owe you that.’
He closed his eyes and stood in silence before her for so long that she thought he was playing another of his games. But as she was about to walk away, his eyes opened again.
‘I didn’t love you at first,’ he told her calmly. ‘You’re quite right, Diana. I saw you as an opportunity. If your father hadn’t been a wealthy man I would never have pursued you so . . . adroitly. Wait.’ He caught her arm as she turned away, her face tight with the pain she couldn’t conceal.
‘Wait, Diana. I’m not finished. When I came back to you after Dunkirk, there was – I don’t know . . . something different. Something I’d never felt before.
‘I agreed with you just now – I don’t have a soul. I don’t think I was born with one, actually. But back then, that summer, just for a moment, I wondered. Something seemed to catch light inside me. Then I got shot down and whatever it might have been, quietly went out. If we’d not been parted . . . well, I do sometimes wonder if I might have found a different path. Because of you, Diana.’
He released her arm and gave a slight shrug. ‘I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.’
Abruptly, she put out her hand, and after a moment, he shook it. For some reason it seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to do.
‘Goodbye, James.’
‘Goodbye, Diana.’
In spite of herself, she could not help glancing back over her shoulder as she reached the revolving doors that led to the street.
He had taken her chair and was rocking gently back on it, staring at the restaurant’s ceiling. He appeared to be lost in thought. Then, as if suddenly aware of her scrutiny, he turned and regarded her. His face was expressionless. After a moment he gave her an absent wave, more of dismissal than farewell.
Diana pushed through the doors and disappeared on to the busy pavement outside.
Behind her, James Blackwell resumed his gentle rocking back and forth.
54
A few minutes later, James Blackwell was back at his apartment. He checked his watch. There should definitely be enough time.
He swept his car keys from a marble-topped table – this was no job for a taxi – and walked quickly to the phone, dialling a number from memory. When the man at the other end picked up, James was brief.
‘I want you to open up the other apartment – now, this afternoon. Get it ready for two people. And buy some food – enough for a few days. When you’re finished, lock up and don’t come back. I want it all done by four o’clock at the latest. Oh, and make sure all the shutters and blinds are closed.’
He hung up without waiting for a reply and headed for the lift that serviced the flats’ basement car park.
Stella was beginning to wish she hadn’t come. The stable had given her their fattest, slowest pony, and however firmly she kicked its flanks with her heels, it refused to break into even the vaguest semblance of a trot.
There were six other girls in the riding party. They were all French and friendly enough – one of them was Maxine’s younger sister Bernadette, whom she knew well – but once they set out for the waterfall and their picnic lunch, her pony stubbornly insisted on bringing up the rear and she couldn’t join in the others’ conversation. This was boring. Even the scenery was boring. The trail led through a rocky forest; the trees blocked any view of the mountains that surrounded them, the first stepping-stones to the Alps. They could be anywhere.
Stella wondered whether she should just turn around and go back to the stables. There was a telephone there and she could call her mother, or Maxine, and ask one of them to come and collect her earlier than planned. Even if they weren’t in, there was plenty to keep her occupied until her mother arrived at five o’clock, as arranged. The stables had an annexe that served as a stud farm and she’d noticed a magnificent black stallion grazing in the paddock, with several colts larking around in the adjoining one.
Perhaps the owners would let her do some grooming, too.
She made up her mind. ‘I’m going back to the stables,’ she called after the others. ‘À bientôt!’
One of the older girls who was leading the party stopped and carefully turned her pony round. She looked surprised.
‘Why, Stella?’ she called back. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s this pony,’ Stella replied as she slowly wheeled her reluctant mount in the opposite direction. ‘He’s so slow and lazy. I’m bored, that’s all.’
The teenager nodded in sympathy. ‘What about your lunch?’ She tapped her saddlebag. ‘Don’t you want it?’
‘No, thanks.’ She wasn’t hungry yet.
‘Well, all right. Au revoir, Stella.’
Stella waved goodbye and headed back down the winding trail. In a few moments, she was lost from view.
Diana used the telephone in Armand’s café to call Douglas. Luckily, he was taking lunch at his desk.
‘Darling, what a nice surprise. Why are you ringing?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I need you to come back from Marseilles, Douglas. Today. Right now, if possible. I’ve been very, very foolish and I must talk to you. I need your advice, and – your forgiveness.’
There was a long silence before Douglas spoke again, so quietly that Diana could barely hear him.
‘There’s another man.’
Diana closed her eyes. She was burning with guilt.
‘Yes. But only for a very short time, and not any more. It’s over. Completely. But it’s – it’s nothing like you can possibly imagine, my dearest. It’s terribly complicated and . . . unlikely. I still can’t quite believe any of it; it’s as if I’ve been trapped in some sort of grotesque fantasy and I’ve only just escaped.’
This time the silence lasted so long that she thought he’d quietly replaced the receiver.
‘Douglas . . . are you there?’
‘Yes, of course. Do you still want to be my wife, Diana? I must know, here and now. I’ll give you a divorce if you want.’
The question threw her off-balance. She had expected many things – anger, coldness, even tears. Not this swift appraisal of the situation and the most logical of enquiries, asked calmly, even sympathetically.
How could she have done this to him?
‘Yes. Yes, I do. Want to stay as your wife, I mean . . . but you may be the one asking for the divorce, Douglas.’
‘Can’t you tell me more about it now?’ he asked in the same quiet tone. ‘Is it about this man you’ve been having lunch with? Who is he?’
Diana hesitated. She desperately wanted to have this conversation face-to-face.
‘When I tell you, you’ll understand why you have to come home,’ she said at last. ‘You will come home, straight away, please, Douglas?’
‘Yes, of course. I love you, Diana, whatever it is that you’ve done. But who is this man? You must tell me. Do I know him?’
Diana rested her forehead against the cool glass of the phone booth’s window before replying.
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, you do. You’ve known of him since first we met.’
He waited.
She pulled her head back from the glass and rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. Suddenly, she felt extraordinar
ily tired.
‘His name is James. James Blackwell. Douglas, it’s my first husband. He’s alive. He isn’t dead at all.’
By the time Stella got back to the stables she was beginning to feel hungry, and regretted refusing the earlier offer of a packed lunch. Perhaps there would be something to eat at the office here.
She tied her morose pony to the hitching post and fetched it a bucket of water to drink. ‘There. You don’t deserve this, you lazy creature.’
The animal ignored her, flicking its ears as it drank.
To her disappointment, there was no sign of the stallion in his paddock and even the colts had disappeared. The place was almost eerily quiet. She went into the office and rang the little hand-bell that stood on the counter.
‘Hello! Is anyone here?’
There was no reply, and after ringing the bell again, she wandered disconsolately outside. She was getting very hungry now. There must be someone around who could give her something to eat.
‘Hello! Hello!’ Her voice echoed off the corrugated-iron storage sheds that were dotted around the compound. She was about to call again, more loudly, when she heard the slamming of a gate in the main paddock behind the office, followed by the brisk clip-clop of horse’s hooves. The next moment the black stallion appeared from behind the building, with the stables’ owner, an athletic-looking middle-aged man, in the saddle. When he saw Stella, he pulled up his horse and stared at her in surprise.
‘Mam’selle Stella? Quelle surprise!’
Stella began to explain but he waved her to be silent, breaking into good English.
‘But how did you know to come back? I was coming to get you.’
Now it was Stella’s turn to look surprised. ‘What? I only came back because my pony was so slow.’
He nodded his understanding. ‘Ah, now I see. Well, anyway, it is most fortunate, as your father has come to collect you. It seems something has occurred and you must go home earlier than expected.’
Stella was mystified. ‘My father ? You mean Douglas – he’s my stepfather. But what is he doing here? I thought he was in Marseilles.’
The rider shrugged, and dismounted. ‘It seems not. I told him to wait in his car while I rode out to find you.’ He pointed over her shoulder. ‘It is in the little car park behind those trees. The one where your mother left you this morning.’ He looked at her. ‘Have you had lunch?’
Stella shook her head. ‘No, but it’s all right, we can stop at a café or something on the way home.’ She frowned. ‘Nothing’s happened, has it? Nothing bad, I mean?’
The man shrugged again. ‘I think not. Your father – I am sorry, your stepfather – seems in pleasant spirits.’ He smiled at her. ‘And so would I be if I drove a car like his! I am very jealous.’
‘Jealous?’
‘Yes, of course! It is beautiful, so dashing and sportif. A young man’s car. It suits your stepfather very well, I think.’
Stella looked at him in astonishment. Douglas could hardly be described as a young man. As for his car, it was a large and stately Rolls-Royce. Luxurious, certainly. No one would call it sporting.
What on earth was going on?
As he drove through the cobbled streets of Vence, James wondered if anyone at the stables up in the hills behind the town would know who he was.
He thought it extremely unlikely. His business was almost exclusively confined to Nice, with one or two newer operations in the neighbouring town of Cagnes sur Mer. He hardly ever went to Vence and when he did, he was not recognised. It was three or four miles from St Paul de Vence and the Colombe d’Or, where only the staff knew him anyway.
He was as anonymous here as the people taking their siestas behind the blue and green shuttered windows of the old stone houses that lined both sides of the narrow road.
He swung the long-nosed Jaguar XK120 towards Col de Vence and the riding school a couple of miles beyond it. The two-seater’s powerful 3.5 litre engine gave a throaty roar as he accelerated past a farm truck, and he took the next bend at speed. It felt good to be behind the wheel again. Taxis gave him a necessary anonymity on the daily rounds of his ‘clients’ in Nice, but being able to afford a coveted car like this was part of what pushed him ever onwards. In recent years he’d been able to afford practically anything he wanted. The apartment, for example. The fashionable artwork he was gradually acquiring. This car. But there was always room for more.
I’m not going to give any of it up, he thought grimly as the Jaguar tore through a dusty village, forcing an oncoming moped off the road, its rider’s eyes bulging in terror. Not a single thing.
His back might be to the wall now, but he’d been here before. The day he was shot down. In the weeks afterwards. And when he’d first begun to establish himself in Nice, in the teeth of opposition from the local hoods and arm-twisters. None of it had ever been easy, but he’d always known how to take his chances when they came.
Diana was a perfect example. What an extraordinary turn of luck to run into her again, just when he needed such a huge lump sum – and her husband a multi-millionaire! Thank God for Douglas.
And thank God for Stella.
Between them, Douglas and Stella were going to buy him his ticket into the big time. And who knew? Maybe they’d be good for a shakedown further along the line. That was why he wouldn’t ask Douglas for a centime more than he needed now.
No point in killing the golden goose.
The steep mountains that guarded the Alps were now rising before him, their bald heads baking under the sun in a clear blue summer sky. James shifted down a gear as the Jaguar’s engine began to labour, and eased back on the throttle. No need to risk overheating.
He’d be there in less than ten minutes.
55
Diana was bewildered.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked the riding-school’s owner. ‘Stella’s stepfather couldn’t possibly have collected her at lunchtime. He was in Marseilles; I spoke to him on the telephone. He was in his office.’
The man shrugged. ‘It is as I tell you, madame,’ he said. ‘Your daughter’s father said there had been some unexpected event and he was to take her back home.’ He looked at his watch. ‘This would be about three hours ago, I think.’
Diana stared at him. ‘It’s not possible,’ she said at last. ‘Anyway, Stella doesn’t have a father. He’s . . . dead. And her stepfather never describes himself as her father. What’s more, she calls him Douglas.’
‘Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding, madame.’
Diana thought hard. ‘What sort of car was he in?’ she asked eventually.
‘Ah, that is most easy to remember. It was a very expensive black sports saloon – a Jaguar, I think. I was most impressed. And jealous.’
A terrible apprehension began to take hold of her. ‘But my husband drives a Rolls-Royce. Monsieur, what did this man look like?’
When he described James Blackwell, Diana’s world crumbled.
Stella walked towards the car. It was facing away from her. The top was down in the sunshine, and she could see a man with blond hair sitting in the driver’s seat, his back to her. He was smoking a cigarette and looking towards the Alps proper that towered in the distance, the last remnants of the winter snows gleaming on their jagged peaks.
‘Monsieur?’
The man turned around.
For a moment, Stella was confused. The face that now smiled at her own was extraordinarily familiar, but she couldn’t put a name to it. She wondered for a moment if it was one of her teachers from England, before dismissing the thought. Her mind raced. Who was this?
‘Hello, Stella.’
A crisp, pleasant voice she did not recognise. Stella moved a little closer to the car.
‘Hello. I know you, don’t I? But I can’t remember your name.’
The smile widened, blue eyes crinkling slightly at the corners.
‘That’s quite all right, Stella. We’ve never met before. There’s no particular reason you
should recognise me – although I’m told on good authority that you keep my photograph by your bed.’
Stella gaped.
That face. The last one she saw every night. The first one she set eyes on when she woke. For as long as she could remember.
That very morning, she had chatted to the man in the picture as she dressed in her riding clothes, telling him her plans for the day.
Here he was now, in front of her, his blond hair blowing in the warm breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees around them.
He smiled at her again, and took a puff of his cigarette. ‘Yes. I think you know who I am now, don’t you, Stella?’
Her dead father.
Alive.
Stella’s hands were clenched in tight fists. Her breath came in rapid gasps as she fought against the swirling dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.
He climbed out of the car and stepped carefully toward her. ‘It’s all right, Stella. I’m not a ghost. I’m your father, my dear. I’m alive. I’ve come back to you.’
She began to tremble, and spoke in a hoarse voice she did not recognise as her own. ‘You can’t be. You can’t be my father. He’s . . . dead.’ Her hands flew to her mouth.
He spoke very gently. ‘Yes, my dear. I know that you and everyone else has believed that for a very long time. Why shouldn’t you? After all, my aeroplane was shot down and I never came home.’
Slowly, he extended an arm and touched her shoulder. She flinched, but did not step back from him.
‘The thing is, I didn’t die, Stella. I lived. It was a kind of miracle, I think. And for all sorts of reasons, I couldn’t come back to your mother. And as for you . . .’ He gave a short laugh. ‘As for you, ma petite, I didn’t even know you existed. Not until your mother told me about you a few days ago.’
Stella looked utterly bewildered. ‘My mother? You’ve seen my mother? She knows you’re alive as well?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, she does. We met quite by accident the other day in the flower-market in Nice. She was as shocked as you are at first. And since then we’ve been trying to work out a way to tell you about me, and . . . well, this was her idea, actually.’
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