People called it many things: clairvoyance, the third eye, prophesying . . . Hélène simply knew it as ‘the voice’.
The voice took many forms, and was master of itself; Hélène was unable to conjure it up, even if she had wanted to. It came and went of its own accord, seemingly randomly and
without warning.
Sometimes she knew precisely what someone was about to say to her, word for word. Only the other evening in her apartment, the phone had begun to ring, and Hélène had known at once
it was Marie calling to say she had gone down with flu and had been forced to cancel a much-anticipated visit to the Louvre. So it proved.
Such predictions that announced themselves in her head could be about anything at all, and they were always correct. A few years earlier, Hélène had been passing a church in what
used to be the old Roman quarter, and thought to herself, with perfect clarity: That church is going to fall down tonight, but it will be all right, no one will be hurt. And it had happened just
so, when one of Nice’s occasional earth tremors had struck the city, and the church had collapsed.
But the sensation that gripped her now was one she had learned to dread. It was an infallible sign that something bad had befallen someone she knew.
There had been many such incidents over the years, some of them indelibly burned on her memory. The worst had been the evening Gerald and all the other poor boys had been killed in their trench.
She’d been eating her evening meal with the other girls in the nurses’ mess-tent, and she’d known with a horrible certainty that something terrible had just happened to her
husband.
Now, as Hélène sipped her water and felt the black cloud around her begin to break and lift, she wondered what ill-fortune had just befallen someone.
She would know soon. She never had to wait long to find out.
Armand was beside himself with anxiety. What was he to do? he kept asking himself. What
on earth
was he to do
?
If only he had been able to stop it, to intervene in some way. He cursed himself for his cowardice, for that was what it had been, he told himself. Sheer cowardice. When he’d realised who
the person was, he’d been frozen to the spot. He simply watched the whole thing happen. He was a pathetic excuse for a man.
Not that there would have been a great deal he could have done, he reflected, his
amour-propre
refusing to take this self-inflicted beating lying down. How would he have explained
himself? What could he have said that would have made a difference? Anyway, it had all taken place so quickly, and was so unexpected, that he’d hardly had time to think clearly.
If only Hélène were here; she would know what to do. Where
was
the dratted woman, anyway? It wasn’t like her to be this late. Soon it would be time to clear away the
little bowls of sugar and small plates of coffee-biscuits, and lay the tables for lunch.
It was while he was busy with this a few minutes later, distractedly and with frequent interruptions to peer anxiously up and down the street, that Hélène at last appeared at her
stall opposite.
Armand ran straight across the street to her, narrowly missing being run over by a spluttering, smoking three-wheeled delivery van. The driver shook his fist at Armand and bellowed insults at
him as the little vehicle swayed wildly, its load of empty wooden beer-crates almost toppling into the road. It stuttered on and disappeared in a cloud of black exhaust fumes around a corner.
‘Hélène, Hélène!’ shouted Armand, oblivious to both his near-miss and the abuse. ‘I have terrible news!
Terrible!
’
Hélène put down her cardboard box of ironmongery with a heavy heart. Here it came, then. Some awfulness, just as she’d expected. She glanced across the road to the
café. Her new friend, the Englishwoman, was not at her usual table.
Even before a breathless Armand had begun to gabble his story, Hélène knew with a grim certainty that Diana was in trouble.
She had arrived at her accustomed time, Armand said. She’d seemed lighter of spirit than of late, and he’d noticed almost immediately that ‘all that damned
looking up and down’ and the obsession with passing taxis had gone. It was, he told Hélène, like getting the old Diana back.
He’d only just brought her coffee and newspaper, he said, when it happened. He saw the whole thing from behind his bar.
A perfectly ordinary taxi had pulled up outside, and a tall man wearing a suit and hat had emerged from the back. He was facing away from the pavement, leaning through the open front passenger
window, saying something to the driver. The street was quiet, otherwise Armand would have been unable to hear that English was being spoken.
The effect on Diana had been instant, electrifying. Armand said she had leaped to her feet, almost run across the wooden terrace, crossed the pavement and seized the stranger by his shoulders,
dragging him around to face her.
The two had simply stared at each other without saying a word. ‘Not a word, Hélène. Not a sound from either of them.’
At last the man had leaned forward and said something very slowly and quietly. Armand couldn’t make out what it was. After a moment Diana nodded – she still hadn’t said
anything – and the two of them walked slowly off together towards the Promenade des Anglais. That was nearly two hours ago, and she had not returned.
Hélène felt slightly relieved. She began to say that Armand’s news didn’t sound all that terrible to her, because she was quite certain who this stranger was. Diana had
been right all along, it would seem. Incredible. Quite incredible. But Armand interrupted her, waving his arms and shouting that he was not finished.
‘The man! The man, Hélène!’ Armand had seen his face clearly for the first time as the pair moved out of the shadow of the café’s canopy and into direct
sunlight.
He could barely believe his eyes. How could Diana possibly know such a man? It made no sense.
Foreboding began to seep into Hélène’s veins like iced water.
‘Who? Who was this man, Armand?’
The
patron
wiped perspiration from his forehead with his handkerchief.
‘
Le Loup, Hélène
.
Le Loup Anglais!
The English Wolf!’
Hélène’s eyes widened in disbelief. Was this who Diana’s first husband had become? It scarcely seemed credible, based on her tender description of him only
yesterday.
‘Are you quite sure, Armand?’ she asked. ‘It was definitely the English Wolf?’
He nodded. ‘No doubt about it.’
Hélène gave a low whistle of surprise, a habit she had acquired years before from Gerald.
‘Well, well. This rather complicates things, I must say.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighed. ‘He’s not just the English Wolf, Armand – he’s her first husband.’
‘That bastard was
married
to her?’
‘I’m very much afraid so. What’s more, he’s supposed to be dead.’
Diana had arrived at Armand’s café, experiencing a peace of mind she hadn’t felt in weeks. She had Hélène to thank for this. Diana resolved to
buy the woman some sort of gift. Not flowers, obviously. Perfume, perhaps. There was a wonderful
parfumerie
in the Rue Pastorelli that sold lovely scents made in nearby Grasse.
Diana was surprised and disappointed to see Hélène’s stall shuttered, with no sign of its owner. She had just decided to ask Armand if everything was as it should be, when a
taxi pulled up at the pavement a few yards from her table. Her eyes turned to it in a reflex reaction before she remembered: all that was finished now. She forced herself to look away as the
passenger door swung open. She must start as she meant to go on.
Two seconds later Diana felt as though she had been hit over the head. Points of light danced before her eyes. Dizzily, she wondered if she was about to pass out.
That voice.
The unmistakable, unforgettable drawl.
The East End undercurrent.
The old, easy authority.
‘I want you back here in twenty minutes, OK? This won’t take long. If I’m not here, don’t wait for me – keep circling the block until you see me and then pick me
up. Got that?’
Without even realising it, she had leaped to her feet and was rushing past empty tables, catching a chair with her knee and sending it spinning to the ground. She crossed the pavement at a run,
and with both hands, she wrenched the astonished man violently around to face her.
Diana gaped at him. She had made a mistake. This man wasn’t James. He didn’t look anything like him.
The illusion lasted for less than a second. Then the man’s shock and anger – and something very like fear – faded from his eyes. The animal snarl left his lips, and the
contorted facial muscles slackened.
The stranger’s face disappeared and that of James Blackwell took its place, the reflex aggression replaced by an expression of utter astonishment.
He’s not dead.
I knew it.
I knew it.
Afterwards, she couldn’t have said how long it was before he spoke the first words she had heard from him since their wedding day, more than a decade before.
‘Well, Diana . . .’ He gave the faintest smile. ‘I think we could both do with a drink, don’t you?’
The hotel receptionist with the
café-au-lait
suntan sent another silent prayer of thanks to the Blessed Virgin.
‘
Holy Mother of God, thank You for keeping my thoughts and deeds pure with the beautiful Englishwoman
,’ he inwardly intoned for the third time in five minutes.
What if he had attempted to flirt with her? Suggested they meet for a drink after his shift, as he had done with so many other women at the Negresco who’d taken his fancy. His palms went
clammy at the mere thought.
She’d come back into the lobby just now, but this time she was accompanied by a man – presumably the ‘friend’ she had been searching for the last time he’d seen
her.
What was the name she had given for him? James something-or-other . . . Bakewell? No,
Blackwell
, that was it. Well, that was a new one. God knew how many aliases the man had. Everyone
in Nice simply knew him as
Le Loup
, and the idea of moving in on his woman . . .
The boy shuddered. The only reason he hadn’t made a move on her was because his manager had recently pulled him up short for flirting too heavily with the female guests. Some American
woman had made a complaint. Bitch. You’d think she’d have been grateful for some attention, given the state of the fat slob of her husband. In fact, thinking about it, it was probably
her husband who’d gone running to the manager . . . The boy became lost in resentful reverie. He forgot all about the Wolf.
James and Diana sat on the Negresco’s sun terrace. High glass screens cut out much of the noise from the traffic moving up and down the Promenade des Anglais. They had
just been served espresso coffees and freshly baked croissants, which lay untouched on the table in front of them.
‘Do you mind sitting in the sun like this? Would you like me to ask them to bring a parasol?’
Diana slowly turned her head towards him. They had barely spoken during the ten-minute walk to the hotel. In fact, Diana had yet to speak at all. She was still in shock. James had said something
about going to the Negresco, ‘where we can collect ourselves’, and she’d simply nodded. She felt numb. The impossible had just happened and her world had exploded into tiny
fragments. She felt light-headed and strangely vacant.
‘No.’ Her voice sounded husky and she cleared her throat. ‘No,’ she repeated, more clearly. ‘No thank you. It’s still quite early. The sun isn’t that
strong yet.’ There, she thought. They were having a conversation about the weather. And she was talking to a dead man whose bones, if the official records were to be believed, lay in a field
in northern France.
Their waiter reappeared with two cognacs in tiny glasses.
‘
Merci
.’ James picked up both glasses and handed one to Diana. ‘Down the hatch, then.’
Diana drained her glass in a single gulp and a few seconds later felt more light-headed than before. She bowed her head.
‘I think I’m going to faint.’
‘No, you’re not. Deep breaths, Diana.’ He moved his chair closer to hers and gently rubbed her back with the flat of his palm. Diana shivered.
‘Keep your head down. Keep taking those breaths. You’ll be fine in a minute.’
They sat like this for some time, before Diana finally raised her head with a sigh and eased herself back in her seat. She stared listlessly at him.
He was a little older, obviously, but barely noticeably. No grey yet in his hair or at his temples – well, he was still in his early thirties, as was she. No apparent weight-gain since
she’d last seen him. A few more lines here and there, perhaps, but these were mitigated by his tan. The whites of his eyes remained clear and his teeth were white too. He smiled at her.
‘Hello, Diana.’
‘I knew you were alive,’ she replied.
‘From the beginning? From the day I was shot down?’
She slowly shook her head. ‘No. Only during these last few weeks. I heard your voice, coming from a taxi in the flower-market. You were telling the driver to bring you here. I knew it was
you, I was absolutely certain. I followed you here but I couldn’t find you.’
He nodded apologetically. ‘Yes, I think I remember that day,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I was picking someone up from here. We went on somewhere else.’
‘How long have you been in Nice?’
‘Nearly eleven years. I came here pretty much straight after I was shot down.’
She nodded to herself. He made it sound so reasonable, so normal. ‘I see.’
He stared at her. ‘Are you all right?’
She laughed at that, a high, wheezy giggle. ‘Oh yes. I’m absolutely fine. I meet people back from the grave for coffee at the Negresco most mornings.’
He held up his hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry . . . This is difficult enough for me. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.’
‘No. I’m sure you can’t, James.’ There. She’d called him by his name. It felt familiar and normal, and yet completely otherworldly too.