Some Day I'll Find You Page 15

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘Right. Look. I accept you’ve had . . . well, an extraordinary experience, my dear. Naturally you’ve been left flustered and confused. But you must listen to me when I say: it wasn’t him. Your husband – forgive me, your first husband – was shot down and killed over France almost exactly eleven years ago.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Wait, Diana. This is what I’m going to do. You’ll remember that you were far too upset at the time to read the official RAF report into what happened – the witness statements by the other pilots who saw the whole thing, all the rest of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Diana said in a small voice.

  ‘I’m going to send you those documents now. Can you bring yourself to read them after all this time?’

  ‘I – I think so.’

  ‘Good. And when you do, you’ll realise that what you thought you heard and saw today was impossible. James is dead, Diana. Ghosts don’t exist, and I must say I’ve never heard of one haunting a Nice taxicab.’

  Diana gave a small laugh. ‘I must sound pretty stupid and emotional, mustn’t I?’

  ‘Not at all, you’ve simply had an unusually intense example of something many others experience. Promise me you’ll read the RAF report when it gets there.’

  ‘I will. Listen, Daddy, I could really do with seeing you and Mummy, especially after this. I know it’s only been six weeks, but would you both come down here and stay? Get away from all the gloom and doom back there? I was thinking of at least a fortnight; longer if you can manage.’

  ‘We’d love to, on one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We can talk about ghosts as much as you like, but there will be no conversations, whatsoever, about oranges.’

  Diana’s laugh was interrupted by a burst of tone on the line and a moment later, it went dead.

  The hotel receptionist covertly watched the young woman with the green eyes and stunning legs leave the phone booth. He had a good idea what the missing ‘friend’ must be up to, wherever he was, the idiot. Some men didn’t know how lucky they were.

  Diana told no one else of her encounter with the Doppelgänger, or ghost, or . . . what? What exactly had she heard and seen? Her thoughts veered wildly from extreme to extreme; from absolute certainty that she had encountered her first husband, very much alive and in the flesh, to an almost equally firm conviction that her father was right, and the whole thing had been a trick of the mind.

  Both interpretations were finely balanced. But they were not quite equal and opposite. If there was a tipping of the scales, if she had to make the call, one way or the other, it was towards the conclusion that she had, incredibly, inexplicably, encountered the living form of a dead man. Her own Lazarus.

  The RAF report arrived three days later in a thick manila envelope covered in stamps.

  ‘One for you,’ Douglas said as he tossed it to her on his way back from the mailbox at the end of their drive. ‘Looks like your dad’s handwriting.’ He sat down opposite her at the breakfast-table. ‘Where’s Stella?’

  ‘Gone for an early-morning dip,’ answered Diana abstractedly.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it then?’ asked Douglas as he sliced the top off his boiled egg.

  Diana extemporised. ‘No, I know what it is,’ she replied. ‘Daddy has a French client living in London who claims he’s been libelled in some letters to the papers. Daddy thinks he’s wrong and he wants me to translate them into proper idiomatic French to show the man. I’m going to ask Emile – you know, the clerk in the villa rental agent’s office, to help me.’

  Diana rarely lied but when she did she was astonished at her facility for it.

  ‘Lucky Emile,’ Donald said, smiling at her. ‘He’s taken quite a fancy to you. When he was going through the rental paperwork here last month he went pink every time you spoke to him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, he’s just a boy.’ Diana wanted to close the conversation down. She hated lying and Douglas was so trusting. She changed the subject. ‘Is it Marseilles today?’

  ‘Aye,’ Douglas nodded. ‘I’m this close to landing that shipping contract I was telling you about.’ He looked sadly at his egg. ‘I don’t really have time to finish this – I’m late as it is. I’d better be off. Bye, darling.’ He kissed her cheek and left the kitchen.

  Diana stared at the big brown envelope. Time to lay this to rest, she thought, and then smiled ruefully to herself. That was certainly apt. James would have liked that.

  As she weighed the envelope in her hands, she felt apprehensive. It seemed almost as if she was about to disturb the bones of her dead husband and commit a kind of sacrilege.

  But this was all nonsense. All the envelope contained was a dry, military report – something she should have had the courage to read more than ten years ago. Diana snatched a knife from the table, pushed it under the gummed-down flap of the envelope, and sliced the package open. She upended it and shook out the contents: a thin file of two – no, three – sheets of lined brown foolscap, held together with a slightly rusty paperclip. She slid the top sheet free and held it gently by her fingertips.

  The heading, in faded red capitals, was direct enough.

  LOSS OF SPITFIRE MK 1, PMF 27A, AT APPROX 16.00HRS SATURDAY 30TH JUNE 1940 DUE TO ENEMY ACTION. AIRCRAFT PILOT, FLIGHT CMNDR JAMES BLACKWELL, D.O.B. 13/04/19, MISSING PRESUMED DEAD.

  *THIS DOCUMENT IS CLASSIFIED.*

  Presumed dead? What did that mean? The Arnolds had always been told that the fact of James’s death was in no doubt.

  Diana began to read.

  The first paragraphs briefly explained the squadron’s mission that afternoon. They had been sent to patrol the French side of the Channel between Dunkirk and Boulogne-sur-Mer. A mix of Royal Navy ships, two destroyers and a gaggle of Corvettes were attempting to slip through the Channel at full speed, and the German Luftwaffe was expected to try and bomb them. Another RAF fighter squadron was providing cover above the convoy itself, ready to take on the bombers; James’s squadron had been told to intercept the inevitable German fighter escort.

  Enemy aircraft had duly appeared, and the Upminster Spitfires had quickly found themselves in a series of dogfights with a pack of Messerschmitt 109 fighters. They were estimated to be about thirty in number – more than two-to-one against James’s squadron. Having absorbed this, Diana turned to the second page.

  WITNESS STATEMENTS

  Diana felt suddenly cold. She’d never wanted, or needed, to know the precise details of James’s last moments. Even now she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She put the sheet of paper back on the table and walked to the brushed steel fridge, where she poured herself a glass of water from a jug.

  What on earth was she doing? Why rake up the past because her over-active imagination had made her act like an idiot? She stared at the musty RAF report on the other side of her gleaming American kitchen and sipped the water.

  . . . presumed dead.

  Diana went back to the table.

  The second page began with the name, rank and number of one of the pilots who had made it back home that day. Underneath was his sworn statement.

  Bracing herself, Diana began to read.

  P.O. Franks and I had just succeeded in shooting down one of the enemy in a joint attack. The fighting had taken me several miles inland over the Pas de Calais and the sky suddenly seemed entirely clear of aircraft.

  I was headed back to the coast at approximately 16.00hrs when I saw F.C. Blackwell’s aircraft slide under my own, about 300 feet below me. He seemed to be in a fast, shallow dive and as he banked hard to port, I was able to confirm his identification markings. Then he took a burst of fire to the rear of the fuselage – I did not see where the attack came from – and part of his tail section was shot away. The aircraft took further strikes to the nose, including the cockpit, and the engine immediately caught fire.

  F.C. Blackwell’s aircraft went into an immediate vertical dive. We had already lost a lot of al
titude in exchanges with the enemy and were at less than 2,000 feet. F.C. Blackwell’s plane seemed to pull up a bit at about 500 feet. At the same time I noticed another Spitfire in the vicinity, which I now know was flown by P.O. Hobson.

  F.C. Blackwell’s aircraft dipped down behind some tall trees and I lost sight of it. After a few moments there was a bright flash visible beyond the trees and a considerable amount of black smoke.

  It is clear to me that F.C. Blackwell’s plane was brought down as a result of enemy action and I regret to say I saw no signs of a parachute. It is my belief F.C. Blackwell was either killed or wounded while in his cockpit, or killed when his plane exploded on the ground.

  The statement was signed in a boyish scribble, executed in fountain pen. Underneath was a separate note in a different hand and in a darker ink. Diana peered at it.

  This officer killed on active duty 9th July 1940.

  Diana’s hands shook slightly. Behind the professional detachment of this young man’s statement lurked the scent of fear and death. Pity, too; for all the attempt to remain factual and unemotional, the word ‘regret’ had managed to penetrate the dry text.

  What must James have gone through in his awful last moments? She half-hoped he had been killed outright in his plane, rather than suffer the terror of that last dive, struggling with the useless controls of a burning aircraft.

  Presumed dead? Of course he had been killed, Diana thought, almost brutally; the presumption could hardly have been more reasonable.

  She picked up the third and final page, which was somewhat shorter than the others. This was the second witness statement.

  Again, the pilot’s name and identification number were quoted at the top of the page. It was P.O. Hobson, mentioned in the first statement. Diana thought she recognised the name as one her brother and James had both mentioned in conversation. Hobson. Yes, he was the squadron joker. Diana had a faint but distinct memory of some prank involving the squadron leader’s car and a giant pair of knickers – something to do with a riotous night out in the West End.

  This time Diana’s eyes went straight to the bottom of the statement but there was no annotation to say that Hobson, too, had been killed, just the man’s moniker, signed in large, flowing italics that managed somehow to convey a jaunty spirit, despite what was written above.

  I had been forced quite a long way inland by three Me 109s which kept me pretty busy for several minutes. I managed to lose them somewhere near what I now believe was the village of Guines, and was hedge-hopping my way back to Cap Blanc-Nez. I was still a couple of miles from the coast when I saw what I was able to identify as F.C. Blackwell’s aircraft passing not more than 100 yards in front of me, moving from port to starboard. The engine was on fire and trailing a lot of smoke. F.C. Blackwell was still in the cockpit and he seemed to me to be making an attempt to land, although I cannot be certain of this. He flew over a screen of poplar trees and disappeared from my sight. Shortly afterwards I saw the flash of an explosion and a large plume of smoke. I would have turned back to investigate, but I was very low on fuel and not certain I would make it home, so I flew on to the coast. It is my firm belief that F.C. Blackwell died when his aircraft struck the ground. I noted the time as 16.00hrs.

  Diana turned to the final paragraph.

  CONCLUSIONS

  Taking into consideration the enemy’s official claim to have shot down one of our aircraft at the time and in the location referred to above, and the fact that there has been no enemy report of F.C. Blackwell being taken prisoner, nor any communication from the French regarding his whereabouts, we conclude that this officer lost his life as a result of enemy action.

  There was a smudged official stamp underneath ‘MISSING PRESUMED DEAD’ and yet another scrawled signature. Nothing else.

  Diana carefully replaced the pages in their envelope and pushed it to the back of a drawer. Douglas was a stranger to the kitchen; he’d never find it there. Then she made herself a pot of tea and took it out on to the terrace. She opened a large yellow parasol and sat in its shade for a long time, barely moving in her rattan chair.

  He’s not dead.

  Two words – ‘presumed dead’ – were the fixed point around which her thoughts swirled. Why ‘presumed’? The men who saw what happened to James were clear enough on the question. One could describe them as expert witnesses; fighter pilots used to dealing in matters of life and death on a daily, even hour-to-hour basis. If they thought James had – what was the expression they would use? – ‘got the chop’, then he had.

  Perhaps it was the absence of a body. Diana shivered slightly. The report had said that the Germans hadn’t taken James prisoner, but clearly they hadn’t found a body either. They would have reported it to the Red Cross; that was how such things worked. But there must have been some remains in the burned-out wreckage of James’s plane; surely? Something to identify him?

  He’s not dead.

  The cicadas were starting to sing now as the sun grew hotter. The lawn beneath the sun terrace was dotted with small olive trees and that was where the insects hid, signalling their presence to each other with their endlessly repeated chi-chi-chi calls.

  You could never actually see them, but you knew they were there.

  *

  Diana went back into the kitchen and returned with a pencil and pad. For the next few minutes, she bent over the little table under the parasol, making a series of notes, her brow furrowed with concentration. Her eyes glittered fiercely and her mouth was closed in a tight line, almost a grimace. When she had finished, she sat back to consider what she’d written.

  1) James still alive in cockpit as plane nears ground? YES, was trying to land.

  2) Why no body found/reported in wreckage?

  3) Who saw plane crash? NO ONE. Behind trees.

  4) ‘Presumed dead’ = doubt: can imply nothing else.

  5) I’VE SEEN AND HEARD HIM HERE IN FRANCE

  Diana wrote the last sentence so firmly that the pencil broke.

  She sat back, taking short, shallow breaths. A light sheen of perspiration had appeared on her forehead, and one foot jiggled restlessly under the table. She got up and walked to the terrace’s wrought-iron balustrade.

  Normally the view of picturesque St Paul, nestling on its hill opposite, claimed her attention. But this morning her eyes slid south and east to the distant Mediterranean. Nice was hidden behind the hills that folded their way down to the sea, gradually petering out in the narrow coastal plain where the city stood.

  But just because you couldn’t see it, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  Like the cicadas in the olive trees.

  Like James.

  Hidden.

  She was going to find him.

  41

  It never occurred to Diana to take Douglas into her confidence.

  She was certain he’d think her a fool – or worse, an obsessive. It would be impossible for her to communicate her certainty that James was alive, based as it was on scant evidence. Douglas would tell her she was being ridiculous.

  But there were other reasons to keep silent. If she told Douglas what she thought she’d seen and heard at the flower-market, he would immediately detect her hunger to see James again. It would be impossible for her to conceal it from him once the subject was broached. Douglas would be hurt, and almost certainly feel threatened.

  Would he be justified in considering that his marriage might be in jeopardy? Diana’s thoughts shied away from the question.

  Of course, she knew that if she was right and, incredibly, her first husband was alive and actually here in Nice, the consequences of finding him again would be enormous. But Diana refused to allow her thoughts to travel any further in this direction. Subconsciously she knew that too close an examination of her motives in searching for James would probably cause her to call off the whole exercise.

  So she ignored her inner fears and told herself that it was simply none of Douglas’s business. The thought that she might be
behaving selfishly, dishonestly or even dangerously didn’t enter her mind.

  She wouldn’t allow it to.

  She dreamed of James constantly, from the very first night after the incident in the flower-market. Usually these dreams were profoundly frustrating, involving endless pursuits of him, always one step behind as he disappeared through doorways, around corners, and into the backs of dark cars that bore him away, oblivious to her desperate cries of, ‘Stop! Oh please, stop!’ She often woke with tears of frustration fresh on her cheeks.

  Other dreams of James were altogether different, and even if Douglas had been in her confidence, she would never have discussed these with him. They were deeply erotic, almost always concluding in convulsive, physical pleasure which jolted her awake, confused and fearful that her involuntary cries had woken Douglas. Fortunately, he was a heavy sleeper.

  Outwardly, Diana’s behaviour did not change. She still waited for Maxine to arrive each morning to give Stella her French lessons, before walking into St Paul and taking a taxi to the flower-market.

  Armand continued to greet her with what he considered the epitome of English wit, before bringing her coffee and Nice-Matin, which Diana affected to read.

  A close observer, however, would have noticed a change in her behaviour. No passing car or taxi went unscrutinised. No tall, suited and hatted man hoving into view went unremarked. And Diana stayed at the pavement café for far longer than she used to, sometimes for more than two hours, lingering over a third café crème when once a single cup was all she drank.

  In fact, there was one such close observer; Hélène, a woman in her late fifties who owned the flower-stall opposite Armand’s café. Diana had never really noticed the woman who worked quietly at her bouquets and arrangements most mornings. She was an unremarkable figure in her plain, neat dresses, greying hair invariably tied back in a conventional bun.