by Mj Roë
Anna put her fingers to her lips as she reread the e-mail. Mark had once accused her of wanting to have two lives. Maybe he was right. It occurred to her that C-C had not mentioned the future, had not even asked her a question about her plans. Mark, by contrast, was always talking about how he wanted to be married and have a family, how he needed her. C-C had told her that he loved her, but he had never once mentioned the future. Even his house was beautiful and comfortable, but it was so much him, so masculine. There was never any mention of making room enough to accommodate a wife or a family. They had been absorbed in the moment since she had arrived. What if, she wondered, in two days, I just packed up and drove to Monique’s? Would he just let me leave him again? Anna had to admit to herself that she really didn’t know him very well. He was and he wasn’t the same person. She pondered their relationship. Maybe she didn’t really love him anymore. Maybe it was nothing but a scintillating physical attraction, just an affair that would run its course. Then what would be left? C-C had come between Mark and her, now more than ever. Would he always be between them?
A door opened and slammed in the back of the house, ending her contemplation. Suddenly needing to be alone to think, Anna shut down the PC and ran out the front door.
It was a hot, dry, airless day. She wandered down to the park where the pétanque players were having an argument about the placement of the little wooden cochon. As she seated herself on a green, slatted chair in the shade of a plane tree to watch them, she felt suddenly claustrophobic in this small, rural community, pretty and charming as it was. She missed the ocean breeze, the freedom of being able to walk along the cool, sandy beach for hours. She opened her cell phone and dialed Monique’s number, wondering if there would be service in this remote village.
“Allô?” Monique’s voice was barely audible because of the static.
“Monique? Anna.”
“Anna! I’ve been thinking of you. How did the [hissing sound] go? Are you having a good [crackling noises], chérie?”
“The wedding was lovely. They seem to be such a happy couple. [snapping sounds]” Anna winced and held the phone away from her ear. “I took lots of photos.”
“And when will we see you? [more hissing and crackling noises]”
“Soon. When are you going back to Paris?”
“Georges is leaving on the thirtieth. I’ll stay longer, so you and I can have a good visit.”
“I should be there by the end of the week.”
“Bon. It’s all set then. How long can you [inaudible]?”
“What? I think you just asked how long can I stay. A week or so. I don’t know really. It will depend on…” Anna hesitated.
“On what?”
“On C-C.”
“Do I dare ask how it’s going with him?” They were now listening to static interference from another cell phone conversation.
“Go right ahead.”
“Bien, how’s it going with C-C?”
“Since you asked…” As she talked, Anna walked toward the town hall hoping that the reception would be better. “Can you hear me better now?” Monique said she could. Anna then explained the reason for her call. She described the house, her suspicions, her doubts, Mark’s e-mails.
Monique listened without interruption until Anna had finished her long discourse. Then she said, “Well, mon amie, you have a dilemma, don’t you? Let me know when you figure it out.”
“Monique!” Anna was irritated. “I was hoping for some good advice from you.”
“Not this time, Anna. Call me whenever you need an ear. I’ll listen, but I want to keep your friendship too much to try to give you advice. I’ve interfered enough already. Besides, you have to decide what is best for you.”
Anna let out a sigh.
“I heard that,” Monique said. “You know, we French have a saying: Coeur qui soupire n’a pas ce qu’il désire.”
“What? The sigh I just let out proves that my heart isn’t satisfied?” Anna paused and sighed again. “Oh, maybe you’re right about that.”
“I am, chérie. I’ve got a feeling.”
CHAPTER 62
When Anna returned to C-C’s house, she found the kitchen in a mess and Clo mopping water from the floor. Above the sink, there was a huge hole in the wall where the antique tiles had been. Protruding from the opening was the rear end of a man, obviously a plumber, whose upper body seemed to have disappeared into the hole. He was pounding loudly on a pipe. Anna picked up one of the broken tiles and looked at C-C with a frown.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I bought extras. The wall will be repaired.”
“What caused the pipe to burst?”
“I expect the extra strain. We’ve been using a lot more water. The bathroom is directly above.” He flashed his disarming smile at her.
Anna turned and ran up the stairs, tears welling in her eyes. She sat down on the bed. It was a bad sign. Even the house couldn’t accommodate more than one person.
C-C entered the room. He saw her face.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t answer him.
“Did I say something to offend you?” He came over to the bed and sat down next to her. “I was just joking about the water usage. It has happened before with just me here.” He tried to put his arm around her.
“It’s not what you said…it’s just…” She brushed him away as she stood up and went over to the window. She crossed her arms in front of her and turned to look at him. “It’s what you haven’t said.”
C-C was puzzled. He said, “I don’t understand.”
“Where is our relationship going? What’s the end, C-C? You never talk about anything but how much you missed me, never anything beyond this moment, today, lunch, dinner. Did it ever occur to you that there might be a tomorrow? That the day is coming that I might leave again? What would you do if I left today? Right now? This minute?” She caught herself. It was a rerun. A decade ago she had brought up a similar conversation. Her words had been met then with the cold, icy stare of non-commitment. She had flown back to California shortly afterwards. Her voice lowered as she added a snappish and abrupt, “Well?”
The room was silent. A slight breeze blew gently from the window. Neither of them moved. What Anna saw in C-C’s sea-deep, gray eyes this time was neither cold nor icy; it was an emotional storm.
A door slammed downstairs. A voice in the foyer yelled, “Monsieur le Docteur?” C-C seemed to be in a haze. “Monsieur le Docteur? Venez tout de suite! C’est urgent!” C-C ran his hands nervously through his hair, got up, and went over to the top of the stairs. “Qu’est-ce?…”
“C’est ma femme. C’est l’heure.”
“J’arrive.” C-C turned to Anna. “I have to leave. A woman in the village is having a baby. That is her husband downstairs come to fetch me. She will have a difficult time. I expect a cesarean will be required. It will take some time. Maybe all night.” He was changing his clothes quickly as he talked. He turned to look at Anna, his eyes the full register of the grays of the sea. “You have every right to ask those questions. I promise you we will talk about the future… when I get back.” With that, he raced down the stairs, the front door slammed shut, and he was gone.
Anna, disappointed and humiliated, stood for several minutes by the window with her arms crossed.
She mumbled aloud, “What is wrong with me? I shouldn’t have said those things to him.” She found her journal in her carry-on and went down the stairs. Creeping cautiously through the kitchen so as not to disturb Clo and the plumber, who were in heated discussion, alternately scratching and shaking their heads, shrugging shoulders, and pointing to the hole in the wall, she slipped out the back door and followed the small pathway to the back corner of the rose garden.
Seated in the shade on a bench under the rose arbor, Anna wrote about how she felt meeting her grandfather and seeing C-C again. She described the wedding and the festivities following it, the village, the Ajaccio, Clo, and C-C’s house.
Two hours passed quickly.
“Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle.”
Anna looked up. The caretaker was standing, slightly bent over, directly in front of her. He had removed his cap and was holding it to his chest as if in worship.
“Désolé, Mademoiselle. I afraid bad news. The pipe, it not be fixed today. Monsieur call a little while ago. He at hospital in Nice. He wanted talk you, but I think you gone out.” He cleared his throat nervously. “I no realize you still here. I just now came through garden to my cottage.” He paused, shaking his head. “Since there no water in house, Mademoiselle, toilettes no operate. Monsieur suggest you go to Ajaccio for night.”
“Do you have water to your cottage, Clo?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Oui, but it too small for two.”
Anna nodded and smiled. He had misunderstood her question. “The Ajaccio will be fine.” She thanked him, closed her journal, and went into the house to pack her bag. The letters C-C had written her were still lying on his desk, unread. She folded them into the inside pocket of her journal.
CHAPTER 63
Anna’s eyes moved back and forth behind closed lids as she followed the action of her fitful dream.
The young man is behind her as she pushes her luggage cart toward the end of the loading platform. A look of admiration is in his eyes as she glances casually back at him. She smiles. At the end of a long journey, she returns. The same man is waiting on the platform for her. He takes her hand. They waltz together. Then, something happens that stops the dancing. He turns around suddenly and runs away. She wants to run after him. A glass window between them prevents her from moving. She pushes it, and it shatters into a thousand pieces. When the air finally clears, she is suddenly on the quay in Le Havre. There are two platforms in front of her. One is as steep as a hill; the other is pebbled with cobbles. At the end of the steep, uphill platform stands a man she recognizes from an old photo. It is her father. As she watches him, he smiles at her and points downward to a man who is standing at the end of the cobblestone platform. But she can’t see who he is, only that his is a male figure. There is fog and mist surrounding him. “Anna?” Rain begins falling heavily. “Anna? Is that you?” It is a familiar voice. She turns around. C-C is walking across wet sand toward her. She takes a step forward, and as she does so, the sun suddenly shines so brightly in her eyes that she is blinded. She can’t move, can’t see. Someone takes hold of her gently from behind and pulls her back away from the platform. The arms feel strong and familiar. She can’t turn around to see who it is. “Who are you? Where are you pulling me to?” she cries out.
Anna awoke and looked around her. She couldn’t remember where she was. The room looked like any one of hundreds of old hotel rooms in France. In this one there was a chair. Now she recalled. She was in Castagniers, at the Ajaccio. She looked at her watch. It was two thirty in the morning.
* * *
In Laguna Beach, California, Mark jogged along the beach with Paris off the leash and outpacing him by twenty feet. At five thirty that afternoon, it was low tide, and the warm August evening had drawn many people to the Pacific shore. They passed a group of teenagers playing volleyball in the sand, and the dog found a lone seagull to chase until a wave doused him and the seagull flew away.
“C’mon, boy,” Mark called as he turned around. “Let’s go home.” He checked his watch. He still had three more hours before his father would be awake in Paris. After he had had no response from Anna to his last e-mail, he had left a message for his father, asking him to use his connections in France in order to get a cell phone number for Georges Durocher. He needed desperately to reach Anna through Georges’ wife, Monique.
After Anna had told him that she was going to meet Diamanté Loupré-Tigre, Mark had run a background check on the man. The first brief search through all the normal channels had come up with nothing, not even an address. Next he had contacted his EU sources in Strasbourg, the ones who had helped him locate Guy de Noailles. They found the usual statistics: a July 1924 birth date in Castagglione, Corsica, an address in Marseilles, France, fifteen years later, and a notation about Diamanté’s being a member of the French Résistance movement during World War II. There was a record of a marriage in Ajaccio, Corsica, and the birth of a son, Diamanté Jr., with notations (son deceased March 1962, Algerian War; wife deceased 1963). They could find no current listed address other than a record of some real estate that had been purchased in the south of France in 1996, and no information about any living relatives. What had concerned Mark most was that his EU contacts had told him that the world’s preeminent police organization, Interpol, had placed a security lock preventing any further access to Diamanté’s records by unauthorized personnel. Despite their EU status, they were not authorized access.
* * *
In Castagniers, Anna got out of bed and walked over to the open window. It was a pretty night with a bright moon and a gentle, warm breeze. The village was asleep. She hadn’t had the dream in eight months, not since the last time she was in France. It was so surreal, in all its variations. She turned on the lamp on the bed stand. Its light shone on C-C’s letters sitting below it. She picked them up and climbed back onto the bed.
The letter on the bottom of the pile was sealed, the envelope addressed to A. Ellis, confidentiel. Anna opened the envelope, carefully removed the pages, and began reading.
January 1998
Anna, ma chère,
This letter contains the story of how I made the decision to stay in Castagniers. I don’t intend to ever send it to you as the contents must be kept a secret. If you are reading this letter, it is because I have given it to you in person and we are together again. If that is the case, then you can be assured that I am at present the happiest man alive.
Remember that night in Paris when I was hit over the head on the street in front of my apartment building? Of course, it was the last time I saw you. Do you recall as well that I thought I was being followed? Well, now I can tell you what I couldn’t then. Yes, yes I was being followed, my love. It’s a long story.
* * *
Mark took off his running shoes and opened the door to his condo, commanding Paris to stay outside until he could get a towel to wipe the sand from the dog’s paws. On the entryway table, he spotted the framed photo of Anna and himself at the restaurant the night of their engagement celebration with his parents. Anna, her bright, dark eyes sparkling, her one bare shoulder and arm exposed by an off-the-shoulder, classic black silk dress, her hand adorned with the engagement ring he had given her in Paris, their hands entwined, both of them smiling.
The phone rang, jolting him from his reverie.
“Hi, Mark? Got that number, son. What’s so all fired important that you needed it in the middle of the night, anyway?”
Mark said apologetically, “Sorry, Dad. I have to reach Durocher first thing this morning. I was willing to wait until you awoke, though.”
“I had insomnia. Always do when I’m over here. Can’t get used to the time change. Never could. Anyway, it wasn’t difficult. I got Durocher’s cell phone number for you. He and his wife are, like everyone else here in France, hah, en vacances, as they say, out of town on vacation until the end of the month, so good luck in reaching him.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“There’s some other information I have for you. In response to that concern you had? I’ve sent you an e-mail. I think you had better look at it.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
“It is, as a matter of fact. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s all I could get, for now, but I’ll keep trying. Anyway, so are you coming to visit us in Paris?”
“Don’t know. I’ll let you know in a couple of days.”
* * *
There is a young woman within the confines of the walls of the convent in Castagniers. She is recuperating from a horrible accident in Paris last August…August the thirty-first, to be exact. She is my patient.
Anna gasped and put her hands to
her mouth. “This is absurd, C-C,” she said aloud. “Are you telling me that your patient is Diana, the Princess Diana?” As if he had anticipated her reaction, he continued:
No, if you are now wondering, it is not Lady Di but her double, officially employed by the British government to act as a decoy anytime the Princess wished her to do so. It was always Diana’s decision when and where. They traveled often together. She recalls nothing of that night in August. The only memory she has is that it was decided that she would take Lady Di’s place in the Mercedes. She has no recollection of where the Princess went. When the Mercedes crashed in the Alma Tunnel, it was she (the decoy) who was badly hurt. Her carotid artery was torn, and she suffered a stroke. The British Embassy contacted their trusted old friend from the war, Diamanté—yes, your grandfather—to help get the decoy out without the paparazzi discovering the switch. My father called me, and very soon after the call Diamanté appeared at La Pitié-Salpêtrière to enlist my services with the patient. A make-shift SAMU transported us from Paris to Normandy—Le Havre, to be exact—where we were taken aboard a helicopter. I was blindfolded. The only thing I knew is that we arrived somewhere in the U.K. without Diamanté. I only learned that Diamanté had escaped safely because of the scene you witnessed in Le Havre.
A bird rustled in the tree outside the window, startling Anna as she visualized the scene on the quay in Le Havre. From a distance came the sound of a dog barking. She took a deep breath and continued reading.
