Red Notice

29

Delphine walked down the aisle, looking for her seat. She put the presents for her niece and nephew into the luggage rack and was about to sit down when she saw a frail, white-haired man a few rows ahead of her struggling to lift his bag. ‘Let me help you with that,’ she said, taking it from him.

‘Thank you. Just one of the joys of getting old, I’m afraid. I used to be as strong as a bull when I was young, but now I can barely turn the pages of my newspaper.’ He gave her a wintry smile. ‘The clockwork’s running down, I suppose. And yet, do you know, the strange thing is I don’t feel any different inside? In my mind I’m still the young buck I was all those years ago, but then I open my eyes and…’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry — as my daughter keeps telling me, I do have a tendency to ramble on…’

‘You mustn’t apologize,’ Delphine said. ‘I bet your daughter will miss you terribly while you’re away. Are you staying in Paris or travelling on?’

‘Staying in Paris,’ he said. ‘The first time I’ve been there in years.’ He leaned towards her, a sparkle in his eye. He pointed to the bouquet of red roses, wrapped in cellophane, which he’d placed on the table in front of them. ‘Don’t laugh, but I’m on my way to meet a woman I haven’t seen in forty years. I met her in Paris in 1967 — the Summer of Love.’ He pointed to his bald head and gave a rueful smile. ‘Not much of a long-haired hippie, these days, am I? Anyway, I fell in love with a Parisian girl. Giselle…’

‘So beautiful!’ Delphine sighed. ‘Like the ballet…’

‘We were…’ he hesitated, searching for the right word ‘… very close. We lived together that winter in a commune on the Left Bank, but then all that peace and love went up in flames. You weren’t even born in 1968, of course, but I’m sure you’ve heard of les événements. There was a real sense of revolution in the air. There were strikes, riots, running battles with the police — the smell of tear gas hung over the city for weeks. We argued a lot about politics — Giselle was a real firebrand, far more left-wing than me.’ A look of sadness came into his eyes. ‘After one big row, I’m sorry to say I ran away. I didn’t have any money, or anywhere to go, but when I swallowed my stubborn pride and went back, Giselle had moved and no one knew where she had gone. I tried to find her, of course, but without success. In the end, after drifting around Paris for a few more weeks, I went back to England, cut my hair, got a job and began to settle down. In time I met another woman. We got married and had children and were happy together. Yet I never forgot Giselle…

‘My wife died a few years ago, and strangely enough it was my daughter who persuaded me to go looking for her. In fact she tracked her down, through Facebook of all things. Giselle’s widowed too, now, and I’m meeting her for lunch in Paris today. After that, who knows?’

He was lost in his thoughts for a while. Then he went on, ‘You must think me a terrible old fool, pouring all this out to a complete stranger. I know it could so easily end in disappointment and I’m trying not to get too excited about it…’ he smiled ‘… but not very successfully, as you can see.’

Across the aisle from them a middle-aged businessman in a pinstriped suit breathed out heavily through his nose and refolded his newspaper in a way that managed to convey both irritation and impatience. The old man glanced at him, then looked back at Delphine. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken up more than enough of your time already.’

She put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to have met you. It’s a lovely story, and I really hope it has a happy ending for you.’ She kissed him on the cheek and walked back down the carriage.

She settled herself in the seat by the window and sat listlessly turning the pages of a magazine. In the row in front of her, a mother with two young children was stowing her bags and answering a string of questions from her hyper-excited cherubic little boy. His chubby face and body suggested to Delphine that Disneyland came a close second to a diet of Happy Meals.

His sister was older, perhaps ten, and more curious about the world around her. While her mother was busy plugging in the Bluetooth attachment to the bottom of a new iPod to download Toy Story 3 from her laptop, she knelt on her seat and pulled herself up so that she could look into the row behind her.

Delphine smiled as the child’s face appeared above the back of the seat. ‘Hello.’

‘I’m going to Disneyland Paris,’ she said, her expression serious.

‘How wonderful,’ Delphine said. ‘You must be really looking forward to it.’

The little girl’s face broke into a huge smile. ‘We’re going to stay in a hotel like a magic castle,’ she said breathlessly, ‘and see Woody and Buzz Lightyear and—’

‘Come and sit down now, Rose,’ her mother snapped, ‘and drink your juice.’ She turned to Delphine. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I hope she’s not bothering you.’

‘Not at all,’ Delphine said. ‘To be honest, I’m glad of the distraction. You look like you’re going to have a busy few days. You’ll probably need a holiday yourself by the time you’ve finished.’

‘I know. My husband was supposed to be coming with us, but something cropped up at work, so now it’s just the three of us. But we’re getting used to that, aren’t we, kids?’

She looked so forlorn as she said it that Delphine had to suppress the urge to give her a hug. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘your children are lovely, a real credit to you. And if you want a bit of time to yourself, I’d be happy to babysit them for you. It would be no trouble — I need to get some practice in.’ She stood up and held out her hand. ‘I’m Delphine.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘I’m Grace. You’ve already met Rose. And my son is called Daniel.’

He looked up at the mention of his name, gave Delphine a shy grin and went back to his colouring book. Grace studied Delphine for a moment, her gaze missing nothing, then gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘And, Delphine, I hope everything works out well for you.’

‘Is it that obvious?’ Delphine found herself blushing. ‘Thank you anyway.’

They were interrupted by an announcement from the guard. ‘This is the eight twenty-six to Paris Gare du Nord International, calling at Ebbsfleet International and Paris. This train is now ready to depart.’

She flipped over a few more pages of her magazine as he repeated the announcement in French, then went back to staring out of the window, taking in her last sight of London for who knew how long? Hereford and Tom already felt a long way behind her. At least, that was what she told herself.

Tom loved her, she was sure of that, but Delphine had at last come to understand that, for all her obvious bitterness, Moira had been speaking no less than the truth when she had talked about the priorities of SAS men.

Tom was fiercely loyal to his mates, and Gavin in particular. He was like a brother to him. As Delphine had said to him one night, only half joking, ‘If Gavin and I were both trapped in a burning building, you’d be carrying him out before you got round to rescuing me.’

Tom had laughed. ‘What makes you think I’d come back for you at all?’

She’d asked Tom about his bond with Gavin a few times, but he just said, ‘We’ve been through a few tough times together and that makes you close,’ then changed the subject.

She’d asked Gavin, too, one quiet night in the bar when Tom was away on an op. ‘We’ve been mates a long time,’ Gavin said. ‘I’d trust Tom with my life. I know I can, because he’s saved it for me in the past.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’ Delphine said, then saw his hesitation. ‘No, forget it. I’m sorry I asked.’

‘No, it’s all right. It was a long time ago. There’s still stuff I can’t tell you, but I can give you some of it. We were in Afghanistan.’

'What’s it like?’ Delphine said.

‘The country? Well, for a start it’s quite beautiful—’ He broke off, studied her expression, then burst out laughing. ‘No, sorry, you thought I was getting all emotional? The mountains do look beautiful but the whole country’s in complete shit state.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘It’s the boys from the Green Army — that’s what we call the battalions — I feel really sorry for. They’re supposed to be training the Afghans to take over security from them, but you can trust most of them as far as you can spit into the wind. When the boys go out on patrol, they have to have eyes front and side, watching for hostiles, and in the back of their heads as well in case one of the friendly forces decides to earn himself a bonus from the Taliban by slotting a couple of Brits.’

Delphine’s expression made it immediately clear that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the Green Army.

‘Yeah, sorry, Delphine, I might have got carried away there for a moment…’

She’d thought it was more to do with avoidance than anything else, and had kept quiet so he’d finally had to fill the silence.

‘There were four of us on a job in a border area, up near Pakistan. We were based with a US unit, and some of the Afghan National Army. It turned out a couple of them were Taliban infiltrators. They took their chance late one night when a lot of the guys were asleep. They threw grenades into a couple of containers, then went round with automatic weapons, shooting anyone they could find. They killed two of us, and nine regular army guys, before we killed them. I took a round.’

Gavin pointed at his leg.

‘I was hit in the thigh. The round partially severed my femoral artery. There was blood spurting everywhere like a fountain. I was sure I was going to die. It doesn’t take long when you have a gusher.

‘Tom didn’t have time for morphine so, while I screamed the place down, he just dug around in the wound with his fingers, found the artery, pinched it off to stop the bleeding and put a tourniquet on it until a Green medic turned up with clamps.

‘I’d lost so much blood I was out of it, but he put me on his back and carried me to the landing zone under fire. It was raining rounds. I was flown out of there and the medics saved my leg, but it was Tom who saved my life.’ He’d been staring at his hands as he spoke, barely aware of her presence, and he gave an embarrassed smile as he looked up and met her gaze. ‘So… yeah…’ he said. ‘We’re pretty close.’

‘So am I going to have to save his life to get that close?’ Delphine had asked.

He had smiled. ‘No, I’d say you were pretty close already, wouldn’t you?’

Now Delphine pushed the memory away and gave a weary shake of her head. Gavin had been wrong. Whatever Delphine might have felt for Tom, he had never seemed that close to her. Not close enough, anyway.