Lenoir found it difficult to sleep that steamy night of June 4, 1944. He spent the evening and the hours of the early morning turning listlessly on top of familiar sheets rendered soft and stale by the humidity, or smoking at his favourite spot on the balcony. The night breeze of last evening persisted, although Lenoir sensed a sudden weakening in its resolve. The fronds of the shrubs that sat against the fence line and which moments earlier had moved to the rhythm of the breeze suddenly fell still. The shrill call of crickets reverberated through the garden. Against the tiled rooves of the neighbouring houses, Lenoir saw the reflection of random flashes of light from the west. Immediately, he thought of London’s searchlights but dismissed that idea as being at odds with the intense light show played out against the tiles rendered moist by the dew.
Lenoir rose to his feet and moved silently along the length of the balcony, peering around the whitewashed corner of the dwelling towards the channel and London. The searchlights were still but in their place, vast sheets of lightning bubbled and crackled ahead of a summer storm. Each new shard of electricity traced the edges of fat clouds that gorged themselves on the hot air sucked into the centre of the storm. Lenoir made his way downstairs in the darkness and fumbled about in the shadows for a bottle of red wine appropriated from a previous mission. He also managed to find a thick water glass before returning to the balcony to take in the symphony of light over London.
Lenoir loved a summer storm and tonight’s was the first of the season. Throughout his life, he had equated storms with varying degrees of personal happiness. In the unencumbered joy of his youth, he recalled sitting with his father on the beaches near Saujon, watching the grey fronts roll in, snarling against the force of the summer northerlies. Even in the midst of his previous life- a life dulled by the anaesthesia of mindless routine- he could snatch fleeting moments of happiness when from his office window high above Montmartre, he watched the summer lightning play above the domes of the basilica Sacré Cœur. Those bouts of happiness were short lived, however. The Montmartre storms soon had him yearning for the uncomplicated happiness of his childhood and the inevitable result, which could endure for weeks, was always his rapid descent into depression and self-loathing.
Yet now as he watched the English storm gather its strength and begin to race across the channel towards him, he neither longed for times past nor yearned for a different life in the future. Since his reinvention, all that mattered to him was an absolute and immediate appreciation of the moment. He sat back and inhaled deeply, delighting in the sharp coolness of the air sent ahead by the storm. With the front came the wondrous scent of rainwater charged with electricity. For the second time in as many days, he felt the tingling sensation commence at the nape of his neck, signalling his body’s willingness to join in the pleasure of the moment. He had found his niche. Claude Lenoir was happy.