by Tessa Lunney
I rested my chin against my shoulder and he looked me straight in the eye. His eyes were so large and dark, smart and wild, their image seemed to last longer than his gaze. Maybe it was because their image was constantly refreshed, as he kept looking at me as he drew. He drew less and less and looked longer and longer, a smile creeping into his face, until he put down his pad and pencil and walked over to me.
‘Now, my Kangaroo, the sketches are over. Time for a break.’
He leant over and kissed me. It was so different to the last time, tender where that was urgent, attentive where that was demanding. I could taste the coffee and tobacco on his breath; it mixed with the smell of paint in the room. He knelt down between my legs and started to undo the clips that held up my stockings. It was the first time I noticed he was almost forty. He was so sure, so active, that I thought of him as someone agelessly virile – but of course he was just a man, with skin rough from decades of shaving and white flecks in his dark hair. His hands were lined and callused with nails bitten down to the quick. They moved with swift purpose though, as they rolled down my stockings and held my legs apart so he could bite the inside of my thighs. I gasped.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he said into my leg as he bit again.
‘No, but . . .’ It didn’t hurt actually, he was very gentle, but it was a shock. He bit me gently again and again, along both thighs, until they tingled. He took off my shoes, ‘Such pretty shoes, Kiki,’ took off my stockings and pulled me up by my waist.
‘This chair is too small,’ he said close to my ear, ‘this way.’ I still wore my suspender belt, and he slipped his hand under my chemise to grab it and pull me over to a couch under a far window. The window was open and a sharp breeze blew in with all the sounds of the street. He half knelt on the couch so his eyes were level with my waist. He unclipped the belt and undid the buttons that held up my knickers, and grunted with approval as the silk fluttered to the floor. My chemise only just covered my bum, so as he turned me around I could almost feel him looking at what was revealed. I certainly felt his little bite and I jumped.
‘Jumping Kangaroo! You’re so sweet, I can hardly help myself.’
When our pulse had stopped thudding in our ears, Pablo strode over to his table. He had strong thighs, muscled shoulders and a confidence to every gesture that you can only get from a few decades of knowing your own body. He grabbed his pipe, his sketchbook and pencils, and threw me my handbag with my cigarettes. He sat on the couch, pipe in his mouth and book on his lap, and sketched me. I had a cigarette between my lips and wore only my chemise.
‘Pablo . . .’
‘Hmph?’ He saw nothing but the curve of my breasts. He pushed the silk aside so that my nipple popped out, and continued to draw.
‘Don’t you have a bit of detective work for me?’
‘What?’ He looked up and then his expression cleared. ‘Ah yes! Of course. Yes, you must do something for me. Olga’s portrait has been stolen. She’s – oh, you know how it is – she thinks I gave it away, or lost it, or something. She’s gone to her friend in the country and won’t come home until I have it back. As proof that I love her.’ He waved his pipe in a dismissive ‘and all of that sort of thing’ gesture.
‘What does the painting look like?’
‘Like Olga, by Picasso.’ He kept drawing, as though that was enough.
‘I’ve never met Olga.’
‘Haven’t you? No. So. It’s . . .’ He frowned, then flipped to a new piece of paper and began to draw. ‘It looks like this.’ An elegant woman emerged on the page, with dark hair and an arresting gaze, long limbs gracefully draped over the divan she sat on – probably the one I was draped over now. Pablo jumped up and grabbed some chalks and sketched in the colours as well, blue and violet with mad splashes of vibrant yellow. He gazed at it critically, then ripped it out of his book and gave it to me. He must have trusted me, to hand over such a valuable sketch without a second glance.
‘That’s a fair imitation of my own work.’
‘How big is it?’
‘Just small.’ He indicated with his hands a canvas as big as his head and shoulders. ‘It was a present, when she told me she was pregnant. That’s why it’s so important to her.’ He shrugged, picked up his pencil and began to sketch me again. He gently pushed me back into my postcoital position.
‘When did it go missing?’
‘We discovered it was missing yesterday morning. We’d had a few people over on Thursday, some rich people that Olga knows. Stupid, except that they like my work. We had the party, I worked on Friday and Saturday, I met you at the Rotonde . . . then when I tried to work on Sunday morning, Olga was crying and yelling at the maid, little Paulo was screaming, the house was in uproar. She left in a noisy huff yesterday morning, which is when I sent you the note.’ He looked at his sketch of me and nodded as if in approval. He closed his sketchbook.
‘So you need me to find it.’
‘In one of those rich houses.’
‘Why don’t you call the police?’
‘And let everyone know that my work can be easily stolen? Have those philistine Paris police sneer at me? No. You are much better placed to find it.’
‘Well, you’d better tell me who was at your party, then.’
As we dressed, he gave some names, some of which I recognised – ‘Tamara, Lydia, Michel, Leonid, Olga’s dancing friends, Igor of course, and Leon, Leon Bakst, I mean’ – and some I did not – ‘those two British, Olga’s cousin and her lover; some French duke; oh yes, Arkady Nikolaievitch, and his partner in crime, sorry, in art dealership, Pavel Arsenyevich, tiny little rat of a man; some pale wisp of a woman, Russian as well, I can’t remember her name.’
I wrote all the names down on a piece of paper that I salvaged from Picasso’s floor. When we were presentable to the outside world, he rang for the housekeeper.
‘Some coffee, Kangaroo. Now, Olga won’t return until you find that painting.’ He ran his fingers over my inner thigh. ‘When will you come back to pose for me again?’
As soon as possible, I suspected.
7
Crazy Blues
IT WAS CLOSE TO DUSK as I left Pablo’s studio. The sky had turned lilac and lemon, those delicate sunset colours that made Paris famous. Office workers were taking their shop girls for coffee, secretaries were being romanced by the fruit sellers on the corners, and booksellers chatted along the Seine. I loved walking through the streets at this time of day, as the city unwound from its anxieties and settled into being properly French. It was quite a walk to my little garret, but between the street scene and post-coital lassitude, I couldn’t manage more than a stroll.
‘Coo-ee!’
I whirled around. Who’d sent that Aussie bush call through the courting couples and denizens of dusk? It bounded off the French façades and half the pedestrians turned around. A tall dark woman, made taller by her mass of curly brown hair, parted the crowd and almost ran up to me.
‘Katie King!’
‘Maisie!’ I practically yelled.
My wonderful friend wrapped her arms around me and lifted me off the ground with her enthusiastic hug.
‘You know, the French all call me Kiki.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but you’ll always be Katie King Button to me.’
‘My Maisie George.’
‘The French call me Chevallier.’ She lifted up her hand to show the ring on her finger.
I clapped my hands together. ‘Married! Right – we need a café. You’re under strict orders to tell me everything.’
‘So the war finished and I was about to be shipped home and those Bluebirds were advertising for nurses in Paris, and I thought, why not?’
‘Those French Red Cross nurses are so sweet!’
A final ray of sunshine found us where we sat on the street, a firelight on the fake-marble tabletop and the unruly ends of Maisie’s hair.
‘So sweet. They even took me with my terrible French. Probably because there was so muc
h to do, with all the returned soldiers.’
‘Certainement.’
‘What? Oh, exactly. God, my French really needs work.’
‘But you have an excellent teacher, oui?’
‘Oh . . . oui,’ she blushed. ‘Raymond. Sorry, Ray-Mon, as it is in French. He grew up in Senegal. The first thing he said when he saw me was, “You remind me of home.” He loves all this,’ she gestured vaguely to her body, ‘he says it reminds him of his first kiss. Can you imagine anyone saying that at home?’
‘Or in London. Or anywhere in the Empire.’
‘I know. I’m just a golliwog native to them. Even if Raymond did mistake me for jungle drums and bananas, still, it’s better than going back to Queensland and working as a maid.’
Maisie almost hadn’t been allowed to nurse in the war, despite her years of experience nursing on the North Queensland coast. She went to five different recruitment offices, working her way down Queensland’s seaboard, but no one let her join up. She finally enlisted in London with me; her journey to the frontline is as much testament to her stellar qualities as her work ethic and sunny nature. At home, if people had seen us sitting together at a café, they’d have hissed ‘touch of the tar’ as they walked by. But in Paris none of the people who walked past, richly dressed or in their stained overalls, young flappers or white-haired old men, looked twice at her, or at us together. We belonged as much as anyone.
‘I’m free here, Katie. I could be partly Spanish, or Italian, a bit Moroccan, no one cares . . . I could even be myself.’
I squeezed her hand.
‘The world’s changing, Katie.’
‘And Paris is leading the way.’
‘About time too.’
‘That calls for a drink.’
‘About time too!’ Maisie leant back and let out her enormous hooting laugh. I loved the way her smile spread right across her face, her hair bouncing out of its set, her eyes crinkling. She picked up her glass of rosé in one large, capable hand and clinked mine.
‘And how do the other Chevalliers like you?’
‘They’re all still back in Senegal. We haven’t met yet. Ray can’t get enough of me. Never could. He lay there on the hospital bed, leg bandaged and unable to move, trying to hook me into chatting by using everything he knew from Diggers he’d met on leave.’ She started to laugh again. ‘The way he says “G’day mate” and “Strewth!”’ She imitated her husband, his soft French vowels and pouted lips, until she was giggling too much. She shook her head. ‘Anyway, he thinks that my, what does he call it, my “exotic looks”, will improve his chances at the foreign office.’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Maise, you’ve landed on your feet!’
‘Don’t I know it. Now you, missy, what on God’s green are you doing back here? And why didn’t you write and tell me? Although you never were the best correspondent . . .’
Over another glass of rosé, and delicious vegetable soup with freshly baked baguettes, and soft little cherry pastries to finish, I told her all about my job as a gossip columnist, Picasso, Bertie and Tom-Tom. She clapped and laughed exactly on cue, until she frowned.
‘And?’
‘What do you mean, “and”? That’s my life.’
‘You’re holding back. There’s some . . . shadow across your face. Is everything really so rosy?’
What could I say? I’d had no intention of telling her about Fox. Fox was like a rumour: the more I mentioned him, the more real he became. Right now, I was happy to keep him as a voice at the end of the receiver.
Maisie cut up the last pastry, ate one bite and pushed the rest towards me. ‘If you don’t tell me, Katie, I’ll just winkle it out of you.’
‘You wouldn’t—’
‘I would, because you need me to. How much better was it after you told me all about your Tom fella? You were a snivelling wreck, dripping rain onto your uniform when you came back from Paris that time.’
That time when I’d fed Tom and dressed his wounds, when I’d given him a fake limp and a fake pass home, and I’d come back to camp, worked a double shift, then almost collapsed in the tent I shared with Maisie. I’d forgotten to eat, of course, but afterwards I remembered my appetite. Yes, it was much better after I’d unburdened myself.
‘You can certainly keep a secret, Maise.’
‘So can you. Just not from me. Madam!’ She called for some tea, with milk, ‘English style’.
‘So, what is it?’
‘Do you remember Dr Fox?’
‘What, the khaki Svengali? I’ll never forget how he leered at you over the operating table. Somehow it made his handsome face look sinister.’ She gasped. ‘Don’t tell me he’s tracked you down!’
I poured the tea and breathed in the sweet, spicy scent of it. ‘He isn’t called Fox for nothing.’
‘Oh, Katie, you only just managed not to marry him! How did he find you?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me. He contacted me through Bertie. Let’s hope he hasn’t been following you as well.’
‘He won’t have,’ Maisie scoffed. ‘He may be wily but he’d never pay attention to a brown girl. He never even saw me. You were the only woman that existed for him.’
‘It seems that some things never change.’
We drank that pot and another as I went through what Fox had said. I hadn’t thought how much it would strengthen me to tell a good woman like Maisie my fears. I hadn’t realised how much I needed a friend here in Paris. The streets were kind, the artists were kinder, but Maisie was a piece of home.
She reached over and took both of my hands. ‘Anything you need, anything at all, just call, or call over. And Ray, you know . . . he loves a bit of intrigue.’
‘He wouldn’t like this.’
‘He doesn’t need to know everything.’ She winked.
MY LIFE HAD CHANGED so much in the last forty-eight hours that an anchor like Maisie was heaven-sent. With her at my back (and my side, and in front if need be) I could take up my new role as gossiping spy-detective with only the slightest of qualms.
I lay on my bed, smoking a cigarette before getting ready for tonight’s party. How much better was it to go into these gilded cages as a detective? I hated to admit it, but how much better again to be there as a spy? I couldn’t help going over Fox’s coded instructions. I held the mission in my hand.
Tender is the night and he cannot see what flowers are at his feet. His plaintive anthem fades, his high requiem becomes a sod. The murmurous haunt of flies treads him down. The faery lands are too forlorn and the word will toll him back from thee to my sole self.
Why is the night tender? Tender, soft, soft-hearted, sentimental, loving, affectionate – there had to be a synonym that would make sense. Was it tender like meat was tender? Or was it a business proposition, a tender for a contract? Was night how I was contracted to find this person for Fox? Was it a multiple play on words – something to do with my feminine softness, his soft-headedness or sentimentality, my ‘tender’ for this man’s deliverance and Fox’s feeling for me? That would be just like Fox, to put all of those ideas in the one phrase, including the little ‘love note’, and make me work it out.
The Parisian sparrows hopped and chatted around my geraniums on the windowsill. He cannot see what flowers are at his feet – was that an allusion to his grave? Was I supposed to kill this man? No – the word will toll him back from thee to my sole self – Fox clearly wanted this man delivered. I knew from experience that he hated DOAs. If someone was going to die, then he had to see it happen, on the operating table, on the ward or in the field. No, these flowers – fleurs-de-lis? Was he French? No, that wouldn’t make sense with all those references to the war and Germany through Mr Berlin. Maybe it had something to do with blindness – and muteness, as his plaintive anthem fades, his high requiem becomes a sod – the Keats poem is ‘become a sod’, a nothing, it suits the sod. But a sod is also a reference to a grave—
I pulled my blanket over my shoulders. I would not become an a
ssassin. A spy, it seemed, couldn’t be helped. But I wouldn’t do more . . . I had done more, of course. Hadn’t we all, all of us who’d been in that dreadful war?
I folded up the note and put it in my handbag, and with it tried to put away memories of blood spilled in the dark and lonely cries for mother. The sky was relaxing into twilight, the birds had flown to their evening perches and the night reached its purple fingers into my little studio. I lit the candles in their wine bottles.
Fox had made it clear that he could always find me. The thought gave me leaden-eyed despair and something else, a feeling of flight, a sense of midnight on viewless wings. I dragged deeply on my cigarette. A sparrow cheeped from behind the flowerpot and fluffed its feathers in sleep. I finally had a moment to myself and I had to admit: the mission excited me. In a world where I was just a blonde, a gossip, a little woman, Fox’s enticements were irresistible. Despite the drawbacks. Or perhaps because of them – the secrecy, the risk, even the telephone calls with Fox himself. I hated that he knew what I liked, but how could I be other than myself? And yet, how could I let myself be chained to him again? I had fought so hard to be here, to be away from the marriage market and all the traps of family (especially of my family), to be mistress of my own time, my own body, my own mind.
But I was – of course – I was! Was there a uniform? Were there orders? Were there shifts and supervising matrons? Yes, there was blackmail, a nasty little thorn – he couldn’t do without power completely. But there was also banter, a playfulness, and that little vocal wobble. He wanted me; no, he needed me. His need gave me some power. The handkerchief showed that Tom could be freed from the charges, so really, even the blackmail gave me hope. And the final thing: my life was more exciting with this mission – I was enjoying myself. That enjoyment itself was freedom.
The lights across the city sat up and blinked, yellow and white in the deepening violet. It was almost as though they heard me. It was almost as though the street hawkers selling frittes heard me, the prostitutes and dancers who lounged in doorways heard me and cheered. What else could freedom be, but Paris in springtime? We all had to work, we all had to stoop to sell what we had – but if you did it willingly, what more could there be?