April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  ‘So he isn’t all evil, then.’

  ‘He smiled too, a proper smile. That was the true end of the war for me. I felt human again, I could taste the roast goose and chocolate mousse he served. It tasted . . . you know, with the texture of the mousse on my tongue, soft and creamy and rich, I came back to life. You know the feeling—’

  ‘Oh yes. You can hear again. Your days come back into focus.’

  ‘Exactly! When the war was like a nightmare and you realise that you are alive, that you made it. I understood who I was suddenly, I felt the power and strength in my body and knew it was mine – not his, not the army’s, not the nursing corps’s – just mine. After the dinner there was a small star shower and we watched the white flashes from the window seat in his library. Then he wound his arm around my waist and kissed me.’

  ‘Doctors and nurses.’ He grinned. ‘You wouldn’t be the first.’

  ‘Master and slave, more like. But it was such a kiss! Firm grip and feather-light lips, passion and restraint – he was clearly very experienced. As I regained my breath he whispered that I would stay the night.’

  ‘Did he now.’ Bertie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Quite. That was his mistake. If he’d asked, or even if he’d said nothing and kept kissing me, everything might have happened as he’d planned. But that order – it was an alarm bell through that fairy tale of good food and perfect manners. I remembered, in a flash, one dark pre-dawn when I’d washed a young man’s teeth through the wound in his face, blood and saliva dripping through the flap as he groaned. We were by the side of the road at the end of some failed mission – Fox had sent him to do the work and then sent me to clean up. I’d said to myself then – no, I’d promised myself – “No more orders, Katherine King Button. Once you remove this uniform, you will never take orders again.” And he ordered me.’ I shrugged. ‘He was so shocked when I said “No” that he simply watched me walk out the door and take his car, all the way back to London.’

  ‘And now he wants you back.’

  ‘According to him, I never properly left. I just took a little holiday.’

  Bertie frowned and swirled the water. ‘Kiki . . . do you think he loves you?’

  I laughed and it sounded harsh as it bounced off the tiles. ‘He doesn’t know what love is.’

  ‘Do any of us?’

  ‘Bertie.’

  When he looked up, his expression was almost sad.

  ‘Bertie, you survived. There’s no shame in that.’

  ‘I know . . .’

  ‘You are made for love. You’ll find it again – but probably not with the porter.’

  ‘No, probably not.’ He smiled. ‘Or with an ex-nurse spy detective gossip columnist.’

  I stroked his face. He took my hand and kissed my palm.

  ‘You’ll always have my love, Bertie Browne.’

  He breathed in the scented steam and sighed. There was no need for him to avow his love for me.

  ‘But Bertie, this water is getting cold and I’m hungry. Let’s eat.’

  ‘And gossip.’

  ‘I’ll swap French dukes for German rumours.’

  ‘Deal. Speaking of food, our breakfast should have arrived by now . . .’

  Over crisp croissants and bowls of milky coffee, I filled him in on all the people I’d met last night. We sat at the window, golden curtains pulled back to reveal the bustle of Place Vendôme, the room high-ceilinged and flush with pale light. Our chairs were soft and striped and right next to each other, and he touched my knee or hand or foot as we talked. He laughed and smiled on cue, without fail. This was the comfort of the body and he seemed to need me as much as I needed him. Was he lonely? I knew how a full bed could be a symptom of an empty heart. He missed me in London, certainly, he’d told me more than once. But there was something else underneath this gossip.

  I poured him more coffee and decorated the saucer with a flower from the vase on the table.

  ‘Why, thank you, Kiki.’

  ‘What else is going on?’

  ‘Else?’

  ‘There’s something more. I can sense it. Gulp your coffee for fortification and tell me what it is.’

  ‘It’s nothing really,’ but he gulped his coffee just the same. ‘It’s just . . . these businessmen keep mentioning the name of Hausmann.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s Teddy’s surname – Hamilton, my latest paramour – or at least, the German version of it.’

  ‘Your new boy is mixed up in this?’

  ‘No! Well . . . I don’t think so. They never said “Edward Houseman” or even “Hamilton Houseman”, and the man they spoke of was definitely German.’

  ‘What did they say about this Hausmann?’

  ‘Well, that’s the funny thing. Some of them thought he was a rabble-rouser, some kind of agitator. Others thought he was a salesman. At one dinner there was quite an argument – was Hausmann a Bolshevik or a businessman? Whatever he is, he’s been busy.’

  ‘Does this sound like your Teddy?’

  ‘Not at all. I rang his father’s house, just to check, but he acted just like the silly boy I picked up in Soho last month.’ He fidgeted with his coffee cup.

  ‘So why are you wary, Bertie?’

  ‘I’m not really, I just . . .’

  ‘Bertie . . .’ I used my warning tone.

  Bertie grinned. ‘Yes, yes, all right Kiki. I’m wary in case anyone has seen us together. You know men like me always have to be suspicious on that count—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I remember that Teddy had said his family used to be German, but I can’t remember if that was one generation ago or several. It was one of the reasons Teddy waited to be called up instead of volunteering – that, and the fact that he was only a child.’

  ‘What else was said about this Hausmann?’

  ‘What we discussed around those dinner tables were German politics – the uprisings and their consequences, the Communists, the Brownshirts—’

  ‘The Brownshirts?’ My ears pricked up.

  ‘Yes, they were called the Freikorps last year, during the Kapp Putsch, but officially they’ve been disbanded. Unofficially . . .’ Bertie gave a mock shiver. ‘Most of the businessmen I spoke to seemed to support the Brownshirts in some way or another. There was a lot of ridiculous talk about Jewish Bolshevism and the Red Menace as a threat to business. The Brownshirts are meant to stop all of that.’

  ‘What, Jewishness or Bolshevism?’

  ‘Both – ha! No, the Bolshevism part – I assume – in the minds of these businessmen, they’re connected.’

  ‘Who are the Brownshirts, exactly?’

  ‘Exactly? The reports say that they’re old soldiers who can’t accept that Germany lost the war.’

  ‘And your Teddy . . . does he still have family in Germany?’

  Bertie shrugged and looked dejected.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘it’s not impossible that he, or someone in his family, would support the Brownshirts?’

  ‘After the war, is anything truly impossible?’ Bertie sighed. ‘His people are old Junkers, so who knows what connections they still have to Prussia. I’ll have to keep digging. I may even have to introduce myself to his father.’ He gave me the look he gave when he had to go over the top, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, mock shock mixed with real fear.

  I squeezed his hand. ‘Bertie, be careful.’

  ‘Anything for you, Kiki.’

  The light from the window, soft and white, lit up every hard-earned line on his forehead. He could’ve looked like such a boy with his lanky limbs and his features too big for his narrow face. But his skin was taut over the jawbone and the line of his lips was set. He was only thirty but had seen too much to ever truly be young again.

  ‘Anything but jail, Bertie.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. My green carnation is hidden away, pressed between my passport and my reporter’s card. Now, I have to go back to London today—’

  ‘Boo.’

>   ‘And hiss. But we’ll keep in touch via telegram and telephone and other modern inventions. Will you see me off at the station?’

  10

  A Night Out

  IN THE END I spent most of the day at the station: walking to and from the station, drinking coffee at the station cafés, and reading station newspapers.

  Bertie and I had a long, warm goodbye, as only we could. I’d miss the food – whenever I was with him, I was relaxed enough to eat a proper meal. I’d miss his company – but it was just like the war, always saying goodbye. Except, somehow, this was harder than the war. Bertie looked pinched and anxious as I saw him into his carriage, a look that corresponded to the tightness in my own stomach.

  ‘Don’t forget me, Kiki.’

  ‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’

  ‘I just have a bad feeling, some presentiment of doom.’

  ‘Then book your passage back as soon as you reach Victoria.’

  He sighed and visibly unwound. ‘Yes, I will. A few weeks – no, days – and we’ll be in the cafés again.’

  I walked back to my garret to change my clothes. In a week of troubles, Bertie’s words occupied me all the way home. Did we need each other so much that we couldn’t say goodbye? We weren’t really missing each other, I didn’t think – so what were we missing that the other filled? But as soon as I started to think of all the holes in our lives, the dead rose up and marched over the cobblestones, staring from their broken faces. I had to stop and hide in a drink before I even reached the studio. The purple winked at the brim and I forced myself, with every sip, not to feel forlorn. I needed Bertie and he needed me. Why that was so was not something I could think about.

  But I could think about Tom. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tom. I dressed carefully, in my peacock blue outfit, with matching blue camiknickers and my favourite star-patterned shoes, brushing my hair and applying my red lipstick with luxuriant excess – I wanted to look brilliant, delicious, divine. I even tidied my little flat in order not to be early to the station, but I was early anyway. I was standing by the newsagent to buy a paper when a paperboy ran up to me.

  ‘Mademoiselle, you must buy this paper.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I want—’

  ‘No, you must, you must!’ His face looked pained. Other men tried to buy a paper from him and he just shoved copies in their hands without looking at the change they gave him. One particular copy he held out to me.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

  ‘Please, mademoiselle. This paper.’

  When I took it from his ink-stained fingers I noticed the withered hand on his other arm. He saw me notice and ran off. I had that familiar jolt: I was being followed, by Fox almost certainly. I would have to pay closer attention.

  I sat at a café, perched on a stool at the end of the bar, with a Florentine and coffee. The bustle of the platforms was mirrored by the bustle inside, the glass walls of the café showing every train, the door open to let in every announcement. I broke the almond flakes off the Florentine one by one, placing each on my tongue and letting the caramel dissolve in my mouth. Fox must have organised for this particular paper to be put into my hands. If so, then there was a clue inside. Would it be in an article? A classified advertisement? A personal message? I didn’t want to read through the whole paper, I was far too distracted with thoughts of Tom-Tom. I glanced at the station clock: 7.05. Did Tom have a hotel? Would he expect to stay in my tiny, ill-equipped flat? Was my hair neat? Was I too thin from living on cocktails and kisses? I worried over every tiny thing that I usually couldn’t give two hoots about – well, maybe one hoot, but certainly not two. 7.10: the wait was excruciating. I forced my attention back to the newspaper, just for some relief.

  It was on the third page, inserted next to articles about European politics. It almost fell on the floor – a photo. It was a group shot of several British Army officers, not posed or formal but all laughing, as though at a joke someone had told. The photo was clearly from the war as right in the centre, in nurse’s uniform, was me. Next to me, standing straight, barely smiling and looking straight at the camera, was Fox.

  It made me feel sick to see him, as though my memory had suddenly taken physical form. He stood at ease, hands behind his back, legs apart. He was slightly taller than me and it was clear that under his jacket he was strong. His stare seemed to bore into me, as though he knew this photo would be a missive to the future. He had sent this image as a reminder: here you are, Vixen, next to me, where you belong. I looked around at the station café, all happy chatter and scents of smoke and coffee. I couldn’t shy away now. I took a deep breath and steeled myself to look at the photo more closely.

  I didn’t remember it being taken and I barely knew any of the men gathered around me. Was this a ward of convalescent men? Three men were total strangers, darkish hair and even features, smaller than Fox, clearly enjoying the joke. One dark-haired man I remembered, with a shock, dying quickly and noisily in my arms. Another man looked very much like Hugh Fernly-Whiting. He was standing next to a very pale, thin man whose smile was more like a sneer.

  I flipped the photo over. There was Fox’s handwriting, in a single line: Hungry generations tread thee down . . . F to V.

  More Keats. But the line should read ‘No hungry generations tread thee down’ – if Fox had changed it to the positive, then this wasn’t about the war but about something new, a new hungry generation. I peered more closely at the man who, I was increasingly sure, was Hugh Fernly-Whiting. There was something about him that didn’t look right. He didn’t stand like the other officers, with their loose slouch, rolling cigarettes in one hand. He was too straight, straighter even than Fox, and he stood with his heels almost clicked together. Was he the mole? Had Fox just told me? I wanted to believe it, but it wasn’t his style to be so direct. Ferny was definitely part of . . . whatever it was, but only part. The other part must have to do with this meeting during the war. Would I have to follow Ferny to find out? What would Fox expect me to do, what had he trained me to assume? But my mind wouldn’t recall those months of subtle indoctrination. Instead, it focused on Fox, his face in the photo projecting memories – the way his silver hair shone under a full moon, his grey eyes with their turbulent expressions, his thin lips in a sneer. Those times when he scrubbed his arms until they bled. Those times when, too tense to sleep himself, he would sit by my cot when Maisie was away and watch me as I slept.

  I tucked the photo into my handbag and scanned the pages it had been inserted between – its placement would not be a coincidence. An article about Germany caught my eye.

  The uprisings in Saxony last month brought the German government to its knees. All industry in Mansfeld has stopped and there is no coal for the entire north-east. President Ebert says he is negotiating with the strikers for a swift resolution. Meanwhile, inflation of the Mark gallops ahead. If it continues at this rate, the paper won’t be worth the ink. Leader of the recent strikes, Mr Hausmann, said they would bring down the government if they had to, they would get what they needed for the workers . . .

  Hausmann – I paid attention to that name. I took down the name of the reporter. Michel Martin would get a little visit from me in the next few days. I needed to know what he’d seen. And I needed a photo from Bertie of his latest Teddy.

  A train whistle blew loudly and there was commotion outside. The Blue Train from Calais had come in. I ripped the article from the paper and stuffed it into my purse along with Fox’s photo, then ran out to the platform to wait with the others.

  I saw him as soon as he got out of the carriage. He was a head taller than everyone else, his hat jaunty over his eyes. He looked around at the station as he walked slowly towards the concourse. I could almost see him remember when he was last here, with me, in that cold November. I saw him straighten up; he wasn’t in uniform now, no khaki or grey, no pips or puttees in sight. He was in a navy suit with a wide lapel, with just the sweet sounds of Paris and me.

>   I was too excited to wave. He caught my eye and grinned, now a little boy, now a dingo. He stepped up the pace and almost ran towards me.

  ‘Tom-Tom—’ But he picked me up before I could finish. With his arm around my waist, he lifted me high, looking up at me like I was a star as he whisked me around. I wanted to laugh but I was almost too full of laughter, it caught in my throat. He dropped his bag and held me tight against him, his face buried in my collar, my feet not quite touching the ground.

  ‘Button.’ He said it over and over. I closed my eyes and breathed him in – tobacco, train dust, the wool of his suit, soap, and his smell underneath it all. He smelt like home. Finally, he let me go, and I saw that his eyes were as misty as mine. I laughed then, both of us so silly to be overwhelmed.

  ‘Oh, my lucky Tombola—’

  ‘Button.’

  ‘Picking me up with one arm, really! What have you been doing, shearing sheep?’

  ‘Maybe, or maybe you’ve just danced yourself into a skeleton.’ He pinched playfully at my elbow and ribs.

  ‘Hey! . . . Actually that’s not too far off the mark.’

  ‘Then it’s time I fed you proper food – roast lamb and potatoes and scones and custard—’

  ‘Oh, not custard!’

  He laughed, he knew how much I hated it.

  ‘I’m sophisticated now, Tom!’

  ‘And Yorkshire pudding and corned-beef sandwiches and rock cakes—’

  ‘Stop!’

  ‘And jam toast and bananas and beer—’

  I couldn’t stop laughing and he couldn’t stop grinning; he couldn’t take his hands from my waist or his eyes from my face. He looked me over, from hair to skin to shoes. I returned his gaze and his touch to the waist. I felt his muscles twitch and tense through the suit. Everything about him was big and strong. It spoke of sunshine on paddocks and country cricket and sailing round Sydney Harbour in his uncle’s dinghy. His eyes, a deep dark blue, were the endless sky of home. If I was ever homesick, then he was all I needed to be content.