April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  ‘You can talk to us here and get this over with, or you can come with us to the little farmhouse owned by . . . who again?’

  ‘My lover’s cousin, or some such,’ growled the driver.

  I twisted around to try and find a street sign or a landmark, though I didn’t need to – we were driving out of Paris. Soon we’d be too far out of Paris for help.

  We turned a corner into a busier street. The driver had mentioned Fox but I was in no position to interrogate him. Horns tooted and people laughed in their Saturday night finery. Umbrellas popped up, red, black, white, like flowers, in the rain that had started to fall. I shivered. Reflected light shimmered in the newly slick roads. Our driver cursed, wrangling the gearstick and the steering wheel over the slippery tarmac. My attacker pinched my tender upper thigh and laughed softly as I squirmed.

  ‘You know, Fern,’ he said – I gasped, Fern was the driver! – but Fern was too preoccupied with the cranky old vehicle to notice that his cover was blown, ‘I think I will wait until the farmhouse. I’m enjoying this too much to waste it all in the back of this taxi.’

  ‘This fucking taxi,’ Fern swore in English and ground the gears.

  The other traffic made a swishing noise in the rain. My attacker squished my face and gave it a little pat. I was quiet and still and he must have assumed I’d been scared into submission, as he leant forward, reached into his pocket and brought out his cigarettes, shaking the packet and leaning forward to take one with his lips.

  The taxi growled and stalled – this tiny moment of pause was my only chance. As the taxi jumped back into the traffic, I kicked my attacker, bracing my body against the seat for maximum force. My heel hit something soft and he jerked forward into Fern, gasping and choking. His fall pushed Fern into the steering wheel, where his mask smashed into his face. The taxi swerved wildly and clipped an oncoming truck, which then slid sideways back into us, covering the road, the bonnet, our front seat with cabbages. Those vegetables were a lethal weapon as they smashed the windows, and Fern and my attacker yelled as the cabbages hit their fragile masks.

  I gripped the door handle and pushed down as hard as I could, falling out of the seat and onto the road in my haste. My attacker grabbed for me weakly but he couldn’t breathe – I must have hit his diaphragm, and hard. I slid and slipped like a drunk, climbing over smashed glass and cabbage leaves, desperate to get away as fast and as far as I could. I bolted across the road and was almost hit by a car, the yells following me onto the footpath. I looked back – the truck driver was shaking Fern and my attacker was trying to follow me through the suddenly fast traffic, bent over and clutching his stomach.

  I couldn’t run, bound and in heels; I had to hide until they gave up and went away.

  A young woman grinned at me from a doorway. ‘Did he hurt you, love?’ she asked. Her voice was gravelly with cigarettes.

  I nodded.

  ‘In here, then.’ She jerked her head and I slipped behind her.

  The room was lit only with a few candles, a soft glow that couldn’t hide the stained sheets, the bare wood floors, the grubby Madonna on the wall. There was a mirror at hip height and a wash basin in the corner. I’d been inside brothels – some men liked to think they could shock me with a few feathered women of the night, to say nothing of Fox – but none quite as sad and cold as this. Her voice said she was forty but she looked only seventeen. I sat on the bed and listened hard while my rescuer stood guard at the door, business as usual. The commotion went on; the truck driver, Fern and my attacker all yelling and grinding glass underfoot. The rain swished and swirled. I got my breath back, ragged and painful. I could feel all the bruises along my thighs, the cut in my mouth, the grazes stinging on my elbows and shoulders where I’d fallen on the road. I no longer had my bag – I panicked, but thankfully no, I’d left all the notes at home after I left with Bertie. Bertie! I had to get back to him. I mentally checked, yes, I had pinned a twenty franc note to my knickers earlier that evening. Always a good idea before an adventure.

  The rain relaxed a moment, took a deep breath, then came back harder. People ran from the street. My saviour sighed.

  ‘No one’s going to walk past in this weather. May as well take a break.’

  ‘Is everyone—’

  ‘Yes, love, your nasty john’s run away. Only the cabbages are left. Speaking of, hold on a tick.’ She ran out and returned moments later with her arms full of dirty, battered vegetables.

  ‘Nothing a bit of water won’t fix.’ She dumped the cabbages in the corner and looked at me, head cocked to one side. ‘You are in a fix.’

  ‘Do you think you could untie me?’

  ‘What? Oh! Of course. Do you want to keep the tie?’

  ‘No! God no—’

  ‘But it’s a lovely silk stocking – look!’ She held up the end of my bind.

  ‘You keep it, if you can, but be quick – I have to go.’

  ‘Your pimp expects you back, does he? And without payment too – that’s too bad. I’d give you something but it’s been slow tonight, hardly a soul wandering lost and needing love – ah! Not even a ladder! Are you sure you don’t want it?’

  I could have hugged her for her workaday assumptions.

  ‘Positive. What can I give you?’

  ‘Give me? Don’t be silly. We’re in this together – although, if you know a comfortable place, with a bit of class, you know, maybe put in a good word for me. I’m Rosie, do everything and everyone, plenty of experience, specialise in playing the schoolgirl.’ Up close, I could see the lines around her eyes, two missing teeth, the grey roots of her hair.

  ‘By the way, where are we?’

  ‘We’re in rue Choron,’ she said. ‘Taxis over there. Ask for Bruiser. He’ll look after you.’

  Bruiser was a hulking man with hair on his knuckles and a witty sideline in grunts. He looked after me by asking no questions, just handing me a towel to sit on and taking off into the traffic. I was going back to the Exchange bar, much as I hated to, in the wild hope that Bertie would still be there. I found the note in my knickers, a bit sodden but still legal tender.

  Fern had been the driver. He’d kidnapped me; he and his accomplice had been going to torture me. They clearly didn’t care if Bertie was alive or dead. How had they known where I was? Who else was looking for Fern? Had Fern been betrayed by someone other than Violet? Had I been betrayed?

  I barely had time to go over what I knew before the taxi drew up at the alley. Bruiser waited but kept his dark, beady eyes on me as I wobbled, sodden and sore, down the cobbles. The bar door was almost hidden in the drizzling dark. I wanted to call out to Bertie but I didn’t want to attract any attention. It was too dark to stay silent, but in the end I didn’t have to.

  ‘Stretcher bearer!’ Bertie yelled from a pile of rubbish. I ran to him as his unusually harsh voice chilled me through.

  ‘Stretcher bearer!’ He flung out an arm.

  ‘Bertie, it’s me—’

  ‘Nurse, nurse, they’re over there, the lads—’

  ‘Bertie—’

  ‘All six of them, in the wire—’

  ‘Bertie, we’re in Paris—’

  ‘Nurse, why are you here, where’s the stretcher bearer? Stretcher bearer!’ His eyes were glassy, as unhinged as his voice.

  ‘Bertie, it’s Kiki, it’s 1921, the war’s over, here we are, come on now, Bertie—’ Over and over I murmured reassurances to him, trying to bring him back to now. I patted him gently on his arm, careful not to shock him. Eventually he lost momentum, sighed, closed his eyes and sank back onto the boxes of rubbish. He was very pale and wet, with a huge red gash across his forehead.

  ‘Bertie,’ I said softly.

  His eyes clicked open and he stared at me. ‘Oh – Kiki . . .’ He started to cry. Huge rolling sobs shook his body, a high whine dying in his throat before it could become a proper wail. This was worse, really, than the pinches and slaps, than being kidnapped by the enemy. I could do nothing but wait for Be
rtie to recover from his nightmare.

  ‘Kiki – what happened?’

  ‘Hell’s bells and mademoiselles,’ I said. ‘Come on, Bruiser’s waiting for us.’

  ‘Bruiser?’ he hiccoughed. ‘Haven’t we had enough of that?’

  Bruiser charged me an arm and a leg, and almost a kiss as well, for the wet ride back to the Ritz. Bertie shivered all the way and I joined him. We stumbled upstairs to his room, doing our best to avoid the concierge and any mentions of the police. We ran a bath as a first priority and called for room service.

  ‘A whole bottle of cognac or just half?’ Bertie called through the door.

  ‘Do you even need to ask?’

  ‘Sorry, still not quite myself yet – yes, hello, and coffee, and biscuits, and an extra bathrobe, and . . .’

  I stopped listening to his list as I lowered myself gingerly into the water. I cursed as little pink tendrils wound up to the surface from cuts I couldn’t see.

  ‘Christ on a bike – Kiki! What happened to you?’

  ‘The same as what happened to you, but without the blackout.’ I swished away the stained water before Bertie could comment on that too. ‘Our attackers were the mole and his accomplice.’

  As Bertie got in the bath with me I went over everything that had happened. Except, of course, for his nightmare. He didn’t ask but I could tell it was with him still: he’d abandoned some of his dandyish grace for tension and precision. He was completely focused on my explanation, not even smiling at the cabbages and silk stocking banter, much as I tried to make it a joke. Perhaps that made it worse – it did for me, as his concentration made me see how very close we’d been to disaster.

  ‘So if you know a classy joint for the gap-toothed Rosie—’

  ‘I’ll ask my cousin. He likes to tread that line between ingénue and child.’ His quips were quick but his frown didn’t lift. ‘How did they know we were there?’

  ‘Either we were betrayed or Fern was betrayed—’

  ‘Well, we know Fern was betrayed: we betrayed him.’

  ‘But he must have set a trap for someone, us or his betrayer, laid false clues, a little path of red herrings that we waltzed down—’

  ‘Ran down, more like it.’ There was a knock at the door as our food arrived and Bertie pushed himself out of the bath. ‘I pity his betrayer. He’ll probably end up in that farmhouse with Mr Pinchy.’

  ‘Or she,’ I said and froze. Was it a she or a he? Was it Violet or Lazarev? The initial clue of ‘the exchange’ came from the notebooks, which Fern must know could only have come via Violet. But it was Lazarev who pointed me towards the bar where Fern was waiting. Was Lazarev working with Fern? That couldn’t be – Lazarev hated anything German – but why had he sent me to the Exchange bar? But whether he was just an exiled aristocrat or something more, from Bertie’s bath I had no way of knowing. I could know, however, that Violet was in trouble. I had to protect her. My muscles protested as I pulled them out of the bath and ran in to Bertie.

  ‘Look at this spread, Kiki! Not bad for a midnight feast.’

  ‘Bertie, we have to go—’

  ‘But the cognac—’

  ‘My source – Fern’s lover, Violet – she’s in danger. He will have worked out who betrayed him and I’m the only one who can tell her.’ I scrambled for my sodden clothes as I spoke, trying to untangle the wet mess of silk and stocking.

  ‘Kiki, you’re naked and I’m hungry—’

  ‘We have to go and get her—’

  ‘Can’t we send the telegram boy or something?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ My dress was like golden pulp in my hands. My arms shook from the very meagre effort it took to hold it, and my feet were still blue with cold. Bertie took the dress from me and replaced it with a very large cognac.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so . . .’

  ‘Excellent. I’ll summon my favourite telegram boy.’

  ‘Violet may even have a telephone in her building.’

  ‘There you go. And we have one here. Now, sit down, drink up, and we’ll sort this out in a civilised way.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Kiki,’ he put on his Captain Browne voice, ‘you cannot seriously think that, despite our near escape, the best thing to do is to rush off naked into another probable abduction. I got the bump on the head, not you.’

  ‘It looks nasty.’

  ‘As do the bruises blooming on your arms, my sweet.’

  ‘And my face?’

  ‘No . . . lucky. Still, all this happened, what, an hour ago? Is it likely that, after a car crash in a stolen taxi with an irate cabbage seller, the first thing Fern would do is torture his lover? If it was me, I’d lie low to pick the bits of papier-mâché mask out of the cuts in my face before I went anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, but not everyone is as well groomed as you.’

  ‘I should think not. Nonetheless, I insist you stay here. You can die another day, my darling. Now, where does she live?’

  HOW COULD I RECOVER from such an episode? In the war I used to go straight back on the wards and let the adrenaline fuel me through a long night of bedpans and pus, so by the time my shift finished I thought of nothing but sleep.

  Tonight Bertie wanted me to stay with him, in his bed, a glass of cognac in one hand and his body in the other. This was as much for his comfort as my safety, as I suspected he dreaded a return of his war nightmare and wanted a body to ward off the ghosts. But I couldn’t do it. We’d left Violet in a suite upstairs, tipsy and smiling at her imminent return to London and home. She wasn’t the only one who dreamt of home. Bertie was right in that Fern was unlikely to do anything tonight, and I needed my own bed, my own space, the view that emptied my heart of care and filled it with joy. It was worth putting my wet dress back on, heading back out into the rain, climbing up all those stairs to my little studio and busting the lock with one of Bertie’s tie pins. It was worth it to wash every cut slowly and in private, to wrap myself up in my silk kimono and indulge in a solitary smoke.

  I had made a mistake and it had cost me my cover. I had been too eager and almost lost my bodily integrity and my darling Bertie as well. I liked this work too much; I was losing my cool. Had Fern set a trap and caught me? Had Fox tipped him off to teach me a lesson? I needed more information before I could know any of that. And I needed sleep before anything.

  The lights of the city shimmied and twinkled through the rain. A last wisp of winter blew up from the street and wound around my bare feet. I shut my windows on the damp and the chill, on the paranoid double agents and violent men, on all the nonsense that threatened my place, my part, my peace in this city.

  21

  A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody

  THE BELLS THROUGH THE CITY PEALED, letting the sparrows know that believers attended Sunday mass. The air vibrated with the joyous, judgmental, dogmatic, divine sounds of a city-wide carillon. There was a knocking at my door, and my sleepy brain tried to make the door knocks part of the bells’ rolling rhythms. It couldn’t and the arrhythmic sounds prised me from sleep.

  ‘All right, all right, hold on!’ I called.

  The telegram boy was my only uninvited guest. Would he be here on a Sunday? It was the only service that this Catholic country would allow on the Sabbath – apart from the cafés and brothels, of course, which for some were essential after a long mass and longer family lunch. The knocks kept up as I tied my kimono around my waist, making sure the huge sleeves covered my bruises. I ached. Why didn’t the boy call through the door? He usually did; I was suddenly alert. Unless it wasn’t him, unless it was—

  I pulled open the door and was greeted by that dingo grin I adored.

  ‘Tom!’ He dropped his suitcase and I jumped into his arms. My aches were gone.

  ‘You don’t half keep a man waiting.’ His hug was fierce. I almost couldn’t speak for lack of breath.

  ‘It’s not usually a man I keep waiting, just the telegram boy,’ I said into his shoulder, ‘and with the tips I give, he can wait as
long as I please.’

  ‘Don’t get used to it.’

  ‘What, you turning up so early? I hope not. I’m not even dressed.’

  He let me down to my feet then, his smile softened, and he kept one arm around me as he stroked my hair out of my face. From the way he looked at me, I didn’t think he’d really heard what I said, or saw what I wore. Or perhaps it was the opposite, and he saw everything in an enchanted light, just as I saw that he had to tip his hat back on his head to fit in the tiny doorway. That he had dark circles under his eyes and his grey suit had a crumpled, slept-in look. The stubble on his neck prickled under my fingertips, but his monochrome wardrobe made his blue eyes dark and fathomless. What a word, ‘fathomless’, like a penny novelette for naughty schoolgirls – when it floated into my mind, I shook myself and smiled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I could hardly say that he made me feel like a naughty schoolgirl. ‘I’m just delighted that you’ve come for breakfast.’

  ‘Well, it’s gaining on midday, but I know that’s early—’

  ‘Abso-bloody-lutely. You’re straight from the train? Did you use your coat as a blanket last night? For Pete’s sake, come inside Tom-Tom, the ceiling isn’t that low.’

  ‘You don’t reckon?’ He took off his hat as he ducked inside. Even though he had to stoop to fit, he couldn’t stop grinning and neither could I.

  ‘Not if you sit down.’

  ‘Where? You haven’t a chair to hang your hat.’

  ‘That’s because there’s too great a risk a hat’d be sat on. I put hats on the floor and my bum on the windowsill.’ I pushed open the window and the sparrows immediately flew in and hopped about. Tom laughed. I grabbed my cigarettes and a glass of water, and sat on the windowsill, my feet dangling out.

  ‘Et voilà!’

  ‘Very pretty, Button.’ He sat down next to me.

  ‘You have to take your shoes off. Only bare feet may dangle into the street.’

  ‘Who made that rule?’ he said as he untied his laces.