April In Paris, 1921

by Tessa Lunney

  ‘But needs must.’ I shrugged. ‘Just leave the painting on the table and—’

  ‘Silly girl.’ Hausmann stood up. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘Quite. Action is always best.’ I prayed that my aim was as good as it used to be and I shot him.

  Pandemonium. The noise of the shot reverberated through the concrete and flimsy walls. Hausmann screamed, dropped his gun, dropped the painting and clutched at his bleeding right shoulder. I kicked the gun to Jean-Claude as Luc lunged for the painting. Fern yelled and struggled with Tom, who I feared was coming out rather the worse for not being armed. Hausmann growled, more angry than hurt; he lunged towards me and I fired another shot near his ear, deliberately missing him. With that, he ran, cursing me, Fern, Luc, France, the entire human race. We heard a door slam and his voice disappeared.

  I turned around and my heart sank. Tom had blood down his face and breathed heavily. Fern spat blood and looked sullen, his arms pinned back by Tom. Jean-Claude held the gun too shakily and too close to his head to be properly useful. Luc held the painting like he’d a rescued a child.

  ‘The betrayer is betrayed,’ rasped Luc. ‘Hausmann has abandoned you, Fern. I’m no poet but this is justice, no?’

  ‘Of a kind,’ I said. ‘Jean-Claude – it is Jean-Claude, isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Give the gun to Luc and get some rope. Fern has a few questions to answer.’

  ‘If you think I’ll talk for that pissant Fox—’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, sitting on the table to stop myself from shaking. ‘You’ll talk for me.’

  Fern laughed at that, but I just smiled sweetly. I could see Tom’s muscles quake with strain and I hoped that Jean-Claude hurried back.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ said Luc, ‘when I asked you to this meeting, I never meant—’

  ‘I know,’ I spoke to him in French. ‘But your group of Communists—’

  ‘Anarcho-Communists.’

  ‘—has been compromised. Fern and Hausmann are Brownshirts from Germany, and they’ve used you to further their own cause. Unsuccessfully, this time.’

  Luc let out a string of curses before he said, ‘But how could they pass our initiation?’

  ‘It was ludicrously easy.’ Fern spat on the floor.

  ‘They’re professionals,’ I shrugged. ‘There was probably nothing you could have done.’

  Luc scowled at Fern and kept a steady aim on him as Jean-Claude came back with the rope, and the three of us tied Fern to the chair. I checked my watch – 6.50 pm. We had just a few minutes before the pick-up.

  ‘Jean-Claude, you stole the painting from the Picassos.’

  He hung his head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For Luc . . .’

  ‘To further the cause,’ Luc cut in.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘To sell, to raise money.’

  ‘For what?’

  But neither Luc nor Jean-Claude answered. Fern smirked through his bruised face.

  ‘Fern didn’t tell you what for?’

  ‘They asked no questions, so I told them no lies.’ Fern was as smug as a man with a fat lip could be. ‘They assumed we were going to blow something up or some such prank.’

  Luc lifted his chin, proud and defiant. ‘The cause will triumph,’ he rasped. ‘Whatever setbacks, whatever traitors, whatever the world in its blindness—’

  ‘Oh shut up, you blithering fanatic,’ Fern resorted to English. ‘You’re as bad as the wartime demagogues.’

  ‘Luc, I think Jean-Claude needs a drink.’ I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘And your bottle is empty.’ The adrenaline had caught up with Jean-Claude and he shook all over, little trembles and jerks so that he had to lean against the sink to stay upright. I guessed that Luc also had no desire to stay here and be humiliated by Fern.

  ‘The painting belongs to Pablo,’ I said gently. ‘I’ll make sure it’s returned.’

  Luc pursed his lips but nodded. He spoke quickly to Jean-Claude in that same incomprehensible dialect and used the crank to wheel himself out of the room. Jean-Claude followed, only just managing to light a cigarette, refusing to look at me. He caught the handles of Luc’s chair by the door, but Luc stopped him.

  ‘Mademoiselle . . .’ Luc’s voice had almost disappeared.

  ‘It’s all forgotten,’ I said. ‘Give my regards to Marie – and to Céline.’

  We listened until the footsteps and squeak of wheels had faded away. I sat on the table, relieved to have some way to stop my legs from shaking – the adrenaline had caught up with me too. And with Tom, it seemed. He moved gingerly to the sink to splash his face, his body turned towards Fern the whole time.

  ‘As for fanatics,’ I said to Fern, ‘I don’t think you’re one to cast the first stone.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re—’

  ‘Oh, drop the mask, Fern, you’re going back to Fox. Whether you tell me or tell him, you’re going to talk, and I know who I’d rather talk to.’

  Fern’s fat lip curled. ‘You’re a feisty little vixen—’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  He sneered as much as his swelling face would allow. ‘Fox’s female counterpart – oh yes, we all knew about you. Fox was discreet but he couldn’t help showing you off. I’ve been on the watch for your . . . interference. I didn’t think I’d be so rewarded though. You walked into my trap.’

  ‘And walked out again. Who was your accomplice?’

  He just laughed. Tom was breathing heavily. I had to hurry.

  ‘Was it the German ambassador’s nephew?’

  Fern stopped laughing abruptly. Bingo. ‘Who told you that? Violet? That bitch, I’ll tear her apart—’

  ‘Now now, settle, petal.’ I kept the gun trained at his heaving chest. ‘It was Lazarev.’

  ‘The Russian? But . . .’ He looked shocked. So Lazarev had betrayed him too.

  ‘But?’

  But Fern just spat bloody saliva at me. I steadied my aim. Lazarev’s role in this business would not be forthcoming, but at the moment it wasn’t what I wanted to know.

  ‘Tell me, these Brownshirts, how did they recruit you?’

  I saw Tom tense in surprise. Fern sneered again; my guess was right.

  ‘Recruit? Like our industrious wartime employer, you mean? How did he “recruit” you – by a hospital bed? Or in a camp bed with your skirt around—’

  ‘Don’t argue with the woman with the gun,’ I said. ‘Answer the question, Fern.’

  ‘Fox trained you in banter too, I see.’ His black eye made him look more sinister. ‘Eddy – Teddy, as you called him; you must know one of his perverts – I’ve known from school. We were both disgusted with the war—’

  ‘Who wasn’t?’

  ‘Not enough people!’ He was vicious. ‘Too many just accepted it! The way we ripped our enemy to shreds, we left them with no honour, no dignity! I – we – have old family in Germany, boys I’d known since childhood, and then we killed them, just like the King and the Kaiser, we just . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘Like the King and the Kaiser – what, you killed your actual cousin?’

  ‘I couldn’t, in the end.’ His voice had softened; he was panting from pain and the strain of talking through the ropes around his chest. ‘Had him by the scruff of the neck, young Johann, a full decade younger than me, should’ve still been in school but of course they threw every last body into the frontline’s ravening maw . . . He was wounded, lying in the mud, I was mopping up . . . His big blue eyes looked up at me, afraid, then calm as he recognised me, then terrified as he realised what I was about to do to him . . . so I couldn’t, could I? That felt like murder – more than anything I did for Fox, that would’ve been a cold-blooded killing. I took him prisoner.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain how you came to join a group of German right-wing revolutionaries.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? I thought Fox said you were clever.’

  I just smiled. I’d thought Fox was clev
er, but he’d recruited this fragile turncoat – surely he’d have detected his fanatical strain? But then, Fern might have been different before; the war had done strange things to us all. The tap dripped, the drop in the concrete basin echoing in the still, dark of the factory, a timer, a metronome. Fern looked at me with his one good eye. If he was talking to me in the hope that Fox would be gentler with him, he didn’t let on. He spoke like someone who didn’t care who heard or what anyone thought of him. Like someone too in love with his high requiem to hear that his plaintive anthem fades.

  ‘I kept in contact with Johann. I visited him in Berlin. What a mess that city is – disgusting, worse than Paris. It struck me with force: order must be restored. Honour and dignity to Europe, so that no man will have died in vain. Our lot are too insular to do it, they just want to grow roses and mumble about the weather. The French are a bunch of whiny children, and the Italians are all hot air. The Germans are the only ones who know what’s what. I knew that as soon as I stepped into their meeting. When I saw Eddy . . . well, that clinched it.’

  ‘But why did you steal the painting?’

  ‘Money. Do you think a political revolution comes for free?’

  ‘But why steal a painting to sell? Why not rob a bank, or persuade businessmen of your righteous cause, or—’

  ‘Who says we aren’t doing those things? The theft was an opportunity. Lazarev knew men who’d buy a Picasso unseen—’

  ‘But Lazarev betrayed you.’

  He looked like he tried to shrug but he was tied up too tightly.

  ‘I came to Paris to recruit and find sponsors. There are plenty of proper men hidden among the feeble peacemakers. This Weimar government will collapse – Eddy will make sure of it – Germany will rise again, and here, in Paris, is where we need to till the ground for the second coming. And with dupes like Luc to help us . . . well, it’s too easy, really.’

  ‘Except that you’ve been caught.’

  ‘Do you think I’m the only one here?’

  There was a bang and strident footsteps. A voice barked, ‘Button!’

  Tom took the gun from me as I walked to the door.

  ‘Here,’ I called into the darkness.

  A huge man with dark hair and a smashed nose, just as Henri had described, bore down on me and shook my hand in his black leather glove.

  ‘Bacon,’ he said in a rough voice. ‘But call me Fry. Where’s the worm?’

  ‘He’s in here.’

  Fry was almost twice my size. He could hardly fit through the door.

  Fern looked up at him and laughed. ‘So you’re still his errand boy then, Fry?’ he said. ‘I knew it was a joke, when you turned up in Poland.’

  ‘Evening, Fern. You’re coming with me.’

  ‘How, may I ask?’ But Fry delivered such a smack to Fern’s face that he was knocked out. He then untied the ropes surprisingly quickly and hoicked Fern over his shoulder. For all his bile, Fern looked like a little boy, flopped over the large man’s back.

  Fry turned to me. ‘A message from Fox – tomorrow, midnight at the Rotonde.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘And this is your retainer.’

  ‘No, you’re mistaken, I’m not being retained.’

  ‘You are. Fox said to mention your “real” payment if you protested.’

  ‘What about my real payment? Is there more?’

  But he just shrugged and fished a cheque out of his back pocket for an amount that made me boggle. His footsteps rang as he left. Tom and I were alone, in the dank washroom with its dripping tap and naked bulb, in the dark factory haunted by its gutless bodies. I picked up the painting, took Tom’s hand and led him towards the streetlights.

  23

  After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It

  IT WASN’T LONG before my washbasin was pink with diluted blood. Tom was in a state and both of us were shaky. I forced him to strip down to his underwear so I could wash every cut and tend every bruise, so I could make sure no bones were broken, so he couldn’t act the hero and in doing so become ill. I washed his back along the lines of muscle, bone and scar; I knelt in front of him to clean his face; I pressed his legs and moved his arms to check their fitness. It was so intimate, but somehow beyond romantic. I was professional in my manner, gentle in my tone, and Tom was content to take instructions. He was content to watch me soak his grazes, to ice his bruises, to let my fingers search his body for pain. We barely spoke.

  But it was too chilly to remain undressed. We gathered up all my half-drunk wine bottles and sat, with our cigarettes, by the window. Tom had some ice in a tea towel for his jaw, a huge wadded bandage on a serious graze on his side, and his bare foot was elevated on a pile of coats.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We return the painting to Pablo tomorrow—’

  ‘No, I mean, right now.’

  ‘Nothing. It’s done.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘My mission from Fox was to find the mole and hand him over. My case from Pablo was to recover his painting. My payment from Fox – my real payment, not the cheque – was your incriminating letter via the careless, or devious, Bobsy.’

  ‘And your payment from Picasso?’

  I frowned. ‘You know, we never discussed it. These walls are pretty bare. A sketch would liven them up, don’t you think? Wait, I might have one somewhere . . .’

  ‘You undersell yourself.’

  ‘Goodwill is worth more than money. Besides, he might recommend my services to other artists in need.’ I winked at him. I wanted to see him relax, to forget his wounds for a moment. We probably needed more wine for that.

  ‘Do you need me to rustle up a chemist for some morphine?’

  ‘Never again,’ he said. ‘That stuff makes me lose my head, and heart and soul along with it. I want to feel everything – even the pain.’

  The look he gave me then, dark and intense, his hair over his eyes, his shirt undone, his bones straining at the skin as he tried to drink me in, as though he was memorising my every detail. I had to look away, at the lights of Paris that called to the flickering candles in my studio.

  ‘Tom . . .’ I could only address the view.

  ‘Button.’

  How could I say it? How could I say, no but yes but no – I want you and don’t want you – can you come back in a few years when I’m ready – you’re too much, I’m drowning – how could I say any of these things, when I didn’t know what I wanted? Being witty with a gun was easy compared to this. Tom watched me as I lit a cigarette, avoided his gaze, fidgeted with my cuffs and my hair. I could feel him waiting.

  ‘Our last cigarette,’ I said as I shook the empty packet.

  ‘Our very last?’ His voice cracked and he looked devastated. I hadn’t meant that to be a symbolic sentence.

  ‘Just for this moment,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there could be a very last, with us.’

  He sighed and his face showed such relief. I reached out to his foot upon the coat pile. He wriggled his toes as I caressed it.

  ‘Tom . . .’ But what did I want to say?

  He smiled into my pause. ‘No words, Button?’

  ‘No words, Tom-Tom.’

  ‘You make me feel the same way.’ His feet were so big that he could curl his toes partway around my finger. ‘But I’m happy to wait until we find the right ones.’

  ‘In the right phrases.’

  ‘At the right moment.’

  ‘And until then?’

  ‘We fill the space with chat, wit, rant, hoot—’

  ‘Whisper, giggle, sigh—’

  ‘Cackle, yodel, warble—’

  ‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty of that,’ I said, ‘especially the cackle bits.’

  He grinned. He took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt in an arc into the street. There was laughter in his face, the expression he had when he was about to dare me to do something dangerous.

  ‘What, Tom?’

  ‘Would you come t
o London to make sure?’

  That was his dangerous dare? My heart pounded hard before I could catch my breath and regain control.

  ‘Only if you come back through Paris.’

  ‘Agreed.’ He reached out to shake on the deal and winced.

  I made a pitying tsk noise, but he grabbed my hand, flipped it and kissed my palm. He kept hold of it and I squeezed his fingers. The night smelt of tobacco and wine; the chill breeze held chatter and jazz. The candlelight sent flickers of gold up and down Tom’s skin. I wanted to stay here, hand in hand, the two of us in the window, suspended in the sky above Paris.

  ‘Button, I have to ask . . .’

  ‘Anything.’ But what more could I give him?

  ‘Why did you let Hausmann go?’

  That was it? But I suppose the mission was everything. I let go of his fingers and leant back.

  ‘How could I stop him? It was either him or Fern, and the mission was to get Fern.’

  ‘But Hausmann is clearly the villain.’

  ‘Clearly, but those weren’t my orders.’

  ‘You’re taking orders again?’

  I hung my head. My words betrayed me. They told the truth of my actions that I’d hidden from myself.

  ‘You promised that you wouldn’t, Button—’

  ‘You have that letter, don’t you?’

  ‘I told you that I didn’t want your help, not when it comes via Fox.’

  ‘But we’re so much closer to clearing your name—’

  ‘We’re closer? The cost is too high.’

  ‘If you think that I won’t do everything in my power to help you—’

  ‘Once and for all, I don’t need your help!’

  ‘Yes, you do. You need me.’

  His eyes were dark in the soft light. I wanted to look away, to escape their stare, but they pinned me to the wall. I bit my tongue; once again, my careless words told the truth I had wanted to deny.

  ‘Don’t tease me, Button.’

  Should I apologise or tease some more? As I wavered, my silence felt like sulky defiance.

  ‘I told you that I would wait for the right words at the right time, Button, but I can’t if you provoke me.’