by Tessa Lunney
“Button—sorry, Hem—Button this is—”
“Ernest Hemingway.” He shook my hand firmly and his smile was warm. “I’m with the Toronto Star. I met your man Tom here in Smyrna. As we were both coming back to Paris, we decided to share costs, defray the per diems, so to speak.”
“Hem, is it?”
“Hem, Hemingway, Ernest…”
“Hem’s a good writer,” said Tom.
“Tom’s not bad himself, but he’s a better drinker than writer.” Hem grinned.
“Just a better barman. Button here’s a writer.”
“Hardly!” I said. “It’s primarily fiction.”
“Oh, you write fiction?” Hem looked keen.
“No, no, I write a society column for a gossip magazine based in London. I just have to disguise the truth so much it could work for MI5.”
“Ha, right. Sorry, was your name Button?”
“Only Tom calls me by my last name. Everyone else calls me Kiki.”
We had made our way to the doors of the station by this point, Hem and Tom using their broad shoulders to create a passage through the crowds. Hem turned to us.
“I’m surprising the wife at the Ritz, so it’s goodbye from me. But say, Tom, you’re staying in Montparnasse with the rest of us, right?”
“He’s staying at my place, on rue Delambre.”
“Meet me outside the Lilas tomorrow, at six? We can have a drink then.”
He shook our hands and headed into a taxi. People swirled around us, smoking into the late afternoon, their bodies and bright laughter creating a pool of warmth. Tom held my hand. He said nothing, there was almost too much to say—my mother, Sydney, his family, his reporting, my return to Europe, the whole of the past year in fact—I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t start, I could only gaze back at him.
“Good meal and a pint, whatcha say, Button?”
“Let’s put your suitcase in my studio and begin.”
14
“when you and i were young, maggie, blues”
“Cozy.” Tom admired the wood-paneled walls around our corner table. I had avoided the raucous atmosphere of the Rotonde and instead led Tom to the Falstaff. It was dark enough that it felt entirely private.
“Belgian beer.” Tom toasted my glass of Kir. “Pity it doesn’t come in pints.”
“Pity doesn’t come in pints either.”
“You don’t need a pint of pity, Button. You need a good wail, a good meal, and a good dance.”
“And you need?”
“Not the wail.”
“You need that most.”
“Men don’t cry!”
“Don’t tell a nurse that men don’t cry.” I wagged my finger in a mock scold. “Or I’ll spank you for lying.”
“There are other things you can spank me for.”
“Settle, petal…”
“Lying’s not my besetting sin.”
“No… maybe pride?” I returned his dingo grin. “Definitely pride.”
“And yours, Button?”
“Well, it’s not sloth! As for the rest, I’m doing my best to sample them all.” I took a sip from his glass. “That’s good beer.”
“Should I get another for you?”
“I need room in my belly for dinner. No, what I need is not a good wail, but a good talk. That’s what I’ve missed: someone who really knows me.”
“So not me, precisely, then?”
“But who else knows me?” I had meant it as a jokey riposte but the words settled heavily between us. No one else knew me as well as Tom did; no one else knew me as a child in Australia and an adult in Paris, no one else knew me pre-war, post-war, and during the war itself. Tom was the only person, man or woman, who had taken that journey with me.
“So me, precisely, then.” He held my gaze, then sighed like he had just remembered to breathe. “Good. Because I have missed you.”
I held his hand. “What’s happened?”
“You’re meant to be telling me—your mother, all that…”
“We have all night. And all tomorrow too, yes? Or Hemingway wouldn’t have extended that invitation.”
“I don’t have to be back until Monday 0900.”
“So, a train on Sunday. Can you stay until then?”
“To be anywhere else would be a punishment.”
“You know, I feel the same way!”
“I should think so.”
“Yes, pride is definitely your besetting sin.” I smiled and he laughed, not at the joke so much as our friendship, our easy company, at being together again at last. I drank my Kir and let its warmth run through me.
“I read all your reports while I was in Sydney, Tom.”
“Did you make a little explorer’s map of my travels?”
“That was beyond me, but I did buy the paper with my sherry and milk every morning.”
“Morning sherry—like that, was it?”
“Worse.”
“Nothing’s worse than sherry, Button, unless it’s cooking sherry.”
“Or vodka?”
“Potato peel vodka, ugh.”
“Tell me about Russia.”
Tom looked around at the watercolor landscapes and lithographs of horses on the walls, at the flickering fireplace, at the slowly disintegrating foam on his beer. I’m sure he saw none of it. His stare said he saw somewhere far away and all too close.
“To tell you about Russia is to relive the horror of the war again, except in a strange language with a strange script and two armies dressed so identically it looked like one army fighting itself… a nightmare version of our war, Button. I’ve been there all through the past year. I know it was bad because the sacking of Smyrna felt like relief.
“Though there is almost no fighting left in Russia, there is also no food left—American Aid feeds everyone from the Baltic to the Black Sea. People drift like ghosts along the train tracks, hands out for any scraps that people might throw from the train. I saw people eat orange peels and potato peels. Apple cores are a positive luxury. Old Buffer didn’t want to know about any of that—‘too much of that already and Belgium is closer’ he blustered when I confronted him about it—so I just have to write up what the well-fed officials say in Moscow, Petrograd, and Vitebsk.”
“If the country suffers, why are the Reds still in power?”
“The country—that’s it precisely. The peasants in the country suffer, they have no food and feel the harvest is stolen from them when the officials ship it off to Moscow. They are the people who are lying down by the train tracks to die, who are giving away their children to strangers at the station to take elsewhere, anywhere, that they might have a chance to live. I look into their ghoulish faces and wonder if I see despair there, or resignation, suppressed rage, or simply hunger.
“The cities, however, are full of enthusiasm. They’re creating a new world, they say, a bright future for men and women alike. The Jewish men I speak to are particularly excited. This new Soviet does away with the pogroms they’ve been afraid of all their lives, there’s no religion anymore, they say, they are finally free. Oh, of course, they say, creating a new world requires a bit of hardship at first, but utopia is worth it. Paradise is worth the sacrifice.”
“So, the officials are Red through and through.”
“It would be infectious, if I hadn’t had a dying child’s handprint burning my palm since Kiev.”
“There’s no chance for a Royal revival then.”
“Any support the Whites had disappeared with the last of the food.”
“ ‘Bread, Land, Peace.’ ”
“It’s a good catchcry. It’s all anyone wants, in the end.”
“And drink.”
“There’s plenty of that, though only the rotten homemade stuff. Suicide juice: it’s too potent on an empty stomach, people drink it and die.” He drained the last of his beer. “Why do you ask about a Royal revival?”
“I have some Romanov friends—I know, preposterous, but that’s
Paris for you—and there’s… talk. I want to know how seriously to take such talk.”
“In my opinion, not seriously at all. When were they last in Russia?”
“As they’re still alive, I don’t think they’ve been back since they fled.”
“They’re imagining it’s the same country, the empire it was for hundreds of years. It’s not, it’s… a new world, just as the Bolsheviks want. Whether it’s a better world, well, they have to stop their citizens dying of hunger first. Until then, their new world is just an extension of the hell we’ve been through since 1914.”
“Only until 1918.”
“Not there. Some mothers have only just found out their son died at the front; that’s seven years without a word. Not in Smyrna either… but I need more beer for that.”
“Something stronger? Something sweeter? Even some food at the Trianon?” I indicated the fancy restaurant across the road.
“I like it here. I don’t have to behave myself. Don’t they have a cheese platter or something?”
“I’ll see what I can rustle up.”
I came back from the bar with two drinks, more cigarettes, bread and cheese, and a promise from the barman to provide us with something hot. There was a little package sitting on the table.
“All done up with string, Tom-Tom?” He avoided my eye, busying himself with the food and drink. “Light us a cigarette, then, and I’ll open it.”
Inside was a beautiful silk scarf, long and brilliant blue, with heavy tassels and a subtle pattern of flowers. Wrapped up in the scarf were two small glasses, the same deep blue, painted round the top in gold. I placed the scarf round my shoulders and the glasses on the table.
“They probably need a wash,” he said.
“So do I. So do you.”
Tom gently turned my face to his. “As I thought. The scarf is the same blue as your eyes.”
I couldn’t speak until he had turned back to his beer.
“Are these from Turkey?”
“From a market on the border with Greece, though whether this particular market is in Greece or Turkey this evening is another matter.”
“Thank you.”
Tom just nodded, burying his face in his drink, his cigarette, a bite of bread. I wanted to climb into his lap and open him up; I took a deep drag on my cigarette to stop myself.
“I brought you nothing from Australia.”
“Not even a letter from home?”
“Oh yes, I have that! Or news, at least, that your sister made me promise not to tell you.”
“Oh, Sissy…”
“She’s worse. I don’t think it’s her body that’s making her sick, though. I think it’s her mind.”
“She’s not mad.”
“She’s not mad. She’s bored.”
“Being bored doesn’t make you sick.”
“You’re not a woman. You wouldn’t know.”
“Then help me to know.”
“That’s a challenge. Ah, thank you.” The waiter brought over two steaming bowls of thick potato soup, with more bread, butter, and a bowl of croutons.
“This smells delicious, Button.”
“Doesn’t it though. So, how does a bored woman become sick?” I stubbed out my cigarette and took a spoonful of soup. “Oh, that’s good. She becomes sick because she loses hope. You saw it in the war, on the wards. I don’t know how it happens, but you could see it in the men’s faces, that they’d given up and even when they seemed to be recovering, they died. I think Sissy is suffering from that malady.”
“But she has…”
“Has… what? Exactly. There’s nothing there for her. There was nothing there for me either, but marriage to some dullard and a life lived at the kitchen sink. Unbearable. And you know, that country…” I thought of the red soil, the far horizon, the shimmering heat, and my mother wilting by the window.
“That country?”
“It’s not for everyone. It certainly wasn’t right for my mother.”
Tom reached past the bowls and glasses to take my hand. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me.”
“She…” I shrugged; there was too much to say. “It’s going to take me all night and all day to tell all. But I need… I need to find her final diary.”
“You said that you’d been reading her diaries, in the only letter you sent to me in more than an entire year.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be. I’ve been going mad without word.”
“I sent a telegram or two…”
“Literally two. I just had to hope you weren’t dead, or worse, married.”
I laughed. “In Sydney? Never.” Tom just squeezed my hand.
“So, you know everything about your mother except the end?”
“Where, hopefully, she reveals the man she loved for years, the one she kept coming back here to see.”
Tom looked at me, thinking, his spoon resting on the side of his bowl. “She was so… she seemed like she came from another world and was halfway back there. Like she was listening to music that no one else could hear. My mother would tease him about it, but my father couldn’t stop watching her, like she was an angel or a goddess that had accidentally appeared on his sheep property. Then she’d look right into your eyes and through, it seemed, into your soul. My father was always a bit stunned after a visit to your place, if your mother was there.”
“And you?”
“I was looking at you most of the time. I noticed her when I would come home from school for the holidays. She seemed… sad is the best way to describe it. She must have had a secret sorrow, as there was no particular reason for her to be sad, as she just smiled and took tea and spoke kindly to our maid Jenny even when she dropped the tea things. You were always so lively, I mostly wanted to get away to be with you… but my mother always spoke of her with a mixture of pity and disapproval… Yes, that’s exactly how she spoke of ‘poor Mrs. Button’ and ‘dear Cordelia.’ I never really knew why. I never asked.”
“Your sister did.”
“Sissy would. And?”
“It was in the diaries. My mother married my father because she became pregnant.”
“With you.”
“No, with another child by another man. A man who couldn’t marry her, but someone had to pay for the child’s upkeep, and my father agreed to take the child as his own. That’s how much he loved my mother.”
“Christ.”
“She lost the child on the ship to Australia. Then she was stuck in Australia, married, and then pregnant with me.”
“And this other man…”
“I hope his identity is in her final missing diary.” I toyed with my cooling soup. I couldn’t eat, I was too tense. “She refers to a ‘big fuss.’ Maybe there was some kind of scandal? I think… I don’t even know if her family knew she was pregnant, but she was very bohemian…”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
“I know, I know…” I sniffed to stop the tears. “She spent her days with artists and poets. She traveled here, to Paris, as a young woman and I don’t think she had a chaperone. She… her diaries are odd. She came to Europe often…”
“I remember. She was always just back or about to leave.”
“And she wrote a fair bit when she was here, but many entries are just a series of notes. Then, when she was on the way home, she would write up everything she’d done, detailed descriptions of dresses, artistic analysis, even entire conversations. Almost as though… as though she was saving it all up for when she was in Sydney, alone and lonely, so that she’d have something to read over, to fall back on.”
“Why didn’t she stay here? It wouldn’t have been the first separate marriage.”
“Apparently she couldn’t leave me.” Then I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my nose. Tom pulled my chair to his and dragged me onto his lap, hugging me so tightly it almost hurt.
“I knew it.” He spoke into my shoulder. “You always hated her but I knew she loved you. You only ever saw
the woman who was married to your father.”
“Stop…”
“But I saw her look at you, so… well, sad always, but proud and amused when you challenged Mr. Reginald Button. She especially liked that time you ran away from school.”
“She didn’t! I got into so much trouble!”
“From her?”
“Father did most of the yelling…”
“She related the whole event with such amusement to my mother, who came home shocked that Mrs. Button thought it was funny that young Katherine ran away from school on the gardener’s horse, and managed to buy a ticket to Shanghai at Woolloomooloo docks, before being reported to the police.”
“I was only twelve. I suppose it was pretty funny.”
“It was magnificent.”
“But why didn’t she say anything? Why did she let me think she was just like my father?”
“Her diaries don’t say anything?”
“They just say ‘One day she’ll understand’ or ‘I hope she understands’ and various vague statements of that sort.”
“I think that one day has come.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You need the final diary.” He looked up at me. “Button, how do you know it exists?”
“Because the penultimate diary ends halfway through a sentence. Where did the end of the sentence go? No, there has to be more.” I reached over for my cigarettes.
“You aren’t going to finish your soup?”
“I… no…”
“Well, I’m finishing mine. I’m bloody hungry.”
“Oi! Careful! No soup on the dress, you grub.”
“Get off, then. And finish your soup—you’re skinny as a beggar’s purse.”
“The look is called garçonne and it’s very fashionable, I’ll have you know.”
“Looking like an urchin?”
“Looking like a boy.” I tucked the unlit cigarette behind my ear and reached for my soup spoon. I had relaxed just enough to contemplate swallowing some. Tom reached over and tucked my hair behind my other ear before it trailed in the spoon.
“I like it—short hair, short skirts, smoking in public. Drunk in public. You still need a bit more flesh on you though.”