by Tessa Lunney
“That’s because it is blackmail.”
I lit up to avoid looking at her. The floor was covered in the burns of a thousand cigarettes.
“Katie, it always was. It’s just that his threats used to be undeniable: do this or we lose the war.”
“It’s not the war now. I don’t want to involve you.”
“Hausmann has been blackmailing us. I’m involved regardless.”
Maisie watched me as I took a big slug of my beer and ordered another, cigarette dangling from my lip, a spot of beer on my bright blue dress. Her look was full of pity and love and I could hardly bear it, I had to turn away. The café’s warmth was rent by the sawtooth wind through the ever-opening door. She was still watching me as I stubbed out my cigarette.
“You can’t hide from me, Katie King.”
I hugged her then, maybe even cried a little, let her laugh at me and shush me and put more chips in my mouth.
“As I eat, read this.” I reached into my bag and handed her the note.
“What is it?”
“My mission.”
She scanned the spidery handwriting.
“Fox is still being cryptic, I see.”
“He can’t help himself.”
“Don’t make excuses for him. Do you carry this everywhere?”
“I have the last few days. Once I work it out, I’ll check with Fox and then get rid of it.”
She read the note a few times, frowning, her lips moving slightly as she went over the different ideas. I ate mechanically. I was thinking of Hausmann and when I saw him last, cursing me in the Citroën factory, after Tom and I had stopped him from stealing a Picasso painting. Hausmann was going to sell the painting to raise money for his Brownshirt cause, but in the end all he took with him was the bullet I had put in his shoulder.
She took a deep breath. “Houseboys,” she said, “that’s Hausmann.”
“Your recent history with him is my final bit of proof. The ‘religion in a brown shirt’ are the Brownshirts from Germany, the Freikorps. The ‘black-clad men who tempt and slay’ are the Italian Fascists, led by a man called Benito Mussolini.”
“And the leader? The princes?”
“English princes. As for the leader… I don’t think anyone knows. Yet.”
“With those people, the rest makes sense. You need to find the princes. Hausmann is still recruiting for his cause, and we know he wants important men or he wouldn’t have contacted Ray with his diplomatic links. But this leader… he’s not only a leader of princes. From these clues, he’s also a leader of ‘people starved and shunned from the shelled fields.’ To me that says ordinary soldiers, ordinary men and women, especially those who have been ‘shunned’ from their fields… Ray talks a lot about the violence in the east, the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian empire, the new nations that France now needs to have individual treaties with, immigration deals and extradition treaties and all sorts.”
“The Ottoman Empire has undergone the same thing. And the German.”
“And what do the Italians call this, what did Ray say—the ‘mutilated victory,’ that’s it. That despite being one of the victors, they have no spoils, and have even lost territory. That would support your idea that this refers to Muscle-man’s Blackshirts.”
“Mussolini. Benito.”
“Right, Benny the Muscle. He’s calling to people who have lost everything—which, strangely, is both princes and paupers.”
“Learning French has made you political.”
“Oh no, Katie, I was always political. I just didn’t used to care so much about the tantrums of powerful men. Now, as a diplomat’s wife, I have to.”
“Well, we always had to sponge their backs and empty their bedpans.”
“Ha! We still do, only they call it taxes.”
“I’ve missed you so much, Maisie.”
“Katie, you have no idea.” She clinked her beer glass with mine. The morning had turned into afternoon, the darkening sky outside calling forth spirits from the bar.
“But here, Katie, this line, ‘make an army whom liberticide and realpolitik make a primed dud to all who wield.’ Fox seems to imply that these ordinary people are a ‘primed dud,’ ready to explode but nothing will happen… or does ‘dud’ mean not failure but some unexpected consequence, like a grenade exploding in your hand? Who is in danger here?”
“I think that’s a warning, where the mission turns away from 1922 and back to the time when it was written. Shelley wrote the original poem, ‘England in 1819,’ four years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. England’s army slaughtered its own people when they conducted a peaceful protest, in a massacre nicknamed Peterloo. England was about to become the most powerful empire of last century. The danger is to ordinary people who get in the way of the powerful as they create an empire.”
“Not the princes you need to save.”
“Not in the original poem. Princes are the ‘dregs of their dull race,’ according to Shelley.”
“Who was a radical lord.”
“And that’s the main link—politically radical aristocrats. All much too clever. However, what I need to do is to find the princes before the Brownshirts or the Blackshirts get them into trouble.”
“I still think there’s more…”
“There’s always more, with Fox.” But right now I didn’t want to delve into how much more Fox meant. “Have you heard anything from Ray about Benny the Muscle? Or the Freikorps? Any gossip at work about a recruitment drive, event, demonstration, a big something or other?”
“Not that I can remember, but I will ask.”
“Be subtle.”
“Fuck subtle. I don’t need that, Katie. Not with Ray and not about Hausmann. Ray’s a patriot, to his marrow, and any political schemer who endangers France’s borders, or people or forests or oceans, he opposes.”
“But didn’t he grow up in Senegal? How can he have such a commitment to a country he only knew as an adult?”
“Why did so many Australians want to die for the British Empire? I don’t know, Katie. He went to boarding school here and only returned to Senegal over the summer holidays… but I think it was the war. Actually, I’m certain it was the war, and his mother’s death just before it, and one of his brothers’ death in Verdun, and his father bleeding the cocoa company dry, its workers destitute, before he died in the arms of his German lover. It’s something to do with all of that.”
She gave a perfectly Gallic shrug, complete with pout, her sleeves slipping up her arms as she lit a cigarette. She knew how she looked too, as she raised her eyebrow, inviting me to appreciate her performance. She checked her watch and jumped up.
“I have a shift starting in half an hour!”
“Catch a cab.”
“I’ll have to! And borrow a uniform.” She shrugged on her coat. “I haven’t run from beer to bedpans since Armistice. But Katie, we haven’t discussed Fox—and Tom, have you seen him?—and all the important things!”
“I’m staying in Paris, Maisie.”
“For good?”
“We have time.”
21
“lovesick blues”
I stayed in the café a little longer, not keen for the rain-checkered wind to follow me home to my unheated apartment. I wanted bright drinks to compliment my bright clothes, glasses of liquid gold and ruby and bronze. I was still not bright on the inside. Maisie helped, Maisie always helped, but Fox was between us and Hausmann haunted our words. Scraps of Shelley and Keats chased each other as I drank and smoked and stared at the windswept outside. Eventually the golden drinks, either too sweet or too bitter, made me feel sick. I needed deep breaths of cold air and the spatter of rain on my face. I wanted Maisie, still, and was in half a mind to walk to the American Hospital to pester her, when a taxi pulled up next to me.
“Kiki!” A Russian head leaned out of the passenger window.
“Theo!”
“Hop in!” He opened the door. “Please?”
There is
something about a pleading prince; although I wanted crisp cold rain, I found myself slipping in beside him with barely a second thought.
“Golden one, it’s been an age.” He kissed me with luxurious slowness. “I’ve been busy all weekend with driving and family business.”
“Business I should know about?” I’d been busy all weekend too, but I did my best not to think of Tom.
“The main business is that you’re invited to a ball.”
“A Russian ball?”
“Alas, no, not until St Petersburg’s winter snows visit Paris. Then, my golden one, I will give you a proper pre-war-style party. In the meantime, my cousin Dmitri’s former paramour is holding one. Here’s your invitation from Coco Chanel.” He took a card from his jacket pocket. “It’s in a few days. We were only just invited. You will come?”
“A black and white ball! I’ve always wanted to meet Chanel.”
“And I can see you tonight?”
“When have you known me to say no?”
And I got a passionate kiss to soothe my tender-sore heart.
* * *
I spent what should have been dinnertime watching the light leave the sky over the rooftops, watching the windows of the metropolis stretch, blink, and start the night shift. The lights came on in geometric shapes: dark squares in the gardens, bright lines around the boulevards, the Eiffel Tower a triangular lighthouse, a beacon for the expatriate desperate to turn loneliness into solitude into attitude.
I had to call Fox to confirm what I knew and get the next part of my mission. I pulled out all my winter woollies from my wardrobe, but looking at my flimsy, sheer selection made me realize I hadn’t faced a proper winter since the final year of the war. I had nothing to protect me from the fierce winds and ravenous frosts that were on their way. I put on literally all my warmest clothes, black suede boots and gray trousers and my black boucle coat. I hid my hair under a black beret that my father had given to me last year, though whether as a joke or not, I couldn’t tell. I was just warm enough for autumn.
I was on the watch for newspaper boys, for men in leather coats and wide-brimmed hats, for men who spoke bad French in worse suits, but I could see no one following me on the way to Gare Montparnasse. Delphine was not at the station, nor any of the beggar children. The last train had pulled in some half an hour previously. Only the café was open and it housed just a few decrepit patrons. The lamps were being doused as I walked in, but the moustachioed guard recognized me and tipped his hat, pointing the way to the phone booth to indicate it was still open. I looked around again, but unless Mr. Moustache was a watcher, I was alone.
The phone pipped through to London, the phone operators talking each other’s language with bad grace and grammar.
“Mayfair 5714. Yes, we accept reverse charges.” The operator hung up and the butler spoke again. “How may I help you?”
“Is that Greef?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Greef, I don’t know if you’d remember me, but this is Miss Button.”
“I remember you, of course, Miss Button. Shall I call the master to the telephone?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. Oh, and Greef, you have an excellent telephone manner.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He sounded as pleased as his dignity would allow. “One moment.”
But it was more like one second than one moment.
“Vixen.”
“That was quick. Are you waiting for someone else to call?”
“Always. But who else could be more important?”
“The prime minister?”
“Who? No, he can wait. Our work is much more important than whatever is happening in Turkey.”
“I know a lot of men who would disagree.”
“You know a lot of men.”
“But not the right men, it seems. I only know those who are true blue, not blue blood.”
“Very good, Vixen.”
“I’ve done a bit more digging. Are you ready?” I opened the door and lit up, not bothering to wait for his reply. “The ‘black shirts’ are Mussolini’s Fascists. Hausmann is definitely involved somewhere, as he’s still in Paris, still trying to raise money for his beloved—even, should I say, sacred—Brownshirts. If I followed Hausmann, he’d probably lead me to a prince or two, but not to the English ones. So I just sniff around his trail, as there are probably other princes who are part of this posh-boy gang. These princes have lost their influence and wealth in the major and minor revolutions that have shaken Europe, and are now joining forces with their former peasants to restore the old order. These other princes will be the link between Hausmann and the English princes—who have to include, at least, well-known libertine, the Prince of Wales.”
I listened, but the station was hush. I could not even hear Fox hum down the line.
“There is more in the mission clues,” I had to fill the silence, “to do with Shelley, and you, and the ‘tempestuous leader,’ but all of that is not immediately important. Only Wales, and possibly another of George’s heirs, is important.”
“Bravo, Vixen.” His voice had taken on a hard edge. “Welcome back.”
The light in the telephone booth fizzed and flickered.
“Bacon will leave for Paris tonight and will meet with you to fill you in on more details.”
“What? That’s it—no more contact?” I was absurdly bereft. After hating Fox’s intrusion in my life, it seemed ridiculous that I would miss his banter. “What about Tom? What about the photos? What about my payment?”
“Bacon will have a check.”
“Not money, my proper payment. Those photos—who took them?”
“ ‘The awful shadow of some unseen power floats though unseen among us…’ ”
“How did you get them?”
“ ‘Visiting this various world with as constant wing as summer winds that creep…’ ”
“Wait, it should be ‘inconstant’ not ‘constant.’ ” He was quoting more Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” “Is this to do with the mission or with my payment?”
“ ‘Like memory of music fled, like aught that for its grace may be dear, and dearer for its mystery.’ ”
I had to take the phone away from my mouth or I would yell in frustration. Why had I rung Fox with only the mission worked out? Why hadn’t I also deduced some of meaning of those lines on the back of the photos and how they related to Tom? Why hadn’t I asked Maisie for more details of her dealings with Hausmann? The station was almost dark, only the café held some meager light. If I screamed, no one would make a fuss; it was a definite temptation.
“Fox.”
“ ‘Art thou pale for weariness, of climbing heaven and gazing earth, of wandering companionless…’ ”
“ ‘Among stars that have a different birth’—oh yes, very good, Fox.” Another Shelley poem, “Art thou pale for weariness,” that Fox was using to refer to the princes, my mission, my Paris life. Thank goodness I had borrowed that volume from Sylvia, or I would have thought he was trying to sweet-talk me.
“ ‘And ever-changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object for its constancy?’ ”
“Not pale for weariness, Fox, pale with frustration.”
He laughed then.
“As for constancy, I will never have the constancy of the fanatic. I’ll leave that to you, Ozymandias.”
“Ozymandias? I like your bite, Vixen.”
“Who took those photos? How did you get them?”
“You should check your post more often, Vixen. And next time, I might call you.”
“How? I don’t have a telephone…” But my last words were said into the void as the operator terminated the call. I stood outside the booth in the still gloom. Fox wouldn’t say any more to me; instead, Fry would contact me in some irritatingly clandestine way to give me more information on those princes and the mission. Fry’s presence seemed to confirm my suspicions that Fox didn’t know precisely who I was meant to find
, or when or where or how. I strode out of the station. I hadn’t even managed to ask about Ray Chevallier and Hausmann.
But that wasn’t what made me want to scream. The payment, the photos, the lines of Shelley, every time I followed a thread it led somewhere impossible. The Monday night streets were damp and empty; only the cafés provided proof of life. The lines kept teasing me that Fox was trying to seduce me; that, in fact, he loved me. Which was impossible, it had to be, I couldn’t bear to contemplate that it might be possible. I backtracked on what he said, again and again, and ended up at that same idea. I escaped into the final lines of “Ozymandias”:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
My letter box was boundless and bare; no post waited for me. What did Fox mean, then, when he said I should check my post more often? I took the steps two at a time to my flat on the top floor. I stripped off my outside clothes and huddled under the blankets, lines of Shelley going round and round my head—“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”—until Theo showed up with cold cheeks and an ardent desire to warm his lips on my breasts and his hands between my legs, with seductive murmurs in Russian and French on breath that smelled of licorice drops.
At midnight, he unwrapped the bundle he had brought with him to reveal a little package of wood, paper, and twigs.
“This room is far too cold for such a passionate woman as yourself.”
I kissed him as he looked around.
“But Kiki… where is your hearth? Your boiler?”
“Here.” I knocked on the far wall and a panel fell out. Behind it was a little fireplace, dusty and decorated with a desiccated rat. With much laughter on my part, and a look of intense distaste on his, I flung the carcass out the window while he lit a fire. It burned hot, the walls glowed, my rack of clothes embraced the healthy smell of wood smoke. We had to open a window to help air circulate, so the room was no longer stuffy and stinking of stale cigarettes. I had no more need to huddle under the covers, I could be properly naked. With Theo’s unflagging help, I could relieve myself of thought. I could, but didn’t, as even in the midst of sighs were the sensational lines of Shelley. I was the spirit of delight, the starry night, the Autumn evening and the morn. The fire’s hiss whispered: “Spirit, I love thee—thou dost possess the things I seek—thou wilt come for pleasure.” The words swirled with the woodsmoke until the fire had spent itself, until all that remained was the echo: “Wherefore hast thou left me now?”