Autumn Leaves

by Tessa Lunney

  “It’s been what?” I linked my fingers with his. He picked up my hand and kissed it but his look was still far away.

  “Are you having nightmares, Tom?”

  He closed his eyes and his hold became a grip.

  “Every night. Sometimes during the day too.”

  “The war—our war?”

  “I don’t know. Some war. It changes. I’m caught in the crossfire of Germans, Turks, Russians—I’m surrounded by starving children and dead children and bodies that are more mud than blood—it’s freezing, it’s boiling…” The hand linked with mine had started to tremble and his other hand shook violently. I held both and looked into his face.

  “I can’t…” His voice shook too and he exhaled loudly. “I can’t…”

  “Have you told Old Buffer?”

  “Ha!” His face twisted. “He’s one of those moustachioed warmongers we used to rail against. He almost called me a coward once, when I asked not to go back to Russia, when I said I couldn’t stomach seeing any more dead kids.”

  “He would surely understand that…”

  “How could he, when other people are just objects to him, just numbers, copy, pounds in the bank? It’s not even worth mentioning.”

  “You’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight at least.”

  “Promise?” He couldn’t look at me. I kissed his knuckles.

  “I promise. But how does relocating to Paris help?”

  He looked at me with his stormy face, his eyes like the ocean, like a drowning boy.

  “I need you, Button.” His voice was very small.

  “You have me, Tom. Always.” But he wasn’t the drowning one, I was, I was falling into him and unable, unwilling, to resist. I could smell his soap and his tobacco, I could feel his breath on my cheek—

  If a plate hadn’t smashed next to us and made us both jump, we would have kissed. But as it did, all the food on the floor, the waiter angrily apologizing, the customer trying to clean her splashed shoes, we pulled apart, blinking as if we had both come up for air. I saw Tom anew, like he was unscarred and shiny clean. I felt a part of him, not merely connected but somehow joined together. I almost didn’t need anything more; a kiss would simply be a rubber-stamp on what had already happened. The waiter cleared up, people yelled and tutted, and we gazed at each other. Eventually we let go of our hands, we picked up our drinks and lit new cigarettes.

  “So, Button, explain to me about Italy—why you’re going, what you know, all the details please and thank you.”

  I reviewed everything I knew so far—the princes, Charlie Coburg, the big event in Italy, Lazarev and Hausmann, where the Russians fit in, how Bertie and Maisie were involved. I even managed to impress him with my descriptions of Lazarev’s interrogation and the photo of Fox. I could see him slowly calm, his shoulders pull back, his posture straighten, his legs stop their jiggling and stretch out underneath my chair. I chatted about all my parties and gossip, I filled him in on what I knew about my mother, and he came back to this world, this day, this moment. He found his smile again.

  We headed out in the night, clear and cold, stars hiding behind the city’s lights. All the way home to Montparnasse he kept close to me, touching me with a linked arm, playing with my hand, foot to foot in the Metro. It wasn’t supposed to be seductive. He just needed to be near me, he needed my body to anchor him to the world, and frankly I felt the same way. Tom pulled me close as we dawdled up my street.

  “Have you put up my camp bed, Button?”

  “I haven’t had time.”

  Tom was silent, his feet dragged, he stopped by my building door.

  “Do you need time?” His voice was strained, but I couldn’t tell if he was excited or scared, I couldn’t tell what he wanted the answer to be. I could only be honest.

  “Tom, there’s only one cure I know for nightmares, and that’s another warm body. I plan to hold you tight, through the thrashing and the screaming too, until the ghosts depart.”

  He put a hand over his eyes and gulped down a sob. I hugged him as he tried to control his tears and failed. I held his hand and took him upstairs where I undressed him, putting aside his filthy socks and suit for the laundry tomorrow. I washed him, his skin too pale, his frame too thin with his knees bigger than his thighs. I could see his ribs swim up his back with each breath. I brushed his hair, combing out the brilliantine, I massaged his head and neck and shoulders. We said almost nothing, just listened to the night noises, clinking glass and laughter, French burbles and cat hisses, footsteps and the thud of pipes. When the last of the lights outside had blinked out, we climbed into my little bed together, with me curled around him even though I was so much smaller, my face between his shoulders as he held my hands and fell into sleep.

  It didn’t last long. He hadn’t been exaggerating about his nightmares. They were the worst I’d seen since working the wards in the war. He sat bolt upright screaming, he was covered in sweat, his eyes staring unseeing. He yelled in Russian, French, and some other languages I didn’t recognize. For hours he bobbed up and down, yelling and thrashing, whimpering and shaking, pursued by his memories. Each time he bobbed up I hugged him, contained him, spoke through his nightmares, I stroked and patted and soothed. As the church bell chimed in the cold, black hours before dawn, his shaking calmed and he collapsed across the bed. I couldn’t wake him. I moved him roughly, rolling him into position so that we both had room to sleep, even to the point of lifting his head so that I could rearrange the pillow, and he didn’t stir, not even the flicker of an eyelid. He could have been unconscious, except when I finally lay down next to him, again snuggled against his back, he sighed and held my hands.

  41

  “pack up your sins and go to the devil”

  Tom looked up eagerly as I walked through the door of Petit’s. He’d left me a note; he’d apparently woken at a normal hour and couldn’t wait any longer for food. His table was covered in newspapers.

  “Button, you’ve been an age. I almost had time to take in a tour of the city while I was waiting for you.”

  I settled myself gingerly in a chair. “It’s only midday.”

  “Don’t you know, all the news happens before dawn?”

  “Yes, in the small hours, when I was busy.”

  “Ah, yes…”

  “I think my favorite moment was when I had to pretend to be a German private, begging for my life, so that you could release me back to my trench. I wonder what the neighbors felt about me yelling ‘Bitte! Kamarade!’ in the middle of the night.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Or perhaps when I had to be a Greek nun and absolve you of some sin or other, I couldn’t catch what, but I had to hold your hands and pray for you, in Greek, before you’d calm down. I don’t know any Greek at all, so I just intoned ‘Athena, Odysseus, Kalamata, Spanakopita,’ and anything else I could think of.”

  He started to laugh, but as he looked over my tired body in the chair, he looked away.

  “Thank you, Button.”

  “No need to thank me, or to look so ashamed. It would’ve been funny if you put it on stage, but alas, the sparrows weren’t much of an audience.” I took his coffee and sipped it, but it was tepid already. “I’d have done it for any man, as I did when I was a nurse. But for you, I’ll do it again and again, every night for the rest of our lives, if I have to.”

  “Button…”

  The ache in his voice. I swallowed hard, nodding to Madeleine for coffee, trying to light my cigarette and failing as I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I didn’t know why but, in that moment, I almost couldn’t hold myself together—Fox in Paris, Tom in my arms, my mother’s lover somewhere, my mother’s ghost, all the ghosts invoked in this new clandestine war—Tom’s tender heart was too much to carry. He must have also seen my hands tremble as he handed me a lit cigarette and took the half-burnt one from my fingers. He thanked Madeleine for me and again when she brought aspirin. It was my turn to stare at the table.

/>   “I don’t think you could do it every night, Button.”

  “Oh, I could. I just couldn’t if every day involved meeting fascist princes and wondering if I’ll bump into my boss.”

  “Bertie is here?”

  “Bertie is here—I’m glad that makes you smile—but I meant Fox.”

  “Fox! In Paris!”

  “Apparently he comes often. By plane. I was told yesterday that he’d left again for London, but I don’t trust the information.”

  “Bastard! Can’t he leave you alone?”

  “I won’t let him as long as you’re working as Mr. Arthur.”

  “Then maybe I should work as Mr. Button.” But his eyes widened, as though he’d realized what he’d said, and he looked away with an embarrassed laugh. I wanted to jump into his lap and cover him with kisses. I wanted to pick up my bag and run away, as far away as possible.

  “It’d ruin your byline.” I took a huge gulp of coffee to avoid his eye. I needed to steer us out of these stormy waters and back to the mission.

  “Speaking of, what’s in the news? What do the papers report today?”

  He exhaled shakily and picked up a paper. “Your sort of thing—the Kaiser’s new bride.”

  “Ha! A royal wedding and German resurrection, exactly my sort of thing! It only needs feathers and champagne.”

  He laughed; thank goodness.

  “What else, Tom-Tom? Germany, Italy, Benny the Muscle, brown shirts, black shirts, top hats, big moustaches…”

  “There’s still some news on the Brownshirts in Coburg, but relegated to back pages… French troops are occupying the Ruhr…”

  “The Brownshirts will hate that.”

  “Talks about Turkish sovereignty—I’m interested in that but it doesn’t help the mission—civil war continues in Ireland…”

  “What a peaceful post-war world we live in. I’m so glad we fought.”

  Tom laughed then, both delighted and bitter. “Oh yes, one or two of the papers were reporting on Mussolini’s movements, Le Figaro but also Action Française. Broadly supportive of noises in the south, though Figaro is not as keen on Blackshirt violence. I don’t think they go in for the cleansed-through-bloodshed thing anymore.”

  “They could hardly be seen to, at any rate. Has there been much violence?”

  “Enough to earn me a ticket out of London, but not enough to land me in hospital.”

  “So, just the perfect amount of fisticuffs, then.”

  Tom shook his head with a smile. “What have we become, Button?”

  42

  “hot lips”

  We spent the day getting ready for the party. Downstairs Odile was busy, so Tom and I had to organize our own costumes from the flea markets and fabric shops of Montparnasse. We had enormous fun gluing beads and sewing satin, waxing and curling and painting and primping. Sometimes we chatted, about his work, about Bertie, about Paris life and London life and life as a roving writer. Sometimes we were quiet, just breathing easily for once, in each other’s company.

  “The thing I remember most about your mother is her air, you know, her sense, her… presence.”

  “Oh, like an air of wistfulness?”

  “Definitely that. Wistful, somehow sad and happy together. If something bad happened, she sympathized but with a little smile in her eyes that suggested life was still worth living. If something good happened, it was as though she could feel in her bones how fleeting happiness is.”

  “Bloody hell. I never got that.”

  “I don’t think you could have seen it, even if she gave it to you. It was something she did for strangers, and I think you were the only person who wasn’t a stranger in her life.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I could tell you how fiercely she loved you. Her face lit up when she looked at you. But I couldn’t tell you why she deliberately estranged you.”

  Nor could I. In fact, all I could do was light another cigarette and blow the smoke over the view, not seeing the glory of Paris but seeing instead warm sunlight on Sydney Harbor and my mother’s cold embrace.

  “Do you reckon one of your relatives might have her final diary?”

  I couldn’t decide between Oh God no and Yes, absolutely; all I could do was shrug like a sulky child.

  “Will you ask them?”

  “I suppose I’ll have to. I like them about as much as my mother did, for about the same reasons. But once this mission is over… the end of the story calls to me.”

  He squeezed my foot and passed me the spangles.

  * * *

  I also tried to find Fox. I rang him at Westminster, at his club, and at his house in Mayfair, but he wasn’t in any of his usual London places. I called Fry, twice, but I couldn’t get him in to the Casati party for love (via Theo) nor money (via Felix).

  “They’re off to Italy with cousin Charlie,” I said. “If I set it up tonight, I think we can get them on the train south.”

  “Always messy, train abductions. Besides, they might drive. They might even fly. The Prince of Wales is apparently a keen pilot.”

  “I’m sure no one else is keen for him to be in the air.”

  “I’m sure no one else is keen for him to get as far as Italy. It should be tonight.”

  “Tonight? At the party? Without you?”

  “Call me. I can be your cab service.”

  “What if they don’t turn up? And what about Rome?”

  “Steady on—”

  “What have you planned?”

  “Events are moving too fast for plans. We’ll have to wing it.”

  43

  “wonderful one”

  “Bertie—a snake charmer!”

  “I knew you’d be an acrobat, Kiki darling. All that gold! And Tom as the strong man. How apt.”

  We were a brightly colored crew that gathered outside Theo’s apartment building. Bertie was in what could only be described as an electric green suit, with a green turban, and a huge fake green python sewn around his body, its head sticking out lewdly at his hip, connected to his wrist by a string. Tom wore a tight, striped bathing costume with a leather belt and leather wrist cuffs. We’d spent ages making a fake barbell out of paper, with little compartments in the bells so that it functioned as pockets for his cigarettes and cash. He’d even stuck on a false moustache. I was entirely in gold—gold cap, gold satin cape, gold leotard embellished with gold beads, tiny gold skirt and gold leather boots, courtesy of Mr. Levi the shoemaker.

  The journey to the party was a whirl of champagne and laughter. The Romanovs were everything that is ignoble. Theo was a tattooed man and we spent ages finding all the designs painted on his body. Irène was a half-man-half-woman, her left side wearing a tuxedo and her right side in a ball gown. Her brother Dmitry was her mirror opposite: they almost looked like twins. Cousin Roman had sewn an extra head onto the shoulder of his jacket, and he used a little lever to make the mouth speak. But the most extravagant costume was Prince Felix, the bearded lady, wearing an enormous beaded pink dress, diamonds on his fingers and wrists and neck and turban. Made up like Widow Twankey, he made his entrance to cheers from his family. Bertie was thrilled; Tom was stunned into laughter; Felix was clearly in his element, taking the champagne bottle from Vanya the butler and pouring it directly into our mouths.

  Just as we were leaving, two young ladies also dressed as a carnival folk, the older with a fortune-teller’s ball and the younger with a pack of cards, arrived in time to get into one of the cars with Theo.

  “Who are they?” I asked. Their arrival had shunted me into the second car.

  “The Princesses Paley, Irina Pavlovna and Natalia Pavlovna,” said Irène. “Mama sent them. She’s hoping Irina and Theo get along well enough to want to marry each other.”

  “And you?”

  She sighed and patted my hand. “We’re still royalty, dear Kiki. Sometimes duty comes first.” Then she took the bottle from Felix, absorbed as he was in talking nose to nose with Bertie, and pour
ed some champagne into my mouth, wiping the drops from my lips with her soft fingers. I felt dizzy—this was clearly the end of my affair with Theo—how strange to have it end this way. Perhaps that was the meaning of Theo’s expression when he said goodbye yesterday. Had he been here before and could see what was about to happen? Or had he already been ordered to do his duty by his mama? In that case, it wasn’t strange at all, it was just right, just timely. Nonetheless, I felt unmoored. I looked around the taxi. Tom was trying not to laugh as Irène poured bubbly into his mouth and Bertie kept playing with the snake puppet at his hip. I lit three cigarettes, passing them on to Irène and Tom, before embracing the floating feeling by grabbing the camera and taking snaps for the Star.

  I couldn’t have said whether it was the parrots or the elephant that was more spectacular, but by the time we arrived the party was alive with jazz, rainbow feathers, elephant trumpets, and radiant costumes. We had driven for over an hour to the outskirts of Paris, through Felix’s impatient complaints, to a country manor that was festooned with lights and flags. In the garden behind the manor, an open big-top tent held the band on a stage, and tables had been set up as a bar. From the house, lines of waiters, dressed as clowns, passed around trays of food, keeping their poker faces even in clown makeup. At the other end of the garden were the animals, of which the elephant was the star. “Just a small elephant,” as Felix said, it had a pink saddle and pink feathered headdress, and knelt down continually to let partygoers up on its back for a ride. High-stepping horses, in ribbons and bells, pranced around inside a paddock. An enormous cage was filled with parrots, green and red and yellow and turquoise, screeching and squawking. In between the animals and the tent were the circus performers. A tightrope had been set up between two trees, with a trampoline underneath it, and acrobats took turns displaying their skill.