April In Paris, 1921 Read online

  Dedication

  To Hannah, for the negronis,

  and Bridie, for the whisky

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1. Ain’t We Got Fun

  2. All By Myself

  3. April Showers

  4. I’ve Got My Captain Working For Me Now

  5. Boy Wanted

  6. I Ain’t Nobody’s Darling

  7. Crazy Blues

  8. Jellybean

  9. Shuffle Along

  10. A Night Out

  11. Wang Wang Blues

  12. I’m a Jazz Vampire

  13. La Belle Excentrique

  14. Avalon

  15. Bolshevik Love

  16. Dardanella

  17. I’m Just Wild About Harry

  18. Wabash Blues

  19. Kitten on the Keys

  20. I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden

  21. A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody

  22. Everybody Step

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

  24. Home Again Blues

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  TWENTY-ONE RUE DELAMBRE, MONTPARNASSE, Paris. The little studio at the very top, just a white-washed attic really, a single room. With a low ceiling, only just high enough for a man without his hat, windows that stretched to the floor and opened straight out into the Paris air. They opened straight out into the view, down the street, over the four corners, down to the river, over the cartwheel network of streets to the Eiffel Tower. A dizzying view laid out like a model for a Montparnasse genius. I can still smell it, the street scents of freshly baked baguettes and galettes, sour wine and faint piss, salty frying and cheap tobacco. The hall smells of disinfectant and sweat. My studio, whitewash and Gauloises, geraniums in the window pots, old wine and candles and sex – the smell of freedom. Have you also been cooped up in a house, restricted by uncomfortable clothes, hemmed in by social expectations, poor pay, and relatives, colleagues, even friends, with no imagination? Then you know what it means to run away to your own special place, to live in your own flat and earn your own money and every hour is yours to do as you choose. And that’s what Paris was like in the 1920s. Utterly free.

  1

  Ain’t We Got Fun

  I ARRIVED IN LONDON in the slushy February of 1921, on a day so cold and grey that I had to grip the radiator in my hotel to warm my fingers. I’d taken a cheap little room near Victoria Station, with faded floral wallpaper that peeled with damp at the corners and so small that I’d had to leave my trunks at the station. I’d taken a cheap little room as I didn’t expect to be in it for more than a minute. Bertie would never let me stay in such a dive if he’d known I was here. Which he didn’t, yet. So I changed my woollen gloves for my fur-lined leather ones, tied my coat more tightly around myself, packed my handbag and set off for the Strand.

  The city greeted me with intermittent sleet, weather rarely seen in either of my Australian homes, but it wasn’t a shock. It wasn’t my first time in London. I’d lived here in 1914, doing the rounds of debutante balls with my boring cousins. Then I’d been here on and off all through the war, relishing the precious hours out of my nurse’s uniform. I didn’t finally leave until January 1919. It was cold and grey then too, a grey that stayed with me even when I sailed south to Sydney sunshine. But now I was excited – and nervous and confused and amazed – to be back. The energy of the city, electric and dangerous, warmed me more than my hotel’s rattly radiator ever could.

  London bustled and jostled, and in this part of town the ticket sellers rubbed shoulders with pink businessmen in their bowlers; loud boys in flat caps winked at the smart secretaries who affected disdain; big-lunged flower girls set up a chorus to cajole fat old men with moustaches. The streets were grey, the buildings were grey, and life moved with the swift ebb and flow of the Thames. I walked quickly – the city demanded it – towards the office of The Star.

  The Star sold celebrity gossip. The star of The Star was subeditor Bertie Browne, my friend, confidant, sometime lover and oft-times saviour from the worst moods of the war. Bertie’s uncle was a newspaperman who could have established Bertie in a sombre and respectable broadsheet. But what Bertie liked best, what he was best at, was chatting over cocktails in underground bars. He was very happy with his little entertainment rag, so much so that he had become an unofficial deputy. The offices were at the other end of the Strand to Fleet Street, in order to be closer to Soho and all its celebrated types. The building’s façade was forbidding grey stone, but the little door had number 72 painted in gold and led to a narrow wooden staircase, whose walls were covered with playbills. I climbed up to the top floor, announced myself to the receptionist, and waited in the dark smoky foyer.

  ‘Kiki Button!’ Bertie burst through the door in an explosion of green check. He ran over and picked me up, swirling me round as he said my name.

  ‘Darling Bertie.’

  ‘When Mavis at reception said it was you, I couldn’t believe it. But then I thought, No, I can believe it – it’d be just like Kiki to turn up unannounced. And in pure peacock blue too – right down to your shoes! All right, turn around, let me get a look at you.’ He spun me around carefully as Mavis at reception gawked.

  ‘Peacock-blue wool coat, fur-trimmed; navy stockings, navy button-up heels, peacock cloche, and is that . . .’ He whisked off my hat. ‘A bob! Your hair is short, Kiki!’

  ‘I had it cut when we stopped in Constantinople. I walked into this little barber’s shop and chopped at my jawline with my hands. I had a full five minutes of pantomime with the barber before I could convince him that I really wanted it all off. People watched at the window—’

  ‘The Turks smirked?’

  ‘They laughed! And clapped, when the final lock came off. They insisted on buying me coffee and cake before I reboarded the ship.’

  ‘A blonde woman with a man’s haircut. You always were novel.’

  ‘I just feel so . . . free.’ I rubbed the back of my head.

  ‘That’s your naughty grin, Kiki.’

  ‘I have a little proposal.’

  ‘Propose to me.’

  ‘Let’s get out of the office and somewhere more gossipy.’

  ‘I’ll get my hat.’

  WE WALKED ARM IN ARM through the back streets to Soho. His coat was a very fine cashmere in pine green, just the right shade to match his three-piece suit. Even his hat was green. He kept lozenges on him at all times, as he loved to smoke but hated the taste on his tongue. He popped one in his mouth as we left the building and I smiled – even the lozenge was green.

  I nodded at it. ‘Mint?’

  ‘Lime.’

  ‘We’re two bright parrots in a world of pigeons, Bertie.’

  ‘I think you mean we’re two discerning citizens in a world of timid muck. I just don’t understand Britain’s obsession with mud colours – didn’t we have enough of that in the war?’

  ‘Khaki, grey—’

  ‘Brown, buff, taupe – ugh! Thank Bacchus for pink cocktails with twists of lemon. Here, just around this corner.’

  We’d cut through into the winding streets of Soho. In a little lane off a little lane was a tiny house. The upstairs shuddered with cacophonous singing but the basement blew ragtime up into the street.

  ‘Down here. I think it’s called something preposterous like the Mountain Rest Stop or the Wonder of the East, but we just call it the Old Standby.’

  ‘Because it’s always open?’

  ‘It opened up as we all got demobbed. It’s tiny, a tad dingy, but yes, Dixon can always be summoned from out the back to pour a whisky.’

&nb
sp; The ragtime came from a rather beaten-up gramophone that sat on the bar. The bar itself was a bench, but the wall behind was decorated with a long mirror, just like a Paris café. The walls of the room were covered in posters – playbills, mostly, but also exhibition notices, newspaper articles, job advertisements, for sale notices, political pamphlets and lewd graffiti. A fire crackled cosily to one side, with two fat armchairs in front of it. A mix of odd chairs and tables were squashed in next to each other, from the door to the bar, so we could hardly move even through the half-empty room. I sat down in one of the armchairs to warm myself. Bertie went up to a bespectacled man scribbling at a table, made an appointment to see him tomorrow and came back with two doubles.

  ‘Proper whisky. The owner has a cousin’s friend’s sister-in-law’s canary’s something-or-other in the Highlands who sends down the most delicious single malt. Half the price you’d get in the Savoy.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘An out-of-work actor who’s been sleeping with . . .’ He stopped and winked at me. ‘You’ll have to read the magazine, Kiki. How’s the dram? You’re licking your lips like it’s soaked into your skin.’

  ‘Would you believe that no one would drink whisky with me on the ship over? The barman didn’t think a woman alone was deserving of single malt. And in Sydney I was living with my Aunt Constance, whose strongest beverage was a particularly dark tea. In other words, the dram’s divine.’

  ‘As are you.’ He reached over and smoothed my bobbed hair. ‘I never thought I’d see you again.’

  ‘Whizzbangs and flu pandemics couldn’t keep me away.’

  ‘I was sure they would.’

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  He shrugged. ‘You know, British fatalism and all that. When you left . . .’

  His big brown eyes reflected the Kiki of 1919. Wan, worn-out by the war, I was almost mute. He’d found me three years earlier behind the casualty clearing station, teary in my grubby uniform, cursing the matron and the registered nurses and in dire need of a cigarette. He provided the smoke, a bon mot, half a music hall ditty made dirty with frontline wit, and joined me in cursing the upper ranks. For years he brought the laughter, but by the time I left no one had the energy to joke. I certainly didn’t have the energy to know what I wanted, let alone to resist my parents’ demands that I return home. Bertie sensibly feared I’d succumb to the Spanish flu. Instead, I nursed passengers all the way back to Australia.

  I squeezed his hand. ‘When I left we were all too used to final goodbyes. I’m here now.’

  ‘And as wicked as ever.’ He clinked my glass. ‘So, what’s your naughty proposal?’

  ‘I need a job.’

  ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘Don’t you have money? Pots and pots of it?’

  ‘My father has money, which I can only use to catch a husband, and then the money will be my husband’s. I need my own money.’

  ‘And you want a job – in the theatre?’

  ‘At the paper. At your magazine. Specifically, I want to be your society gossip reporter.’

  ‘We have one of those—’

  ‘But not in Paris.’

  ‘Oh – Paris! Yes, Kiki, yes, I love it.’

  ‘Look at these.’ I opened my handbag and shook out the contents. Twenty different cards, notes and letters fluttered out. Bertie picked them up.

  ‘The Honourable Mrs Hanley-Sidebottom cordially invites you to Miss Letitia’s ball on 20 February – Dear Katherine – Katherine?’

  ‘It’s my birth name. Katherine King Button.’

  ‘A solid, respectable name. It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘Why do you think I adopted Kiki so readily?’

  ‘Because you despise your family and all they stand for?’

  ‘Well, technically I only got rid of my mother’s influence – King is her surname and Katherine is her middle name, after my grandmother. I’m still a Button.’

  ‘I never picked you as Daddy’s girl.’

  ‘If I were Daddy’s girl, I’d marry the son of the neighbouring wool baron and combine the properties, all while making babies, looking pretty and doing what I’m told. Instead, I’m here.’

  Bertie kissed my hand in delight. ‘So, Dear Katherine,’ he began, then cleared his throat and put on a posh accent, ‘when you get to London I insist that you visit me for tea at Belgravia Square – Dear Miss Button, I’m a friend of your father’s (well my father is at any rate ha ha) blah blah et cetera, et cetera – are all of these invitations?’

  ‘I have another thirty telegrams, in my trunk, of people to look up.’

  ‘But you’re not posh. How do you know all these people?’

  ‘Through Father’s business contacts. He was here in London when I left Australia and spread the word that I was coming with a fortune for the highest bidder.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t—’

  ‘I had to say I was coming over, for another season, to find a husband. It was the only way I could stop my parents from calling the navy on their runaway daughter.’

  ‘Ooh, sailors – if only they had.’

  ‘Well, quite. I’m also meant to be staying with my cousins, but . . .’ I shrugged. ‘My letter must have been mislaid. Anyway, the men want money and the women want any available men. The invitations flooded in.’

  ‘But which are for Paris?’

  ‘If I attend these three’ – I sorted through the invitations to find the gilt-edged cards – ‘then I will have all the Paris contacts I need.’

  ‘Americans?’

  ‘I love them. They’re even richer than Father. The boys don’t need my money and most would rather have an American girl. The American girls all know that and so consider me an ally, not competition. They’re the best fun.’

  ‘Apart from me, of course.’

  ‘That goes without saying, the best of all Berties.’

  He smiled and tapped the invitations on his knee. ‘You know, my Aussie minx, I think this might just work.’

  ‘I haven’t crossed the seven seas for it to fail.’

  ‘Now, you’ll need to send me a column every week . . .’

  We spent the rest of the afternoon working out the details. Gossip columnists report on the rich and famous, which, for me, meant mostly aristocrats and the idle rich and whichever Hollywood star breezed into town. I would spend some time here in London in order to secure my Paris introductions. Bertie would help to set me up in a little studio, preferably in a bohemian part of Paris, which I could afford on my income; I insisted on proper independence. I would send a column a week by the express post, to be printed each Friday – Monday was the London gossip, fresh from the weekend, and Wednesday was for the transatlantic tidbits (always, unfortunately, a few days late). My column would necessitate at least two parties a week: ‘But Kiki, as you’re doing nothing else, I think you can squeeze that in, don’t you?’ And while I was in London, Bertie insisted that I stay at his flat.

  ‘I have to make sure you know what you’re doing, Kiki. It’s my professional responsibility to show you how to party.’

  And with that, we headed to a more exciting underground bar for a bottle of champagne and some illicit tickles. We downed it in double-quick time, but as it was still office hours and the place was empty, we moved our loose limbs to Bertie’s favourite dumpling house on Wardour Street. The steam was spicy and our heads were cleared with hot chilli paste and cool green tea. Uncle Wu’s nephew, Young Wu, joined us for a little tumbler of rice wine at the end of the meal, his skin golden and his shoes shiny in the half-light of the restaurant. But he had to take his golden tones back to work, so we headed out into the chill night, browsed tipsily through the secondhand book stalls until, clutching cut-price Vorticist poetry, we wormed our way into the 43 Club. Mother’s ruin came in every sort of cocktail and concoction and we danced and laughed until the poetry made sense, until we forgot our bloody yesterdays, until we were hungry again and had to head back to Bertie’s for late-night biscuits and whisp
ers. We fell asleep with the dawn, stinking of booze and tobacco and sweat, in his tiny unmade bed.

  LONDON WAS A REVELATION, with its fancy stores and dingy bars, with its posh bohemians and serious barmen, garrulous booksellers and polite whores. This London I’d never seen before; it’d been off limits to a debutante and hidden from a nurse behind rows of khaki-clad lads. The footpaths were cold but Bertie’s attentions were always warm as he helped me to get ready for my parties. He would often run to the flower seller downstairs to buy me a corsage so that he could have a matching buttonhole. I developed a taste for fruity lozenges and he learnt how to darn a silk stocking. We mostly woke up in the same bed.

  Then it was the end of the month and time I stopped scandalising Bertie’s neighbours. I loved being with Bertie. We were so free without our uniforms and our seven-day passes and our mandatory rush back to barracks. But much as I loved the city, it was all too close to Father’s business contacts and Mother’s vast network of cousins. I knew if I stayed too long that I’d be press-ganged into marrying some titled dullard before I had time to finish my champagne.

  Bertie saw me off at Victoria Station. He’d bought my ticket, first class. ‘Start as you mean to go on, Kiki.’

  He looked like a painting set against the sooty and smoky rising roof of the station – his sandy brown hair slicked under his hat, his military bearing, long limbs and slender body somehow both louche and polite, as though they weren’t really part of him. He wore a light grey suit, set off with a lavender shirt and a suffragette-purple tie. I half expected him to yell out ‘Votes for Women!’ but in a puff of steam he grabbed me and kissed me.

  ‘Blackcurrant today.’ I could taste the lozenges on his tongue.

  ‘Don’t forget me, Kiki.’

  ‘How could I? You’re my boss.’

  ‘I don’t think you can have a boss, Kiki. You just have people who give you money to do what you want.’

  ‘We all need a reward after the war.’

  ‘Can you be—’

  ‘I can’t be your reward, Bertie.’