Autumn Leaves Read online

  “A recruitment drive.”

  “Yes! I hadn’t thought of that, I was thinking more of a seduction. But he was recruiting Felix to his cause. God knows what he’ll make Felix do. I can hardly bear to watch.”

  A waiter came and left without an order for dessert. Theo smoked silently, his legs crossed, once again lost in his thousand-yard stare. The society women were, in fact, American tourists and came up to ask Theo whether he was really a Romanov prince. He pulled himself together to address them and I had a moment to think. This really did sound like my last mission. A certain Edward Houseman, or Hausmann, had tried to recruit disgruntled British soldiers to the cause of his German Brownshirts. The Brownshirts were the nickname for the German variety of fascist, a group I still did not fully understand, but it seemed to be composed of bitter old soldiers who felt betrayed by the end of the war. Had Hausmann moved from soldiers to aristocrats now? If so, was he only targeting Russians, or were other nationalities on his list? Why was he still in Paris and not in London, Berlin, Munich… but I was getting ahead of myself. I had no mission, I was just here with the lover I’d abandoned last year. The society women fluttered away. Theo finished his whisky and licked his lips.

  “That was delicious.”

  “Another?”

  “Somewhere else, perhaps?” He picked up my hand and kissed it, holding my gaze. I was at such a pitch, being in Paris, seeing Theo, the possibility of danger he carried, what else could I do but say yes?

  5

  “dearest (you’re the nearest to my heart)”

  As soon as we left the café it started to rain in huge bucketing gusts. We ran to my building but by the time we reached it Theo was already soaked. He slipped off the hood of my opera cloak and kissed my neck. Not a small peck, or a cheeky bite, but with one arm circling my waist and pulling me toward him, he caressed the entire length of my neck from my ear to my collar bone. With each kiss he pulled me closer to him, so my feet rose off the ground and I had to cling to him in order not to fall. He said nothing, each breath became deeper as he kissed the other side of my neck. He knew this made me quiver and I would quickly say yes to whatever he asked. I lifted his face from my collarbone to read his expression. Desire had wiped out all other emotions.

  “Please,” he said. I kissed him and he made a little moan from the back of his throat. “Please.”

  We almost ran up the four flights of stairs to my garret, tripping over my wet opera cloak, my shoes scuffed as he half-carried me over the landing spaces in order to kiss me. I didn’t need to worry whether we’d locked the door, as Theo held me against it with both hands under my bum. I just about managed to kick off my shoes and unpin my cloak before I felt my stockings clips snap undone, before I felt him caressing me. He kissed my ears, neck, mouth, his breathing so deep it was as if he was trying to drink me in, as if he wanted to dissolve into me. That depth of desire, so rarely found, is irresistible. It made me respond in kind, it woke me up, I was alive to every sensation of touch and smell and sound in a way I hadn’t been since I had received that black-edged telegram informing me of my mother’s death. I was alive and I wanted him as completely as he wanted me. I wanted him instantly, I didn’t want to wait the two steps it would’ve taken to get to the bed. I said his name and a shudder ran through his body. I could feel the way he had to hold himself back to make the moment last, how difficult and how necessary that was for him. He was so tall that he could hold me up easily. I wrapped my legs tightly around him and let myself go. He said my name, over and over as he calmed down, his lips on my neck still hot with hunger.

  He hoisted me up and shuffled to the bed. We lay tangled together as the autumn night cooled our sweat. All I could hear was the patter of rain on the metal roof above us, its harmony on the window panes, the undertone of whistling where the wind tried to join in our kisses.

  I thought Theo was asleep and moved to light the bedside candle and grab my cigarettes, but he propped himself up and took a cigarette for himself.

  “Our last ones.”

  “Not ever, Kiki.” He looked stricken. I shook the empty packet at him.

  “That wasn’t a metaphor, Theo.”

  “Good.” He flopped back on the pillow. “Is it my imagination or do you smoke more than you used to?”

  “Much more.”

  “As do I. Why, though? Is it this city?”

  “And all the love and heartache it holds. I never want to leave. If I have my way, I never will.”

  The candlelight flickered in the draft from the window.

  “You don’t want to be an Australienne?”

  “Do you want to be Russian?”

  “It’s unavoidable.”

  “Precisely. I’m the Australienne de Paris.”

  “A true émigré, always two people at once.”

  “Always myself, Theo, and that is true freedom.”

  I was still wearing my slip, its black silk and lace now sticky and askew over my breasts. Theo flicked his cigarette out the window and, leaning over me, pulled the slip over my head, dropping it on the floor as he gazed at me. I kept smoking, watching his emotions boiling beneath the surface—longing, lust, laughter, a sort of hopefulness. I slid my feet up his chest, moving his singlet up with them, until he took his cue and took it off. He was only slightly muscled, hours in the driver’s seat balanced by the occasional repair job and night on the dancefloor. Another cold draught made all the tiny hairs on his body stand to attention, among other things. He leant forward.

  “Welcome home,” he said and he kissed me.

  * * *

  Theo left early the next morning, and the next, with a promise to introduce me to his brother-in-law, Felix Yusupov. I had told Theo that, if he wanted my help with Felix, I had to hear about his fascist fascination for myself. I had to meet Felix regardless; I could not pass up the opportunity to write about Russian princes for my column.

  I spent a blissful couple of days wandering around Montparnasse. I wanted to touch everything and often returned to my studio with fingertips filthy from running them along walls and fences and signs. I sat at three different terrasse tables at each café, ordering a new coffee at each one; I touched posters and sandwich boards for shoe repairs, sausages, stationers; I walked along the Seine with one arm out, brushing the weeds and wood and stone wall as I strolled. I wasn’t interested in haute Paris, in the museums and galleries, in the Angelica tearooms or Galeries Lafayette. I wanted to sit under the falling golden leaves and sip cheap aperitifs, I wanted to hear the rough voices of fishermen as they waited out their old age, I wanted to see shopgirls and street sweepers and seamstresses hurrying to and from work or stretching on their lunchbreak. I wanted the Paris that wasn’t just for the perpetual tourist. I wanted the Paris that really was my home.

  The telegram boy found me at Café Petit. Petit’s was the opposite of the Rotonde. Here, no one wanted to be recognized, to establish their reputation among the avant-garde, or to spot the celebrities of the art world. Here, furriers and cobblers wanted a good cheap breakfast, old men wanted to see their friends for a spot of chess, and expats wanted to read their letters in caffeinated peace. Madame Petit had been so delighted to see me again that she insisted I call her Madeleine. I adored short, round Madeleine, who always swept her hair into a Gibson-girl bun and had fresh hot coffee ready when I walked in. I felt at home in her café, its dark green walls with their photos of pre-war Paris, its wooden furniture worn smooth with use. I had ordered my usual light breakfast when the telegram boy poked his head in.

  “Mademoiselle Button?” He gave a grin and a little bow at the door; I clearly had a reputation at the post office. “Telegrams from London.”

  I propped the little yellow cards against my empty coffee cup. I wanted to rip them open and devour the contents, I wanted to throw them in the bin with the rest of my obligations. There were only a few people who would bother to send me a telegram—Bertie, Tom, Fox, and my father—and all of them had the ability to
turn my Paris life upside-down and inside-out. I waited for the pastry, and the extra coffee Madeleine brought with it, before I lit a cigarette and opened the first.

  UNBUTTON THAT BUTTON IN PARIS FRIDAY GARE L’EST 1600

  I exhaled with a smile. No one called me Button but Tom. These saucy instructions meant Tom was coming to Paris to monopolize my company and my bedroom floor. My delicious boy from home, with his black hair that wouldn’t stay in its pomade, stormy blue eyes, and dingo grin… I felt a physical pain in my chest and I had to fold up the telegram to stop my tears. I knew I had missed his company, but with my mother’s diaries in front of me, I hadn’t thought much about it. I could hear his deep Australian voice in these few words. I could almost smell him, soap and sweaty wool and tobacco and something else, his natural scent, a smell complicated by memories of far away and long ago.

  The coffee was just the right sort of bitter to offset the sweetness of this first telegram, just the right sort of milky to give me strength to open the next.

  DARKLING I LISTEN

  Just three words and no sending address. I didn’t need one, I didn’t need any other markers to know who sent this and why. This was from Fox, quoting Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” to let me know that a mission was impending, my spy work would resume soon, and he was listening somewhere, somehow. It must have been Fox I had seen in the window in Westminster; that he knew I was in Paris by any other means was too chilling to contemplate.

  I watched the leaves fighting with the wind. So, the game was on. This was the summons. Next, he would let me know how to contact him, and then my days would be shaped by secret meetings with shady men. When I had received my summons last year, I almost cried. Bertie had delivered it along with the first payment: Tom’s handkerchief, rescued from the battlefield.

  My boy from home was in serious trouble. He had abandoned his real name, as Thomas Thompson was wanted by the Australian Imperial Force for desertion and the British Army for treason. Tom hid in plain sight as the reporter Thomas Arthur, but he remained in danger until he cleared his name. The handkerchief told me that Fox knew of Tom’s plight; I only worked for Fox to get the evidence I needed to help Tom. What would be my payment this time? Would one more mission deliver the proof Tom needed? Fox didn’t work like that, he liked to hold on to power and strengthen his hold over his agents until they dressed like him, spoke like him, smoked the same gold-tipped Sobranie cigarettes with the same sneer as him. But I hoped. I had to hope, I had only hope, otherwise I was working for a man who wished to imprison me.

  I shredded my pain au chocolat, dipping each piece into my coffee before eating it. The pastry was light and buttery, the chocolate both sweet and bitter, the coffee softening the whole. Each mouthful was a sensation and kept me anchored in my body, when my mind threatened to drift off into memories of Fox in the war, of Tom in Paris, spy missions almost failing and what I’d had to sacrifice to make them succeed. I concentrated on each mouthful until my swirling memories had settled, until I felt safe in Paris, and not threatened by a sudden return of the past.

  6

  “love her by radio”

  I moved quickly to my building. There was one job I had neglected to do since I arrived, and that was check my post. Everyone had a little box on the ground floor of the building. I had assumed that no one would have written to me as no one knew I was here. Bertie had already given me the invitations I needed for my work and the first wasn’t until the end of the week. I hadn’t yet contacted my nearest and dearest. I hoped to run into my artist friends at the Rotonde, or the Dȏme, or even just in the street; in fact, that was the surest way to find Picasso and crew, as I had no idea where they were living now. I hadn’t yet contacted Harry or Maisie, my best friends from the war, who both lived in Paris. I knew why I hadn’t but I didn’t like to think about it. Bertie was a mirror but a forgiving one; he suffered as I did, it was easy to see myself in him and still pour the champagne. Tom knew me too well. To him, I could be neither better nor worse, he’d seen it all. But Maisie, my fellow nurse, would see all my flaws and ask me why I couldn’t see them too. Harry, Ms. Harriet Harker, would simply tell me what to do to get over my sadness and organize me into doing it. I needed a little time, a little Paris, a few packets of Gauloises and glasses of Cassis before I saw them and saw, in them, the ravages of grief in my face.

  That is what I felt anyway, that is what the nasty little voice at the back of my mind told me. That voice, always so fearful, didn’t remind me of the times in the war when Maisie had picked me up from the floor of our tent after I had been working too hard, had taken off my boots and unpinned my hair and pulled a blanket over me when I had been too exhausted to move. It didn’t remind me how, last year, Harry organized for me to have a twice-weekly bath in her sumptuous apartment while she took care of my laundry. It was a vile little voice, suspicious of its own shadow, and it kept me away from my two best women, the very people who could help me most.

  But those two telegrams were a reminder, a warning, a cooee from the future. My little postbox held only one piece of mail, more like a package, with thick cream paper and addressed in spidery calligraphy: Fox had sent me a handwritten mission. I was caught between feeling impressed and horrified that he should be so particular and personal in his attentions. There was no stamp or postage mark though. Had the envelope been hand-delivered? In Fox’s handwriting—did that mean he was in Paris? Surely, he would have summoned me if he was nearby. No, there must be some intermediary, he must be playing some game. I smiled at myself; of course he was playing games, it was the only way he communicated, it was what he loved best and did without cease. I just had to make sure I played as well as he did.

  I stood in the street for a moment, spots of rain cool kisses on my face, each spot a mark on my silk dress. I took a seat at the Café Dȏme among the working men having their midmorning coffee and the revolutionaries just filtering in after the previous night’s debauches. These men looked once but not twice at a society girl in an inky blue beret and coat, shirt dress with buttons past my belly button, and star-patterned shoes that fit like old friends. I had all my tools with me: notebook and pencils, coffee and cigarettes.

  The envelope sprang open in my hand. Inside was a single page of cream paper with the mission on it and four photographs. I was still for so long that I almost burned my fingers on my cigarette. The photos were of Tom, in uniform, sprawled in mud surrounded by shrapnel and body parts. In the first photo he was unconscious, eyes closed, arms flung wide. Next to him, face up to the camera, was a German soldier, hand out to pull Tom out of the mud. In the second picture, the German soldier was now actively pulling him, one hand reaching into Tom’s tunic. In the third, the German soldier was peering at Tom’s identity discs. In the last, Tom’s discs hung from the German soldier’s neck as he hauled Tom, his head slack, through the mud.

  I thought I might vomit. I thought I might crumple into a tiny ball, here on the café floor, Tom looked so broken. Yet here it was, payment before I even asked for it, exactly what I wanted: the next bit of proof that Tom was innocent of those charges of treason.

  Or was it? I peered more carefully, hiding the pictures behind my handbag. My first thought was that this proved that Tom had been kidnapped by the Germans, but on a second look, it wasn’t clear if they were rescuing a stranger or a comrade. The German soldier clearly didn’t know Tom by sight as he had to check Tom’s identity discs, but whether he was taking Tom to be a prisoner of war or back to his German kamaraden was not evident from the photo.

  The German soldier clearly knew the photographer, and perhaps even knew why they were taking the photograph, as there wasn’t a trace of surprise on his face. The photographer must therefore be German or known by the Germans in that trench. There wasn’t anything that would give away the photographer’s identity—no boot, no hand, no accidental reflection. I flipped the photos over. Fox’s handwriting spiralled over each one:

  Teach me half the gladness tha
t thy brain must know

  Such harmonious madness from my lips would flow

  The world should listen then, as I am listening now

  Shelley; I stared at the lines. Fox should be quoting Keats, Keats was his favorite, and using Keats meant that you were a favorite, a code within a code. Was I no longer a favorite? If not, then why send a telegram with “Darkling I listen,” his most-used line from his favorite poem? It was clever how it echoed the Keats fragment in the telegram—“Darkling I listen” and “I am listening now”—as was the way the lines seemed to reveal my closeness to Tom, my closeness to Fox, the madness of spy work and the madness of love…

  I shoved the photos back in the envelope. My first question when I spoke to Fox would be how he got these photos. There could, of course, be a clue in the mission. As I blew my smoke at the smoke-stained ceiling, I had to remind myself to be professional, however much Fox provoked me to be emotional, vulnerable, and dependent. I made an effort to ash my cigarette, get out my pencil, and get ready to decode his handwriting.

  An old, mad, blind, despised king rises from the south. Houseboys, dregs of their dull race, would march princes, jewels of their fine race, through public scorn. Mud from a muddy trench, rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, but leechlike to their gas-blind amputated country cling ’til they swell with blood. People starved and shunned from the shelled fields, princes halved and stunned in the drenched fields, make an army whom liberticide and realpolitik make a primed dud to all who wield. Black-clad men who tempt and slay, religion in a brown shirt, a free corps against an empire sealed, Versailles worst statute unrepealed—all are graves from which a leader may march in our tempestuous day.

  This wasn’t Keats either. The last mission had looked like this, but that had been lines from “Ode to a Nightingale” cut up and rewritten as prose. This was also some prosy nonsense, but… was this more Shelley? That opening line looked familiar, “an old, mad, blind, despised king,” but there was something off about it.