11 
“shimmy with me”
It was dark when I returned to my studio flat and I read by candlelight. I flicked the letter over but there was no second page. The letter was, like the mission, only a poem.
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary nightingale day
’Tis since thou are fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.
As a lizard with the shade
Of a lustrous leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismay’d;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Thy happy lot will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.
I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dress’d,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love snow, and forlorn forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
One minute past, and
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.
I love Love—though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee—
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
“Many a weary nightingale day”—nightingale was surely not in the original poem. This poem was in code. It was Shelley, called only after the first line, “Rarely, rarely, comest thou.” “Nightingale” wasn’t the only substitution. There was also “thy happy lot,” “forlorn,” “one minute past,” and possibly “lustrous.” These were all words or phrases from Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” which I knew inside out. “Nightingale” was the first clue and this was the key; the other words would refer to something within or about “Ode to a Nightingale.”
Stuck in the folds of my passport was the copy of “Ode to a Nightingale” that Fox had given me when I first started nursing for him. My copy was now brown with travel and frayed at the edges, spotted with tea and coffee and what looked like blood. But the title was clear: “Ode to a Nightingale (early May).” “Early May” was not usually published as part of the title; in fact, I had only seen it on this copy. I had an inkling that “nightingale” had something to do with “May.” I looked at the other words but there was no obvious link between them. Unless it was their position in “Ode to a Nightingale”—“nightingale” was line 1, “lustrous” was line 39 (it was so helpful that each stanza was ten lines), “thy happy lot” was 5, “forlorn” was 71, and “one minute past” was 4. No, if “one minute past” was 4, then “nightingale” couldn’t be 1 as the word didn’t appear in the poem except in the title. Was “nightingale” actually zero? 0395714—that collection of numbers was nonsensical, unless only some of the numbers mattered. 5714 could be the end of a telephone number—now I felt I was getting somewhere—which left 0 and 39, nightingale and lustrous. 039: another telephone number? A date, a time? That made no sense. What about the words, what could they have to do with each other? Maybe “nightingale” of the title did relate to “may,” as a synonym, a substitution within a substitution? May-lustrous? May-beauty? May-fair?
I couldn’t help myself, I yelled “Aha!” into the chill night. Mayfair 5714—this must be the number to call Fox. Was it his club? In Mayfair, it was more likely to be his London home.
A cold wind crept under the window frame and wrapped around my neck. He had given me his home number in the poem—home is where the heart is—his heart was in the poem. Shelley and his abstract Spirit of Delight disappeared and I could hear Fox’s silvery voice flow like mercury, poisonous and powerful, through the lines to speak to me directly. It was so intimate that I felt sick.
I opened the window wide, the night air damp and wild, moving under my hair and in my sleeves and making it hard to light my cigarette. The view at night was a carnival of light and noise, it was a photographic negative of the subtle elegance of the day. The Eiffel Tower lit up like a beacon, calling all the street life out of their crannies and into the rain-heavy air. I inhaled deeply and considered what the entirety of the poem meant. It was unlike Fox to be so personal, but if he wasn’t calling me with this song, then why was it here? That final stanza was too much, he couldn’t possibly mean it, I doubt he would ever think of something so over-the-top. I had never made his heart my home and never would; he must know it. No, this “spirit of delight” had to refer to something other than me—our work together, Englishness, King and Country, something. That it seemed to speak to me was just a game, a play for power, it had to be.
The bells in the church rang; it was nine o’clock. If I had to call Fox at his home in Mayfair, and not at his work in Westminster, then now was as good a time as any.