27 “when hearts are young”

I loved being with Theo but had no intention of staying at his house all day in a stinking ball gown. I had no intention of staying in his bed when last night’s desperate kisses swirled between us with our smoke. I excused myself when more of his brothers turned up for an enormous semiformal breakfast party, slipping safely back to down-at-heel, bonkers, private Montparnasse.

I needed to think about Lazarev. He had been part of my mission last April. He had teased me by seeming to have information about Hausmann, when he actually knew nothing of use. He was excellent in a waltz, though, and drank vodka like it was a vocation. In the end, he had been extraneous. But clearly not anymore, as here he was, sneaking in and out of the Yusupov apartment in the early morning, as though he was a secret lover or a thief. What had he been doing? More importantly, who had he been seeing? It wasn’t Theo; I doubt it was Irène; it could only have been Felix or one of the servants in the kitchen. The butler was a snob, the maid was a bit clueless, the cook was sarcastic—unless they were brilliant liars, none of them were interested in Lazarev. He must have snuck in to speak to Felix. Theo had mentioned that Felix saw him sometimes. I would have to get him to find out why Felix was seeing Lazarev now.

Waiting at home was a letter from Tom. I waited until I was washed and dressed, sitting at my windowsill with a cigarette, before I allowed myself to open it.

Button,

London is damp, cramped, and I feel like a tramp in my worn cuffs and scuffed shoes. I only unpack my suitcase to wash the smell of bloodshed and cordite from my clothes. I haven’t learned how to go to sleep. I fall unconscious at some point in the night, wake up dry-mouthed and still in my trousers before I haul myself onto a lumpy mattress for hours of bad dreams.

Do you feel sorry for me yet?

It’s no wonder I love Paris. It’s perhaps the only place I can get a good meal and a proper rest (even if that rest doesn’t include any actual shut-eye).

But I’m not writing to whine about my life of travel and excitement. I have news in the form of Fleet Street gossip.

The lads in the bars have also made their way home from Smyrna via Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Milan. They speak about gangs of old soldiers who follow other old soldiers. They speak to boys too young to have fought, who pipe up about a new world order, even while the old soldiers are using the same words to talk about the old world order. The men in Vienna speak about Munich, about the Freikorps and some political party or movement with a long name that I always struggle to remember. Its initials are NSDAP and they wear brown as they did in the war. The men in Rome and Milan speak about Mussolini. These men wear black and live to fight. They are excited. They speak of a big event coming, something new, some show of power. The Fleet Street lads have their bags packed and are booking passages to Rome, to Milan, to Florence, to make sure they’re nearby when the big event happens.

Which means I will be there too. Old Buffer wants to send me back to Greece but I’ve convinced him that Italy is where the news will happen, that an eyewitness account will make him look good and the paper sell well at home. I’m convincing him that a week or two eating spaghetti and gelato in a warmer climate will stop me “looking like a cadaver, some ghost of Banquo.” I just need a few more days—to wash my clothes, to gather more gossip from the pubs and print rooms—before I will be back in Paris on my way to Rome.

Keep the camp bed out, set up a table for my typewriter. I’m bringing whisky and gossip and I’m in need of warmth. I almost don’t want to say it but I will: I miss you, Button. Champagne doesn’t fizz without you.

T.

My heart rattled its cage as I reacted simultaneously to all the parts of the letter.

Something was going to happen in Italy and soon. Were my princes involved? With Fry, I had narrowed it down to Edward, Albert, and George; that is, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and Prince George. But how they were involved was still a mystery. These Blackshirts didn’t sound like sons of earls and men with property, they sounded like angry villagers and disillusioned clerks. They “live to fight,” Tom wrote, but that kind of physical violence did not suit men in tuxedos or hunting tweed, even if they were old soldiers. How did the two connect?

Camp beds and typewriters, whisky and scuffed shoes; why did these make my breath catch? It wasn’t the objects, they were just ordinary, everyday things. It had to be the longing he wrote into them, as though his grimy cuffs reached out for me across the channel. Which they did, in a way, as he couldn’t and wouldn’t say what he really meant. I was glad he didn’t, as I wasn’t at all ready for confessions of undying this or deep unconditional that. Except friendship, of course; I supposed that could be the most complicated of all.

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I pulled on my only pair of trousers, warm and practical, just right for a head full of passion and last night’s champagne. I found my sailor’s peacoat under the bed with a packet of boiled lollies in the pocket—Bertie must have worn it when he was here. But it was covered with dust and smelt of mold, so I grabbed my peacock coat and the soft blue scarf that Tom had brought back from Smyrna. I couldn’t find my mirror, so I would need to trust that I had washed off all of last night’s makeup. I also had to trust that my feet would remember the way to Harry’s as I had forgotten her address. My literal dirty linen would have to wait until next time too. For the moment, it would be enough to relieve my heart of some of its memories.

The air became heavy with moisture and the surface of the river shivered. I could talk about my mother with Bertie, with Maisie, and especially with Tom, but speaking about how I still suffered felt like wading through mud, like extracting bits of shrapnel. When I spoke about her, my memory offered up sections of her diaries, events in my mother’s voice from years previously. When I spoke about my suffering, my memory offered up events that had nothing to do with my mother. I saw the crematorium in Sydney, manned by a sweating one-armed veteran. I saw the portholes of the troop ships, rust stains dripping like blood. I saw an amputated leg in a muddy French field, I saw apples rotting by the roadside with no one to harvest them, I saw gold cigarette butts amid the debris outside the surgeon’s tent. What else could I do but concentrate on the smells of frying garlic and fizzing wine, on the sounds of French debate and cooing pigeons, on the feel of an European autumn as the dead leaves littered the footpath?

My walk to Harry’s gave me the opportunity to call Bertie. I headed into the cavernous and busy Gare du Nord. A guard directed me to a bank of public telephones, such a strange but welcome sight, their little boxes painted blue and yellow.

“Browne speaking.”

“Bertie darling, I call you with a hangover and sore feet.”

“Kiki! Did you go to the ball? When will there be copy? You don’t possibly have a photo, do you?”

“I can’t possibly as I don’t have a camera. Will you buy one for me?”

“Will Fox?”

“Why? What have you heard?”

“Only that my lover-boy now requires evidence for his various theories. He was fulminating about it last night, ranting really, like a rabble-rouser at Speakers’ Corner. His boss, Fox that is, wants proof of what he has heard, seen, read, and understood. He was going on and on about how could he do that without a camera, without a radio studio, why should he show evidence of thinking like he was schoolboy, et cetera et cetera… but it seems that Fox might just buy you a camera. He might just have to.”

“Or he might just send me evidence of other work he has commissioned. Has your boy been to France lately?”

“Not that I could see. Dublin again, and Italy. He had a wrapper for Italian homemade licorice. I was tempted to buy him more but that would give me away.”

“Italian… Fox knows more than he’s letting on. Not Germany?”

“Who goes to Germany nowadays?”

“The damned. I’m beginning to think I’m one of them.”

“Leave the melodrama for your copy.”

“I’ll send it tomorrow. Say hello to Tom for me.”

“With pleasure! But for any reason?”

“Same old. He’s on leave from the front.”

“By the way, I have a check for a typewriter made out to you. Himself is humming up the corridor; I’ll see if I can add a camera to the total. Any juicy titbits from the ball last night that he couldn’t refuse?”

“All the Romanov brothers in black and white tuxedos around Coco Chanel in shimmering black. Masked waiters serving white cocktails. A ballroom as big as Buckingham Palace.”

“Next time we will have it on film.”

“Be here soon, Bertie. I think I’ll need you.”