40 
“thru the night”
I toyed with the idea of not calling Fox. I was full of food and booze, I was keyed up and exhausted, I was already running late. But if I didn’t call as soon as I arrived, then I would need to call Fox with Tom next to me, with Tom listening to my banter, seeing my smile… it was not something I liked to admit to myself, the fun I had with my manipulative boss, the pride in proper work and solving puzzles and winning wars, the pleasure in making my spymaster my spy-servant, even if only for a moment, those seductive games. Because seduction was the game; only who was seducing whom? I looked out the window of the taxi and saw nothing but memories. Fox in dress uniform, looking every inch the soldier, looking me over as he passed by with the visiting commander. Fox resting after surgery, laid out on the grass in the dawn, blood even on his cigarette, eyes unfocused in the hazy morning light. Fox in his house in Kent, the moonlight in his silver hair, watching me watching the stars before he kissed me. Fox in the apple orchard, again and again, his collar open, his sunshine smile. My heart beat uncomfortably, but whether it was from excitement or fear, I couldn’t have said. Perhaps I could no longer tell the difference between the two.
“My apologies, miss, Dr. Fox left for London about an hour ago.”
“Left! But… do you know, is he traveling by train, by plane…”
“I couldn’t say, miss.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t? Do you know?”
I heard a muffle on the line. “It seems he left for the train station, miss.”
I thanked him absentmindedly and hung up. Fox could be here, Fox could be in this train station, waiting to get the Blue Train back to London. Surely, surely he would have taken a flight if he was used to flying, because why would he take the long way home? Only if he knew Tom was coming, only if he wanted to surprise me, scare me, shock me after not seeing him for so many years… no, it couldn’t be, he wouldn’t. I struggled to control my breathing but found I could not. Two minutes until Tom’s train arrived. Which platform did the Blue Train back to London leave from? No, Fox wouldn’t wait on the platform, he’d wait inside. I scanned the station bar and the café. No, he wouldn’t wait, he’d get to the train in the nick of time… out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of some silver hair. I moved forward, drawn to it, the head turned—it wasn’t Fox. My legs felt weak from relief and disappointment. The whistle blew, steam blasted the platform: Tom’s train was here. Was Fox at Gare du Nord or not? My thoughts rattled, I kept seeing and unseeing silver hair and a straight posture, until I saw black hair with a tilted hat, a worn navy suit on a too-large frame, a grin, now boyish, now like a dingo, that ploughed toward me. I jumped into Tom’s arms.
“Button.”
“My Tom-Tom.”
We stayed that way for a long time.
“You’re here to stay.”
“I like how that isn’t a question, Button.”
“Of course it isn’t a question, but I’d like confirmation all the same.”
We’d walked straight into the nearest welcoming café. Tom’s bag was at our feet as the warm light flowed over and around us. The café was full of train workers, guards half in uniform, boiler stokers, ticket sellers, cleaning ladies with their buckets of brushes next to them. His worn-out suit and wild-eyed stare fit right in. It was only my silk and embroidery, suede and high color that looked out of place, but then again, it’d look out of place anywhere but Montparnasse. I was beginning to realize that I looked like a bohemian artist—colorful but scruffy, eccentric and too modern—too declassé for the Café de la Paix, too luxurious for a workers’ bar, too fragile for the streets, too robust for the drawing rooms. In Sydney, I wouldn’t be served, and in London, I would be stared at. In Paris, however, I got a single glance and people went back to their drinks. Was this real freedom? I ordered another round of beers from a passing waiter and waited for Tom to lift his eyes from the table.
He fiddled with his beer glass. “I can’t give it to you, not yet. I want to stay, I’ve argued with Old Buffer that I should stay—and I should, it’d save me time and save the paper money—but it depends on this next story.”
“Smyrna?”
“Rome.”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Us?”
“Me, Maisie, Bertie, Fox’s other agents.”
Tom frowned and looked confused.
“They’re my mission unit. I think it’s a given that I’ll be going to Italy for this Blackshirt gathering, even if my mission is completed beforehand. I’m sure Fry will go too, and his helper, aka Roger the Dodger. Maisie and Bertie want to go as well… in fact, I might need them to.”
“Button, you’re speaking in riddles. How do you know all this?”
“You told me! In your letter. Fascists and princes, it’s what my mission is all about… you know this!”
He shook his head and stared at the table again. “Yes. No. Perhaps I do. It’s been…” He looked around as if the unspoken part of his sentence was obvious, his eyes unfocused, as though he couldn’t really see the sweat-stained uniforms around us.
“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.