45 “three o’clock in the morning”

“Katie King! It’s after midnight… ah.” She held the door a little wider when she saw Fry limping through the foyer, leaning heavily on Tom. She was wearing a pink dressing gown, her hair untamed, but she was completely awake.

“Maisie, my love.” I looked around for a servant but we were alone. “We need a few discreet stitches and I don’t own the right kit anymore.”

“And you thought I would?—No, not there, you’ll get blood all over the new upholstery, go into the kitchen—well, you happen to be right, Katie.”

She ushered us all into her apartment, past the loungeroom, and into the kitchen. It was bare and scrubbed, the white tiles on the floor and walls reminding me strangely of a morgue. Or perhaps it was the one, large, bright white light that glared at the pinewood table, stained and shiny with overuse.

“I stole new thread from the hospital only last week.”

“You’ve been using it up?”

“Our maid found the knives too sharp when she did the washing up, poor thing. Yes, just there, by the table. It’s been covered with all the kitchen fluids—fat, bleach, blood—so I’m sure it can handle a few more stains. Boil the kettle, Katie. Tom—it is Tom, isn’t it?”

“Maisie.” He pulled her into a hug. “It’s been years.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you in your swimsuit. In my head, you’re forever in uniform.”

“In my head too.”

“Here’s the brandy.” She took a bottle from a cupboard. “Dose yourself first.”

“I’m Bertie.” Bertie held out his hand. “Don’t mind the snake.”

“I never do. So good to finally see you again!”

“And Maisie.” I put my hand on Fry’s shoulder, where he sat heavily at the kitchen table. “This is Agent Bacon, but everyone calls him Fry. He had a little disagreement with a now-former colleague.”

“I’ve seen a few of those before. We’ll fix you up.”

“You’re only a nurse.” Fry’s voice growled.

“Only!” Maisie feigned offense. “Well, I can get a seamstress if you prefer. My maid does a lot of darning—shall I wake her up?”

“I thought you were taking me to a doctor, Kiki.”

“If I was going to take you to a doctor, I’d send you back to Fox.” I raised my eyebrows but he merely looked at the table, rubbing his finger along the grain. Maisie had taken off her dressing gown to prep, unselfconscious about her pink striped pajamas.

“Trust me, Fry, this is much better. Free, quiet, and quick, and all you’ll have to show for it is a neat little scar under your hairline.”

“I can see why you might be worried, Fry,” said Maisie as she washed her hands and put on her apron. “Why would a bourgeois housewife know how to stitch skin? But after the Somme, when I worked forty-eight hours straight assisting all the over-burdened surgeons, you shouldn’t be worried. I could stitch cuts like yours in my sleep.”

“And did, in fact.”

“Hmph.” Fry looked sullen. “I don’t suppose I have much choice.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Fry submitted with poor grace to Maisie’s ministrations. I held my cape tighter around my shoulders. This kitchen smelt of soap and old fat and was too spartan for circus clothes. Bertie had taken a seat opposite Fry and peered with undisguised interest. Tom stood close to me, watching Maisie with her box of surgical bits and pieces, working quickly and neatly.

“There!” said Maisie. “All done.”

“What?” said Fry. “But… I didn’t feel anything!”

“I know! Good, isn’t it?” She packed up her box in a few deft movements and took her needle to be disinfected at the sink. “It’s a new local anaesthetic. I apply it directly to the affected area of little jobs like this. My maid, Gina, is so clumsy and such a wimp, if I didn’t dose her up, she’d cry for the rest of the day over one little cut. You looked like you could do with the same care.”

Fry did nothing but scowl.

“Maisie, we’re heading to Rome tonight.”

She looked at me, scanning my face, then smiled broadly.

“Do I have time to pack a thing or two?”

“If I can use your telephone.”

“In the living room, with the rest of the drinks.”

I nodded to Tom and left Bertie to light Fry a cigarette.

“Is Bertie safe with Fry?” He looked back through the kitchen door.

“I think you mean, is Fry safe with Bertie?” I took off my cap, finally, itchy after the long party. “They’re big boys, they can take care of themselves. Especially if you take in whisky.”

“They only have rum… Carribbean spiced rum.” He frowned at the label next to the drinks cabinet. “And you?”

“Just a cigarette.”

He lit one for me and waited, his eyes flicking over the green décor, the small modernist pieces on the walls, the big radio in the corner next to the dark green easy chair, the streetlights through the curtains, anywhere but at the mirror over the fireplace that showed our ragged reflections, anywhere but at me. I took his hand and kissed his knuckles. He moved closer, so we were only a handspan apart.

“Tom…”

“Do you have to call him?”

“You don’t want to hear me play his games.”

“I don’t want you to play his games.” He looked at me with such intensity.

“He won’t hear me otherwise.”

As he left, I had to turn away to force myself to focus. I stood at the window, looking at the Parisian streets lit up like a photograph under the fat moon. My skin felt prickly with cold; I was light-headed with hunger. I inhaled deeply on my cigarette through the French and English operators, through Greef’s polite concern.

“Vixen.” His voice was silver, soft and soporific.

“Don’t you ever sleep, Fox?” I suddenly felt very tired.

“ ‘I follow the waning moon, like a dying lady, who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil out of her chamber…’ ”

“Yes, yes, alright—though aren’t you pale for weariness of these Romantics?”

“ ‘Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room…’ ”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Not just tired, but cold and alone. I touched the radio like it was a good luck charm. “So, bella Roma: Put your man there on standby. You do have a man there, don’t you? Because I’m traveling there tonight. I’m takin’ the bacon.”

I watched a single taxi trundle up the road.

“Take him to the aerodrome. I need you to fly.”

“I have other passengers. I need them to complete the mission.”

Fox’s pause stretched to breaking point. “Why?” His voice was steel again.

“To be lads and ladies for the ladies’ lads.”

“Find some Italians.”

“Sure, and I would… if I spoke Italian, or the princes spoke Italian.”

“How many other passengers?”

“Three.”

“At the aerodrome in Paris, Bacon knows what to do. At Rome, insist on only Vittorio. Anyone else will either sell you to the Communists or the squadristi, whichever side they’re working for.”

“And your man in Italy? Will I know him by his Sobranies cigarettes?”

“I heard that another of my men has joined Hausmann.”

“You clearly inspire them.”

“They teach me half the gladness that their brains would know.”

“How is the fascist cause ‘harmonious madness’?”

“Because the world is listening now.”

“So, it’s all part of your plan… that sounds incredible. I am incredulous.”

“You will know my man by his Sobranies cigarettes.” I could hear the smile in his voice. My cape provided no protection against the night’s chill.

“When’s the flight?”

“How’s the sky in Paris?”

I moved aside the curtains to stare above the streetlamps. “Clear as a heavenly highway.”

“Then as soon as you arrive. Be there in an hour.”

I waited but there was no click, no beep, no operator barking at me in either English or French.

“Fox?”

“I expect a full report on this mission, Vixen.”

“And you’ll have it, when the mission is complete.” Is that all he wanted to say?

“Such harmonious madness…”

“Do you think this mission is half my gladness?”

“More than half, blithe spirit.” Then he hung up. I stared at the receiver. Not more than half, not even half… yet I couldn’t help but feel that it was true, partly true, some shade of true. Why else would I feel happy that Fox was happy, even if it did make me feel sick the moment after? I hunted through the loungeroom until I found some cigarettes and lit one with shaky fingers. “Blithe spirit” and “harmonious madness” were from “To a Skylark,” and I couldn’t help but think of other lines from the poem: “We look before and after and pine for what is not, our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught.” Pleasure in pain, pain in pleasure; this was a perfect description of Fox and everything he touched. I felt ashamed that I enjoyed it. I leant against the window and let the cool glass soothe my cheek. But it didn’t really matter, all this nonsense with Fox. All that mattered, in the end, was that I did all I could to get Tom’s charges cleared. Even if I had to walk through fire, I would do it.

“Katie King.” Maisie popped her head in. “What’s next?”

It was Ray who ran out to find us taxis, a blonde angel in a blue dressing gown, hailing the cabs and kissing his wife in the street. I think all of us looked on with a pang at his obvious passion for Maisie. I needed to go home and put on some sensible warm clothes, as did Bertie and Tom, then we all needed to go to the aerodrome on the city’s outskirts. Fry said he had “business to attend to” and would meet us there, though I had a suspicion that his business included a bottle of gin and a quick private sob. He looked hangdog as he gingerly lowered himself into his taxi.

“Headache,” said Bertie once we’d settled in the cab. “I offered to give him some morphine I had in my hotel bedroom and he looked at me like I’d suggested something lewd.”

“Had you?” I asked.

“He may be built like a sailor but he certainly doesn’t act like any of the sailors I’ve met.” The streets were empty in a way that felt like metaphor, like prophecy, as they whizzed by the cab windows.

“No, I think he’s less sailor and more fly-boy,” I said.

“You know, I’ve never been in an aeroplane.”

“Nor me,” said Tom.

“Nor me,” said Maisie.

“I understand Fox wanted to get us there quickly, but all of us, with no experience of air travel…”

“We’ll be fine.” Tom shrugged. “What more have we got to lose?”