by Tessa Lunney
North looked up from her gossip. ‘Kiki, you look lost.’
‘Forlorn. The very word is like a bell—’
‘Like a bell? You’re being morbid and poetical, Kiki.’
‘My heart aches—’
‘Well, we have the cure for that – wine!’ She held up a bottle. ‘Sit down and have a glass of this, what is it, Beaujolais.’
Why not? I needed something and I still had hours to wait until Fox’s call. Some of her companions were old soldiers, Californians who’d run off to Canada to join the fight, and knew Paris in the way I did. The hours relaxed with the wine, and when I saw Henri come towards me I got ready with my next drink order. Despite my mild flirtation, his expression remained glum. I looked at my watch; it was exactly midnight.
‘Mademoiselle,’ Henri leant over and whispered in my ear, ‘you have—’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll come now.’
The café’s office was a tomb and Henri wouldn’t come further than the door. I lit a cigarette before I picked up, as something to do, something to calm me, to pretend I was in control. I blew out smoke into the telephone receiver.
‘Woodbines, Vixen?’ purred Fox. He was in one of his filthy flirty moods.
‘I’m not that nostalgic.’ Woodbines were the smoke of the trenches.
‘Not even Sobranie?’
‘Gitanes,’ I said. ‘I bought them with the newspaper yesterday.’
‘Do the French newspapers include photos now?’
‘Just the one.’
The clock ticked on the shelf. The sounds of the café were blocked by the heavy stone wall of the office.
‘Vixen.’
‘Fox?’
‘I cry your mercy – pity – love! Aye, love!’
Oh, this game. ‘And what is love? It is a doll dress’d-up—’
‘Ye may love in spite of beaver hats . . .’
‘Fox, are you just bored?’
‘Bored? I could play this game all day!’
‘But not all night, and night it is.’
‘And is the night tender?’
‘Tender is the night and he cannot see what flowers are at his feet.’
‘Do you know it by heart, Vixen?’
‘I’m working on it. Am I the flowers at his feet?’
‘You’re one of them.’
‘Along with the man who took that photo?’ I wanted to know how many other agents the mole could not see.
‘Do you like it? It’s one of my favourites. I have so few of you laughing.’
‘So few of me? How many did this photographer take?’
‘That photographer is me.’ I could hear that he was delighted with my confusion, with his own technical ingenuity. ‘I’m as dexterous with a box brownie as I am with a scalpel, Vixen.’
He was also more intimately involved with this mole than I had originally assumed. The man who had died in my arms was one of Fox’s protégés, as I was . . . I thought I had known most of his agents, but apparently not. I took the photo out of my handbag and stared at it. I still only recognised a few faces.
‘You look very pretty in it, don’t you think? A Queen-Moon clustered round by her starry fays.’ His voice was silky but it chilled me that he knew I was looking at the photo again.
‘But here there is no light,’ I countered.
I heard him exhale. ‘Save what from heaven is with breezes blown.’
‘Who’s listening to us, Fox?’
‘Darkling, I listen—’
‘Who do you think is eavesdropping on the line?’
‘Men sit and hear each other groan, youth grows pale—’
‘And dies – that sounds like a hospital ward.’
Fox made a satisfied noise down the line.
‘It seems rich to die for the lands forlorn.’ I connected the two sets of clues. ‘Germany is a bit forlorn at the moment. Is this goodbye, France?’
‘Why don’t they give us a chance? The faery lands are too forlorn—’
‘Because they don’t have shadows numberless to hide a mole?’
‘Not quite yet.’
I could hear him light another cigarette. I was right – the mole was a double agent for Germany or some German organisation. I had to look for a man with German connections. I hated the way Fox made me play his games, but I couldn’t stop myself. If I was brutally honest, I didn’t want to stop – but I wanted to play on my terms.
‘Do you have more clues for me, Fox?’
‘Oh, Vixen, I was just beginning to enjoy this match—’
‘Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes—’
‘Lustrous or lusty?’
‘Or her wandering mind—’
‘Beyond tomorrow – and you don’t have many more days beyond that to complete this mission.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘As you wish, Vixen. But before we go, tell me, was the owner of the handkerchief glad to receive his property?’
Tom. I had to protect him and I had to force Fox to surrender his information.
‘He’d be gladder if everything was returned. As would the messenger.’
‘Such as what? His name?’ Fox’s voice was cruel.
‘His good name.’
‘But is it really so good, Vixen?’
‘I trust—’
‘Ah, trust. Such a fragile thing. The slightest suspicion and it disintegrates.’
I cursed under my breath. To trust Fox, to let myself be trustworthy to him, would betray too much vulnerability, would leave me open to his lies and cruelty. But without it, how could I get what I needed? I had to work for Fox and trust that he’d deliver, and trust that what he delivered to me would help clear Tom’s name. I stubbed out my cigarette. There was nothing else for it; I had to gamble on trust and all that it entailed.
‘But trust is the basis of love, Fox. And I only work for love.’
Silence. I strained to hear him, but all I could hear was the clock on the table and the muted sounds from the other side of the door.
‘I know.’ But his voice wasn’t cold, or sharp, or cruel. It sounded almost sad. I had expected more jealousy from Fox. He hated to be second best, in anything. So what did he know that I didn’t?
‘Vixen,’ his purr was back, ‘open the desk drawer, the top right. There is an envelope addressed to Mademoiselle Renarde. Use that name when you go to the address on the back.’
‘Why? To find what?’
But the only reply was a click. The line was dead.
The envelope was not written in his ornate handwriting, but typed. Just the name on the front, and on the back, an address in a part of Paris I didn’t recognise. Inside was another photo, but not of Ferny or Fox or something related to the mission. It was of me and Tom, both in uniform, somewhere in Paris during the war. We weren’t looking at the camera, we weren’t even aware of it as we held hands over the café table, forehead to forehead, eyes closed. I had to light another cigarette to stop the tremble in my fingers; I sucked hard on it to stop myself from crying. When had this been taken? Had Fox always had me followed? Or had he taken this himself and followed me in person – how many other photos did he have? I flipped it over but this time there was nothing written on the back. Fox was the master of understatement. Nothing else needed to be said – he was watching me, he had always been watching me. He was trying to make me believe that he knew everything. I slipped the photo into my handbag and stayed at the desk for a moment, blotting my tears and staining my hankie with make-up in the process. He was trying to poison my most precious relationship and replace it with himself. The mission was exciting, yes, but this was why I’d been so desperate to get away from him. Another reason. And now I couldn’t get away because that meant losing Tom too – I gasped; of course – if I wanted Tom, I had to take Fox too; if I abandoned Fox, then I abandoned Tom too. It was ingenious. I almost admired the perfect trap Fox had made for me.
I looked at the photo again. Tom and I were in focus while the waiters, other patrons, pedestrians were blurred
figures around us. We looked so happy, our heads together, at peace in a bustling sea. Envy of thy happy lot . . . Fox must want this, he must be envious, or sad, or jealous. However deeply he hid them, his pursuit of me revealed his feelings, and that gave me a tiny skerrick of power. A tiny window through which I might escape his trap.
Henri was waiting at the end of the bar. When he saw me he came over and bowed. ‘Mademoiselle, please, a drink on the house.’
‘A double whisky would be lovely.’
‘Scottish, oui?’
I reached out to touch his shoulder in thanks, but he grabbed my hand and kissed it, giving it a squeeze. He knew Fox somehow and knew what he did. I’d have to get the story one day but right now I just needed that drink. ‘And a packet of your best cigarettes.’
‘Oui, mademoiselle. They are expensive but Sobranie are handmade in London and serve the kings of Europe.’ I knew all about that: Sobranie were Fox’s favourites. Henri opened up a packet to show me cigarettes coloured blue, yellow, pink and green.
‘These cocktail cigarettes might entice you.’ They still had that distinctive golden tip, but the bright, jaunty rainbow beckoned. I took one and smelt it; it didn’t smell like Fox’s tobacco at all. That decided me.
‘Kiki! We’re off to a party – are you coming?’ North called as I paid a vast sum for the pretty tailor-mades.
‘Is it Cocteau’s hat party?’
‘Why, yes, how do you—’
‘He invited me himself.’ I pulled a cloth contraption out of my handbag. I had converted a camisole into a black lace veil that fitted tightly over my entire head, with only a hole cut out for the mouth. Across the lace I had sewn little bumblebee buttons that I had found at a flea market stall when I’d first arrived.
‘How do I look?’ I smoked through the hole in the veil at North’s shocked face. ‘Suitably Dada? Suitably surreal?’
‘Oh!’ Relief made her smile. ‘Yes, Kiki! Yes, absolutely.’
I turned to Henri but he just shook his head. I whipped off my ‘hat’ and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, for everything.’
He blushed as I swigged the last of my whisky.
La Gaya was alive when we arrived in a cab that included North and all her friends sitting on one another’s laps. A doorman policed the entrance – no one was allowed inside without a fancy chapeau. My veil reflected exactly how I felt – I wanted both to stand out and to hide; I wanted to party and to stay alone in the dark. I pulled it over my face and lit a pink Sobranie through it. It was my passport to the party.
Inside the jazz was faster than last night and the dancers were wilder. Our hats had given us leave to take leave of our senses. I could hardly see people’s faces under their headwear. There was a straw hat with a bunch of flowers in the top like a vase. There was a stuffed pelican that perched on a pudding bowl, the contraption strapped under the wearer’s chin. There was an enormous wineskin with a tube that went down into the dancer’s cup. Hats were blood red and crushed silver and electric blue. Hats flashed with bits of tinsel and tinfoil, and one wearer had to stay near the wall so that he could keep the Christmas lights he was entwined with plugged in and lit up. Even the barman wore a hat – a bowler hat turned upside down, the crown concave so it perched on the back of his head as he poured drinks. I ignored his offer of cocktails – the crowd was mad for a purple mess served in a white mug that reminded me too forcibly of a blood clot. I ordered more whisky instead. North and the rest were still outside, adjusting their hats, mostly made of flags and hankies and scarves like fortune tellers, greeting North’s friends who spilled out onto the street. I took a sip and looked around for Cocteau.
He was by the band in a beekeeper’s hat. I expected a couple of live bees to be attached to him, but instead he had a drink that looked like it was a block of honeycomb. I lifted my veil and waved and he waved back, then continued to conduct the dancers. I joined the throng on the dance floor.
‘Oh! Very modern. I love it!’ A tall pretty woman wearing a colander touched my veiled face. ‘You look so . . .’
‘Ghoulish,’ the man holding her said disdainfully. He wore a subeditor’s visor with some tags sticking out of it. He only came up to her cleavage, which made him even shorter than me. She didn’t seem to notice or care.
‘Yes, ghoulish. It gives me shivers.’ And she demonstrated.
I took a drag of my cigarette and let the smoke fill the inside of the veil, so it wafted out of the lace on my cheeks and forehead. She laughed and he coughed. One song ended and as we applauded she held her hand out to me.
‘I’m Paulette,’ she said.
‘Kiki. Cocteau invited me last night.’
‘Oh yes, he loves to invite all the interesting ones,’ she said. ‘I’ve known him since I came to Paris, before the war.’ The man beside her coughed. ‘This is Michel.’
He merely nodded.
‘Do you write for Le Figaro?’ I asked.
He looked startled. ‘Yes, how—’
‘You wrote an article about German unrest—’
‘It was published yesterday. Why—’
‘I need to know—’
‘If you’re going to talk work, I’m going to dance with Dadaists,’ said Paulette. She waved her hand dismissively and wiggled over to a man with a monocle.
Martin looked jealously after her, even as he spoke to me. ‘Why do you ask about the strikes?’
‘I need to know about Hausmann.’
With that phrase, he looked at me properly for the first time. I took off my veil so he could see my face.
‘Hausmann’s an interesting man,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows of him but no one seems to know him. I managed to talk to him – though I didn’t see him. No one has.’
‘Then how do you know he exists?’
He scoffed as we pushed our way to the bar. The barman served us more whisky, which Martin drank with relish.
‘That voice of his isn’t a fake. That’s how I knew it was him – simpering, high-pitched, somewhat revolting—’
‘You spoke to him in French? I thought he was German.’
‘He is. His French is rubbish. But the tone of his voice . . . it gave me the creeps.’ He looked me up and down. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m investigating the Brownshirts in Paris—’ I bluffed with the truth.
‘Those Jew-hating fascists.’ Martin scowled. ‘Just like Action Française. I don’t want to have anything more to do with them!’
‘More? What have you had to do with them until now?’ And, I thought, what’s a fascist?
‘Nothing! . . . Not much, just . . .’ He looked into his drink. ‘A lot of us were angry at the end of the war . . . so many had died, France was a mess, no one seemed to care but Action Française. But then I found out they have connections with the Fascisti from Italy—’
‘Fascists—’
‘Yes, like the Brownshirts in Germany.’ His face turned sour. ‘Germany! Such a betrayal. And all those German and Italian thugs coming over here, bringing their ideas to the people with clubs and guns, the lot of them swarming over France’s wounds like flies on a corpse—’
Flies – the murmurous haunt of flies treads him down – could these right-wing nationalist groups be the flies?
‘I almost think they’d betray their own country to further their beloved cause,’ he continued, with only the merest nod of encouragement. ‘They don’t care about our glorious traditions, freedom, democracy – France has been a democracy for a long time, Germany should be the same!’ He was properly worked up now, eyes bulging, tapping his empty glass on the bar top. ‘But how can it succeed when it’s the Germans who run it? How can they build a land of liberty and fraternity when they have the blood of so many millions of Frenchman on their hands?’
A shriek of delight rang across the dance floor. Paulette had climbed up onto a young man’s shoulders and was being bounced around in time to the music. Martin visibly jerked. The music increased in intensity.
He said something to me that I couldn’t hear, never taking his eyes from Paulette. He gave me a wave of dismissal or goodbye, I couldn’t tell, and moved towards his ecstatic lover, leaving me with just enough information to make Fox’s clues murmur and haunt the back of my mind.
The rest of the party was exactly what I needed – mad, wild, weird and wonderful. North and company finally joined me on the dance floor with their fashionable cocktails. One handsome veteran had a surprisingly good foxtrot and a very smooth waltz. and we danced until his wife cut in for the slower songs. We swapped hats with every song and my veil ended up smeared with lipstick and kisses. I introduced myself to everyone who wore it. The monocled man was Tristan Tzara and he wore his monocle on top of it. He was a delight to dance with, his movements odd and jerky but with a nervous charm. We tangoed to a waltz and did a polka to a foxtrot. He stood next to two dancers from the Ballet Russes. I couldn’t catch their names, but they took my veil and danced with it, making it a shroud, a ghoul’s mask, a puppet’s face and a sleepwalker’s blank stare as they passed it between them. The lights bounced off the mirrors and the marble tabletops so everyone seemed to shine in double, triple, infinite replication. Hats ended up on the floor and purple drinks spilled like blood down shirtfronts and onto stockings. Faces pressed against the glass from the night outside. Cocteau kept conducting the dancers and sipping his honey. North’s companions ended up in a cosy tight corner while North flitted between different groups. As she passed she shot me a look, and with it, all the ghosts rose up from their muddy graves to crowd the conversation. I was aware of all the absent people – Bertie, Tom, and those who would never return. Did North feel it too? Even in the midst of such a festival, with the air full of jazz and laughter and the room smelling of all the tobaccos and drinks and sweat of the world, did absence also haunt her like a half-heard melody? She was off again, attending to her friends, swilling her drink like the lifeblood it resembled – perhaps that was how she coped. For me the only cures were booze and sex, but I’d had enough of them. I kissed Cocteau on the cheek and North on the lips and, with my now soggy veil, headed into a taxi and home.
