The War Widow

by Tara Moss

  Billie took her tea strong and black, and as the leaves steeped, she gave her other stocking a brief examination and decided it was not in need of mending. Once she had a steaming cup in hand she made her way towards the front of the flat in her slip, her damaged stocking over her shoulder, and took her place behind a small table in the corner nook. This was the spot with good light. The curtains were open but there was nothing but the tops of trees to witness her semi-undressed state or the lithe figure it revealed. It was close to sunset now and the evening sun was pouring in across the woodwork, the spools, the sewing machine, the pin cushion, turning everything a lovely rose gold. A rainbow of threads was propped neatly on the little wooden spikes of a rack mounted on the wall behind her. The traffic from the street below seemed distant, as so many tired men returned from work in the city to so many bored wives at home grappling with a changed world after a war that had bid so aggressively, so openly, for their involvement, only to ask them now to return to domestic service behind closed doors.

  Certainly there are many Mrs Browns, but she doesn’t look like one, Billie thought, despite the decidedly brown theme of her client’s clothes. The name was English, and common. But Billie’s new client did not have an English accent. She wondered why it niggled, if it mattered.

  Billie pulled her wooden egg-shaped mould from a drawer, ran her fingers over it to check its smoothness, and pulled the foot of her stocking over it. Damned holes. She’d been fortunate enough not to have to go without stockings for too long, but now that nylon stockings were in supply again she’d be damned if she let that little hole get any larger. Expensive things, stockings. Damned expensive. And while there’d been plenty of men happy to give them to her, she wasn’t happy with their romantic price. As with everything else, she’d buy her own, thank you very much. What a client wanted for his pound was sometimes pretty steep in her business, but what men expected for nylons was something else entirely. She found a fairly well matched thread in tan, threaded her darning needle and began to close the small hole. The sun was lower by the time she was finished. Night was coming and her telephone was due to ring.

  It was only one minute past eight when it rang. That would be Sam checking in, right on time. He was to call the office, letting it ring, and if she didn’t pick up he was to try her flat. She put down her satisfactorily mended stocking and strode to her black telephone.

  ‘Ms Walker. What’s doing?’

  ‘Sam, how did you go? Have we found our boy?’

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said to her. ‘I didn’t find anyone with his description. Actually that’s not such bad news considering the blokes I did find. Some of them were rather mangled.’

  She hadn’t thought it would be that easy, but it had been worth a shot. ‘Righto. Change of plans then. We’re going out tonight, Sam,’ Billie announced. ‘Will that check okay with your dance card?’

  ‘No problem at all. I have no, er, card.’

  ‘It will be in a couple of hours, around ten,’ she added, glancing at the clock.

  ‘Where shall we meet? The morgue?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘No, the death house will have to wait.’ Sam had not yet had occasion to visit the morgue, and Billie in fact preferred to make those visits solo. ‘We have something more interesting to pursue. And more lively. Meet me back at the office, will you? Ten o’clock sharp? Oh, and wear the jacket.’

  There was a pause down the line. ‘The white jacket?’

  ‘Yes, dear Sam. The white jacket. Tonight is black tie. We’ll be mixing with the high end of town.’

  Billie hung up and reheated some leftover casserole on the stove. It was, at best, below average and the dirty dishes were depressing to look at afterwards, an unfortunate price to pay for something that had tasted pretty lousy. Housework and culinary pursuits had never been Billie’s forte, but she managed well enough on her own. For lack of a wife or maid, or any prospect of either, Billie cooked merely to sustain herself, treating the work more as a chore than the art form it could be. She saved her art for other mediums, content to experience great food in restaurants, or when dining with her aristocratic mother. So it was with mild distaste that Billie slid the empty plate and cutlery into the sink under some tepid water and promised herself she’d clean up later. She had, after all, no one to impress but herself, and the possibilities of her case seemed more important by half. Fortunately she’d managed to purchase a bar of good dark chocolate – it had been terrifically hard to hunt out during the war – and she savoured a single square in small nibbles, leaning against the kitchen counter in a kind of temporary ecstasy. Her palate recovered, she tied her hair up with a scarf and peeled off her remaining silk underthings, leaving them on her bed. She had started to feel a sticky heat out in Stanmore, or perhaps it had been all those heavy looks. In the city she didn’t arouse quite so much attention, at least not when wearing a skirt suit and oxfords.

  With a smile Billie showered under a stream of warm, clear water, and washed the day off. Oh how she’d missed these showers in Europe. Her flat, like the others in the building, had modern conveniences. So many of the places she’d stayed with Jack had been spartan and lacked hot water, let alone a shower. Some had even lacked a roof.

  Jack.

  Billie recalled the first time she’d clapped eyes on the British correspondent, he with his ever-present Argus camera, her friends in Paris regaling stories of his recent triumph, surviving a light aeroplane crash and smuggling film past Nazi German officers in tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream. He’d covered the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany earlier that year, and the recent Nazi march into Sudetenland after Prime Minister Chamberlain’s disastrous part in the Munich Agreement. He was relaxed on that first meeting, wine in hand, blushing modestly as the others bragged on his behalf about his exploits, and watching his lean face and those bright hazel eyes, Billie had been hooked. Even now she could see him sitting there across the café table, his shirt slightly undone, his face glowing and almost tanned despite the autumn chill, lips reddened by the wine, head bowed slightly as he squirmed under the weight of their praise and playful teasing. She could see him so vividly in her memories that he was almost there, close enough to touch. He spoke of what he’d witnessed, of wanting to return next to Vienna. When he did go, Billie was with him.

  And now she recalled the feeling of his body under hers, those pale chest hairs, the warmth of his skin, her fingers running over him, bodies intertwined. All around them was cold darkness, and in the distance air raid sirens. It was just him, just Jack and Billie, the rest of the world seeming not to exist in those moments, and in his irresistible accent he would softly say her name, ‘Billie, Billie . . .’

  She swallowed, and closing her eyes ran a hand down her body, tempted to touch herself. Her fingers caressed her slim, softly rounded belly, her velvety pubic hair. How long had it been? Well over one year. No. Now over two years, in fact, she realised with a kind of horror. Her chest began to ache and she shook herself gently, hand retreating. Where was he? Was he really gone?

  Stop.

  There was no time for diversions, or longing. Frowning now, Billie turned off the tap, towelled herself vigorously and slipped into a pale-peach dressing robe with a nipped waist and long, flowing hem. The silk felt lovely against her bare, clean skin. These were the sensual pleasures she had at her disposal. Simple luxuries. She’d not had this silk robe when she was in Europe, nor Savon de Marseille to soap herself. But she’d had Jack.

  Stay on track, Walker. Stay on track.

  Her choice of clothing this evening had to be strategic. Billie padded to her bedroom, and opened both doors of her generous satin maple wardrobe. She stood on the round Persian rug and pondered what she saw inside, as a surgeon might look over a case file. The Dancers. She had not been there for some time, but she recalled the rarified atmosphere. Billie had to fit in, look appropriately glamorous yet not stand out. This was no time for her suits and trench coats, but anything
too bold could attract unwanted attention. She needed something fashionable, but something that didn’t particularly catch the eye. Nothing overly daring, though a little daring was certainly preferable to gauche. An emerald dress with beading beckoned, and she pulled the hanger out, turned the garment this way and that in the light. No, the beading was too much, the neckline too low now that she’d regained her curves after Europe. With rations finally easing, she’d soon fill it out dramatically. For a date with Jack? Certainly. For tonight, no. She replaced the dress. After some consideration she pulled out a dark ruby dress, silk and cut on the bias. She’d altered it and fitted it with shoulder pads when the fashion came in. It had a neckline that skimmed across the clavicle and a nice v-shaped cut-out at the back. It suited low shoes, but really it was too clingy to wear her Colt underneath. It would stand out a country mile. The weapon would go in her handbag. Yes, the outfit would do. She hooked the hanger over the edge of the robe, sat before her mirrored vanity and started to prepare a convincing evening look.

  Billie powdered her face, darkened her lash line a touch and reached for her small black bottle of Bandit, the perfume designed by one of Paris’s finest and most famous perfumers, Germaine Cellier. She swept her dark hair up and applied the leathery, sensual scent to her naked nape. Bandit had sprung up two years earlier in 1944, launched by the haute couture designer Robert Piguet, his runway stalked by mannequins in dark masks and red lipstick, brandishing knives and revolvers, the whole scene loaded with sexual innuendo and resulting in some considerable controversy. Billie had been dedicated to it ever since. That launch was one of Billie’s last memories of Paris, and one of the better ones. Not long after, she’d got word of her father’s condition and had flown home to be with him, arriving too late to say goodbye. Jack was still missing and the war came to an end and nothing was the same. Things wouldn’t be the same, she reminded herself. Couldn’t be the same.

  She lifted her stick of Fighting Red to her lips. Some Einstein in marketing was discontinuing the colour, she’d heard, so when this stick was gone she’d have to find a new favourite. Jeep Red was not getting near her mouth, as far as she was concerned. Jeep? It brought memories to mind of wounded soldiers and falling shells. The telephone’s ring broke her concentration and Billie crossed to the pink bedroom ’phone on her night stand. She sat down on the edge of the bed, smoothed her robe and picked up the receiver. It could be Sam, hopefully not backing out of their evening commitment, but if not, she could guess who it was.

  ‘Darling, I knew you’d be in,’ the voice on the line said. ‘There’s something I’d like some help with.’

  Billie took a deep breath and slouched back on the bed. Her eyes darted to the small clock of her pink celluloid vanity dresser set. She wasn’t ready for The Dancers yet, but didn’t need to be either. She supposed she had a little time to spare. ‘Okay, but I’m not in all night. I’m going out on a job,’ she stressed. ‘See you shortly.’ She hung up.

  Billie completed a rushed lipstick job, blotted her lips, scrutinised herself in the mirror and, reasonably satisfied, pulled on her foundation garments and slipped into the sleek red gown. A turn at the full-length mirror told her she would pass, though her neck was bare and her hair needed work, particularly at the back, before she faced Sydney’s top end of town. Anyway, her first task was to talk with Ella. She still had plenty of time to get to the office and meet her assistant, if she could keep the length of this visit to a minimum.

  Chapter Five

  Billie Walker took the stairs to the next level of the building and sauntered down the corridor to the large corner flat. The door was unlocked. Familiar as she was with it, she knocked and entered almost in the same breath and found the Baroness Ella von Hooft in her favourite spot before the large window, her lady’s maid, Alma McGuire, pouring her a sherry in a delicate crystal glass with a pair of strong, steady hands.

  Alma nodded to Billie with a bob of her curled and neatly pinned silver and strawberry hair, and the ever-elegant Ella turned and spotted her daughter. ‘Darling, it’s been weeks since I saw you,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Mother, it’s been since Sunday,’ Billie corrected her. The baroness did have a flair for the dramatic. ‘And we live in the same building, after all. I’m hardly in Berlin.’ She walked over to the settee and bent to give her mother a kiss on her scented cheek. As usual, she smelled pleasantly of Chanel No 5, a staple she clearly had no intention of giving up, no matter her financial circumstances.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ Ella said with a wave of her manicured hand. ‘Mother. You know how I hate it. It makes me feel old.’

  Billie sighed.

  Tonight Ella wore sequins and silk, her darkly dyed cropped hair set in impeccable marcel waves, tight to the head and curled gently at porcelain cheekbones. One might assume she was dressed this way because she’d come from a lavish dinner, but Billie knew perfectly well that she dressed like this for dinner every night as a matter of course, whether she had company or not. If you don’t take pride in yourself, what is the point in living? she’d often say. As a once-divorced and now recently widowed Dutch aristocrat, the third of five daughters of Baron von Hooft, a former mayor of Arnhem, Ella had grown up with wealth and had never really let go of her taste for the finer things, even when her situation had become ‘strained’, financially speaking.

  Something of a free spirit, Ella had lived a large life, having come to Australia from Holland with her first husband, only to have him take up a rather too public affair. It was then that she’d met Billie’s father, Barry Walker, a former cop turned PI, whom she had hired to gain the necessary proof of adultery, which was rather easy, as the story goes. What she hadn’t counted on was Barry’s gallantry and charm. They’d fallen in love hard and fast. She’d had Billie out of wedlock, something a woman without a title could have barely survived. But Ella had the title and the money to support herself and her little family, and she’d weathered the scandal in the way the upper classes sometimes did. She was a savvy, determined woman. She had done her time as a good girl, and it hadn’t paid off, as she saw it, so she’d married the man she wanted, had the baby she craved, and to hell with social expectations. Ella had not changed her name, either, which was just the sort of thing she would dig her heels in about, and Billie’s dad wouldn’t give a toss about. Barry Walker had been a thoroughly modern man, in his way, happy to let Ella be her own woman, an idiosyncratic and passionate ‘goddess’, as he’d liked to call her. They’d been a good match, Barry and Ella. Billie missed her dad keenly, and she knew her mother did too. Since his death her mother had seemed listless, and a touch more demanding, which wasn’t something Billie felt like dealing with tonight.

  ‘Let me have a look at you,’ Ella von Hooft said to her daughter. ‘Give us a whirl. Where are you going tonight?’

  ‘I’m not going to give you a whirl. I’m on a case,’ Billie said, not in the mood for play.

  ‘Being on a case doesn’t make you invisible, does it? Certainly not in that dress.’

  Invisibility would be handy sometimes, Billie thought.

  ‘Have a drink with me.’ Her mother changed tack, patting the seat beside her.

  Billie sat next to Ella on the plush emerald-green settee, crammed with jewel-coloured cushions of ruby and emerald velvet and silk. Alma poured her a tipple, a quiet smile on her ruddy, weathered face. Against Ella’s exciting presence, Alma appeared as calm and solid as the Pyramids of Giza. An Irish immigrant, Alma hadn’t family of her own. She’d first come on to help with newborn Billie, and as Billie had grown older Alma had taught her to sew and mend. She had patience, a steady hand and keen eye for details, and she’d soon made herself indispensable. The other staff had been let go over the years, but she was always there. Ella would spend her last shilling to keep Alma, Billie knew, and unlike the other tenants in Cliffside, Ella had Alma live in the flat with her. She had a fair-sized room at the east end of the flat as her personal quarters and Billie understood
it housed a near library-sized collection of paperback romance novels and copies of Talk of the Town and True Confessions, though the part of Alma that indulged in them remained well hidden beneath a sober surface.

  There was a shared maids’ quarters at the top of the building, with beds side by side and a kitchen where the staff made meals for their various employers, but Ella wouldn’t hear of it. In truth the two women were inseparable, particularly since Billie’s father had passed on. While Billie and her mother sipped their drinks, Alma walked off to the kitchen to see to something that smelled quite divinely of sweetness and cinnamon. To add to her many talents, the woman was an impressive baker.