The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  His voice is strict and sure. Violet sinks back into her pillow.

  The train still careers down the tracks. They’re not at the border, then: just stamping papers in advance to avoid waking passengers at three in the morning. Unless it’s something else, unless it’s the police.

  “Here we are,” says Lionel in his American accent.

  “Hmm.” The sounds of paper shuffling, grunts of official skepticism. “You are Edward Brown?”

  “Yes, sir. I sure am.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Sleeping right here, sir. She was taken a little poorly, if you know what I mean.”

  Violet imagines a wink of shared masculine understanding.

  “Hmm,” says the official.

  Footsteps. Violet closes her eyes and arranges her face into peaceful misery.

  Lionel chuckles apologetically and speaks in his American voice, Lionel and yet not-Lionel. “You know how it is with these female complaints, sir.”

  Violet makes a faint groan, investing it with as much misery as she can. She feels the bright beam of a flashlight on her face.

  “Now, now,” says Lionel. “We don’t need to wake her up, do we?”

  “Sylvia Brown?”

  Violet groans a pitiful yes.

  “From New York?”

  Nod.

  “Hmm.” The flashlight moves away. “Very well, then. Your papers are in order. We cross into Switzerland at four o’clock. There exists a state of preparation for war—”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why we’re leaving. Sounds like a real humdinger. I was just telling Sylvie over dinner, I said to her, Syvlie, honey, it’s a good thing we—”

  “—and there may be an additional stop at the border. I apologize in anticipation for any inconvenience.”

  “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

  The papers shuffle; the footsteps scrape into the corridor; the door snaps shut.

  Violet opens her eyes and lifts her head. Lionel stands breathing in the center of the compartment, a few feet away. A crack of moonlight escapes the curtains and touches the outline of his still body with silver-blue.

  “Everything all right?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Go back to sleep, Violet.” He ducks into his bunk.

  There’s no question of sleep. Violet stares at the low ceiling above and listens to the jump of her heart, the clackety-clack clickety-clackety-clack of the carriage wheels.

  “Lionel, what does the P stand for?”

  “The P?”

  “Your initials. Your middle name.”

  A sigh. “It stands for Philip, Violet. Lionel Philip Richardson.”

  Violet lifts the blankets from her legs and climbs down the ladder to the carpet below. The pile is plush beneath her bare feet. She kneels next to Lionel. In the thick warmth of the compartment, he rests on top of the covers, his long blue legs bent slightly because the bed is too short.

  “What is it, Violet?”

  She reaches for his left ankle and draws the loose blue-striped pajamas up above his knee. She traces the smooth skin, the wiry hair. “There’s no scar,” she says softly.

  “No.”

  “You weren’t in Berlin for surgery, were you? There was no doctor, no operation. You didn’t need a cane.”

  “No.”

  “Our new papers. Edward and Sylvia Brown. Your American accent, your perfect German. The way you handled that official just now.”

  “Just ask me, Violet. Ask me.”

  “Who are you, Lionel? Or are you really Lionel?”

  He laughs drily. “Oh, I’m Lionel, right enough. The Honorable Lionel Richardson, Captain in the Life Guards. I did murder my stepfather; you can look that up. I did study with Grant, back at Oxford. That’s why I was in Berlin, because I knew him before, because my German was excellent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lionel reaches for the cigarettes on the little fold-out table beneath the window. “Violet, Grant’s a traitor. He was supposed to be gathering information on German war preparedness for us, except that he wasn’t.” He lights a cigarette and settles back against the wall. “He was playing us false, telling us what his generals and his officials told him to tell us. A double agent, to use the familiar term.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was doing it on purpose? He wasn’t . . . They weren’t simply using him?”

  Lionel reaches for the ashtray. “That was the question I was supposed to answer this summer.”

  “And you did. You found out.”

  “I did.”

  “That was why you killed him.”

  “Does that make it easier for you?”

  Violet jumps to her feet and turns to the window. “And me. You seduced me in order to learn about Walter. Another reason to send you, of all men: you’re irresistible to neglected wives.”

  He’s behind her, covering her back, his hands braced on either side of the window. The smoke trails away from the cigarette between his fingers. “That’s where you’re wrong, Violet. Perhaps that was the plan, at the beginning, the very beginning, but then I met you—”

  “Oh, yes. How could I forget? You fell headlong into love with me. Imagine the coincidence. You simply had to have me in your bed, to seduce me, to gain my trust.”

  “Violet . . .”

  “Yes, the sacrifices one makes for one’s country.” She ducks under his arm. He grabs her elbow.

  “Wait, Violet. Just listen to me.”

  “The way that official just listened to you and believed it all? Your perfect American act?”

  “I’ve told you the truth. I’ve answered your every question, haven’t I?”

  “As you answered his.”

  “You can’t leave. You’ll be arrested without me, without our papers.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I care, by God! I risked my life to bring you out with me. To make you safe.”

  Violet stands with her back to the door, her eyes closed against him, sobbing quietly. “Stop. Just stop talking. I am so very sick of words.”

  “Oh, Violet. Violet.” His hands on her face, her arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Just stop talking, Lionel.”

  • • •

  THE BED is impossibly narrow. Violet sprawls almost entirely on top of Lionel, and still her foot bounces slightly over the edge, her back touches the wall with every jerk of the moving train. How she loves his strength, his bulldog chest and shoulders, the carnal muscles of his legs, holding her steady in her precarious perch. What heedless risk, to lie here naked with Lionel in the airless compartment, utterly vulnerable, when a single official boot could snap the latch on the door and expose them together. Why doesn’t she care?

  “I suppose Jane is part of it?” she says softly.

  “Can we not talk about Jane?”

  “Just answer me.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “But why? She’s American.”

  “She’s also highly skilled, and paid handsomely for her services. Is that enough for you?”

  Violet’s ear lies exactly over Lionel’s heart, which beats in the slow and measured thuds of recent climax. She counts them, one by one, waiting expectantly for each blow to strike her eardrum.

  Lionel maneuvers his body around hers, until they face each other, breath on breath. “Is it, Violet? Is it enough? Do I have your faith yet?”

  She wants to say no. She wants to place a square of gold foil between her heart and his, so she can’t hear it anymore, can’t feel it in her ears and bones, can’t let it beat against her logic. But her body is too subdued by him, her needful flesh too triumphant over his. She is too soldered to Lionel. The line has been crossed; it was crossed days ago, at the pr
ecise moment when she leaned into Lionel and accepted his kiss amid the roses. She knows that. It’s already too late. It no longer matters whether he’s true or false. He’s here, that’s all.

  “Violet, I need you. I need your faith in me. I can’t live without it.”

  “You want me to trust you blindly.”

  “That’s what faith is, Violet. Knowing what you can’t prove.”

  She laughs sadly. “Lionel, I’m a scientist.”

  “I know you are. I’m asking you anyway.”

  Violet stares at Lionel’s lips, still warm from her kisses. In the cramped space, she stretches around their damp bodies to pry the gold ring from her left hand. She perches it atop the crooked last finger of his right hand, just above the topmost joint.

  • • •

  VIOLET WAKES sometime later in the same reassuring nook of Lionel’s body, while his heart strikes the same assured cadence against her ear. But his body is tense, his breath watchful in her hair. “What is it?” she whispers.

  “The train,” he whispers back. “It’s stopped.”

  Vivian

  One minute I’m cracking wise in an airless interrogation room at London Airport, the next I’m speeding down the A4 in a police car, lights flashing panic, siren practicing scales. What delight, hmm? This was London, it should have been raining, but it wasn’t: the sky was picnic-perfect, blue space and puffballs. The traffic parted obediently before us.

  “Far more convenient than a taxi,” I said to Mr. Peach, who sat next to me in the backseat, looking as if he wanted to spring a set of handcuffs on me. Not in a good way. “I hope you’re not going to bill me for the fare.”

  He went on tapping the leather envelope against his knee.

  “Not a talkative chappie. I get it. We’re not all at our best in the morning. Fag?” I held out a cigarette. He shook his head. “At least you can hear me. I so dislike it when people ignore me, don’t you?”

  No answer from Mr. Peach on that one.

  I lit a cigarette and cracked the window without asking. Outside, the dreary suburbs passed by, wretched terraces and unhappy semis, backed by gardens in the last gasp of November dilapidation. I hadn’t been to London in years, not since my parents took me to Europe the last time, the summer before I started Bryn Mawr. It had been late June, and I wore my one woolen sweater all week, before we departed in relief for Calais and tossed our umbrellas overboard into the channel. Besides the rain, I remembered the long rows of identical white pillar–fronted houses, the merry chaos of streets, the fragrant ceremony of tea in the afternoon. One morning we took the train out to Blenheim. The clouds parted magically, and when we walked through the gardens, we found the exact spot where Winston Churchill had proposed to his wife. My father had got down on one knee and took Mums’s hand, and she, all blushy, had put her hand to her bosom and said Oh, Charles. Tiny wanted to take a picture, but by the time she got her Brownie all ready to go, the moment had passed. The clouds were gathering back together in a dull ceiling, and the first drops were smacking against our hats.

  No sign of rain today. I finished my cigarette and smashed it into the tiny ashtray in the door, and when I looked up again we were speeding into central London. “Not to put my vulgar American curiosity on full display, but where are you taking me? Please say it’s Scotland Yard. Such an honor.”

  “No.” Tap tap tap went the envelope against Mr. Peach’s knee. “It’s not Scotland Yard.”

  Another flash of buildings, a sudden cataclysmic stop, and hustle bustle went Vivian out of the car and up some stairs and through a door and more stairs, all of it surrounded by strapping lads who looked as if postwar rationing hadn’t blighted their growing years a bit. “Just inside here, if you will, Miss Schuyler,” said Mr. Peach, and I went into another picturesque interrogation room.

  “What about my suitcase,” I began, but as I turned to address Mr. Peach directly, the door closed in front of me with one of those awful metallic clangs that tells you you’re going nowhere in a hurry, Miss Schuyler, and you might as well sit down and have a cigarette and hope that someone in this joint knows how to make a decent cup of coffee.

  • • •

  WELL. Jet lag, excitement, et cetera. I fell asleep, head on arms, arms on picturesque metal table. I dreamed that my doctor and I were climbing to the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, hand in hand, and every time we turned the corner, an endless new set of stairs appeared before us, and I knew we were never going to make it, stone stairs ad infinitum unto rigor mortis, but for some reason we kept trudging on. Hoping the sublime would open out before us.

  When I awoke, a man stood before me in his shirtsleeves, large hands on narrow hips, shoulders like battleships on either side of his navy-blue tie. His cropped dark hair absorbed the overhead light. His brow cast his eyes in actual shadow, or maybe it was a trick of the light.

  “I think this is the part where I ask to see a lawyer,” I said.

  His left eyebrow scoffed at the very idea. The rest of his face remained serious as a heart attack. “Miss . . . Schuyler, I believe.”

  “Ah. Mr. . . . Bond, I believe. James Bond.” I held out my hand. “A pleasure. I’m Vivian Schuyler, and I’m not going to sleep with you, no matter how bad a boy you are.”

  He gave my hand the briefest of shakes, and his eyebrow lost its scofflaw kink. “So. They weren’t joking,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “My colleagues. Please sit. You must be exhausted.”

  I sank gracefully into my seat and crossed the old legs. One of my stockings had developed a conspicuous ladder. I recrossed. “I was about to ask for coffee.”

  He nodded and walked to the door. Pressed a button. Asked for coffee for Miss Schuyler, on the pip-pip. I liked the man already.

  “Now, Miss Schuyler.”

  “It’s Vivian.”

  “Miss Schuyler. The documents hidden in the lining of your suitcase. Where and when did they come into your possession?”

  “The irony here is that I don’t even know what these documents are.”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  “Ooh.” I shivered. “That was thrilling.”

  “Thank you. I practice.”

  “If you must know, they came into my possession at twelve sharp on October the fourteenth of this year, at the United States post office on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. Only I didn’t know about them until a few hours ago, when your charming friend Mr. Peach—”

  “Mr. Peach?”

  “The fellow at the airport. With, you know, the . . .” I made a circular motion in the rear center quadrant of my scalp. “The peach.”

  A tiny flush marred the pallor of James’s cheekbones. He raised his left fist and coughed, ever so posh. “Go on.”

  “Well, that’s all, really.”

  “You must have received the suitcase from somewhere.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, my mother forwarded it to me. It had been sent to her apartment on Fifth Avenue by mistake.” By mistake. Even as I said the words, their meaning struck me from a wholly new direction. Did anything ever really happen by mistake?

  Particularly when secret compartments and leather envelopes were involved.

  I was falling into a rabbit hole, had been falling since that first customs official pulled me aside, and another false bottom had just disintegrated below me.

  James’s right hand fell to the edge of the table and began to tap tap tap against the metal surface. His navy eyes took on a reptilian flatness, which might unnerve the sort of girl whose nerves detached easily.

  James pulled out the other chair in a prolonged scrape. He sat down. The coffee arrived in a utilitarian white cup and pot, with cream and sugar. I ignored the fixings and lifted the cup to my mouth, black and hot and unalloyed. I had the feeling my counterparty took note of every detail.
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  “Miss Schuyler,” he said, when the coffee lady departed for interrogation rooms unknown, “you strike me as a clever sort of girl. Why don’t you do the clever thing and start from the very beginning?”

  I bounced my foot. “I might, if I were to receive something from you in return.”

  “You’re really not in a position to bargain, Miss Schuyler.”

  Bounce, bounce. Coffee. Smile.

  Because I had nothing left in my bag but chutzpah.

  “Oh, James. I think I really am.”

  • • •

  JAMES—I still didn’t know his name—drove me to the Ritz himself, three hours later. Not in an Aston Martin, alas: he drove a smallish boxy thing, a Rover, I think, which fit around him like a birdcage over a bulldog. “Now, James, I’m trusting you’ll fulfill your end of the bargain,” I said, as we pulled up before the entrance and half a dozen doormen dashed to our assistance. “Don’t you dare disappoint me. The honor of the British intelligence community is at stake.”

  “Do you know the hotel bar?”

  “I’m planning to make its acquaintance as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll meet you there at eight o’clock this evening.”

  A man in a splendid red uniform opened my door. I levered myself out of James’s car, crooked my finger good-bye, and struck out for the hotel reception.

  “Schuyler. Vivian Schuyler,” I told the dainty red-suited woman at the desk.

  “Ah. Yes. Miss Schuyler. Your luggage has already been delivered. The Imperial suite, I believe.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Imperial suite. Is something wrong, Miss Schuyler?”

  “I’m afraid there’s some mistake. I reserved a single bedroom, no view.”

  She looked down at the papers on her desk. “It seems your reservation was changed two hours ago. Will this be a problem?”

  “Not at present, but it will be a significant problem in a few days, when I come downstairs to settle the bill.”

  “Oh, the room’s been paid for already, Miss Schuyler, as well as any additional charges.” She smiled her apple-cheeked English smile at me as if I were the first and honored concubine of the King of Morocco.