Autumn Leaves

by Tessa Lunney

  * * *

  “Oh, Theo…” I had collapsed in an armchair after a particularly fast dance. “I don’t know which is harder, the dancing or the politics.”

  “If only the politics was also over in three minutes. It might be more bearable then.”

  “Will you…”

  “No, my golden one. I won’t take you to one of those meetings. You’ll have to meet your princes another way.”

  I couldn’t think of a way to press the point without giving myself away. As I smiled at Theo, thinking frantically, a gust of icy wind blew in from the window behind us. The window was actually a door to a tiny balcony that hung over the moonlit street. I could see the silhouette of two women in the doorframe.

  “Harry!” I called and waved. “Wendy!”

  “Kiki, darling!” said Harry and, almost before I stood up, my great friend Harriet Harker had enveloped me in an enormous hug. Her lover Wendy ran over and hugged the two of us, squeezing the air out of me in gusts of laughter, both of them so much taller than me that my feet left the ground.

  “How long have you been home?” asked Harry.

  “I love that you call Paris my home.”

  “Of course it is,” said Wendy. “We’ve never seen anyone more at home in Paris.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? Where have you been? Tobago? Timbuktu?” Harry tapped me with her fan. “Don’t tell me you’ve been hiding in the country on some dairy farm, I’ll never believe you. Those farmers know cheese but they wouldn’t know a cocktail even if gin and vermouth started copulating on their kitchen table.”

  “Her protégé ran off with a dairy farmer last month.” Wendy’s clipped English tones conveyed everything her words didn’t.

  “So, Kiki?”

  “I’ve been in Sydney. My mother… for her funeral…”

  “Oh God, honey…” Harry’s American accent became thick with emotion.

  “I’m so sorry, Kiki,” said Wendy.

  Harry stroked my arm, then took my face in both of her hands and kissed my nose. “This is not the time or place. You’re coming over tomorrow and you can tell me then. Garçon! Double Manhattans all round! And who is this?”

  “This is Theo.” He had been waiting politely and now shook hands with Harry and Wendy. “Theo, this is Miss Harriet Harker, aka Harry. She was with the ambulance corps in the war and I patched her up one starry night as we discussed the healing properties of champagne for heartbreak and silk underwear for loneliness.”

  “And when she arrived last April, I rescued her from looking like a dirty bohemian,” said Harry. “She came to my apartment and went home looking like a clean bohemian.”

  “This is Wendy Moore, painter, sculptor, reluctant heiress. She also rescued me last April by making sure I ate proper meals instead of Harry’s usual dinner of cheese and gin.”

  “I’ve changed!” said Harry. “I’ve mended my ways.”

  “Not when left alone,” said Wendy. “Very pleased to meet you, Theo. You’re Russian? What do you do in Paris?”

  “Apart from hide out from the Russian secret police, of course.” Harry smiled but dropped it quickly. “Oh God, I meant that as a joke! You’re not really hiding from them, are you?”

  “It’s a bit hard to hide when my brother-in-law is Prince Felix Yusupov.” Theo nodded toward Felix, who dazzled in his white jacket next to the black-clad Chanel.

  “You’re a prince?”

  “Harry, you sound so American when you say that.”

  “Oh, Kiki, how can I help it?”

  “I’m a Romanov, no less.” Theo gave a slight bow.

  “Well!” Harry hooked her arm in Theo’s and strode with him toward the supper table, skillfully and brutally extracting as much gossip as she could. If I didn’t love her, I would have rescued Theo, but when he looked back at me, I just winked.

  “She wasn’t impressed with this party before, too much style, not enough substance. But she’ll be happy now,” said Wendy. “You must come for dinner. As soon as convenient.”

  “Harry directed me to come tomorrow. Besides, I’m sure I’ll need someone to tend my hangover and my sweat-stained body. I still have to pay for my baths.”

  “Excellent. And bring your dirty linen, real and metaphorical.”

  * * *

  The night ended in Theo’s room, everyone else in bed, smoking near the open door of his balcony. The moon splashed on my skin as he slowly undressed me. The room was lit only by a smoldering fire. He said almost nothing, no sweet murmurs or witty gossip, just his intent gaze as he moved his hands down my body with the dress.

  “Please.” His voice was a rasp. Another “please”—what else could I do but whisper yes as he licked the salt from my skin? What else could I say when every kiss felt like goodbye? Air from the balcony sent its fingers over my curves so I couldn’t tell if I tingled from cold or from Theo. All the curtains were open and the full moon’s light cut into the shadows at his collarbone, the sharp line of his haircut, his dark eyes locked with mine.

  26

  “taint nobody’s business if i do”

  Servants make me tense. They shouldn’t, I grew up with a cook, kitchen maid, scullery maid, nurse maid, gardeners, and all manner of men who worked on the farm. But sometime around boarding school, I got out of the habit. I didn’t want other people around me all the time. I much preferred my independence, even solitude; I wanted to leave books open and clothes scattered on the floor and have them be undisturbed the next day. For most of my adult life I had, in fact, done the work of servants, scrubbing bedpans and floors, washing sheets, the endless tending and mending of bodies. Modern clothes and short hair meant I didn’t need someone to dress me. My little studio flat, with its noises and smells and drafts, barely needed cleaning. It was also much more private than this soft, lush, crowded cage. Waking up in Theo’s bed, hearing footsteps and murmured voices, pots and pans and splashing water, I was suddenly aware I couldn’t wander around naked, or help myself to coffee and biscuits in the kitchen, or any of my other favorite morning-after activities.

  In the daylight I could see that the huge glass doors of his balcony looked over a courtyard. Light streamed in, making the room, with its high ceilings and pale walls, seem vibrant even though the sky was gray. The only hint of the overblown Art-Nouveau-museum look that marked the rest of the apartment were his dark blue-green bedsheets and the decorative tiles over the fireplace. I wrapped myself in my opera cloak and took a cigarette out on the balcony.

  In the courtyard were the usual chairs and table and potted plants, as well as two different gates that led out to the street. A tall man dashed into one, then dashed out the other, before he returned, looking over his shoulder. I almost called to him to help him out, I expected him to smell my cigarette smoke and look up, but he was so intent he didn’t seem to notice. He hesitated then moved straight into Theo’s apartment building. He wasn’t a servant or a tradesman, as he wore a perfectly tailored gray coat and neat gray hat that covered his face. I wriggled into my ball gown. There was something about that man that was deeply familiar. I needed to know who he was.

  “Mademoiselle!” The scullery maid was startled and the cook looked annoyed.

  “Mademoiselle, Feodor Alexandrovich has ordered your coffee and pastries. I will bring them to you presently.” An old butler-type servant indicated that I should leave.

  “Who was that man?”

  “Mademoiselle, there is no need to worry.”

  “Was he a tradesman? The man who just came in here.”

  “Mr. Eddy?” the maid asked.

  “It wasn’t Mr. Eddy,” said the cook sharply. “Don’t you know an Englishman from a Russian yet? That man was one of the Master’s Russian friends.”

  “If he’s a Russian friend of Felix’s, why is he using the servants’ entrance?” I asked.

  “He is not a friend,” said the butler. “But not quite a tradesman either. He is…” the butler pursed his lips, “another exile.” />
  “You don’t like the exiles?”

  “Felix Felixovitch has not been able to move in the same circles since we left Russia.”

  “He means the Master has to speak to ordinary people.” The cook sneered.

  “There is no reason why he should,” said the butler, “except that Paris is…”

  “Too republican?” I asked.

  “Quite so, mademoiselle.”

  “So, who was that man? Why was he creeping around in the early morning?”

  “It’s eleven o’clock!” said the maid but was hushed by a stern look from the butler. The butler then looked me up and down, as if deciding what was most important: his discretion or the encroachment of the lower orders on his Master’s perfect nobility. I was very glad his snobbery won the day.

  “He calls himself Arkady Nikolaievitch, but I would never address him as such. I call him as a man like him should be called, by his family name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Lazarev.”

  Lazarev! As he walked upstairs with me and the tray of breakfast things, I tried to get him to tell me more, but he simply murmured, “I have said enough.”

  “Ah, Vanya, merci.” Theo was deliciously sleepy. “Just put the tray there. Kiki, what are you doing out of bed?”

  “Cigarette.”

  “Ah, yes… and yes please, though I feel like a kipper, I’m so smoked.”

  “And fishy.”

  But his only retort was a kiss once Vanya the butler had closed the door.

  27

  “when hearts are young”

  I loved being with Theo but had no intention of staying at his house all day in a stinking ball gown. I had no intention of staying in his bed when last night’s desperate kisses swirled between us with our smoke. I excused myself when more of his brothers turned up for an enormous semiformal breakfast party, slipping safely back to down-at-heel, bonkers, private Montparnasse.

  I needed to think about Lazarev. He had been part of my mission last April. He had teased me by seeming to have information about Hausmann, when he actually knew nothing of use. He was excellent in a waltz, though, and drank vodka like it was a vocation. In the end, he had been extraneous. But clearly not anymore, as here he was, sneaking in and out of the Yusupov apartment in the early morning, as though he was a secret lover or a thief. What had he been doing? More importantly, who had he been seeing? It wasn’t Theo; I doubt it was Irène; it could only have been Felix or one of the servants in the kitchen. The butler was a snob, the maid was a bit clueless, the cook was sarcastic—unless they were brilliant liars, none of them were interested in Lazarev. He must have snuck in to speak to Felix. Theo had mentioned that Felix saw him sometimes. I would have to get him to find out why Felix was seeing Lazarev now.

  Waiting at home was a letter from Tom. I waited until I was washed and dressed, sitting at my windowsill with a cigarette, before I allowed myself to open it.

  Button,

  London is damp, cramped, and I feel like a tramp in my worn cuffs and scuffed shoes. I only unpack my suitcase to wash the smell of bloodshed and cordite from my clothes. I haven’t learned how to go to sleep. I fall unconscious at some point in the night, wake up dry-mouthed and still in my trousers before I haul myself onto a lumpy mattress for hours of bad dreams.

  Do you feel sorry for me yet?

  It’s no wonder I love Paris. It’s perhaps the only place I can get a good meal and a proper rest (even if that rest doesn’t include any actual shut-eye).

  But I’m not writing to whine about my life of travel and excitement. I have news in the form of Fleet Street gossip.

  The lads in the bars have also made their way home from Smyrna via Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Milan. They speak about gangs of old soldiers who follow other old soldiers. They speak to boys too young to have fought, who pipe up about a new world order, even while the old soldiers are using the same words to talk about the old world order. The men in Vienna speak about Munich, about the Freikorps and some political party or movement with a long name that I always struggle to remember. Its initials are NSDAP and they wear brown as they did in the war. The men in Rome and Milan speak about Mussolini. These men wear black and live to fight. They are excited. They speak of a big event coming, something new, some show of power. The Fleet Street lads have their bags packed and are booking passages to Rome, to Milan, to Florence, to make sure they’re nearby when the big event happens.

  Which means I will be there too. Old Buffer wants to send me back to Greece but I’ve convinced him that Italy is where the news will happen, that an eyewitness account will make him look good and the paper sell well at home. I’m convincing him that a week or two eating spaghetti and gelato in a warmer climate will stop me “looking like a cadaver, some ghost of Banquo.” I just need a few more days—to wash my clothes, to gather more gossip from the pubs and print rooms—before I will be back in Paris on my way to Rome.

  Keep the camp bed out, set up a table for my typewriter. I’m bringing whisky and gossip and I’m in need of warmth. I almost don’t want to say it but I will: I miss you, Button. Champagne doesn’t fizz without you.

  T.

  My heart rattled its cage as I reacted simultaneously to all the parts of the letter.

  Something was going to happen in Italy and soon. Were my princes involved? With Fry, I had narrowed it down to Edward, Albert, and George; that is, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and Prince George. But how they were involved was still a mystery. These Blackshirts didn’t sound like sons of earls and men with property, they sounded like angry villagers and disillusioned clerks. They “live to fight,” Tom wrote, but that kind of physical violence did not suit men in tuxedos or hunting tweed, even if they were old soldiers. How did the two connect?

  Camp beds and typewriters, whisky and scuffed shoes; why did these make my breath catch? It wasn’t the objects, they were just ordinary, everyday things. It had to be the longing he wrote into them, as though his grimy cuffs reached out for me across the channel. Which they did, in a way, as he couldn’t and wouldn’t say what he really meant. I was glad he didn’t, as I wasn’t at all ready for confessions of undying this or deep unconditional that. Except friendship, of course; I supposed that could be the most complicated of all.

  * * *

  I pulled on my only pair of trousers, warm and practical, just right for a head full of passion and last night’s champagne. I found my sailor’s peacoat under the bed with a packet of boiled lollies in the pocket—Bertie must have worn it when he was here. But it was covered with dust and smelt of mold, so I grabbed my peacock coat and the soft blue scarf that Tom had brought back from Smyrna. I couldn’t find my mirror, so I would need to trust that I had washed off all of last night’s makeup. I also had to trust that my feet would remember the way to Harry’s as I had forgotten her address. My literal dirty linen would have to wait until next time too. For the moment, it would be enough to relieve my heart of some of its memories.

  The air became heavy with moisture and the surface of the river shivered. I could talk about my mother with Bertie, with Maisie, and especially with Tom, but speaking about how I still suffered felt like wading through mud, like extracting bits of shrapnel. When I spoke about her, my memory offered up sections of her diaries, events in my mother’s voice from years previously. When I spoke about my suffering, my memory offered up events that had nothing to do with my mother. I saw the crematorium in Sydney, manned by a sweating one-armed veteran. I saw the portholes of the troop ships, rust stains dripping like blood. I saw an amputated leg in a muddy French field, I saw apples rotting by the roadside with no one to harvest them, I saw gold cigarette butts amid the debris outside the surgeon’s tent. What else could I do but concentrate on the smells of frying garlic and fizzing wine, on the sounds of French debate and cooing pigeons, on the feel of an European autumn as the dead leaves littered the footpath?

  My walk to Harry’s gave me the opportunity to call Bertie. I headed into the c
avernous and busy Gare du Nord. A guard directed me to a bank of public telephones, such a strange but welcome sight, their little boxes painted blue and yellow.

  “Browne speaking.”

  “Bertie darling, I call you with a hangover and sore feet.”

  “Kiki! Did you go to the ball? When will there be copy? You don’t possibly have a photo, do you?”

  “I can’t possibly as I don’t have a camera. Will you buy one for me?”

  “Will Fox?”

  “Why? What have you heard?”

  “Only that my lover-boy now requires evidence for his various theories. He was fulminating about it last night, ranting really, like a rabble-rouser at Speakers’ Corner. His boss, Fox that is, wants proof of what he has heard, seen, read, and understood. He was going on and on about how could he do that without a camera, without a radio studio, why should he show evidence of thinking like he was schoolboy, et cetera et cetera… but it seems that Fox might just buy you a camera. He might just have to.”

  “Or he might just send me evidence of other work he has commissioned. Has your boy been to France lately?”

  “Not that I could see. Dublin again, and Italy. He had a wrapper for Italian homemade licorice. I was tempted to buy him more but that would give me away.”

  “Italian… Fox knows more than he’s letting on. Not Germany?”

  “Who goes to Germany nowadays?”

  “The damned. I’m beginning to think I’m one of them.”

  “Leave the melodrama for your copy.”

  “I’ll send it tomorrow. Say hello to Tom for me.”

  “With pleasure! But for any reason?”

  “Same old. He’s on leave from the front.”

  “By the way, I have a check for a typewriter made out to you. Himself is humming up the corridor; I’ll see if I can add a camera to the total. Any juicy titbits from the ball last night that he couldn’t refuse?”

  “All the Romanov brothers in black and white tuxedos around Coco Chanel in shimmering black. Masked waiters serving white cocktails. A ballroom as big as Buckingham Palace.”