Autumn Leaves

by Tessa Lunney

  “Is that her real name, ‘Mavis at reception’?”

  “It’s how she answers the telephone. It stuck.”

  I had left the door to the telephone booth open so I could smoke without fumigating myself. Yesterday’s trousers were covered with wine and cold mud splashes where the icy puddles had leapt out of the way of the traffic and onto my accommodating legs. I did not want today’s red brogues and scarlet coat to become equally grubby.

  “You’ll miss it, writing the column with me over the telephone, smoothing the edges and adding the frills. A typewritten column and a couple of pictures will be dull in comparison.”

  “Everything is dull compared to your physical presence, but it would make my life so much simpler.”

  “Does it need to be?”

  “It does. My man is starting to suspect I’m not with him for his… (Mavis, go and get me some caramels, there’s a love) for his knowledge of Kodak’s Box Brownies.” Bertie spoke in hushed tones. “I go through his coat pockets but there’s nothing there. I’ve had to resort to more devious methods—following him in the morning, reading his letters—I even took one of the Hello Girls at the Ministry exchange to dinner, just to get more information.”

  “What sacrifice! And?” I looked around at the concourse of Gare Montparnasse. Still no newspaper boys or young men with gold-tipped cigarettes. Why were there no watchers?

  “Well, he’s off to France, isn’t he?” said Bertie. “Accompanying his boss, the Hello Girl said. He has to meet with a colleague in Paris… Fry?”

  “I know Fry.”

  “Well. You might meet my Roger too. In fact, they might be there already. (Ah, Mavis, thank you.) I need that copy by tomorrow, Kiki.” His voice had changed, becoming a touch theatrical; he could no longer speak freely.

  “I’ll post it today. Send me a telegram with another telephone number we can use.”

  The evidence was now overwhelming: Fox was in France. This thought ran around my head as I walked through Gare de Montparnasse, the late morning travelers drifting in from the countryside. He didn’t come over with Fry, a couple of days ago, but he was here now. Why? What had changed? I was so close to working out all the clues. If he was in Paris, how was I supposed to contact him?

  I stopped by the doors, my feet arrested by the thought: Fox would visit me. That’s how he would contact me, he would wait for me in a café, he would loiter in my street. I could just imagine him, standing in a doorway opposite my apartment building, hat down and collar up, the smoke from his Sobranies stealing through the damp air as he watched me, at my window at night, or saying goodbye to Madeleine Petit in the morning. I could almost hear his footfalls in his leather-soled shoes, soft and even like a metronome… I would have stayed like that for an hour, staring at the Montparnasse traffic and seeing only Fox’s shadow, if it hadn’t been for Delphine.

  “Mademoiselle, would you like some matches?”

  “Delphine.” I breathed again, I could focus, I could hear once more.

  “I have more brands ’round the corner, if you would prefer.”

  “Ah! Yes.” She must have information for me. “Let’s go.”

  “Mademoiselle, I have seen that man you met, the big one with the dark hair and eyes like a thief.”

  That described Fry exactly; I laughed, partly with relief. “And?”

  “He met another man, tall and thin and sniffy, and they went to the station café. They talked for a while but I couldn’t get inside to hear them.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night.”

  “Well done. Keep a look out for them. Now, I promised you boots. Your feet look frozen and sore in those clodhoppers. Which bootmaker do you have an eye on?”

  Delphine grinned and I followed her down a couple of alleyways to a tiny little shop. Its front window was dirty but inside it was scrubbed clean, it smelt of fresh leather and glue and was noisy with industry. A small dark man with enormous eyebrows greeted us.

  “Delphine! Back again? Is this your wondrous benefactor?”

  “She will pay for the boots.” Delphine held herself like a queen. “Are they ready?”

  “But of course, Mademoiselle Delphine.” The man gave a little bow. “Wait one moment.”

  He brought out a pair of calf-high black boots in Delphine’s size. They seemed ordinary at first glance, but at second glance I could see all the details—a brogue pattern on the toes and up the sides were black embroidered animals. I picked out a cat, a dog, a bear, and a bird in flight, before Delphine pulled them on.

  “What wonderfully soft leather,” I said.

  “Of course, mademoiselle,” said the man. “She wanted red boots but we decided, in the end, that black would be more useful. No one would believe she was a match girl if she had red boots.”

  “And I can leave them here at night too,” said Delphine.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “So my father doesn’t sell them.”

  The man gave me a loaded look; clearly, he kept an eye out for Delphine as well.

  “I think I might like red boots,” I said.

  The man looked at me curiously. “With that coat, certainly. But with your hair, I think golden boots might suit you better, mademoiselle. Wait one moment.” He returned with a length of gold leather. “We have just received some of this.”

  “Oh yes, mademoiselle!” Delphine’s eyes glowed.

  “Put some aside, I’ll return tomorrow. Delphine, I trust you will show me the way here.”

  She winked. She wouldn’t be a match-seller forever, not if I could help it.

  30

  “make it snappy”

  I had to cross the river for the type of shops that sold typewriters and cameras and other things Montparnassians were mostly too poor to own. I needed to be able to put the typewriter in a suitcase and the camera in my handbag or else they would be useless. This meant I needed the latest models, not yesterday’s machines that could hardly be moved except by two burly men with lots of grunting. I thought about using the typewriter money to pay a typist, but Bertie would expect copy forever and the money for a typist would eventually run out. No, I needed a typewriter and to learn how to type. Life was full of complications.

  Complications such as Fox being in France. Who was this tall, thin, sniffy man that Delphine mentioned? Was it a Parisian contact of Fry’s or was it Bertie’s lover? It certainly wasn’t Fox. First of all, although he was taller than me, he wasn’t tall for a man. Secondly, when I knew him three years ago, he had been built like an athlete. I doubt he would have abandoned an ounce of strength or a smidge of personal power by becoming thin. And sniffy? If Delphine had said snarly, snarky, or steely, then I might have believed it was Fox. But sniffs were for snobs; Fox was above that kind of class-consciousness. So, if it wasn’t Fox with Fry, then where was Fox? Hopefully Fry would tell me.

  The typewriter shop was on a street that sold lots of different writing implements. There was a shop selling fountain pens and another selling paper. There was a printer and a bookshop and a shop that sold only ink and wax. The typewriter shop had a small museum of old typewriters in the window, but the inside was bright and clattering as the salesmen and shopgirls showed off their wares.

  “I need a portable typewriter, as small and light as you have.”

  “Yes, mademoiselle. This gentleman here is looking at our latest model, so if you don’t mind…”

  “Nguyễn,” I said. It was the man from the noodle house who recommended the phở bo.

  “Miss Kiki.”

  “You’re a writer?”

  “I’m the new secretary of the French Communist Party.” He held himself a little straighter in his worn brown suit. “And we need better records of our committee meetings. The old typewriter is too heavy to move and our meetings no longer fit in the president’s office. You want a typewriter too?”

  “I write a column for a London magazine on all the things your party would do away with—you kn
ow, princes and balls and rich capitalists, that sort of thing.”

  “You need some education. When are you coming to a meeting?”

  “Whenever the next one is. Whenever you invite me.”

  “You’re in luck. It’s tonight, eight o’clock at the Pigalle Workers’ Club. It’s an important meeting too. We’re making final preparations for the second congress.”

  “Second congress… of the Communist Party?”

  “All the committees of the Communist Party in France will meet in Paris next week. You should come to that too.”

  “Even if I’m not a party member?”

  “You will be.” His smile was a mixture of sweetness and arrogance. “I’m a very persuasive speaker.”

  I laughed then. That was one of most ridiculous flirtations I’d heard to date, along with “How d’you like my cannon, miss?” and “Sister, I think I can feel my missing leg. Could you check for me?” He knew it too and grinned, his thin face lighting up. We bought the shop’s last two portable typewriters, both in a serious black with matching suitcases, while he gave me advice on where else in Paris I could find proper phở bo.

  “Until tonight, comrade.” Nguyễn loped toward the metro.

  On the recommendation of the typewriter sellers, I moved to the next street filled with other gadget shops, such as radios and microphones and cameras. I bought the smallest camera I could find, one that fit neatly in its own little handbag. I imagined photographing Nguyễn at the meeting, his worn brown suit holding his shiny new ideas. As I stopped in the street to practice my photography skills, I wondered idly what Theo would say if he knew I was going to a Communist Party meeting. I wondered what would happen if all the parts of my life collided.

  At home I had two telegrams and a handwritten note. It was the handwritten note I tore open:

  Darkling I listen

  Nothing more, just Fox’s handwriting to let me know he was in Paris. I stared at it. Should I scream or cry or laugh or sigh? I looked up and down the street but no silver hair was sitting at a café table or lurking in a doorway. It was with heavy feet that I trooped up to my flat to put on clothes more suited to serious proletarian revolutionaries, to put more film in my camera, and to pack my new handbag with the necessaries. Darkling I listen: There had to be more. Why did he only listen? Why didn’t he see? He should have written lines from Shelley about seeing and knowing, about hunting and finding; he knows I know his handwriting, he doesn’t need to use this line over and over. Unless he really does hear. Did he mean that he was listening to my telephone calls to Bertie and eavesdropping on my conversations with Fry? Did it have to do with that line from the photos, “the world will listen then, as I am listening now”? Was he referring to something I had already done, or something that I was about to do? These games were too much.

  I sat on my bed for a moment, listening to the clangs in the street, the chatter in the stairwell, the old plumbing in the walls, anything to stop the downward spiral of my thoughts. Fox might be in Paris but I was not his pet, collared and caged, not anymore and never again. I applied my reddest lipstick like it was war paint. I removed my sensible knickers and replaced them with emerald green silk ones. I ripped up the note and flung it out the window, watching it catch on the spitting wind and scatter, sodden, over the street.

  * * *

  “Katie King! (Yes, thank you, Gina.),” said Maisie. “What’s the gossip?”

  I flicked up my coat collar against the chill in the telephone booth.

  “Nancy Cunard, an avant-garde poet heiress, just stopped me in the street to invite me to a ‘little gathering’ she’s holding at the Rotonde. I’m calling to see if you’re free tomorrow night.”

  “Count me in. Will there be people there for our ‘other’ work?”

  “I don’t think so, but I have information about that. My friend in London… Have you met Bertie?”

  “During the war, but not since. Slender Soho type?”

  “That’s the one. He’s been doing a little digging for me and has sent me some names via telegram: Carl and Phillip.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Friends of Hausmann, I’m hoping. I also have another telegram from Tom.”

  “You’re practically a post office, Katie.”

  “More like a dead letter drop.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s… not important. Tom’s coming in a couple of days.”

  “He’s part of this too?”

  “Unavoidably. He’s on his way to Rome, where Mussolini is planning a big demonstration with his Blackshirts. How do you feel about a trip south, Maisie?”

  “Pizza in a piazza? I’m there.” I heard her sigh. “Life is so exciting with you in Paris, Katie.”

  “Your life was a bit exciting before, what with the blackmail.”

  “Oh no, that was just fear and tension. Somehow you make it glamorous.”

  “Put diamonds on my pistol, then. Six o’clock tomorrow outside the Metro, here in Montparnasse? I want you to myself for a moment before we plunge into the party.”

  “I’ll wear all the parrot colors.”

  I hung up and smoked a cigarette, looking around at Gare du Montparnasse. Delphine caught my eye but shook her head: no sighting of either Fry or Fox. It was good to see her move about in her new boots. She was quicker and lighter and her ready smile meant she sold more matches.

  But I needed to find another telephone. If Fox really was listening, then he knew where and how to listen. He would have threatened the girls in the exchange to record my calls. I took a risk today, after the note and the telegrams and my heart going like a racehorse and Nancy Cunard chatting in her chic bangles and having to remember how to be a society girl while my head was split into several fighting factions. I just had to speak to someone, to Maisie, as soon as I could.

  I had a new number for Bertie in his telegram:

  SOHO 8623 PRINZ PHILLIP & CARL?

  “Prinz” was German, I was sure, for prince. I would need to find out how he got these names. His lack of banter suggested that he sent this in a hurry, that someone was with him or waiting for him and he had no time to think of a little innuendo. This was most unlike him; I hoped he hadn’t been found out by his lover.

  I had a telegram from Tom too:

  BUTTON LAY OUT THE CAMP BED WE’RE MARCHING TO ROME.

  A little better than Bertie, but only a little; there were no willow cabins, no whisky, no time or date or place to meet. Just the bare ten words of the cheapest telegram.

  I sighed, full of smoke. This spy work was threatening to become as serious as the war.

  31

  “in the little red schoolhouse”

  “Fry.” I nodded. We met opposite the Grand Guignol theater. The streets of Pigalle were bustling with people ignoring the cold weather in favor of cheap thrills. The lights from the theater barely reached our side of the street.

  “Nice cap,” I said. “It looks like it really was your father’s.”

  “Absolutely. You can’t actually buy the proper ones in London. As I was traveling to Yorkshire to buy one anyway, I thought I may as well use the real deal. Besides, new boots are always suspicious.”

  “New high heels, however, are just the thing.”

  I had given serious thought to my outfit. If I had changed back into my trousers and sailor peacoat, would that have made me look like I was playing at having proletarian sympathies? The most straightforward thing would have been to wear what I had been wearing all day, but even though red was the color of revolution, a scarlet dress with matching coat and hat was just far too noticeable. In the end I did what no true revolutionary did and bought some new clothes. I bought some navy woolen trousers, which I got Odile to fit around my waist, and a thick green jumper to keep me warm. My sailor peacoat and black beret went well with this costume, as did my new tri-tone green heels.

  “I wanted to wear the golden boots I’m having made, but they’re not ready yet. I have to impre
ss my own flat-cap wearer tonight.”

  The theater posters screamed of bloody murder. Red lights flickered in the windows of the apartments above us. I checked the directions in my notes and set off.

  “You’ve impressed me,” said Fry. “This is quite an invitation.”

  “This invitation? This is nothing. Now if I’d been invited to tea with Lenin, that would be something.”

  “If you’d been invited to tea with Lenin, I wouldn’t be working with you, I’d be reporting on you.”

  “Aren’t you anyway?”

  The Workers’ Club was hidden down an alley between a nightclub, a moulin, and a couple of brothels. At least I assumed they were brothels, as women lounged in the doors, the windows, on the street outside, chatting to each other across the alleyway, calling out to us in a way that was casually hopeful, seemingly impervious to both the cold and rejection. Fry ignored them admirably but I could see the muscles in his neck and jaw tense in the effort to do so. I pursed my lips to stop myself laughing.

  I had expected a self-important hall like the ones I had seen in Sydney, but this club was just a sign erected outside an old stable. Inside it was scrubbed raw. It had clearly only recently been turned into a meeting place, as it was heated by a single gas ring and the door to the main house was a neatly edged hole in the wall. But the lack of heating was immaterial; it was warm with packed bodies. Many attendees looked battered by life—limbless veterans, women with gray skin in gray clothes, teenagers with scars and a gaze that flickered between vacant and fiery. But there was a sizable contingent of bourgeoisie, with their new clothes and healthy skin, keen for some kind of three-piece-suit revolution. At the far end of the stable was a makeshift stage. Nguyễn smiled at me, causing a couple of people in front of him to turn around. I moved up the aisle.

  “Nguyễn, I’ve brought a friend, over from London. He’s a brother to your cause.”

  “Alberts.” Fry held out his hand along with his alias.