A Letter from Paris Read online

  Next morning, wondering if the whole thing was a dream, I read the morning paper and caught up on the Foreign Office scandal. I was at the little basin shaving, with my back to the door, when it burst open, a rugged-looking dark Frenchman in a blue suit, probably a southerner, took me in a jiffy, simultaneously staring at everything in the room at once. He kept one hand in his pocket and said three words: ‘D.S.T. Monsieur, Passeport?’

  D.S.T. I had heard of this sinister department — the French equivalent of the Special Branch. A very undercover organization for operations against foreign spies on French territory. I produced my passport very quickly. He examined it and spent another minute or two examining me and a photo he held in his hand. I told him, with some malice, that the International Press had left the trail cold the night before. With a typical French monosyllable, he turned on his heel and left.

  Shortly after this, Alister Kershaw dropped in for a chat and warned me to be careful. ‘You’d better be on the watch. These D.S.T. people don’t act like French police — and you know how different they are from British police forces. We had better see Jacques [Delarue].’

  Jacques was a very civilized, well-read police inspector. He used to drop into the Hotel for chats about poetry and life at odd times. Small, dark, very French.

  Jacques came round to see us and we told the story again. He was sitting on the bed, smoking a Gauloise. Alister occupied the only chair. There was yet another knock on the door. I opened it to a small sandy-haired man in a raincoat who cupped his hand with a card in it and rapped out ‘D.S.T.! Passeport!’

  This time I didn’t hurry to show my passport. ‘Look here,’ I said, made bolder by the presence of Jacques. ‘Why don’t you ask your colleague about it, he was here this morning?’

  Sandy-haired went red with anger. ‘Colleague? What colleague, what did he look like? Which way did he go? No-one was assigned to this job but me.’

  Jacques interrupted drily from the bed. ‘Permit me to point out, Monsieur, that you are rather late in arriving. The whole Paris Press was here last night.’

  Sandy-hair was not amused. Furiously he demanded more details about the short dark visitor of the morning and went off to interrogate Louis about this new spy mystery and raced off to chase, not Maclean, but the pseudo-D.S.T.

  Tucked into the diary was a newspaper clipping:

  May 1951

  AUSTRALIAN NOT MISSING DIPLOMAT

  Sunday Telegraph Service

  PARIS, Sat. — Scores of police and British Embassy officials combed Paris last night for Mr Dinison [sic] Deasey, of Melbourne.

  Deasey, 30, is a son of the late Canon Deasey, of Melbourne.

  When he went to the office of International Airways to book a passage to Berlin, the clerk thought he was Donald Maclean, one of the missing British Foreign Office men.

  The clerk told Deasey to wait, then rang the British Embassy from a backroom telephone.

  Tired of waiting, Deasey left the office before Embassy officials arrived.

  Police joined the officials in an all-night search of Paris hotels and ordered a watch on all aerodromes and railway stations.

  Deasey was dressing at 7.30 this morning when police knocked on his hotel room door.

  IN UNDERPANTS

  The police questioned him as he stood in his shirt and underpants.

  They refused to believe that Deasey was not Maclean until British Embassy officials arrived.

  The officials, who knew Maclean well, said that Deasey bore a remarkable likeness to the missing diplomat.

  But their questions soon revealed that he was not Maclean.

  Maclean and Guy Burgess, another Foreign Office official, disappeared on May 27 while on a visit to France.

  Dad, mistaken for a spy! Was Michelle back in Paris at that time, too? 1951, yes, she would have been. Did she see the newspaper clipping? I would have to find out if she had lived near the Hotel Floridor.

  The voice in his diaries — the sense of snap decisions, intense observation, love of adventure, and instinctive, impulsive boldness — was so familiar.

  Mum had been brave, but she’d never been so plucky and adventurous.

  This was my dad. One half of my DNA.

  Me.

  Just as he’d chanced upon Tucker in Saint Germain, he bumped into his ex-wife’s mother, perhaps the only other Australian he might have known in France, staring at the Nike statue at the Louvre. The next day, he’d taken her to Versailles, where gossip and small talk of Melbourne life reminded him why he’d left.

  In Europe, Melbourne feels like an alien-land … I realized they are looking forward to going back there soon. Why?

  Dad’s handwriting was difficult to understand, but if I stayed with it, almost like listening to the particular sound intonations of another language, I could sense the rhythm. If I squinted and read out loud, I got used to his shorthand for certain words. I had to keep my head down or I’d lose the thread.

  He came into my brain, his writing ‘voice’ replaced my own, because I read so many of his thoughts. But all the questions I had, only he could answer, so I kept reading, catching up on decades of lost conversations.

  He was here, again. Alive through the printed word. If only in my head.

  But still, it felt so real.

  Each piece of material — every new letter, every new page — revealed more information than the last. It reminded me of that first night I spent in Paris, wanting to walk down every street but being distracted by every new vision and encounter, every precious thing. I felt possessed by more gifts than I could hold.

  Michelle, Michelle, must look for Michelle. But then dad was in the South of France, which seemed another world entirely, living in a villa with Richard Aldington, being visited by his literary heroes such as Henry Williamson.

  Here, I see the war was worth it, he wrote. Then, just as soon, he was back in London. From 1948 to 1949, he travelled from London to France so many times, endlessly catching the train.

  The character I met on those pages had managed to squeeze multiple lives into what others would struggle to put into one. I started to see him more clearly, understanding how even in his older years he would have still been the man in these pages. I could finally see how mum must have found him intriguing, despite the massive age difference, despite how the relationship ended.

  The strangest events were brushed off like they were nothing — was it a sign of the times? He didn’t mind being mistaken for a Cold War spy when he could have been shot by the secret police — because Louis Marandou, the hotelier at the Floridor, where he’d been confronted, opened a bottle of champagne in Monsieur Denison’s honour! He’d even found a way to make tuberculosis work for his life plans, using the medical papers to ensure he got out of London and back to France.

  I read so much that first day. I read until my vision blurred and my stomach roared and I was so thirsty I couldn’t even voice a ‘thank you’ to the librarian at the desk when I signed the requisite forms to be let out through the glass doors.

  I stumbled down the library stairs to the hot night outside — Melbourne, Australia, summer 2016. But underneath my skin, I was in 1940s France, still travelling with dad. I thought of how much he adored France, how happy he was there, regardless of the health problems that seemed to plague him.

  It’s impossible to sustain melancholy in Paris, he’d written.

  That seemed significant, somehow.

  That a family in France had reintroduced him to me.

  I’d gone to the library to search for Michelle, but instead found dad. Her beautiful letters had helped me brave the snakes.

  But now I couldn’t close the boxes.

  Chapter Six

  Chance perdue

  There had been chances to learn of dad’s story, breadcrumbs that had come before Coralie’s message and Michelle’s
letters, hints that his life was interesting, references to famous names. But something had always frightened me off diving deeply. The knowledge that he’d suffered, perhaps. Or the sense that his story was too big for me to ever understand.

  Mirka Mora, a Frenchwoman who narrowly escaped Auschwitz and relocated to Melbourne in the 1950s, had been one breadcrumb. She’d also been an artist and a member of the Heide circle, closely entwined with Nolan and Tucker, and John and Sunday Reed, and that whole bohemian time in Melbourne.

  But Mirka had also said something that had warned me off, all those years ago. Much like the first trip to the library when all I found was sadness, something she said had hinted at the pain I knew had filled the end of dad’s life.

  I spent a decade whipping across the floors of Mediterranean restaurants in the city, first as a university student, and for a few years afterwards. As I tried to figure out how to make writing work as a career, I’d occasionally look up and realise I’d spent more of my time delivering plates of food and drinks to strangers than sitting at my desk and actually typing. But I always kept a diary.

  What I loved about working in each of those restaurants, was that it felt a bit like I was travelling. Even if there was a crazy Italian chef who fired all the staff and then hired them back in weeping apology ten minutes later, I found that more interesting than sitting in an office, and I loved witnessing the differences of culture in European restaurants. I seemed to gravitate towards the more intense and busy places, mostly because I loathed being bored, even if my arms did feel like they were going to fall off from the weight of carrying plates for a sixteen-hour shift.

  It was hard work, but the simplicity of serving such a basic human need and having interesting interactions kept me waitressing even after I did start to work as a freelance journalist.

  At Florentino’s, one of Melbourne’s oldest Italian restaurants, at the top of Bourke Street, Mirka Mora had a ritual where she’d come in every Monday for oysters at midday. A well-known character in Melbourne, she and her husband had once started Balzac, the first French restaurant to open in Melbourne, in the early 1950s. Her being a French-Australian artist, and born in the same era as dad, made me wonder if they’d met.

  Something about Mirka, by virtue of her French-ness, also made me think of Gisèle. She felt familiar to me. Melbourne was small in the late 1950s, and dad had returned to Melbourne with Gisèle sometime around then. There couldn’t have been a large French-Australian population. Perhaps they’d met?

  So Mirka would appear every Monday, bright-red lipstick, wide eyes, and warm greetings, dressed for what seemed such a beautifully French ritual, ordering a dozen oysters for lunch and a glass of champagne.

  She had this playfully young sense about her, despite her age. She captured the sense of style I imagined of older women across France — an innate self-possession, confidence in her own particular type of femininity. A sense of the necessity of luxury, yet a beauty that had nothing to do with material means.

  I also loved that she couldn’t care less about outside opinion. Her irreverence to authority and conservatism made me comfortable.

  Her face would change when I set down the plate of oysters on her table, and she always squealed something funny in delight, like ‘Look at their little faces!’ or ‘My friends have arrived!’

  Glancing at the butcher’s paper we always placed on top of the tablecloths, I’d see she’d been drawing wide-eyed doll faces. She always left a trail of art wherever she went. Whenever I cleared the table after her, I’d keep her drawings, and the manager once pinned one above the phone.

  After working up the courage for weeks, I stood by the chef plating up the oysters to ensure no one else got to the bell before me. The manager was upstairs, and I knew I had a few moments alone.

  I placed her ‘little friends’ down and cleared my throat, tumbling the words out before I had the chance to get scared.

  ‘I’m sorry if this is an odd question, but I — I just wondered if you knew my dad?’

  ‘Who was your daddy?’ she said to me in her French accent, unfazed because she was like that, changing dad to daddy in a way that made me feel she understood. I was twenty-seven. She was about eighty, and her tone was kind, if a little confused. She studied my face, looking up from her seat, and I felt guilty for pestering her.

  ‘His name was Denison Deasey,’ I replied, feeling foolish.

  Time passed as I could see her scanning her memories — all the people she’d known, the lives she’d lived.

  ‘No …’ She looked like she was trying to remember something. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that man …’

  My shoulders fell, the drama was all for nothing.

  ‘Oh, okay, sorry, sorry, enjoy your oysters. Bon appétit!’ I said, embarrassed. I walked to the back of the restaurant to hide my red face and give her some space, but then I heard her chair scrape back, so I turned around.

  ‘HIS EYES! YOU HAVE YOUR DADDY’S EYES!’ she shouted across the restaurant floor.

  I sped back to her before the manager could hear, and she took my hand in both of hers, warm and beautiful. Like we were family.

  ‘I remember your daddy. I remember your daddy! Yes. Yes. I remember him. I remember him … Deasey. I don’t remember Denison, but I remember Deasey you see. You confused me. I remember Deasey …’

  Tears welled in my eyes, and she studied me again.

  ‘He is still here,’ she said — like a fairy godmother — pointing at my face and then my chest. ‘You have your daddy in you,’ she said, looking me deep in the eyes, which by then were openly spilling tears.

  Then, just as unexpectedly, she started telling me a story and her face changed to twinkling amusement.

  ‘We were at a party at our restaurant,’ she said. Balzac, it must have been. ‘Some “notable” men, you know the sorts, important or something, anyway they arrived and they were stuffy. Too stuffy. Everyone was acting so stuffy …’

  She made me giggle. I loved that she didn’t like stuffiness.

  ‘Anyway, I decided to throw some cheese, and nobody liked that of course … but your daddy stood up, clapped, and said, “Bravo!”, which made them all join in …’

  Sibling subversives, I thought. No wonder she felt like family.

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember him,’ she said, pointing as she spoke with her beautiful red-lipped smile. ‘I can tell you more if you come to my house in Richmond,’ she said, writing her address on a napkin and forcing it into my hand. She was still staring into my eyes, as though dad was there.

  ‘Your daddy … he suffered a lot,’ she added before she left, looking sad.

  What did she mean? I had to sit out the back in the laneway to recover, and I kept coming back to those words, unsure if I could handle the answer. Why did she say that?

  I worked split shifts in that restaurant for a year. By the time I had some space to even think about travelling to her house in Richmond, I wondered if she’d forgotten our encounter.

  I never did go and visit her, feeling intrusive and foolish because I didn’t have a phone number and I didn’t want to turn up unannounced. I saw her on the streets of St Kilda a few years later, and tried to say hello, but she didn’t remember me.

  For she was elderly by then, like everyone connected to dad.

  Perhaps the truth was, I didn’t want to know more details of his suffering. When I’d first tried to look at the boxes in the library, a year or two after meeting Mirka, all that had met me was his pain.

  I only wanted to know he’d laughed and encouraged her to throw cheese.

  Chapter Seven

  Manuscrits

  Aunt Alice had still been alive all those years ago when I’d met Mirka. Seven years older than dad, minus a day, I thought they’d been close. The diaries in the library confirmed she was his favourite sibling, listing secret calling codes and nick
names they’d use in London and France. Perhaps that’s why he’d introduced her to Michelle.

  She was his most adored sister, his dear Azzy. But even his adored Azzy had pestered him about his spending. He’d shouted her lunch in London and she’d told him off for ‘wasting’ his inheritance, I found in one of the diaries.

  Of dad’s three sisters, Alice was the only one still alive when I was born, but I’d always thought of her more like a grandmother, because she was in her seventies in my earliest memories of her. Impeccable, scarily observant, and extremely independent, even in her eighties she’d wear her handmade Liberty of London dresses with polished nails, opening up the piano in the front room or a book of art on the living-room table and asking me about school. After her husband, Grant, died, she lived alone in that house in Point Lonsdale by the sea until she died in her nineties, even driving her car well into her eighties.

  Until she retired, Alice had been a headmistress in Geelong, and I loved her but she intimidated me, which is perhaps why I didn’t ask her more about dad. Also, what could I have asked? I didn’t know much about world history, had no idea what all the reference points would have been.

  Alice once took me out to lunch on one of those visits to her house in Point Lonsdale, and I remember serving myself some salad without waiting for permission, or something similarly casual. She flashed her eyes at me without a word and I felt so ashamed. The event makes complete sense, now that I know she’d lived through the the Great Depression, World War II, and rationing, but when it happened I remember feeling I’d broken some great moral code.

  That sense of austerity, of clear right and wrong, seemed to hint at what dad must have experienced in his family — particularly when they were so connected to the Church of England. If my casual serving of salad was bad, what must they have thought of his spending so much money on travel and art, on living large?

  When I finished my arts degree and applied for a postgraduate writing course, I only told my sister. I doubted I’d make it in, because the course was so competitive.