‘That suits me,’ said Edith, already feeling it as a pressing task, losing the relaxation gained only a second before, wondering if this was an illustration of the British liking for games about which John Latham had told her, along with his advice on soup and other matters of the world. He said the British loved games but chose only those at which they had the skills and where they knew the rules.
After they’d ordered, both taking the menu à prix fixe, with him choosing the wine, he introduced himself as Major Ambrose Westwood. She introduced herself as Edith Berry, failing to put in her middle name, Campbell, forgetting momentarily that she now intended to use this middle name. They vigorously shook hands across the table.
She said, ‘You were in the War?’
‘Oh, I like being called the Major. I was in the War, but only as a doctor soldier, I’m afraid,’ he said with a grimace, showing the customary diffidence she’d seen before in soldiers. She had trouble reconciling his being a doctor and yet being in the Foreign Office. She guessed that it would be eventually explained.
The soup Julienne arrived and he whisked it with his fork and laughed. ‘Observe the bubbles — that’s soap — we can be assured that the plates were washed.’
‘I dare say we have eaten soap in one form or another all our lives and not suffered from it, but it doesn’t stimulate the appetite. Does the talk of soap count as an anecdote about soup Julienne?’
‘My apologies for having drawn attention to it. Childish. That doesn’t count. You did the soup anecdote marvellously, antedate, as it were, and I have nothing to top that. Have you dined much in Paris?’
‘A little.’ Were three or four times sufficient to be described as having dined a little in Paris?
‘This is my anecdote. Last night I dined at the Club des Cent. It was founded about ten years ago by some men who, besides a love of good food and good wine, love also the open road and motoring. They explore the food and hotels of France and, apart from lunching every Thursday in Paris, they put on feasts in other parts of France. The club has its own rooms and library and bar in the Faubourg St Honoré. Do you know the thing that surprised me at my visit to the club?’
‘I do not accept the demand of the question,’ she said, meaning it, because she hated those sorts of questions, but smiling to take away any edge of impatience. ‘Given that I have no way of knowing what surprised you in the Club des Cent.’
‘Objection accepted. What surprised me was this: the way they served the salmon — which, I have to say, was première classe. They placed the salmon on thick slices of crustless bread. Chunks of salmon on chunks of bread. At White’s — in London — we serve it delicately, ever so thin slices on ever so thin biscuits.’ He laughed as a prelude to what he was about to say. ‘You see, we, the English, think of our way of serving salmon as being the French way. We think of the French gourmets as finicky, and so my surprise at the robustness of the servings.’ He closed the anecdote in laughter, perhaps laughing to safeguard it from any chance of it failing to meet the tests of amusement. ‘There was much discussion.’
‘Much discussion?’
‘You know how it is with food and wine enthusiasts.’
‘I don’t, really, you see we don’t make much of a fuss about food back in Australia. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t care more. In all things.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true — which city do you come from?’
What wasn’t true? How would he know?
She realised she was being prickly, and should stop it.
‘Sydney and Melbourne, but before that I came from a small town on the coast of New South Wales, the south coast of New South Wales.’
And she was, at twenty-six, having her first lunch in a railway dining car, at the first sitting, holding her own with an English gentleman to whom she didn’t object, and she was disregarding the advice of both Lord Curzon and John Latham by having soup.
‘I am a member of a dining club — the Saintsbury. Vyvyan Holland is a member of the Saintsbury.’
She observed that this was a conversational move which was not simple, maybe was not wholly kind, had something hiding within it. It was not only that she did not know the name Vyvyan Holland, and it was not that he was perhaps important and she should know — what was, perhaps, unkind was that this Major Westwood had said it with a teasing voice. As the conversation was running, she didn’t have time to detect his secret theme. Was it, again, to give himself altitude, through displaying glamorous, worldly information about himself?
‘Vyvyan with two ys,’ he said, in the same teasing voice.
‘Vyvyan with two ys,’ she repeated, but she didn’t make this a question; she wouldn’t ask for his help. Not yet. As she said the name, she wrote it in her mind’s eye, seeing the word with its two ys.
To ask, ‘Who is Vyvyan Holland?’ would lead her into the ambush of his tease. He knew that she did not know. She decided then to use the Way of the Silent Void, which she’d devised to overcome such conversational teasing and to hide her disadvantage. In her experience, the Way of the Silent Void usually forced the other person to explain themselves, and deflated the teasing.
As she allowed a silence to form in the conversation, it appeared to her, though, that he might be a Master of the Silent Void because he, too, looked at her without speaking, his mouth holding a small smile.
She continued to hold her silence, also bringing a small smile to her mouth. She steered another spoonful of soup to her mouth.
The silence was long enough and the void wide enough for them to both hear the clack of the train over the track, and the conversation and laughter of the other diners.
She thought she heard a church bell somewhere out in the countryside of France.
She heard another diner say, in English, ‘Buy Ford.’
At last he spoke, going into the void she had created. She quietly congratulated herself. However it did not release her from the tease or from her ignorance, because he said, ‘In London, our club, the Saintsbury, meets twice yearly — on Shakespeare’s birthday and on the birthday of Professor George Saintsbury. The club is devoted to wine and books.’
He was years older than she, at least, and from the FO, although as she examined his face, she felt uncertain of his age. He was boyish, but there was an exhaustion which dragged at his face. But he would have his Ways for All Occasions by now. Or maybe some people did not have Ways?
He was being inexplicable, being a dodger, trying to detour around her void.
But he was falling into the void, because he spoke again just as she was preparing to throw herself on the mercy of the conversation. This time he seemed to be presenting a clue but it didn’t assist her.
‘In Paris, at the Club des Cent, we ate,’ he looked meaningfully at her, ‘ortolans des Landes wrapped in Sicilian vine leaves.’ He used his glance to prance the tease even further. She did not know what an ortolan was. She decided she could no longer either play with his tease or widen the void. She decided to Tip It All Up.
‘You are teasing me. I don’t know who Vyvyan Holland with two ys is and I do not understand your other references and I am not sure that I want to know what your tease is about.’ She wrapped her Tip-Up in a simulation of gleeful laughter, to make it pleasant. She felt she was correct in using Tip It All Up to stop him treating her like a girl. She laughed gleefully again to make sure that she was not spoiling things entirely and for all time.
He now dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and he seemed uncomfortable, but put on a smile to show he was not too uncomfortable. She could see that he had embarked on the tease without foreseeing its end, and without knowing what it was he hoped to whet in her by teasing her. She looked across at him as the waiter served the oxtail Florentine. He was still uncomfortable. He had moved into his tease and now found himself without pleasure and without a way of gracefully concluding. Not very good for a man from the FO. Teasing could arouse unpleasant things in the person teased but usually, in her e
xperience, it had to do with flirtation. Was he drawing back from the flirtation? Teasing was verbal tickling and, like tickling, could be bullying. She ruled out bullying. The thrill of flirtation, then, was what he hoped to achieve. She’d spotted the true shadow thrown by this anecdote. She’d Tipped It All Up when perhaps she shouldn’t have been so impatient or insecure. Perhaps she should have allowed him to continue to tickle her into confusion and submission. She did not know how to revive the flirt.
In the silence the sound of the train seemed loud.
‘It’s really very silly of me,’ he said.
‘How is it silly of you?’
‘There is no reason why you should have read De Profundis.’ He was letting her off, but not immediately — not before making this not-so-enigmatic reference to De Profundis. She knew what De Profundis was. He was trying to go on with the flirtatious tease. Good. She let him finish a mouthful of food while waiting for the elucidation she needed. He was not being nasty; he wanted to pleasure her by teasing her so that she would not be in full control of herself, which was perhaps permissible for this kind of luncheon. ‘Oscar Wilde. The manuscript itself is in the British Museum but no one has ever had access to it — some of it came out in the court case in 1913. And there’s the disputed Methuen edition.’
He then delivered what she took to be his principal item. ‘I have seen it — Vyvyan Holland’s copy.’
She laughed, relaxing at the end of the tease, relieved by the smallness of the item. She was not overwhelmed at all.
He responded to her laugh by saying, ‘I am being rather superior. Sorry.’ He was now flustered. Having gained a little superiority he found it an encumbrance. He was not good with his Ways at all. There was nothing she could do to relieve him from his bother because the conversation had become unneat, they were both in confusion and it was of his making.
Ah. The name Oscar Wilde was what it was all about. That was the secret of his gambit. It was a name he believed could titillate her as a woman. It was a name about which hung sniggers and taboos. Although she was a modern woman and had talked about that subject — of men loving men — she couldn’t lightly do so with a strange man on a train. But she sensed that the titillation he wanted to cause in her was to make her display something of her nature, to find out something about her responsiveness. Again, she quickly saw that it was not a nasty embarrassment he wished upon her. She decided to try her most difficult way, the Way of All Doors, which required her to try to be adept at talking of all things with all people. It would be the grandest way of all if she could ever confidently install it.
But he spoke. ‘I’ll begin again.’ He was not teasing now and was going back to comradeship. ‘You see, Vyvyan Holland, who is a member of the Saintsbury Club, is Oscar Wilde’s son.’
‘Oscar Wilde’s son?’ There was still more to the anecdote. The play was not finished.
‘The mother adopted her family name because of the scandal.’
‘I know of the scandal of Oscar Wilde,’ she said firmly, testing her footing along the ledge of the Way of All Doors. ‘Even in Australia we have heard of the scandal of Oscar Wilde.’ As she said it she was disappointed with herself. She’d sworn never to apologise for her nationality.
‘Of course you have. Anyhow, Oscar Wilde’s son is a member of my club and, in De Profundis, Oscar Wilde recalls a meal he had with Lord Alfred Douglas.’
‘His lover,’ she said. ‘Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend.’ She strengthened it with spice. ‘His concubine.’ Again firmly using the Way of All Doors and finding that she could go that Way with poise.
He seemed eased by her frankness. ‘Yes, his lover. Wilde describes a meal of ortolans eaten at the Savoy with Lord Alfred, and there I was, eating these with Vyvyan Wilde-Holland just last night at the Club des Cent. So, you see — that is my anecdote.’
The warmth of shared purpose returned to the lunch for two, in the railway dining car, at the first sitting, on the train from Paris to Geneva.
As she looked over his anecdote she forgave him for his playing with her, and appreciated it as a rather breathtaking anecdote. Rather fine. The teasing had been more like gentle tickling. But the anecdote had, still, a question mark hooked into it, which she hadn’t time to unhook.
She said to him, ‘That was a fine anecdote.’
‘Thank you. I’m glad it pleased you. Finally.’
‘I have not eaten ortolans,’ she said cautiously, his conversation having not told her what ortolans were.
‘I was shown how to eat them only last night by Monsieur Massenat,’ he said, and she noted that by his confession of a minor ignorance he was either admitting their equality or pretending to an equality, or appealing for an equality, careful now not to play with her or to try to overwhelm her. ‘Monsieur Massenat took the bird by the head and put its body into his mouth. Thus.’ He mimed this.
Conversationally, the waiting, at least, had worked. She now knew something of what an ortolan was.
‘Biting through the neck, you chew gently, rejecting any tough morsels. The tiny bones will break. I felt like a cat. So small are the birds that three make only a moderate size course. We accompanied it with a burgundy from 1919, Clos de Tart.’
‘We have had to travel some distance to reach the conclusion of this anecdote,’ she laughed, ‘which I now observe — checking back over the conversation — makes no reference to oxtail Florentine.’ They both laughed.
‘I apologise. I talk in riddles.’
It was no riddle, it was a tease, but she had wriggled out of it and Tipped him Up, even enjoyed the tickling a little, and they were back together in the conversation. She had wriggled out of it affectionately and had not recoiled. She had granted him, she hoped, some of the pleasure of his tease, and she hoped she had not gone out of the reach of his flirting.
She laughed, and executed the Way of Companionable Directness. ‘It was a tease — you were trying to tease me, if not to embarrass me, for your own fun, and to flirt.’ They laughed as he agreed, and they moved into a closer understanding. She said, ‘At my school, new girls were not to be encouraged. But nor were they to be teased or baited.’
‘You’re very good,’ he said sincerely. ‘Edith Berry — Edith.’ Using her name for the first time.
‘Really, it’s Edith Campbell Berry.’ Wanting him to know her full and proper name, and then being quietly abashed at hearing how pretentious it sounded now, at least between them. Though she was absolutely sure, and her friends back home had agreed, that she needed a spirited name if she was to make her way here on the Continent. Anyhow, her visiting cards said Edith Campbell Berry. She would, at some point, get one out and give it to him.
He asked her whether she was bound for Geneva. She said yes, to take up a posting with the League of Nations. She enjoyed a tremor of importance as she said it.
‘How remarkable! I’m with the League myself. Which section?’
‘Internal Administration, division 1 class B.’ She laughed, enjoying the sound of it and enjoying her feeling of self-importance.
‘It’s a shambles. Whereabouts in Internal?’
‘In the Under Secretary’s bureau. To start with, at least.’
‘We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, but I’m a notch or two above you, I’m afraid — I’m in with Tony Buxton, helping Sir Eric — in the haute direction,’ he told her, also laughing at the pomp of the language. ‘I’m dogsbody to the haute direction. Buxton’s a great chap — one of the old gang — came over to Geneva with us at the start.’
She was pleasantly surprised that he’d be working there too. She tried to be mature and not show how pleased she was to meet someone else from the League. ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘will they — we — admit Germany?’
‘You’ll find the Secretariat pretty much all for Germany. As for my countrymen, “unwise and premature” were Chamberlain’s words.’
‘If Germany could be admitted she would then cease to be a leper nation, could be taught the
ways of civilisation, perhaps, through membership of the League.’ Edith felt that what she’d contributed wasn’t quite up to scratch. She tried to improve it by adding, ‘Butler thinks it should happen.’ Hoping that sounded authoritative, hoping that he respected Butler’s book, which she’d studied on the voyage over.
‘Brazil is the problem.’
‘Brazil?’ Edith feared she’d been caught way off the point.
‘Brazil wants a permanent seat on the Council. Top secret. Only myself and Sir Eric know. And you.’ He laughed. ‘And Jules the messenger. The Germans want a seat on the Council but not at the same time as Brazil. Feel it lowers their status to that of Brazil. Which is exactly where I would put it. I’m inclined to keep Germany a prisoner, twenty years’ hard labour, repay and repent, and certainly unarmed.’ He held up a hand. ‘We mustn’t talk shop — in Geneva nothing else is talked. On the train from Paris to Geneva we can at least talk of frivolous matters. And, of course, as international civil servants, we have no opinions.’
It wasn’t a rebuke. He seemed not to want to talk about Germany, as if it were exhausted as a subject for him. Maybe it had to do with having been in the War. Did international civil servants have no opinions?
‘At least your government has conceded that the Germans didn’t boil down corpses of soldiers to make grease for their machinery,’ she said, finishing the topic in her own way and in her own time, thinking, then, that she had no right to talk that way, given that he’d been in the War. She watched to see if the criticism of his country had hurt him. He did not let on.
‘Someone at Intelligence got it wrong, it seems, misread some German document during the War.’ Ambrose appeared uncomfortable with this confession of British error, or perhaps with talk of the War.
‘It’s taken seven years for your intelligence section to improve its German.’ Edith bit her tongue, feeling that again she was perhaps pushing it too far and too hard, and backed quickly away. ‘This is my first posting. I have not been to Geneva,’ she said, taking a subordinate place in the conversation as a slap to herself for being a bit hard on the British.
Grand Days Page 2
