Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  He didn’t let it go. ‘They did tie people to the locomotives.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they did things that were bad.’ She looked out the window at the snowy fields of France, hugging the landscape to her.

  He said, ‘You’ll dine well, and you’ll talk nothing but League. You will even enjoy yourself. There are young people on the staff. The esprit d’équipe is fine.’

  The waiter served the roast pheasant, Parmentier potatoes, and fresh beans.

  To her pleasure, Edith found an anecdote rising to her mind without any effort. ‘Chestnuts go well with pheasant. Do you know why that is?’

  She waited to see if he had the answer. He did not.

  ‘Because chestnuts are the favourite food of the pheasant. It isn’t one of life’s great stories, but it’s an anecdote of sorts.’

  ‘It is indeed. And I had not made that connection between pheasants and chestnuts. Oh yes, that definitely counts as an anecdote.’

  ‘I also know that peasants, as distinct from pheasants, did not like chestnuts and would not eat them in France, even during times of great hunger.’

  ‘Very good — two anecdotes for the price of one.’ He chuckled and then said, ‘Should lamb, then, be served with grass?’

  She smiled. ‘That, I think, annuls my anecdote. Must I pay a forfeit?’

  ‘No, not at all, but my little joke must count as an anecdote.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Edith let herself become aware that her curiosity about Vyvyan with two ys had been stifled earlier by apprehension and she had not, in fact, been fully true to the Way of All Doors.

  She had been frightened, she was ashamed to note, to ask her way on into the hidden depths of his anecdote.

  As they ate the roast pheasant, she concentrated herself to ask, and when ready, said as a preliminary, ‘I do like one thing Oscar Wilde said — he said that he couldn’t understand why we talk of red and white wine, when wine is in fact yellow. We should speak of red and yellow wine.’

  Ambrose savoured this with a loud chuckle, which pleased her. ‘The good thing about Wilde — now that he is quotable again — is that he said so many good things that one forgets them, so when they come up again they seem really quite new.’

  He told her that on the PLM line she was entitled to second helpings if she wanted. She did not want second helpings.

  She pushed herself back towards the perturbing gist of the earlier conversation. ‘This Vyvyan with the two ys — is he as his father?’

  ‘Is he “as his father”?’ Ambrose repeated her expression as a way of grasping it. ‘You mean, of the Greek inclination?’ Edith supposed that was another way of saying it, his euphemism being a show of propriety.

  She again reprimanded herself for not being true to the Way of All Doors. Euphemisms did not belong to the Way of All Doors.

  ‘Does he take men as lovers, is what I mean,’ she said explicitly.

  She listened closely to her voice as the words came out. It sounded firm, not nervously firm, and not impatient. Just fine.

  ‘I would say, no.’ He then added, ‘He is as his father, I suppose, in enjoying the good things of life.’

  ‘Was Vyvyan aware of the reference in De Profundis to ortolans, as you ate them? Together.’

  ‘No mention was made of that, no.’

  She wanted now to ask if Ambrose was, whether he, Ambrose, was of the way of Oscar Wilde, but saw that she could not ask — not by any of the rules of casual conversation, nor by any of her private Ways — although she felt sure now that Ambrose had moved the conversation in this direction. Was that the confession loitering in his remarks? She knew that some conversations contained such latent confessions, especially perhaps with a stranger on a train, but they’d moved significantly from being strangers. Indeed, they were now colleagues. New rules now applied.

  She considered again whether the Way of All Doors could be used to satisfy her inquisitiveness.

  No, she could not ask.

  Edith stared out the window of the train and said to herself, Edith Campbell Berry, at twenty-six, sits in the first-class dining car of the train from Paris to Geneva, eating six courses with a strange gentleman, a friend of Oscar Wilde’s son, and disregarding the advice of Lord Curzon and John Latham about eating soup, and realises that she has no conversational way of finding out whether her male companion, whom she finds exceedingly attractive, is of ‘the Greek inclination’.

  She had, in disregard of another of John Latham’s rules for a young diplomat, also lost track of how much wine she’d drunk.

  The sorbet arrived and they agreed not to treat that as a course requiring an anecdote.

  She then had a decisive realisation. It would be revealed. At some time it would be made clear whether or not her companion was of the Greek inclination. That was the Way of Compulsive Revelation, which was not a Way, strictly speaking, because it didn’t have to be taken — it occurred; in fact, it was the Way which asked that no efforts be made, only that it be given space, time and implicit invitation to allow the compulsive revelation, timidly and appropriately, to appear at its rightful time. It could not be hurried. Though, she joked to herself, it must occur before the wedding night. If he were of that inclination, the earlier teasing took on a different character; might, in fact, have been meant as a warning. Or he himself may not know what revelation was trying to find its way out into his conversation. Surely not?

  Picking up the conversation, he said, ‘In places where there is dancing and dim lights, the label on a bottle of wine may not have any relationship to its contents. Geneva is a place where much dancing is done, some say only dancing.’

  She grasped his meaning about the nature of the international diplomacy in Geneva and then again wondered if he were talking also of himself.

  ‘Better banquets than bullets,’ she said, feeling that it was a worldly thing to say, even if it lacked originality and was something of a non sequitur. It filled a space.

  At the appearance of the cheese, she was quick to remember that the French had it before dessert. She also came up with an anecdote. ‘I am told, although I have not been to Italy, that the Italians refer to the aroma of the cheese shop as “the feet of God”.’

  Ambrose thought that this was very good. ‘Having begun this silly game, I seem to be the one always without an anecdote.’

  ‘You told a rather complicated one to start things rolling. It could count as at least two.’ And, nor, she thought, has it finished all its resoundings.

  The bananas glacé chantilly arrived, with vanilla wafers and a glass of Tokay. Her first Tokay.

  The swaying of the train and the wines now made Edith oblivious to any separation between her body and her social manoeuvres or, for that matter, of any separation between the train and her body. The wine and the train gave her a happy awareness of her body as she moved against the leather seat, of both the flesh of her buttocks and her loins, and of her fashionable new Parisian corset and elegant underwear. She was drawn to Ambrose and if she were to advance this attraction, it was best she determine whether he was the way of Oscar Wilde, who if she recalled correctly had said that going to a whore was like eating chewed mutton, a description she found objectionable. Maybe she could venture a Lure and see what reaction it caused. But Ploys and Lures could go off all over the place. Could go off in one’s face. Not that she always resisted the unforeseeable. Knowing what was going on in a conversation was part of her training as an international civil servant, and also, was a way of becoming a woman to whom nice things happened.

  There was no reason, she argued, why one couldn’t nudge Compulsive Revelation along by using a Lure. Edith Campbell Berry plunged on.

  ‘Oscar Wilde did, however, go with women — I remember reading somewhere that he said going with a whore in Paris was like eating chewed mutton. And he fathered Vyvyan with two ys and two vs.’

  She felt that Ambrose could either find this amusing, or find it appalling that a woman should tell
such an anecdote, or find the idea of a carnal experience with a woman beyond his knowledge or unimportant to his experience or he could find it objectionable as a way for Wilde to speak about a woman, about a forlorn person. Or he could pretend to any one of these positions.

  Ambrose said nothing, but nodded.

  That was not revealing. The Lure had flopped.

  She struggled on. ‘I find it rather appalling, that a man of alleged high sensibility should speak that way of another human being, a forlorn person, that he should speak that way of a human encounter …’

  Say it, Edith, say it.

  ‘… that he should speak that way of a carnal encounter.’ That was the best she could do.

  Ambrose’s face became alert. ‘Why, yes, that’s my response exactly. I’m so glad, I’m so glad that you didn’t find it amusing. The way you told it seemed to suggest that you found it amusing. It’s not amusing at all.’

  Which established that Ambrose was a person of fine sensibility but did not establish whether he was the way of Oscar Wilde. Why was it that she could not tell from the conversational clues? Was it his diplomatic training or was it that she had trouble understanding the British? Sometimes the nature of a man was revealed by the gesture and line of his talk, although she and her friends back home now agreed that one could only sometimes tell.

  ‘How do you account for him having gone with a whore in Paris when he was so definitely the other way?’ She felt this question would cause him to jump in one direction or another. Into her life or out of her life.

  ‘Oh, I suspect that he was just revisiting, going back to that way to see if it was as unacceptable as he recalled it, or not the right way for him.’

  ‘It would be distasteful for a man such as Wilde? Distasteful to go with a woman?’

  He looked directly across at her. Perhaps he was now aware that he was being investigated. ‘I imagine so.’

  Was that it then? Was the use of the word ‘imagine’ a way of saying that he had no personal knowledge or feelings which could be brought to bear on this matter?

  She pushed on. ‘It is a line that cannot be crossed, do you think? Not happily?’

  His face had become unrelaxed. He stared out of the window into the snowy fields. Ambrose was not at ease with this Probe.

  She was tempted to talk away from the subject now, and go to lighter things, but she held back, feeling that because of his earlier flirting that she was justified in being curious, and in using the Way of the Silent Void to see what it might now elicit. She refused to relieve him from his subject, kept looking at him for a response.

  He turned his eyes to hers.

  ‘Oh, there are men who can cross the line back and forth, so to speak.’ He tried to say this lightly, but it came out unsteadily.

  Edith was unsure whether he was speaking of himself but he was revealing something about the practices of carnal love which she had not met before. This crossing of the borders. She was nonplussed. That was the trouble with the Way of All Doors — it sometimes plopped you down in the thistles. This was not an idea she had confronted before, that men might love both men and women. She felt she should leave it for now. Quickly. But she could not move the conversation fast enough and Ambrose went on. ‘And there are those who live damned near the border but just to one side of it. There is another devilish zone there.’ He said this with force, with the full effort of honesty, implying that it was not a serene place to dwell. ‘The free city of Danzig,’ he laughed, making a semi-private joke. She took his reference, a city belonging to no country, and maybe also the private meaning he was giving it. And, now, now, he was talking of himself.

  Edith took fright and the Way of Cowardly Flight.

  They were, thankfully, confronted by the fruit plate and she found herself again with something to say.

  He had fallen into a careworn silence and she felt that it was her fault. That she had better carry things for a while. ‘Orange, apple, and banana,’ she said brightly, examining the fruit plate with more attention than it deserved. ‘The three musketeers of the English winter.’ She smiled at him, relieving him of the investigation not only because of her perturbation but also from tenderness. ‘I count that as my anecdote on the matter of fruit.’

  Edith was still in silent disarray from her efforts to use conversation detectively. Maybe she’d been successful by her code, had dared to go to a new place in ideas. She’d been fearfully close to a blunder, and a blunder could not be claimed as a manoeuvre. But a conversation couldn’t be fully managed all the way. Not on trains. Part of the confusion was that it had begun as a conversation with a stranger on a train and had changed to a conversation with a colleague. It had at some point changed again to being flirtation, although she felt she wasn’t always good at knowing flirtation from friendliness. She even suspected the flirtation had been moving towards seduction.

  The meal was over. Ambrose told her not to pay the bill unless it was written out in her presence and never to make payment on a French train without a bill. ‘Just good practice,’ he told her. ‘Keep the bill for the dreadful people in Finance.’

  They returned to her compartment, which she had to herself, and he sat beside her and they sipped Singleton’s, which Ambrose described as a single malt Scotch whisky, from Ambrose’s well-worn and dented hip flask, in the small silver cups which went with the hip flask, embossed with Ambrose’s corps insignia, and they talked of their childhoods and other things through the few remaining hours of the darkening winter’s afternoon.

  She’d drunk Scotch with her father back in Australia and it reminded her of those conversations where the presence of the Scotch decanter had marked his recognition of her maturity. She relaxed into the motion of the train with its sensation of velocity, the play of the light and dusk at the window, enjoying the landscape blurred by speed, winter snow, the feeling of rushing through time, the alcohol and its rug of carefree warmth, the steam-heating of the train, and the faint smell of burning coal from the engine. If she let her eyes become lazy, the window view became an abstraction of light and shapes. It was a winter dark when the train stopped at Bellegarde. Ambrose told her it was the border. They’d already showed their League lettre de mission and other papers to the customs officers who’d moved through the train earlier.

  Standing together in the dim corridor after the train moved out on its last few miles to Geneva, looking out of the window, she admitted to him that she was rather elated at the idea of arriving in Geneva and with working for the League and she hoped that, when there, he might guide her in her work and watch over her a little.

  ‘So you should be elated,’ he said, ‘Geneva’s the place to be. And I should be proudly happy to be your guide, dear Edith, and to watch over you.’

  Having, by her youthful admission, delivered herself into his care, she then let the train rock their bodies together, and she realised that the body also asked questions, and Ambrose kissed her, and as she played with his kiss, and gave herself to the kiss, she could not tell whether there was a difference to the kiss of a man who inhabited a place at or near the border, knowing more about conversation than she did about kissing. If, indeed, he did. As she looked over his shoulder, she wondered what a lady should do to give pleasure to a gentleman who inhabited this border place. And did she not believe in the ending of national borders? She returned then to the mild swoon of another kiss and, just before she entered the delight of the kiss, his body against hers, the swelling of his groin gave her the message that he belonged to the domain of men and women, definitely in that domain.

  Presenting One’s Credentials

  On her first day, Edith set out for the Palais Wilson at 7.45 a.m. She was not dressed in her new yellow wool suit with the belt. She wore her familiar, but dapper, fine grey wool suit with black braid trim from her Melbourne days. She wanted not to have to worry about the feel and sensation of unacquainted clothing, especially the colour yellow, and, even though it sounded schoolgirlish, she did not wan
t to appear ‘all new’. Dress so as to pass unobserved. She had, though, heightened her make-up because of the grey.

  She carried a parcel of personal things for her office.

  Walking along the quai Woodrow Wilson to the Palais, she let a rush of exhilaration pass through her as she looked across Lac Léman but she did not linger and nor did she reveal her exhilaration to the passing Genevans.

  She arrived at what she took to be the front door of the Palais, the entrance facing Lac Léman, but was directed to go around to the other side of the Palais by a man inside the building, gesticulating from behind the glass door.

  That is, she thought, one incontrovertible error of the League. The front door should be where people expect a front door to be, facing a natural scenic attraction. Maybe the League of Nations had a higher order of priorities which could not acknowledge natural scenic attractions. Perhaps they had not beheld the lake. She believed in the Aesthetic of the Outside of the Inside. That the Outside determined the Inside, was part of the Inside. She wondered whether that should go on to her list of suggestions for improving the League which she felt a good officer with initiative and drive would be expected to have upon joining. She then thought that her saying, ‘The front door should be where people expect a front door to be,’ sounded like something Alice might have said to the Queen. And what would the Queen have replied? ‘Sometimes in this world,’ the Queen would have said, ‘it is better to look both ways — hence to have two fronts and no back.’

  Edith passed two dogs playing at the ‘front door’. On the steps, she had a momentary but elusive and extraneous thought about carnal love, something from a joke she remembered from the non-members’ bar at Parliament House in Melbourne about the ‘two-backed beast’, which she had, embarrassedly, asked John Latham to explain. He had not, though, made fun of her in his explanation.