Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘You are? Well, that’s grand.’ Captain Strongbow turned to his associate, Mr Kennedy, and said, pointing at her, ‘Isn’t that grand? We have here an officer of the League of Nations.’

  He turned back to her. ‘Ma’am, this is pure luck. You don’t know how hard it has been to get to talk to the officials of your organisation when I have so much to give which would be of benefit to that organisation.’

  ‘I have to warn you,’ she said, ‘that I cannot commit the League in any way and that my opinions are not to be quoted.’ Was she being now officious?

  ‘Naturally. All we ask is that you help us get the attention of the Big Guys in there,’ gesturing In There. Meaning, she supposed, in the Palais Wilson. ‘And, say, you could help us get the attention of the world as well.’ He gestured to The World.

  ‘You can make a submission,’ she said, trying to think how an American could make a submission given that they didn’t yet belong to the League, ‘to the Secretary-General.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve done all that. I ain’t so good with words on paper. I am a words-on-ears person.’

  ‘Tell me again the nature of your business,’ she said correctly.

  ‘You League people need protection. You need to be surrounded day and night by a protective shield.’

  ‘You need protection,’ Mr Kennedy echoed.

  It crossed her mind that they could be ‘gangsters’, but what they were doing in Geneva she couldn’t imagine.

  Captain Strongbow went on, ‘You do not realise how hated and feared you are by the powerful. The munitions people are out to get you.’

  Edith did not like the idea of the League being hated and feared. She stared at Captain Strongbow and Mr Kennedy, realising that there was political truth in what they said. How much truth? She looked at what she imagined was the tepid, Genevan vice in the people and buildings about her but felt no threat. Still, this was Europe, the place of assassinations, of plots, and thrown bombs. Even here in Switzerland a Russian diplomat had been assassinated at the Preparatory Commission in Lausanne, just before she’d arrived. That had been done by a fanatic, not by an armaments manufacturer.

  She imagined men in long leather overcoats filled with menace and she saw, wide-eyed, for the first time, Europe with all its political menace. ‘Do you intend to protect us?’ she asked them. She looked back to Captain Strongbow and Mr Kennedy.

  ‘Indeed we do.’

  The League did have opponents but they were seen as political enemies, or ‘those people yet to be convinced’. ‘You think there are people who would try to harm us?’ She was attentive now.

  ‘I know they will. They will try to kill you. At least to assassinate those at the top, and maybe all sorts of violence will be brought to bear upon you.’ Captain Strongbow said this with much emphasis.

  ‘Your building may be exploded, for one thing,’ Mr Kennedy put in.

  ‘Hence I have plans. I have plans for an international police army. Empowered by our President Coolidge …’

  ‘By President Coolidge?’

  ‘President Coolidge. President Coolidge said that an international police force was now needed. I have designed a uniform. I have an insignia.’

  To her attentiveness Edith now added caution. She had reservations about people who designed uniforms and flags, unasked. That reservation was perhaps unreasonable, but the League had encountered a number of people who designed flags unasked and they were rarely, somehow — well, on the right track. Though this was the first person she’d met in the flesh who designed uniforms and flags, unasked, for an international police army.

  With a charming insistence, and some conviction, he went on. ‘We plan also, a people’s ballot. Mr Kennedy has the details. Mr Kennedy?’ Mr Kennedy nodded strongly, and patted his satchel. Captain Strongbow continued, ‘Your bosses must be made to listen. I am organising a convoy of ten automobiles to tour Geneva and then to tour the world, growing ever larger, to convey the message of a world court backed with a world force. On the way round the world we will conduct a ballot. We have ballot papers — the first people’s ballot for the setting up of the world government at the League of Nations — the people of the world will vote together. You could join the team of one of our vehicles, Miss —?’

  Captain Strongbow’s speech had a rush to it now. She sensed that for Captain Strongbow that last idea or last word was suggesting the next. There was a line, however, and on one side of the line was fertile thinking, and on the other, downright conversational fraud. The ballot idea was new. On World Federation she had not made up her mind, although she was, of course, for World Co-operation.

  ‘My name is Edith Campbell Berry, of Internal Administration.’ She took her professional card from her handbag. The third that she’d had a chance to present. She had stopped calling it a visiting card.

  Captain Strongbow studied the card and said, ‘Excellent. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Edith Campbell Berry.’ He shook her hand and passed the card to Mr Kennedy who likewise read it, and shook her hand, and then carefully placed the card in his satchel.

  She liked the idea of the people’s ballot. Why hadn’t someone at the League come up with that? Why, with a people’s ballot, you could override national boundaries. There were difficulties, of course.

  Mr Kennedy said, ‘It would give the League a direct mandate — an empowering more direct than any mandate which any government of a nation state could ever have.’

  ‘A power greater than the sun. Our President Coolidge said that …’ Strongbow took a note from his pocket and read from it. ‘He said that: “Disaster will surely be the penalty if the world fails to devise methods of preventing war. It is for the generation which saw and survived to devise those methods of protection.”’

  She had not read President Coolidge’s words. ‘What became of your submission to the League?’ she asked them.

  Captain Strongbow said that he had made something of a submission with illustrations and drawings, but no reply had come forth. ‘I have sent designs, I have sent in the colour chart showing how, by combining all colours — including, I add, the colour red from the red flag — I do not judge the Russians and their revolution, as many of my countrymen have — by the mixing of all the colours of the world, you achieve a result which is olive drab or khaki which is also the colour of the uniform which I am wearing, and Mr Kennedy is wearing, and which many brave boys wore not so long ago in the dreadful war of slaughter.’

  Although intrigued, Edith was put off by the talk of mixing of colours and uniforms. She was perplexed about where reasonableness began and ended in the conversation of Captain Strongbow.

  She looked at her watch to signal the conclusion of the unsolicited interview. She stood up, took money from her purse and went to put it on the table, but Captain Strongbow intercepted her hand, firmly preventing her, gesturing to Mr Kennedy to pay the coffee bill.

  ‘I cannot accept that,’ she said, feeling it would compromise her as a civil servant.

  ‘I insist, as an officer and as a gentleman.’

  ‘I cannot accept,’ said Edith, equally firmly, placing the money in the saucer. ‘If we are to quote presidents, I seem to recall that your President George Washington said that the President of the United States could never be “any man’s guest” — it is the same at the League.’ She then flushed because it sounded pompous. She tried to retrieve her composure by giving a small laugh to show that she recognised a distance between herself and George Washington.

  Mr Kennedy was stalled, and stood with his money in his hand, looking to her and to Captain Strongbow.

  ‘I accept the ruling of George Washington,’ Captain Strongbow said, and turning to Mr Kennedy, he said, ‘Brochure.’ Mr Kennedy put away his money and took out a brochure from his satchel and handed it to the Captain.

  Captain Strongbow gave her the copy. Taking it, she smiled at them, shook their hands and left.

  Next day at the office, she sharpened her pencils with a knife her
father had given her as a fruit knife. Maybe sharpening the pencils was the nearest to ‘working with her hands’ that she got these days. ‘Writing with pencil: working with wood.’ She laughed. Not very close.

  She might write a poem about it titled ‘Working with Wood’. She had learned only recently that Dame Rachel Crowdy, head of Social Questions section, wrote poems.

  Jules the messenger knocked and entered, handing her a memorandum from Cooper asking her to see him ‘not urgently’ — then why the messenger? — about a Captain Strongbow. She mentally kicked herself. She recalled now that yesterday some small voice in her head had caused her to hesitate about giving him her card. She had sensed there in the old city that he was a man who would use whatever he could to further his business but she had overridden her judgement there in the old city in the spring sun. Damn, damn, damn.

  She had better get the seeing of Cooper over with or it would fret away at her during the day. She hadn’t made an official record of her ‘interview’ with Strongbow, if that was what she was supposed to do. ‘Encounter’ was probably the precise word.

  Cooper was all smiles. ‘This Captain Strongbow …’ He lifted, rather than held, a document she recognised as a telegram, together with Strongbow’s prospectus, now all in a file. ‘That couldn’t be his real name, surely? Is he a friend?’

  ‘Strongbow?’ She affected an act of recall. ‘Oh yes. Not a friend, no,’ she said, as lightly as she could.

  ‘He quotes your name in this telegram. The telegram, by the way, was addressed to the Secretary-General. It has now come on to my desk. It is not the sort of thing I want on my desk.’ Cooper smiled.

  ‘He approached me in the street.’

  ‘In the street?’

  ‘In the old city.’

  ‘In the old city?’

  Without showing it, she winced.

  Cooper looked at her. She sat there. He looked back at the document from Strongbow.

  He looked back to her. ‘You say he came up to you in the street. In the old city?’

  ‘He was driving a rather impressive motor-car.’

  ‘You were impressed by his motor-car?’ Cooper made it sound as if she were a dizzy woman.

  She explained it to him but he seemed to be unwilling to make the effort to visualise for himself how it might have happened. ‘I admit I should not have given out my name and connection to the League — but sometimes you have to give out your name. It would be discourteous not to give your name and business.’

  ‘To strangers in the street?’

  ‘He was an American.’

  ‘How does that change the nature of things?’

  She chafed under his authority because she believed that he was the sort of person whose judgement was distorted by having authority. Everything alerted and worried him. He worried that anything that passed into the section might be important but he could never be sure, so his attention itself exaggerated all business into its wrong size.

  Struggling to be fair to Cooper, she admitted that she didn’t know whether Captain Strongbow was important, wrong-headed, crazy or sinister.

  Typically though, Cooper was concentrating on her having given out her name, which certainly was not the item of greatest importance in the matter on his desk.

  Though, face up to it, she was defensive because diplomatically she had made a false move. Cooper was now aware of it and that deflated her.

  ‘The man is obviously crazy,’ he said, wanting, however, confirmation of this assessment.

  ‘There might be truth in what Strongbow says,’ she said. ‘It might be that there are people threatening us.’

  She should have stopped here but instead threw in, ‘He may be the wrong person to propose the idea but the international police army could be what we need. And the people’s ballot could become a popular idea. There is that party which has been formed in Germany to bring about world unification. Could be a big thing. A turning point in world opinions. Sir Geoffrey Butler says that it’s particularly encouraging to realise that community discussion in international affairs at last seems realised.’

  Cooper looked up at her momentarily, and then back to the file. Cooper, she could see, was now perplexed by possibilities. Surrounded by them. ‘Nonsense. Look at this. The motor-cars, the uniforms, the flags — the man is mad. Or it’s a travelling circus. One or the other.’

  That was right; Strongbow was a circus man, but more than that, he had combined his circus with international politics. That was new. ‘I accept that he’s a showman. It is a political circus. It could be made into a turning point.’ She was beginning to make it up as she went, and to convince herself at the same time. ‘We need a police army of our own.’

  Cooper stared at her trying to decide whether she was dizzy or perspicacious.

  If he thought she was dizzy, her career was probably ruined. Ruined by a chance encounter. As ruined as a woman from a maison close.

  ‘We already have diplomatic jurisdiction over this building,’ she added, lamely, but warming to the idea, feeling that she had to make it sound sensible or she would for ever be seen as dizzy. ‘Why not create a force to protect visiting statesmen, for instance, and to stamp out opium or the traffic in women?’ That was too big a leap — she calmed the idea down. ‘We could run a small League police army — to protect the building and those who come here.’

  She refrained from mentioning the French idea of a League of Nations army which had not got very far.

  Cooper was further perplexed, probably now worrying that he would have to wear a uniform and hold parades of this police army.

  ‘You’re not suggesting we take this man seriously? You’ve met the man — what is it that you are advising?’

  Cooper had played the right move. She was now on the spot. She had now to make her move. She paused, thinking about it.

  He pushed at her. ‘Are you suggesting that we arrange a meeting with Sir Eric?’

  She wasn’t suggesting that.

  ‘Or what?’ he said impatiently.

  She wanted the mess off his desk and to get her hands on the telegram with her name in it, and the whole caboodle, so as to somehow save herself. She’d simply burn the file.

  ‘You could dump it on to Political section, or you could make it my responsibility to investigate it and report,’ she said, and before he could make a decision, she leaned over and took the file off the desk. ‘I’ll sort it out,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want us looking ill-advised,’ Cooper said, ‘or to seem to be a section which is always passing things on. And I don’t want to let Political in on it — if it is in any way a going thing, that is.’

  She suspected that Cooper was one of those people who often compulsively spoke the description of themselves that they most deeply dreaded. He was forever saying that he did not want to appear ill-advised, and yet that was just how his actions so often appeared to her. As she walked along the corridor, she looked at the file and saw that in the telegram Strongbow mentioned her as a ‘wise counsellor’. That annoyed her but it could have been worse.

  Back at her desk, she found that a box had been delivered to her. Addressed personally. From what Strongbow had told her, she thought immediately of bombs. She pushed the box with a pencil. Not a gift box but a serious-looking parcel the size of a shoebox. She wondered whether she should call one of the military chaps on the staff. She decided that she was being panicky and gingerly opened the box. Inside it was a card. The card was from Strongbow and it said that the box contained a gift for her, sent in the spirit of internationalism.

  The Strongbow mess was spreading. With sickening apprehension, she looked into the box.

  Inside was a jewellery box. She could not imagine how she would explain an expensive gift to Cooper — maybe she would even have to explain it to Sir Eric, to Tony Buxton, to the lot of them. Yikes. She opened the hinged jewel case and oh, it was velveteen-lined but it was no jewel case. Inside, in a recessed compartment was a small silver-plated
revolver. A booklet of instruction said it was a Ladies’ Handbag Pistol. There were five shining bullets in their velveteen recesses. She closed the presentation case and got up and locked the door to her office.

  She looked at the revolver again. She took it out carefully. She had seen revolvers only in motion pictures and museums. She gripped it and awkwardly pointed it. She liked it. But she would have to think about the protocol, so she put the revolver back in the case and into her drawer. She could return it to Strongbow and not mention it. She would have to think.

  If it had been diamonds, she would have given it in to Cooper or no, she would have given it to Under Secretary Bartou who handled these things until they had a Chef du Protocole. Under Secretary Bartou might be the person to see about the whole matter. That would keep it well out of Internal Services and anyhow, she felt intimidated by Under Secretary Monnet, her real boss who she rarely saw.

  Part of her, though, was coldly certain that she intended to keep the revolver and to keep it a secret. It seemed to her that it was what she needed here in Europe. She had not realised it until this very moment, but she needed an instrument of personal safety. She thought that maybe Strongbow was correct about enemies of the League, not that they would go for someone at her level. At some point, she might need to defend others.

  That evening she took the revolver home with her and exulted in the possession of it and the exultation pushed away any sense of dishonesty.

  The next weekend when she went to stay with Ambrose at his apartment, she showed it to him, and asked him to teach her to shoot.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  She told him.

  ‘Send it back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s against rules.’

  ‘I consider it a personal gift — from a man to a woman. A gift of admiration.’

  ‘From an admirer?’

  She could tell that he had changed his approach and tone. ‘From a would-be admirer. Will you teach me to shoot it?’

  ‘I was a medical officer. Not very good at shooting.’