Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘We really only have cowgirl left. I could swap with you. You could be Hawaiian.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, aghast, ‘I’ll be the cowgirl. But Athena …?’

  ‘Yes, Edith, what is it?’

  ‘Could I be disguised? Could I wear, say a hairpiece or something which would disguise me?’

  ‘No one will recognise you, I promise. I will make you up. I will get a wig from the costume wardrobe and you will be another person. I promise you, Edith. I am so thrilled you are joining us.’

  Edith was not feeling ‘glad’ or ‘thrilled’ about anything. She was feeling trepidation. She had made decisions which were breathtaking. She prayed that the disguise would work, though should a bullet strike her breast, or if a bomb should take her life, she would be revealed as Edith Campbell Berry of Internal Administration, League of Nations Secretariat. Heroine. Or Nincompoop?

  Back at the Palais Wilson, amid the scent of magnolias from the garden, she pondered her decision and tried to write an amusing minute on the encounter but it sounded more like a confession, or a will and testament, and she decided not to file it, just yet. If she died, Cooper would at least find it and see that she had done her work according to procedure. However, she did not mark it ‘to be opened in case of death’. The magnolias reminded her of a funeral parlour. Usually she considered magnolias somehow ‘blowzy’.

  She told herself that she had until the next day to change her mind, but she knew that if she did change her mind she would feel that she had betrayed herself and the quest for a new diplomacy. If she did not do this, did not go out into the field and test the situation one more step, she would never know whether the ideas were tenable or not.

  She had also to honour her audacious self, the country girl. She did not want to lose that part of herself. Not yet. There was betrayal enough in her desire to be disguised, but the wilder self was satisfied with that.

  Of one thing I am certain, she said to herself: that this is an historically unprecedented action — an officer of the League dressed as a cowgirl sitting on the back of an open touring motor-car in the interests of the ballot for world government.

  She told no one about her plans, not even her new friend Florence Travers, and certainly not Ambrose. Maybe when it was all over.

  On the day, she first worried about what lingerie she should wear under a leather cowgirl outfit.

  She went to the Richemond, still shivering with trepidation but resolved to go through with it. She loaded her new pistol and put it in her leather travelling handbag, saying to herself, If I am to need a pistol, it will probably be this very day. It gave her fortitude. She also thought that Captain Strongbow would expect it of her.

  At the Richemond, Athena led her into a room of the suite which contained, it seemed, many costumes. Three other women — of the showgirl kind, to put it generously — were dressing in national costumes although which nations they represented was far from obvious to Edith.

  Athena handed her a glass of champagne. She was thankful for that, drinking it in three gulps.

  She was introduced to Simone and Nicole but not to the others.

  Athena whispered, too loudly for Edith’s comfort, that they were from an artists’ model agency.

  As she dressed in the outfit, the sweaty smell of its leather brought memories of childhood riding and she resolved to arrange to go riding regularly, there in Geneva, when all this was over — if she came through. As she shed her corset and other unneeded underwear she felt as she hadn’t for a long time, like a young country girl, running free.

  Nervously she put on the cowgirl suit with Athena’s help, accepting, also nervously, Athena’s praise of her underwear, her panties and brassière, and Athena’s fondling of her brassière. The first woman, apart from her mother, to touch her body intimately. She put on the long blue denim trousers, Mexican boots with hand-tooled designs, leather chaps which tied behind the legs, an embroidered satin shirt with pearl buttons, a leather waistcoat and a bandanna. Edith tried to assure herself that there were times when one had to live at a high pitch. Though she was suddenly appreciative, also, of the place in life for times that passed in a quiet and ordinary way.

  Edith did not like the way that Captain Strongbow, in his uniform of a captain but now with badges and medals that she could not identify, walked in and out of the ‘dressing room’, though she thought that it was probably acceptable in show business, that sort of thing. Athena kept her promise and fitted a blonde wig over Edith’s red hair and changed her make-up quite dramatically, though not in a direction that a genteel woman would normally go with make-up. Still, Edith reminded herself, it was all show business. The wig and the make-up brought both a sense of hiding to Edith and oddly, a sense of becoming some other ‘Edith’. But then Edith felt she became ‘different’ every time she had her hair styled by a hairdresser.

  The final touch for the cowgirl costume was a coiled stock-whip which she was to carry over her shoulder.

  ‘All set are we?’ were Captain Strongbow’s words. He looked them over as though he was — what? Inspecting the troops? Or a buyer of slave girls? He wore a revolver in a polished holster on his belt.

  ‘I must congratulate you all on your bravery,’ he said. ‘And before we set off on this historic mission, I wish to address you.’

  There were the six Representatives of Womanhood, and the four drivers of the other motor-cars. Edith had imagined a larger cavalcade.

  Mr Kennedy, who was also in a uniform that Edith could not identify, brought a chair forward and Captain Strongbow, instead of sitting on it, stood on it. He held his hands together in a tidy speaker’s clasp and he made a speech on the importance of the people’s ballot. He quoted President Coolidge, again reading the words from his card. He concluded by saying, ‘May God be with us, on this fateful day.’

  He jumped briskly from the chair and led the way out.

  The troupe received much ogling as they filed through the foyer of the Hôtel Richemond and out to the street where the motor-cars waited.

  The convoy of five motor-cars — not the ten as originally stated by Captain Strongbow — was gaily decorated, and a battery-powered loudspeaker had been placed on the military motor-car.

  The military motor-car led the cavalcade which moved slowly through the streets, and through its loudspeaker, Captain Strongbow propounded their mission.

  Mr Kennedy also travelled in the military motor-car, and made a motion picture of it all with a camera on a tripod on the back seat.

  Edith wondered briefly about Captain Strongbow and Mr Kennedy choosing to travel in the military motor-car while the others were in the open motor-cars, exposed to anything that might happen.

  As instructed, the Representatives of Womanhood leaned out of the motor-cars and beckoned people to come and take the leaflets and the ballot paper. Some did, although the citizenry of Geneva seemed reluctant to accept anything offered by a stranger, especially colourfully dressed Representatives of Womanhood.

  Athena and the other women took to getting out of the cars and going over to the people who gathered to watch, thrusting the leaflets at them. Despite urgings from Athena, Edith remained in her car and did the best she could from there.

  After a while, and as the champagne relaxed her, she began to wave timidly and to blow kisses as well. There is something of the showgirl in me, she thought as she waved from the back of the motor-car, yes indeed. Of that I am glad. Occasionally people on the footpaths waved and sometimes cheered and clapped. Most stared.

  It was warm and sunny and Edith, because of her coloration and complexion, was glad of the wide-brimmed hat.

  She saw no one she knew in the streets, although some of the League staff were at the windows of the Palais Wilson. At this point she looked towards the lake and away from the Palais, pulling her hat further over her face. At the Palais the procession stopped and Captain Strongbow stood up in the military motorcar and solemnly saluted the Palais Wilson, the other hand on his che
st, over his heart. Mr Kennedy set up his tripod and camera on the footpaths and made film of it.

  The cavalcade took about two hours to travel along the busiest streets both on the left and right bank of the lake.

  No shots were fired. No bombs or eggs were thrown, no unseemliness occurred. As for the idea of a people’s ballot, Edith saw now that it would require more system and execution than the handing out of ballot forms from open touring motor-cars. She personally doubted that many people would fill them out and post them to the League. She could see that the cavalcade was not reaching a cross-section of the ‘people’. She wondered who would handle any ballot forms which did end up at the League. Would it be her job? She vaguely imagined the organisation which would be needed to receive the ballot forms, verify their authenticity, count them, and so on, and felt tired.

  She at least established for herself something about the feasibility of it all. That had been the value and success of her audacity.

  They wound their way back to the Hôtel Richemond and dismounted, this time receiving some clapping from the staff of the hotel.

  In the Strongbow suite, everyone was very talkative, sunburnt, and rather elated. Corks popped, champagne foamed onto the carpet, glasses were again handed around and filled to overflowing. Edith had never seen people so careless with champagne. They all stayed in costume while Strongbow made another speech on their bravery and the historic spirit of the occasion, world government, the Anglo-Saxon race, the importance of the automobile, the science of colour, and whatever else came to his mind.

  Edith noticed that Mr Kennedy handed white envelopes to Nicole, Simone and the other two girls, and then put his arm around Nicole’s waist, confidently but not naturally.

  After the speech there was animated talk and laughter as they recalled funny things they had seen or that people had said. It became something of a party, with the assistant manager of the hotel and the hotel’s chef de securité — a rotund cigar-smoking man — and a couple of Nicole’s and Simone’s friends coming to join in the festivity.

  Strongbow stood with Edith and at some point asked her in a whisper if she would go to his room with him, and she said to him — for the second time in her life, recalling their meeting at the café terrasse in the old city, ‘Captain Strongbow, I am not that kind of woman.’ He kissed her on the cheek, and patted her just above her bottom, and said, ‘I kinda knew that.’

  She also turned down profuse invitations from Athena, Mr Kennedy and Captain Strongbow to join the troupe and carry the message around the world. The invitations were not without appeal in some fanciful way.

  ‘Tomorrow we drive to India,’ Captain Strongbow said.

  ‘My work is here, I’m afraid,’ Edith said. Wondering if she could find it in herself to impulsively say yes, and to become a showgirl from that day forth and drive with them ‘to India’, but it did not seem to her that joining the troupe was to be her destiny. Both Nicole and Simone seemed to have decided to go with the troupe.

  The party was becoming a little risqué for her and she was feeling slightly tipsy, from the champagne and maybe from the sun. She changed out of her costume and back into Edith Campbell Berry of Internal Administration and said goodbye, feeling very close to them all, the showgirls, the drivers and Captain Strongbow. Impulsively she asked Athena if she could borrow the cowgirl costume, and the wig, overnight, seeing herself surprising Ambrose and having a laugh. Athena agreed happily and gave her a wink that she didn’t quite understand. Edith winked back from comradeship although she was not practised at winking.

  As she walked to Ambrose’s apartment she felt tipsy but pleased with herself and full of good feeling for the world.

  She let herself in to the apartment and, still singing with the champagne, again dressed in the cowgirl costume and read while she waited.

  When he arrived home, he was delighted to be welcomed by a cowgirl. ‘But what is the occasion? Is it a costume party, a bal costumé?’

  ‘Well, yes, a costume party for two.’

  ‘I’m flabbergasted,’ he said, ‘and impressed. You make a fine cowgirl.’

  ‘I thought we should brighten up dull Geneva.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  He was really taken by it as she suspected he would be. She told him she’d hired it from the costume place in rue de Berne ‘for fun’. She supposed that eventually she’d tell him the truth or that it would come out.

  She urged him to open some champagne, which he did, and she put on some music. He took off his suit and put on his smoking jacket.

  As she danced by herself to the music in her cowgirl outfit, he joined her and she coiled the whip around them both, binding them in its woven leather. As they danced she sensed that he wasn’t only reacting from a sense of fun. She became aware of something about her being in costume and the wig which was not simple ‘fun’. Not only a lark.

  He grasped the whip end and pulled her tightly to him with it and they embraced.

  Her body felt his arousal and responded. The fun of the costume had turned now to something entirely different. She didn’t quite understand it but nor did she care, it was love play, she knew that, as they moved then to the bedroom, embraced.

  She’d thought that dressing up as a cowgirl would be a lark but she had not really thought it through. But it wasn’t only Ambrose who had been stimulated; she was feeling different and enlivened by the costume.

  He undressed as she sat cross-legged on the bed and played with him and with the whip, drinking her champagne.

  What she was doing was what should happen, she’d never felt so unthinkingly confident. She seemed to know exactly what to do. He made a noise of acceptance and pleasure, going then to his knees and kissing her cowgirl riding boots, smelling and seeming to enjoy the sweaty leather of the cowgirl outfit, smelling her around the groin, and under her arms, the leather made sweaty not only from the cavalcade but also from other times past, in other playlets performed by the troupe in its travels. She unbuttoned the satin shirt and exposed her breasts to him, framed now by the leather waistcoat.

  As he kissed her breasts and her costume, she trailed the whip over and around his naked body.

  Then he said to her in a tentative whisper, ‘May I dress up too?’

  She thought: in what would he dress? The cowgirl outfit? She asked, ‘In what?’

  ‘In your clothes.’

  She at first chose to believe it was to do with her being in costume and that he was making a joke, but his tone of voice made it clear that it was not a joking game that he was proposing.

  ‘In my clothes?’

  Sheepishly, he said, ‘Yes, your underwear.’

  She realised that the champagne glass in her hand had gone to her lips, and was resting on her lip, but that she was not drinking.

  ‘You’d like to wear my underwear?’ she said, over the rim of the glass.

  ‘Yes.’

  Edith poured herself another glass. She took too big a mouthful, and it caught her throat, and some dribbled down her chin. She wiped it, hoping that Ambrose did not see her slight, although pleasant, nervousness.

  Again, he looked at her and said coyly, ‘Yes, your knickers, your corset. And so on. I’d love to.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, more from not having any ready reply than from consent, or from any clear understanding of the enchantment which was in play in his mind. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, softly, this time her voice giving full consent to him.

  She took a drink of champagne and said, now slightly enchanted by the idea herself, ‘I’d love to see you dressed in my underclothes.’ She guessed that given his slimness they would fit.

  He left the bed, still aroused, and went to the wardrobe room where she kept some clothing for their week-ends together. When he returned, and she saw him dressed in her underclothes and observed the arousal of his body, she was certain then that this was not comedy and nor was it just bal costumé. It was outside anything that had happened in her admittedly
limited experience with men in these matters, although now she thought about it, she’d occasionally read of it, and heard jokes about it. She supposed that in putting on the cowgirl costume, she had ‘started it’, but it had gone in these other directions, they were changing their roles for each other and she was falling so easily into it, effortlessly, as if she knew her part.

  ‘You look delightful,’ she said, and indeed he looked sensual. She saw now that his body had always carried some effeminacy, which was glamorised by the silk underclothing.

  ‘You really think so?’ He looked at himself in the mirror, posing for himself and for her.

  He remained rather preoccupied with himself in the brassière, panties, camisole, stays and stockings. She turned off one of the lights so that the room was dim.

  The imagery began to fascinate her and move through her, running its own course, taking over, and she lay back in her cowgirl outfit sipping champagne and watched him moving with confidence, with no self-consciousness at all. The clothing fitted him well, and he looked attractive and quite decadent.

  He took her make-up from her handbag and applied it to his face at the mirror. She saw the exhaustion creases from the War disappear, the make-up made him, once again, youthful, and at the same time, became a mask which unbridled him.

  She removed the denim trousers and her panties, leaving on her silk stockings and her lace suspender belt, and putting on the leather chaps. She pulled on the cowgirl boots and spurs, and lay back on the bed, her breasts nicely exposed by the satin shirt and leather waistcoat.

  He then came to her as a woman, as a man and a woman, for he was fully aroused in the masculine way, without any doubt. She remembered something that Nicole had said that afternoon and Edith repeated it, her voice husky, ‘There is a law in Geneva against wearing masks. I think I see why.’

  ‘Give a person a mask and they will tell you the truth,’ he said softly in a new more effeminate voice.

  ‘You have dressed up before?’ she asked or observed, she too speaking in a voice she hardly recognised.