Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘Maybe a cocktail after work one of these days, by all means. Not tonight. Busy. Thanks, Lloyd.’

  She did not trust anyone in Internal Services on this. They did, indeed, lack poetry. She went down and had afternoon tea with Victoria in the Registry and asked her to keep an eye on mail related to the chair and let her know.

  ‘I will not tamper with anything,’ Victoria said, defending the honour of her position. Every time Edith looked at Victoria she recalled that one of the first things Victoria had told her about herself was that, back in New Zealand, she’d founded the League of Nations Union in Opotiki.

  ‘Victoria, I wouldn’t expect you to tamper with anything. I want only to be alerted to the comings and goings of letters about the chair.’

  ‘Because you feel so strongly about the orphans?’ Victoria said, by her tone somehow doubting this.

  This surprised Edith, this note of doubt. ‘Why? Do you doubt my motives?’

  ‘It’s a rather sentimental stand to take, to be interested so much in a chair. Even if made by orphans.’

  Edith began to wonder whether she was the only one who saw what the chair meant. ‘You don’t see me as sentimental?’

  Victoria considered her answer and then said, ‘You live it up — you don’t seem to be sentimental, no.’

  Edith realised then that she didn’t know whether she’d describe herself as ‘sentimental’. Nor had she realised that she ‘lived it up’, or was seen to be ‘living it up’. Then she said, ‘Anyhow, I don’t consider this as sentimentality.’

  She pondered what it was that the chair was about. ‘I see it as part of the creating of the new Palais. I think that is how the League should be created — by gift.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Edith felt inspired. ‘We start with just a chair as this — we start with Miss Dickinson’s chair. I want the Palais to be layer upon layer of the best of human effort and art, a museum of all the best in human experience.’

  ‘My, my,’ said Victoria, ‘we are inspired today.’

  ‘I want the new Palais to be an organ of human memory.’

  That was all a bit beyond Victoria, although people said she was terribly good at her job.

  Victoria wanted to be justified in extending the mail privilege Edith was asking but Edith knew Victoria would do it also because of the little sorority which was emerging in the Secretariat. After all, it wasn’t in breach of office rules. ‘Victoria, we girls have to stick together,’ she threw in, as she left. Victoria didn’t respond to this one way or another — the sorority wasn’t altogether something that Victoria approved of either. It suggested misty codes of behaviour outside the staff rules.

  Victoria, for whatever reason, did keep an eye on the correspondence to do with the chair, and she alerted Edith to the next letter from Miss Dickinson to Sir Eric, which said, ‘I am sorry to trouble you again should you have received my first letter, but I fear that is not the case. I am writing again after writing months ago …’ It was clear that no communication had reached her. Miss Dickinson again described the chair. ‘I wrote to Lord Cushendun who is an old friend, asking advice as to how and when to present it but he never received my letter, either. Later I wrote direct to you but I fancy the same fate for my letter. Now this, my third letter, I am sending through England but I have no third photograph to hand. My young craftsman has put his whole heart into this chair …’

  No one was answering Miss Dickinson’s letters! Not Lord Cushendun or the League. Edith felt cheated. Lloyd hadn’t sent the letter after all. The so-called draft had been to get her out of his office. Or to get her into his arms.

  She stormed down to his office again.

  Defensively, he exclaimed that he had been late getting it to Sir Eric but the draft had gone up to him two months ago.

  ‘Can’t you see that for these orphans and Miss Dickinson every week is an agony of waiting? They worked for years, well, maybe a year, on this chair and you can’t even get a dashed letter written to them in a month!’

  ‘Why don’t you yell at Sir Eric?’ Lloyd scratched around and found a copy of his reply. ‘There,’ he said, handing a draft to her. ‘That was what I showed you and that was what went to Sir Eric.’ She looked at it and then stared at him, uncertain about what was going on. She went back to her office. Of course she couldn’t go barging into Sir E’s office about Miss Dickinson’s chair when he had disarmament, opium, the white slave traffic, and God knows what other world problems on his mind.

  Over a gin in the Secretariat lounge, she told Florence about the distressing business.

  Florence pondered the problem. Florence drank, then turned to her and said, ‘I can solve your problem like that.’ She snapped her fingers.

  ‘How, Florence?’

  ‘I’ll begin with a tale. I will tell you of Mary McGeachy’s last visit to Canada and how she became the Secretary-General. At least for a day or two.’

  They were both admirers of Mary McGeachy, a Canadian who worked in Information.

  ‘Tell!’

  Florence was renowned for her gossip. ‘This is a tale about Girls Taking Their Due. I am sitting in Finance doing expenses claims and in comes one from Mary. I look at it closely and see that she’s made an application for annual leave. She’s entitled to her paid return trip to Canada. She makes her application as an assistant officer — that’s all she is, you know. The leave was approved. Next she proposes to the boys in haute direction that while in Canada she extend for a week or so and give talks there, to the YWCA and so on, and they think this is a worthy idea.’

  Florence took a drink.

  ‘After she has agreement on this, she then suggests she be given higher subsistence and so on because she will be doing higher duties — talking in public, blah blah. She says she should go to a higher scale of subsistence. Well, we consider this, and agree to give her just a proportion of her time on the higher subsistence.’

  ‘Is that it? I don’t see the point.’

  ‘No, more, much more. This is a moral fable, Edith, listen carefully. Comes a third memo. And comes the second drink. It’s thirsty work telling moral fables.’ Florence held her empty glass to Edith.

  Edith ordered her another drink. ‘It better be worth two gin fizzes.’

  ‘It is, it is. Thank you, my dear. The third memo asks for …?’

  ‘A lettre de mission?’ Edith was beginning to see where the story was going.

  ‘Correct. Mary asks for a lettre de mission to get her typewriter and “confidential papers” and so forth through customs. She also asks for a League dispatch box.’

  ‘A dispatch box!’

  ‘When I read this, I said to myself there in Finance, three cheers for you, Mary McGeachy. Mary says she needs the official dispatch box because she will be carrying confidential papers and so forth from which to prepare her speeches. About this, they hum and hah. But they give it to her.’

  ‘Good for her. So she starts out on a vacation which ends up being a special mission complete with a lettre de mission and dispatch box.’

  ‘Precisely. And at a higher duty scale. And she gets off the boat and walks straight through customs. Dispatch box, wardrobe trunk, tennis racket in a press, and her hatbox, I suppose. There’s more. When she comes back, she asks for all sorts of expenses that weren’t foreseen in the original applications. So it comes to us again in Finance with newspaper clippings about the great publicity she got for the League in Canada. I read these with interest. What becomes clear is that when she talked in public, she represented the Secretary-General. That is how the lettre de mission is worded, anyhow — anyone who talks in public for the League represents the Secretary-General. She arrives in Canada and is interviewed, I guess, by her old buddies from the newspapers, and inflation begins. By the time she reaches Montreal she’s reported in the papers as Acting Secretary-General.’

  They both laughed. ‘I like this story,’ Edith said, although she also thought that Mary shouldn’t have been
underhanded about it.

  ‘There is more. She ends up briefing the Canadian cabinet!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So … Mary is Secretary-General, for a few days, at least. By the time she gets back to Geneva, the carriage has changed back into a pumpkin, and she is plain old Mary, a junior assistant, arguing with Finance over her expenses claims. There was one that I liked. We had to query her claims for entertaining because she had no receipts. She haughtily replies that she always entertained “in her clubs” and that we would understand that it was not the practice for clubs to issue receipts.’

  ‘Florence, what’s this got to do with the orphan’s chair? And I’m not sure you should be telling me confidential things from her file.’

  ‘Pooh to confidentiality. The tale has everything to do with orphans.’ Florence paused and said, ‘Dear Edith. Just go into Sir E’s office and sign the letter to your Miss Dickinson. Sign the letter, if the letter exists, sign it “Sir Eric”, and put it in the out-tray. Or if the letter doesn’t exist, type it up and sign it and put it in the out-tray.’

  Edith looked at her with disbelief.

  ‘If she can become Secretary-General for a few days, you can become Secretary-General for a couple of seconds. The orphans at least deserve that much.’

  ‘I’ll have to argue with the police, not with Finance.’ It was without one doubt, a dismissable offence. If not a gaolable offence. ‘In fact, Florence, I think that what you’re suggesting is called forgery.’

  Florence laughed and said in a mocking voice, ‘You could be dragged before the Committee on Disciplining and Analogous Questions.’

  ‘More likely they’ll just throw me out on my ear.’

  ‘Edith, dear, what I’m suggesting is the assumption of command in a situation which requires initiative from a subordinate officer.’

  Edith gave a small snort. In the field that may be possible.

  Florence said, ‘You took initiative when you wanted to go to the Directors’ meeting.’

  ‘That was hardly forgery.’

  She’d never told Florence about the Strongbow incident. After that fiasco, she’d promised herself that she’d stick to strict and regular conduct.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You’ll finish that drink, you’ll go up there now, and you’ll do it. Do it. No one will be around up there now.’

  Edith sat at the bar and thought about it. The letter had been drafted; accepting the gift did not conflict with League policy. It was really about delay through pressure of business, she was sure. Of course, she didn’t have the authority to sign letters.

  She remembered her father telling her about ‘overlearning’ or learning the wrong lesson from experience. He used to quote the example of a cat which once having sat on a hot stove learned never to sit on any stove again, instead of learning just to avoid hot stoves. Was this plan another hot stove like Strongbow or another sort of stove? She looked at Florence. Florence was more crafty than she, but Edith did not want to be seen as lacking boldness.

  ‘Go on, do it,’ Florence said.

  And she did. She left Florence in the bar and went upstairs. She went to her own office, armed herself with some papers to give herself the appearance of being on duty and went down again to Sir Eric’s sanctum with the movements of someone who belonged in there. She feared his private secretary, Jean ‘Tiger’ Howard, more than she feared Sir Eric but she knocked and there was no reply. She went in through Tiger’s office and into Sir Eric’s. Everyone called it the Countess’ bedroom, because it was where Countess von Trani always stayed in the old days.

  She stood in the large office, immobilised by the magnitude of its role in the world and by her trespass upon it.

  She forced herself to continue with her mission.

  She then went through papers waiting his signature and found the Dickinson letter, a long way down, the letter drafted by Lloyd. Lloyd had not been lying. Idly she thought that she might owe him something for having done it, and smiled to herself. Virtue is its own reward.

  Edith was sickened to see that it was now five months after Miss Dickinson’s first letter. That alone, she felt, justified her taking action.

  With what would she sign it? Her pen? His pen? The pen in the ivory and gold inkstand? Not brass and glass, nor crystal and silver, but ivory and gold for the Secretary-General. She smiled to herself as she remembered Athena’s beautiful ivory and silver pistol. It gave her courage.

  With a quick flourish she did a passable imitation of Sir Eric’s signature. She then crossed herself in what she thought was the Catholic way, and put the letter under some others in the out-tray. She initialled the corner of the carbon to show that the letter, as drafted, had been signed and sent, and then returned the file to the out-tray.

  Did forging Sir Eric’s signature make her complete within herself for that day? Not really. Although the action was further justified because, although in the scale of Sir Eric’s concerns it was not a great matter, within another scale and the spirit of the League it seemed to Edith that the matter of the chair was momentous.

  She knew that the whole world wrote letters to the League but somehow the small, veritable voice had to be responded to and served, as much as the eminent.

  Back in the bar, shaking a little, she joined Florence, who was now with Dr Joshi from Health, and Howard Liverright, and she said quietly to Florence across the others, ‘I did it.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Florence, in a lowered voice. ‘To the orphans.’ They drank a private toast.

  Then in her social voice, Florence said, ‘I was telling Joshi and Liverright about your coup d’éclat on the matter of tenders.’

  ‘Very well done,’ said Joshi. ‘Do you know the Indian answer to the dilemma of identical tenders?’

  Edith said she didn’t. She was angry at herself for having told Florence and breaking the confidence of the Directors’ meeting. Now Florence had broken her confidence. Even if it were a very minor thing. She had to learn discipline.

  Joshi went on, ‘In India the person handling the tenders would have gone to each of the tenderers and seen which would furnish his house most opulently in return for the granting of the tender. It is he who would then get the contract. That is the Indian way.’

  ‘That is not the Indian way — it’s the smart way,’ said Florence. ‘If you’d used your head, Edith, you could have furnished your rooms.’

  Edith said grumpily that the tender system was a fundamental of good administration. She wasn’t feeling in a joking mood. And she was quite happy with the way her rooms were furnished.

  ‘But of course,’ said Joshi, ‘I was simply making a joke against my countrymen. I do not condone it in any way, shape or form.’ At least Liverright hadn’t come out with anything bitter.

  ‘Brighten up, Edith,’ Florence said. ‘You’ve done your good deed for the day.’

  She pushed out a smile and put her arm around Florence and hugged her and Florence hugged back. ‘Sorry.’

  She couldn’t tell Ambrose because it was beyond anything that he would have assented to. Here she was, training to be an international civil servant and here she was bending the rules. No — she was snapping the rules in two.

  Of course, it had to be considered also that maybe Annie Dickinson was a pest. The chair, however, existed in all its humble grandeur.

  About tardiness, there was nothing much to be done. Within the bureau she became a watchdog for promptness of reply and something of a pain in the neck for everyone.

  A few weeks later, Victoria called from Registry. Annie Dickinson had written again. She read out the letter.

  ‘Dear Sir Eric Drummond, I have arranged with the Jugo-slavian Foreign Office to dispatch the chair, and I hope it will start on its journey soon.’

  That evening she had to again go to his office to head off the letter, which she simply filed.

  She dearly wished for the chair to arrive and the matter to be over. Yet another letter cam
e from Miss Dickinson. She groaned when Victoria called her and offered to read it out. ‘Yes, Victoria, read it out.’ She gritted herself.

  Victoria read: ‘After much pushing and effort I have got the chair dispatched but it seems to have been addressed to the International Labor Office and not to you as I had requested because the League of Nations does not accept presents. I am very sorry if you have trouble in this matter but perhaps on arrival somebody will kindly see that it reaches its destination.’

  Ye gods. Was there no end to it? Now she had to involve the ILO and pretend other things to other people to find the wretched chair, and deal with this nonsense about the League not accepting gifts.

  Edith sometimes felt exhausted from combating the false ideas which circulated concerning the League. Where did they come from? They were not all malicious — it was more as if people liked to sound as if they knew something about the way the League ‘worked’. Consequently people just made up things about the League. Sometimes they said things they thought were good for the League; probably this statement was of that nature. How could it possibly work if so much false information was flying around? Should someone write to the Jugo-slavian Foreign Office and tell whoever it was that the League was accepting gifts for the new building on a selective basis? There should be a section for the Correction of Erroneous Ideas.

  This time ‘Sir Eric’ wrote to Miss Dickinson saying he would ensure that the ILO knew that the chair had been addressed by mistake. She rang the ILO’s Internal Services and informed them of the matter and that she herself would come and collect the chair when it arrived.

  Edith had to go out of her way, up the hill, to call in at the ILO office daily to see if the chair was there. It was no good telephoning because no one knew what it looked like and they might snaffle it for themselves.

  She knew they felt she was behaving oddly by calling in every morning and asking about ‘Miss Dickinson’s chair’ and showing them the photograph of the chair, which she had improperly taken from the file.

  One afternoon she received a call from the ILO to say that they had the chair.