Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  She wrote a note to herself in her notepad, keeping her pad with her for further notes.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Sir Willoughby — Annie Dickinson’s brother — drafted the Covenant. Or had a go at it.’

  She said that she hadn’t known that.

  He asked her to be Germany. ‘Go out and come in when I call.’

  Despite the no-smoking signs, the workmen stood smoking in the corner, catching the ash in the palms of their hands, and watching the play-acting.

  She felt a little embarrassed. She stood outside the door of the Glass-room and waited.

  ‘I invite the German delegates to take their places,’ called Sir Eric. ‘Enter, Germany.’

  Edith came in. She stood in the room, not feeling like Germany at all.

  ‘Of course, someone will have to lead them to their seat,’ Sir Eric said. ‘Make a note of that, will you.’

  ‘We should have a ceremony,’ Edith said, surprised at how strong her voice sounded. ‘It should be more ceremonial,’ she said, this time more tentatively.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Could be right. Sweetser said the same thing. First new permanent Council member. Don’t get around to thinking about ceremonies. How’d you see it? This ceremony?’

  ‘Oh — well, the huissiers could wear uniforms, for a start.’ Was that too Germanic? She stood, thinking. ‘A voice could then boom out, “Enter, Germany.” There could be a fanfare of trumpets, perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t go for fanfares of trumpets myself. Not really a fanfare-of-trumpets man. Or fanfare of anything.’

  ‘I don’t mean only for Germany. For each new Council member, in the future.’

  ‘The Americans might like the fanfare of trumpets. They go in for that. Drums for the Germans, perhaps? Do you think the Germans are drum people? Feel somehow we’ve already done enough for Germany.’ Sir Eric glanced over at the workmen as if he had perhaps committed a diplomatic gaffe and that they would immediately communicate it to Berlin. They were watching with curiosity.

  Edith warmed to the idea of a ceremony. ‘We could have the booming voice read out something grand. “Hear ye, hear ye — it is solemnly declared that the sovereign nation state of Germany … is now admitted to the Council of world nations … under the sacred Covenant of …” and so on, etc.’

  ‘You have something of a feel for this sort of thing?’ Sir Eric said, looking at her with interest. ‘Didn’t think you Australians went in for it.’

  ‘I suppose we don’t,’ she said. ‘But again, this is not Australia.’

  ‘Don’t go in for the hear-ye-hear-ye stuff, myself. Too much House of Lords. The Coronation.’

  ‘Oh, I meant something along those lines.’

  ‘Could be right.’ Sir Eric looked at her again, recalling her. ‘I remember now, you came up with an answer for us on another matter. Tenders for furniture. Something like that. That was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Eric.’

  ‘At a Directors’ meeting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her and thought for a second or two. ‘Remind me again — what were you doing at the meeting?’

  ‘Filling in. Under Secretary Monnet was away, and Claude Cooper was ill.’

  ‘What grade are you?’

  ‘I’m only class B — I was not filling in so much as reporting back. I was just there to report back anything that our bureau might have to do.’

  ‘Maybe the hear-ye-hear-ye stuff would be better for Assembly.’

  She could tell that he wasn’t enthusiastic. She decided, though, that working out a ceremonial procedure might be a way for her to make her mark.

  He seemed to remember the Directors’ meeting now. ‘Edith — that’s your name.’

  ‘Yes. Dame Rachel and I were the only women present. I’m Edith Campbell Berry.’

  She sat there, still in Germany’s place at the Council with Sir Eric sitting in as President of Council. The workmen were now down the end of the hall, lounging in chairs in the public section, being, she supposed, the World.

  He pointed to an empty chair. ‘America will sit there, of course. When they get around to it.’

  ‘Will they get around to doing it?’

  ‘Difficult to say.’

  ‘I’ve put up the signs,’ she said. She pointed. ‘The Prière de ne pas fumer signs.’

  Sir Eric looked across at one of the signs. ‘Very good. No one will take the slightest heed. Don’t be hurt.’

  She laughed and said she expected that to be the case. She gestured at the smoking workmen.

  ‘Briand won’t take any notice either,’ he said.

  One of the workmen approached the table and asked if they were still needed.

  Sir Eric nodded at Edith and said in French, ‘She’s your boss, Ask her.’

  She turned to them and told them that they could go. They gathered their tools.

  He leaned across to her. ‘Should give them something — a gratuity?’

  ‘I’ll offer them something for a glass of Ricard or whatever.’

  ‘Good idea. Could you look after that for me?’ He gave her some money and she went over to them and gave the foreman the money and told him to buy his men a drink. As they trooped out, the foreman said something, which she could not catch, about a woman having given them money for it, and they all laughed. She stood, again looking around at the room and at Sir Eric seated at the table.

  ‘Sit down again, Berry,’ he called.

  She came over and seated herself, this time in the chair in which the United States might one day sit.

  Sir Eric seemed in a talkative mood. ‘You say you’re a student of tables?’

  ‘A student of furniture, to be more accurate, and of rooms.’

  ‘I remember how Lord Curzon always had a personal baize-covered footstool at conferences and meetings — for his gout. You know, he wore a back brace too. People used to say he was very formal — but it was his back brace. Made him seem very stiff’ Sir Eric laughed.

  ‘“A most superior person.”’

  Sir Eric laughed at the old joke. ‘Well, now you see — it was his back brace.’

  She was pleased. ‘I do know,’ she said, ‘when the horseshoe table was first used in diplomacy.’

  ‘You know more than I do then.’

  She hoped that Sir Eric didn’t believe that he’d been the first to think of using a horseshoe table. ‘At the Tuileries at the end of the eighteenth century.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘It was for a meeting of the Convention.’ As she delivered the information she disliked herself. What a useless fact. She believed in statistical facts but only when made into a worthwhile pattern. She hated smart alecks.

  ‘Tell me, Berry, what would you do if you were me, and you had two member states who want to discuss something or other? They don’t have diplomatic relations — will not talk to each other.’

  She was taken off-guard, having had her mind on the lowly matters of tables and chairs, no-smoking notices, and ceremonial procedures.

  She wondered whether he was talking about the diplomatic problems between Russia and Switzerland. But Russia was not yet a member. ‘Would these countries come into the same room?’ she asked.

  ‘I doubt that they would. No.’

  Edith began working her way to some sort of answer while fearing that her solution would probably be diplomatically very foolish. Still, she had to have a go. ‘You could become a neutral state.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I mean your office. The position of Secretary-General could be seen as neutral territory.’

  ‘Where would that get us?’

  ‘If the two countries accepted you as neutral, each could speak to you … if not to each other.’ She saw then how it might be done. ‘One country could tell you what it wanted to say to the other country. You could convey it to that country. They could respond to you and then, you could convey that back. And so on.’

  ‘Where would
these envoys be? In their own countries? I would have to go back and forth by train or by aeroplane? It would take months.’

  She could see it wouldn’t work. ‘They could both be here,’ she said, suddenly, ‘here in Geneva.’

  ‘I would go back and forth to their hotels?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Again, she could see that it would be too undignified perhaps to have the Secretary-General running between hotels acting as a go-between. ‘I see that could be undignified for the office of Secretary-General.’

  She sensed that he hadn’t altogether seriously expected her to come up with a solution. Or maybe he was interested in what a middle-ranks woman might come up with.

  He rose and then stopped. ‘There’s one more thing you might do for me, Berry.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Eric?’ She opened her pad.

  ‘You know that this Special Assembly is going to be something of an historic moment?’

  ‘Very historic.’

  ‘After the decision to admit Germany is taken, I think a messenger must go immediately to the German delegation waiting at the Metropole and a telegram must be sent to President Hindenberg in Berlin. Immediately.’

  ‘I think that would be very appropriate.’ Thank you, Edith Campbell Berry.

  ‘We must ensure that there’s a record of communication with Berlin. Show Berlin that we do things promptly here. I was wondering, would you look after all that? Draft up something like: “Please accept heartfelt congratulations of President and Secretary-General STOP Germany admission unanimous STOP.” So on, etc.’

  ‘I’ll see to that. And the message to the German delegation?’

  ‘Compose a message and dispatch a messenger. Good lass. See me in my office later, say, tomorrow morning. We’ll look at your draft.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Eric.’

  That night Edith stayed up very late working on the telegram and the message for the messenger, and also on a plan of ceremonials which she would present to Sir Eric — and, on and off, she worried about an answer to his diplomatic question.

  Early the next day, Edith went to see Sir Eric, with three drafted telegrams.

  ‘Tiger’ Howard checked with Sir Eric and then took her into the office. With a slightly sick feeling, she recalled the madness of Miss Dickinson’s chair.

  She handed across the messages. ‘I drafted three telegrams, Sir Eric.’

  ‘Three?’

  One read congratulations on unanimous acceptance etc. One was the same without the word unanimous, and one told of a deferment. During the night, she’d also drafted a fourth telegram saying ‘Germany’s entry denied’, but this morning had felt that might bring bad luck. She had torn that one up. She’d drafted the deferment telegram only as an act of efficiency.

  As he read them, she again imagined his office as the bedroom of the notorious Countess.

  ‘Know something I don’t know, Berry?’ he joked, looking up from the telegrams and waving them.

  ‘I felt that I had to cover all eventualities, Sir Eric. Nearly all.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Red for deferred, green for go, and orange for halfway — is that it?’

  ‘Orange is for not unanimous.’

  ‘I see that you know about telegraphese.’

  ‘A little. I composed telegrams for John Latham back in Australia.’

  ‘I know Latham. Met him at the Peace Conference. Good man, If you’re covering all eventualities, hadn’t you better compose a telegram saying, “Earthquake Geneva STOP Meeting postponed”?’ he continued, enjoying himself. ‘Maybe they should be written in the new language.’

  She laughed with him, but did not understand his reference to a new language, then she flushed, thinking that somehow he’d heard of her crazy idea on scat singing which she’d babbled on about in Paris. Surely Ambrose hadn’t been joking about it in the office? ‘New language, Sir Eric?’

  ‘Briand told the Chamber in Paris last week that he and Stresemann were talking a new language. The new language of Europe.’

  ‘I didn’t see that, sir. There is certainly a new feeling about.’

  ‘Sit down and I will give you a lesson in statecraft.’

  He tore up the ‘deferred’ and ‘not unanimous’ telegrams and put them in the wastepaper basket. ‘That’s your lesson.’

  She felt reprimanded. But then he smiled at her. ‘In diplomatic matters such as this, there is a rule: “No request is ever made unless it is already granted.”’

  She pondered this. ‘Germany would not have requested admission unless she had ascertained that it was assured?’

  ‘Correct. It is a foregone conclusion by the time that it reaches this stage. Believe me, it has been planned since 1921. All agreed at Locarno. We are at the formalities now. You were conscientious, but unnecessarily so.’

  ‘Thank you for the lesson, Sir Eric.’

  He initialled her drafts and gave them back to her. She was pleased enough to be given the job of drafting the telegram and the other message but was not so happy about having to send the telegram. Strictly, that was a messenger’s job, but she could see that at a time when there could be excitement, a messenger couldn’t perhaps be trusted and, anyhow, the telegraph office was set up at the Salle de la Réformation. It wasn’t as if she had to dash up the street.

  ‘I’ve planned out a new member ceremonial, also,’ she said, taking out a plan from her attaché case. ‘One for Council and one for Assembly. I thought there also should be a ceremonial just for the opening of the Assembly each year. I haven’t got around to that.’

  It was quite a massive plan, quite detailed, with floor plans and positioning sketched out, and a sketch of a uniform for the huissiers, with arrows indicating the colours of the uniforms and armbands. She’d abandoned the idea of having different uniforms for different sections and for different levels of authority. She’d remembered Strongbow’s uniforms and had taken out the file. Her uniforms were nothing like his.

  He was surprised. ‘Little late in the day for that, Berry. But well done, maybe next time. Don’t give it to me now. You might come to another Directors’ meeting. Put it to us.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Eric.’

  ‘When America joins, yes?’ he smiled.

  ‘They seem to be joining in some of our activities,’ she said, in a remarkably experienced voice.

  ‘By the way, Berry, you might like to know that the League exhibition in the Düsseldorf World Fair won a gold medal.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’

  ‘I was rather quietly proud.’

  At the door she turned back to him, ‘Sir Eric?’

  ‘Yes?’ He looked up from his work.

  ‘It might be wise not to accept the gold medal.’

  He put down his pen, and his fingers touched his moustache. ‘Why so?’

  ‘It occurs to me that if we enter Fairs and so on we should not do it competitively. We should stand apart.’

  ‘Stand apart?’

  ‘Be hors concours.’

  ‘But in God’s name why?’

  ‘It would be bad for the League of Nations ever to be in other than first place.’

  ‘Quite so.’ He smiled. ‘Thank you, Berry.’

  She was conscious that he didn’t return to his work but continued to look at her as she left the room and until she had closed the door behind her.

  Grinning to herself about her advice on the entering of Fairs, she went up the back stairs to her office. She felt disappointed that her plans hadn’t been considered by Sir Eric. She could see that it was too late to do much about ceremonials now, but if the admission of Germany had been planned since 1921, why hadn’t the ceremonials as well?

  Crowds lined the streets to see the German delegation arrive in Geneva in their special train. They had a large diplomatic contingent accompanied by more than a hundred German journalists, and took nearly all the rooms at the Hôtel Metropole. A fleet of Mercedes motorcars was parked outside for the delegates and attracted the attention of automobile
aficionados.

  The world press had also arrived in Geneva to witness the admission of Germany along with VIPs from around the world including Wilson’s widow, Edith Bolling Wilson.

  The Sunday night before the Assembly she was working in her office when Cooper came to the door. ‘You too? Working on Sunday night?’ he said. He came in and looked at her desk, saw the special folder boldly lettered ‘Telegram to Berlin’, picked it up and read the telegram.

  He looked at her, startled. ‘Communicating with President Hindenberg, Berry.’ He was unsettled. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Special mission. Directly requested by Sir Eric.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, Cooper, me.’

  ‘How so?’

  She explained how it’d come about.

  Cooper digested this. ‘Strictly speaking, it should be Legal,’ he said, worried about it, but also intrigued. He also seemed to imply that if anyone was going to communicate with President Hindenberg, it should be him.

  Still holding the telegram draft, he then noticed the design of the huissiers’ uniform which she had pinned to the wall. ‘And this?’

  ‘I’m designing a uniform for the huissiers,’ she explained.

  ‘You’d be better concentrating on our own work.’

  ‘I think it brings glory to us,’ she said lightly, ‘redounds to the glory of your section.’

  He looked at her, maybe thinking that she had a special connection with Sir Eric. He was cautious. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I didn’t do it in office time.’

  ‘Very well.’ He put the telegram down on her desk.

  At the door, he turned. ‘Might get you to design me a uniform,’ he said, smiling. ‘Give it plenty of panache, something like our Dictator friend further south might wear. Would please the Marquis Paulucci di Calboli Barone when he arrives, don’t you think?’ Cooper pronounced the name with an exaggerated comedian’s Italian accent. ‘Good night, Berry. Get some sleep.’

  ‘Good night, Cooper.’

  Cooper’s jokes were like badly done icing on a cake but she saw also that he was including her in some mild ganging-up against the Marquis Paulucci di Calboli who was said to be taking over Internal and was a Mussolini appointee. She was, however, determined to be absolutely correct in her conduct about the Marquis regardless of what she privately thought.