Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘Should I wait for blood to be running in the streets?’

  He chuckled and then his face clouded for a second or two. ‘If you wish to become a Nathan Rothschild, you can, sadly, always find some place in this unhappy world where blood is running in the streets. But at times the stock market bears no relationship to the economy or to the real world. Sometimes it becomes a world unto itself.’

  He looked deeply into her eyes, a look she was coming to know in men. ‘You could let me invest for you.’

  She thought this attractive and easy. But no, it was her mother’s money — she would have to play a part in its management. She would have to have stewardship. ‘If I am to understand this business,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to learn by venturing.’

  ‘So be it. Now tell me — which trail will you take?’

  ‘A random bunch.’

  He smiled but she didn’t know whether it was in approval. ‘Tell me all about yourself,’ he said, ordering another drink for her. ‘How’d you meet Latham?’

  ‘He is a friend of my father’s, through the Rationalist Society. I did science at university but decided I was not really a scientist. I liked insects and flowers but not science. I was good at birds too, owls especially. I had an interest in politics through my father and uncle — my uncle once stood for a state seat but lost. I helped him put leaflets in letter boxes, went to rallies, worked as a helper. John offered me a job as his assistant when he was elected — if I would learn to type. So I went to Melbourne — federal parliament is there. I learned to type, but working with John was not all typing. He’s been arguing for Australia to have its own Department of Foreign Affairs.’

  ‘And you ended up in Geneva?’

  ‘Thanks to John.’

  ‘Where did you get your French?’

  ‘School, university — but really I learned it from the family who lived next door when I was growing up. They were French. I grew up with their daughters. That is where I really learned it. And my parents knew the French writer Paul Wenz who lives in Australia and we always spoke French with him.’ She silently supposed that he wouldn’t have heard of Paul Wenz and that she was talking too much.

  ‘The League is the future. You know that?’ Forstall said.

  ‘I believe it to be.’

  ‘My country has to join the League — hell, we should be running the League.’

  ‘No country should run it.’

  ‘There will always be a leader in any herd. You just have to be sure that leader is benign — not out to hurt anyone — and wise — that is, knows what it’s doing. Or if not, at least controllable. My country can become wise, if it works at it.’

  As they parted, he said, ‘I’ll give you another piece of advice about the buying of stocks and about life. It’s Gypsy wisdom. The Gypsy tells his son to get up on a horse and ride it so that he can see how it looks. The Gypsy’s son says to his father, “Should I ride to buy or ride to sell?” Do you follow that?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘You probably already know that people who are trying to gain influence ride the truth differently than those who are trying to hold influence. There are different ways of riding the truth.’

  As she walked home, she made another leap in her thinking. Given that she were to invest her mother’s gift, she would use any earnings from the shares for eccentric causes. Or if she made pots of money, she would, like James Forstall, give something to the League. A library or a radio station. Her investment of her mother’s legacy would be a memorial to her mother. That was what she thought. This decision seemed to nicely complete her musing about the money she had and the stock market. As a first step she would place her mother’s gift at the disposal of the Landolt syndicate for now, invest it in Cooper’s scheme. Although the financial situation of the League looked better as the Assembly adopted the budget for the coming year.

  That week-end, in bed with Ambrose, she talked to him about the stock market.

  ‘The question is,’ she said, ‘do I wish to lead a humble but decorous life or do I wish to lead a life of dash and of risk?’

  ‘Dash! With dash, Edith! With pure caprice.’ Ambrose was always championing caprice in her life. In everyone’s life. He often quoted Emerson: ‘I would write on the lintels of my doorpost: whim.’

  Perhaps that was why she liked James Forstall’s idea of buying some shares ‘unaimed’ — maybe this would give expression to caprice in her life.

  She said to him, ‘And I dare say that you are for me a caprice.’

  ‘I like the idea of being your caprice,’ said Ambrose, and then, ‘I am going to play the market, too.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘With whatever boodle I can scrape together.’

  He must have sensed that at that moment his debt to her entered both their minds, because he said, ‘I will repay that loan, you know.’

  She raised herself in the bed and looked at him. ‘I know you will repay, my sweet,’ She did not know this at all and was surprised to hear iron in her voice, as much commanding the repayment as assuring him of her trust.

  ‘I’ll repay you from my stock market winnings,’ he said.

  This tipped her from feeling generous to feeling that he was trying to fool with her in an unpleasant way.

  ‘I do not think, temperamentally, you’re the person to play the market, darling. I really don’t.’ Her voice had hardened.

  The atmosphere in the room had lost its playfulness.

  She was about to say to him that he lacked ‘the nerve’ to play the market. More, that he had a predisposition, she thought, to lose. To say this to him, though, would not just be being candid with Ambrose, it would be nasty, and she tried to stop it coming out, but out it came. ‘You lack the nerve.’

  He sat up, his voice changed a little, back towards being fully masculine. ‘Oh, I think I have nerve.’

  That was true. ‘Perhaps the stock market requires a different nerve. Needs a different sort of courage to the battlefield.’

  ‘The nerve to play with money isn’t what I call nerve,’ he said.

  She couldn’t stop herself. ‘There’s no nerve required if you play the stock market with someone else’s money.’

  A silence came between and around them.

  He pulled to the other side of the bed, his back towards her. ‘For God’s sake, if it’s the four hundred francs I owe you …’ he said, more to the wall than to to her.

  She sensed in herself a pause, during which she considered whether to say that the amount was, in fact, six hundred francs. She did.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And you lack the judgement. You would lose.’ She didn’t say, and you will always lose. It was good for him to hear the truth at last, to know what he was.

  ‘I accept that I am not particularly clever about money.’

  ‘Oh, stop simpering,’ she said. ‘Be a man.’ This statement caused a cold silence.

  ‘It hasn’t bothered you before,’ he said, again his voice wavering towards the masculine. ‘You seem to like someone who isn’t a man. Maybe I am something more than a man. Maybe you wouldn’t care for a man who was only a man.’

  His insult did not land home.

  ‘I know what I am. And I know what you are.’ As she heard herself say it, she realised that it was a serious insult, and that it could very well have been cruel.

  They’d never said things like this to each other before.

  He pulled back the covers and got out of the bed. ‘You should’ve spoken sooner. It would have been more honest for you to have spoken up. Much earlier.’

  He sat at the dressing table in his nightdress. She let him burn in his humiliation.

  She began to get a glimmer of understanding about why the outburst had happened. It was not all aimed at him — she had wanted to be cruel to the world.

  It had not come out as pure cruelty It had posed as fake principled behaviour. It was also said to relieve herself of what she felt about Ambrose — ab
out his deficiencies. But he would not grow strong from knowing his weakness. Or what she thought were his weaknesses. Having been callous released her from her irritation and she didn’t feel a need to go further with her cruelty.

  Nor could you insult someone into awareness of their faults.

  She thought about ‘imperfect friends’. Maybe that was all she had. Maybe that was what she was. Was anyone ever a ‘perfect friend’? As a child she’d believed that all insects were perfect, ladybirds for example, but under the microscope she found that even insects are flawed, crippled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ he asked in a small, defeated voice.

  ‘For the suggestion that you lacked nerve.’

  ‘Others decide if we are brave. I don’t think I have it.’ His voice was self-pitying.

  She had no antagonism now. She wanted things to be calm and intimate again, not only for his sake, but for her own peace. ‘I said I’m sorry. Come back to bed.’

  He did so.

  As he entered the bed she pulled him toward her and kissed him as he began to sob. She stretched out a hand and turned off the bedside lamp.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said to him, feeling contained and clear-seeing and controlled. ‘I’ll be the one who worries about money.’

  Through his crying, he said, ‘I’m really hopeless about living — living outside some institution, some organisation.’

  ‘You’re not. In so many ways you’re a remarkable person.’ That was true. ‘Maybe not so good with practical living.’ She did not really think that she’d go on worrying about money for him as well as for herself, not through life. She made that silent reservation.

  What was she to do with Ambrose?

  ‘You do good things for the world,’ she said. ‘Now hush.’

  On the day he left, John sent her a note containing a warning which he’d meant to give her before. He said that in his experience, successful people rarely knew the reasons for their success. When they contribute their success to these or those factors, they were often wrong.

  ‘This is simply a gentle warning against the well-meaning wisdom of successful people like James Forstall. Good luck.’

  But then who could explain what they did and why?

  On the day it had been decided that the Landolt crowd would make up its mind about investing in the stock market, Edith was the only one who came to Cooper’s office.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Not interested,’ said Cooper abruptly, eating an oatcake biscuit.

  ‘None of the others are interested!?’ she said.

  ‘You’re the only one.’

  Cooper said not one of the others had been interested at all and he himself had lost interest. ‘Have a biscuit.’ He pushed the plate of biscuits to her.

  Oh.

  She sat there in his office, looking at him. She realised that although he’d put up the scheme, deep down he too lacked nerve. He had never had the nerve to carry it through.

  For want of something to say, she asked, ‘Are you waiting until blood is running in the streets?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  How odd.

  This made her different from the others in the crowd.

  How odd.

  How different? Different how?

  ‘You can have the name of my brother’s broker in London,’ Cooper said, reaching for his address book, ‘if you want to go ahead yourself.’

  ‘It’s all right. Mr Forstall has given me the name of a broker.’

  Cooper was piqued and surprised. ‘Oh,’ he said, restraining himself from asking further about her knowing Forstall.

  She found she was relieved that they weren’t setting up a syndicate. She would manage it herself and for her mother. She would do it with caprice. At least for her first splash. After that she would take advice. She did not have the time in her life to study both the stock market and the troubles of the world.

  That is how she came to invest her mother’s gift in the stock market. Her first investment was in Firestone Rubber because they were investing in Liberia, the nation run by former Negro slaves from America. She wanted to help Liberia but she also wanted to commemorate another caprice — her night in Paris with Jerome.

  The Receiving of Envoys: George McDowell Comes to Town

  When she’d left home to go to Sydney University, George McDowell had been the most promising young man in her district, although sometimes laughed at for his schemes. He’d gone on with the blind expectation that people should take him seriously, and as long as he paid his bills, she supposed they would take him seriously, and she presumed that George made money, although he never seemed to boast about it and did not live in a flashy way. Though she remembered that he always sought to be treated preferentially with expressions such as, ‘I know this is not the usual way things are done but I want you to do it for me as a favour’, or ‘I am going to ask you to do a rather difficult thing for me.’ Older men called him ‘Mr McDowell’, even when he was barely twenty-one. He had a rapid manner, reminding her, in recollection, of some of the earlier, jerky motion pictures.

  While at university she had been his ‘agent and technical adviser’ in one of his schemes for marketing a water clarifier and had made, she recalled, about fifteen guineas out of it. He was the only man she had ever seen wear overalls over a suit and tie but it expressed him perfectly. He was always ready to muck in on a job but underneath it, he was always the manager.

  Although he was a few years younger, she’d flirted with him at balls when she had been home on vacation. As a suitor, he had been a possibility, but she had other roads to travel. George was a man with big ideas in a small town, and she could not see herself back there, living on the coast with George.

  The letter from George said he was coming to Geneva. To ‘inspect’ the League for himself.

  She remembered that George, as a young man, had been the first person in their circle to go overseas. He had gone not to Europe, but to the States, where he believed the future lay. There’d been Scribner, an older man of no particular age, who’d earlier been to Oxford, or at least that was what people said, but if he had been to Oxford and gained a degree, what was he doing back in the town?

  Scribner existed without a job, although he was always in the street first thing in the morning in collar and tie, involved in undertakings of a mysterious personal kind which seemed to fill his days, and from time to time he worked with George on schemes, writing brochures, cranking handles, driving George about in George’s Studebaker tourer, both of them dressed in white dust jackets, goggles and suits.

  As much as she had affectionate memories of George and of those days, Edith really didn’t want George McDowell in Geneva and around in her life now. She wasn’t the flirtatious girl from the town balls any more, doing the hokey pokey and the progressive barn dance. She certainly was not ‘Edy’, as George had addressed her in the letter.

  There was something unnerving about the idea of a visit from someone she had left behind. John had been different — he belonged half in her world anyhow. George’s visit would mean facing the self she’d left behind. The discarded self, even. Did the visiting person seek to find the person they’d known? Or did they hope to find a new person who’d surprise and dazzle them? Or did they fear meeting some formidable new person who would dismay them? Whatever, it was an unwanted reunion with no definable purpose.

  Typically, he talked in his letter of her helping him to make ‘the best use of his time in Geneva’. George led a relentless life.

  George would want to meet Sir Eric. Oh, she saw it now. George believed in ‘going straight to the top’. Just when she’d begun to be noticed by Sir Eric and had the very special bond with him, along came George to muddle it. Admittedly, she hadn’t been back in that office since the crisis about Germany and the shaving of Sir Eric. It was as if that special morning were something holding t
hem at arm’s length in their work, that Sir Eric did not dare allow her to be too close again.

  She couldn’t arrange for George to meet Sir Eric, anyhow, but deep in her heart she knew that, by one means or another, George would get to see Sir Eric. As long as he didn’t drag her into it. The more she thought about it, the better it was that he do it himself, and she would beg him not to mention their connection back in Australia. At all. In any way.

  It then crossed her mind that George might propose to her if he wasn’t yet married to Thelma, the belle of most of the balls, who came from one of the older families. One of her mother’s letters had mentioned Thelma.

  It wasn’t that Australia was not a ‘real’ place, full of real people doing real things, finding happiness, making families, practising the arts of friendship, practising the arts of politics, and practising, albeit in a youthful way, the arts and scholarship — doing all the things she knew mattered in life. It was that she needed now in her life to put herself in a position which made her productively nervous. Even if it was a bit uncomfortable at times. She had to be where she didn’t know quite what was happening next, to be living precipitously. She wanted to be in the presence of people who made her a little nervous. She wanted to be among objects, buildings and art works which made her mindful and sentient, which could cause her, now and then, to be in awe.

  She wanted to feel that she was absorbing from her world, she wanted to feel as if these buildings and objects were entering her spirit. She knew that French culture, or at least Genevan French culture, would shape her, not into a French person, but into another sort of person.

  There was a loss from living in Europe, she acknowledged. For instance, on the day she first visited Mont Blanc, she had lost the mythical ‘Alps’ of her childhood with all their fables and fantasy. They were no longer ‘the Alps’ in quite the way they’d been before when she had seen only photographic postcards or just heard the words ‘the Alps’. They were mountains now.

  She had also lost mythical ‘Europe’. The mythical Europe of her childhood picture books and the many hearings of the word spoken so longingly and with such aching and worried significance by the adult world around her as a child. She lived in a real Europe now — and in some minor ways, regretfully. A Europe of visible and touchable places to walk, to ride, to shop, to eat and drink — and of dull and ugly places as well.