Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  Still, sometimes on a mountain road driving around a bend to face a vista of farms and churches and fields she became breathless, or when driving through the dark, narrow, winding cobble-stoned streets of a village. The word Dubonnet on a sign above some tables and chairs could still thrill her.

  She was willing to forgo such things as family and friends for now, to have placed herself where these European sensations might become part of her, because she felt at times that she might not be able to have her own family, could not yet see how that could be in her life. It was also true that she was not sure how much she was prepared to forfeit to be able to have these sensations of Europe and the work of the League. She prayed that what she was pursuing was more than just sensations. Or more, that they were consequential sensations. And, as time moved on, she was aware of the dire bargain she was making with her life, and with her womanhood.

  Sir Eric wanted them to be representatives of their nations within the Secretariat, in the sense that they should be able to guide the League in its dealings with their own countries, although no one had officially asked her anything about Australia since she’d been at the League. Nothing whatsoever.

  For good or for ill, she now lived in Geneva. The capital of intellectual life, as Flaubert said. Her life was assemblies, congresses, receptions, banquets, and she had a lover. That was her life and that was how she wanted her life for now. She did not see how a visit from George fitted in.

  Would she introduce Ambrose to George? She groaned. Not likely.

  She sat in her office and ashamedly cursed George McDowell away from Geneva and her life.

  The curse did not work. George came. George paced about her office, examining the pneumatic tubes, the window-opening devices, holding the League notepaper to the light to look at the watermark, and standing on a chair to look at the electric light. She wished her office wasn’t so small, was more impressive for George to report on back home.

  He glanced through the files on her desk.

  ‘Those files are confidential, George. Secrets of the nation states of the world.’

  ‘“Have no secrets”,’ he stated to no one in particular, but he respected the files, and closed them. He took the glass from over the water flask, and poured himself a drink. He appeared to ‘taste’ the water. He was cultivating his taste, he’d told her. He went to look at one of Mantoux’s jokes pinned to the wall.

  ‘It’s an office joke, George.’

  She was frightened that he’d take it seriously and write it down in his notebook. The joke was a ‘formula’ for disarmament.

  PROBLEM: Find out on the basis of what principles it would be possible to establish the proportion of armaments to be attributed to each country, taking into consideration especially:

  the number of inhabitants. … . . a

  the resources of the country. … . . r

  the geographical situation. … . . s

  the length and the nature of the maritime communications. … . . cos. m

  the density and the extent of the railways. . . F

  the vulnerable frontiers and the vital centres near these same frontiers. … … . . fr

  the time necessary (varying according to the different countries) to transform armaments on a peace footing to armaments on a war footing. … … C

  the degree of international security, etc. … S

  SOLUTION:

  ‘Has anyone tried it? It might work.’ He next looked at the Punch cartoon of the ‘League of Nations Hotel’ and laughed.

  Edith saw it afresh after all this time and decided to take it down. It was something she no longer saw on her wall.

  Turning back to her he said, ‘On this trip I’ve picked up five new ideas. I came from the United States to here. You know I’ve been to the United States twice now? Do I sound American? You can’t help picking up some of the American way of talking. I’m not going to England because England has nothing to teach Australia.’

  That was typical of the breathtaking ideas that George came up with — to travel the world and to avoid England.

  ‘But I came here because Geneva’s more important than London. That’s one reason why I looked you up. I am admiring of you, Edy. You were the first internationalist from the south coast. Maybe the first from New South Wales.’

  ‘What about Scribner?’

  ‘Scribner?’ George chuckled. ‘Scribner. You know what he asked me to bring him back?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’d imagine it would be a book or a musical score.’

  ‘Wrong. He wanted me to get him a honey spoon.’

  She allowed herself to laugh. Suddenly it was nice to hear about Scribner, Doctor Teddy Trenbow and the others from her younger days. These people lived on in her life now only in dreams and recollections; they would never reappear in her life. Except for George. ‘A honey spoon!’

  ‘A wooden Alpine honey spoon. I’ll admit I’d never heard of such a thing. It exists, all right. It’s made of wood and doesn’t look like a spoon. It has this grooved end. You push the thing into the honey pot and twist it. It winds up the honey. You hold it over the bread and unwind the honey onto the bread. Scribner explained it to me. In fact, he made a drawing of it. I’ve got it back at the hotel.’

  ‘We’ll have a look for one.’ She was beginning to relax with George.

  George said there could be a market for it, Australians being big honey-eaters. Then he said, ‘Scribner is not an internationalist or a citizen of the world.’ George stood at the window presumably thinking of Scribner and at the same time examining the geraniums in her window box.

  He laughed. ‘I remember you lecturing me about gardens. You told me that gardens were nature in a prison.’

  She had once said that. She smiled, flattered that he’d remembered something she’d said. ‘Yes, that is my little prison. Those are my Swiss geranium prisoners.’

  George turned to her. ‘Seriously, you were the first from our district to know what it was all about. About being international.’

  He waved his monogrammed leather-bound notebook at her. ‘I don’t mean inventions. I mean ideas in the realm of the philosophical.’

  She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him with the protective superiority of an older sister indulging the enthusiasms of a younger brother.

  ‘An example: take this key.’ He went to the door and removed the key. ‘The teeth of this key might be the same as in other countries; the shank is the same; but in every country I have visited the finger-turning part is different. Why is that?’

  ‘I’ve really never thought about it, George.’

  ‘It has to do with different countries’ ideas of what looks good. Beauty.’

  She’d never heard him talk of beauty.

  ‘I have another example not related to beauty. Back home when travelling I always carry a strong electric light bulb because the bulbs in hotels are too weak. But the world has foiled me. Each darned country has a different sort of socket and different voltage. I’ve turned it into a lesson. I will put that light bulb on my desk back home to remind me.’

  He didn’t sound at all like an American but he wanted to, so she let him think he did. He had pep and she liked that.

  ‘Do you know what that badge is?’ He leaned over to her and held his lapel towards her.

  ‘No, George, I don’t.’

  ‘That, Edith, is the badge of Rotary.’

  He explained that Rotary was a world organisation of businessmen. Not just any businessmen. An organisation of the most motivated of men, those with the esteem of their fellow businessmen. Those businessmen with respect for life. Membership was, he said, by invitation.

  ‘It is not the differences in locks and key and taps and switches that worries me. What gets me down, from time to time, is that people love their differences too much,’ he said ruefully. ‘And, believe it or not, I think the world could learn something from Australia.’

  ‘One day we will all be one,’ she said.

&n
bsp; George burst into a song from the musical Belle of New York, ‘“Of course, you could never be like us, But be as like us as you’re able to be”.’

  She laughed. George seemed to have attained a much better balance between the serious and playful parts of his nature than she remembered.

  ‘What do you think the world has to learn from Australia, George?’

  He thought before he spoke. ‘No bombast. No showy politics.’

  She said jokingly that she’d learned new approaches to tendering since coming to the League. She told George of her advice to the Directors’ meetings. ‘My friend Florence said that I could’ve furnished my rooms by taking gifts from the tendering companies.’

  ‘Don’t ever do that, Edy,’ George said with concern. ‘It’s better to be hard up than to have to live your life feeling bad about yourself.’ He leaned over to her across her desk. ‘Bribery is death to a good country.’ Then he grinned. ‘If you’re short of a chair, I think I could make a contribution.’

  ‘No, George, I’m not short of a chair — but thanks. And I don’t take bribes.’

  ‘I never thought for one minute that a girl from the south coast ever would.’

  She winced as she recalled the gift of a pistol in her first days at the League.

  In the Jardin Anglais, he had coffee and she a glass of wine. George still didn’t drink alcohol, although he did taste her wine. George tasted everything. Apart from having a passion for wine, she realised with a frivolous, faint embarrassment, that she was also having the glass of rosé to show George that she was a woman of the world now, who could drink alcohol and who knew her wines.

  ‘For the French, George, wine is food.’

  ‘For a young man like myself it’s a mighty powerful food,’ was all he said.

  He said he was impressed with her French but that he believed that all people understood one language. Did she know what language that was?

  She told him that Briand had said that he and Herr Stresemann were now speaking a new language — the language of Europe.

  ‘I don’t know about the language of Europe. The one language I do know about that all peoples understand is the language of Usefulness,’ George said, smiling. ‘I can get across to people as long as they know I am a man of use to them. What is my letter of introduction?’

  She shook her head.

  He held out his hand, ‘My handshake is my letter of introduction.’

  His face showed that he was about to change the subject, and that the subject was important, delicate. ‘Edy — about your speaking of French.’

  ‘“Edith”,’ she corrected. ‘Yes, George?’

  He seemed to leave what he had been about to say, and now seemed to ponder her shift from her girlhood name to her full legal name. He seemed to come to a private conclusion about that, and then returned to what he had been about to say. ‘“Edith” — sorry. I want to say something to you straight from the shoulder.’

  ‘Go ahead, George.’ She took up her glass of rosé as if it would shield her, a chalice of magic fluid. ‘You were always one for straight talking, George.’

  ‘I want to say that I find that you sound different. Very different.’

  ‘I sound different?’

  ‘When you speak English, you don’t sound like the Edy I know.’ He looked her straight in the eye, his jaw firm, then remembered. ‘Sorry, “Edith”.’

  She coloured because she knew what he was talking about: her intonation had perhaps changed. Sometimes she wondered whether hidden parts of herself came to express themselves through her use of another language, especially when that language encouraged, well, certain mores, traits and peculiarities. She thought briefly of her carnal behaviour with Jerome, and with Ambrose, whether that had to do with her being impelled to speak French and to live a French way of life. The ‘French’ coming out in her? She was sure she ate differently, with more attention to her food and with more pleasure — that came from the French. What of the sinister, nastier traits which might sneak out through the speaking of another language? What if she were speaking one of the less cultivated languages — what would come out then?

  Then he said, ‘The Japanese believe that when you learn another language you lose part of your Japanese self. They think it’s a bad thing.’

  Where did George pick that up? ‘We should all have another self or part of our self perhaps which isn’t tied to one nationality,’ she said.

  He said that he thought that learning another language might be a way of disguising oneself.

  ‘It’s perhaps a way of slipping across the border,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what I think about learning another language?’

  ‘No, George.’

  ‘I think it means having to learn two words for the same thing.’

  ‘It’s a key to the door of another culture,’ she said. ‘You get let into another people’s secrets.’ She hoped he didn’t ask her to give him an example.

  ‘Maybe one day I will learn. I want to be a cultivated man, Edy, but it’ll just have to wait. I’m in too much of a hurry.’ He showed regret and then pulled himself into another mood. ‘I see why you don’t want to be called Edy. I know about wanting to get away from childhood.’

  ‘You were called Georgie.’

  ‘And Pudden. And Pie. And King.’ He smiled quickly. ‘Rather liked King as a name. Billie Fowler still calls me Pudden. I’ve asked him to stop. He won’t.’

  She was still holding herself defensively, but knew she’d better face it somehow. It had to do with mouthing French sounds, day in and day out. She had let her voice change and maybe even pushed it in that direction because she was glad of a new voice.

  ‘I’m an internationalist now,’ she laughed. ‘I had to change, George. What would be the point of being an internationalist and not changing?’

  George didn’t laugh. ‘No, Edy, it’s more than that. I see myself as a Rotarian and a Rotarian is a citizen of the world. I don’t speak differently. Except for the American style of speech which is because I was there for a few weeks and I admire them. I picked up American because I wanted to be like them a little. That’s different. Americans have a way of speaking to convince themselves of what they’ve just said. They stimulate themselves with themselves. In business, that’s good.’

  ‘In politics, that’s bad.’

  ‘In politics, that’s bad, I agree. With me, it’s mostly playing around. I fear for Edith, the person.’ He reached out to hold her hand. ‘I am talking, Edith, about you, the Australian.’

  She was shaken slightly because he made it sound grave. She was facing the representative of all that she’d left back home. She didn’t think she’d changed as much as that. Still, she had not been back to Australia to hear herself — if you could ever hear yourself. George made it sound like a treason, punishable by ominous penalty.

  ‘Have you been homesick?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I see.’

  Was the opposite to homesickness — desertion, disaffection?

  ‘May I talk to you about your card?’ From his wallet he took the business card she’d given him when he’d first arrived. He placed it on the table squarely between them. ‘I want to say something about your business card.’ He studied it while finding his words.

  ‘I think using an initial in your name is a natty manoeuvre. Very American. I might do it one day myself but I’d be laughed at back home. Not that being laughed at has ever stopped me. When my firm’s a bit bigger, I might add a letter to my name. To stop me being confused with my father.’

  ‘I didn’t see it as American. I saw it as making my name memorable.’

  ‘Precisely. Good move.’

  ‘What else?’ She swigged her glass of rosé.

  ‘The card gave me my first clue.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To your metamorphosis. To your personality predicament.’

  ‘George — I may’ve picked up an accent and I may’ve
played about with my name but I don’t see that I have a predicament.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

  She became aware that her defensiveness had within it a suppressed real fear, which was wriggling up from her soul, a fear of being exposed as a cheat. ‘We all have to grow up.’

  ‘Definitely. I don’t say that. What I say is that we have to keep on growing “upward” and I say that it’s a lifelong science. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being out of shape.’ He made it sound ugly, as well as grave.

  ‘You mentioned a clue?’ she asked, now quite defensive.

  ‘Your card has too many names on it.’ He dramatised the counting of the names. ‘One — Edith. Two — the initial A. That counts as a name in this situation. Alison, isn’t it? Three Campbell. Four — Berry. You know what it said to me, what the card said to me?’

  ‘No, George.’

  ‘It made me think you were four people trying to crowd together on one card — to come together as one.’

  He was breathtaking, She now remembered why he was the most surprising man in the district. He had not gone to university but he was a man who ruminated. He was spirited.

  ‘That’s fairly psychological, George.’

  ‘I understand psychology.’

  She suspected he meant not the science but psychology as the ‘methodology of life’. Oh God, perhaps he was right about the four names. She’d sensed it when she’d had the new cards printed. It was Florence’s influence; Florence had decided that she would champion Edith to the top and this was part of her plan.

  She glanced across at him. Could she admit to this country town go-getter that he was right?

  ‘We shouldn’t be secretive about our middle names,’ she said, trying to be conversational. ‘I don’t know why we’re all frightened of our middle names. Do we want to keep one name for our secret self?’