Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  They played out a funny sketch full of sexual innuendo where the Action Civique were vanquished with a repeated chorus line about ‘men who needed batons’.

  Edith thought that the spectacle had been well rehearsed. There were cries of ‘show us’ and eventually, as the finale, the girls did turn around, lifting their skirts and dresses to show their underwear and glimpses of their tucked away bulges.

  Edith was glad the lights were down, because she had never seen anything as salacious as this. Taking another drink from the waiter, she drank deeply, seeking calm from the alcohol. She had heard of shows in Berlin and Paris. The atmosphere in the club was no longer prosaic. It was, she thought, very much an atmosphere of the times. During other events, she had felt that she was of the times. Being in Geneva she sometimes felt that, too. And now, in this cabaret, she felt it. The darker side of the times.

  There was excessive applause from the audience, and the cast came back and took a bow, the Action Civique and the ‘girls’ of the cast linking arms. The lights came on.

  Mr Follett thanked the audience again but said that as it was not a regular night for the club, the club would be closing now and he wished them all good night. He reminded any club patron who had suffered injury and medical expenses to give details to himself or to the assistant-manager.

  She was relieved that the night was over.

  As she and Ambrose stood up, Mr Follett came to them and said quietly that he would like to invite them upstairs to his apartment, for a nightcap drink and a chat, when the others had gone.

  Edith rushed to say that really they had to go, and found that her voice wobbled from the drinks she’d had.

  Mr Follett said, ‘You are a heroine of mine, you were very brave. I insist you honour me with your presence.’

  Edith managed to say graciously, ‘We were all heroines on that night.’

  But she again felt an embarrassed worry about how much he had seen on the dreadful night. She now worried too about compromising the League by any closer involvement with the Molly Club. She glanced at Ambrose, hoping that he would extricate them from the invitation by saying that they had to go. He didn’t. Instead, he enthusiastically accepted.

  They waited, drinking, while the last few patrons, reluctant to leave, clinging to the evening, were eventually ushered out by the doormen, good-naturedly protesting as they went. Mr Follett went about putting out lights and collecting ashtrays. She and Ambrose finished their drinks in the emptied club and she felt, standing there, how the empty nightclub seemed to rebuff the presence of only one couple, as if one couple alone did not belong in a nightclub.

  His duties finished, Mr Follett came to them and led them by an interior stairway at the back of the club up two flights to his apartment. He knocked on the door in a way that announced his arrival to whoever was inside the apartment. The door was opened by one of the young men who had acted as Action Civique in the show, and who was still in costume, and they went in. She and Ambrose were introduced and she was again praised for her courage. She said she would prefer now for that to be put behind them all.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Bernard Follett. ‘Bernard Follett says that to laugh is to demolish.’

  She thought, but did not say, that sometimes humour simply dodges.

  It was a luxurious place, with well-chosen furniture and objets d’art. While Mr Follett fussed about drinks, she occupied herself by examining a bright blue screen which divided the room and which was decorated with golden peacocks whose tails reached from the top of the six-foot-high screen down to the floor in an oriental style.

  She turned from the screens and screwed herself up to being sociable. The company of the smiling boy dressed as Action Civique caused an unsteady apprehension, an entwining of the pleasant and the unpleasant. He was a living sculpture of a threat and of her dread, now turned to a matter of play-acting, to a social ornament — for when she allowed her gaze to focus on him as a person, she could see that he was muscular and very handsome.

  Music came from a gramophone. The Firebird. Bernard Follett began dancing with Ambrose, and she, by pressure of circumstance, danced with the Action Civique boy, who called himself Patrice.

  The pairing into dancing couples seemed to happen so easily, so inescapably, although it became obvious to her that Ambrose was an attraction to both Bernard Follett and to Patrice. This at first surprised her but she had to remind herself that Ambrose, well, was very familiar to her, but that to them he was ‘fresh’, and when she looked at him through their eyes, she could see that he made a very attractive travesti. She also reminded herself that these men were not necessarily interested in a woman as a woman.

  Patrice took something of a polite interest in her, although she felt she had to share it with his over-the-shoulder interest in Ambrose, but this interest was sufficient for her, for that night, and for the circumstances. She did not want, in any way, the burden of amorous attention.

  The record on the gramophone came to an end and she considered that she might let herself become drunk. Or she might not. She might get up from the sofa where she had now flopped, find her coat, and take her leave. Or she might not. But if she was simply contemplating ‘getting up’ while remaining seated, she was almost lost — that was a sure indication that her will was oozing away.

  She might let herself be kissed by Patrice. Their eyes kept meeting each other’s lips as they talked. Or she might not.

  She would go now. Rising to her feet she asked Mr Follett to telephone the taxi depot and arrange for a taxi to be sent to the club.

  ‘Of course.’ He offered no argument.

  Ambrose said he would go with her.

  ‘Stay,’ she said. ‘Have a night out.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  She smiled and shook her head. Their eyes met and registered that she was ‘resigning’ from the club. She was backing away from the club and all its works.

  ‘I’ll see you at the office,’ she said. This told him that she was going to her own rooms.

  He took her hand. ‘Thank you, Edith. Again.’

  Follett helped her into her coat and walked down the stairs with her to wait for the taxi.

  The doormen were still putting things away.

  ‘It is all right,’ she said to Follett, ‘I will wait here on my own.

  Follett told the doorman to see her to the taxi and he said good night and left her.

  Shortly after, her taxi driver came to the door of the club and the doorman called to her.

  In the taxi she wondered whether such things as the Molly Club had happened in her parents’ times. Her mind attempted to visualise what Ambrose might be doing back in Follett’s apartment.

  As she lay back in a late-night bath she thought to herself that she wouldn’t be surprised if the night had indeed been, in Ambrose’s word, cathartic. However she did not think that she would go back to the Molly Club.

  Next day at lunch she asked Ambrose whether he’d had ‘a good time’.

  He smiled diffidently. ‘Oh yes. Nothing wrong with a little Greek revelry. Once in a while.’ She smiled, but without the confidence of knowing fully what she was smiling about. Nor did she wish to know more.

  ‘As long as it’s without moderation,’ he added.

  She asked him if he thought that there had been such clubs as the Molly in their parents’ time.

  Ambrose looked at her with his frown of amusement. ‘As shocking as it may be, dear Edith, I believe that it happened also in our parents’ time.’

  ‘You think they were as wicked as us?’

  ‘I do believe they were. Some of them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh? I’ve seen the forbidden books of their time. And I hear tell.’ Ambrose prattled on. ‘We could die of etiquette. In fact, I knew a chap who died of etiquette. Death from good form, the coroner said. Need to break out now and then.’

  She could tell that he was trying to be sure that she felt ‘right’ about it all.
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br />   What she felt glad of was that she had ventured into that dark world not as a place to live, but as a locale she had now visited and where she’d been able to glimpse more of the nature of things. Or perhaps, the de-naturing of things.

  About three weeks after this strange night, Edith was walking along the rue de Berne when she saw the young man who had assaulted her. He was unloading boxes from a truck outside a store. He looked hot and miserable. She took off the glove of her right hand, walked over to him, and slapped his face.

  His hand went to the slapped cheek and his eyes were dully uncomprehending, stunned.

  She walked on, her knees a little shaky, but quite coolly replacing her glove. She thought that a few people had seen it. Not that it mattered.

  The young man and she were not, in playground parlance, ‘even’ but it was something of a retribution.

  It was said that revenge should be undertaken unemotionally if it is to be successful. She was not sure what her emotions had been at that moment of small revenge.

  Confidence and the Giving of Confidences

  Sophie Langer, from the ILO, let the Drama Club use the big front room in her apartment for rehearsals, ‘As long as I don’t, as honorary President, have to sit through them.’

  She’d also added, ‘I will adjudicate tantrums only among nation states but never among theatrical types.’

  But this night there were no rehearsals. Caroline Bailey was to read from her novel set at the League, and the drama club cast and supporters and a few outsiders were crammed into the big room. Rumours about the novel had been going around for months.

  Caroline was a South African in her twenties, who tried to pass as English. She was only a filing clerk but was well educated and proud of her English accent, which Edith acknowledged was very good.

  Caroline had masses of self-assurance and said she wasn’t at all nervous about reading to an audience. She said she believed that stories were really meant to be read or recited and that she would do what Dickens did and, one day, tour, reading her work.

  Edith sat on the floor of Sophie’s big room next to Florence and Victoria, jammed in with the others, nearly all women. Ambrose would have nothing to do with it and some of the other men had been scared off from what they’d heard about the book. Perhaps everyone there secretly hoped to be in the book. Favourably. The lights went out and the audience sat in darkness for a minute or so. Then a reading light came on, revealing in half-light the face of Caroline who sat on a high-backed oak chair next to a table on which there was a vase containing a single red tulip, a water jug, a glass, the reading lamp, and her manuscript in a leather folder. She wore a shirt-blouse buttoned down the front, a large floppy bow tie, and a long jacket almost to her knees. Her hat was a striking stylised turban. It was all very theatrical but passed Edith’s tests except for the tulip. Edith was still fascinated by seeing tulips and thought that they seemed to be made of wax.

  Caroline opened her manuscript with studied care.

  She looked up and around at her audience before speaking, as if she’d been told to do it. ‘In this rendition, I intend to jump around a little in the story. It deals with my male character, Humphrey Hume — described in the opening pages of the novel as a “lanky young man who no rain could dismay and, despite his enthusiasm for work, was liked by everyone”.’ Caroline made herself pause here to collect laughter from the audience, which she did receive. She continued, ‘Some of his colleagues are discussing him in the Office.’ She cleared her throat, took a sip of water, and looked up from her manuscript.

  For all her boasting about going on tour like Dickens, Caroline was shaking a little as she held the leather-bound manuscript.

  She added to her introduction by saying, ‘First, we learn something of Humphrey Hume from his colleague Barlow, less well loved.’ She began reading. ‘“Barlow was a Jew with a dolorous face. Long ago he had done something wrong, no one knew what, but everyone knew it was something dreadful, which had ruined a brilliant career and made him glad enough to use his trick of languages to earn his keep as a translator in the Office. His life had stopped when he did this dreadful thing, whatever it was, and now he led a posthumous existence, drinking a spectacular amount, and from time to time, just in time, in fact, doing a month’s work in a night.”’

  There was uneasy laughter as people recognised, or thought they recognised, this character as Liverright. Some looked around in case he was there. Edith thought it a cruel portrayal. He and Caroline were friends although something might have gone wrong there.

  Caroline continued, ‘“It was odd to picture him eating, getting into his pyjamas, or shaving in the morning. It was as horrible as imagining a dead man doing these things. In the Office he appeared in character as ‘that disgusting beast, Barlow’, frightening the typists by talking innuendo to them in whatever might be their own tongue and rolling half-drunk about the corridors. Some of the men, especially Mr Whibley, used to drop in to see him, lured by the malevolent charm of his conversation, and his appalling comments on the lives of their colleagues. Sometimes he described alleged vices and practices among their colleagues so unnatural and far-fetched that if the Office had, in fact, held one single specimen who practised them, it would have been an unique organisation indeed.”’

  While many might have guessed that Barlow was Liverright, Edith alone thought she knew, perhaps along with Liverright, that some of the unnatural practices alluded to were not as far from the Office as Caroline thought. It was amusing that Caroline thought the unnatural practices existed only in Barlow’s imagination. And Edith recalled meeting Liverright’s malevolence on her first day.

  ‘“Mr Whibley, monologist by nature, in Barlow’s company humbly took the part of feeder. Now this name, now that, he placed the lamb or the goat in the jaws of his lion and sat back to hear the bones cracking. This time, he asked Barlow about Humphrey Hume. Barlow replied, ‘He went to the War. A medical man. I don’t somehow see him grinning behind a bayonet, but he was there, and no one, on either side, put a bullet into him. But it smashed him just the same, smashed his little soul. When it was over, there was nothing left and he dared not feel about in the dark for bits which might have been worth sticking together — he dared not. If you can imagine a dying man who thinks he can be cured by telling himself and his friends that he is quite well. Then, in the very nick, as I said, the politicians made this place, the Office, and he sprang to it, and pulled it round him, warm and comfortable, clerks and typewriters and committees and minutes and resolutions, and he lifted up his shaking voice and cried, “There shall be no more war!” Everyone said, “What an excellent young man!” They are still saying it; he looks fine, talks fine, feels fine, but n’y touchez pas, il est brisé!’”’

  Victoria said to Edith in a whisper, ‘Is Humphrey Hume Ambrose?’

  She whispered back, ‘I don’t know. Could be.’ The description of Hume could fit a few of the men who were in the Secretariat, especially the men who’d fought in the War. His being a medical doctor narrowed it somewhat.

  Caroline went on. ‘“‘And when will his crash come?’ Mr Whibley asked Barlow.

  ‘“‘Never,’ said Barlow. ‘He’s saved. Got religion. The Office is his religion.’

  ‘“Barlow sat smoking, a great bulk, staring with dull eyes at the patch of sky outside the window, surrounded by his own peculiar atmosphere of idleness, and defeat, and emptiness.”’

  Caroline looked up from her manuscript and said, ‘We next meet Humphrey who has just returned from a disappointing interview with the Chief Secretary … “The moment had appeared to him ripe for intervention by the Office in a peculiarly abominable situation in the Near East. He had pressed his point with fervour. The Chief Secretary, of necessity, had listened with attention, since the ultimate responsibility for Humphrey’s actions rested with him. He had been very kind, had agreed with Humphrey down to the last detail, and then, blandly, genially, almost as if he were continuing to agree, he had vetoed any
action in the affair.

  ‘“‘Too expensive,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry — as sorry as you are. We might do something’ — by ‘we’ this time, he meant the British Government, not the Office — ‘but any action on the Office’s part would be resented by the French: not a hope of cooperation from them; and if they did not cooperate, none of the little fellows on the spot, who all look to the French, would do anything, and then where would we be? — but you’ve had your head too close to it these last weeks; you see it a little out of proportion.’

  ‘“‘They’ve appealed to us for help,’ urged Humphrey.”’

  There were titters at hearing Sir Eric and the procedures of the League presented so critically.

  ‘“‘If you like, we can circulate these telegrams to the member governments without comment. I think we had better, and in acknowledging the telegrams, say they have been circulated.’

  ‘“‘I should so much prefer—’

  ‘“‘To do something, and explain later. Of course you would, it’s perfectly natural; but I’m sorry, it’s also perfectly impossible.’

  ‘“Humphrey returned to his room and threw the pile of telegrams on the table and went and stood in the bay window overlooking the courtyard, and stared at the insipid lake with its transparent summer blue. It was the pale blue which little girls couple with pale pink as their favourite colours. He shifted his gaze to Captain Creighton-Downes’s bull-terrier chained up in the courtyard.”’

  Again at the mention of the bull terrier, there were titters of recognition; everyone knew whose dog this was. Caroline looked out and smiled at the shared recognition, enjoying all signs of appreciation for whatever reason.

  ‘“Humphrey tried patiently to accommodate himself to his disappointment, seeking with his agile mind for some sidelight of action. He yearned for the life of action. Instead he circulated telegrams.”’