Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  Mustering what she hoped looked like hauteur, she said that it was perhaps, yes, almost certainly, the importance of this commission that had led to the incident. Yes. The delegates had taken memorials, commemorating the conference, because the objects taken were destined to be historic. She listened to herself with wonder.

  ‘I anticipated that there would be, on such an historic occasion, the need for memorabilia. On all adventures, we instinctively seek trophies from strange or dangerous places. We have them around us to create a sense of life lived. These mementoes will go back to the countries of these people, to sit on desks in the offices of Ministers of State or in display cases of fine homes, and will speak the message not only of world disarmament but of the League.’

  She marvelled at her facility — not to lie, but to articulate what had been thought somewhere in her head, but not consciously reasoned. She did not believe this to be duplicitous — more that some thinking went on in an unpremeditated way. Or, at least, had been meditated in some other part of the mind, well before the question ever came, and that this sort of reasoning did not necessarily pass across the front of the mind until needed. That was her explanation of it.

  She marvelled that it contradicted her first wave of thinking of only an hour earlier and now replaced it. She now believed what she had just said about souvenirs being trophies of experience.

  ‘I would ask that you not officially request the return of these objects — it is more important that they go to the countries of the delegates as part of our propaganda.’

  She’d held their attention but she had something of a reputation now for this sort of speech. She was expected to come out with something novel.

  ‘You have more of the elegant stands then?’ Rosting asked, perhaps amused now, or careful not to take her on — because he had on other occasions and been trounced. ‘You can replace them?’

  She held her breath. ‘Yes,’ she lied.

  ‘If you replace all without difficulty so that we are not embarrassed, so that the appearance of the hall is correct and complete, there is no problem — let’s move on then. But another thing …’ Rosting added, ‘these stands — may I have one of those stands for my office? I also like mementoes.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘Of course, Rosting.’ She smiled.

  She was, she realised, also protecting the honour of the nations which had taken the things. She did not want scorn against those particular national delegates who came from countries not as rich or as sophisticated as others. And anyhow, there were European nations also incriminated. Although as far as she could see no English-speaking nation.

  She excused herself and left. I am not only a liar, she thought, I lie myself into impossible situations.

  She went around the Salle de la Réformation and noted down the countries which had taken the stationery stands. She then tried telephoning the personal secretaries and liaison officers in the guilty delegations, one by one, and explaining that there’d been a dreadful misunderstanding about the stationery stands. She got on to some of them. She said that of course the stationery stands could be taken as mementoes at the conclusion of the conference, but should remain in place in the Salle until then. She managed to get the cooperation of some of the culprits. She then took a taxi — for which she knew she would personally have to pay — and called at the hotels of those delegations and retrieved the stands.

  Five of the delegates who had taken the stands were staying at the Hôtel Metropole, but she’d been unable to contact their secretaries.

  Leaving the taxi waiting, she asked to see the hotel chef de Securité at the Metropole, a M. Dupont.

  When he came to the lobby she recognised him from the Richemond and from Captain Strongbow’s party. He looked at her as if trying to place her. She couldn’t see that there was anything to be gained by reminding him of it.

  She explained to M. Dupont that she well understood the irregularity of her request but that she had to get into their rooms on League business. ‘They have League property which I have to collect.’

  She made vamp eyes at him. Yes, Caroline, there is a vamp in me somewhere.

  He said that it was not proper to let her into the rooms.

  She then showed him her League carte de légitimation from the Political Department of the Swiss government in Bern which was an important-looking thing.

  He examined it.

  ‘This is a matter of diplomatic urgency,’ she said desperately. She watched his face and could see that the peace of the world being in balance made little impact on M. Dupont.

  ‘They have madames running the League of Nations?’

  ‘There are a few women,’ she said, feeling that this might weaken matters in his eyes, ‘but only a few.’

  Then he grinned at her. ‘They have cowgirls running the League of Nations too.’

  She smiled and they were immediately old friends.

  ‘A detective never forgets,’ he said, pleased with himself.

  He looked back to her carte de légitimation. He read all the writing on the card.

  She added, in an unhappy voice, ‘I could lose my position.’ At these words he did look at her with concern. He drew on his cigar, then said, ‘You could recommend me for a job at the League of Nations? Yes?’

  ‘A job! What sort of job, M. Dupont?’

  ‘A job in the police of the League of Nations.’

  ‘We don’t have any police. Yet.’ There had been talk of a League international police force.

  ‘I hear they will make a police for the League of Nations.’

  ‘There will be an international police force, yes, soon. I will see that your name goes before the Secretary-General. Yes. Definitely.’

  He looked at the burning end of his cigar, blew on it, and fiddled with the sodden mouth end. He had saliva at the corners of his mouth. She could tell he was a man who had trouble managing his saliva.

  She looked away. Now she was appointing people to the League police force.

  He took out a bunch of keys and they went to the rooms where he stood and watched while she retrieved the stationery holders herself. In one instance, from the valise of the delegate, where it had been guiltily hidden. She felt confident, reasoning that none of them were in a position officially to complain.

  He asked if she’d heard of Captain Strongbow but she said she hadn’t. ‘I was at the party to see he paid his bill,’ he said. ‘He swore me in as a World Sheriff. I have a certificate somewhere. All nonsense.’

  M. Dupont then realised something of what had happened with the stands. ‘These great men steal these things?’

  She looked at him ruefully, and nodded.

  He laughed, coughing on his cigar. ‘On these men, the future of the world rests?’ He laughed for the rest of the time they were together, and repeated this a couple of times. She also recovered two blotters.

  He helped her carry the things and found a floor bag in the kitchen into which she placed the holders.

  At the hotel door, she smiled at him with immense gratitude and then, regardless of his saliva problem, she impulsively kissed him on the mouth.

  He smiled at her for the first time.

  He carried the bag of stationery stands to the waiting taxi for her. She thanked M. Dupont again, realising that she had thanked him too many times already.

  She returned to the Salle de la Réformation and placed them in position. Some of the delegation leaders would be surprised at the magical reappearance of the stationery holders. Perhaps the guilty ones would experience that delicious relief felt upon waking from a dream in which one had committed a criminal act.

  She had it all in place for the afternoon plenary session and sat in her office trying not to crow; for some perverse reason she did not want to be in the hall when they saw the stands. She did not wish in any way to betray her concern.

  She was sitting there when Jules brought a note to her.

  It was from Robert Dole.

  �
��Dole?’ she looked at Jules.

  ‘Dole is a true intellectual. He has the correct amount of melancholy and the correct amount of the ridiculous.’

  She didn’t need a character portrait from a messenger.

  The note requested they meet in the Club de la Presse that day. He had, the note said, something to show her.

  Jules stood there waiting for a return message.

  ‘You aren’t at the beck and call of reporters, Jules.’

  Jules shrugged. She scribbled a note, reluctantly accepting the invitation. Though she was not a spokesman for the Disarmament section or the preparatory commission, she felt honour-bound to face up to difficult thinkers such as Dole. She would be guarded but ‘assisting and cooperative’, as M. Avenol had advised them.

  Then she thought, Oh God, Dole knows about the disappearance of the stationery stands. But surely that wasn’t international news?

  When they met she made the usual references to the rules of their meeting, how she was not able to speak for the League.

  ‘I know how correct you are, Edith Campbell Berry. But we must study statistics if you are to survive in this diplomatic business.’

  He was a little drunk and trying to be playful, even courtly. She looked at him, at what Jeanne called his liquid brown eyes which she said denoted a ‘seeking person’. ‘I have already survived, Mr Dole, and the League has survived. And I value statistics above all things. Persuasive statistics.’

  ‘Good.’

  She had sherry. He had Scotch.

  He took out some tables and showed them to her. They were French population figures.

  ‘Let me explain.’ He pointed at the charts. ‘By 1933, France will begin a five-year period of sterility because the mothers born in the War years did not find husbands — those possible husbands are rotting dead in military cemeteries.’

  Edith had a queer reaction to Dole’s charts on the sterility of the French. She felt a clutch of concern for her own fertility, for her maternity. She had quite a strong private reaction to the words. She returned her attention to what Dole was saying.

  So, he continued, following on this period of sterility the number of French boys at military age would drop by half. France was desperate to either disarm the world or to find a strong ally with lots of young boys — that was to be the United States. ‘This so-called Kellogg—Briand pact to outlaw war is France’s desperate effort to get itself a family of young boys. She is buying flesh.’

  ‘Who is to say that a France which feels safe will not mean a world which feels safe?’

  ‘It is a disguised military alliance with the United States against Germany — against whoever.’

  ‘If that is true, it doesn’t worry me. I think that non-aggression treaties between any two nations amount to renunciation of wars — one at a time,’ she said.

  This time with Dole she was not passionately shrill. She remained calmly conversational. She found her words coming to her, she kept breathing evenly. ‘And surely you trust Briand?’

  Dole said that Briand was the only Frenchman he trusted. ‘It’s the Quai d’Orsay that I do not trust.’

  She concluded the discussion with Dole, thanked him for his lecture on the sterility of France.

  He took her wrist. Her first reaction was what the waiters at the club would think. Pointedly, she looked down at his hand on her wrist.

  He said, ‘May I tell you a joke which is going around about the disarmament talks? You may have heard it.’

  He kept holding her wrist and did not wait for her agreement to the telling of the joke. ‘The lion looks sideways at the eagle and says wings must be abolished. The eagle looks at the bull and declares horns must be abolished. The bull looks at the tiger and says claws must be abolished. The Russian bear in his turn says, all claws, wings, and horns must be abolished. All that is necessary, says the Russian bear, is a universal embrace of fraternity.’

  She had heard the joke before, but she paid the necessary polite smile and pulled her wrist out of his grip.

  ‘What say another drink and dinner?’ he said.

  ‘No, thank you, Mr Dole.’

  He took hold of her wrist again. This time she could not pull her arm free from his grip so she unbent his fingers from her wrist and with what she felt was a suitably diplomatic bow of her head, left.

  He followed behind her to the door and caught up with her, again taking her wrist. This time it raised her temper and she roughly prised away his fingers. ‘Please, stop it, Mr Dole.’

  Oddly, he said, ‘Why do you recoil?’ sounding surprised that she should remove his hand from her wrist.

  As she went off she looked back from the footpath to where he stood in the doorway with his sheaf of documents. ‘It’s France we have to fear!’ he cried to her.

  As she walked away from the Club de la Presse, she paused and allowed herself to be calmed and refreshed by the swift flowing waters under the bridge. She again worried about the question of what was ‘politically feasible’, ‘politically realistic’. The politically feasible often depended for its feasibility on those involved throwing their political weight. If enough people behaved as if it were feasible — threw their weight, so to speak — it became so. If they had the weight.

  Something else occurred to her then, which interested her more, although she did not know what to do with it — Mr Dole wanted to convince her, to win her, and she found this pleased her vanity. She was being treated seriously by Mr Dole. It more than pleased her vanity, it caressed it. Staring down into the river waters, she realised a second thing. She realised how close she had been to succumbing to his physical approach. How could that be? The man was compelling. He had been trying to ‘hold her’ with all that wrist business, to stop her going away. And she had been on the edge of being dragged to his arms. He had not realised just how close. Nor had she, until now, staring down at the swift waters. Oh my God, she thought. In that regard, I know nothing about myself. Memories of Jerome, of the Molly Club swirled in the waters.

  She continued walking back to the Palais Wilson, her face burning with fright at her self-blindness and the turbulence of her day.

  At the Secretariat lounge in the Palais Wilson, Ambrose, good old comfortable Ambrose, welcomed her.

  She had another sherry. As she drank the sherry, she was able to tell Ambrose about the turbulence of her day. ‘I stole back my stationery stands.’

  ‘Bravo!’

  ‘I won’t name names. Not only the South Americans. As it turns out a few European diplomats of distinction had taken mementoes.’

  ‘Really? Give me the names!’

  ‘No names. And I took back two blotters as well.’

  Ambrose broke into laughter and his laughter instantly freed her from the earnest agonies of her working day concerns. She told him of her magnificent defence of the souveniring. He was so good like this. No matter how much of a personal disaster a situation was Ambrose would say, ‘What a romp’, or ‘How delicious’, and it would dissolve.

  She did not tell him of the infertility of France and the obvious potency of Mr Dole.

  ‘Oh, and another thing,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘M. Dupont, the Chef de Securité of the Metropole — I said I would get him a position in the League of Nation’s police force.’

  ‘Police force?’ He laughed.

  ‘I promised. It was an agreement.’

  ‘For having done such a service to world peace, he deserves a position.’

  ‘Will you write to him and say something encouraging?’

  ‘I will write to him and say that if we ever form a police force, he shall be Commissioner in Chief.’

  ‘I don’t think he wants to be chief. Just detective will be enough.’

  She told him how Captain Strongbow had sworn in M. Dupont as a world sheriff.

  ‘Did he believe it?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ and then added, laughing, ‘At the time I almost did.’

  S
he again went back to his apartment and to bed.

  After, as they lay still, she chattered about the Pact of Peace. Ambrose listened and then rose on an elbow to interrupt her.

  ‘Edith, there is something of which you should be aware,’ The boy-girl lover had gone and he was now diplomat and man. How extraordinary that the transformation could seem so natural.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t wish to quell your spirit — I admire your spirit — but there is a doctrine in international law which you should know. It is known as rebus sic stantibus.’ Ambrose changed his tone of voice to pronounce the Latin.

  She had done Latin at school but she did not know this expression. ‘Which means?’

  ‘Which means that the circumstances surrounding the treaty must continue to exist if that treaty is to continue to exist. You should always remember this.’

  She said nothing, allowing the lesson to wander in her mind, searching for companionship among her many ideas. It was a more severe idea than the others she had stored away.

  ‘Doesn’t that mean that any pact can be abandoned whenever a nation has a whim?’

  ‘Well, yes. Germany created the doctrine when she invaded Belgium in 1914 after having pledged to respect the borders. She used the existence of a treaty as a military tactic. Put them off-guard.’

  She found this idea disconcerting and she was not ready to talk about it.

  On the third day of the commission she found Mr David Hunter Miller, one of the American team from the United States State Department, and had coffee with him at the kiosk across from the Salle de la Réformation. He was said to be an expert on treaties and said to be pro-League.

  ‘You see,’ the very scholarly American said, ‘it is impossible to imagine a breach of this new pact which was not also a breach of the League Covenant. Consequence: like it or not, the United States is involved with the League and the League is involved with the United States.’

  ‘Tell me how the Pact of Peace will work?’

  He smiled gently. ‘A crisis occurs. The United States is consulted by telegraphic exchange. Every one of the pact signatories, except the United States, is a member of the League. So at the same time that the pact is involved, the League becomes involved. Only a very rash and uncontrolled government would resist the United States and the Council of the League in combination. The pact is a psychological obstruction to war planning and then an obstruction to war itself.’