Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘What’s it all about?’ Dame Rachel asked.

  Edith knew immediately — Sacco and Vanzetti. They were probably after her for not having signed the petition.

  ‘It’s probably to do with the wretched Sacco thing.’ Miss Figgis said the word ‘wretched’ in such a British way you weren’t sure whether she was annoyed at Sacco and Vanzetti or the American legal system or the Issue or the crowd or what. Just annoyed at being inconvenienced, at being diverted from her own mission.

  ‘Poor devils,’ said Dame Rachel.

  Again, Edith didn’t know whether she meant Sacco and Vanzetti or the crowd in the street.

  ‘I think it’s me they want,’ she tried to joke. ‘I didn’t sign the petition.’ Maybe they’d both signed it.

  ‘It was poorly worded,’ Miss Figgis said. ‘Nor did I.’

  That cheered her. Dame Rachel didn’t comment.

  They encountered another angry crowd further along rue Plantamour. The crowd was shouting slogans against America and the capitalists.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Dame Rachel. ‘They are angry.’

  Miss Figgis turned again, into the rue des Paquis. A few decently dressed men flagged them down.

  ‘Shall I stop?’ asked Miss Figgis. ‘They don’t seem to be part of the rabble.’

  ‘See what they can tell us,’ said Dame Rachel. ‘Yes, they seem not to be part of the mob.’

  Miss Figgis pulled up without stopping the engine and wound the window halfway down. The men were agitated, and warned them to get out of Geneva because the rioters were burning down all things American. The American garage where the motor-car was usually housed was on fire. The men said that the rioters were attacking any American manufactured motor-car, which theirs was.

  Dame Rachel leaned forward and thanked the men. ‘Wind up the window,’ she said to Miss Figgis. ‘We shall not retreat to the countryside simply because we drive a Ford motor-car.’

  It sounded a very attractive idea on a summer’s night. Edith had to stop herself saying, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Figgis, drive to the Palais Wilson. We’ll put the car there.’

  Miss Figgis was driving very well under the strain. Even relishing it, it seemed to Edith. Maybe it reminded her of driving ambulances during the War. Edith was not relishing it.

  They got to rue Butini and drove in through the open gates and Miss Figgis parked the motor-car.

  ‘Park over there in the dark corner,’ Dame Rachel instructed. Miss Figgis started up the motor-car again and moved it.

  The concierge came out with a man from Securitas and the concierge’s dog, a St Bernard named Volkerbund, who would be useless as protection.

  ‘What is his name?’ Dame Rachel said to Miss Figgis, sotto voce.

  ‘Volkerbund,’ Miss Figgis replied, sotto voce.

  ‘I know the name of the dog. What is the name of the concierge?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  She looked at Edith. Edith shook her head. Edith patted the dog.

  Dame Rachel turned to the concierge. ‘Close the gates, man. There are rioters about in the streets.’

  ‘I don’t think the gates can be closed,’ the concierge said. ‘There’s a problem with the hinges.’

  Of course the gates couldn’t be closed, thought Edith. Fate will hound me to my very last refuge, to my very own office.

  ‘Well, get inside and bolt the doors.’ The man from Securitas and the concierge moved off to do this. Dame Rachel suggested that they make their way to her and Miss Figgis’ apartment in rue Plantamour. Before they could go, they heard the smashing of glass from the other side of the building near the lake-side door, and moving quickly, they followed the concierge and the Securitas man into the Palais, bolting the door behind them. The smashing was coming from the library and they ran along the corridor to see what damage was being done. The noise sounded fearful and the dog hid under a table.

  The crowd had gathered out in quai Woodrow Wilson and was throwing stones through the Glass-room and the library windows.

  ‘I think we’d better stay here in the building, Dame Rachel,’ Edith said, saying to herself, ‘and accept our fate.’

  ‘I think so, too,’ said Dame Rachel quietly. ‘This is no manifestation — this is full-blown riot.’ She spoke as if she’d experienced everything in the way of angry crowds.

  ‘I have a pistol,’ the concierge said.

  Edith thought of her pistol back in her room, now more an ornament and memento than a weapon. This was perhaps the very occasion Captain Strongbow had given it to her for. And she didn’t have it.

  ‘Maybe it will come to that,’ Dame Rachel said, as the concierge went to get his pistol.

  ‘I should’ve signed the petition,’ Edith said as a kind of gallows humour.

  ‘What?’ asked Dame Rachel urgently. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing, Dame Rachel. Just thinking aloud,’ said Edith. ‘Praying.’

  ‘Where are the police?’ Miss Figgis said.

  ‘Obviously not outside our building,’ Dame Rachel said.

  Edith looked out. ‘The rioters have entered the courtyard.’

  ‘Get down the fire hose,’ Miss Figgis ordered the Securitas man. ‘If they set fire to things or if they come in — flush them out.’ The Securitas man seemed to be considering his position. Miss Figgis said impatiently, ‘No matter. I’ll do it. Leave it to me.’ Miss Figgis took the fire hose nozzle, and began unreeling the hose. ‘I’ll take some of the fire out of them.’

  Edith peered again. ‘They’re not all men — there are women throwing stones too.’ A thousand angry eyes. She wondered if Liverright and Caroline were out there. Surely not. Whatever their posturing, they wouldn’t stone the League.

  Without fear, Miss Figgis went to the window, dragging the hose by its nozzle. ‘Men or women — I’ll hose them all.’

  The concierge kept pointing his small pistol out at the crowd but it seemed ineffectual.

  The crowd swarmed in the grounds of the Secretariat.

  Stones broke the glass of the front door, a flying splinter catching Edith’s thumb.

  ‘I’ve been hit.’ She said it more to herself. She backed away towards the interior light and bent down, trying to see how badly she was cut.

  Miss Figgis dropped the hose and came across to her, gripped her wrist and examined it. ‘Move inside and sit down. I’ll get the first-aid box.’

  ‘Why us?’ Edith asked, holding her wrist tightly to staunch the bleeding.

  Miss Figgis returned with the first-aid box from the infirmary and began to swab and bind her wound with the proficiency of a nurse.

  ‘From minute to minute, a crowd has no reliable information; they’re rife with rumour,’ Dame Rachel said coolly, again speaking as if she had had much to do with such crowds and civic disturbances. ‘And they are rarely sensibly led. Have the police been rung on the telephone?’

  The man from Securitas said that he had tried but the gendarme post did not answer. Dame Rachel looked at him with some disbelief. ‘Call the fire brigade. Call les pompiers, man.’

  ‘Or the military,’ Miss Figgis added. Miss Figgis seemed ready for a fight.

  Dame Rachel looked out at the crowd through an unbroken window, her hands cupped at her eyes. ‘They harm their cause,’ she said, sadly. ‘Put furniture against the door.’

  The Securitas man came back and said the fire brigade were not answering either.

  ‘They are probably fighting the fire at the American garage,’ Dame Rachel said, ‘or they’ve bolted to the countryside.’

  She and Miss Figgis began to move a desk against the door.

  A fearful sense of being abandoned and in danger came over the five of them. The stones were smashing in. They huddled back from the splintering glass, yet staying where they could keep the rioters partly in view.

  ‘Upstairs,’ ordered Dame Rachel.

  The damage was now quite bad. The candelabra in the lobby were being smashed by stones.
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  ‘Call Huston,’ Dame Rachel said. ‘You people watch the doors. Where are the police? Where are any of the authorities? Figgis, turn the hose on them if they come in.’

  ‘I have every intention,’ said Miss Figgis who had again taken up the hose.

  ‘Should we put on the lights?’ Edith suggested. ‘Maybe indicate that people are here. Get the dog out?’

  ‘Show our flag?’ said Dame Rachel.

  ‘Yes. Show the flag.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that give them a target? Defiance might incite,’ Dame Rachel said, looking at her with full attention. She then looked at the two men but realised that they were not offering opinions. She turned again to Edith, ‘No. You are right. We should reveal ourselves and take the consequences. They might be more careful if they knew we were here. Or they might turn and run. Put on the lights. Show yourselves.’ Turning to the concierge she said, ‘Don’t call Huston. Call Monsieur Munier. Huston is an American and it would be unwise for him to arrive here.’

  Edith recalled an incident from a novel by Mrs Gaskell, North and South, where the heroine threw herself between the crowd and Thornton the hero during an angry riot in the industrial town of Milton. They had no Mr Thornton who could go and address the crowd. But they had Dame Rachel.

  She recalled her father telling her how Colonel Ingersoll had thrown himself in front of President Garfield to stop Guiteau’s bullet. It had shown that Rationalists could be both patriotic and brave.

  Maybe Dame Rachel would go out and address the crowd. Edith would throw herself between Dame Rachel and the crowd. That was the least she could do for not having signed the wretched petition. She could place herself between the crowd and Dame Rachel and take the stoning and the blows that fell upon her. Obeying Dame Rachel, Edith went about turning on lights. Figgis dragged out the dog, strengthening it with encouraging words and references to duty.

  The concierge returned to say that M. Munier did not reply.

  Dame Rachel swore. ‘I’ll call Sir Eric.’ She went off, and, after a while, returned. ‘He will try to raise the police through higher channels.’

  Edith said to her, ‘I’ll show myself on the front balcony.’

  ‘We’ll all show ourselves,’ said Dame Rachel.

  ‘I’m the tallest and the youngest,’ Edith said, and before they could stop her, she opened the smashed glass door and stepped out onto the balcony.

  She heard both Dame Rachel and Figgis call to her to come back in. Peering out at the crowd again, Edith said in a reporting-back voice, ‘They seem to be moving down towards the Paquis.’

  Dame Rachel and Figgis then joined her on the balcony with Dame Rachel saying, ‘We will face them together.’

  Figgis dragged the dog with her. ‘Teamwork,’ said Figgis, ‘face them as a unit.’

  Edith wondered what they would do if the rioters turned on them or stones began to stike them. Stand until they fell bleeding to the ground? She thought about what she might say to the rioters; the only words that came to her were a forfeit from childhood play: ‘Bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, kiss the one you love the most.’ Or maybe ‘stone the one you hate the most’. She thought it might work simply by being so dumbfounding. She began to put it into French.

  The rioters, however, had turned away and were streaming down quai Woodrow Wilson.

  ‘Bravo. It worked,’ said Dame Rachel. ‘Well done. Good move, Berry.’

  Edith’s own observation was that the rioters had not seen them and had been moving before she’d stepped out. Dame Rachel and she stood on the front steps, resolutely in the military ‘at ease’ stance, hands behind their backs, feet apart, side by side, facing out at the enemy. Figgis held the dog by the collar. The dog looked the part but she could see that it was quivering.

  Quiet settled about the building and the night. The two men now joined them.

  They all stood in the sudden silence for a few minutes.

  ‘All’s quiet,’ announced Dame Rachel. ‘Everyone inside.’

  They went back in and secured the door by pushing the table against it.

  Edith helped Miss Figgis to begin cleaning away some of the glass.

  ‘No, leave it,’ Dame Rachel said, ‘leave it for the repair men.’

  ‘I’ll make tea,’ said Miss Figgis, putting down the broom. ‘I think we could all do with a cup.’

  They sat around drinking their tea with the concierge, M. Bochut, and the Securitas man, M. Louis. The five of them felt great camaraderie, an emotion which Edith found strengthening. Dame Rachel sent Figgis up to their office to get a bottle of cognac and they each had a glass. Dame Rachel had two glasses. Every now and then, Miss Figgis went to the window and inspected the outside darkness.

  At about eleven-thirty, they decided the League was not threatened and left, with the Securitas man seeing them home, ‘or vice versa’, as Dame Rachel muttered.

  At home in her rooms, Edith locked the door and began to shake for the first time since the riot. It was her first violent crowd. She had a sherry which made her feel queasy after the cognac. She lay on the Wilson chair, not yet ready to go to bed. She wished they had turned the hose on the rioters. Drenched them. Done something. That had been the problem. They had not retaliated. If only they had fought back, she might have felt less uncomfortably charged up.

  Soon she drifted towards sleep and fell into her bed.

  Next day, they each wrote an account of what had happened for Sir Eric, who said that a report would have to go to Council and to all member states.

  As she was writing her account, Dame Rachel came to her office. ‘Morning, Berry, how’s that thumb?’

  ‘Fine. No pain.’ She held it up. It still had Miss Figgis’ bandage on it.

  ‘Take the day off and get that dressing changed. Or go down and show it to Joshi or Westwood. I am saying in my report that you behaved with bravery and presence of mind. You did. And I thank you. Do you wish to take the rest of the day off?’

  Edith shook her head.

  ‘Good woman.’ With that, Dame Rachel departed.

  She thought about the night of the Molly Club riot. Maybe she was courageous. Audacity was better. Although General Pétain said that the art of audacity was knowing when not to be. Sir Eric telephoned her and thanked her for defending the Palais. He, too, suggested she take the day off. She declined again. When talking to her, his voice began as that of the Secretary-General but changed as he spoke and became quieter and more personal as, she supposed, they both remembered their special morning together. Whenever they spoke now, she thought, that morning would pass silently through their minds.

  Ambrose came to see her, and as the word of the riot got around the building, a couple of others rang to see how she was. Cooper brought Joshi along and fussed about while Joshi redressed the thumb.

  ‘I do my best work on mosquito bites,’ said Joshi, ‘but I’ll see what I can do.’

  Victoria came up with flowers from the Registry staff.

  She had a minute then to think about what Dame Rachel had said about bravery. She did feel that she had perhaps been brave at the Molly Club but she didn’t see how she had shown any virtue at the riot — it didn’t feel like ‘virtue’. It was, she saw, in her nature to be cool in the face of disorder. It seemed wrong to accept praise for what was in one’s nature rather than an act requiring one to surmount one’s nature. She went around to see Dame Rachel. And she had seen the crowd moving away before she’d stepped out on to the balcony.

  ‘I don’t think what you said about me being “courageous” is accurate. One does not take credit for good upbringing.’

  Dame Rachel was taken aback. ‘It was, I suppose,’ she said, ‘platitudinous, it could be more fully described. I can see that, now. I respect you for raising it, Berry, you are quite unusual. But I have to say you did not panic, you kept your post, you came up with a plan, and you carried it through. You accept that?’

  Edith considered this. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now
, what else? I could say that you made observations of the riot and you reported coolly on the state of play?’

  That seemed accurate. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘I do think all that could be called “bravery”.’

  Edith stood there and then said, ‘Not quite.’

  Edith went back to her office.

  Robert Dole called her on the telephone and wanted to come and talk. She didn’t feel that she could handle Mr Dole today. She said that she couldn’t issue statements, he should know that. He said he would get the official statement but Sir Eric had suggested he talk with her as an ‘eye’ witness.

  Sir Eric. She relented. ‘As long as you don’t put my name in the story.’

  Later that morning in her office, she talked with Dole. He commented on her thumb and she shrugged it off.

  ‘You’re a very correct person, Miss Berry.’

  ‘I try to be a good officer.’

  ‘Are you “correct” outside the office?’

  ‘Oh, definitely.’ How could she say that so readily and with such conviction? She wasn’t that ‘incorrect’ either.

  ‘I heard that, in future, there will be a permanent police guard placed in the League building,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t heard that.’

  ‘It would be breaching the League’s diplomatic status.’

  ‘I suppose it would.’

  ‘The Swiss would put a spy in, of course.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She couldn’t see why they’d bother. ‘Why?’

  ‘Everyone believes that something is being hidden from them.’

  Mr Dole had a reporter’s view of the world.

  She said, ‘I suppose that because something is hidden from you doesn’t mean that it is important to you.’

  ‘I would like to decide for myself what is important to me.’

  ‘No more secrets?’

  ‘I’d be against letting in the Swiss if I were Secretary-General.’

  Edith said, ‘My position would be that if Dame Rachel, Miss Figgis, and I can keep an angry crowd at bay, why do we need police?’

  He laughed. ‘Let me quote you in my story.’ She’d made the melancholy Mr Dole laugh. She flushed with pleasure. ‘I don’t know you well,’ he said, ‘but if I were in a crowd I wouldn’t tangle with Miss Figgis or Dame Rachel. But especially Miss Figgis.’ He laughed again. ‘But what about the twenty police who helped you?’