Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  She again looked at her brother in his dated costume of a worker. He who fights for communism has, of all the virtues, only one: that he fights for communism. In an ill-fitting suit.

  What did filial allegiance mean at this time of life? For either of them?

  She was reminded that her father had a much older brother, whom they visited when she was a child. She had sat quietly reading, glancing at this man called uncle. While her father and uncle chatted, she asked herself what an uncle was and did. Her father had said he had not seen the brother for many years, and for all she knew he never saw him again after that visit. The bond of blood when affection so fails us. Did members of a family have some sort of genetic magnetism of unknown potential, which caused them to be ever aware of each other, for good or for ill, regardless of bad blood or affection, regardless of distance put between them, regardless of inclination or wish?

  She also remembered reading an American story lying around the house by Theodore Dreiser – The Lost Phoebe – which had disturbed her as a child and which returned to her mind throughout her life whenever she considered family life. It went something like this: old Henry Reifsneider and his wife, Phoebe, were a loving couple. Seven children had been born to them: three had died; one girl had gone to Kansas; one boy had gone to Sioux Falls and never been heard of after; another boy had gone to Washington; and the last girl lived five counties away in the same state, but was so burdened with cares of her own that she rarely considered the mother and father. The home life that had never been attractive had weaned them thoroughly, so that, wherever they were, they gave little thought to their father and mother.

  Ambrose and Frederick had moved on to conversation about work at the High Commission. She heard Ambrose complaining of long morning teas and diplomatic receptions, and about dealing with ‘the peevish whingeing of newly arrived British migrants who come out here for £10 and now want to go home. Nothing to spy on. Could spy on you chaps, I suppose. If we weren’t always at morning tea and afternoon tea.’

  She heard Ambrose saying the three of them must all get together for a reunion dinner. He turned to Edith. ‘Or would it be best if you two spent some time alone?’

  She bridled a little about Ambrose going ahead with social arrangements, until she realised that Ambrose was, of course, Frederick’s brother-in-law. Ye gods. What was the import of this merry mess of family connection?

  Ambrose made them each strawberry jam and cream on a cold scone – an impossible combination with Scotch.

  Her mind choked with questions, but this was not the occasion to get to know her long-lost brother. Too much.

  She decided to end this encounter. She realised that from some sort of familial courtesy she should go along with Ambrose’s proposal of another meeting, regardless of whether she ultimately found a way of bringing Frederick into her life after these years – if, indeed, he wished to be brought into her life, and if, in fact, she wanted to be brought into his – if anything at all was to be done with Frederick, this queer, politically pedantic remnant of her family life.

  She waited until they had finished their drinks, which was not long at all. The men ate their cold scones. She had left hers. So much nervousness, buzzing like flies in the hot room.

  ‘So much nervousness,’ she said, making a practised signal with her little finger to Ambrose, and then stood. Ambrose also stood, looking at his watch. ‘A grand dinner next time,’ he said, ‘if a grand dinner is to be found in this make-believe city.’ He chuckled.

  Her move brought Frederick to his feet, surprised at being chucked.

  She went to Frederick, putting an arm around him, smoothing away her abruptness. ‘Sorry to chuck you, Frederick. Too much nervous excitement. I suggest we leave it at this for now and all get together in a relaxed way.’ Pray tell, how? ‘Is there a telephone number through which I can call you?’ she asked. ‘Or is that hush-hush?’ She didn’t know if she was being rude.

  From his wallet he gave her a piece of paper cut from a sheet, on which was only his first name and a telephone number.

  ‘You can leave a message for me on that number.’

  ‘Will we make it Wednesday for dinner here at the dining room?’ She then saw the three of them seated in the dining room with politicians and others. ‘Or we could have dinner served here in the rooms?’

  He said, ‘You decide.’

  She hugged him, again as a form of compensation. Oh, the queerness of it all. ‘I know this is abrupt. Need time to take it all in.’ She gave her helpless smile.

  She saw him out to the lobby, and they chatted about the heat and some of the complaints about living conditions in the city, which were so much the commonplace talk of all residents. She had stopped herself saying that she could call for the High Commission car to drive him home. ‘I think we will lunch together, just you and me – in the suite, say, next week? I’ll have your handkerchief laundered.’

  ‘Fine.’ He studied her face again and nodded. ‘I would’ve known you in a crowd,’ he said.

  ‘I would have known you, too,’ she said, unsure of that.

  Outside the hotel, she stopped. She put a hand on his arm. ‘Frederick, did you ever read a story by Dreiser about an old couple – Phoebe and Henry – whose family just flees from them and they are left alone? It was in a book of his stories in the library at home.’

  ‘I do remember that story. The children dispersed all over the place and never came back. Left the parents alone.’ He looked at her. ‘You see us in the story? Our fleeing home?’

  ‘Or our proper weaning. And our parents loved each other, as did Phoebe and Henry.’ She could think of nothing else to say about it.

  They smiled, brother and sister. ‘The story came to my mind as we were talking today. It seems somewhat apt,’ she said.

  And then he went off along the gravel pathway to walk to his Capital Hill camp. In his hot suit with a briefcase full of – what? Propaganda? He had put on his cap.

  He turned once to wave, and she waved back. She watched him until he disappeared.

  She returned to the hotel and to Ambrose, who poured drinks.

  ‘Well,’ she said.

  ‘Well, indeed,’ he said. ‘Your brother the Bolshevik.’

  ‘And what are we to do with my brother the communist? Here in a city that is not a city, in a world that may well fall apart again into war any minute.’ She finished her speech feeling tearful. ‘And that suit. And the cap?’

  Ambrose shrugged. ‘I think the suit is Central European. Your brother’s arrival is, of course, the perfect illustration of why we have so little free will – if any. The family we didn’t choose, their genes and their living presence. The bad penny proves there is no free will.’ He smiled. ‘It is called the Bad Penny Theory.’

  ‘Part of the Bad Luck Theory.’

  Ambrose said, ‘We’ll probably be told by your brother that it is economics that determines everything about our lives.’

  ‘If we choose to see him again.’

  Ambrose seemed to think for a few seconds. ‘I believe we should see him again. Definitely.’

  ‘Then he is not a spanner in the works – in my plans?’

  Without looking at her, he said rather firmly, ‘No – you will be alright. Let’s see him again.’

  She didn’t question Ambrose’s inclination to see Frederick again, suspecting that it was driven by whim. Or boredom.

  They sat, drinks in hand, and looked at each other with blank expressions. She shook her head and gave out her short laugh, which she now recognised was the family laugh. In the family it had been a laugh that congratulated them, the family – that said, ‘What a witty family we are, what a worldly family; a family that sees through the humbug of the world; not a cynical family but a family that thinks about things that matter and can laugh at the world.’ Somewhere, deep in Frederick’s political posturing, that laugh was still alive – just.

  ‘I nearly suggested I telephone for the HC’s car to drive hi
m home.’

  Lunch or Luncheon or Dinner or Obed

  There in her sitting room at the hotel, Edith watched while the serving girl, Janice, in her black dress, white starched apron, servant cap, black stockings and very clean black shoes, stood and waited, pencil and pad in hand, while Frederick ordered steak and eggs and onions from the typewritten menu sent up from the dining room.

  She thought that the serving girl was – well, seemed to be – enjoying playing her role. Uniforms brought out other selves. She remembered how different she felt in her UNRRA uniform in Vienna.

  Edith urged Frederick towards indulgence. ‘To begin? Oysters?’

  ‘I’ll have the tomato soup.’

  ‘Order some dessert, too.’ And before Frederick could order, she said to the serving girl, ‘He’ll have the bavarois Chantilly.’

  The serving girl smiled. Frederick looked at Edith with resignation.

  She ordered the ‘oysters en coctaile’ – she had given up correcting the hotel-menu French – followed by the fillets of snapper and sauce tartare. ‘And for my dessert I will take the meringue Chantilly.’

  The girl wrote it down on her pad. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  Frederick said, ‘I usually have lunch with the workers, sitting on the ground with our backs to the wall in the sun.’ He was acting too. ‘I got the men’s camp lunchboxes improved.’

  ‘Nutritiously improved?’

  He laughed. ‘No, more-to-eat improved. I don’t think nutrition’s on their minds. That may be next year’s campaign.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Frederick, have some oysters. Tomato soup is rather –’ She was about to say common, but changed it to – ‘dull.’

  Frederick looked at the serving girl and nodded.

  ‘And, of course, some wine. Send up a bottle of claret and a bottle of something white – that Australian wine . . . I always forget its name. Graves?’

  ‘I know the wine, ma’am,’ Janice said. ‘Whenever I order it, the cellar man says, “Oh, that’s for the woman from Europe.” ’

  They all laughed and Edith felt glad of the laughter – it warmed the atmosphere.

  Frederick raised an eyebrow. ‘Two bottles of wine?’

  ‘What we don’t have with our lunch, Ambrose and I can drink some other time.’ Edith said that they usually received their weekly wine delivery from the High Commission – French – but sometimes the wine didn’t turn up and they had to resort to the hotel cellar, ‘such as when your lot have a strike on the waterfront’.

  She turned to Janice. ‘You may tell the cellar man, Janice, that I was from Australia before I was from Europe, and I am from Australia now. This is my brother Frederick, Janice, who is not from Europe, although he lived for a time in Central Europe.’

  Frederick rose and formally shook hands with Janice, who said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ She even did something of a curtsey to Frederick, which was not normal. Edith rather liked it.

  As he sat down again, he said, ‘I’ll change my order, Janice, and have everything that my sister from the Continent has suggested.’

  Janice, in an educated voice that Edith had not heard before, said to him, ‘Nothing is too good for the working classes.’ Then, in a broad Australian voice, ‘That’s what I alwus say.’

  Edith saw something in this playlet that she didn’t understand. She also saw that Janice was perhaps playing with her. It was slightly unsettling. Irritating.

  Edith said, ‘You look the part today, Janice.’ The voice of a guest to a servant who is perhaps not what she seems. Staring at her, trying to decipher the playlet.

  Janice then said, ‘These black stockings prickle.’

  ‘Remind you of schooldays?’

  ‘At my school we had better quality.’

  Edith was tempted to ask the name of her school but decided against that.

  After Janice left, Frederick said, ‘Have you been to Russia?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I was there at a cadre school before the war. In Russia, lunch, or obed, is the largest meal – several courses, the soup comes after a salad. And the salads are a meal in themselves. Topped with meat or fish. Pickled vegetables. Then meat or fish and roasted vegetables. And, of course, vodka.’

  Then he said, ‘Very egalitarian of you, introducing the serving classes to your guest.’ This sounded odd.

  ‘I am becoming fond of her. She is usually in her chambermaid outfit, though sometimes she waits table. In our mother’s day, Janice would have been called the parlourmaid and expected to do both jobs, maybe even answer the door. Remember how our parlourmaids at Jasper’s Brush came and went?’

  ‘With or without parlourmaids, the house was always a mess,’ Frederick said.

  Edith pinned her brother. ‘You and she know each other.’

  He smiled, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘Yes, Janice is in the Party. We’re friends.’ He then broke eye contact and looked at the wall, finishing his sherry.

  She fiddled with her drink. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘We observe the niceties of the work situation, when it’s required – on the rare occasions I visit this posh place. Anyhow, we were joking around. And now you’re in on the joke.’ He put his glass down on the table. ‘I would’ve told you.’

  So. This Janice was the friend. And what did this Janice observe as she had come and gone from their rooms over the months? This would not make Ambrose happy. Although Ambrose was not supposed to take files and cables from the office, he did. What about her own correspondence to people such as John Latham? To her UNO friends in Flushing Meadow? She was not happy. The orbit of the planets had been further disturbed.

  This was a new dilemma, to be put to one side.

  ‘Why do you wear that dreadful suit?’

  He looked down at himself. ‘I try to blend with the workforce.’ He smiled. ‘The suit is from Prague and, I suspect, doesn’t blend at all.’

  He added, ‘I suppose I try to set an example. Somehow. Not –’ He hesitated – ‘not sartorially.’ He grinned at the word. ‘I try to set an example in hut hygiene. I set an example about drinking on the job. I urge them to respect each other’s property. I urge them not to pilfer. We have undesirables turning up.’

  ‘Undesirables?’

  ‘Urgers – bludgers – scroungers.’

  He said these words in a voice she had not heard before. A tough, moralistic voice.

  ‘My morning callisthenics programme was a flop.’ He laughed. ‘Only because I couldn’t keep it up.’ He was being self-deprecating. ‘And I try to get a discussion of world affairs going at the weekend, but only two or three give a damn.’

  ‘Father sent you to Newington – why didn’t you go to university?’

  ‘Took me five years to get rid of the Newington accent.’

  ‘You failed. Do they rib you about your accent?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘It’s not a bad accent.’

  He gave their family short laugh. ‘You have a bit of a foreign accent.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The French language has sandpapered it up a bit.’

  ‘I was so long abroad, I don’t notice it.’

  ‘It’s there alright. But so is Jasper’s Brush. Jasper’s Brush is still there in your voice.’

  ‘I’m glad. What’s a Jasper’s Brush accent?’

  He thought. ‘Not an accent, I suppose. At Jasper’s Brush we had words for things. I remember we used to say “dressed out” – as in “she was all dressed out”. Or “the town was all dressed out” – say, for a parade.’

  She found it interesting that he remembered such things.

  They chattered about Jasper’s Brush days, while waiting for the food. Edith said, ‘Remember when I would address the trees? I would say to an ironbark, “Good morning, Iron Bark,” and to the wattle, “Good morning, Yellow Alice.” I used to say that the trees were my friends, but I have to be honest, I never felt they were my friends.
Secretly, I was even disloyal to the Australian trees. I preferred the trees in the Girls’ Own Annual – oaks, elms, chestnuts and birches. That was when I was trying to be poetical. When I decided to be a scientist, I learned their Latin botanical names and I would say, “Good morning, Acacia pycnantha.” You ridiculed it. You argued that you couldn’t see an Australian tree if you gave it a Latin name. You said that was the wrong way of seeing.’

  ‘I think I was right,’ he said.

  ‘Now I think you were right.’

  He reminded her of how they rode their horses bareback through the bush tracks to Seven Mile Beach and into the sea, and lit fires from the driftwood to dry out.

  They went through their favourite names from the coast: Foxground, Flying Fox Creek, Fairy Meadow, Mollymook, Jerry Bailey and, of course, Jasper’s Brush. ‘Did you ever see a fairy at Fairy Meadow?’

  There was a knock and she went to the door, opening it to allow Janice to back into the room with a tray loaded with food, glasses, wine and cutlery. Edith helped her clear a space on the table and together they laid the tablecloth. Now armed with something Janice didn’t know she knew, she watched Janice. The ball was back in her court. Janice laid out the cutlery and put down their first course. ‘I’ll bring up the other courses when they’re ready.’ She had returned to her serving-girl voice.

  Frederick and Janice did not make any sort of eye or verbal contact.

  She felt like saying something, but now, slightly amused, she would leave them stranded in their own game.

  She dipped a little finger in the oyster sauce and tried it. The sauces were unpredictable. At least the oyster forks were there.

  ‘Thank you, Janice.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Janice left. She said to Frederick, ‘What did you do with your share of the inheritance from Mother and then from Father?’

  He shrugged and tried an oyster.

  Edith persisted with her inquiry. ‘Mother transferred money and assets to us before she died – divided between you, me and Father. It must be sitting there in the bank waiting for you to collect it. Or at the solicitor’s.’