Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  She considered this. ‘Yes . . .’ She spoke slowly, thoughtfully. ‘You may be right about that.’

  Standing there, he said, ‘Let’s get together and discuss your part in the peace congress.’

  She smiled her charming smile but did not reply. Instead, she saw them to the door, leaning over to kiss his cheek, although she would have preferred that they shake hands if he had not had the tray. ‘Who knows? I may convert you,’ she said.

  To what?

  ‘We should have one more meeting, at least,’ she said, ‘about being brother and sister. Maybe we should visit Mother’s and Father’s graves.’ Was that a bourgeois thing to do?

  ‘Agreed,’ he said, and they went off down the hall. She closed the door and flopped into an armchair, picking up the document, the draft agenda. She could see that the peace congress was a door to public life, but she could not see clearly enough where the doorway led. While she was not the Dean of Canterbury, she could see that she would be something of a prize speaker for the congress.

  It would be some way back into public life.

  One of the favourite quotations she had used back in the old days, in café talk about these things, was from The House in Paris, where Karen, speaking of the socialist revolution, had said, ‘I should always work against it, but I should like it to happen in spite of me.’

  She realised, as an objective reality, that her arranging of a fancy lunch – as fancy as Canberra had to offer – was a way of concealing from her brother her own stalled, marooned state of life.

  Over dinner that evening, Edith revealed the facts about Janice to Ambrose.

  He patted his mouth with his napkin and frowned. ‘That’s rather serious – security of the realm and such.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we can ask for a different chambermaid without causing embarrassment.’

  ‘I shall be more circumspect about my papers. Not that the HC has any secrets.’

  He liked to say things like that, but she knew that important things about Britain and the US were shared with the Australian government and came to the HC. He sometimes indulged in the pleasure of reading things to her from these official papers. He gave state secrets as small gifts to keep her alive to that world. And these papers did tend to lie around for a day or so.

  He laughed. ‘I could leave things out for her to read which we want Stalin to believe. In the craft it’s called disinformation.’

  ‘I doubt that my brother or Janice talk with Stalin that often.’

  ‘We may be surprised. I agree that there’s nothing to be done about this Janice. And your brother? What is happening there?’

  ‘I think my brother and I have said all that we have to say to each other. But we mentioned another meeting.’

  ‘The word is that the Party will be banned.’

  ‘And my brother will go to gaol?’

  ‘I think it’s highly likely that someone such as he would go to gaol.’

  Ambrose then looked at her sternly. ‘Let us be careful that we do not go with him.’

  ‘Have you heard of internment camps?’

  ‘Frederick mentioned internment camps?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ambrose put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘You know, I would like for us to meet with them again.’

  She was surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like to get a feel for what they are thinking – on their side of the fence.’

  ‘You want to spy on them?’

  ‘I am sure there are things they could tell me that I will not learn from sitting in the High Commission. Call it a fact-finding mission.’

  He sat there, considering this move. ‘I will clear it with the HC so that we don’t get arrested when the balloon goes up, or so that we do not have to defect to Moscow.’

  She didn’t know quite how she felt about this. ‘Do you think I should speak at their congress?’

  ‘No, I do not. That would really land us in the soup.’

  She then faced another question her sisterly mind had avoided. ‘Do you think my brother decided to contact me after all these years because I could serve his purpose at the peace congress?’

  ‘What answer do you want? The political or the jolly?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I cannot discount that your being in the same city together after all these years of being apart – that pure filial curiosity – caused even a hard-bitten Bolshevik to visit you. But nor would it be wise to not consider that he may have another motive. Or that the two motives live side by side and are of equal or unequal strength.’

  He put a hand on her arm. ‘I do have to ask you not to speak at their congress.’

  How unlike Ambrose. The chains of marriage. She would see about that. ‘Do you think the communists run the peace congresses?’

  ‘Probably. Throughout history the enemy has always financed peace movements on the other side – even in the American civil war. Probably in Roman times.’

  ‘The Quakers aren’t financed by the Soviet Union. They’re supporting the congress.’

  ‘The Quakers always hope for the best; and hope, as we know, is not a plan.’

  Edith thought about this and laughed. ‘And prayer is not a plan. And a reliance on prophecy is a surrender.’

  Ambrose smiled. ‘I once heard a rabbi at the League say that some Jewish men use prayer as an excuse for laziness in all matters. If they’d devotedly prayed, they felt they’d done enough. Did not have to study the issues.’

  ‘I like to think that the Quakers have a plan of their own. A secret plan.’

  Ambrose looked at her contemplatively. He then added, apropos of nothing, ‘Did you know that eating or drinking while praying invalidates the prayer?’

  ‘Coming from a non-praying, non-believing family, I did not know that.’

  ‘You can’t go to the lavatory while praying, either.’

  ‘If ever I take up praying, I will remember that.’

  The Chat with Janice

  From her writing desk, Edith watched Janice cleaning the room and saw that she had paused at the bookcase and taken out a book – she couldn’t see the title. It was a bookcase they’d had to bring to the room because the hotel did not have one in its furniture store. Also a gramophone. She admired Janice’s figure in the chambermaid uniform, her age late twenties, maybe thirty?

  ‘I see,’ Edith said, ‘that you’ve lowered the hemline of the uniform and taken in the bodice.’

  Janice blushed. ‘Oh, well . . .’ She shrugged and smiled.

  Why did she think that communist women would not care for those matters?

  Janice went out to the corridor and hauled in a vacuum cleaner attached to an electricity point in the hallway. She opened the windows. ‘Put on your ear pads, Mrs Westwood. I’m about to vacuum.’ The vacuum cleaner droned loudly into life.

  Edith called out, ‘Not today, thanks, Janice.’ Janice switched it off and it died away in a moan. ‘I thought we might talk.’

  ‘You spend a lot of time in your room, ma’am – Mrs Westwood,’ Janice said, and began hand-dusting in a desultory way.

  Edith sponged the glue of the envelope and pressed it down. She turned her chair half-around and took off her reading glasses. ‘I suppose a communist would think me a woman of the leisured class. And seeing that you are a friend of my brother, you may stop calling me ma’am and call me Edith.’

  ‘Thank you, Edith. In answer to your question, I meant that I was more worried about you.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll worry about the working class this afternoon.’

  ‘I must appear to be something of a sad sack. Have you seen those American comics of Sad Sack?’

  Janice shook her head. ‘I read only English comics as a kid.’

  ‘So did I, but I saw some of the American comics during the war. To be honest, I have never really read a Sad Sack comic; I have purloined the name.’

  ‘The Party is campaigning to have American comics banned.’

 
‘Oh?’

  ‘Being dumped here – putting Australian artists out of work. Children shouldn’t be brought up to be Americans.’

  ‘I don’t remember Australian comics when I was a child. Only Ginger Meggs.’

  ‘And you must have read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  How could a little girl who read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie become a communist?

  ‘Sit down for a bit. Tell me about yourself, Janice. Without being impolite, I gather you’re attached to him romantically?’

  Janice nodded. She sat on the sofa, leaned back and looked at the ceiling, the feather duster dangling from her hand.

  There were two things Edith’s mother had warned her about when dealing with servants or employees: that it was unfair to put temptation in their way by leaving money about the house, and that it was also unfair to make employed people act as friends. To impose your woes and personal matters on them. The rules didn’t quite apply with Janice; this was somewhat different. Still, she did restrain her impulse to offer Janice a cup of tea.

  She would feel her way. Janice was, after all, somehow, now family.

  ‘You’re somewhat younger than my brother,’ she said, one woman to another.

  Janice said, ‘And you and your husband seem also to have an age difference. If that’s not too personal a thing for a chambermaid to say.’

  Edith heard Janice’s riposte and thought, She turned that back on me.

  ‘Romance is not a word we would use. We are comrades. And more.’

  ‘Frederick’s not romantic?’ Edith laughed.

  ‘The Revolution – that’s his romance.’ Janice said it in a way that poked fun at Frederick, and her voice slipped to a more modulated, educated accent, away from her workplace voice.

  ‘I take it you don’t hold the idea of revolution as seriously as he?’

  Janice, feather duster still in hand, smiled at Edith, enigmatically. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘You’ve had an education?’ Edith wondered whether she sounded as though she were a parent interviewing Janice as a prospective wife for Frederick.

  ‘Ah, the private-school accent has betrayed me.’ She laughed again. ‘I went to SCEGGS. I did my snobbery and class training there.’

  ‘And why then does a SCEGGS girl deign to wait on me, an Ascham girl?’

  They shared a laugh.

  And then, in a challenging, harder, but teasing voice, Janice said, ‘But you believe there’s a class destined to wait on you? And that I am not of the serving class?’

  Edith looked away. She supposed that was what she’d meant, but if Janice wanted to play politics then she could play too. ‘I was not evaluating the class system, Janice, I was speaking about expectation. I was sorting out our reality here and now in this room. Our “objective reality”.’

  Janice smiled, obviously appreciating Edith’s return serve. ‘Objective reality. Fred has been at work.’

  Edith took the tease and added, ‘Naturally, I don’t support class distinction, but we have to live in a world with those who do.’

  Janice made a resigned face, nodded and moved the conversation on. ‘I know a lot about you, through Frederick. Other people know about you too – your time at the League. I had serious theoretical objections to the League, but I admire you. As a woman.’

  She was pleased to be admired by a smart-talking young communist. Janice was shifting before her eyes, from chambermaid, to her brother’s lover and her de facto sister-in-law, to hotel spy, to communist, to potential friend. ‘Frederick and I were out of touch for such a long time.’

  ‘He seems to have followed your career, one way or another. And the Party has its spies too.’ She smiled. ‘Including me – it was I who told Frederick that you were living here at the hotel.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘After I saw the piece in the newspaper. I felt a brother should know. Leaving aside the Party line, I would see that the League was a beginning, misconceived, of another sort of internationalism. It might have met up with the brotherhood of man at some point in history. Don’t tell Fred I said that.’

  Janice’s request for confidentiality reminded her of a third rule her mother had about servants: never ask them to lie for you. But here the servant was asking her employer to lie for her. In a sense. ‘You seem to take your communism lightly?’

  Janice became alert. ‘Don’t be misled. I like the dedication of the Party. I like the organisation – although I have to say that it is more impressive on paper. And don’t tell Fred I said that. He’ll have me up before a verification committee. Some bitchy comrades say that I am not a communist, I just sleep with one. Fred thinks no one knows; they all know.’ She ran her hand through the feather duster. ‘I am a communist.’

  ‘I had better keep a list of things I shouldn’t tell Frederick. I suppose I lean more towards Fabian socialism. Or rather, a dreamy Spanish anarchism. In the meantime, I’m a pragmatic kind of democrat.’

  Janice shrugged.

  Edith went on, ‘I knew the anarchist leader Ascaso, just before the Spanish war began.’

  ‘You were in Spain during the civil war?’

  ‘I met him when I went down to Spain in 1936 to do a small report on something, maybe telephone systems. Oh dear, all the small reports and recommendations I have made – all now dust. A life of small reports. I went down again with the League Commission in 1938. He was dead by then. Shot.’

  Janice was interested. ‘What was he like, Ascaso?’

  Edith considered what to say – after all, Janice had slipped into the conversation that she was sleeping with Frederick. She dived in, ‘Ascaso was by far the most dangerous man I have slept with. It was just an amourette.’

  ‘Amourette. Mrs Westwood – Edith. I’ll use that – amourette. The word would make some of my early fumbles in the dark sound more exotic, even charming. We weren’t taught that word in French lessons at SCEGGS.’

  ‘I do remember wishing that he would shave more closely. And more often.’

  Janice laughed loudly. ‘I sometimes wish Fred would, too. Some days he thinks some stubble is working class, other days he shaves and sees himself setting an example of hygiene and self-responsibility. As a good communist.’

  She looked at Janice and risked a further revelation, feeling that this was the way forward between them. Lowering her voice, she said, ‘I also always washed Ascaso’s privates before we had sex. He seemed to be unconcerned with the duties of hygiene. I fantasised that he had just come to me, muddy from battle.’ She coloured at her candour. In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘He liked having his privates washed in warm water. And dried.’

  Janice laughed and also blushed. ‘Did you meet Durruti?’

  ‘I would have liked to. If we are to exchange such secrets, Janice, put down that duster and make us a cup of tea – there’s some black Ceylon there, and some fresh milk that came up this morning. And you will find the last of our Belgian chocolate there somewhere – let’s finish it.’ She heard the bossiness in her voice and, in contrition, sprang up and went to help with the chocolate and tea. ‘I didn’t mean to boss you.’

  ‘I’m accustomed to being bossed. That is why I do this job – to get to know what most people have to put up with all their lives: being bossed.’ Janice stopped herself, as if she feared becoming preachy, and shifted the conversation. ‘You know, you’re the only guests who have ever rearranged the furniture. And you brought in some of your own furniture.’

  ‘We were trying to make the suite more liveable.’

  The slow electric jug was becoming noisy as it approached boiling.

  Edith went on. ‘At the League, I rather liked being a subaltern in administration. I suppose, though, that was the pleasure of carrying out orders while being something of a colleague. And it’s part of being young, being a trainee. That’s not really being bossed around, because the subaltern often gets to run her boss, and the boss leaves more and more to the good
subaltern. But I do rather like to have an . . . ancillary role. Perhaps it has to do with being a woman – the way we are brought up – but I think not. I think there’s a type of personality that performs best at that role. The best work I did with the League was as a lieutenant, I think. Not the captain. Then in UNRRA, organising refugees, I was equivalent to the rank of major, but I still reported to a colonel.’

  Edith did not put into words that sometimes there had also been a dreadful pull towards the silent offering of herself to superior men, a wishing to be taken over and to serve – utterly. She had always resisted that urge. Yet, paradoxically, the two men in her married life – Robert and Ambrose – had also been, oddly enough, disposed to subordinate themselves to her. And that had suited her.

  ‘I would think that is something else,’ Janice said as she went about making the tea. ‘The difference is that you felt yourself part of the officer class, even if junior.’

  ‘Tell me about Frederick.’

  Janice pretended to think, finger to her forehead. ‘He is very thorough. He accounts for every penny of petty cash. He will walk miles rather than spend Party funds on transport. He does it all by bus, train and borrowed car.’ She laughed. ‘In his library he turns the unread books spine to the wall, in case people think he’s claiming them as books he’s read.’

  There was something delectable in hearing details about one’s family from a stranger; it was like listening at a keyhole.

  ‘But you don’t live at this camp on the hill – with all the men?’

  ‘I have a room here. Servants’ quarters.’

  Janice served the tea. ‘Sugar, ma’am?’ She parodied her servant voice, holding a sugar cube with tongs. ‘He sneaks in for nocturnal visits.’

  ‘One, thank you, Janice. You do the voice very well. Is Frederick scared about the banning of the Party? Are you scared?’

  ‘We are all scared, but we are prepared. Preparations are being made to go underground.’ Janice glanced at her uneasily.

  ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘They may torture it out of you.’