Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  McLaren grunted. ‘I know about the success story of the League of Nations.’ He looked down at her résumé.

  She moved her gloves from one hand to another. But did not bite.

  McLaren looked at her and said, ‘What do you think of this damned lake?’

  She was unsure of his meaning, and then took it that he meant the lake for Canberra, which everyone talked of as something that would never happen. He, at least, was treating her as a person who might, just might, have an opinion. ‘Having lived in Geneva –’ She threw that in – ‘Woodrow Wilson thought a lake calming to negotiation. And it puts ozone in the air.’ She wondered if this were true; she’d heard it so often back there in Geneva, but had never looked at the scientific premise behind it.

  ‘Ozone?’ McLaren said. He grunted some distaste. ‘Tasmania wants Canberra closed down for a hundred years until we can afford it and are ready for it.’ He seemed to agree with Tasmania. ‘Isn’t all that water in Lake George enough for you?’

  She said, ‘The lake is in the original plan for the city. Finish what you start.’ She might as well go on. ‘ “He who commences many things finishes few.” I suspect that this is the quandary of your department with its multifarious functions – agriculture, immigrants, defence things, electoral matters, forestry regulations, Aboriginal affairs, motor-vehicle licences, meteorology, passports, shipping, surveying and mapping, war memorials and Canberra works. Have I missed any?’

  She was smug at her remembering the list; something like a girl tested on her homework.

  She thought McLaren smiled.

  She went on about the lake, ‘I think Wilson meant the lake brought placidity – mutual concession, and so on. I am not sure that it does. I am not sure about the ozone, either. I meant in the British sense, invigorating – not the scientific sense of being a pungent, toxic form of oxygen.’

  Throw in some science to a man who did not complete his scientific studies. She kept on, ‘Lakes, more so perhaps than, say, surf. I would not build a house of parliament near surf or a volcano. Or a waterfall. Or rapids.’ She chuckled, more to herself. Neither of the men chuckled.

  McLaren said, ‘I would think that the river channel might be sufficient. A river with a bit of flow to it, something like that. Which we have and which costs us nothing. Forget the lake.’

  McLaren then nodded at Gibson, who rose. She rose with him and together they left to go to Gibson’s office. There was no shaking of hands.

  Walking along the corridor, Gibson said, ‘Haven’t heard anyone play verbal table tennis with McLaren.’

  ‘I don’t really remember him.’

  Gibson said, ‘Mrs Westwood, you understand that you will not be a public servant. You will be employed by the Congress, working in our offices at Interior. For an honorarium. The visit to McLaren was a courtesy.’

  So. She was being offered the position. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’ll be attached to my office to liaise with Peter Harrison in Sydney, who’s the official Secretary of the Congress. But you will represent the Department, in a sense, by delegation from me. Know anything about town planning?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’m afraid the position will be that you take dictation – I see that you have done that – file documents; telephone people; book rooms. Nothing grand, sorry.’ He had said all this before the meeting.

  Gibson didn’t worry her.

  It was the vagueness of the ‘liaise’ and the ‘represent’ part of the description of this position that enticed her. She had learned that she could fashion and elevate a position through the doorways of those two words. In Geneva, Bartou had once told her that ill-defined positions carried a secret power. Those around such a person could never be sure where that person’s authority ended.

  But nor was authority always granted.

  The apology was also a way of keeping her down to size. He kept on, ‘It’s just a job for a glorified office assistant. Feel bad about it. Anyhow, would you like to see where you would work if you joined us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They drove to Acton, where Gibson and his team had their offices in rather simple weatherboard buildings with stage-set porticos.

  Gibson said the weatherboard buildings were the first erected at the start of the building of the city to house surveyors, engineers, draughtsmen and so on. ‘After they moved out of tents. This was a village.’

  ‘The Griffins worked in these buildings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In his office she went over to a draughtsman’s desk. ‘What are these drawings, these illustrations? These grey-greens work?’ And the ochres, golds, browns and russets.

  ‘They are illustrations of Griffin’s idea of Canberra – drawn by his wife, we think. She was an architect too. I got them over from the Department of Works. They’re a bit dusty. I wanted to have a quick look at them. Not much use.’

  She looked at them one by one, mounted on chipboard backings. ‘They’re rather magnificent.’

  With her fingers, she touched them carefully. They seemed to ask to be respectfully touched in the same way that they had been so assiduously created.

  He came and stood behind, and looked at them as if for the first time. ‘I suppose they are rather good in a dreamy sort of way. I see them just as architectural sketches. There are more in a drawer over in one of the Nissan huts.’

  ‘I must see them. Would you get them out for me? Please? And these are Griffin’s plans too?’

  ‘Griffin’s plans – surpassed now. Remember, they were done before air travel, before everyone could own the motorcar, before the autobahn or the super highway. Although you’d think from the plans that we all flew like birds and that was how we would always look at the city – from a bird’s-eye view or from an aeroplane.’ And he added with a kind of distrust, ‘And all that statutory pattern.’

  She continued to look at the drawings done by Mrs Griffin. ‘These say more than they depict.’

  Gibson didn’t respond.

  She then turned to the plans. ‘And we will see the city from above – from Red Hill, from Mount Ainslie. From “lookouts”. And we will pretty soon all be flying in and out of Canberra. Thankfully, no American skyscrapers.’ She said that the plans were a sort of geometric artistry. ‘Griffin would say “severe simplicity”. The city should be like a fine sculpture – it should be pleasing when looked at from any angle.’

  Gibson then adopted a professional, lecturing tone. ‘Griffin believed in what he called “the order of the site” – that the plan should respond to the nature of the site; hills and so on. And then he talked about “the complementary order of function” – some bending of the natural setting to human requirement.’

  Severe simplicity. She turned over the sheets. ‘The free-flowing along with the severely shaped.’ If she were to describe her own aesthetic, it might be that. And she also knew that simplicity and severe shaping in life were always undermined by the urge to add, the urge to accumulate, which led then to clutter. That always had to be resisted. ‘Look at the lake.’

  ‘As McLaren said, the lake won’t happen.’

  She nearly said, ‘We’ll see.’

  She was surprised how awed she felt by these original drawings and plans done by the fingers of the Griffins. This Marion, this Maid Marion – she visualised them back there in a snow-bound Chicago office studying the contour maps and photographs of the proposed city site, dreaming up a city.

  She even had a small vision of her own – about the lucerne. Why not have a working farm in the heart of the city? With cows and sheep and haystacks. Didn’t Marie Antoinette have her farm – the petit hameau? Edith’s petit hameau – her laiterie d’agrément; her pleasure dairy.

  She might not mention the idea at this moment.

  He said, ‘What we need are more verticals, more variation of skyline, blocks of flats, spires.’

  She thought not. Gibson did not have the awe of the plans there in his off
ice; maybe he was past that.

  Gibson said, ‘Griffin didn’t want skyscrapers because he wanted low, large buildings so that light and air could play their parts. Now we have too bloody much of both. Pardon my French. We have too much light and too much air and too many trees and too little else.’

  She smiled to put him at ease.

  He said, ‘We’re not used to having a lady on site.’

  ‘Your French is very good.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘We are left with the job of making the bloody things work.’

  ‘Is that what the Congress will be about?’

  ‘Holford is coming to sort it all out. At least, that seems to be what everyone thinks. The messiah.’

  She didn’t know much yet about Holford.

  In the last week, she had realised that at the League and so on she had in fact read a little about town planning and was for it. ‘I know something about the Garden City philosophy. I remember my father talking about those ideas.’

  ‘An architect?’

  ‘A water specialist. He found water, he drilled bores, he was a maker of water tanks and dams – but he was also a thinker.’

  She had not thought about all this – the Garden City – for years, and now the conversations and lectures at the Rationalists’ Association in Sydney and in Melbourne she had attended as a girl came trickling back to her. And there had been committees and reports about planning at the League, which had not been in her purview but of which she had been aware, especially plans for the Palais des Nations. Le Corbusier.

  Somewhat against her wishes, she felt that this position being offered to her was falling into place in her life. Formulate the ethos through structures. Destine the nation.

  As she stood there, this idea was like a large, friendly animal, which had leapt into her arms and was grasping her. A large, friendly cat, licking her face, whose befriending she could not escape or reject.

  She said, ‘A planner of the city deserves a special assistant.’

  ‘Special assistant, is it?’ He laughed nervously.

  She turned to him and said, ‘I accept the appointment and I would like to begin on my work today. Now.’

  He laughed. ‘I suspect there are forms to be filled before you can do that.’

  ‘I will begin and the forms can catch me up.’

  She said it so firmly that he looked away, stymied, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he said, ‘We’ll find you a desk. You’ll have to share.’ He gestured down the corridor and began to walk. He glanced at her, as if deciding what nature of woman he had brought into his life. ‘You’ll be paid from the conference budget. I think. We will have to sort that out,’ he said nervously.

  ‘As long as I am on someone’s budget.’ She could forgo payment, but payment, she felt, was a matter of honour. As she walked beside him, she said, ‘I work better in an office of my own. I am a deep concentrator.’

  ‘The position doesn’t call for an office,’ he said. He tried to joke. ‘Nor for a deep concentrator.’

  ‘I think it best, for the appearances of the department and for the impression that you should make as the Senior Planner of the city, that I, as your special assistant, have a personal office.’

  He put his hand to his hair. ‘I suppose in deference to your age and experience we can find you an office – of your own. Hadn’t planned on you having an office. Nor, let it be said, on having a “special assistant”. There’s no real title that goes with the job. It is more a job for a typist.’

  ‘I shall be your special assistant,’ Edith said.

  He touched his hair again.

  He turned them both around and they walked in the other direction to an office where two clerks were working. Gibson spoke to one, asking about ‘Conrad’s office’. One of the clerks said, ‘Vacant.’ Gibson asked for the keys, and the clerk took them from a hook board and handed them to Gibson. ‘Sign here,’ the clerk said, taking up a form from a tray. Gibson handed the form to Edith. ‘You may as well take responsibility for the key.’ He said it as if she were taking over the whole building. She signed it and handed the form to the clerk. She then introduced herself to the two clerks in the office, who hastily stood up from their chairs and shook her offered hand. ‘From today, I am special assistant to Mr Gibson. You may call me –’ She was about to use her married name, behind which she had decided to hide from the connection to her brother, but then decided that it was cowardice – ‘You may call me Campbell Berry.’ They introduced themselves as Mr Thomas and Mr Harry.

  Outside on the steps, Gibson asked why she was using her maiden name. She said that it was best to maintain one’s professional name.

  ‘Then I shall call you Campbell Berry.’

  ‘You could call me Edith, if you wish, if it’s not too informal.’

  He said he might alternate between the two. She didn’t know what to make of that.

  She then said to Gibson, ‘I like Griffin’s geometrical lake – putting water into geometrical shapes. Perhaps it’s art deco. But with room enough for fairies.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Lake fairies. Don’t worry, I’m being playful.’ She glanced at his face. ‘Lakes have fairies, I’m led to believe. Naiads. I should have mentioned this to McLaren.’

  Gibson looked at her. She touched his elbow. ‘I’m having a joke. I rush to assure you that I do not believe in fairies.’

  ‘That’s somewhat of a relief,’ Gibson said.

  ‘But the lake will bring birds and fishes into the heart of our lives.’

  He was, she could tell already, overloaded by her. She must stop being bubbly.

  They arrived at ‘Conrad’s office’, which Gibson unlocked, and they entered. It was small but clean, smelling of public-service wax, furnished in standard PS stock. But she would change all that.

  ‘Do you think Griffin worked here?’

  Gibson laughed. ‘If you would like to believe so.’ He turned to smile at her, showing his unsureness in her presence, and handed her the keys. ‘If you need any piece of furniture, make requisitions through public works, as long as it’s within the inventory scale for the position – and given there is no position I guess there is no scale. When you’re ready, you can come to my office and collect all my files about the Congress. Oh, the ladies’ washrooms, and so on, are down the corridor on the left. I’ll see that you are issued with a handtowel.’

  ‘I shall bring my own towels and toiletries.’

  ‘Of course.’ He rushed off, both from her office and from that subject.

  There was no window as such. She put down her handbag and took off her gloves, then took off her beret, hanging it on the hat stand.

  She sat in the wooden chair and swung. She’d had an awareness – what she would once have called une prise de conscience. The drawings by Mrs Griffin had done it. And the Griffin plans. The vision of it had gripped her for now, for now at this point of history. This was good work for her. It was fertile ground. She had found her way to a point in the scheme of things where she could flourish and move things. She had not thought that it could happen, but it had.

  She had taken the correct turn on the crossroads of circumstance: by taking the path she had not intended to take. By confounding her destiny, and, hey presto, she was now out of the shadow lands.

  On the surface of things, she was back at the level of Gerty, her own personal assistant back at the League, but she sensed both with McLaren and with Gibson that she was being somewhat humoured and would make her own status.

  She went outside to read the number of her office, and then took out some notepaper and worked on her carte de visite.

  In a drawer of the well-waxed desk with its green leather top, she found a roneoed government office telephone directory, picked up the telephone and had the switch put her through to the government printery.

  To a clerk at the other end of the phone line, she dictated her business card. The clerk said that she would have to have it authorised
through the relevant officer. She told them to go ahead and print one hundred cards and that she would get the proper form of authority sent over to them. She would dictate as it was urgent.

  The carte de visite she dictated said:

  Edith Campbell Berry BSc (Syd)

  (Formerly Assistant Chef de Section to Undersecretary General Bartou, League of Nations, Geneva)

  Special Assistant

  Congress of Town and Country Planning Directorate

  Office of Senior City Planner

  Department of the Interior

  Acton

  Australian Capital Territory

  She reasoned that the card would be more a reminder to Australia of who she was.

  She had added the office number and the telephone extension number from there on the telephone in her office. The clerk said, ‘I assume that will be a lady-sized card?’

  She paused. ‘No, make it the size that men usually have their cards.’

  He was silent and then said, ‘Okay. If you say so.’

  She considered spelling Capital as Capitol, but thought that a proofreader would change it.

  She reasoned that neither Gibson nor McLaren would ever see the card, which was, she thought, anyhow, not at all too much of a twist on accuracy.

  She then connected to the telephone switch again and introduced herself. She asked the switch to record her office number and enter her in the revisions for the directory, and then to book a call for her to Peter Harrison at the University of Sydney.

  She put down the telephone and again swivelled in the chair. The images of the Griffins’ Canberra still lit her mind; the geometric world of Mr Griffin arcing electrically with the illustrated world of Mrs Griffin. This Marion.

  Poor Ambrose. He would have to unpack again. Or unpack his already packed-up mind.

  She telephoned him.

  ‘I am now Controller of the Controller of the Capitolium, sitting in Office 302 with telephone extension number 117. Not exactly a situation on Capitoline Hill, but close. And I have a carte de visite printing as we speak.’

  ‘Dear, dear, Edith.’

  ‘And I may use the name “Berry”. To hell with my brother and to hell with hiding.’