Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  He did desist as she pushed back at him, though.

  As he made to go, he went to the cumquat pot and scooped out a handful of soil, which he threw into the air and watched fall to the floor.

  Her disarray after his advance was further confounded by this weird act.

  ‘Study the fall of the soil, E. Read the geomancers. Know who they are.’

  Scraper hobbled away out of the office.

  Breathless, Edith sat and collected herself.

  Then he was back again. Oh God. This time he simply hovered at the door. ‘Beware of anything that has a cross at its heart. And this city has a cross at its heart. The cross is one of the most ancient symbols, probably the first symbol. Probably the first human construction. We tied two sticks together and hey presto – magic. Thus the division of the world into four elements and then into four cardinal points. False. There are many, many points of direction, not just four. And we know many more elements. Some still hold to the primitive power – what the first humans felt. Humbug. Dangerous humbug.’

  His attention wandered and then he said cleverly, ‘The Red Cross had better change its name or Menzies will ban it.’ And he laughed.

  She suppressed a smile. She would tell Janice that joke.

  Catching her suppressed smile, he too smiled his crooked smile at the pleasure of having made her react. Before his war injuries, it would have been the youthful smile of seduction. She could almost see the young Scraper from university days behind the crushed face.

  ‘Think about the sacralising of structures. Of course, there is nothing in nature to speak to us except that which we impose upon it, which we make into our echo. But it affects those who believe.’

  Edith now had a question for him, but to ask him a question was like putting her finger into a spider hole. ‘Even if there is a sort of symbolism in the planning, how would it ever affect those who live here? It might please the planners and amuse the gods to whom they pray, but it would be irrelevant to the residents.’

  ‘Ah,’ Scraper said, as if he was perhaps waiting for her question. ‘Those who believe in it – they affect us. If you want to know how it affects those who live by it, come visit me at the Kurrajong. I’ll be here for a few days. Meddling.’

  ‘Tell me, Scraper,’ she said, ‘how did you come to be at that meeting at the Causeway?’

  He seemed to find it difficult to bring his mind back from the symbolism and arcane of the plans. Then his mind reached the question and he replied, ‘Oh, a member of the War Memorial mentioned it. Thought I could make trouble for the coms. So I turned up. They could hardly refuse entry to a crippled Returned Soldier.’ He looked at her. ‘I could ask you the same question. I wouldn’t think you were one of them. Oh yes, the brother. Yes. The brother.’

  He hobbled away again, and she sat expecting him to return yet again, but this time he had truly gone.

  She stood up and stared at the pattern of the soil on the floor, but saw no meaning. It was no Hermann Rorschach test. No sacralising of nature occurred. Avoiding the soil, she then went over to the plans again. This time she did not see the skeleton of a city, with its skin of boundary lines, its bones made from streets, its intestinal curves and clumps, its parkland hearts and lungs. She now saw Scraper’s grinning geomantic patterns.

  And, yes, there was a cross in it at its very heart, perhaps a patriarchal cross or cross of Joan of Arc.

  She used a sheet of typing paper to scoop up the soil and dump it back into the pot.

  Freud likened the human mind to the city of Rome, with all its traces of past habitation and overbuilding and alleyways and cellars and lost parts. An old city represented the unconscious mind. We dream of houses and strangely familiar cities and precincts. Does living in a circle or a pentagon or rhomboid or a square change us?

  She sat at her desk and poured herself a glass of water from her carafe. His crazy ramblings and his sexual lunge at her had made her forehead perspire. She dabbed it with a handkerchief. Her armpits were also perspiring, and her groin and feet.

  She could not finish her letter to Holford. She called Ambrose and asked if the HC car was available and whether Theo could pick her up. She took her coat and hat and put on her gloves, and sat there rather tensely, staring at nothing until he arrived and tooted the horn.

  A House Arrives

  Back at the hotel rooms, she took a sherry and pondered Scraper.

  Ambrose was not yet home. She had taken off her make-up and stockings and was padding about barefoot, which always made her feel girlish. She ran a bath to wash away the perspiration.

  Scraper’s crazed ramblings about the underlying geomancy of the Canberra plan would not go away from her mind, nor did she know how to analyse it away. She knew she could not consult Gibson about this because he would doubt her good sense. Her sanity, even. Nor some of the Canberra experts she had been communicating with about the conference. In fact, she could not think of anyone with whom she could even joke about it. Even Ambrose might come to doubt her senses.

  Yet, what if the Griffins, or whoever, were imposing a pagan or, say, theosophical pattern – perhaps Masonic – on the capitol, and only a small inner circle knew. Who, then, were these people who knew? How would she find out who knew? And if she believed that certain planning and architecture could ennoble those who lived in it and in its midst, then what effect would, say, a mystical manipulation of the citizens produce? Would it still work upon them if they were unaware of it?

  As a Rationalist, she knew it was fundamentally just hokum, but, hokum or not, it was in some ways an attempt at conspiracy if it were true. And hokum – say, in religion – also had its pernicious affects among those who did not believe it to be hokum. And as Scraper had pointed out, to give him his due, believers affected non-believers in serious ways.

  She then remembered the day’s mail on a tray at the table inside the door. Among it was an official letter from her department.

  It was an offer of a house.

  Ambrose came in the door and she waved the letter at him. ‘We have a home.’

  ‘Really? Where is it located?’ He placed his keys and briefcase on the mail table, where he always placed them, and took off his jacket.

  She looked at the letter. ‘The place is called Forrest.’

  ‘A hut in a forest. Show me the letter,’ Ambrose said, loosening his tie and undoing his shoelaces. He poured himself a sherry and sat on the sofa. ‘I am very tired of this living in a hotel.’ He looked at the letter. ‘Odd. Our application was through the HC. This has come addressed to you. Isn’t this a little irregular?’

  ‘I’ve asked all sorts of people to help find a house. I asked Gibson, I asked McLaren.’

  She turned to him on the sofa, kissed his cheek and hugged him. ‘This is good,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, I am rather sweaty.’

  ‘If we still want to stay in this country,’ he said, still staring at the letter.

  ‘Whatever happens, we’ll be here for sometime to come. Until after the conference. It could have come through Latham or Bruce. I asked them to help.’

  Or even the man who put his hand on her knee? When was he going to surface in her life again?

  ‘They would have done it through the HC. There’s a huge waiting list – about 3000 waiting for houses. And even though we have priority, there’s still a long priority list.’

  She said that she thought that maybe it was Gibson. The Department of Interior managed the lists.

  ‘They would have gone back to the application from the HC and would have channelled it through the HC. It’s the HC that is to take the lease.’

  ‘It’s a house, darling. Let’s not worry about formality. It’s official, it’s on Department letter head. Let’s just get out of this damned hotel.’

  Ambrose looked at her and again at the letter. ‘I see it’s signed by a clerk. But yes,’ he said without conviction, ‘let’s not worry. Let’s just take it.’

  She said, ‘It’s an FCC type 15. Rathe
r special. I’m an expert.’ She was showing off her new knowledge of housing types. ‘Because of the HC we would be offered a type 15 – that’s an upper-class house.’ What would Frederick and Janice say? They would, at least, tease in their serious way.

  She took the letter again and looked at the signature, but couldn’t decipher it. It was signed on behalf of the Secretary of the Department, which was quite normal.

  He asked her, ‘Do you know this place Forrest?’

  She said, ‘Quite decent. Leafy.’ Everywhere was leafy. ‘It’s the place where the senior public servants and so on are housed. I am sure that the HC would have been given somewhere up there. Someone said that there is something of a bohemian element there. The professors and intellectuals are there. I have heard it referred to as “culture corner”. Bloomsbury on the Molonglo.’

  She could tell that he was troubled by the way the offer had been made.

  ‘Ambrose, it’s a house. I also have heard that in some of the gardens of Forrest are to be found opium poppies, which have wandered from botanical laboratories of the CSIRO. Does that interest you?’

  He was not in a joking mood. ‘It will have to go through the HC anyhow, if they are to pay.’

  ‘Oh, we can pay. I mean, I can pay.’

  Ambrose turned grumpy. ‘That’s not the point. In a sense, the house is an extension of the High Commission. Diplomatic immunity and so on. Entertainment of foreign guests and so on.’

  ‘But of course the HC should pay. Of course.’ She laughed. ‘Entertainment! What entertainment? We have a foreign visitor once in a blue moon. Everyone else has entertained everyone else over and over. My bath is getting cold.’ And anyhow, they used the Chancery for entertainment.

  She added bath salts, which were supposed to relax the body. She couldn’t quite see how that would work – physiologically. Still, one had to use whatever to get through this life. She would have another look at the letter and the signature. It could be that of Mr Thomas, who had become an ally. She would compare it at work with other documents she knew he had signed. She did not recognise it, but it would be one of the clerks.

  As she slipped into her bath, she thought that Ambrose was becoming stuffy. He who had taught her whimsy and caprice. Perhaps he had been more damaged by the collapse of the League than he let on.

  In the dining room that night, Janice was waiting on table. When she got to them, she said, ‘I hear you have some good news.’

  ‘What news is that?’ Edith asked.

  ‘The house . . .’

  They both looked at her. Edith asked, ‘You know about the house?’

  Janice seemed to realise that she had revealed that she knew what she should not perhaps know.

  ‘A little bird told me,’ she said, blushing. ‘Jungle drums.’

  Ambrose was studying her. ‘And what little bird might that be?’ he asked in his jolly voice, which she knew was his way of interrogation.

  Janice laughed and ignored the question. ‘May I take your order?’

  ‘No, I would like to meet this little bird,’ he said, touching her arm in a jovial way, but there was also serious intent in his words.

  Janice shrugged and laughed it away, saying, ‘My secret.’

  They ordered and Janice left.

  ‘How would she know about the house?’ he asked. His tone was deadly serious.

  ‘Small town.’

  ‘Or she reads our mail.’

  ‘I think small town.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe you’re right.’

  After dinner, Ambrose went off to do some work in his room, and she listened to a concert on the wireless, but her mind kept drifting off the music.

  Ambrose and she had had a dinner and a picnic with Janice and Frederick, but Frederick was quite often away – doing his organising. Her chats with Janice had gone from her life now that she had a position; still, she had tea with her now and then. She kept hoping, she supposed, that any contact with Frederick would be the last time. The Causeway, for example. But it was Ambrose who had urged her on because of his so-called fact-finding mission.

  It was the being a sister that was still besetting her. She had realised that being a sister also carried with it something of a maternal response; something passed from the mother’s obligations and duties to her, the daughter. Obligations to the brother and to the father after the mother had gone. True, she had got as far as deciding that being a sister was not an inescapable onus or compact – that we decide to accept the blood bond or kin bond or we don’t, and that siblings could change into strangers and disappear, as it were, into the crowd. What percentage of this man Frederick who had presented himself as her brother was her brother, as she had known him as a child? Was any of that person left?

  She turned off the concert and went to the connecting door. ‘Ambrose, I am going to slip something on and go down to the lounge for a Scotch. We are out of Scotch.’

  ‘Have a bottle sent up.’

  ‘It would take ages. I will bring up a bottle. I feel restless. I need to take a turn around the deck.’

  In the lounge she chased up Janice, who was finishing work and had changed into her street clothes. Edith studied Janice’s clothing. Should she take a lead from her? Or was her style too young?

  ‘May I buy you a drink? Are staff allowed in the lounge? I’ve never been sure of that.’

  Janice winked. ‘I think we can get away with it.’

  They sat down and Edith ordered drinks.

  After some chat, she looked at Janice and said, ‘Did Frederick and you winkle this house for us?’

  ‘Not really. Ask him. Fred said he would use one of his union connections to push your name up the list.’

  ‘I’m not sure that is a correct thing to do.’

  ‘He said you were already on priority and getting near the top.’

  ‘It’s still not quite proper.’

  Janice was uncomfortable. ‘You are, after all, his sister. He was being brotherly.’

  ‘Or is he obligating me?’ This could have repercussions. Was she worried about repercussions or about fairness?

  ‘Edith, you’re a tough one. I think he did it as a gift. Or maybe he did it to show off to you. Perhaps he wanted to impress you, his sister.’

  ‘To impress his sister?’

  ‘The Party has power in its own way. And anyhow, as I said, you were entitled to a house and it was only a matter of weeks before you got one.’

  Janice took her hand. ‘Accept it for everything that it is. Nothing bad could come of it.’ She then laced her fingers into Edith’s. Edith found it strengthening. Janice finished her drink quickly and said that she must go. ‘A meeting, of course.’ She stood up, leaned over and kissed Edith’s cheek. Edith devoured the kiss.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the car.’

  Outside, at the car she said, ‘I’ll have to get a car, you must advise me . . .’ She smiled. ‘I know there’s a waiting list for cars, but please do not pull strings for me.’

  They laughed.

  ‘I don’t think the Communist Party has much influence with the Morris Motor Company or Rolls-Royce, although you never know.’

  ‘We won’t be getting a Rolls.’

  ‘A Holden? The people’s car.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think so.’ As she said it, she wondered whether Ambrose was entitled to a car. The HC had a Bentley, which they used when the HC wasn’t using it. Couldn’t have a car superior to the HC. Edith changed the subject, and it was she who took Janice’s hand this time. ‘I hate it when you wait on us and clean our room, but that will change now that we are moving out. I miss our chats.’

  Janice wagged a finger at her. ‘How class-conscious. It’s my job to clean. People who do those jobs are not demeaning themselves unless those who use their services demean them. Work itself in any form is not demeaning, only our relationship to it. Capitalism makes it demeaning because it is the old servant–master relationship.’

  ‘I know, I know. We’ve be
en through this.’

  Edith had been making a social apology, and although Janice used a lenient tone for her unexpected rebuke, it was still a rebuke. Edith felt abruptly as if she were somehow behind in her understanding of the world; that there were ways of thinking that had passed her by. Maybe it was time for her to take a seat back in the school of life and listen to these young, passionate teachers. Frederick had given her books; she had made random excursions into them but had not read them systematically yet. When he first gave her books to read he said that he had not read Marx and Lenin to become a communist – from the age of twelve he was already a communist.

  Quietly, Edith said, ‘I suppose I’m saying that one shouldn’t be waited on by someone they know personally. Especially when one is fond – very fond – of that person.’

  She resisted taking Janice by the shoulders and shaking her.

  ‘It’s not as if I’m socially excluded by you. We take tea together. Or do you mean that someone of my background shouldn’t have to do it – it is work that belongs to the lower classes?’

  In the darkness, Edith’s face warmed. There was truth in that, but it was not the full answer. ‘It’s more that it’s an arrangement of awkwardness. In the dining room, for example, you cannot sit down with us. And yes, I do consider you to be capable of better work as well.’ She wondered what error of political etiquette lay within that sentence. ‘And I can’t bear it that you clean our toilet bowl.’

  ‘Your bowl is always spotless.’

  ‘Because I make sure it is. In any hotel.’

  They both made faces at each other about the ricocheting complications and personal detail contained within this remark, and laughed.

  Janice spoke first. ‘That means you are cleaning the toilet bowl for me.’

  ‘I suppose so. And when we stand back and look at it, anthropologically, it doesn’t really matter. It is very Victorian to even raise it.’