Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How could you possibly know he was my brother?’

  Mr T pondered his answer. ‘There’s a resemblance. And he sometimes sounds like you.’

  ‘I would not have thought he sounded like me.’

  ‘Oh, not what he says – more tone of voice. He’s also a bit plummy – no offence – although he tries to conceal it. He might have said his sister worked here. Something like that. Nothing sinister.’

  ‘I wanted you to be in the picture. In case you are at risk.’

  ‘Thank you. After our other talk I went to the library and read the Universal Declaration. I might have it framed.’

  She reached over and put her hand on his in a companionable way. He was a confrère.

  That week there was a Civil Defence nuclear-attack drill, and Mr T and another clerk, as part of the exercise, gathered in her office, each with a red fire bucket filled with sand, a first-aid kit, an ex-army helmet painted white, and a lever-pump fire extinguisher, which fitted on the back.

  They sat there as the siren wailed.

  The other clerk said they should crouch under her desk.

  She looked at Mr T and said, dead-pan, ‘I think we can take that as read. You agree, Mr T?’

  He nodded and said, ‘As read.’ He asked her permission to tell a joke.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘You know what the actual instructions are about what we should do in the case of a nuclear attack?’

  ‘Tell me, Mr T.’

  ‘It’s a little rude.’

  ‘I don’t think I will faint.’

  ‘The real instructions are: take off your helmet; put down your bucket; bend over and kiss your arse goodbye.’

  He faltered on the word arse.

  ‘I think that may very well be the best advice we have, Mr T.’

  The other clerk blushed, but laughed.

  Best Show in Town

  Having a residence meant that Edith no longer had to put up with the ethical discomfort of watching Janice clean their rooms, but she also missed chatting and, to put it candidly, appreciating the physical presence of Janice, as the essence of a young woman. To be even more candid, there was some degree of doting in her feelings for Janice, perhaps even a ‘crush’, as the Americans would say, although she hoped she never made it obvious in any way, shape or form.

  There was also melancholia in her appreciation of Janice, seeing in her the passing of her own youth. Perhaps she was secretly stealing Janice’s youthfulness – the age of thirty seemed to her now to be youthful.

  If youthfulness could be stolen, no youth would be safe.

  Janice and she still had morning coffee or afternoon tea over at the Liberty Café in Manuka or at the Blue Moon – sometimes with assistance from her hipflask. Sometimes Frederick would join them. Sometimes they had toasted sandwiches, which Janice always insisted must have the crusts removed.

  Frederick always arrived after Janice to check whether they were being followed. She had laughed at his histrionic caution. How would you ever know whether you were being watched? He had said that after a while the same faces showed up. Edith did not mention to either of them her meeting with the intelligence agent. She was not sure why.

  Probably because of her teasing, Frederick had stopped dressing like a Welsh miner and was now more regular in his dress.

  Although Ambrose sometimes suggested that the four of them have a meal together – perhaps he was being the dutiful brother-in-law or perhaps the spy – she noted that she sometimes didn’t tell him about these café twosomes and threesomes. Perhaps the security reports that came onto his desk said, ‘Wife of Major Westwood seen at Liberty Café with known communists.’

  ‘Why aren’t you down in Melbourne at the Peace Congress?’ she asked Janice.

  Janice shrugged. ‘I know it’s silly, but I didn’t want to leave the hotel short-handed with all the people coming to Canberra for the sitting of parliament. If I’m not there, the work falls on the others. The Party always says that to be effective, communists had to be very good at their workplace. Anyhow, I’m flat-out organising the demonstrations for the night of the bill.’

  Janice looked directly into her eyes and asked her if she were going to join in the protests outside Parliament House.

  Wanting to be on Janice’s side, she was a little fazed by Janice’s effort at recruitment and had to say, a little shamefacedly, that Ambrose and she had been given reserved seats in the diplomatic gallery. ‘I’m afraid, dear Janice, we will be on opposite sides of the barricade.’ She looked away from Janice’s stare.

  Janice laughed. ‘Traitor.’ She poked her tongue at Edith and they smirked at each other.

  Edith was relieved.

  ‘You’d be well placed, then, to throw rotten eggs,’ Janice said. ‘We can’t get seats in the House. The Libs are getting all the tickets. Stacking the gallery. Perhaps the Major would get Frederick and me seats. As friends and relatives.’

  Edith then wondered whether they could get seats for them in the public gallery. They were hardly bomb throwers or even rotten-egg throwers. Or perhaps they were rotten-egg throwers? No, that was too much to ask Ambrose-of-the-Homburg-hat-and-umbrella.

  Janice said, ‘I thought you might protest. You came to the meeting at the Causeway.’

  ‘I am against the bill. Even Ambrose is against it. He calls it the “banishings and huntings bill”. But he has to be there representing the HC. He still thinks there could be a world war, but doesn’t think banishing you communists here will stop it. Will there be riots?’

  ‘The police may riot against us. Someone in the force told us that all police leave in New South Wales has been cancelled.’

  ‘Really?’ Edith thought that Ambrose would probably be interested in this sort of information. Was she herself, then, now an assistant spy for the HC? Perhaps, as the agent had suggested in her interview, she passed on information unwittingly.

  How many things did she – did we all – do unwittingly? What if much of human conduct was unwitting? Inadvertent.

  Janice was high-spirited about it all. ‘Country police and many Sydney police are being driven up here in government buses. Do you know which entrance you will go in?’

  Edith hesitated. ‘Honestly, no. There are special passes and most doors to Parliament House will be barred.’

  ‘May I see one of the passes? Perhaps we could forge some.’

  Edith was a little piqued by Janice’s request. Given the unusual circumstances of their friendship, Janice should be more discerning. She laughed it off. ‘That would be giving away state secrets.’

  Janice seemed to become serious and went into developing a plan. ‘If we had an official pass, we could print up a few hundred and infiltrate. Or cause havoc.’

  ‘And it would all be traced back to me and I would go to gaol.’

  ‘We’re all going to gaol if this bill goes through. You will go to gaol for being my friend.’ She gestured around at the café. ‘The workers here will go to gaol for knowing me.’

  When jokes were made about the bill, Edith wondered just how far the government would go. Yet the communist Mr Sharkey had been gaoled for years for saying something seditious last year, and that was under a Labor government. Ambrose thought that the government was deadly serious – that the bill wasn’t just for show or dreamed up simply to wreck the Labor Party. Ambrose had been told that there had been chortling in Cabinet about the consternation that the bill was causing in the Labor Party, which did not wish to be seen as defending the communists.

  She sometimes thought Janice was in politics for the sport of it as much as from dedication to the cause. Or was it that she wanted to believe that of her? Why couldn’t she take Janice’s or her brother’s politics as seriously as perhaps she should? And what would follow from any such seriousness so taken?

  Janice went on, ‘Don’t you think it would be a lark to have the place teeming with coms with false passes?’

  ‘You would
really print up forgeries?’

  ‘We would if we were in Nazi Germany, and this is what the Nazis were trying to do – ban the opposition parties. The Party has plans for going underground. We did it in 1940.’

  She saw Janice considering what to say or not say about this. ‘A particular problem presented to the Party by the situation is to learn to skilfully combine legal and illegal work – preserving internal organisational secrecy against the activity of the security police.’

  She had thought of Janice as something of an innocent, but sometimes, such as with this bill, she saw herself as the innocent. ‘Of course, everyone, including the security police, knows that the party has prepared for a long time to ensure that it’ll be able to carry on, irrespective of the conditions imposed on it by the enemy.’

  Edith had known people in the resistance in Europe during the war. In a sense, she, too, had been in it. Even in Geneva, things had been truly dangerous. She had been assaulted by the Action Civique. And the Molly Club had been outwardly a place of frivolity, however it was also a secret headquarters of resistance. She thought of telling Janice, but it all seemed so far from the life and times here in Australia. She reminded herself that Janice had been through the war, through the Depression. Yet through the war and through the Depression meant different things to different people in different countries. She looked at Janice and saw that she was not just fooling about, that she was ready to take risks, but, still, her tone did have something of the uni commem-day prank about it.

  ‘Isn’t that being melodramatic?’

  ‘Is it?’ A stinging reply. No commem-day student in that tone.

  Edith shifted her level of gravity. ‘The passes are, I think, under lock and key at the High Commission. And I couldn’t put Ambrose at risk, even for you.’ Then she thought she may as well let Janice have it. ‘It’s an unfair ask, Janice.’

  Janice looked away and coloured a little. She stood up and said she should go. ‘I was tactless about the passes, sorry.’ She could tell that the apology took some effort on Janice’s part and was lame. ‘No,’ Janice said, ‘I’m not sorry. This is all deadly serious. You should throw yourself into the struggle. If you had any sense of –’ she searched for the word – ‘true apprehension.’ It was not one of the jargon words. It was truly felt.

  ‘I am apprehensive, but I do not intend to create havoc in my own life. That would simply disable me for no true gain. Forged passes will not change the government or their intentions.’

  Janice took money from her purse and put it on the table for her share of the bill. ‘We never know which bullet won the battle.’

  ‘Janice, don’t stalk off.’

  Janice said, ‘I think this is a problem for us. For us as friends. Will you invite us to meet your other friends?’

  Edith felt a sharp unease in her stomach, which was not connected to political argument. It was about Janice’s withdrawal of affection.

  Edith looked up at her and said, ‘Can’t we disagree on tactics?’

  Janice stood there. She seemed to be thinking.

  Edith went on, ‘We can disagree and still be close?’ It came out as a question and a plea.

  Janice said, ‘I wonder how we can be close. On the night of the bill, you will be hobnobbing with people who want to put your brother and me in gaol.’

  Edith thought that surely Janice could not authorise this sort of action – the forging of documents.

  Janice stood there and seemed to be going through critical introspection.

  Edith carried on, ‘I’m there as an observer. So is Ambrose – in one sense. Ambrose and I are often thrown into company not of our choosing. It is in the nature of civility that we learn to mix in an easy way with those with whom we do not agree.’

  ‘Neutral means not making a choice in your fate.’ There was steel in Janice’s tone, but it was also something of a platitude.

  ‘Sometimes, doing nothing is a way of doing something – or, more precisely, in some circles not agreeing or disagreeing can itself cast a shadow of doubt.’ She knew enough of Frederick and Janice’s way of thinking to know that this line of thinking – civility and such – would not cut it.

  In her mind, Edith heard voices from the past, arguments from back at the League. She had once said, when asked to give a conference the status of ‘benevolent neutrality’, she would show neither benevolence nor malevolence. Undersecretary General Bartou had said, ‘I have never heard the expression “benevolent neutrality”. Nor can I conceive of the diplomatic condition of malevolent neutrality or of benevolent neutrality. Neutrality is either blind to good and to evil, or it is not neutrality.’

  At the time, she had thought Bartou had been simplistic. Sometimes, if not always, neutrality aids one side or another. Such blindness could not exist. Sweden, for example, was neutral to Germany and traded with them during the war. Ball bearings. Sweden’s neutrality was a tactic to avoid being invaded by Germany.

  And as if she had read her thoughts, Janice leaned down with both hands on the table and, with some harshness, said quietly, ‘They say in Harlan County that there are no neutrals there. You either are a union man or a scab for J. H. Blair.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She felt flustered and her stomach still hurt emotionally.

  ‘Your lot have only one song – “God Save the King”. Or is it “Onward Christian Soldiers” ’

  That was aggressive and petty. Edith muttered back, ‘This government is not my government. They are not my songs.’

  Janice crouched down and, in a rather beautiful voice, looking into Edith’s eyes, quietly sang to a hymn-like tune:

  Come all you good workers,

  Good news to you I’ll tell

  Of how the good old union

  Has come in here to dwell.

  Which side are you on?

  Which side are you on?

  Which side are you on?

  Which side are you on?

  Don’t scab for the bosses,

  Don’t listen to their lies.

  Us poor folks haven’t got a chance

  Unless we organise.

  Despite the strength of the words and its embracing melody, Edith thought Janice’s posturing and the sentiments of the song were rather unearned, given her privileged background. She held back from saying so because she saw something else – that Janice was singing to her.

  Janice said, ‘It was written by the wife of a miner who was in the battle for their rights after anti-union thugs came to her house.’

  ‘But in another country – in the US – it is not an Australian song.’ She did not show her irritation at Janice’s posturing, wanting so much to be in harmony with her. ‘And who is or was J. H. Blair?’

  Janice coloured. ‘How embarrassing. I should know. I forget.’

  Good. Janice was off balance.

  And then Janice laughed. ‘You’ve exposed me as a phoney.’

  The tension evaporated.

  Janice sat down and became warm again. She reached out and held Edith’s hands, and Edith’s stomach relaxed. ‘Dear Edith, I don’t want your squalid passes. That was a childish idea. Lenin should have taught me that. But at least, Edith, stand with the people who will be locked out of the so-called people’s house.’

  As they held hands across the table, an ugly blowfly of a thought again came into her head: was Janice using her affection as persuasion, as ulterior seduction?

  She had once been told that you should never become seasoned at seduction or you will never become a true lover – you will become only a fine seducer. It was a pernicious skill.

  Or was it the reverse? Was she, herself, unwittingly a seducer of women? It was not the first time she had wandered into this zone. Was she oblivious to her behaviour towards women? Her mind timidly returned to her misunderstandings with a colleague, Jeanne, back at the League. They had pulled each other’s hair like two schoolgirls. And her mind returned to an American woman at the naval disarmament conference where there had been a m
isunderstanding. And with a refugee girl in Vienna. Always, there seemed nothing unnatural about the feelings she had towards women, but then it all went wrong, galloped out and away from her sense of comfort. Was it really she who employed seductive manoeuvrings and then baulked at the hurdle? The Bloomsbury women didn’t baulk at the hurdle. What lay on the other side of the hurdle?

  And again and again and again the question returned: why was she involved with a man such as Ambrose over all this time? This feminine man. It said something about her, which she at times heard: the truth that her mind and her body were able to take this anomaly into her life and blend it and savour it; that she was able to live it out as a secret kept from the closest of friends as well as from the public. It was part of her. There had been those free and daring days of the Molly Club and other places in Europe after the First World War when anything had been possible – a time of delightful outrageousness when no one really cared much, but that time had passed. Within her marriage the anomaly also remained tacit, without proper scrutiny, because scrutiny would have led them into an inexplicable quandary. Ambrose and she in their sexuality now lived like the underground communists.

  But surely she and Ambrose had scrutinised all this at some time? If they had, again, her mind had lost memory of it.

  And oh, oh, Edith felt a wave move through her. She wanted so much to be seduced – politically. Yes. She wanted to be holding hands, or arms linked, with Janice in a demonstration, to be singing her songs, their heads leaning into each other, hair mingled. Like the photographs of the young Russian women in the Soviet magazines.

  She resented that she was tied up with Ambrose and the hyper-sensitive High Commission, always considering whether it affected things for him as well as how it affected her own aspirations to be a diplomat, however dim they now were.

  Janice again looked her in the eyes intensely. ‘You know you’ll have to cross the picket line. I’ll be there watching for you, and Fred, too. You in your furs and pearls.’ Janice started the sentence seriously and then laughed when she said ‘furs and pearls’. She leaned over and kissed Edith’s cheek. The pressure was off. ‘I know I shouldn’t be so pushy. It’s a bit obnoxious.’ Now she was just one private schoolgirl talking to another.