Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘I want to look at the link between analysis and theory, and then theory and political organisation, and then organisational discipline and power.’

  ‘Any one of those might do. You should know a bit about all that already.’

  ‘I should, but I don’t. We knew how dangerous capitalism was, but we didn’t know how dangerous communism could be.’

  ‘What do you think Wheelwright and Buckley will know that you don’t? Did they leave or were they expelled?’

  He shrugged. ‘Buckley’s out. They might know something. I want to think it through from the beginning.’

  She went with him in a taxicab to the railway.

  They shook hands at the station. ‘Stay in touch,’ she said, and kissed his cheek. He nodded and said, ‘Let me know when you’re made an ambassador.’

  She smiled. ‘Afraid that is not going to happen.’

  ‘Say hello to the Major when you write to him.’

  The mention of Ambrose moved her. ‘I will.’ Her voice cracked a little.

  She had not heard from Janice. All that Frederick knew was that she had stayed in the Party and was in Melbourne, presumably siding with the Melbourne leadership. When Edith had said that as it turned out it was Janice who was the Stalinist, Frederick had said, without smiling, ‘No – Stalin was a Janicist.’ Frederick said the Party was falling apart. He had heard some of the former members were turning to Scientology. The Party was having to sell its assets to keep afloat. He snorted. ‘They’ll have to go to the Russians for more money.’

  This was the first time he had said that the Party took money from the Soviet Union – ‘Moscow gold’. He and Janice had always denied that money for the Party had come from Russia, always counter-posing that the CIA funded Australian organisations such as the Association for Cultural Freedom and paid for university professors, trade unionists and politicians to travel to America.

  ‘Were the leaders corrupt?’ she asked. ‘Who looked after the petty-cash box?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Some of it would’ve gone on the horses and Chinese dinners, but they lacked any imagination for corruption. And they were pretty much dedicated.’ He thought again. ‘Perhaps there were private bank accounts. I don’t know. But I think the bookies probably got a fair share of the Moscow gold.’ She sensed he was pushing this notion away, already overwhelmed by the larger collapse of his ideals.

  She stood with others on the platform, waving until the train had completely left the platform. She liked the way people stayed to wave, even for such a small journey.

  She sensed that her brother had again left her life.

  Edith had a political dilemma of her own. Again it came from Ambrose via the diplomatic bag – Ambrose’s gifts from the heart of the Empire, and from his own poor heart.

  It contained a parcel for her, which was a copy of an American novel entitled Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Ambrose had attached a memo saying that it was very likely that the book would be banned in Australia because it dealt with nancy-boys – a black nancy-boy, at that. ‘The other item will, likewise, not be read by Australians.’

  When she opened the book, she found the other item glued over a blank page at the back. It was a half-page TOP SECRET memorandum.

  She cut out the page and the memorandum, which was a British report about their atomic tests in Western Australia.

  THE TEST AT ALPHA ISLAND

  Time: 19 June (02:14 GMT; 10:14 WAST)

  Location: Alpha Island, near Monte Bello Island, 20.40 S 115.53 E

  Test Height and Type: Tower, 31 m

  Yield: 98 kt.

  Ambrose had drawn a circle around the ‘Yield: 98 kt’.

  She could see why he had circled the figure. The yield of ninety-eight kilotons seemed very high. It would make it the highest test yield conducted in Australia, and she suspected that it was way above the agreed yield limit.

  She did not know what to make of this. It was the kind of information that would have usually come across her desk, and that even if withheld from her would have reached her ears in the to and fro of the corridors.

  She called Pam, her friend on the staff of the AAEC at Lucas Heights, to see if her memory was right about the yield limit.

  Pam said, yes, from memory the agreed limit was that the yield would not exceed two-and-a-half times that of the Hurricane tests. ‘That would be about sixty-two kilotons.’

  ‘I assume that the Brits are using the same definition of kiloton as we are? Or is this confusion over metric versus American measurement versus imperial measurements?’

  ‘The Brits and we use the same measurements, although the standardisation of the cap K hasn’t been adopted yet.’

  ‘I am thankful that I am not on that sub-committee.’

  Pam laughed. ‘God, yes.’

  Pam said that there was no universal standard measure of an atomic blast. ‘The energy release is affected by such things as charge density, degree of confinement, temperature. Things like that.’

  She said to Pam, ‘What would you make of the measurement of ninety-eight kilotons?’

  ‘I would say that either something went badly wrong or they decided to try for a big bang without telling us. I suspect things got a little out of hand.’

  When she was off the phone, Edith hunted through other files about the British tests and eventually found a note verbale. Yes, the test yield broke an assurance made personally to the Prime Minister by Anthony Eden. At present, there was much concern about something called fallout – radioactive material that blew many miles from the blast and fell into populated areas. The Prime Minister had tried to be strict about it. Beale simply pooh-poohed talk of fallout and said he doubted it existed.

  There were also worries about the British bursting nuclear balloons over Christmas Island in their tests, which could make habitation of the island dangerous. It crossed her mind that eventually there would have to be a stop to the blowing up of islands with these bombs.

  During her hunt through the files she came across another note, the arrogance of which made her smile. A British military report outlined possible dangerous radiation dosages for people near the Grapple nuclear tests in Western Australia. The report noted:

  For civilised populations, assumed to wear boots and clothing and to wash, the amount of fallout necessary to produce a dangerous dosage is more than would be necessary for primitive peoples in the area, who are assumed not to possess these habits . . . It is assumed that in the area of Grapple there may be scantily clad people in boats to whom the criteria of primitive peoples should apply . . . Independent authorities agree that . . . only a very slight health hazard exists and this health hazard would apply only to primitive peoples.

  She rang Pam again and read it to her. They both laughed and Pam said, ‘The primitive people I know are in the government.’ She made a theatrical gasp. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Edith knew that earlier secrecy around the Hurricane tests on Australian soil was high. Cabinet was not in on it – even Beale, although someone said that his Head of Department, Stevens, had disobeyed Menzies and told him about the tests. But now most of the cats were finding their way out of the bags. Except for this yield figure.

  She sat in her office, tapping her teeth with a pencil.

  She wondered if her telephone number for Eden from before the war would still work. She doubted it, though it would not be difficult for her to get through to his office in London. They had met occasionally at official UNRRA receptions after the war.

  What could he possibly say to her if she did call? That the blast was more successful than they had expected? Denial, probably.

  If she told Menzies, he would probably have difficulty confronting Eden. And anyhow, the test could not be undone.

  Menzies could again demand that all tests be kept within agreed limits, but Menzies would not deny the Brits further testing rights because he reasoned that these rights would force Britain into giving Australia access to
nuclear weapons.

  She thought there were many implications from this British deception. They were obviously withholding things – this and whatever else – from the Prime Minister and the Australian scientists. The ‘ancient structural unity’ was not being felt by the British.

  If the allies were cheating on each other, what did that mean for the new IAEA and its safeguards? And the Prime Minister, in turn, was keeping secrets from the Cabinet. Who knew what was really happening? She had missed out on getting to Vienna for the first three general conferences, but she thought there would be a good chance of the Prime Minister sending her to the next as an observer. Would telling him enhance her chances or imperil the possibility of getting to Vienna? Could she do more good by going to the IAEA general conference than by telling tales on the Brits? Or, perhaps, would the IAEA be the best place to discreetly tell these tales?

  If the excessive explosion had been an error, it was dangerous stuff with which to be making mistakes.

  What had Ambrose thought she would – or could – do with the information? Give it to the Australian government? Mention it to her reporter friends? Make a fuss?

  Or was Ambrose part of a clique within the Foreign Office, say, wishing to embarrass Eden or cause a rift between him and Menzies?

  There were already rumours among the science people around the AAEC about a serious accident with a nuclear reactor in the Soviet Union. The information was not being released publicly by the CIA because of its reluctance to bring to public attention the risk of nuclear accidents, which could cause unrest among people living near nuclear facilities in the USA.

  Why bring to the Prime Minister’s attention something for which there was no happy answer and no effective response, and where the situation could not be reversed? Churchill had already taught Australia its lesson on Perfidious Albion.

  She felt that, as a good administrator, it was her duty to distract a Prime Minister as little as possible. To reduce the options confronting him.

  Still, the top-secret memorandum from Ambrose sat there on her desk.

  When she was young, Ambrose had always given her information gifts to use as she saw fit, always eager to tell her things he felt would widen her understanding of the ways of the world, to save her from naivety. Dear man. But, of course, he had not revealed exactly what his role was in the Bigger Picture, probably because it would jeopardise her as much as it would jeopardise him. She had trusted that in whatever role he secretly occupied – if, indeed, he were in any such role – it would be for the good of humankind, at least as he saw it.

  As she was pondering, she rolled back on her chair away from her desk – or rather, as far as it would go before hitting the wall. Detached from the desk, she came to focus on it: this solid, wooden, four-drawer public-service object. She saw the official desk for the first time as a remarkably intricate administrative invention. She became aware of its strange nature. People talked of things landing on their desk, like helicopters, or passing across their desks, like birds alighting and taking off. Then there were its in-trays and out-trays and the Rolodex – hers now much fatter and much thumbed. She marvelled at the desk as a machine with a silent mystique operating constantly. When a document, any piece of paper, did come onto the desk – when it arrived in that busy rectangular nation-state she governed – it had to be dealt with. Attention had to be paid. It was rarely possible to screw it up and throw it in a bin. Even that was a decision; that could be an immense decision. The desk was also a launchpad from which went her proposals, and from which she fought the skirmishes that were fought among desks.

  She sent her thunderbolts from her desk – if she ever possessed a thunderbolt. This top-secret memo could be a thunderbolt.

  On desks, great documents were signed, and death warrants. The Nazi Eichmann had been called a ‘desk killer’. He had sent many people to their deaths from his desk, but argued that all his work was simply ‘paperwork’.

  Perhaps the desk and its typewriter and the Rolodex were, at times, more like a musical instrument – an organ – on which thoughts were orchestrated into plots and the word-music of grand schemes, concertos of bright ideas.

  On her daily meanderings around the departments, she saw public servants whose desks were as ordered as parade grounds, while others became cluttered with documents about which they could not, or would not, make a decision, because of apprehension about the repercussion of what they might write on the document. Their fear was even greater around documents they themselves had written. The fear of rebound. The humiliation of a document rebounding with corrections and queries. Even corrections of grammar from higher up.

  Some senior public servants had a reputation for changing, even if only in minor ways, everything placed before them, as evidence of their rank. It was said of one department head that he would have amended the Ten Commandments had they been put before him. Some were vexatious perfectionists who did not know perfection.

  Richard was increasingly in the grip of a fear of emendation. His desk was tightly organised, but she knew he was reluctant to make even small decisions and to give his opinion. The fear of placing something in the out-tray, which meant it could be examined by others. She wondered if the fact that copies of his memoranda passed across her desk had intimidated him.

  She rolled her chair back to the desk and back into action.

  Ambrose’s document did not come via the in-tray and therefore did not have the propulsion of a bureaucratic kind. It was not being carried by the flowing bureaucratic river of words. It was a wayward document, a tricky document, without regular provenance. Worse, it almost certainly carried diplomatic consequences: Ambrose’s misuse of the Foreign Office’s bag, for a start, and then his misuse of official secrets. It could be explosive in ways she could not control and certainly could not confidently foresee. If she acted on it, she would at some point have to reveal its source, and then what would follow from that? And was she being enlisted in a Foreign Office plot without a full understanding – any understanding – of her role in it?

  She reached a position: indecision. But it was strategic indecision.

  She opened the top drawer and pushed the memorandum with her pencil – as if it were radioactive – towards the drawer. She had forgotten the role of the desk drawers. They were compartments with hidden functions in the affairs of the desktop nation. Especially the bottom drawer. They were the underground facilities of the desk, where things could be stored – out of sight.

  A desk could be searched.

  She stopped before the memo toppled into the right bottom drawer.

  There was another path, away from the desk. She picked the memorandum up, folded it and put it in her handbag hanging from the back of her chair. It was thus freed from the desk’s magnetic field. The handbag, more so than her briefcase, was a secure offshore island. The briefcase was really a mobile extension of the desk, but her handbag was another territory, which she alone controlled.

  During the following month, she read Giovanni’s Room and found it brave and moving. The government did ban it and she enjoyed lending it around. Amelia had quite a few of the banned books, which she had covered in brown paper ‘so the children will know which they are’.

  She thought about the memo from time to time. She felt that sometimes a document had to await its proper destiny, and while awaiting its destiny it had to find sanctuary. Sometimes, doing nothing was doing something. It was wrong to move when the consequences were unfathomable. It was wrong to pick a fight you did not need. She did, however, speak out when an officer of the Northern Territory Administration reported that ‘trees along the banks of one stream at Rum Jungle mine are dying and water holes devoid of fish’. She brought it to the attention of those she thought should know and might worry. This was a new problem springing from uranium, and she kept pestering.

  Finally, a memo came to her on the head of the Minister for National Development, who replied that ‘the AAEC would minimise the possibility of pollutio
n, but unfortunately any attempt to overcome the pollution hazard would involve quite unreasonable operating costs’.

  A handwritten note on the bottom of the memo from the minister said, ‘Berry, hope you’re not becoming one of these “environmentalists”.’

  She pondered the word. She recalled it from university days. It meant someone who believed the environment was primarily involved in the formation of a species and, in humans, the personality. She could see Beale was using it in the new sense. If it meant what she thought it meant, she thought that she might be just that. Not a master of the universe, but an environmentalist. That would be role enough.

  There was another type of bombshell.

  Amelia came to her at Parliament House and there, huddled in her small office, revealed that she was having an affair with a man twenty years younger than her. To be exact, twenty-four years younger.

  He was a carpenter who had been doing renovations on their new house in Tasmania Circle.

  ‘It just happened,’ she said, ‘and it’s glorious.’

  ‘What about Theodor?’

  She could tell from Amelia’s face that that was not the question.

  ‘At first, he tried to be very Bloomsbury and seemed to want to be part of it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That wasn’t possible. My lover – I will call him K for the time being – and I are happy in bed. It just was not possible. It was not like that. Not something to be shared. I wasn’t interested in him. I was interested only in K.’

  ‘You would have been loved by two men. That would be bearable, surely?’

  ‘Only in Bloomsbury. I just wanted K.’

  Edith found her feelings confused. She cared for both Theodor and Amelia, and had come to know and enjoy their children. Amelia was also enlivened by the whole nature of the affair – the much younger man – and Edith knew she was expected to applaud this. Close on the heels of that confusion, she felt a burst of envy. And there was an uglier feeling, which she extinguished: she wanted a strong couple to fail; she wanted other marriages to be in unsatisfactory emotional condition. She was having trouble arranging her emotions.