Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  He turned his inquiring look to her, demanding an answer from her.

  As his wife?

  Edith cut across. ‘What’s the American note?’

  ‘I’ve heard that the Secretary of State has written to the League pledging US support for any League action against the Japanese. But I hadn’t heard they were joining the League as such.’ Uncharacteristically, Robert let his astonishment show. ‘Is that confirmed?’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Can we leave this matter now? It’s very late.’ She was frightened of jinxing the matter.

  At the same time, she found herself taking petty pleasure by withholding something from Robert.

  In their marriage, they had an understood tension about her work and its diplomatic secrets and his newspaperman’s need to find out. But they had managed it well, she thought.

  For whatever reason, Robert did not pursue the matter.

  He began a perverse bar-room line of talk, defending Japan, and at the same time searching around for a waiter to order more drinks. ‘Japan’s just looking after business.’

  He went on, ‘They built Manchuria: now they want to run it. You’re just ganging up on them. And look at the Americans—they seized the Philippines and Hawaii. Why shouldn’t the Japanese grab something for themselves?’

  ‘Oh come off it, Robert, the world is done with aggressive expansion,’ she said. ‘That may have been fine in the last century.’

  His surly perverseness no longer threw the fear of God into her, although she could sometimes detect in herself the young bride’s fear of being offside with him. But generally, the pugnacious arrogance of Robert The Knowing Journalist had become simply a husband’s bombast. And tonight a somewhat crocked husband, as well, she suspected.

  ‘ “Outlawing war,” ’ he said. ‘War is itself already “outside the law” … you can’t outlaw lawlessness. You can’t outlaw crime.’

  This was a tired old line.

  In this mood, Robert always moved to explosive positions. And to inversion. He was a person who always said of a bold or idealistic statement, ‘What we see as helpful may be harmful.’ His mind simply holidayed there in the limbo of inversion. He never thought it through. Which, then, was the harmful way? Was the opposite true or not true?

  He cheated himself into thinking that one could never know the truth.

  Coffee was served together with more cognacs.

  ‘And anyhow,’ Robert rambled on, ‘why is China a member state of the League? It’s barely a nation. It’s an antiquated civilisation. Barbaric. At least Japan’s a modernising nation state. China needs uplifting. Needs to be awakened from a sleep of twenty centuries. Who better than Japan to do it?’

  Jeanne reappeared. She did not care for Robert. She and Robert coolly nodded at each other. ‘Am I permitted back now, Artur?’

  Robert glanced at Jeanne and Sweetser, realising probably that Jeanne had left the table so that something could be discussed between Sweetser and her.

  It was close to his deadline.

  He again looked at her, ‘Something is happening—is the US coming?’

  She could have gestured to him that her lips were sealed. That in turn, would have tipped him off. Instead, she said, ‘Nothing that you don’t already know.’

  He searched her face and then let the matter go.

  Robert could very well be the only person in the hotel who didn’t know about the US coming to Council.

  Sweetser was in Jeanne’s chair. He surrendered it back and beckoned to a waiter for another chair to be brought to the table.

  Robert glanced at him standing there. ‘Arthur, aren’t you rather hot in that overcoat?’

  Sweetser looked down as if discovering it. He at last took off the overcoat which he handed to a waiter.

  Robert carried on. ‘The League has this World Disarmament Conference about to happen and now you have a war which has blown up in your face. Doesn’t that tell you anything about the hopelessness of disarmament?’

  ‘This war between Japan and China is the best thing that could have happened for disarmament,’ Edith said.

  ‘How!?’

  ‘The war will either be a bloody reminder to the world of the need for disarmament or if the war is stopped it will show that collective security works and that therefore there is no need for a build-up of armaments.’

  Before Robert could respond, Edith said, ‘Come on, Robert, let’s go. I have to call at the Palais. And you should go home to bed. You’ll have a big day tomorrow. I can promise you that much.’

  There, saying that was wifely.

  As he stood, Robert tried again with Sweetser. ‘Are you trying to get the US into the League on the back of the Kellogg-Briand Pact?’

  ‘I would think they’re going to support the League,’ Sweetser said. ‘That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.’

  After saying her goodbyes, Edith took Robert’s arm and urged him towards the door.

  ‘You’re a dreamer, Arthur,’ Robert said.

  Sweetser couldn’t resist a further superior retort to Robert. ‘Wait and you shall see.’

  Robert doffed his hat sardonically at Sweetser, placed it back on his head, and smiled.

  After calling in at the Palais and finding that Bartou had left, she rejoined Robert in the waiting taxi.

  He continued in his difficult mood. ‘How do you bear to be around Sweetser?’

  She squeezed his arm to indicate that she didn’t wish to talk about League matters in front of the taxi driver.

  Robert leaned across to the open communication panel, and said to the driver in his coarse French, ‘Driver, this passenger beside me is an important person in the Société des Nations. Put your hands over your ears.’

  The driver ignored Robert.

  She pulled him back. ‘Robert, be good.’

  He slumped in the seat. She always had to jolly Robert out of these waves of surliness. She defended his moods as some sort of frustrated, fretful reaction by him to the derangement of the world. Something he suffered but could never find ways of handling. Journalism was an occupation without solutions. Every certainty of today unravelled tomorrow.

  She then whispered to him. ‘The Americans are coming to Council tomorrow.’

  She braced herself for a storm.

  ‘So,’ he said.

  She could almost feel him struggling to hold back his anger. ‘I wish you’d rung me at the office. Even if you’d told me back there I could have tried to get it through.’ He compulsively looked at his watch. ‘Damn. There would’ve been time.’

  His voice was a brewing storm.

  ‘You know I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘You should’ve told me.’

  ‘It’s confidential League business.’

  ‘You should’ve told me.’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘You know why, damnit.’

  That was the first time he’d put it that way. They drove in silence. He again looked at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Damn, damn.’

  ‘You’ll have the news tomorrow.’

  ‘Everyone will have the news tomorrow. If they haven’t got it already. How could you let me sit there and not tell me?’

  ‘It’s great news for the world—regardless of when it’s published. Publishing it today or tomorrow won’t change anything.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I didn’t want to jinx it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Jinx it!’

  He pulled away from her. ‘I thought Rationalists didn’t believe in jinxs?’

  ‘We’re allowed to believe in one jinx a year,’ she said in her playful voice.

  She moved over to him, undid her overcoat and then nestled her breast on to Robert’s arm, wondering if a wife’s breast had the same effect after marriage as before, sensing that her stylish femininity tonight was stimulating him.

  ‘I intend to teach you the Theory of Diplomatic Esprit,’ she said softly.

  ‘What is
the Theory of Diplomatic Esprit?’ he said, still miffed.

  ‘It is a way of working against jinxs. If you’re a player in world events, even a minor player, then spirit is a factor in the outcome. If you behave as if something will succeed, it helps it succeed.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘All the attitudes of the players on the diplomatic stage have an impact on the psychology of those at the discussions—especially the Secretariat.’

  ‘Does pretending to be optimistic still work? Like pretending not to be afraid of a dog? Does that work?’

  ‘Precisely, it’s like pretending not to be afraid of a dog. It’s the role of the Secretariat to engender an affirmative temperature in international negotiations. Fervour is a diplomatic tool. The Secretariat are engineers of mentalité.’

  She wondered why a dog would not know if a person was pretending.

  He grunted but it was a grunt she knew, the grunt before giving up and becoming pliable, becoming her pet.

  ‘What will you write about it?’

  ‘About the US and the League?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Robert adopted the voice of a radio announcer and said, ‘ “President Woodrow Wilson helped establish the League after the War but the United States Senate voted to stay out. Now it looks as if the United States is joining the world community and that the vacant chair kept for the United States will at last be filled etc, etc, etc.” ’

  She’d got him to be playful. Her breast pressing against his arm through the lace of her brassiere and the silk of her gown was working its magic.

  She took his hand and amorously put both their hands on her knee.

  His fingers closed on her leg and the silk stocking.

  ‘Talking of Manchuria, I heard a strange story today,’ she said. She told him of the suicide of the Japanese woman. ‘Have you ever heard of a woman doing such a thing?’

  ‘The Japanese have higher levels of devotion to the state.’

  ‘Do wives have these higher levels of devotion—to their husbands and the state?’

  ‘I suspect so.’ Then he added, ‘On another scale, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in marriage? Devotion.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  She waited for him to press home this point against her behaviour tonight but he veered.

  ‘I once talked with a Japanese general who said that from a military point of view earthquakes were good for the national character and useful for military training,’ he laughed. ‘He welcomed a good earthquake.’

  She decided that he really was a bit crocked.

  ‘Potato wants to leave for Manchuria,’ he said.

  Good, she thought. Geneva would be a happier place without him. ‘Good,’ she said.

  They sat there silently. Was she, perhaps, in her heart, not properly devoted? And therefore not properly married?

  That was the point which had been niggling at her all night and it broke through the clouds like a star—she was perhaps not a proper wife.

  That was the point.

  She felt a panic about this thought.

  She had a vocation and, as yet, she had no burning desire to have a family, she did not run the household except in the smallest ways, she earned more than her husband, and she had private income, as well, which had survived the Depression. And, for no good reason, after a year of marriage she still hadn’t told him everything about the extent of her private income.

  And if she were a proper wife, perhaps she would’ve told him about the United States before his deadline.

  How much of the wedding contract had she discounted?

  Were they then, just lovers pretending to be man and wife? Or worse, was he a proper husband and was she just a lover?

  What was really in her marriage contract?

  The Japanese wife was a marker at the far side of the field of marriage. And she was perhaps on the other boundary, if she were, in fact, inside the boundary at all.

  She was, perhaps, a Special Companion.

  She warmed to that idea but it was a little late perhaps for her to be redefining her bond to Robert.

  She nestled her breast against Robert, who moved his hand a little up the silk stocking of her leg. He was responding to her body, her perfume—now a little faded—to the smell of her hair, the feel of her body.

  She thought that would be the best way to go now, into the misty world of bodies.

  And despite everything, they were fine companions.

  ‘We are fine companions,’ she whispered to him.

  ‘Companions?’

  ‘Yes, fine companions.’

  ‘I suppose we are that. Odd way of putting it.’ He was silent and then said, ‘You should’ve told me about the Americans.’ But it wasn’t a grumpy voice.

  That was what she wanted for her marriage—fine companionship. She would work towards that.

  She could have a marriage of an artful and unique design.

  Robert had no design, he most likely thought that marriage was something already all set out by the conventions.

  She turned into him, putting her head on his shoulder, lightly kissing his neck. She laughed silently at having withheld the news from him, laughed with a mild devilry, a delicious petty devilry.

  Or was it more a petty cruelty?

  Laugh thy girlish laughter:

  Then, the moment after,

  Weep thy girlish tears!

  The Secret Apartments of Marriage, Their Locks and Their Keys

  She nearly always left for the office before Robert because he didn’t begin his work until early afternoon or at best, late morning.

  It would be earlier today because of the Japanese crisis, but he was still in bed when she rose.

  She often had to fight her resentment at his sleeping in late, that she had to be the one who rose and faced the apartment alone, and then faced the world. She faced the newspapers alone.

  It was as if she’d expected marriage would at least mean that two people rose together and that, consequently, you never had to face the world alone.

  Perhaps what she wanted was for the Man to rise first and to inspect the boundaries of life and to see that the world was safe, as her brother and father had done in Jasper’s Brush.

  It was also somehow unnatural for her to see a man sleeping late. When she had been growing up, her father and brother had been the first to rise, although her mother had usually not been far behind them. Except for Those Days when her mother slept late and was not present at breakfast.

  She would then visit her mother before school, entering into that oh-so-determined-womanliness which her mother had created around her in the bedroom. The billowing tulle, the lace, the satin bed cover on the canopy bed. The abundance of freshly cut flowers always placed outside the bedroom at night and brought in first thing by her father so that her mother could rise surrounded by the fragrance and sight of flowers. The much loved volumes in the cedar bookcase, the gramophone in the corner.

  Her mother’s bedroom was a room such as no other in the house and Edith was always enfolded by it, was always reluctant to leave it, yet feared her urge to linger, because to linger so would suggest that she hide there. Forever.

  For her mother, the bedroom had been a refuge from and a resistance to the harshness of the country town and the hot bush, the torment of insects both of nature and those within the mind. Her mother was also setting a standard of intimacy, the grace of intimacy.

  And on some days, her mother could not leave the room.

  Edith, having kissed her mother goodbye there in the bedroom, would herself feel the urge to linger, to hang on there, to lie down with her mother and remain in the lavishness of the imported lingerie and rich scents, and the mirrors both normal and magnifying which seemed to invite the nervous delight of self-scrutiny, which gave out the permission to admire oneself, to lavish on oneself the attention which was deserved. Which those around perhaps did not give.

  But the mirrors had returned an unreliable reply to
her own self-scrutiny, some days saying: I am a thing of beauty in this life; I am charged with high destiny. On other days, giving back an unanswering blankness.

  She wondered now if the mirrors had given succouring answers to her mother. Or whether she had daily to live with the absence of answers. Or with fearful answers.

  Her own bedroom here in Geneva was an attempt at such a haven and an expression of all those womanly essences which her mother had celebrated.

  In some contradictory way, Edith also felt that true physical passion could only express itself amid such feminine order even though that passion came as a gasping, grunting disruption of that bedroom refinement, as if the order had to be there for it to be violated and then restored, awaiting the next disarraying visit.

  Although they slept together, Robert was always a visitor to the bedroom. But then, so had been her father. Neither of them ‘visited’ the bedroom until bedtime.

  Both saw it as a female domain, at least during the daylight hours.

  And Robert did indeed frequently, and mostly to her pleasure, carnally violate her feminine domain with his carnal noises and thrustings.

  She was not like her mother in that she ever locked herself away for days on end. She was generally pleased to rise and to go out into the world.

  As today, she was pleased to rise. She’d woken early and had lain in bed briefly, thinking of the challenges of her day, how the presence of the US should be handled at the Council meeting. The management of history’s stage. Without that management nothing would happen. Or it would happen badly.

  She had a feeling of restive pleasure about the day.

  She looked at Robert asleep in bed in his regimental pyjamas, a garment she detested and which he would not give up, something he retained from his life as an officer in the War and insisted on reordering from London Naval and Military Store against her wishes.

  She had tried to joke him out of wearing them. She had brought fine, black silk pyjamas from Paris as a gift. He would not touch them.

  She had come to abhor not only the dull regimentals, but also, let it be said, his woollen combination vest and drawers.