Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  Sitting on the floor could itself help relax them from the overall formality and solemnity of the conference atmosphere. She had provided cushions and rugs but still it would be a jolt, she suspected, when they realised they would have to sit on the floor.

  What she did hope was that the seating might shake them out of their pious poses.

  Change the chairs: change the mentalité. Edith’s Rule. How many times had she said that people thought and argued differently if the speaker were seated rather than standing and that the practices by which policy is executed are commonly as important as the policy itself. Salisbury’s rule, to be honest: the methods by which policy is executed are commonly as important as the policy itself.

  She caught sight of herself again and thought that she should freshen her make-up. ‘How’s my face?’ she asked Ambrose.

  He examined her make-up. ‘A touch-up, perhaps. Lips.’

  ‘The puritans might turn on me.’

  ‘All the more reason, darling. All the more reason.’

  She looked at herself again in a hand mirror.

  ‘I would make-up to the hilt,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you would,’ she replied.

  ‘Show them that modern woman has all the artifices and guile of Womanhood at her disposal. That’s a lesson they need.’

  ‘No. I think I’ll let my make-up fade a little—recede, as it were. The busy woman look. I’m not on display.’

  The guests began to arrive, still wearing their green sashes.

  Guests were tentative as they came in but Jeanne, Ambrose, Victoria, Gerty, and the rest of her little team welcomed them and explained the random seating plan.

  Her gang, despite their teasing of her, had all rallied to the flag, including Bernard Follett and four of his waiters from the Club.

  Many of the guests exclaimed with surprised pleasure—or graciousness—at the arrangements.

  A crippled ex-soldier in a wheelchair then presented himself at the door and she went over and welcomed him with joy.

  He couldn’t sit at the tablecloth on the floor but she seated him at the reading tables at the side.

  As she turned from seating him, she saw more of his colleagues arriving in their wheelchairs and on crutches. She placed them also at the reading tables.

  When she returned to the door again she saw Ambrose assisting a blind soldier in to the picnic. And then behind him came others of the mutilés. More than she had officially invited.

  My goodness, she thought, the word is out.

  She had invited the leader of the mutilés delegation but had specified only two representatives. In her mind, the picnic had been for the women’s organisations which dominated the peace groups.

  She glanced at Ambrose and saw that he was aware of the breach in the wall of the picnic.

  In they came. All sorts, mainly the mutilés, invited or not.

  The other helpers glanced at her and shrugged.

  She gestured that they should allow them in.

  She left Jeanne and the others to handle it while she took Ambrose into the small Library kitchen, where the two staff were preparing to serve soupe provençale de légumes. She told them to add more water.

  ‘The word is out,’ she said.

  ‘You are popular with the mutilés, Edith.’

  ‘Dear God.’

  He then began to laugh and she was caught up in it and she too giggled. ‘Free food,’ he said, ‘and hungry, tired and cold men.’

  She got control of her laughter and asked Tony to put out all the contingency picnics held in reserve and to prepare some more. He went to the door of the kitchen and looked out. ‘Mon Dieu.’

  ‘I want everyone fed. Send out for provisions if needed. Put out all the bread we have.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tony said. ‘Of course we will feed them.’

  Edith looked into her handbag and took out a bundle of bank notes which she had for contingencies.

  Tony held up his hands. ‘Non. It will be taken care of—you?—me? Whoever? That is not a question for this occasion. It is not a consideration.’

  Ambrose and she looked out of the Library kitchen into the reading hall. ‘It’s really the most bizarre picnic I’ve ever been at,’ Ambrose said.

  In total, he counted twenty-seven mutilés.

  The other delegates gradually seated themselves around the overcrowded Library. Edith looked around, thrilled that they had all shown up.

  ‘When should I speak?’

  Ambrose advised her to speak after they had eaten something. ‘A little wine helps.’

  Edith was too tense to eat, so she went out into the main reading room where she leaned down to shake hands and introduce herself as people ate the food and drank the wine. She realised that quite a few spoke neither English nor French, especially among the mutilés.

  Bernard and Ambrose also went about helping with the welcoming.

  Ambrose came to her and said, ‘Now is the time—speak.’

  Edith got out her notes and went to the low makeshift platform.

  Edith began her speech of welcome in English: ‘In some ways, you all, as individuals, represent seven hundred million people. There is no human being—whether his home is in one of the great centres of industry and population or in the deserts of Africa, among the jungles of the East, or amid the ice of the Arctic region—who has not someone here to speak in his name.’

  She repeated this in French and then indicated that Jeanne would continue a simultaneous translation into French from a copy of the speech.

  ‘I will not abuse my position as host by attempting to tell you your business. You have all spent many years thinking out your beliefs.’ As she said this, she thought to herself, that is exactly what I am about to do: tell them their business—abusing my position as host.

  ‘As someone who works for the League and has been privy to much of the argument in preparing for this conference over the last few years, I would like to share some of my observations. I will be brief.’

  Most went on eating away at the food.

  Many of the mutilés were ignoring her, perhaps finding her words incomprehensible in English or French. Though, understanding or not, some waved at her, chicken legs in their hands.

  ‘You are all people with passionate beliefs and doctrines. Extremely principled political positions do identify social illnesses and connect those illnesses with the guilty, though, in my opinion, rarely contribute to a solution. I say this with respect.

  ‘Finding workable solutions—albeit often imperfect human solutions for both the guiltless and the guilty—is left to the likes of me. Our work—my work—is to search for those procedures which make, and keep us, humane, and which accommodate the diversity of belief. Even if it involves the distasteful work of negotiating with the disreputable.’

  She went on to urge them to shift from extreme uncompromising positions and join with those who work with the imperfection of the human condition.

  ‘First, we must keep the armies—’ there were murmurs of dissent, ‘—but transform those armies into world police, or into a different sort of army. An army which will have to learn new ways of diplomatic behaviour in countries not their own where they have been sent to quell violent unrest or evil. We have, though, to retain the will to bring force to bear when it is required.

  ‘Every one of these new soldiers will have to negotiate and educate at the same time as they enforce the peace.

  ‘To those of you women here today, I say that we must not surrender these deliberations to those who say that military matters are men’s matters.

  ‘And pacifists—which I know many of you are—have to learn about machine-guns and grenades and not turn away in moral disgust. Because this conference will be about which weapons to do away with and which to keep. There will not be a total destruction of all weapons.

  ‘It is the weapons which are kept that will make for the success or failure of disarmament.

  ‘Another paradox: the civ
ilised states differ from the savage tribe not only in the use of less force through diplomatic restraint—at least since the War—but also, oddly, at the same time by possessing more force through the innovation of the human mind. Our job is to develop advanced diplomatic and planetary methods of oversight and supervision as fast as we develop advanced weapons.

  ‘Civilisation is nearly to the point “when armies can destroy each other in a second” and, as Alfred Nobel said, this will be the point in human history when the world will decide to disarm.’

  She nodded towards Bernard, acknowledging the contribution of his thoughts.

  She mentioned Angell’s plan for international ‘pairing’ of politicians, trades union leaders, business leaders and professors, and towns country by country, who could engage in correspondence and be the conscience of the other.

  She had doubts about the value of this but thought it would make her sound less military-minded.

  And, she said, the League must have its own army or at least its own airforce which could act quickly before a conflict spread or did too much damage.

  This proposal also caused some stirring among the picnickers.

  ‘The most important thing is for the League of Nations’ International Control Commissions to be stationed in every powerful country to inspect what is happening there in military build-up and to enforce disarmament.

  ‘These Commissions must have the power in every significant country to inspect armaments factories once the limits are set.

  ‘We will only survive and disarm if we never base policies on trust.’

  Small murmurings of dissent came from one picnic group and then another and another.

  She stopped speaking as the noises of consternation began drowning her out.

  One woman, a Miss Royden, rose and interrupted her, the others falling silent as Miss Royden took the floor. ‘You are the hostess and I will not insult you by walking out. But we are here to assert one thing only: pacifism—the end of all armies and all weapons. Now and forever.’

  There was general clapping.

  Miss Royden continued, ‘We must not be persuaded away from total disarmament.’

  More clapping.

  Miss Royden was campaigning for a Pacifist League of Nations.

  Miss Royden went on, ‘No preparation at all should be made for war—including listening to the sort of position being put now by you, which I see as itself a preparation of our minds for further war: trying to present war in a different costume.

  ‘Most of us here have learned that to even entertain an argument against pacifism is to weaken it. Pacifism is the one position for which there can be no compromise. No argument can be heard against it. No challenge made to it is to be given the time of day. To accept compromise, argument or challenge is to shake the very essential nature of pacifism. We too are practical people, Miss Berry: for the next war we too have a new weapon: we will call for the peace-lovers in the world to fling themselves, if need be, in front of the troop trains.

  ‘Troop trains will be unable to move anywhere in the world without running over the bodies of soldiers’ mothers and daughters.

  ‘If millions of men will go out to offer their lives up in war, surely there are millions of us who would just as gladly die for peace. We will march onto the battlefields between the combatants. They will have to shoot daughters, mothers and grandmothers if they wish to have their war.

  ‘We will sabotage the munitions. We will stop the aeroplanes from landing on aerodromes.’

  There was much clapping.

  Miss Royden sat down.

  Edith glanced down at the remaining pages of her speech. She thought she may as well finish.

  She began again.

  In a demonstration of her dissent, Miss Royden then turned her back on Edith.

  To Edith’s confusion, many of Miss Royden’s followers also turned their backs on Edith. Others joined in this protest.

  Mary Dingman rose to her feet from her tablecloth and picnic and turned to the picnickers. ‘Let us at least listen to the only official woman who has spoken to us here in Geneva, while at the same time knowing that she is wrong, knowing that to compromise is to fail.’

  She sat down and turned her back too. Now nearly all the women and the few men had their backs to her.

  The mutilés went on drinking and eating—mainly drinking. They appeared to be cadging bottles of wine from those picnickers who were abstainers.

  A few of the women did not follow Miss Royden and clapped Edith, but they were a handful and their clapping showed how little support she had rather than giving a sense of endorsement.

  Edith looked at the turned backs, decided that they might still be listening even if with disapproval, and went on. ‘What I have to say may be in disagreement with you but I have had to say it: “I kept silence, and thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.” To do that would be wrong. I wanted you to know what one woman, myself, that is, working within the League who has spent much of her life in and out of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference has thought about such things.’

  She was speaking to a wall of backs and to the incomprehension of the mutilés.

  She stopped, deciding not to finish her speech. She thanked them all—to their backs—and went to the Librarian’s empty office, shaking.

  Jeanne followed her.

  Ambrose was already at the office, having listened from there. ‘Bravely done.’ He kissed her cheeks, and hugged her.

  ‘But not so well done, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘You stood up and made them listen to sense,’ he said.

  No. She had blundered in her management of mentalités.

  Edith took out her pocket flask and poured herself a drink from it, put the cap back on the flask, looked at the glass, took the cap off again and poured out some more cognac.

  ‘Steady on, Edith,’ said Ambrose, touching her arm. ‘You’ll slip on the ice again.’

  ‘I have slipped on the ice, it seems to me.’ She looked down at the sash. It seemed all so unnecessary. She removed it.

  He reminded her that those who speak out from the floor of a gathering never speak on behalf of the entire audience. ‘We never know the mind of a crowd or an audience. It’s a hundred unknown minds. And we never know what it is that changes a mind or when that mind will change.’

  ‘You fed the multitude,’ Jeanne said.

  ‘I felt I was back at my boarding school in Sydney being school captain again. And failing in my speech on Prize Day.’

  ‘You are our school captain,’ Victoria said, earnestly, then caught herself, adding, ‘if you want to be school captain, that is.’

  ‘And I skipped the last two pages of my speech.’

  ‘I thought that there was a gap in the advancement of the argument,’ said Victoria. ‘But that isn’t a criticism.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone missed it,’ Ambrose said, bringing her a chicken leg and a piece of baguette. ‘And at least there were no ants. Unless you count Miss Royden.’

  ‘What sort of picnic is it that has no ants?’ She looked out through the one-way window and saw that many were now leaving the picnic for the afternoon sessions.

  Her gang, including even Chef Tony, sat around there in the Librarian’s office and nibbled at some of the leftover picnic food, tired, obviously feeling for her, but probably thinking that it was all a great folly to begin with.

  ‘They’re all leaving. Perhaps we should say goodbye,’ said Victoria, after looking out the door.

  ‘To hell with them. I’ve done my bit,’ Edith said, and laughed deeply. The picnic was over.

  The mutilés were the last to leave, some taking the leftover bottles of wine. They were welcome to them.

  Finally the Library was empty. The caterers and Bernard’s staff went about cleaning up.

  Soon the little party in the office was giggling. There was mimicry of Miss Royden.

  ‘The mutilés will love
you forever,’ Bernard said.

  ‘Maybe they could put on a show at the club,’ Ambrose said. ‘Get together in some sort of cabaret macabre.’

  Jeanne and Victoria shouted in unison. ‘Ambrose!!!’

  She wondered if they had the faintest idea of what went on at the Molly Club. They had, of course, heard of it, although they had refused her one invitaion to accompany her there. But even she thought Ambrose’s joke was perhaps going a little too far.

  Latitude: Doorway to Chance?

  Edith felt a light, giddy guilt about bringing Ambrose to the apartment.

  But as they entered, the apartment felt airy—spacious.

  Robert’s going had created a spaciousness she could almost breathe. Maybe it was what was known as a breathing-space.

  A second, surprise relief also came to her as she stood in the apartment with Ambrose: while Robert’s absence had caused a deep disturbance, it had not left any sense of void in her life.

  In fact, the ghost had left the castle.

  As she saw the apartment through Ambrose’s eyes she could see that Robert had left reminders of himself, and it occurred to her that if he’d wanted to really go, he would be all gone. He was not all gone.

  ‘I feel rather mischievous,’ she said, taking his hand, ‘bringing you here. The corpse not yet cold.’ Marriage treason was the expression perhaps, rather than mischievous. She found that this treason, if that was what it was, did not worry her. If she had a marriage.

  ‘As long as it’s the good kind of mischief,’ Ambrose said.

  ‘Not—not quite yet,’ she replied, ‘it is not of the good kind, yet.’ She smiled nervously. ‘It will be of the good kind soon.’

  She went to the sideboard and picked up a splendidly wrapped gift box.

  ‘A gift,’ she said, presenting it to Ambrose. ‘Pour toi, ma chérie.’

  He showed genuine pleasure, as if it were some time since anyone had given him a gift. ‘What’s the occasion?’ he asked, taking it from her, weighing it in his hand, shaking it lightly, playing the gift-guessing game.