Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

She had no firm answer.

  Did she, then, now have a mariage blanc?

  Or was it, perhaps, a ménage à trois?

  Heavens.

  Ambrose did not push for further answers on that front.

  Did she really believe that was how it all would work?

  ‘And public opinion?’ he asked.

  She made a dismissive noise. ‘The old gang know us as a couple from the old days. God knows what they know or what they care to know. Anyhow, the League is so big now. Gossip doesn’t matter as much. Too much of it now. And the people at the League are not a club anymore. If asked, we shall say that you are a house guest, living here until you find yourself an apartment. And time will pass.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘Are you happy with that formulation, Edith? Is that to be my locus standi?’

  She frowned.

  She thought about it. ‘On second thoughts, no. I’m not happy with that formulation.’

  ‘For a moment, Edith, I thought that you may have become duplicitous.’

  ‘My trick has always been not to be duplicitous when others think I am being duplicitous.’

  ‘If you permit someone to believe you are being duplicitous you are being duplicitous.’

  ‘I will tell the truth to whoever asks, or …’ she smiled, ‘… or whatever part of the truth to which I think they are entitled—or able to comprehend without blowing a fuse.’

  Ambrose returned to her and they again entwined into each other’s arms, smiling, she aware of a stiffening in his groin.

  He said, ‘ “By how we live, we show the way”?’

  She sensed that he was quoting her, quoting a distant, more youthful Edith. It came to her mind. ‘The quote from Stendhal of which I was once rather fond. I think Julien says something like, “I am convincing the world to make heaven on earth.” And he asks himself, “How then shall I make that place visible to them?” And he replies to himself, “By the difference between my conduct and that of a layman.” Something like that.’

  ‘It might be a rather tiring way to live.’

  ‘We might alter the requirements a little. By how we live, we show some of the way—to some of the world—sometimes. Not to all, all at once,’ she said.

  ‘We are not to live as another of your instructional picnics, I hope?’

  ‘No more pedagogic picnics.’

  Edith heard then in her voice a new resignation. But not a giving up. More a giving over to the imperfection of it all.

  Imperfection seemed to be all that she had.

  She decided now was the right time to ask him another question.

  ‘You seem to like women—to like me—intimately, that is?’

  ‘I do. When they are women such as you—which is rare.’

  ‘And where do men fit into the picture?’

  ‘Let me tell you something I have discovered’

  ‘I am all ears.’

  ‘I have dallied with men.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I have loved you, and one other woman.’

  ‘I know about her.’

  ‘And more often, I’ve had dalliances now and then with men who dress as women.’

  ‘I know that too. And?’

  ‘All those dalliances and that loving—men and women and the other—were fairly glorious. And you were the most glorious of all.’

  ‘You are required by etiquette to say that,’ she laughed, covering her joy at his words.

  ‘I suspect that the world of which I speak does not have an etiquette, as such. I meant what I said with all my heart—you are the most glorious of all.’

  She was moved.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  She considered the breathtaking gift of his revelations.

  In a soft voice she asked, ‘And what were you to those you dallied with? How did they see you? As man? As woman? As woman-man?’

  ‘They knew me, I suspect, as a man who dressed as a woman. Perhaps, best described as a man who was womanly.’

  ‘I see.’ She was unsure of the degree of her comprehension.

  ‘Perhaps I am your foible?’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps we are a couple who dares not speak its name? Or who has no name.’

  ‘Nicely put.’

  She decided to leave it at that.

  But it raised one other last question.

  ‘What if you should choose to bring home a guest—an overnight guest?’

  He contemplated the question. ‘I would not consider it good form to do that.’

  ‘What would you do then if overtaken by desire?’

  ‘Behave as a cat, perhaps. Find some dark alley. Some alternative accommodation.’

  She left it at that. ‘And are you sane?’

  ‘Dr Vittoz thinks I am sane enough. My English doctor thinks so as well. Do you think I am?’

  ‘Yes. Sane enough—and sane in the right way.’

  They kissed again.

  ‘I, too, have changed, perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You may find that I have changed in such a way that you find nothing about which you need to fib.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘You can be my Rotten Friend, though, if you find you have to be. As well as my Strange Lover.’

  ‘I have very little Rotten left in me, I hope. But, as you see, the Strangeness is still there.’

  She stood to remove her outer clothing, wanting their bodies to be joined.

  She wanted to feel his body through the nightdress, for them to be bodies in silk against each other.

  And the nightdress—her Gift of Affirmation—would change, once again, this time into a Gift of Carnal Celebration.

  She remembered one of their silly old games.

  As she undressed herself before him, she whispered, ‘Halt. Who goes there? Man or Woman?’

  She removed her underpants and corset and left on only her petticoat, brassiere, garter belt, and stockings.

  He whispered his reply. ‘Neither man nor woman.’

  She sat down again, going into his arms. ‘Who then?’

  ‘A brazen hussy.’

  ‘Approach that we may recognise you.’

  She opened her legs to him.

  He moved onto her and kissed her. Her hand went lightly to him, under the nightdress and she led him to her, allowing him to enter her deeply.

  Lying back under him, she whispered, ‘Pass friend—all’s well.’

  Stiff Face

  ‘Guess what job I’ve landed?’ she said to Ambrose as she arrived to join him at the Perle du Lac, trying not to be breathless, putting down her satchel and the bundle of papers she was carrying under her arm.

  ‘Gather your breath.’

  ‘Eden and the Committee of Five. Liaison Officer. Working with Eden.’

  ‘I wondered why we were eating flashily tonight. You know Eden is called “The Glamour Boy”?’

  ‘And he is. At last we’ll bang on economic sanctions. For the first time in the history of the world we are going to stop war by non-military means. Eden is being formidable. Italy is going to get a caning.’

  Ambrose put away the newspaper he’d been reading and said, ‘If Italy is found in breach of the Covenant. And if everyone comes on board.’

  ‘Ambrose, this is it—the defining moment. Yes, I know I’ve said this before and been wrong. This time the League strikes. Thump. Whack.’ She slapped the table. ‘Disarmament may have failed but this will not.’

  ‘Liaison is rather a delightful fish,’ he said. ‘It’s a role which can be, how shall we say …’

  ‘Augmented.’

  ‘Precisely. We shall say augmented. Oh, yes. We can have fun with this—however, it sounds to me that it’s not arbitration which has you so breathless but more the possibility of exercising naked power.’

  ‘As something of an expert at naked power and also something of an expert at la liaison, you must coach me.’

  ‘Many times have I been
l’officier de liaison. And in the strangest of situations.’

  ‘It’ll be power, darling, if we get to hit Italy with economic sanctions.’

  ‘You know who dreamed up this economic sanctions thing?’

  ‘Cecil? Wilson?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I should warn you—you won’t like the answer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pope Benedict XV.’

  ‘How infuriating. I suppose even popes can come up with a brilliant idea every century or so.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  ‘Darling, I’m on my way up.’ She stretched out her arms and danced in her chair.

  ‘Decorum, Edith. You may well be. Did Avenol appoint you?’

  ‘He said, “I want you to report to me. If I put a French person in there, Eden will not talk freely. They will talk freely with you, the English. But, remember, you report to me.” ’

  ‘To him? Not to the League?’

  ‘I said, “Oh, absolutely, my loyalty is always to the League.” ’

  ‘And he said?’

  ‘ “I am the League.” ’

  ‘He didn’t!?’

  ‘He did. “La Société, c’est moi!”.’

  ‘He was joking!?’

  ‘He was joking, and at the same time, he was not joking.’

  ‘What is the politics of this appointment? What is your analysis?’

  ‘For a start, Jeanne whispered my name in his ear. Vouched for my absolute neutrality. And for my deep attachment to France—both at the same time.’

  ‘The French affiliation. I keep forgetting about Jeanne’s Important Uncle at the Quai d’Orsay.’

  ‘Important Grandfather. Jeanne’s loyal to the League. And more crucially, she’s loyal to me.’

  ‘I suppose these days one is loyal to The Good People. But how to know them?’

  ‘We are The Good People.’

  ‘That illusion is the first step on the road to conspiracy.’

  ‘Well, after all, darling, conspiracy is your field.’

  He ignored this reference to his irregular past. ‘Who—apart from Eden—is on the Committee of Five?’

  ‘England, France, Spain—Senor de Madariaga, one of the good people—Poland, Turkey. Madariaga is in the chair. But Eden’s the prime mover. Alexis Léger will surely be there. Swoon.’

  ‘Now that you’re really in the diplomatic thick of things, I have one last lesson in diplomacy for you, Edith.’

  ‘Yet another “last lesson”. How many last lessons are there?’

  ‘Of last lessons there is no end.’

  ‘What is it then?’ she said, chin on hand, pretending to studious attention.

  ‘The Lesson of the Stiff Face.’

  ‘The Lesson of the Stiff Face?’

  ‘In all you’ve learned—and may I say, I feel at times you now are ahead of me in your understanding of statecraft—the lesson you haven’t yet learned is the lesson of the stiff face.’

  ‘Pray tell.’

  ‘You have a face which is too expressive, Edith—which is, in every human situation except that of statecraft, a wonderful, winning, and enchanting thing to have. You have un visage express if. That’s no good for diplomacy. No good at all. For example, there’s tremendous power in the act of not smiling. You smile naturally and frequently. In statecraft, that is not always efficacious. Not smiling is a way of causing others some degree of quandary. They must ask themselves: “What is it that we have here—this unsmiling enigma?” You have heard it said many times that a diplomat is a mask for his country. A diplomat cannot smile or be pleased without the authority of his government. You must now learn to wear The Mask of the Stiff Face.’

  Edith made a stiff face.

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘And as a diplomat in high places you do not stretch out your arms and wriggle at the dinner table.’

  She stretched out her arms and danced again. It was a long time since she’d felt in such high spirits. ‘Now for a stiff drink. I can do a Stiff Drink.’

  Edith hit trouble on her first day. The Italian diplomat, Baron Aloisi, presented to the Committee two volumes of reports and photographs of brutalities he alleged that the Ethiopians had inflicted on captured Italians. It was to counter Ethiopian allegations of Italian use of poison gas.

  The volumes with the photographs were passed around but not to her.

  When the men had finished, she reached over for them, but Aloisi without looking at her, simply moved them out of her reach. He said, ‘Not, I think, for the eyes of a lady.’

  The two volumes, however, remained halfway in the common part of the conference table but half in what could be seen as Aloisi’s official space at the table.

  She looked to Madariaga but he did not give her his attention.

  Edith swallowed and said in a voice remarkably firm and quiet, and with a face diplomatically stiff, ‘I feel I should be as fully informed as the rest of the Committee,’ including herself by declaration to be in the Committee. She did not want to be classified as an observer.

  She held out her hand.

  And anyhow, they were tabled documents. She added, ‘I would feel remiss if I were not to see your documents. At this Committee, I should, perhaps, be considered as the eyes and ears of the Secretary-General.’

  And, there, she’d spoken, even if only as a functionary. How important it was to make oneself speak on such occasions, to breach the cage of one’s personal silence and to dive into the committee’s deliberations.

  Aloisi said, ‘Mais oui, of course,’ but in fact ignored her, and went on with his claims that the Ethiopians had used dum-dum bullets, hollowed to explode in the body.

  She heard him refer, in French, to the brutalisation of the captured Italians and the ‘loss of their manhood’, the meaning of which she guessed.

  Léger, the head of the French Department of Foreign Affairs, said something about ‘a warrior tradition from times immemorial’.

  Aloisi said, ‘Not the traditions of a civilised nation.’

  Léger said, ‘Quite so. Civilised nations have discovered worse things to do to each other. We are more modernistic barbarians.’

  About the documents, she felt she was about to suffer a defeat but could see no way of advancing her position. She was tempted to get up from the table, walk around to where the volumes were, and take them. But that would be a tad temperamental.

  Eden came to her rescue. He reached over and took the books from their ambiguous location on the table and moved them in front of himself, into his personal space, and then opened one of them randomly, turning the pages, while Aloisi talked on. At some point, Eden then closed the book and pushed both volumes out into the common area of the table, but this time in her direction and within her reach.

  He said, sotto voce, ‘Ghastly stuff,’ perhaps as a warning to her. Or perhaps as an invitation to her to look.

  She realised she had his implicit support.

  She reached over and took them securely into her space, but did not open them. She would spare the men their embarrassment and peruse them in private.

  Aloisi glanced at this manoeuvre without pausing in his speech. ‘Ethiopia is controlled by a ruling minority which has cruelly repressed its people. Ethiopia is not an organised state at all. It should never have been admitted as a member of the League.’

  ‘Italy voted for her admission,’ Léger said without looking up, addressing his remark to no one in particular.

  When the committee adjourned for lunch, she was pleased that Eden invited her to join them, but she declined, feeling she should begin writing her report, sensing that the men needed to be free of a woman’s presence. She knew things of importance would be said at lunch, but that couldn’t be helped.

  She had Eden on her side and she did not wish to strain it.

  As Eden and the others put on their coats, she recited to them,

  When the great ones go off to their dinner,

  Th
e secretary stays getting thinner and thinner,

  Racking his brains to record and report,

  What he thinks that they think they ought to have thought.

  They chuckled. Even Aloisi.

  ‘Quite true—and quite unfair,’ Eden said.

  As they trundled off to lunch, she immediately regretted having done the recitation. She’d put herself back in the subordinate role. But at least the doggerel referred to a secretary of the higher order.

  She asked Gerty, who was acting as the stenographer, to bring her in some lunch on a tray from the café. ‘And a pichet of their vin blanc.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ Gerty looked to see that the men were out of earshot and said in her staccato, Dutch-accented English, ‘Madam Berry—are you going to look in the book?’

  She raised her eyes to Gerty, one wicked woman to another. ‘When I’ve got my report on its way.’

  ‘Could I have a look?’

  ‘It’s really a Committee document—but I think that we can find a time for you to have a peek, Gerty.’

  ‘Thank you, madam.’

  Edith had some qualms about the voyeuristic use of the material. And then had a qualm about her prudish protectiveness of Gerty. Gerty was no prude.

  As soon as Gerty had left to get their lunch, she opened the Italian atrocity documents.

  They were photographs of castration, of exposed wounds from where limbs had been hacked off, of stomachs exploded by bullets, of intestines spilling onto the sand. There was a photograph of an Italian soldier with a spike driven through his body from anus to mouth.

  She came across a photograph which she at first did not understand, and then felt stunned. The Italian soldier had a penis in his mouth. His own penis had been cut off and put in his mouth.

  To her surprise, she found that she viewed the ghastly photographs with a coolness, a detachment. Maybe those years of dissection in the science laboratories as a student were now serving a diplomatic purpose.

  She wondered if they were ‘doctored’ photographs but concluded that it would be difficult to do that.

  Before she’d finished looking at them, her detachment began to dissolve and she felt dry-mouthed and dizzy. She took a glass of water.

  She put the documents back in their ambiguous space near Aloisi’s chair, out of some deference to him. She did not wish to offend the Italian government nor the sensitivities of Italian manliness.