Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  She nodded, with misgivings. But things were happening too quickly for her to find her proper position.

  They found Laval in his room, fiddling with a wireless set. ‘I have a financial interest in a Swiss broadcasting station but I cannot find it on the dial. Perhaps it is a fictitious broadcasting station. Maybe I have been duped.’

  Eden then went into what Edith could only describe as a fabulous act.

  He evinced annoyance. ‘I have a serious complaint.’

  Laval gave up fiddling with the wireless set and assumed his diplomatic posture. He showed them into his sitting room. ‘Complaint? How so? Please—speak.’

  ‘You and I agreed that France and England would stand together: that we would reach a position together and stick.’

  Laval nodded. ‘Of course.’

  Eden ploughed on. ‘That being the case, at the meeting last night of the Committee of Five, Léger did nothing but make difficulties. He showed none of your reason and moral strength. Since you have been out of Geneva he has obstructed us. I am sure they were not your instructions. It is my understanding that the report of the Committee of Five would be an expression of your country and my country’s positions of strength.’

  Laval seemed not to know quite how to handle this.

  Eden then said, ‘I demand that you inform Léger of your moral and diplomatic position—that is, that we are together shoulder to shoulder, France and the United Kingdom.’

  It was obvious to Edith that Eden still felt that Laval and the French had to be dragged into strong action. He was using the manoeuvre to do just that.

  But people dragged into strong positions made the position less stable. She knew that also.

  Laval took the bait and agreed to expressing displeasure with Léger’s obstructionnisme.

  He took them to his new wireless set and explained it. Its dial indicated that it could reach Berlin, Moscow, Athens.

  As he fussed with a demonstration which did not live up to his expectations, she sensed that he was keeping them in the room so that he could further digest what they had said. After all it was not the first wireless set either of them had seen.

  He was not letting them go just yet.

  Perhaps he wanted Eden to let more drop. Perhaps he had not been convinced. But Eden did not reopen the subject and, after a polite length of time, excused them both.

  Afterwards, when Eden and she had left Laval’s room, they had tea in a private room off the lobby.

  Edith thrilled at being tête-à-tête with such a glamorous figure. She felt that she was indeed on stage.

  She even wished that someone from the office would see them there together taking tea.

  She tried to prevent her tone of voice or demeanour from becoming too feminine, she tried to maintain a professional tone.

  It was a matter of pride that she should not in any way flirt or be thought of as flirting.

  But inside her was a silly girl, locked in her room hammering on the door, wanting to flirt. Wanting to flirt outrageously.

  Eden said to her, ‘The French will be only as strong as they are compelled to be.’

  ‘Can you compel them?’

  ‘I can only try.’

  A messenger arrived with a dispatch for Eden. He read it and handed it to her. ‘The Italians have bombed a Red Cross ambulance and hospital near Melka Dida. Where is that?’

  Edith took out a map from her attaché case and spread it out and together they found Melka Dida.

  ‘You know what we have to do?’ Eden asked her.

  ‘Yes. We have to dust off the economic sanctions plans of the Second Assembly so we can be ready to launch.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘I have already called up the file.’

  ‘I think we should draw up a special list of commodities which must definitely be prohibited to Italy.’

  ‘May I raise a point, Minister?’

  ‘By all means.’

  She heard the locked-away girl who wanted to flirt groan at her oh-so-correct tone of voice. Lordy, why not say, let’s leave the affairs of the world for now and relax. Why not say, ‘And tell me Anthony, what gives you most pleasure in life?’

  Edith said, ‘The Second Assembly thought that every effort should be made with the economic sanctions to avoid their effect falling on the civilian population—the women and children.’

  ‘I am aware of that argument, but isn’t the aim to use the Lesser Misery of sanctions to avoid the Grimmer Misery—the misery of war?’

  ‘During the blockade in the War—which was very much like sanctions, I suppose—it was the poor and the children who suffered in Germany; the ruling junta and the army were fed. Many cases of rickets have shown up among children.’

  ‘That’s why the sanctions should be swift and total—before the Italians can arrange secret and illegal supplies and so on. The sanctions should cause a collapse of the economy. They should be automatic and terrible—make life intolerable to the ordinary man and woman. The theory of modern war is that the army and the people are one. Everyone is responsible for the war. Everyone a soldier.’

  ‘Except the very young.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I rather favour gradual strangulation of the economy. And that food and medicines should come well down the list.’

  ‘Strangulation? You’re both compassionate and rather cold-blooded, Berry. Glad you’re on my side and not on theirs.’

  She heard him say ‘on my side’ and savoured the words for all their other meanings. Or at least the locked-away girl savoured them.

  ‘I am glad that I am on your side, Minister.’ The words came out with a rather softer tone that she’d intended. She corrected her voice. ‘Naturally we start by stopping war materials,’ she said.

  ‘Beg to differ. You are wrong. Swift and total, I think. Ton of bricks. The financial structure of Italy must be collapsed first.’

  He then left that point, as being settled. ‘I have to move assiduously. It must not seem that the British are pushing everyone on this—and my Co-Foreign Secretary, Sam Hoare, has been telephoning me asking that we not be seen as the initiator of all this strong stuff.’

  He smiled at her. ‘So you see, Laval and Léger are not the only ones with problems in their Cabinet.’

  It was always other squabbles of politics which tripped up their feet.

  ‘See if you can jolly the others along,’ said Eden. ‘Anything you can do, Berry. I’m sure that Laval wants to be friends with Musso, but I think we can frog-march him—no pun intended—into sanctions.’

  She said, ‘I will do what I can to get the Assembly moving rapidly.’

  ‘Good. All the commotion will now shift to the special Assembly. Do you think we’re too far out ahead of the pack on this?’

  ‘No—not at all. I have been testing the water.’ Edith began to tick off the members of the Assembly whose opinions she’d tested. ‘We are backed by almost all of Europe, the Dominions, Holland, Belgium, Soviet Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia, the Little Entente—they are all firmly against Italy and for the sanctions. Romania worries about its oil exports to Italy which are substantial.’

  ‘Quite so. I suspect I will be hearing “Encore du cognac pour les anglais, encore du cognac” at dinner with Titulescu tonight. Did you know he always brings his own supply of brandy to Geneva?’

  ‘I have been privileged to taste Monsieur Titulescu’s brandy,’ she said, with a smile. Her reply sounded somewhat indecorous—Titulescu, the brandy, and Edith. She qualified, ‘I have been at an official dinner with the Romanians.’

  ‘Talking of brandy,’ Eden said, ‘I was at a lunch in London with Lady Cunard and Nicolson—at Grosvenor Square—and others, just before I came across to Geneva. I’d just come from Cabinet. Emerald—that is, Lady Cunard—knowing full well I can’t talk about Cabinet, simply pops out as her first question, in full hearing of the dinner party, “You are all wrong about Italy. Why should she not have Ethiopia? You must tell
me what Cabinet’s thinking.” ’

  ‘What did you reply to Lady Cunard?’ Edith asked tentatively, not sure how far to inquire into his social life.

  ‘To make it worse, de Castellane from the French Embassy had to save me. De Castellane made the joke about cocottes and the commandant de frégate.’

  Edith laughed even though she did not get the point of the ‘cocottes and commandants’ and supposed it was the arcane talk of gentlemen to gentlemen and left it at that. Or gentlemen to gentlemen and Lady Cunard. Even if these days she were more familiar with the dinner talk of gentlemen and ladies of high rank.

  She had enough in her life to puzzle about, without puzzling about cocottes and their commandants.

  Despite their tactical differences, Edith was exhilarated that the sanctions instrument was now going to be tested. They would drag France along, and the Assembly was reasonably solid.

  She heard herself say, ‘I don’t think I understand the joke about the cocottes and their commandants. Maybe I come from too genteel a background.’

  ‘Oh?’ He seemed disconcerted.

  She should not have asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s really a joke at all—I think de Castellane was saving me from Emerald’s indiscreet questioning, showing me at the same time that he knew I was in a hot seat. It’s what diplomatic chaps do for each other. Sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  His face became bemused. ‘Must be a joke in there somewhere though. I suppose.’ He looked at her sheepishly. ‘Could be that I missed the joke. In the fluster of it all.’

  She smiled widely and fully for the first time in days. She felt her facial muscles relax.

  Eden stumbled on. ‘I will, Berry, endeavour to find out the point of the joke—if joke it be—and report back to you.’

  ‘I would enjoy that.’

  She dropped her report for Avenol in to the Night Officer so that it would be there for him first thing.

  She did not report on the Léger incident and she implied his ‘opposition’ at the meeting.

  She’d decided that, on balance, the protection of Léger was a priority.

  She’d been manipulated, but not so unwillingly. She’d hardly had time to consider how she should handle the things which had happened that day.

  She was too tired to care.

  She was bone weary.

  Was that how wars began? Because everyone was too tired to bother?

  The Diplomacy of Bibulation

  Edith got home to the apartment one night after a late meeting of the Committee, took her attaché case and papers from the League driver who had carried them to the door, said goodnight to him, backed herself in through the door, pushed it closed with her foot, went on into the sitting room—which Ambrose insisted on calling the drawing room—dropped her handbag, attaché case and papers on to the floor, went over and kissed Ambrose on the cheek, noting that he was wearing light maquillage, flopped into an armchair and took off her shoes.

  Had he been ‘out’?

  She placed her shoes side by side, but then staring at them for a second, she tipped them over with her foot, looked at them again, and then bad-temperedly but lightly kicked them across the room.

  She looked at the attaché case and handbag in matching leather. In a cupboard somewhere there was a travelling case as well. A sometime gift from Robert. Tonight it did not please her. Tonight it embarrassed her. ‘Matching’ was not one of the higher principles of aesthetics. She thought it was on a par with neatness. That was the limit of his aesthetics. Still, he had thought out the gift.

  It was too thought-out—in the duller sense.

  Or was she being an ungrateful harridan?

  Yes. Ungrateful harridan.

  In the early years at the League, she’d used her briefcase from university, until it had become too scruffed and would not respond to polish. She’d hung on to it—for whatever sentimental reason—for as long as she could.

  She looked at Ambrose but couldn’t find the energy to speak.

  Ambrose had raised his head from his book and watched her testy entry but had said nothing.

  Her entry barely expressed the ire she’d brought home. It was not in any way a rebellion against the shipshape order which Ambrose had brought to the apartment over the time he’d been there, but she may as well rage against that as well. They had, on his suggestion, let the housekeeper go. Even Robert, on his last flying visit home, had commented on the order of the place.

  Ambrose’s order would tonight have to stand in for all that beset her and take the brunt.

  ‘Shipshape’ was not an aesthetic for which she cared, either. Although she’d been relieved that Ambrose was no longer the slightly unkempt bohemian bachelor of yesteryear. If bachelor were the word in his case.

  He was now, she thought, if anything, a little prissy. Perhaps prim.

  Yes, he was now a little prissy.

  She looked at him and he looked at her looking at him.

  Prissiness was a defensible enough aesthetic.

  Perhaps.

  If it came with elegance.

  In Ambrose’s case, it did. How imperturbably elegant he always looked these days. So much composure.

  Maybe it was serenity.

  She was sure it was.

  He should not be serene while she was beset.

  Robert, on the other hand, had been downright slovenly.

  Better prissy than slovenly, of that she was sure.

  She was perhaps prissy herself.

  Yes, she was prissy. With a touch of elegance. At times. When at her best.

  Two prissy people

  living in a steeple

  known now and then,

  to occasionally

  tipple.

  Poor rhyming. Shocking.

  Maybe that was what Ambrose and she were—one of nature’s poorly rhymed couplets.

  Or maybe too rhymed.

  In personality, they were, she supposed, both by nature aides-de-camp. In a way, while she was an aide-de-camp in work, she felt she needed, well, a ‘wife’ at home. And perhaps that was what Ambrose had become.

  While she, alas, had turned out not to be quite a wife. Not at all a wife.

  You could, of course, be a Leader of Men at work, and a wife at home.

  If you chose.

  Or if you were chosen.

  He was dressed in his knee-length, blue satin lounging jacket with flared sleeves and its fetching, high, round neckline—very Chinoise—over cream silk-satin trousers. Blue velvet slippers.

  She coveted the jacket. It was always a fight to see who got to it first.

  She admitted that his appearance, at least, pleased her. His calm did not please her.

  Mr Femality.

  They continued to silently look at each other.

  If she left the shoes where they were, would Ambrose pick them up and put them away before bed?

  She pulled a face at him.

  Book on his knees, he continued to look at her.

  She broke first. ‘Do you think I drink too much?’ she said, challenging him. Not quite recognising her voice. It was a difficult question to get out. Exposing. Well, it was out now.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ He sounded decidedly unchallenged by her question.

  ‘Sweetser said something tonight about my drinking—jokingly, of course—but his jokes are so ponderous. It was obviously a stone wrapped in cellophane.’

  Ambrose watched her, expressionless, but she had his attention.

  ‘Well?!’ she said.

  He closed the book on the bookmark.

  Don’t lose your place just because of me, Little Miss Serenity. Mr Femality.

  ‘What did Sweetser say, exactly?’

  ‘He suggested I “hadn’t come to terms” with Robert’s “leaving” and that this was causing me to hit the bottle.’

  ‘He said “hit the bottle”?!’

  ‘He used some euphemism: “finding comfort in cocktails”, I think it
was. Hell’s bells—Robert’s been gone for ages. And he does return.’

  ‘Sweetser said that?’

  That wasn’t exactly what had been said by Sweetser, but that would do for now. What he had said, she remembered precisely—in flaming letters. ‘How dare he!’

  ‘And what did you say to Sweetser?’

  She sniggered, but the snigger did not in any way relieve her injured fury. ‘Ah—what did I say!? I turned to him and held him in my gaze and said, “Arthur,” I said, “if I drink a lot, it’s because I have a lot to drink about.” ’

  Ambrose laughed. ‘Very good, Edith.’

  ‘And while on the question of annoyance,’ Edith said, ‘I wish people—namely you, dear Ambrose—would stop expressing surprise when I make a joke. I make many jokes. Yet people—namely, you—refuse to see me as a dazzling wit. All my life that’s happened, even at university. I have wanted, now and then, to be seen as a lovable clown. Instead, people see me as Earnest Edith. It’s something about my hair. There are no red-headed clowns.’

  ‘I seem to recall that there are red-headed clowns. Or red-nosed clowns,’ Ambrose said. ‘Maybe you’re becoming a red-nosed clown.’

  ‘Don’t be cruel.’ She tried for it to come out as a funny complaint but it came out just as a bald old complaint.

  He glanced at her, showing that he’d registered her pique.

  She looked over at the drinks table. She found herself arguing with herself about having a drink. ‘The Good Edith and the Bad Edith are arguing now about having a drink. That’s how piqued I am by Sweetser.’

  ‘Listen to the Bad Edith,’ Ambrose advised. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘Hah—you’re wrong. It’s the Bad Edith who says not to drink; the Good Edith wants me to have a drink.’

  He laughed again.

  ‘And don’t say, ‘‘Very good, Edith.” ’

  ‘It’s probably best that you not be seen as a clown,’ he said. ‘The problem with being a clown is that you can ridicule a chief but never be a chief. And, sorry to say, you are correct—you’ve never been seen as a clown.’

  ‘A wit—do you see me as a wit then?’ She paused. ‘Well?’

  ‘You are in a bad mood. Were you squiffed when Sweetser said this to you?’