Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘I’d had lunch and dinner wine, if that’s what you mean. No different to any other day. A pichet or so of wine. For mercy sake, don’t you start.’

  ‘I wasn’t “starting”—I was asking you what caused Sweetser to make this remark.’

  ‘I think he has been observing me. He hates that Avenol has attached me to the Committee and that I’m buddies with Eden.’

  ‘There is a theory,’ Ambrose said, ‘that it’s not the alcohol that’s bad for you: it’s the late nights which accompany the drinking.’

  ‘I never show my drink.’

  Ambrose went to the drinks table and poured them both a port.

  He came over to her, and handed her the drink and kissed her forehead, ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ She drank from the glass and then added, ‘Dear.’

  He returned to his seat. ‘Are you sure that you’ve eaten?’

  ‘Yes, I am sure that I’ve eaten. Sure, sure, sure.’

  ‘Mustn’t skip meals.’

  ‘And you mustn’t become a mother. You can be a girlfriend, you can be a big sister. You can, if you so wish, be a chorus girl, you can be a hussy, you can even be courtesan. But do not, not ever, try to become a mother.’

  ‘To that, dear Edith, I have never made claim.’

  ‘You would never be good at it. Not at all. And do not ever become matronly.’

  ‘Woefully, I dare say I will.’

  She turned the idea over in her head and then said, wearily, ‘I dare say that we’ll both become matronly. What a sickening thought. Sickening.’

  She was hiding in the chatter, hiding from the hideous encounter with Sweetser.

  She returned to the burning issue. ‘I do not show my drink.’

  Ambrose examined his nails, picked up a nail file and worked on them. He said, quietly, as if taking a conversational risk, ‘The Manual to the Diplomacy of Bibulation states that one should never assume that people don’t know you’ve been drinking. It’s the Drinkers’ Grand Delusion. Sober people pretty much always know. And drinkers pretty much always know. Always assume that people know.’

  ‘I am not a “drinker”,’ she said tersely. ‘I am a person who drinks.’

  She stared at him feeling unpleasantly annoyed. Annoyed by everything. ‘Oh, put down the nail file.’

  It reminded her of how bad her own nails were. Her grooming at present was a disaster. No time.

  ‘Nancyboy.’

  She didn’t say it with good humour.

  She knew that his rule was that youth let you off much of the boredom of grooming but at their age grooming was everything.

  He looked across at her and did put down the nail file and gave her full eye attention, crossing his legs as if to emphasise the attention he was giving her. And then he said, ‘Another precept of the Diplomacy of Bibulation is: Don’t drink when with sober people; and don’t stay completely sober when with drinking people.’

  ‘Nancyboy.’

  ‘Drinking is civilisation flirting with anarchy.’

  ‘Pansy.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Nancyboy,’ she said, staring at him, not really feeling any personal antagonism, more a free-floating antagonism. ‘Pansy nancyboy.’

  He opened his book and began to read.

  She watched him read and then said, ‘Stop talking to me as if I am eighteen years old. Drinking is a slight relaxation of discipline or it’s nothing. It’s to do with frivolity and frivolity has no rules. Pleasure maybe has rules. But not fun.’

  He again closed his book and returned his attention to her.

  ‘Nancyboy. Pansy.’

  ‘Have I ever told you that in my part of the country the pansy is called “heart’s-ease”?’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  He continued with his sermonising, ‘The saddest thing of all about the drinking life is that when one was young and innocent and one drank to excess it appeared to others to be “enchanting”, perhaps “daring”, even amusing: now that we’re older, we appear simply as, well, mundanely, people who’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘Is that what they taught you in the Foreign Office? The Diplomacy of Drinking?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, they did give us some advice on drinking. Basically, it was that one should never be drunk at the wrong time of the day. Don’t be seven o’clock in the bar when it is only five. We all scoffed, of course. Hence my downwards career. Hence the state of the Empire.’

  She drank the port. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She stood up and went over to Ambrose, giving him a goodnight kiss, ‘See you in the morning, darling. Sorry—didn’t intend to be mean—I’m done in.’

  ‘The more I think about the state of the Empire, it’s curious—as long as we’ve had an empire it’s been considered to be in a bad state. Bit like the jokes in Punch. Not as good as they used to be and always have been.’

  She gave a weak grin of appreciation at his efforts towards good humour.

  She glanced at her papers, attaché case and stuff dumped in the room and at her scattered shoes.

  She left it all.

  In her bedroom, she felt a desperate need to be free of all tightness: the earrings, the waistband of her skirt, the tightness of her underclothing—girdle, stockings, brassiere, the elastic waistband of her underpants, her garter belt—her stockings, the rings on her fingers, her watchband. The lot.

  She pulled them off and let them stay where they fell.

  Her body was bridling at constraint. Even her make-up felt tight.

  She chose a flowing ankle-length crepe-de-chine nightgown which left her shoulders and arms bare and her breasts swinging free and, putting it on, went to her bathroom, washed her make-up off with a hand cloth, came back to her bedroom and fell with relief onto the bed. She did not put on night cream.

  Only after breathing deeply and worming her way down into her bed did she let Sweetser’s words fully return to her, and his words returned to her over and over as she lay there. He’d said more than she’d told. Sweetser had said, ‘I heard Walters and Bartou talking about you and the question of your drinking came up, that’s all. Thought I should mention it. Word to the wise.’ She kept going over Sweetser’s remarks and her clever rejoinder, a rejoinder which she knew had not nullified the situation at all.

  Not at all.

  His remarks implied all sorts of things which she couldn’t quite bring herself to face. There were the implications for her professionalism. And implications about the way people must see her. She felt sick. Was she commonly seen as a tippler? And there was his presuming to comment about Robert’s absence from her life. And furthermore, on top of everything, she wasn’t ecstatic with Ambrose’s observation on the so-called ‘delusion of drinkers’—that people could always tell.

  She suspected that he was wrong about that, but it added to her agitation. It dawned on her that he, too, was warning her. Why was he warning her? About what was he warning her?

  The hide of Sweetser and Walters and Bartou to speak about her behind her back.

  She would have it out with them.

  Lying there seething, she heard Ambrose wash the glasses in the kitchen, and then go to his room.

  She lay there stark awake. Realising that she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, she pulled herself out of bed and went back out to the sitting room.

  Looking into the darkened room, she saw that Ambrose had picked up her papers and attaché case and put them on the table. Her shoes were together. She smiled tiredly. She’d been going to do it herself.

  She knocked on Ambrose’s door.

  ‘Come.’

  She went in and threw herself on the bed beside him and began to cry.

  ‘Darling, what is it?’ he said, taking her in his arms and stroking her hair. She put her face to his. The make-up had gone from his face, replaced by the clean smell of night cream.

  ‘The wretched Sweetser.’

  ‘Come on, Edith, you’ve never let Sweetser get t
o you. And he’s only trying to be, well, superior. He probably didn’t give the matter a second thought. Just something to say in passing to make himself appear in-the-know with the haute direction.’

  Ambrose continued to stroke her hair.

  ‘I didn’t tell you all,’ she said, at last, through the crying.

  ‘Tell me all.’

  ‘I’d finished the meeting. People were hanging around as they do after a meeting, but I was exhausted and eager to get home. I said my goodnights and went to my office. I put on my coat and did my face, and realised that I felt edgy, the usual feeling of being edgy after a difficult meeting. Laval is dragging his feet again on full sanctions. I took out my flask and, well, had a nip. And who should come in through the door but Sweetser—he’d been at some other meeting, I suppose, he barged in without knocking—he looked in and said something about an action file he was searching for.’

  ‘He caught you with the flask at your lips?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was, of course, an irregular request and he’s done it before—taken a file before it’s gone back to Registry.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, he said, “Finding comfort in cocktails?”, in his joking voice, and then said rather seriously, “Not good to drink alone.” ’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘I said—she put on an American accent—“Would you like a nip, Arthur?” He didn’t. He then continued in a brotherly voice, saying, “I heard Walters and Bartou talking about your drinking. I told them you were going through a difficult time and all. I thought I should mention the conversation to you. A word to the wise.” And, furthermore, he actually put his index finger to the side of his nose—he actually did.’

  ‘Your American accent needs coaching, darling. And that’s when you said …?’

  ‘That’s when I said, “If I drink a lot, Arthur, it’s because I have a lot to drink about.” ’

  She got no additional applause for her quip.

  ‘That’s all that was said?’ The tone of Ambrose’s voice had changed.

  ‘He said more. He suggested that the Committee was too much for me. “Taxing” was his word.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Implied that.’

  ‘That’s all—entirely all?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It’s enough. It is indeed enough.’ His voice was serious.

  ‘Why the interrogation?’

  He was silent.

  She filled the silence. ‘And anyhow, the more I think about it, why on earth was Sweetser looking for a file at that time of night?!’

  Ambrose ignored this gambit. ‘On further consideration, Edith, your saying, “If I drink a lot, it’s because I have a lot to drink about” was a shrewd reply.’

  ‘I thought it rather good. At the time. On the spur. But I don’t see what shrewdness has to do with it.’

  ‘Sit up, Edith.’

  There in the darkness, they both pulled themselves up, side by side against the bedhead, her head on his shoulder, their hands clasped.

  ‘It was a tactical reply because it implies that you’re under strain.’

  ‘I am not “under strain” and I am not “taxed” by my work with the Committee. It’s a simple matter—I was edgy after a meeting. I had a nip to calm me. I’ll have it out with them all tomorrow—face to face.’

  ‘How do you intend to do that, exactly—this “having it out”?’

  ‘I’ll storm in and ask them what they think they’re doing talking behind my back.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘You obviously don’t agree?’

  ‘You might shut Sweetser up. But I don’t know if that is the approach with Walters. Bartou will never harm you. Bartou was probably defending you. He’s your best ally as you know, a friend-in-club. But with Walters we will have to think up better moves. He is after all Deputy Secretary-General.’

  ‘They’re a bunch of gossips.’

  ‘It has to be thought about some more.’

  ‘You don’t think Walters would have the hide to reprimand me!?’

  ‘Walters is Deputy Secretary-General. He may call you into the Head’s Office for six of the best. Is it Regulation 286? No alcohol in the office? Or is that the rule on dogs?’

  ‘It’s the regulation on dogs and their drinking. I’ll have it out with Walters. I’ll tell them all to mind their own b—business.’

  ‘Edith, we’ll have to talk about it. In the cold light of day. Not now.’

  She felt suddenly afraid of his voice. She did not want to ask why they’d need to talk about it more. ‘May I stay the night with you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She pushed in beside him and they snuggled back down in the bed.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he whispered, and then quoted in his becalming, loving voice, as if to a child: ‘It may well be that the bear you have seen is only a bush. Remember, “in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear”.’

  ‘Say it again.’ Edith closed her eyes, putting Ambrose’s hand up inside her nightdress, between her legs. His wonderful, firm and knowing fingers began to move inside her. He whispered it to her again more fully,

  The lunatic, the lover and the poet,

  Are of imagination all compact:

  One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

  That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

  Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

  The poet’s eyes, in fine frenzy rolling,

  Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven …

  Turns them to shapes …

  Or in the night, imagining some fear,

  How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

  In the silence which followed, his gentle fingers brought her to a small, comforting release which shooed away some of her tension. She drifted to sleep in his arms, fleeing to the comfort of oblivion, but as she drifted, she was vaguely aware that Ambrose was lying there, awake.

  In the morning, as she went about dressing, she thought out a pointed remark for Walters and ripping riposte for Sweetser. And she would say to Bartou something about those in glass houses …

  She felt in better spirits.

  She was finishing her make-up when Ambrose came back up to the apartment after having been shaved at the barbier. He stood and watched her make-up.

  ‘How was Barber Didier today?’ she asked. ‘Did he have any more views on the Italian crisis for you to communicate to the League?’

  ‘He still sides with Mussolini.’

  ‘Why do you persist with him?’

  ‘If I changed barbers he would know I was going somewhere else and stare at me every day as I passed his shop. Would ruin my day. And Arthur Norris once said to me, “Even in the wilds of Asia, I have never shaved myself when it could possibly be avoided. It’s one of those sordid annoying operations which put one in bad humour for the rest of the day.” ’

  ‘You shave yourself in the evening.’

  ‘The second shave is different. The morning shave is to allow me to face the world. The evening shave is to allow me to face myself.’

  She examined her make-up, moving her head from side to side. ‘Do you know the first woman I saw make-up in public?’

  ‘No.’ He didn’t seem that interested.

  ‘The wife of the New South Wales Premier—Ada Holman. She was the most sophisticated woman—apart from my mother—I have ever met. She had her initials on her specially made cigarettes. And she made-up in public. New South Wales, by the way, is a state of Australia.’

  They went to the café downstairs for breakfast.

  As soon as they were seated and had ordered, Ambrose said, ‘I want to say that I was rather preachy with you last night. Sorry. Didn’t quite see the full picture. Sorry about all that stuff about diplomatic drinking. Must’ve sounded rather prefectorial.’

  ‘Forgiven. Hang the precepts of drinking.
The rules of gossip should be enforced. Whatever they are. Sweetser barging into my office. Sweetser! You know he once blew his nose while seated at dinner? And he dares to tell me how to behave.’

  She sipped her tea. ‘And he uses too much slang.’

  ‘Has anyone ever mentioned it before?’

  ‘Sorry???’

  ‘The drink question.’

  ‘No. Never. Would never have dared. And, there is no “drink question”.’

  ‘Go over it again for me.’

  ‘For mercy sake, Ambrose!’

  ‘Indulge me.’

  She recounted the events of the previous evening. ‘It’s not as if I was staggering around the office. I don’t drink any more than any of them.’

  ‘That’s the Second Delusion of the Drinker—drinkers always imagine that other people all drink as much as they do.’

  ‘You drink as much as I do.’

  He was quiet.

  ‘Admit it!’

  ‘In truth, dear Edith, you regularly have two or three more drinks than I.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  He went on with his breakfast.

  ‘Do you count?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Oh, stop being so damned impeccable. It’s never affected my work. Never.’

  Ambrose didn’t say anything.

  ‘You think it has?’ she said, defiantly.

  He was silent again.

  She burst out, ‘If you are thinking something, say it. Don’t sit in sanctimonious silence!’

  He took her hand. ‘I’m on your side, Edith. And remember that I’m a doctor, as well as your dear friend.’

  ‘Sorry. But I hardly need a doctor. I need a lawyer. I should sue for slander.’

  ‘It was a nasty thing to have thrown in your face. And in the cold light of day, yes, I do think that it has serious implications.’

  ‘What implications?’

  ‘The perception that you drink too much.’

  She coloured. ‘I’m going to throw it back at them. I’m going to see Walters. Have it out. Clear the air.’

  She looked at her watch and rose to leave, dabbing her mouth with the serviette, careful of her lipstick.

  ‘Don’t go—not yet. Sit down.’

  ‘I have to go. The car will be here.’ She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Want a lift?’