Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘Yes.’ He finished up and followed her on to the pavement.

  ‘I am going to put a lid on the rumours—now. This day.’

  They got into the car.

  ‘I agree—but we have to find a way to do that.’

  She dropped him off first and found that by the time she reached her office she had lost her momentum.

  Ambrose’s remark about serious implications was eating away at her.

  She saw now that simple outrage would not necessarily do the trick.

  She turned away from the League door and walked back to Ambrose’s office. He had his suit coat off and was at work at his desk. He was startled to see her. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Don’t look so worried.’ She sat down.

  ‘Did you do anything about it?’

  ‘No. I agree with you. We should talk more. Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell me more about the shrewdness of my saying “I have a lot to drink about”? How might it be useful?’

  ‘It allows you to plead strain and special conditions. Robert and so on …’

  ‘He’s been gone for … how long? Who cares? Hardly a new situation.’

  ‘It’s a situation that people would understand.’

  ‘Hang on—you’re siding with them. If I say that, then I admit to being a tippler. Or worse.’

  ‘You are not a drunkard, Edith.’

  ‘Well, thank you. I will not plead “special circumstances”—that would be admission of guilt. Some sort of guilt. And what are the implications you alluded to? Do you think they might take the Committee away from me?’

  ‘I don’t know what they might do.’

  ‘You could say something—boys together. You know Walters, you know Sweetser.’

  ‘I could. I suppose I could say something in club. But I’m pretty much on the outer these days. Might make matters worse. Do you know what I think you should do? It might help for you to see a doctor who specialises in this sort of thing.’

  Hearing him say this scared her. ‘What “sort of thing”? A doctor who specialises in the treatment of inebriates?’

  ‘I think you’re suffering from the demands of everything. I think you took the collapse of the Disarmament Conference very hard. Your personal life has suffered an … upheaval, shall we say. Avenol and the French taking over the haute direction has meant new ways of doing things. It’s been trying for you. Then there’s this Italian crisis. You’re certainly suffering fatigue and strain.’

  ‘Strain? That implies I can’t handle the work.’

  ‘You could plead nervous prostration. A “nerve storm”. That’s not as bad. All the American film actors have them.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘It shifts the blame away from the drinking.’

  ‘You do think I drink too much!’ She began to cry. ‘You see me as an inebriate!’ She stopped her crying and became angry. ‘They all drink! Everyone in Europe drinks.’

  He came around from his desk and crouched beside her, putting his arm around her.

  ‘In a sense, that’s true,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean “in a sense”? They do! Agree with me for once!’

  ‘Well, for the French, wine is simply food.’

  ‘I am sick to death of the “French way”. Don’t talk to me ever again about the “French way”. I’ve seen them staggering out of their estaminets drunk on pastis. Don’t talk to me about civilised drinking. The French drink to get squiffed just like everyone else.’

  ‘Edith.’

  She looked him in the eye, still boiling.

  ‘Edith, I think that your reaction to all this is a sure sign that you are seriously strained.’

  Hearing him say that now brought it home with a bang. She was strained, she was strained near to breaking. She began to cry again. But that didn’t mean she should give up. ‘The sanctions are not moving well at all.’

  He stroked her, comforting her.

  He then stood up from his crouching position, and went to the window, staring out.

  She watched him. ‘Don’t go into a thoughtful limbo!’

  He turned around to face her. ‘You should see a doctor who’ll advise you on your state of mind and general health. And then you could perhaps present this medical advice to the office. Let it be known.’

  ‘They will have to accept me the way I am. I’ll brazen it out.’

  ‘ “By how we live we show the way”?’ For the first time that morning, his mood seemed to lighten. ‘That’s rather audacious. I rather like that. But it’s a tall order to take on yourself, Edith—teaching the world how to drink.’

  She smiled through her tears, ‘My life will be a demonstration of la joie de vivre, liberty for my unwomanly self. My contribution to the cause of emancipation.’

  His seriousness returned. ‘Edith, how others perceive us does matter. It’s an unfair truth about the world, but to reveal our vices too readily is to give ammunition to our enemies. We do have to take care. Politically. And to feel that you need to prove you’re strong is weakness.’

  She began to come around to the doctor solution. ‘I’ll go to a doctor, then. But not to be certified as ill. I’ll get a medical declaration giving me a clean bill of health and I’ll throw that in their faces. A declaration of my fitness and reasonableness.’

  ‘I think going to a doctor is the best move. I suggest you see Vittoz.’

  She baulked. ‘I would’ve thought that an ordinary doctor would be enough. I hardly need a head doctor. I am not cracking up.’

  ‘I am not suggesting that you’re in as bad a way as I was. I was off my trolley. But you’d be better off with someone who knows about nerves.’

  ‘But he’s a doctor who treats hysterics.’

  ‘I myself rather liked the idea of being an hysteric. I was good at it—at hysterics. Seriously, he did very well by me. I may not be here today if you’d not arranged that, dear Edith. Let me return the favour.’

  ‘Will he “analyse” me?’

  ‘If you want.’

  She thought about it. ‘Could be fun.’

  ‘I found it all rather labyrinthine.’

  ‘Could be frightening, you mean?’

  ‘How easy is a bush supposed a bear! And how sometimes, the bush doth, indeed, be a bear … He has a long waiting list. Very fashionable now, this sort of thing. Being analysed.’

  ‘Sweetser had analysis, you know,’ she said. ‘In Vienna—after his son suicided. Couldn’t stop talking about it.’

  ‘Oh yes. That’s good. He’ll be on your side about seeing Vittoz.’

  She would throw the medical declaration in their faces. The procedure for doing this throwing would have to be worked out. But work it out she would.

  Another matter came to her mind. ‘Does this Doctor Vittoz know … about your particular predilections?’

  ‘He knows everything about me. That’s part of it, Edith—telling all.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He recommended a very reasonably priced haute couture seamstress.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘We decided that as long as I didn’t go to Directors’ Meetings so dressed, I might be all right.’

  Something else followed from that. She had never asked before. ‘Does that mean you told him about us?’

  ‘In so many words … yes. No names. Inescapable, I’m afraid.’

  ‘If I turn up he’ll know about us!’

  ‘He may put two and two together.’

  ‘I’ll deny everything.’

  ‘It isn’t really a place where you are supposed to deny things, dear. Au contraire.’

  ‘Maybe it’s best that I see him rather than a stranger. He would be somehow a little in the picture. Friend of the family, in a sense. And he didn’t censure you?’

  ‘No censures from the good Doctor Vittoz. It was rather like doing a laboratory study of myself. Rather luxurious and self-indulgent, really, when one loo
ks back. But not at the time, though. A few spiders. A few home truths.’

  ‘Home truths?’

  ‘Home truths.’

  ‘Oh dear—that doesn’t sound very attractive. Perhaps I won’t do the analysis. I want him to write me a medical clearance. Something to throw in their faces.’

  ‘Our first task is a medical examination. Then we will deal with office tactics.’

  ‘There’s a certain symmetry in all this: you sending me off to a head doctor—after I’d sent you off. Are you sure it’s not retaliation?’

  ‘We could do with some symmetry in our life, in the absence of any other conventions.’

  ‘I guess that we are both show ponies.’

  ‘I don’t know that expression.’

  ‘I suppose it’s Australian; both of us are temperamental horses. You mean it, though—that I’m strained? That I’m not a dipsomaniac?’

  ‘You are not a dipsomaniac, Edith.’

  ‘You think they could reprimand me?’

  ‘Perhaps. Lightly. The Raging Twenties are over, Edith. For the world and for you.’

  ‘For the world, maybe. I will live as I choose. I will proceed as I intend to continue, as my grandmother always said. Sorry, I can’t live as a prisoner of other people’s expectations.’

  ‘Shall I make an appointment?’

  ‘Yes. But don’t tell him that I’m barmy.’

  ‘What you are will be obvious to Vittoz.’

  She felt frightened again. Her mood kept changing. ‘What will he see in me?’

  ‘An elegant young woman, full of zest for life. Too full of zest, maybe.’

  ‘I need to hear things like that. Those gossips must be made to see me as you see me. I will not bow.’

  Ambrose didn’t comment.

  ‘Tell me something good about drinking,’ she said.

  ‘About drinking?’

  ‘A happy story about drinking.’

  ‘I can tell you about hunting and drinking—not one of my favourite stories perhaps but jolly in a certain way—if you like hunting.’

  ‘I shot a rabbit once. Go on.’

  ‘I hunted near Danzig—Sean Lester was the League Commissioner for Danzig at the time—a Shooting Party with some Austrian friends. We went in forest wagons; I fired twice during the day and hit nothing. This hunting though was rather hard work—starting at dawn with hot soup around big wood fires.’

  ‘Did you drink?’

  ‘Hot red-wine grog—and then later for breakfast we ate great dishes of split brötchens with fish meat and cheese, heaped up. Hearty breakfast.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘By the end of the day we had a small bag—as things go—forty-eight hares, four foxes, and one poor rabbit. No deer. No wildschwein. But it was the ceremonials which I rather liked.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘At the end of the day, we had coffee and cakes at the Forestmeister’s house and then a ceremony in the village square. The bag for the day was laid out in a long line on benches. The foxes had pride of place. The police band played hunting calls. Then we went to dinner. The dining rooms were decorated with fresh foliage and berries—they keep it all in the forest theme. The man who shot the most is elected King of the Hunt—Jagdkönig. People are fined by the King for various mock counts of misbehaviour during the hunt, fined in drinks. The man who shot the second best is called the Crown Prince and the man who shot the least—me, that is—was called the Poodle King—don’t remember the German word—we all had to make speeches. As the Poodle King I had to speak on behalf of the hares.’

  ‘You spoke for the hares?’

  ‘I did with eloquence—even if I say so myself.’

  ‘Tell me what you said on behalf of the hares.’

  ‘Too long ago.’

  She thought of the hares, of Ambrose speaking on their behalf, and she was suddenly weeping.

  Precepts Five, Six and Seven

  As the economic sanctions plan went forward, she would every day report to Avenol either by memorandum or face to face, depending on their individual daily schedules.

  On this particular Tuesday, after a meeting of the newly enlarged Committee—known now as the Committee of Eighteen—which was overseeing the implementation of sanctions, she spoke with Avenol while he walked from one meeting to another through the new Palais.

  She walked beside him in the wide corridor known as the Salle des Pas Perdus and brought him up-to-date on the application of sanctions.

  ‘We are having trouble getting oil onto the list,’ she said.

  ‘We must not hound the Italians.’

  Edith did not show her consternation. This was the first hint from the Secretary-General that he was not fully supporting the Council and Assembly.

  ‘We are simply going by the Assembly sanctions plan,’ she said.

  ‘In the interests of the League I would rather lose Ethiopia than lose Italy.’

  It would be good not to lose either. And better still not to lose our integrity, she wanted to say.

  ‘You must understand, Berry, it’s a quarrel between England and Italy for control of the Mediterranean.’

  ‘There are other issues, surely.’

  Impudence.

  ‘There are not. We should make Ethiopia a League mandate. It should never have been made a member of the League. Thank you, Berry, for your report. Excellent.’

  She went to her office, shaken by his explicit shift against Assembly and Council policy.

  She wondered what she should tell Eden. That the Secretary-General was undermining policy? Or, at least, speaking loosely against it?

  Earlier in the crisis, during the Committee of Five, she’d regretted the walkout of the Italians but realised that, of course, someone in the Committee would be reporting to them.

  She now suspected that it was she who had been, indirectly, reporting to the absent Italians—through her reports to Avenol.

  She gave a dark laugh.

  ‘I owe my loyalties not to Avenol but to the League. The Council and the Assembly,’ she said to Ambrose, as he tied his bowtie at the mirror of his dressing room.

  They were on their way to a Delegates’ Reception—to keep the spirits of the Assembly delegates high. After finishing their normal business, the Assembly had been held back to consider the Ethiopian crisis. The Assembly members hadn’t complained at having an extended stay in Geneva. As she checked her make-up in the better light of Ambrose’s mirror, she again resolved to get better lighting and her own magnifying mirror. An honesty mirror. How could she get the world in order if her personal life was not in order? There were so many things to have fixed in the apartment.

  ‘On the Committee, you are a representative of the Secretary-General’s office,’ he said. ‘And as such you must keep your line of responsibilities clear. Otherwise you’ll get into a pickle.’

  Edith reflected that because Avenol couldn’t be present that night at the reception, she would be representing the Secretary-General. ‘In a loyalty conflict, my higher loyalty is, probably, to the spirit and intention of the Covenant.’

  ‘Your personal interpretation of the Covenant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If the League collapsed? To where would your loyalties scurry?’

  She had not considered that.

  He pursued her. ‘To Australia? The British Empire?’

  ‘I would become a citizen of the “country of lost borders”.’

  ‘That sounds like the Molly Club.’

  She laughed. ‘I might very well shift my loyalties to the Molly Club.’

  ‘You could do worse.’

  ‘This is not a laughing matter. Help me define my loyalties!’

  ‘I am more worried by the Other Matter.’

  ‘To hell with that.’

  ‘As for the loyalty question—dodge it as long as possible.’ He turned to face her, his bowtie perfect. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Perfection—but for mercy’s sake, put on a happy face
.’

  He made a clownish face.

  Ambrose and she were finding that they were now invited to the same functions and increasingly went as each other’s escort.

  Ambrose followed Edith into the sitting room. She went to the drinks table. ‘A shoehorn?’

  He looked at her. ‘I am going to say one more thing about the Diplomacy of Drinking. As a diplomat you do not begin drinking before everyone else. And even if you think that everyone else in the world has a ‘shoehorn’ before going to an official function, you shouldn’t. If you are right—that everyone has a drink before a social function—then your not having a drink makes you one drink more sober than the others. For an observer that’s an advantage.’

  She looked at him with amusement. ‘I do believe you’re becoming prudish, hiding it behind your precepts.’

  He didn’t smile. ‘I am trying, dear Lord, to save you from your brazen self.’

  She poured herself a drink. ‘Are you sure that you won’t have one, Nanny Ambrose, or should I call you Mademoiselle de Garde?’

  ‘I’ll have one. I need it more than you. I’m the nervous one. And I’m not the one on trial. It’s bloody unfair that I should be the one who is nervous. Pour me a Scotch.’

  Out of the arms of an arrogant husband into the arms of a bossy wife?

  ‘Don’t become a bossy squaw, dear,’ she said, handing him his drink and kissing his cheek.

  ‘I did see a recent photograph of Louise Brooks dancing as an Indian squaw which was quite fetching.’

  ‘I’d be happy if we were known as Geneva’s most heavenly bon vivants,’ she said. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘I have not finished my drink. Being a grand bon vivant does not involve excess. A true bon vivant has the other keys to the pleasures. And to drink too quickly is unpleasant: to drink too much is a waste.’

  ‘I find it absolutely astounding that you should know so many rules to a pastime which is, at its heart, truant. Honestly, you astound me. How do I look?’

  ‘You know that outfit is one of my favourites.’

  She looked again at herself in the mirror. It was a splendid evening dress—gold coloured silk-satin, ankle length, halter neck, vee-shaped front, bias cut. ‘You don’t think I’ve worn it too often?’