Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  The science girls had all considered themselves pioneers. But teaching was usually where they went too.

  The degree had been very close to being a waste, although she’d fought away that idea—the thought of having wasted three years of her young life was simply too appalling.

  In reference to something else, her mother had once told her never to dwell on what you felt was a waste in your life because the ‘dwelling’ itself became then a second waste of time.

  Back then, she’d told herself that, after all, they were all living in a scientific age and that the degree equipped her for that scientific age.

  There’d been a lot of Darwinism, Mendelism, and Pearson and, of course, Galton, which she supposed had given her an edge in some arguments and helped form her world view.

  She loved Galton’s experiments to prove the inefficacy of prayer.

  Galton had discovered the use of fingerprints for identification. He and Pearson had been her heroes.

  Walking towards Women’s College, she remembered her ‘path to go’ from Women’s College to the lecture rooms and labs. She’d worked out the most pleasing walk even though it was longer. Alva and the others had sometimes indulged her, but mostly they left her to walk her own way alone, while they went the short cut.

  She’d also devised her own ‘way to go back’ to college, that too chosen for its pleasing trees and because it gave her time to calm down after the day, before facing college life.

  She had always devised ways of coming and ways of going to the places where she’d worked or lived.

  She stood outside the college and decided not to go in. Maybe later in the week she’d go in and look at her old room. All she seemed to remember at that moment were the frantic efforts to keep up her grooming, to get the creaming of her body and hair plucking done, in the rush and bustle of shared bathrooms and the college timetable.

  Her gang, had not been only from Science but included also some of the Arts people at Manning and the Union. That and the Public Issues Society had been her real university life.

  It was in those places that she’d begun to somehow turn her provincialism into a suave questioning—a style of urbanity based on curiosity.

  She thought that she still held civility and curiosity as her highest personal values.

  Standing there in the university grounds, she again felt herself as a perplexed young undergraduate who concealed her perplexity by behaving loudly.

  Oh God, her laugh! Back then her laugh had been so false. It had been too loud.

  They’d all been putting on an act to get by.

  At least, now the Quad and the Harbour Bridge were finished. Two things at least. Almost nothing had been finished in Australia when she’d left.

  She had the sort of mind which yearned for, and in fact, lived in, projections of some idea of a completed future. She was always impatient with incompletion.

  That was what she loved about Geneva—it was a finished city, old and solid.

  Finished, that is, except for the Palais des Nations—but almost finished.

  She felt a coldness pass through her at the idea of living in unfinished Canberra, of going back to another unfinished, imaginary state of mind and place.

  And the world the League was trying to design was certainly far from finished. She’d expected the newly designed world to be finished by now.

  The joke at the League was that when the world was perfect they’d be out of a job.

  Had she lost faith?

  One day, she’d have to sort out the whole business of political faith. Faith came into play at that point where statistical information no longer pointed the way forward and some sort of belief was needed—or if not belief, perhaps a Grand Wish.

  Did she live by Grand Wishes?

  She’d once thought her view of things was historically inevitable. She now saw that she belonged more with the crowd who thought that there were identifiable things which could be won or lost, that everything was always in the balance. That there was no inevitability.

  And you never knew which gesture, word, or action won the day. Which silence, which acquiescence, which inaction lost the day.

  She guessed that there was also the poignant position of belonging to a lost cause.

  The League?

  And then there was the more complicated position, of belonging to a lost cause while welcoming the justice of a new regime. Karen in The House in Paris, speaking of the socialist revolution, had said, ‘I should always work against it, but I should like it to happen in spite of me.’

  She headed towards the Student Union.

  Time to meet the organisers from the League of Nations group.

  It was somehow more daunting to speak to those who’d known you when you were immature. And she assumed that some of her old teachers and friends would be there.

  An audience of strangers was alive only to what you were saying.

  A familiar audience, especially one from one’s past, was alive to your person and to your background—they saw too much of you as you spoke. And in this case, they would be seeing that younger version of herself, not the new improved version.

  And, in so many ways she’d been such a queer young undergraduate and today they would probably still see her as such.

  Maybe she was.

  As such.

  At the Union refectory, she was met by two of the academic staff, an A.P. Elkin, and an Irishman, Enoch Powell, who was younger than she but was introduced as ‘Professor’. So young?

  Hanging behind them was an undergraduate introduced as Rob Follan.

  They were joined by a Hermann Black—handsome, with a fine voice, from Economics—who brought with him a couple of other undergraduates.

  She did not remember any of these dons from her days nor they her. Too much time had passed.

  She wore her wonderful wide-brimmed felt hat with a feather tucked in the band. She’d once been told a French proverb, that ‘when a person wears a hat it is impossible to tell what is on their mind’.

  She felt she needed any shielding of her mind that a hat might give.

  She had on a black suit with a hip-length jacket, a box-pleated skirt, and belt. Two-toned blue and white shoes. She rather liked the two-toned shoes although on men she considered two-toned shoes to be cad’s shoes. As a general rule. The rule had not applied to Jerome—but he was another sort of person from another time.

  And she wore soft kid-leather gauntlet gloves.

  And a cape.

  The gloves, she thought, were rather swashling. The swank hat was perhaps excessive, although when she’d put it on that morning, she’d thought at first that it suggested the sheep station. But on second thoughts had seen it, simply, as swank. For Sydney.

  Give them splash, Edith.

  Perhaps, there was also something defiant in the hat.

  She wore no jewellery, apart from Ambrose’s necklet which could not be seen.

  She realised that most of those present were younger, and she had to remind herself that this was only natural. And then, hovering in the background, she saw dear Alva, whom she’d asked to be included at the official lunch table.

  She excused herself from the greeting party and went over to embrace her. She’d been closer to Alva than anyone else in the last year at university.

  ‘It looks as if we’re the only two women at lunch,’ she said to Alva, leading her back to the greeting party.

  She introduced Alva and then asked the men, ‘Will there be a turnout?’

  ‘I think the League group is still the largest society on campus,’ Elkin said, turning to Black. ‘Would that be right, Hermann?

  ‘Oh yes, by far,’ said Black.

  ‘And I think Camilla Wedgewood, Principal of Women’s College, will join us—to even up the sexes.’

  ‘Support for the League is holding?’ she asked.

  ‘Own up,’ said Powell to the other men, and then turned to her. ‘Dwindling, I’m afraid—in attendances.’
r />   ‘But not in dedication,’ said Black.

  ‘Can’t be sure of that, either,’ said the man Powell.

  The Harsh Realist.

  ‘Disheartening times,’ she sympathised. She asked what their activities were. She felt momentarily as if she were a member of the royal family in a cinema newsreel visiting a factory. And your work is to sweep up the iron filings—how interesting that must be.

  Elkin said that Black and he were doing broadcasting work and talks to trades unions. ‘And we organise model assemblies for the brighter high school students.’

  ‘Broadcasting! Splendid,’ said Her Royal Highness. ‘Duncan Hall, of course, invented the idea of the model assemblies—an Australian idea.’

  They then turned the questions to her and she felt herself sink as she tried to make answers for them which would hearten them. She ached to be able to tell them that something grand, noble was about to flow from Geneva directly to the world and to them.

  She said that there was a feeling that the League had to leave aside sanctions and a collective military force for now. Moves were afoot, to let go of the idea that the League could police the world. Time to concentrate on good works. Relieving suffering.

  The undergraduate Follan asked a question about citizen sanctions as his way of making a rather strident statement—‘the trades union can stop goods moving from one country to another,’ he said. ‘The workers can choose to stop buying the goods from another country, sanctions could be done by the people, not only by governments.’

  ‘The trouble with citizen sanctions is that you could have one foreign policy pursued by the trades union and another by the farmer organisations. Confuses everyone abroad,’ Edith said. ‘But, I agree that they are a new form of diplomacy. And more diplomacy seems to be done outside of government. The Peace Ballot, the Red Cross, and the international conferences of citizens. Can’t be sure it’s a good thing.’

  She saw Follan had not accepted her answer.

  Bolshie.

  He began another foray. She held up a hand, laughing. ‘Don’t make me give my talk twice. I’m going to argue sanctions this afternoon.’

  Follan unwillingly withdrew.

  Black, the economist, said, ‘Sanctions could make the marketplace more devious—make traders cunning at finding ways around the blockades and so on.’

  Powell said in a staccato voice, ‘And I’m worried about the hollow value of treaties. Hitler has killed the Locarno peace treaties now that he’s invaded the Rhineland. One could ask what value there is in treaties?’

  He was irritated with the world. Maybe with the League. Maybe with her?

  Edith had long pondered the enigma of treaties.

  She was about to reply when Black said, ‘Rebus sic stantibus,’ as if pulling it as a rabbit from a hat. ‘When the circumstances change the treaty no longer applies.’

  ‘You make my point,’ said Powell, impatiently.

  They looked to her. She was being paid respect. She was also being seen as a bearer of the latest from Europe. The Latin term brought with it a crowd of memories for her. It had been one of her first lessons in the arts of diplomacy.

  She had also once lived by it. ‘Diplomatically, most of us now consider the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus a rather immature doctrine,’ she said. Hoping it didn’t sound offensive.

  ‘Which doesn’t prevent some nations applying it,’ said Powell.

  The Pessimist.

  ‘The doctrine lends itself to misuse by politically irresponsible nations,’ she said. ‘We—the more responsible diplomatic community—have tossed it.’

  She went on, ‘The advanced nations do not accept that one party can just up and terminate a treaty.’

  There were smiles showing that they knew which nations these were.

  She turned to Powell, trying to win him. ‘I’m reminded of what Alexis Léger once said to me. He said, “We must act within the League to prevent, or punish, all treaty violations. Treaties are the handshake of world civilisation. When the trust of the handshake has gone so has civilisation.” He said that the only way treaties will be kept is reward and punishment.’

  ‘One wonders, if treaties are so unreliable and so much trouble, why we need so many,’ Powell said.

  She batted back. ‘Well, things are changing about treaties. At last, all treaties are public. They are all registered with the League and open to inspection by all parties. In fact, for the first time in history, the world is a party to every treaty—the League, in a sense, is now a signatory to every treaty. The recent Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Alliance allows for revision if necessary, but only by the League Council. That’s the new thinking on treaties.’

  Bring them up to the mark on treaties.

  Discussion was robust here in Sydney, to say the least. No small talk here.

  And what about your marriage contract, Edith? There was perhaps no safety even in the contract of people pledged to love. That contract was nothing more than a signing up for the effort or intention of the two people to avoid risk, to find safety. Or could one only find safety with those who knew that there was no safety?

  The partnership of the frightened?

  She didn’t feel that much at risk though, with Ambrose. But she supposed they accepted, both of them, that there was no contract, that they lived from day to day. Another hopeless manoeuvre to avoid putting the heart at risk.

  In the refectory, they sat at a reserved table. After much shuffling around, she was placed facing into the dining hall, in the middle.

  ‘Of course, there’s the Doctrine of Frustration,’ Powell said, buttering a slice of bread as soon as he’d sat down. ‘Where circumstances arise between two parties which neither party to a contract could have foreseen, the contract is then set aside.’

  ‘That applies, as I understand it, only in civil law,’ she said. ‘And the contract still cannot be set aside by the action of one party.’

  She knew that much law, if they were all to play lawyers.

  ‘Mutatis mutandis—other things being equal,’ said Black, having found another Latin tag in his bag of tricks. ‘And with those things being changed which must change.’

  They all laughed knowingly.

  ‘Many things in civil law are not to be found in international law,’ said Elkin.

  ‘Contracts signed by force?’ said Follan, sounding like a smart student rushing out an answer. ‘In civil law if a contract is signed because of threat of force it’s invalid. But internationally, many treaties are imposed on defeated nations by force.’

  ‘Treaty of Versailles, for one,’ said Black quickly.

  ‘At the end of every war—and some of these imposed treaties last,’ she said.

  My goodness, she thought, although they were not against her as such, it did feel as if she were in a Hollywood cowboy picture with the baddies and the goodies shooting up and down the streets.

  The students at the end seemed to be sitting in some awe at the exchange.

  All those at the table, she decided, were taking her measure.

  She added, ‘I do agree that treaties on matters of war and peace seem to be simply descriptions of a prevailing mood—which can soon change.’

  ‘Everyone signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Locarno treaties to end war forever,’ said Powell. ‘That was done with great confidence. People trusted those treaties. Now Germany and Italy have just torn them up.’

  ‘But the treaties supervising the airwaves and sea waves, postal service and so on, seem to be useful rules of the game,’ Edith said, trying to salvage some respect for international diplomacy. ‘Florence Nightingale once said that people who will keep a vow would do their duty without a vow; but people who will not do their duty without a vow cannot be relied upon to do it with one. But I don’t agree. We need rules and agreements to keep us on track. They’re usually the distillation of long past arguments. Wisdom of the tribe.’

  ‘I can’t see why we bother with treaties at all,’ said Alva
, finding the confidence to join in.

  Edith smiled encouragingly at Alva and said, ‘I once asked the same question of Under Secretary-General Auguste Bartou. And I remember that he replied, “Because they sometimes work.” We make treaties because they might be kept.’

  That sounded too instructional.

  These were university dons she was talking with. Perhaps deference might be a better demeanour.

  ‘Give me a good example of a long-lasting treaty,’ Black asked.

  That was easy. ‘The Rush-Bagot Treaty—one of the oldest in the book,’ she said, also sounding too much like a bright girl in a classroom. Though she reminded herself that she was older than most of them and more experienced perhaps than any of them. It was being back in the university grounds that had caused her to shrink like Alice in Wonderland. She was growing back to her right size.

  ‘The United States and Canada,’ said Black, his memory having thrown it up. ‘The disarming of the Great Lakes?’

  She was touched to see him seeking her approval.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Between Canada, America and Great Britain. After the Canadians and the British burned down the White House. A treaty which has lasted.’

  She’d learned a thing or two in Geneva and she may as well promenade her learning.

  ‘Rather than rebus sic stantibus…’ she said, deciding to lighten things and to round this discussion off ‘… I prefer, for the likes of us, the motto sidere mens eadem mutato—“though the sky be changed our spirit is the same …”,’ putting in the translation quickly with just the right tone to suggest that, of course, they would all know it, the tone suggesting she was simply refreshing her own understanding of the term.

  Two of the men patted the table in approval.

  ‘Oh gosh—it’s the university motto and you remember it!’ said Alva.

  One of the undergraduates—McAuley?—ventured a quip, ‘My translation is “although the facts may changeth: our opinions remaineth the same”.’

  Much laughter.

  The food was served. Ah, Union food, but the superior menu perhaps? It was really Windsor soup, two joints and mixed vegetables, and wine trifle. Only two bottles of wine among them all.