Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  She said, ‘I tried Ulysses twice and put it down but on the third attempt I found that it gave me great pleasure. Although I am sure there is much that I missed.’

  ‘I hear that there are sections which are rather controversial?’

  ‘Naturally I left those unread,’ she said, smiling.

  He grinned back. ‘Naturally, a lady would.’

  Again, he seemed to be searching for the appropriate words or considering whether to make his request at all. Where could this be leading?

  ‘The thing of it is, he has a daughter in a clinic in France and there are difficulties about her being released into Switzerland. Lucia, the daughter is named.’

  ‘What sort of clinic?’

  ‘She is ill in a French clinic near La Baule. Mentally ill, I gather.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Joyce himself had trouble getting the rest of the family into Switzerland. They thought he was Jewish. He had to deny that he was. Although he said that he took it as a compliment that they thought him Jewish. And then the French detained him because he had an English passport. And he has a son of military age whom the French wanted to keep as a belligerent. Things like that.’

  ‘How confused it all is.’

  ‘Indeed. I will be talking with him about the matter of his daughter and I was wondering if the worst came to worst, if all else failed, your friends at the club might be able to “obtain” a permis de sortir or other document—which would facilitate her being removed from France to Switzerland? Evidently she has a terror of bombardment as well as her mental illness.’

  She wondered how the knowledge of this sort of Molly Club service had reached him. She felt a little apprehensive. It was dangerous if word was getting around about the illegal visa activities at the Club.

  She wondered how much she should say? How authorised was she?

  She was not directly involved in that part of the work. That was handled by others and she knew only that it went on. She was not even sure of Ambrose’s role. It was part of the rules that everyone kept what they were doing to themselves and to their co-workers. ‘If you don’t know, it can’t be tortured out of you,’ Bernard had told the inner circle.

  She remembered Olivia, one of the more outrageous of the circle, had cried out, ‘Oh Bernice, please tell me something so that it can be tortured out of me!’

  Edith did know one thing. She knew how important Olivia, a printer, was to the whole illicit business.

  At the Molly, she’d become a source of diplomatic information for Bernard and others which, when necessary, she passed on, especially about changes in regulations and procedures and promotions in the Swiss bureaucracy.

  Lester must have seen her pondering and guessed about her reservations. ‘I understand that I may be wrongly informed about this service being available there. I appreciate that you may not be able to answer at this point. But if there was a possibility I would be pleased to know of it. In due course. And only as a last resort, of course. There are still official channels to be explored. I have been talking with the Irish Minister to France. But we are pessimistic. Joyce has refused an Irish passport which would’ve made everything easier. He said he wouldn’t accept in wartime that which he refused in peacetime.’

  ‘And Mr Joyce has approached the League?’

  ‘More that he approached me as a fellow Irishman who may have influence. More that than an approach to the League, as such.’

  ‘This is not official League business then?’

  ‘Does that worry you?’

  ‘Oh no. I was simply sorting things into their correct baskets.’

  He smiled. ‘As always, dear Edith.’

  She said, ‘I suppose it’s the League’s old problem—how to be involved with the irregular without losing our probity: how to participate in the murkiness of events without losing our “noble” identity.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Why had she said the word ‘noble’ so cynically? She was still fighting that sort of attitude.

  She would have to raise this with Bernard before telling Lester anything.

  ‘I will make inquiries,’ she said. ‘As soon as possible.’

  He stood up to show her out, ‘I would appreciate that.’

  As they reached the door, he said, ‘You couldn’t imagine Avenol, in the old days, making such a request?’

  She laughed. ‘No. Never. Nor Sir Eric.’

  ‘These are different times: the rules are bent now.’

  ‘Yes—we live in times bent out of shape.’

  She arranged an appointment with Bernard at the Club during the day, outside the Club’s usual trading hours.

  She realised that she had never been to the Club in the daytime.

  She went down the steps and found the door open. What windows there were to the Club were open to allow airing and some light streamed in, but it still had the comfortable, decadent smell of stale alcohol, of cigarette smoke, of perfume, and of perspiration.

  A cleaner worked away at the wooden tables with furniture polish and the smell of the polish smelt like it was attempting to renew the atmosphere.

  That sunlight which did get into the Club from the light well and through the transom windows was feeble and seemed reluctant to enter such a decadent atmosphere.

  There in his office, in this semi-daylight, Bernard was just another businessman. He was dressed in a business suit and tie, albeit a rather colourful tie, working away on figures, order books and invoices, with an adding machine in front of him, the enamel worn from the lever.

  ‘Catering supplies and coal, questions of dancers’ fees, costume makers behind in their schedule, a shortage of silk—the life of a nightclub proprietor. As you see, behind the scenes there’s no flamboyance and no romance.’ He rose to greet her.

  Even his voice was more manly and everyday.

  They kissed on both cheeks.

  When seated over coffee out in the empty Club, their voices were drowned out by the noise of a woman dusting the carpets with a vacuum cleaner.

  Bernard called to the woman to stop the vacuuming and to find some cleaning in the kitchens.

  Edith explained Lester’s request.

  Bernard remained silent, considering it.

  He then said, ‘If the papers were used by Monsieur Joyce for his daughter and some diligent border guard or police officer found them to be forgeries, then what? What would Monsieur Joyce say about their origin? The trail of origin might be too obvious. The Irish connection for a start. And if it were traced back to Lester, what then? What would Lester say? How would it look for the status of the League? What would the Swiss government do? Would we all be at risk? Not just the Club—but Monsieur Joyce and his family. And the League as well. Unlike our other transactions, this one could leave a rather damaging trail. And is the moving of his daughter from one hospital in France to another in Switzerland of such priority to be raised above all the other matters we deal with here?’

  ‘I understand the question of people who are well known, I get it at the League—they hope for special treatment but they also bring greater risk. The refugees come to us with their framed doctorates, their letters of commendation from governments long gone, their certificates of honourable mention.’

  She thought about it. ‘In some ways, it would be better to handle things on a first come, first served basis. But I suppose that is very Australian.’

  ‘We would think of it as being very democratically Swiss. The French would think it was a matter of égalité.

  ‘The Joyce matter would involve important people: Lester—and you—and a writer with a narrow reputation but considered to be important. The Swiss or the Germans may make an extra effort to trace the forged documents in this case. They may feel the tug of big fish. They may use harsh means to get their information. Nothing might protect us then.’

  ‘What do you recommend?’

  He thought again.

  ‘If Lester’s efforts through th
e official channels fail, I suggest that he signal this to you. And he should be circumspect in any visit he makes to Joyce. Not that Joyce would be watched. But we know about Swiss neighbours … And he should turn his back on the matter, making sure that he writes official letters to Joyce saying that nothing can be done. I will take it over from there. And the less you know about it, the better. My emissary will find out from Joyce what is needed to be known and I suggest that it be handled behind Joyce’s back as well. If possible, the girl will simply arrive at his doorstep.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll tell Lester. I gather also that the daughter is troublesome.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Violent. During any travelling, she would need attendants who could handle her.’

  ‘Mother of God.’ Bernard ran a hand through his hair. ‘Is there no end to it all?’

  He was harried.

  She said, ‘At this stage it is all hypothetical.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, tiredly.

  Bernard changed the subject. ‘How are things at the Palais?’

  She shrugged. ‘We pretend that we are still at the centre of the world. We pretend that we are not forgotten. Ambrose is working away at the Library.’

  ‘Will the League take him back?’

  ‘After the war? Maybe—no one is being employed at present, of course. I think Lester sees him as part of the League again. Seeks his advice. Uses him for indirect connection to the British Foreign Office.’

  ‘Good. It is a bizarre position for you all to be in—isolated—reduced—to be so frustrated.’

  ‘We spend our time planning the New World—the world after the war—and we will be involved in the peace negotiations. There is another peace conference to be planned.’

  ‘But this time it is unconditional surrender? Isn’t that what Churchill insists?’

  ‘That is what he says. Though we will have some role in the grisly end, I daresay.’

  ‘The Germans seem to have made their first mistake with the invasion of Russia. It may not be long now.’

  ‘I see that even some of the Swiss are painting the V for Victory signs on walls and railway cuttings as Churchill asked.’

  ‘I am told the street women in Paris see the opening of their legs in a V as an anti-Nazi act,’ Bernard covered his mouth with his hand and winked. ‘Oh, that is a rather vulgar thing to say. Apologies.’

  Edith smiled. ‘Tch, tch, Bernard.’

  As she left his office, they hugged, hugged longer than for a parting hug. A hug to give each other strength.

  She met Lester on a street corner away from the Richemond where Joyce and his family were staying. To her surprise he wore a beret and a cravat and looked like a caricature of a Swiss artist.

  She did not know whether to laugh.

  ‘I thought I would not dress like a Secretary-General.’

  ‘You certainly don’t look like a Secretary-General.’

  ‘Do I look artistic?’

  She made a play of examining him critically, ‘You look like a Secretary-General disguised as an artist.’ She laughed.

  He joined in the laughter.

  ‘Perhaps we should act as a couple involved in a clandestine assignation of a romantic kind,’ he said, light-heartedly, as they walked towards the hotel.

  ‘I think that the secret police here in Geneva know us well enough by now.’

  ‘I think so.’

  She suspected that he had dressed that way to fit in with Joyce as a writer.

  As they walked she glanced at him again. She had never thought of Lester romantically. No. He was a family man and not her type. And he had been a journalist before he became a diplomat and she had had her experience with a journalist.

  ‘If we feel we’re being watched by the police we could, I suppose, act as lovers, if you wish,’ she said, not really knowing what that might require.

  ‘No, I don’t think we want that on their files.’ He smiled at her. ‘But don’t think that isn’t an attractive proposition for me.’

  They asked for Joyce at the reception desk.

  His wife Nora came down to greet them and took them up to the room.

  Their son, in his late twenties, joined them.

  ‘I read a very early book of your poems, Chamber Music, and Dubliners,’ Lester said. ‘Do you remember the notice of A Portrait of the Artist in the Freeman’s Journal?’

  ‘I remember it was a fine notice.’

  ‘I have to admit I am responsible for the notice.’

  ‘Well, I thank you again.’

  ‘You’re generous. I’m sure the notice was inadequate. I haven’t read the book for fifteen years but I remember vividly the first chapter which describes a typical Irish household in the crisis of 1890.’

  It was obvious that Joyce had poor eyesight. His wife found something for him and put it in his hand rather than passing it to him.

  She went about preparing tea.

  Lester went on nervously, ‘I tried to read Ulysses but didn’t finish it. I remember that it gave a fine impression of Dublin’s beauty but the Dublin argot beat me. I don’t know how foreigners got along with the argot.’

  Edith put in that she had enjoyed Ulysses but had something of a struggle with the Irish argot.

  Joyce seemed pleased that she’d read it but gave his attention to Lester.

  Joyce said that it had been translated into French, German, Czech, Russian, Japanese, and he thought Italian as well. ‘I sometimes wonder what a monsieur in Tokyo made of it. Have you read Finnegans Wake?’

  Lester said he hadn’t seen it yet. ‘Is it a big book?’

  Edith felt embarrassed by the naivety of the question.

  Joyce chuckled, ‘You remind me of the story of the two drunks on the road to Dundalk who kept falling into the ditch on the side of the road. A stranger came along and asked them how far it was to Dundalk. One of the drunks said it wasn’t the length of the road that worried them, it was the width.’

  They all laughed.

  Joyce told them of a peculiar publication of some of his poems set to music by twelve composers of different nationalities—‘an international type of thing’.

  She supposed that he assumed that might interest them.

  Edith noticed that the family spoke to each other in Italian. Joyce saw her interest in this and said, ‘The children were all born in Trieste and grew up there. Didn’t speak English until they were grown.’

  Joyce said the family and he enjoyed the wireless and listened to the quiz show on Sunday nights.

  ‘On one night they asked the contestant—a labourer from Dublin—who had won some literary prize and the labourer said that he thought it was James Joyce and he was adjudicated correct. I stood up and bowed to the wireless.’

  Lester and Joyce spent some time talking about common acquaintances in Dublin.

  Tea was served and Joyce then outlined the problems of getting his daughter out of France.

  Edith took notes.

  ‘How was Mr Joyce?’ Ambrose called from his study after she had let herself into the apartment on her return.

  She went to the door of his study, ‘Oh, it’s rather disappointing to meet an author—though thrilling at first. Authors shouldn’t talk about ordinary things such as the weather and postal difficulties.’ She added, ‘He praised Swiss wine.’

  Ambrose turned in his chair, pushing back his typewriter, ‘You talked about wine?’

  Ambrose was dressed immaculately and conservatively en femme and she again wondered how it was that she could find it so normal—Ambrose as Carla, the name by which he was known at the Club.

  ‘Joyce said he preferred the Swiss white wines to the French.’

  She straightened the emerald brooch at his neck. ‘He likes the wines of Neuchâtel. And said we weren’t to tell the French. He says he always drinks white.’

  ‘The Swiss wines are rather good. As we well know. What else did he say?’

  Out in the living room, they sat down and she
told him other snippets, her head on his shoulder, legs stretched out.

  ‘We expect serious authors to speak with golden tongues,’ she said. ‘To speak wisdom and never to stoop to the banalities of us mere mortals.’

  ‘Oh, you know authors—Robert was an author.’

  ‘Of one book. And a detective fiction at that.’

  ‘And you knew Caroline.’

  ‘Caroline was a beginner when I knew her. And even she has written only two books. It is, I suppose, the older writers who should speak only wisdom. They should speak only in aphorisms.’

  ‘I imagine that even authors have to buy groceries. Put out the cat. Unless they can afford servants.’

  She looked at him with warm feelings. Tonight even his make-up seemed so perfect and his hair well brushed and stylishly feminine.

  He was more a girlfriend now than anything else. Sometimes perhaps a big sister.

  Sometimes a courtesan, although their love making had become more a comfort than an adventure. Still, they sometimes ignited each other’s dark and rich desires and were, at times, surprised by the passion which sprang from their bodies. Perhaps it was his two identities which created the passion, allowing Ambrose and she occasionally to become intriguing strangers to each other. And also allowing her to become a stranger to herself. It allowed out to play a part of her which she had difficulty describing.

  Sometimes after the long, deeply intimate fondling and fingering, and the aroused playing with their breasts, and bodily frottage—sometimes full penetration, but not always—they fell apart exhausted and sated. Their bodies seemed always to suggest their own personal ways and needs.

  She had never talked with her mother about the matter of married love, even though they had been a free-speaking family. The nearest they came to it was when she was a young woman and her mother had let it be known that she possessed a rare, privately printed copy of the Kama Sutra—but this revelation was made only when Edith was at university. And, handing the book to her after she had asked to see it, her mother had said that it was a marriage manual and asked her not to glance through it in front of her but to read it in private, ‘And return it—although I think I am familiar enough with it by now.’