Edith was sure they were the letters which had headed up the document in Ambrose’s typewriter. She thanked Victoria and hung up the telephone. Edith felt a wave of shock move through her mind. She sat there in her office feeling cold and lost. The document in Ambrose’s typewriter had been definitely headed MI. This must mean that Ambrose was making a report to the British intelligence service — that he was working for the British.
She called Victoria again. ‘And the League — we don’t use those file references ever? You’re absolutely sure?’ Edith noticed that her hands were trembling.
‘You know full well what filing system we use.’
It was absolutely wrong conduct. She sat trying to think. Very, very wrong.
‘Why do you ask? What are you doing with military intelligence?’ It was the voice of Victoria still on the line, a voice which had changed from impatience at the request to curiosity.
‘Sorry, Victoria. I’m not doing anything with military intelligence, nothing at all. Thank you.’
‘You sound queer.’
‘I’m all right, thank you, Victoria.’ She put down the telephone.
Plainly something had now to happen. Either she confronted Ambrose, and then what? He would admit or deny it. If admitted, then what? And if denied, then what? Should she induce him to stop or to resign? Or she could go to Sir Eric and alert him to Ambrose. What kind of loyalty did she owe to Ambrose as a friend — her lover — or to the League? And could he be a friend if he secretly worked against the League and concealed this from her? Maybe he used things he’d heard from her. How was this part of friendship? What would she do if the matter required her to inform the Swiss police? She could not see herself doing that. Her ethic was clear there. Friendship was a sanctuary and a protection. A source of counsel. A friend lent herself to advocacy for a friend, lent herself to giving the best possible defence of her friend, if defence were feasible — although not complicity — a friend was not required to deny guilt when there was guilt. A friend should make all efforts at the best vindication and mitigation of consequences. The immunity of the life and welfare of the friend, that was the obligation of a friend. About this, she was clear. There was no obligation to do the work of the police or government in making a case against a friend. A friend’s obligation was to look to her friend’s welfare. Others would impersonally do the work of prosecution.
But the League was different — the League was not a police force. The League was her very life and the hope of the world and she had always believed it to be Ambrose’s very life. The League was not a government, nor an employer as such. It was a unique entity and of a distinctively higher order than anything else in the world.
Was not an enemy of the League an enemy of hers?
That was, perhaps, too dramatic.
Yet it was clearly understood that League officers would regulate their conduct with only the interests of the League in mind. And that they should never receive instruction from any government or other authority. Including the Pope. True, no oath of allegiance was taken. But Edith felt that everything she said at the League was a statement under oath.
A huge painful emptiness opened in her heart about Ambrose and his deception of her and of the League. She couldn’t consult with Jeanne who seemed to have a different cultural ethic from her. They had never quite found common ground. Victoria was too much a woman of practical matters, not a person to consult on complicated ethical behaviour. She certainly couldn’t consult with Robert Dole who was a competitor with Ambrose for her affections, and a reporter. Caroline was erratic in her judgements, occasionally wise, sometimes just cranky and wayward. They had become close since the stoning business but Caroline had left the League and was leaving Geneva that week to make her life as a writer or a ‘surrealist’ in Paris, London or Vienna. Another loss. Liverright, too. Sometimes she was frightened that the old gang was going.
She did go to talk with Caroline.
Over tea at the Hôtel de la Paix she told a simple version of events and tried to be hypothetical and not to mention Ambrose.
Caroline saw through the hypothetical camouflage. ‘You mean Ambrose is a rotten spy.’
She nodded to Caroline.
Caroline played with the sugar bowl, obviously taking in both the sensation of the information and the seriousness of the advice she’d been asked for.
‘You have to decide whether you are A Person Who Has Spies as Friends or whether you are not.’
The answer was simple. It was dazzlingly simple. ‘And I am not.’
‘No, Edith. You are not.’
‘As my mother would have said, “The forks shouldn’t be in with the spoons.”’
‘And especially not with the knives.’
‘Are you, Caroline, someone who has spies for friends?’
‘I have every sort as friends. I even have Liverright.’
Edith managed a cheerless laugh. Then she asked, ‘Do you also have earnest members of the Secretariat as your friends?’
‘I do indeed, if that earnest but very interesting officer is named Edith Berry.’
They held hands.
‘Thank you,’ Edith said, feeling the turmoil of having gained a friend who was about to leave her life.
‘I also think that while you are definitely not A Person Who Has Spies as Friends, you could very well be A Person Who Has Writers as Friends.’
‘If that writer is named Caroline Bailey,’ she said, thinking also of Robert Dole.
They held hands tightly, looking directly into each other’s eyes, confirming all that they were saying.
‘I have observed you, Edith Berry, and although I know you are an earnest officer, you are more, much more. Remember that. Not a vamp — I’ve already told you I was wrong about all that. That was just Caroline having an hysterical night and that was long, long ago. No. You are uncommon.’
Her spirits were lifted by Caroline’s praise. She hadn’t heard praise for a while. Everyone went on with their work, no one really had much time for praising each other. At any other time, she would have been wildly elated by this character analysis and praise but now she could only store it like a squirrel, to savour at some other time when, if ever, her personal crisis had lost its distress, had stopped spoiling all her feelings.
Caroline empathised with her. She said it was a nasty dilemma which tainted all. It was important, she said, that Edith came through it as well as possible, and safely.
Caroline said, ‘One promise? When this dreadful thing is all over, write to me and tell me all.’
‘A promise.’
‘I ask for your sake as well as out of my writer’s need to know all.’
She also sensed that she could tell Caroline about her darker experiences. She wanted one day to show Caroline that she wasn’t just an earnest officer. Not a vamp, but nor was she a woman who hid from the strangeness of life.
What sort of person would she be after this mess?
In one simple sentence, Caroline had made the next move clear. Heavy-hearted, she decided to consult with Under Secretary Bartou although such an action came perilously close to making it an official matter. He’d been good to her in the past. She remembered him speaking encouragingly to her at her first, and only, Directors’ meeting, way back in the early days.
In arranging the appointment with Under Secretary Bartou she tried to make it clear to him that it was not an official report she was about to make, more an ‘échange de vues’.
He said that he understood. ‘An exchange of notes which precedes the opening of a file. Is that it?’
‘No file may be required.’ Deep in her heart, she knew that there would eventually be a file and that the matter was grave, that she was delaying the moment of crisis.
He’d suggested then, an informal meeting place, the parc l’Ariana, where they were unlikely to be observed.
In the park, seated at a park table, he gestured around them. ‘Can you imagine the new Palais des Nations built here?’
That wasn’t really on her mind but she looked about her. ‘Oh, yes — yes I can.’
He turned back to her. ‘Well?’
She outlined what she knew of Ambrose’s spying activity with Shearer and possibly other things. ‘That is, I think he’s spying on the League.’ She frowned at a tone of self-importance she detected in herself. It was not the most actively present of her broiling sentiments but it was lurking there dishonourably, like the nasty child in the playground. She hoped Under Secretary Bartou couldn’t detect it.
As Under Secretary Bartou sat listening and thinking, he took out two oranges from a paper bag and from his pocket he took out a folding fruit knife. He offered an orange to Edith which she refused, feeling that she could not, that afternoon, handle the matter of Ambrose and an orange.
He told her that Robespierre had a passion for oranges, adding, ‘I do not compare myself in any way with Robespierre. If anything, I am a Mirabeau.’
She smiled nervously, although not having enough of a command of history to understand the reference. Would there come a day when she would understand all the references and allusions?
On the park table, he peeled the orange in a way that Edith had never seen before. He cut off a lid of skin from around the top of the orange and then with a sharp knife cut down the orange peel, top to bottom, cutting only into the skin, making four or five incisions into the skin from top to bottom. He then peeled away the skin segments like the petals of a flower to reveal the orange. The peel formed a sort of plate for the orange.
She watched him eat his orange, impatient for him to comment. Under Secretary Bartou carefully removed the core and all rind and membrane, and ate first the juicy reservoir from the crown, and then delicately broke away each segment. No juice ran down his arm. She observed to herself then, strangely, that she wanted him to wish it all away, for it to be resolved somehow by him, so that she need do nothing more, to have the burden of it taken from her. But she also saw that there was no way he could do that — that no one could do that — and she began to feel the impending wound to herself — the wound of the breach looming between her and Ambrose and the ruin of Ambrose. She could not be released from doing something and yet whatever she did, she would suffer for it. She felt like crying out that she did not deserve another wound. She had been wounded at the Molly Club and she had been wounded by Florence, and somehow also wounded by the stone-throwing. These wounds had healed and become scars. She did not think she could take another. She then saw herself, her spirit, as being scarred and said to herself, I am becoming a scarred person. She remembered then, her father once saying to her as a little girl that the world judged people not by their medals and diplomas but by their scars. Back then, she’d thought of scarred knees and only now did she understand that he’d used the word scars to mean the marks of a courageously led life, but she felt she had no courage left to open herself to another wound.
He then said that he was not sure that it was so serious.
She was taken aback. It seemed to her the most serious thing in her world.
He then said, ‘You are a close friend of Major Westwood?’
‘I am.’ Or was the friendship in suspension?
‘I will rephrase. Seeing that we are dealing with what could become a serious matter, but which, on closer examination, may not be so serious, may I be frank?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I have been told by friends more experienced than I with diplomacy in eastern cultures, that eunuchs make good diplomats. They do not waste their time chasing the pleasures of the flesh, they sharpen their wits so as to be ready to retaliate against insult, they pose as the confidants of all, and they have a sceptical advantage of living between the world of men and the world of women. As well, they possess a feminine intuition.’
Edith felt that eunuchs were outside her world and her specifications of human conduct and, in so far as it was a reference to Ambrose, she was uncertain how it applied. She showed that she was uncertain.
‘There is talk about Major Westwood’s nature. Yet, on the other hand, talk that he is your lover.’
She took his meaning, wondered how they — who? — were talking about him. ‘Do I have to answer?’
‘You could — if you take what I say as a question.’
‘I would rather not take it as a question.’
Under Secretary Bartou didn’t say anything, waiting to see whether she would speak. She knew that stratagem, the Way of the Silent Void, although she had not consciously used her Ways for some time now. She, too, knew the defence, and remained silent.
Under Secretary Bartou broke first. ‘They sometimes simulate masculinity,’ he said.
Edith blushed at this; her blushing had returned after she’d thought that it’d gone from her life. Maybe her blushes were telling him what he needed to know.
He left that subject and went on, ‘Don’t judge too harshly, or too quickly, about this spying business,’ he said, touching her hand briefly and lightly, signalling the end of the other line of questions. ‘Remember the words of Taine: “for a young person the world always seems a scandalous place”. Later in life, the world seems only to be an imperfect place which can be worked on here and there. I’m told that finally, in old age, the world becomes either infinitely amusing or infinitely annoying — according to one’s temperament.’
‘I am over thirty,’ she said, putting her age up a little, sensing at the same time that one didn’t say ‘over thirty’. It occurred to her that maybe she knew more about the ambivalence of masculinity than Under Secretary Bartou.
He went on, ‘Despite what we say in the League, we cannot build a Republic of Virtue,’ and again changing direction, he said, ‘The League is your vocation?’
She couldn’t see where he was headed in his thinking. ‘I see it that way,’ she said, although Under Secretary Bartou did not need to reinforce her loyalty.
He went on to say that as long as British foreign policy was not in conflict with the League’s policies and Britain was a preeminent supporter of the League, both in concept and spirit, he could not see a great danger to the interests of the League in the conduct of Major Westwood. However, that could always change, he supposed.
She was amazed to hear him so unperturbed about the spying which she felt to be self-evidently alarming.
Secondly, he said, it could well be that Major Westwood did not spy on the League as such but could be seen as reporting on those matters which were of interest to the British Foreign Office in Genevan life. ‘What you describe — this report on Mr Shearer — that is not League business, not directly. Although we all wish Mr Shearer would go home.’
Thirdly, he said, it could be that he was bringing to the attention of the Foreign Office only those things which, while being in the public domain, were buried under the weight of documents which the League begat. This may be to everyone’s advantage.
He let this sink in before he said, ‘It could be argued that we should leave things be and let him go on with his work.’
She had trouble comprehending this.
‘Even assist him in his work without his knowledge,’ Under Secretary Bartou said, watching her closely.
‘That would mean that I would not mention all this to him?’
‘And you would go on as if nothing had happened.’
She was stunned by this proposal. She couldn’t imagine how that could ever be.
‘After all, he has gone on as if everything between you were as you thought it to be.’
‘But that I couldn’t contemplate doing it means that I am different from him.’
‘It means you are not good spy material, yes.’
Under Secretary Bartou spoke no more about this possibility and went on with his analysis. Fourthly, Major Westwood may be aggrandising himself in the eyes of the British Foreign Office by pretending to them that what he sends is very secret. Unintentionally — intentionally? — he could be doing nothing more than being a publicis
t for the League within the British Foreign Office. ‘In that sense, he may be working to our advantage,’ Under Secretary Bartou said, again confounding her.
‘Are you telling me that perhaps he’s working for the League in this underhand way?’ For a mad minute, Edith thought that she had been relieved of the burden, that in some twisted way Under Secretary Bartou was saying that Ambrose was innocent, was working for the League, that therefore nothing need be done. She even felt the beginnings of a crazy elation.
‘I am not telling you that. And I doubt it as a hypothesis.’
She ventured then to ask directly whether perhaps there was nothing to be done.
‘Something has to be done,’ he replied. ‘It would be a disaster if we did nothing and a member state discovered this. What we have to do is determine how bad that danger is, how harmful to our interests, and how much alarm should be taken.’
She took this in.
‘It’s up to you to determine this,’ he said.
‘How can I do that!’
‘By looking into what he has been doing — by spying on the spy.’
The interview had not gone the way she had foreseen it. Not at all.
‘Me on him?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid that I couldn’t do that,’ she said.
‘To spy on a spy is no crime,’ Under Secretary Bartou said.
She was against spying. She supposed. Edith told Under Secretary Bartou this. ‘It goes against my nature.’
‘Spying is best justified simply as a way of knowing what other secret agents are doing against you,’ he said. ‘In our case, we want to know so that we can protect ourselves. Secrecy and publicity — both do their own kinds of harm. But remember, secrecy is not a badge of fraud or evidence of conspiracy.’
‘It goes against my sense of what is right. We are supposed to be bringing to the world the rules of fair play in international affairs.’
‘That may be. We haven’t achieved that yet. We can’t really function by pretending that the world is already humane. You forget one thing. You’ve made an allegation against Major Westwood. I have no evidence which would establish that allegation in my eyes.’ His voice hardened somewhat.
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