There was the added difficulty of taking such an action with a former lover. She searched her mind for another person she could ask to intercede, to go to him and help, but she couldn’t think of anyone on whom she could off-load the responsibility. Claude had dodged it and, as he’d confirmed, Ambrose had become somewhat isolated. She imagined that his old associates were probably steering clear of him. She would have to go to him.
What could one do to help a person in decline? She could lead him to seek help from a physician or a clinic. One could offer solace — if the person was a friend. One could amuse and keep the person cheerful for an hour or so. One could participate in the person’s illusion that everything was unexceptional. Drink with them while they died in drunkenness night after night.
She had to get it off her mind now, and heavily she forced herself up, put on her coat and went out again, dog-tired. She would take him to dinner.
She rang the bell and Ambrose came to the door and let her in, obviously delighted by her visit. She hadn’t been there since the night they’d parted ways.
He was welcoming and seemingly in good spirits.
‘How good of you to call — what a pleasant surprise. During the afternoon I was expecting some of the others to drop down and talk about the hay sweep. No one came by.’
The apartment was dusty but tidy, still very much the way they’d done it together back in the mad, giggling days. There was a smell of cooking, well, of toast burning, and under that, a smell which she would describe as the smell of a man, a man alone, of self-neglect.
He wore a dressing robe over his work clothes. He still had on his tie. He had an open bottle of Scotch on the glass-topped round table, drink in hand. He had changed his shoes and had on his tasselled loafers.
He hugged her, she offered her cheek for a kiss but he kissed her lips, still holding his glass. ‘I was drowning my indigestion,’ he said, waving the Scotch glass.
‘You always said that if you had indigestion Scotch only stirred up the frogs in the swamp,’ she said for want of something to say, taking off her coat.
‘The first one does but then the others knock them on the head. But, oh, this calls for champagne.’
‘No — a Scotch will be fine.’
‘Not good enough,’ and he went off to the kitchen, calling out to her, ‘A champagne day. My lecturette. Return of a long lost friend.’ He returned with the bottle of Lanson, labouring with the cork.
‘Please, Ambrose, no champagne.’
Ambrose ignored her, and the cork popped. He went to the glasses cabinet and took out two cut-glass champagne goblets, pouring the foaming champagne until it overflowed onto the carpet, which was not like him at all. ‘I was just about to have something to eat — not much really, but you’re welcome,’ he said.
She took the glass of champagne with sad reluctance.
‘It’s early for dinner,’ she said. ‘But thank you, if you have enough.’
‘I was just having something eggy on a tray.’
Somehow his saying that confirmed her apprehensions about Ambrose, Ambrose who’d always been a fastidious eater. ‘Something eggy on a tray and something horrid on toast,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe it! You abhor people who eat like that!’ She found she was thinking before she spoke, and she said this, hoping that he could be perhaps teased or shamed into pulling himself together, and she decided then to say, ‘Remember, we both swore to each other than we’d never end up living like that, that we would always eat the French way, come what may?’
‘Oh, standards have slipped a bit around here. Back to trench food. Cheers. What a grand day!’ He touched glasses with her. ‘To the return of a friend.’
She then suspected that his description of his evening meal was intended to sound pathetic, especially to her, that he was twisting her sympathies, although she noticed that he didn’t renew the invitation to eat with him nor did he go near the kitchen. Thankfully, he let pass the idea of their having something eggy on a tray or something horrid on toast.
And she, in turn, decided not to invite him out to dinner, recalling their last trying meal together. She couldn’t face sitting through dinner with him.
‘I think I know why you’ve come,’ he said, propelling her to the lounge, sitting her down and sitting himself too closely beside her, assuming a manly command which teetered a little.
‘What’s your guess?’ Without having touched it, she put down the glass of champagne on the dusty glass-topped table. It left a ring. She felt, given her inner thoughts, that it would be perfidious of her to let the champagne touch her lips.
‘Sir E. has sent you. I’m again persona grata? You and Bartou put your heads together? Had me reinstated? Am I correct? I know you are a Power in the Land these days. More so than I — even in my heyday. Hay-day today? Like the play on words? You liked all my games,’ he said with empty flirtation.
He was speaking quickly, rambling on, perhaps not wanting to face her reply just yet, in case it was other than he wished.
She smiled, wishing that the momentum of his chatter would carry him far enough away from his hopeful questions, so that she wouldn’t have to answer.
But eventually he asked, ‘Well, what did Sir E. say? Am I back in?’
‘Too soon for that, I’m afraid — for now …’ She hated herself for sugaring her reply.
‘I knew the meeting had a long agenda. Sir E. told me that I really could only ask for ten minutes or so. I tried to keep it short. That wasn’t the problem, was it? Too long? I timed it. I may’ve gone over a minute or so — they aren’t holding that against me, are they? It was, after all, rather top-line stuff. Couldn’t expect that the reinstatement of old Ambrose would pop up on the agenda. You know, don’t you, that my lecturette was an attempt to resuscitate my fortunes? Save the world: save Ambrose. Get back to form. I tried to keep it short but telling at the same time. Did you think it went over?’
He stood up, with slight agitation, and poured himself a second glass of champagne, having quickly, burpingly, drunk the first.
There was no easy way to do it. ‘Ambrose, sit down and let me talk with you.’
‘Oh — right!’ He sat down again, like an obedient schoolboy. ‘You have Something to Say. I can tell. I’ve become rather good at picking when someone has Something to Say.’
Looking into his eyes she said, quietly, ‘I am worried about you. We are all worried about you.’
‘You did talk about me then, the meeting?’
‘I mean generally. Your friends.’
‘My friends?’ He seemed to be searching his mind to remember who his friends could be.
‘I am worried about you, Ambrose,’ she took his hands in hers, ‘dear Ambrose.’
‘Oh, come on — I might be a bit … well, I am a bit absentminded one way or another … but not too bad. I was in good form today, wasn’t I? Forgot to call for questions, but they didn’t hold that against me, did they?’
She had to plough on and get it over with. ‘No, Ambrose, you were not in good form. Not at all.’
He started to show indignation. ‘Comert seemed to be won over. He was taking notes and so on. Sir E. said that it was all “highly informative”.’
‘Ambrose, look at me.’ She took his hands and held them firmly. ‘It was something of a disaster. They weren’t impressed. It’s a misguided idea you have about this hay sweep. You sounded very fatigued, you sounded worn down by things, you’ve been pushed beyond your limit. It’s time for you to stop for a while — to take care of yourself.’
‘But I’m just back from leave.’
That was right. She’d forgotten Wiltshire. He was, then, truly ill — it was more than a holiday that he needed. Before she could find the words to bring home to him his condition, he jumped in with another rally. ‘I agree with you now, I can see that it was my mention of the British — when I said “trust the British to come up with the answer”, that line — that was what put their backs up. The non
-English-speaking chaps don’t like that. Error of judgement on my part.’ Ambrose released one of his hands from hers and slapped his wrist. He looked at her conspiratorially. ‘Obviously the British were with me. Even if they couldn’t come out with it at the meeting.’
‘Ambrose, it wasn’t anything like that. It was that the whole thing, the idea of the hay sweeper solving the problems of the world — Ambrose, it’s fanciful, it’s not aligned to reality.’
This registered with him. ‘You think I’m going potty?’
‘I think you need a long rest, a break from this sort of work, and a little loving care.’
He seemed to brighten at her saying this. ‘I did it for you, you know — trying to impress. Say it did. Today was all for you. Are you offering?’
She didn’t quite understand. ‘Offering?’
‘Loving care.’
Oh, God. ‘No, Ambrose, it was not for me. Today was something else. I don’t think it’s me you need to help you.’
‘You think I’m potty!’ He huffed.
‘I think you’re under strain. Maybe it’s something left over from the War, as well.’
‘You don’t see that you might be a bit to blame?’
‘Me? How?’ she said, tiredly.
‘Turning a chap down.’
‘Ambrose …’ She felt expended and ineffective. ‘We were never going to marry — that wasn’t why we were together back then. And there was the spy thing.’
‘Fuss over nothing. I was on the right side. In a balloon with a telescope. Just doing my bit.’
She saw now that she really couldn’t help him, that he saw her as part of the blizzard blowing against him and blowing deep inside him. She also saw that he had no repentance about the spying business.
He became self-defensive and haughty. ‘I don’t see you for almost a year, then you show up to tell me I’m potty — trying to blame it all on the War.’
‘I came to tell you to get help — if you don’t you’ll be left to rot where you are and never rehabilitated. You might even be let go.’
‘You don’t understand. You don’t really understand, do you? They can’t do that.’
‘I’ll make an appointment with someone you can talk to about what’s worrying you, and then when you’re well again we can talk to Sir Eric about getting things back to normal.’ She was trying to use the possibility of reinstatement as a carrot. She turned it into a rule, something like, ‘Promises made to sick people to help them get better are not binding.’
‘I think you’ve misunderstood everything,’ he said, with a patronising tone. ‘I would expect Sir Eric to be talking to me before too long. He said he would be in touch. It will mean exports for the British, you see. I should’ve emphasised that. We like that, we British, doing good and selling a few machines at the same time. Especially now we have this economic silliness.’
He went to a drawer and took out pencil and paper and began making a calculation on the scrap of paper.
She stood up. ‘You’re not well, Ambrose. Think about it. I am going to call to see you again tomorrow at the Palais. I’ll bring Joshi.’
‘If you haven’t anything funnier to say, don’t bother. Don’t bother to bring Joshi either. I haven’t got malaria and anyhow, I’m a doctor myself. Can look after myself. You lack caprice, Edith. Always said that.’
He was very nervous and went on scribbling figures on the sheet of paper.
How did you help? Did you let them go completely mad? Did they have to start wearing pyjamas in the street before anyone took notice? She remembered a Mrs Cobb from back home who’d lost a son in the War and who had gone to the corner of their street each day expecting his return. She sometimes argued that those people close to someone who suicided should be held responsible, should be questioned about their negligence. She would talk to Joshi about it.
She was letting herself out of the apartment when he looked up, realising that she was leaving, and came to the door. He took her arm. ‘Don’t go yet.’ His voice sounded normal and was so pleading that it hurt her heart.
She leaned to him and kissed his cheek. ‘I must, Ambrose, I’ll call in to see you at the office. Think about what I’ve said.’ She thought that his body had changed its smell.
‘If you came back — if we could get together and make things work — promise no more dresses. Scout’s honour.’ He made a Boy Scout salute. ‘Will be a regular chap. What do you say? We might make a go of things? I’d be much improved. I think you’d set me right. I’ll become a gastropath instead.’
‘Ambrose, I can’t help you. You have to go to a physician.’
He frowned and then smiled in an exaggerated way. ‘Oh well, can’t blame a chap for trying with a girl, can you? Fare thee well, pleasant evening, all that.’ Without looking at her, he went back inside the apartment, and closed the door behind him.
Bartou agreed with her. He’d heard the painful story of the meeting from others and he, too, was worried about Ambrose. ‘Some of us have seen it happening over the years.’
‘Over the years?’ This perturbed her. Did he mean that others could see that Ambrose was ill when she’d been with him? That she hadn’t been able to see this? ‘What exactly?’
‘There was his overconcern with detail below his rank. I remember him worrying about the soap. The soap the cleaners used. Matters like that. He said the soap was too strong. Would eat into the soil.’
She remembered the business about the soap but she hadn’t listened to him. She now remembered other things. She realised how little one actually saw of one’s lover. Even when they worked in the same building. ‘What is to be done?’
‘There is,’ he said, ‘the Swiss way of handling it and the British way.’ He said that if Ambrose went back to England, he might be looked upon as a lovable eccentric. ‘“Tis no great matter there.”’
‘Or an unlovable eccentric.’
‘Quite so. Here they would place him in a beautiful Alpine clinic and treat him with machines and long walks and keep him there until he recovered. I hear they eat well.’ He said something about the Fogel clinic at Montreux where Zelda Fitzgerald, the author’s wife, had gone — and a couple of League people.
‘Machines?’
‘Oh, exercise machines, I think. Nothing from the Inquisition.’
‘There is also the Viennese way.’
‘For that you have to get him onto the couch. Can you get him onto the couch?’
‘I can’t see him going onto a couch. No. How could we get him into a clinic?’
The ugly word ‘commit’ leapt at her, from its use in Australia, from the grim world of lunatic asylums. ‘It wouldn’t be a lunatic asylum? He’s not a lunatic.’ She wondered if he were. Was he going mad?
‘The Swiss word is kinder,’ he said. ‘When we say “asylum” we mean it. As in political asylum. A refuge from trouble.’
‘But are the Swiss? Kinder?’
He shrugged.
At least if he went to a Swiss clinic, she could visit. Would she visit? Would anyone visit? There was no pretty way of doing it.
‘I’ll talk with Joshi.’
‘I have doctor friends here in Geneva who will help.’
‘Thank you.’
She talked with Joshi, telling him everything except to mention Ambrose’s sexual predilection. She did not want to be the one to mention that to anyone. Nor was she sure that it was a part of the illness. Maybe it was part of his health.
Joshi said he would visit Ambrose himself, examine him, and then talk with Bartou’s doctor friends.
A day later, Joshi called to see her and to report on his visit. He agreed that Ambrose should be given help. ‘He seemed to realise why I was there but tried to suggest that you had your reasons for going about telling people he was mad.’
She felt cold at the unthinkable possibility that Joshi or anyone else might possibly believe that of her. ‘How unjust.’
‘It’s clear to me that the man is sick.’ Joshi knew
of the Directors’ meeting, had talked to others. Joshi looked at her and said, ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Are you going to put him in the clinic?’
‘Me?’
‘Someone has to initiate it. Someone has to say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘That he is a danger to the public — or to himself.’
Was he a danger to anyone? He was certainly in danger of hurting his professional standing. His health?
She looked hopefully at Joshi. ‘Can’t you?’
‘If I were licensed to practise here and if he were running amok.’
She saw that Joshi was putting the responsibility onto her.
He said, ‘Usually it would be next of kin.’
She stared at the wall. ‘I suppose I am the nearest to him. But I am not “next of kin”.’
He nodded. ‘Legally you could pass as wife, de facto. Stretching it a bit.’
‘But I’m not. I shouldn’t be responsible for him. That’s hardly right. It certainly is stretching it a bit.’
‘I accept that it’s stretching it a bit. Not fair at all. But someone known to be close to him has to sign.’
‘The clinic? This clinic will make him well again?’
Joshi’s face showed sad scepticism. ‘It is his best chance. Though some might prescribe love and the passing of time.’
She wondered whether she had the time or the love to give Ambrose. No, she couldn’t give Ambrose the type of love that he needed.
She looked at the Laurencin lithograph of Les deux soeurs on the wall of her corner. She and Ambrose? Her selves? The sisters she didn’t have and wanted? A postcard of The Three Sisters, three huge rock projections in the Blue Mountains. Until that moment she hadn’t seen the connection between the painting and the postcard.
She looked back to Joshi. ‘I will do it.’
He said he would arrange for Ambrose’s admission to a good clinic, probably the one at Montreux.
On the following Saturday, she and Joshi went to Ambrose’s apartment and explained to Ambrose what was happening.
Her glass of undrunk champagne was where she had left it, flat and untouched. The bottle had not been finished.
Grand Days Page 50