Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  She had bought a toaster for their rooms, to make what she called off-the-fire toast, finger-hot and semi-crisp, with a bit of burnt crust; not the English toast, hard and cold or soft and cold, which, of course, all toast was when sent to the room from the hotel or club kitchen. She couldn’t be bothered making another round.

  She almost smiled. ‘I would work on the grand roads of the city emergent if they offered it.’ She reached over to him. ‘By bringing us here, I’ve made a great misreckoning with our lives – that’s the long and the short of it.’

  He didn’t contradict her. He was supposed to.

  ‘Despite the rules, I thought that just by my landing here they would snap me up. Even Latham and Bruce thought someone would snap me up. I was so full of myself.’

  She had even written to their old friend from the Australian Paris legation, the painter Sam Atyeo, asking him to help her, but he had said the public-servant diplomats ignored him because he was a bohemian interloper in their midst. ‘You would be better off not mentioning my name or you will find you are seen as an interloper too. And anyhow, Evatt and my people are no longer in power. Come back to France, Edith.’

  Ambrose said from behind his newspaper, ‘Experience and talent frighten as much as they attract.’

  He had said that before.

  ‘I will not play croquet.’

  He lifted his eyes above the newspaper, smiled and then returned to the Guardian.

  She had said that before.

  There was a croquet lawn next to the hotel. The ladies had invited her to play but she had politely declined.

  She took up the Canberra Times, which was delivered to the door, and drifted through it in a desultory way, not yet fully connected with this community yet curious about it.

  On top of page three, she came across a news item that stopped her. The headline read: ‘Perverts Posed as Women at Adelaide Shop.’ She read that ‘the young men dressed as women and using women’s names had been charged with gross indecency . . . at a shop known as the Lamp Shade shop . . . At parties in the shop many of the visitors assumed girls’ names and some dressed as women, wearing lipstick and powder . . . they sang and danced . . .’

  She tightened, chilled. She looked up but hesitated about bringing it to Ambrose’s attention. Somehow she had always assumed that if it, whatever it was, were done in the privacy of a home it was not a crime. And in Europe they had moved with people who didn’t give a damn. Or who shared his penchant. For God’s sake, look at the Nicolsons and their crowd.

  She felt compelled to raise it. ‘I think you should listen to this.’

  He put down his paper, caught by the urgency of her voice, and she read the story out to him, summarising some of it. ‘It appears that the young man who has been charged with gross indecency with another male person has gone to gaol. What the paper calls an unnatural act. And the others went to gaol too.’

  He reached over to take the paper. His face was expressionless. She released it and watched as he read it for himself.

  She said softly, ‘We must remember, darling, that we are not in Geneva. Or London. Or war-torn, vice-ridden Vienna.’

  He finished reading the paper and looked across at her, stiff-faced. ‘The boy they gaoled for unnatural love was only eighteen.’

  She nodded. ‘Very sad.’

  She hadn’t realised that Australia was like that. Ambrose’s penchant had become so much a part of her life that she had forgotten that it was in many places illegal. In Geneva, the Swiss federal police and canton police had never worried the Molly Club.

  Ambrose then said, ‘Unlawful merriment.’ And murmured, ‘He was the rarest musician that his age did behold; a cheerful person he was, passing his days in unlawful merriment.’ His facetiousness carried pain. ‘Unlawful merriment. I have to dress and go to the Chancellery.’ He stood up. He came around the table and dug his fingers gently into her shoulders. She looked up at him and saw that his eyes were wet. She reached behind her and put her hand on his hand.

  She felt it best to say nothing, if in fact she had anything more to say.

  He went then to the bedroom to dress for the office.

  She took up the paper and read the story again. ‘Perverts posed as women . . .’ Pervert was a particularly ugly word.

  First her brother, and now this reminder of life in the colony. Ambrose and she had really landed in a quagmire. More, it reminded her of their vulnerability and how they had always behaved as if protected by a certain arrogant sophistication. Would this protect him back here in Australia?

  They should scurry back to Europe, where they could at least pretend to be invulnerable.

  Her mind returned to the report and she read it yet again, and again found she had nothing to say. Its foreboding discomposed her.

  ‘What am I to do with my brother?’ she called to him, at last taking some tea, meaning, What are we going to do with our lives?

  She hardly recognised her voice.

  His voice, coming from the bedroom, was subdued. ‘ “We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest . . . we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us . . .” ’

  ‘If there were decent gods, they would not put us in situations where we required their pity,’ she called back, trying to be light. ‘I could go to see the new spy organisation. Aren’t their offices in your building? Or are they all in Sydney? Maybe they would give me a position in return for me dobbing in my brother?’

  Ambrose came from the bedroom to the door of their sitting room, tying his tie. She saw that he had chosen his old school tie, Exeter, something he rarely did. Three-piece, navy pin-stripe suit. Black patent-leather shoes. For reasons she couldn’t find, her eyes filled with tears. It was a very masculine tie. She saw him in a schoolboy’s uniform – a schoolboy who, for protection from what he probably did not yet realise was his nature, played the pally schoolboy too well. The tie meant he was being valiant.

  She wiped her eyes. Her brother and this Adelaide business were causing a twin storm of consternation.

  ‘I am getting back my playground slang from Janice the bolshie parlourmaid.’ Her voice was now unnaturally calm.

  ‘I can divine its meaning.’

  She watched as he tightened his tie.

  ‘There seem to be many Australian words for a person who tells tales. Perhaps there were many people who told tales. I could denounce him.’

  ‘You could renounce him, I suppose.’

  His daily transformation from a man-en-femme to a man-of-the-world never ceased to fascinate her. At times it even beguiled her. Sometimes, though, it also still perplexed her. She lived with two people: she lived in a ménage à trois. And one day he would be caught out, and if he were caught out she would also be caught out and revealed as a certain type of woman. And what type of woman was that?

  ‘I could raise the brother matter with the HC.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘How this is best to be handled. All things considered.’

  China had fallen. Communists were uprising everywhere in Asia. Russia had the Bomb. Ambrose had told her that Australia had secretly agreed with Britain to allow testing of new atomic weapons in the outback. She had asked whether there would be new illnesses from the radioactivity. Ambrose said that the Aboriginal people had been moved out. ‘All of them?’ she had asked. He had looked across at her without comment. She had said, ‘Should they have to move? Couldn’t the British test the bombs in, say, Scotland?’ Ambrose had made a facial expression that said that he, too, did not think that for the British to test a bomb of unknown magnitude and result in the Australian outback was such a felicitous solution. ‘Northern Ireland had been the second choice,’ he had joked.

  Again a wave of frustration. How much more unaccepta
ble would she be in her diplomatic career, now that she had a brother who was a known Communist Party apparatchik? If one’s brother obstructed or embarrassed your life, did one just shunt him off? Or call the police and have him taken out in the backyard and shot.

  She then wondered about Ambrose’s attitude. ‘Are you going to dob him in?’

  Ambrose frowned. ‘I do not intend to do anything at this point.’ He gathered papers and put them in his briefcase. ‘But if we are to be hobnobbing with a known Communist Party official, I will have to do something – make a note on some file or other. Inform the King.’

  ‘He’s your brother-in-law.’

  Ambrose paused. He had not quite taken that in. ‘That’s true. How odd.’

  She had an insight. ‘Remember, though, that I go by my married name. They may never make the connection.’ She could hide inside the marriage.

  He came to her, bent down and kissed her. ‘I hope he doesn’t plan to blow up trains.’

  She took his hand and looked at his nails, his immaculate nails – no tell-tale traces of varnish from his weekend en femme indulgence, of lolling about the suite in silks and satins and painted nails. But it was no replacement for the Molly Club.

  He stood there at the door on his way out, Homburg hat in hand. ‘They probably have Frederick in their sights already.’

  They were holding on to a rather shaky bravado.

  Instead of leaving, he came back to her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We always Sort Things Out.’

  She put her hand on his. ‘Are you still a master spy?’

  She knew the question was a waste of time.

  ‘In the old days I was simply someone who helped his friends with some information to save the Empire. I was never one of the real spies. You know that.’ They had talked about this many many times back then. Had he forgotten that she had searched his apartment and found the hidden-away League papers and the coding book?

  She said, ‘Spies always say something like that.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘And you would consider it in your interests to know what my brother was up to?’

  ‘It’s really Australia’s business, not ours.’

  She wondered if that were fully true.

  ‘Tell me, then, how am I to treat my brother?’

  ‘We shall have cocktails,’ he said. ‘We shall be amusing. We will try to be amused. We will learn about the other half.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘I should go to my work.’ He moved towards the door.

  She noted that he had not denied that he would mention Frederick at the HC or wherever. ‘I feel I have to see him, at least once more. I think he and I should visit our parents’ graves. If we have cocktails I think it should be here in our suite.’

  ‘Sometimes, clandestine behaviour is the wrong move. Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta – a person’s guilt may be inferred from that person’s actions.’

  She said, ‘And abundans cautela non nocet – there is no harm done by great caution.’

  ‘Yet you always take risks.’ He smiled, hand on the door knob. ‘I taught you to take risks.’

  ‘I knew how to take risks before I met you.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. I suppose that explains why you are with me.’

  ‘Do you think the communists are going to take us over?’

  ‘Not enough of them.’

  ‘There weren’t many communists in Russia and they took over Russia. Latham thinks they’re a danger.’

  ‘The Russians had starvation, a nasty czar, the knout. When they made their revolution, Russians were not considering whether to buy a washing machine for their clothes, as every Australian seems to be doing.’

  ‘If they took over here, my brother could give me an important position. We don’t have the knout, we have the sack.’

  ‘I really must go. You may find that when your brother takes over, Burton is still Head of the Department. We may be very surprised by who remains in their important position after the revolution.’

  She realised that she tried, these mornings, to hold Ambrose to the room by conversation, fearing the closing of the door, the pointlessness of the day once he had gone. And she must avoid conscripting Janice into being her company on dreary mornings. She still felt Ambrose and she had to talk about the Adelaide business, while still feeling that perhaps there was nothing to be said.

  She saw how pitiful her behaviour was and said, ‘Go, go.’ She waved, as if dismissing a child, and reached over and took up his Guardian and cold toast.

  He stood there looking at her, saluted her and then gently closed the door.

  Ambrose always left in the same indomitable mood and came home with a breezy mood, regardless of the events in his day. And then, after dinner, he often changed en femme, and his mood became distinctively lighter. He became animated and his body became lissom, his hands moved more, his neck and head more expressive.

  The dreaded silence of his going. The silence of Canberra was different, that was one thing she appreciated. The perfectly silent nights. And even silent days. Sometimes she lay awake thinking, Is there anyone out there in the dark? Is anyone else awake? She had never lived with such night silence since the Jasper’s Brush of her childhood.

  She reread for the third time the story of the men who went to gaol for dressing as women, and then scissored it from the newspaper and locked it away.

  It crossed her mind that at least MI5 would surely know about Ambrose and his penchant. The British intelligence service wouldn’t give a damn. Ambrose had like-minded friends who shared his penchant in the Foreign Office, and probably also in the intelligence service.

  There was a knock. She looked down at herself – a bad sign to be in night clothing after 11 am. A very bad sign. Too bad. Brushing away crumbs and quickly checking her face, she went to the door, where a clerk from reception gave her a hand-delivered letter. It was an official letter. As usual, she hoped for some great opportunity to leap from an envelope. Salvation.

  From the Office of the Prime Minister. A Letter from On High. She opened it. An invitation to a dinner. Gilt-edged, embossed printing, exactly the way it was done in England. And it said: ‘Invites Edith Campbell Westwood BSc (Syd) and husband Major A. Westwood MBchB (Edin).’

  Edith Campbell Westwood and husband.

  It was obviously not through the High Commission.

  ‘Dress: Semi-formal.’

  She would have preferred formal.

  Edith Campbell Westwood goes to the Lodge. Why was it called the Lodge?

  Not salvation, but perhaps something. Perhaps Latham or Bruce had asked Menzies to do this, to cheer her up. These days she hesitated to call Latham, even when she did not intend to request anything. She knew that even when she was as light as a feather in conversation, he would think she was hoping that he would pull a position out of the hat for her, remake her life as he had made it back in the days of the League in Geneva by getting her a posting there. But she was no longer a smart, pretty girl with red hair and ideas. She was a married woman in, well, midlife. Still with ideas. Over-experienced, too travelled, as they said back here. ‘Too travelled’ meant a person had been away too long and was, as a consequence, no longer quite suited to Australia. Someone who had lost their Australianness. Who was a bit foreign.

  The invitation lifted her spirits. Who knew what would come of such a dinner? But she remembered her brother. What would she say to the question, ‘Do you have family in Australia?’ Damn him. He was socially unspeakable in the literal sense of the word.

  It was not so much cowardly, she told herself, as shrewd.

  Did she wish to be a shrewd person?

  But on the bright side, would a whispered offer of a position be made in her ear at the dinner?

  She went to the bedroom and dressed herself, choosing her favourite day dress – even choosing her underwear – with thought. She made up her face. Put on her rings.

  She then put through a telephone call to Ambrose, a
nd told him of the invitation. ‘Someone might whisper in my ear,’ she said to him.

  ‘Indeed they might,’ he said. ‘How did it arrive?’

  ‘Delivered by two footmen in crimson livery with powdered wigs, carried on a silken cushion.’

  ‘Naturally. You see – you are not forgotten.’

  ‘The invitation is for me – “and husband”,’ she said.

  ‘It is a husband, then, that I must be.’

  ‘Indeed, you must. It’s semi-formal. I think it is what we used to call Late Afternoon. I thought I would wear that new la ligne Corolla, which I got in Paris last year. You know it. It’s an afternoon dress – black wool, a large silk velvet bow and a square neckline? Haven’t had occasion to wear it since returning to Australia. Would that do?’

  ‘The Dior.’

  ‘I think last year’s Paris style will pass muster on the night.’

  ‘At least it’s an original.’

  As she spoke, she placed the invitation in pride of place upright on the telephone table.

  She put down the telephone. She could tell he was relieved by the rising of her spirits.

  Janice would see the displayed invitation. Let her make of it what she would.

  And she also marvelled that Voltaire, or whoever, was right when he said that if you sit on your porch the whole world will eventually pass by. In a sense, the whole world had found its way to her here in her hotel rooms in an outpost of the Empire – the looming Third World War had come in the door with her brother and with guided missiles from Firestone, and now the Prime Minister, his most important enemy, had also entered. More disconcertingly, the Adelaide business – the vice squad – had also come through the door. Yet another menacing reality.

  Enough reality for one morning, to be sure.

  On second thought, she removed the invitation from display. It was immature boasting and it was provocative. It was an argument she did not wish to have. Do not start fights you do not need.