She realised why she hadn’t seen much of Amelia recently.
Amelia must have sensed the confusion. ‘I would have thought you’d be happy for me?’
‘I am.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘But I am,’ she said, forcing herself to put feeling into it. ‘But remember, I care for you both. For years now, I’ve enjoyed you as a couple. What about your friends – the family?’
‘Things will work themselves out. I never dreamed something so splendid would happen to me – at this age.’
Edith realised that she could not shrug off her envy or her selfish wish for things to remain unchanged with Theodor and Amelia, as part of their happy-go-lucky social life. How would she fit a twenty-year-old carpenter into the French dinner parties? The picnics? But then, she had left Ambrose. ‘I gather you’re not here to seek my advice?’
‘I’m not, actually. Why do you ask? What advice could you possibly give?’
‘I’m not sure I have any advice whatsoever. I suppose I would say enjoy it while it lasts.’ She laughed. ‘I have lived too long and seen too much to feel able to give advice.’
Amelia bristled and said, ‘Why wouldn’t it last?’
Edith shrugged her shoulders, to say, How could it? The age difference – different social circles. She made a wry, friendly face at Amelia.
Amelia seemed to expect something else from her – something other than approval – but she did not know what that might be.
She rose from her chair and moved to crouch next to Amelia, taking her hand. ‘I am happy for you, but don’t wreck everything for, well, a roll in the hay.’
‘It’s more than a roll in the hay.’ Amelia was now impatient.
Edith held on to her hand, trying to find a way of being a friend, but she was being asked to do only one thing – to be a celebrant of wild, careless love.
‘Theodor still wants to have sex with me, but I couldn’t. He kept asking whether he was such a bad lover. Said he would get advice on what he called “technique”.’
Amelia was not getting what she came for, but Edith could not see her way to an honest response. Among all her mixed reactions, what she felt most strongly was a miserable, rather conservative, expectation.
She began to tell Amelia that, years back in Geneva, after she had broken with Robert, an American friend had said to her angrily, ‘We should demand more accountability from our friends in the matter of marriage. Excepting extraordinary situations, we should let people know there’s a price to walking away from their marriage. When people seek advice on breaking up a marriage, it’s better to let people know that you believe in the union – it matters. Marriage is also a communal contract with friends. When people break it, we should let them know that it is a big step, which affects others around them.’
She wondered if this was of any use, or even appropriate. ‘The American seemed to find that my then husband, Robert, and our break-up – any break-up of a marriage – shook his own marriage. But he was right that people around us have to relate and adjust – even commit to – our long-term relationships, our marriages. That is a demand we make on our friends, and they, as a consequence, in return, have rights and have a say in our marriages.’
She wondered how far she believed this, but she had remembered it.
Amelia stood up and left.
Edith rose to go after her, but gave up. Amelia did not need her just now. Did not need anyone.
Within days, Theodor called her and arranged a meeting in his room at the National University.
He was haggard and somewhat theatrical. ‘I gather Amelia told you about what’s happened. Will you speak to her?’
‘She seemed to want to hear only one thing from me – approval.’
‘I tried to be jolly about it – tried to make it very civilised and modern. Didn’t get angry with them. Told him he was welcome in the house.’
‘That was courageous. It didn’t work?’
‘No.’
‘You must allow her freedom to see this through, because there is nothing you can do.’
‘They have sex in the house.’
‘That must be horrid.’ She remembered the brief time that Ambrose had lived at Arthur Circle with Richard and her. It had been ghastly, even for Richard and her. It must have been wretched for Ambrose. They had tried to be quiet.
She said, ‘But you mustn’t wreck your case or spoil your bond with Amelia by behaving like a demented monster. Even if you feel demented.’
Nothing she said seemed to satisfy him. She guessed he wanted her to give him a formula, which would magically solve the situation and give him back his lost love. Not that Amelia was the only one bed-hopping. She had heard much about the Clarks and others.
She did not know that formula.
She stood to leave, but he sprang up and took her in his arms and tried to kiss her.
She held him back. ‘Theodor, no. That is not the answer.’
He desisted and went back and slumped in his chair.
Again, she felt she had nothing to give him. She was impotent.
She knew that sex could be used as a kindness, but not with the husband of a friend.
Months went by and neither Amelia nor Theodor came to see her or talked with her on the telephone.
Then a call came from Amelia, with an apology for having been distant. Theodor was due for sabbatical and she and the family would go with him. He was taking it in Geneva. ‘Do you recommend a hotel?’
‘It’s over with K?’
‘Yes, it’s over.’
Edith laughed. ‘Yes, I do. The Hôtel de la Paix.’
The Wisdom of Lakes
As the 1960s rolled on, her relationship with Richard flattened. Her murky personal mythology may have caused her to rise in the minds of many, or at least labelled her ‘take care, beware’, but in Richard’s mind this rise meant that he himself had been diminished; he was now the second-ranking person in their marriage. With Richard, there was a class thing also present. He had come from what was once described as ‘humble origins’ and considered that she had come from some grand and colourful world of ideas and good living, which, she supposed, she had.
But more than anything, she soon realised she was intellectually his superior, and although she tried to avoid demonstrating this or in any way parading it within the intimacy of their marriage, she was aware that he had realised it. He had then tried to deny it, tried to challenge it, which was expressed by ever-erupting struggles to prove that he was not just her equal but was the better thinker. When he failed in these challenges, a rage burst out in him, causing him to abruptly leave the table or to throw down a book and stomp off. But worse, she saw that he also came to resent that she was, at times, falsely deferring to him and at other times letting an argument pass as a way of protecting his amour propre. He was smart enough to discern this.
He was skewed by another resentment. Richard had a better degree than she – and a BA as well – but, sadly, this had not translated into real-world achievement or into a thinking mind. Richard had information but not ideas; he had ‘theories’ but he could not analyse; he had uncritical allegiances to suppositions, which he could not see. But he could solve practical problems of a higher order, and this is where his value lay, except that he sullenly wished to be seen as more than that.
She had desperately wanted him to be her equal, even a mentor. He had become lazier and fell back on truisms and banalities. He went to cricket matches and rugby, but she pointed out to him – in so many words – that these interests did not preclude a life of the mind. Perhaps she should not have pressed that point so insistently. And, of course, he inevitably became aware of her manoeuvres and they became themselves a source of resentment.
It probably also niggled him that the absence of her official status had been compensated by some other informal standing, which she now often sensed in the behaviour of others towards her. She honestly felt that she had never gone out of her way to
ingratiate herself with men. Ambrose had once said that it was not who you know that matters in life, but who knows you. Knows your talents. Older people loved to help the talented young. She had met Latham when she was just a young science graduate. Admittedly, back then a female scientist had been a rare breed. And, of course, they had both been Rationalists. He had supported her when she had applied for a position with the League, but she had been up against hundreds, maybe thousands of young people who wanted a position there. And anyhow, Latham himself had then been a lowly delegate to the League from a very small nation. She had won her place by what she did and how she did it. By verve and dash.
As for Bruce, she had met him in Geneva because he was an Australian delegate and had sought her out as some sort of personal guide while he was there for the assembly. And she had, she supposed, as a guide, even as a youthful counsellor, performed well.
Now, it could be said that she had eventually found her place in the corridors of power – if not as a fat cat then as, say, a hotel cat in a high-class hotel with a ribbon around its neck, who people rather liked having around even if its purpose was hard to define. She had come to do her rounds and prowl the corridors.
As she saw it, she had come to her place through four doorways, each one leading to another more intriguing room, where her presence was accepted, even expected, but not quite understood. The first doorway had been her background at the League, and the important people she had known there. She was perceived as a woman of the world. The second doorway was her knowledge of the planning of Canberra, which she gained through her job with Gibson – a job that originally had been given to her as some grace-and-favour ball of string to keep her busy and out of the way. The third doorway was her expertise of sorts on questions of uranium, which she had gained through her own efforts and, admittedly, through Richard’s position. Finally, there was the secret doorway – revealed in a kitchen spat with Richard – of her reputation, among some, of belonging in some convoluted way to the international world of espionage. This was a Door of Misconception: once she had passed through – or been pushed through – she could not go back out. It was a door with no knob on the other side. There was no way of denying this type of reputation – in some minds that simply confirmed her hidden power – nor could she claim it; that would isolate her or lead to her assumed power being investigated and exposed, if such a role could ever be successfully investigated by any one person. But she was sure that this misconception gave her an aura – again, something of the aura of the beribboned hotel cat, which was permitted to go anywhere, belonged wherever and chose to sit and to watch and pretend to lick its paws. She had no authority except that which she claimed or was granted by bluff or stealth or misconception or the sleekness of her fur.
Partly from the location of her tiny grace-and-favour office, she also gradually developed a special relationship with Menzies. She’d had to fend off two tentative attempts by administratively minded public servants to have her removed from her office, and another attempt to have her share a larger office with others. On one occasion, she had simply looked at them with her woman-of-the-world face and said that for her not to have an office was unacceptable. She had gone on with her work at her desk, and they, after standing there for a minute or so, had shrugged and left her alone. She’d had to mention it to the Prime Minister and it was fixed. She was not sure whether the Prime Minister held misconceptions about her relations with the wider, cloudy world of espionage, and there was no point in discussing it. She assumed that, whatever he assumed about her, he also assumed they were on the same side. And in many senses they were.
Probably because of their failure to dislodge her from her office, she eventually overcame this uneasiness between herself and the members of the public service of a certain rank who thought she was an interloper. They must have discussed it among themselves and decided there was some covert mystery surrounding her to which they were not privy. However, she did once get an anonymous memo in the early days. It was an extract from some report and read, ‘The Edith River prospect is simply a uranium occurrence within granite. It is north-west of Katherine and the concentration isn’t commercial or the reserves large enough.’
She didn’t know whether it was malicious or comical, but assumed that if it were meant to be friendly, it would have been signed. She worried about it, and from time to time over the following weeks reread it, pondering the words ‘isn’t commercial nor the reserves large enough’. She finally destroyed it, saying to herself out loud, ‘We shall see about my reserves . . .’
Because of her early connections with the organising of the Town Planning Congress, she had met Holford, who was Menzies’ English planning oracle. This in turn had caused Menzies to send her to sit in on the Senate Select Committee on Canberra in an observer role and to report back. She had, as a consequence, over morning and afternoon biscuits and tea, become friendly with Senator McCallum and Commissioner John Overall at the NCDC. She realised they saw her as a pipeline to the Prime Minister, a go-between. Or maybe they saw her as his plenipotentiary. A cat, a pipeline, a woman of the world, a special agent, a plenipotentiary – she supposed she could play all these parts.
One part she did not feel she’d had pinned to her was as mistress to the Prime Minister. There were rumours about other women, but according to her circle and her press-gallery pals, she was not cast in this role, and Mrs Menzies was always warm towards her. She did not know whether to be relieved or hurt. In her dealings with the Prime Minister, however, the situation had never arisen. Not a whiff. He was very correct.
In the fights for how Canberra should look, she and Overall had joined forces to have the cultural institutions placed within the parliamentary precinct. They both believed that the precinct should architecturally describe the things of importance in Australian life – pretty much conforming to the hierarchy of the original Griffin plan.
She fancied that she had converted the Prime Minister to Griffin’s lake scheme, but Menzies had, anyway, become what he called ‘an apostle of Canberra’.
She had helped the Prime Minister defeat, one by one, the opposition to the lake – the arguments of the opponents that it would create not a lake but mud flats and look like the Thames at low tide, that it would breed mosquitoes, that it would divide the city and so on. She had gathered together the planning specifics to demolish these objections. On her small desk she worked up document-weapons and manufactured turns of phrase.
So, the lake had won. ‘Will a million pounds be enough for you and your lake, Berry?’ he had asked, his back to her, looking out his window after she had told him a few of the problems she was having with the opponents of the lake.
He turned to face her, hands behind his back. She looked at him, considered how to reply, did a calculation in her head. She had studied the estimates many times over the last few years.
He waited for her reply. ‘You’re a deep thinker, Berry. Don’t take too long to accept or I might withdraw the offer.’
She came out with her answer. ‘A million would do it – just. It would cover the marking and preparation of the boundary formation and landscaping. We would need more for excavation.’
‘That answer means you will come back wanting another million. But alright, you have your first million.’
He was in a merry mood.
She was jubilant.
Of course, the money was not hers and would wander off into other hands and committees beyond her reach, but she appreciated the gesture.
The Prime Minister went to England for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, and the day after his return he called for her. She found Holt, the treasurer, in the office – the man who had no smile, only a salesman’s grin.
The Prime Minister turned to her and said, ‘Berry, did you get wind of the elimination of the lake money from the budget while I was away?’
She hated to be caught by surprise; it disclosed a failure of vigilance. ‘I did not. I have heard nothing about
that.’
Was this a reprimand?
He said to her, ‘Then you have just learned a lesson about Treasury. Treasury departments move in a mysterious way, their wonders to perform, or, in this case, to obstruct anyone else’s wished-for wonders.’
She was seized with cold fright. ‘The lake has gone?’
A defeat of the first magnitude. She looked to Holt. Was the cat expected to control the mice?
This was somehow a prankish revolt by Treasury or Cabinet. The Treasurer was now wearing his Face of Concerned Responsibility. Ah, he too could be in trouble. Her heart was thumping. She felt, frantically, that she had failed both the Prime Minister and the Griffins, and the destiny of Canberra.
The Prime Minister then turned to Holt and said, ‘So, while I was away, Treasury struck out the million pounds for the lake?’
‘Cabinet agreed, Ming. Done and dusted. No lake.’
The Prime Minister walked to the window and looked out. Without turning, he said, ‘At the next cabinet meeting, can you assure me, Harold, that by unanimous consent of the ministers, the item of the million pounds for the lake will be struck back in?’
Holt laughed in an unreadable way, in case this was a joke or in case it was a dictat. He began a sentence of argument and resistance and then abandoned it mid-air and, instead, said, ‘It shall be so.’
The Prime Minister then turned to her, raising an eyebrow. ‘Happy, Berry?’
‘Happy.’
She was uncomfortable accepting this pat on the head in front of a senior minister who had just been kicked up the pants.
Cold Light Page 51