Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  Maybe what had happened with Scraper would undo them? Be a confession too dark?

  Oh God.

  She would tell Ambrose. There could be no secrets. She did not want to live that sort of concealed life.

  Edith lay down on the bed and wept for Stephan, for Ambrose, for Scraper, and for herself.

  She had committed herself to Ambrose. Just like that.

  On a radio telephone connection.

  Just like that.

  Today she would see no one.

  No people.

  She stopped crying only when the maid knocked on the door and she shouted, ‘No servicing of the room today, thank you.’

  She remembered the bag sitting in the middle of the room and jumped up, grabbed the bag, opened the door, called to the maid, and gave her the bag, saying, ‘Please get rid of this.’

  The maid looked into the bag.

  ‘You could keep the clothing—if you find it to your taste.’

  The maid said she would need a note ‘to that effect’ from Edith.

  Oh God. Edith went back into the room and scribbled a note on the Club stationery authorising the maid to take the clothing.

  ‘There,’ she said, giving the maid the note.

  She felt sick at the idea of the maid wearing the stained garment.

  She closed the door on the world and locked it.

  No one at all, today.

  No one.

  To the Unfinished City

  From the front door of Beauchamp House as far as you could see stretched a paddock without a fence, and then the paddock became a wall of wretched bush.

  Of course, she knew that one day a grand street would pass the front door. With an appropriate historical name.

  One day.

  The taxi had failed to arrive despite the clerk making a second telephone call to the taxi office. She decided to walk to Parliament House but it was so hot.

  There on the steps she decided that she couldn’t face any of it.

  She went back inside the whatever it was in which she was staying—she looked around at the lobby—what was it, this Beauchamp House? A guest house? Quality accommodation for women public servants, she’d been told. The other guests seemed to be and were, of course, typists, though surprisingly fashionable in their dress, she thought.

  ‘Forget something?’ a man in the lobby asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  And to herself added, ‘My sanity.’

  She went up the stairs to her room, pulled off her hat and gloves and seated herself, breathing deeply, suffering prickles of agitation through her skin and the feeling of iron bands across her chest. Her perfume smelled too strong because of the heat. She felt indigestion rising from her stomach, bringing with it the taste of bacon and fried eggs and the hard brown lace of fat which had surrounded the eggs.

  She calmed and then went to the mirror, checked her make-up once more, put her hat back on and pinned it, and pulled on her gloves, repeating, ‘Do not throw French expressions around’ and ‘Do not say “The way we do it at the League is …”,’ took a deep breath and, with shoulders back, forayed out again.

  This time the man in the lobby said, ‘Got everything now, have we?’

  She looked at him without expression as she passed.

  She again stood at the ‘front’ door of Beauchamp House. She was uncertain to what front Beauchamp House faced. It seemed to face the paddock. The back door was the door used by everyone.

  The Palais Wilson, she remembered, had a confusion between front and back door which she had later learned had to do with the closing of the lakeside door during the bise wind, but not until after she’d made a rather naive suggestion that the League of Nations decide once and for all about which was the front and which was the back door.

  She cringed at the memory. She then reminded herself that embarrassing moments are remembered only by the person who suffered the embarrassment.

  Usually.

  Other people remember their own embarrassing moments.

  If other people had embarrassing moments.

  From Geneva, one of the civilised world’s oldest cities, she’d travelled to the world’s newest, most unfinished and unhewn of cities.

  Capital of one of the still uncompleted nations. Although she was beginning to think that all nations were incomplete. Had changes yet to be made. Had to continuously evolve.

  But she had come to the world’s most baffling city, baffling by its not being there.

  The city was just not there. Nor was there what you would call even a town or a village. It did not have the shape of a town or a village. It was something else. It was a plan perhaps, marked out by random structures scattered across the fields.

  Sorry. Paddocks.

  In a way, she would like to be part of something just beginning, as she’d been at the League. It would be a chance to be young and hopeful again. Perhaps.

  John Latham had arranged for her to stay the remainder of her visit to Canberra with the Watts but they had children and had themselves just arrived and were still settling in. They’d asked for a couple of days to get ready to receive her.

  Which was a nuisance. She hated arriving in a place and having to change rooms or change residence. It was bad enough having arrived in a strange place once without, as it were, arriving twice.

  As she made her way along what might be called a footpath or at least a path towards the bridge over the Molonglo River, she looked again at Canberra through narrowed eyes, trying to reduce as best she could the blinding impact of that sun, brushing the flies away.

  She hadn’t expected much of Canberra at this point in time but, truth be told, she had expected somewhat more. My God, there was a herd of sheep grazing.

  Canberra had pockets of people in isolated structures spread across the paddocks, centred—if one could discern a centre—on the provisional Parliament building and the administration offices.

  She could see that.

  How had this been conceived? And how had Australia made such a breathtaking decision? And what if it failed? What if people did not come to live there?

  What if it just didn’t work?

  What would they do with it? Pull it down and put it somewhere else? She’d been told that some of the newspapers were arguing that the Canberra idea be abandoned now before it was too late.

  A man came by on a bicycle and stopped.

  He said, ‘Headed to the offices? Want a lift?’ Brushing the flies away from his face.

  ‘A lift?’

  ‘I can double you over, if you can put up with it.’

  ‘Double’ was a word from her childhood.

  ‘On the bike?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She hadn’t doubled on a bike since childhood. Her initial exasperated recoil from the idea of it changed to happy thoughts.

  ‘All right then,’ she said, finding a hearty, horsey voice, and hoisting her skirts, she mounted the cross-bar of the bike, remembering to hold on to the handlebars without steering or attempting to steer, a special loose hold which came back to her instantly.

  ‘What’s your name, by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘Edith Campbell Berry. Edith. And yours?’

  He gave his name—Theo Matthew—which meant nothing to her.

  ‘I’m going to External Affairs,’ she said.

  ‘You’re in luck—so am I,’ he said in her ear.

  It was good to be in the arms of a man, however innocent. She could tell that Theo Matthew certainly didn’t mind.

  She worried that the heat made her perfume too blowzy.

  What a way to arrive for an appointment, what a way for a mature woman to travel. But it seemed right, in a way. And Theo Matthew seemed to think it acceptable behaviour for Canberra.

  He turned out to be a junior officer there and he showed her to the outer office of the Secretary of the Department where she spoke with a clerk. She told the clerk that her letters of introduction from Stanley Bruce and John Latham sh
ould have preceded her.

  Although a trifle early, she was shown in immediately to meet the Department Head, Colonel Hodgson.

  As they shook hands, she was put at ease by seeing his dog sitting in the office on the other armchair.

  Perhaps the dog was applying for a position too.

  It reminded her of the old days at the League when each Section had a dog mascot and dogs abounded in the Palais Wilson.

  There was a decanter of what she guessed was whisky, a soda siphon, and glasses on a silver tray on a butler’s table.

  A good sign.

  ‘How lovely to see a dog in a bureaucratic office,’ she said to Colonel Hodgson.

  She went over to the dog, pausing and glancing at Hodgson for reassurance about the temper of the dog before patting him.

  ‘Go ahead, he’s susceptible to affection,’ Hodgson said, implying that he, Hodgson, was not.

  ‘When I first went to the League every Section had a mascot and we took our dogs to work. But as the League grew—and the number of dogs with it—eventually an edict came forbidding dogs.’

  ‘Oh, there’s always room for a dog.’ Hodgson had a rather Australian accent. She’d expected, for no good reason, that he would be more plummy. ‘I’ll give you a good reason for having a dog in official life—do you want to hear it?’ he said.

  She waited but he didn’t speak.

  ‘Do you want to hear it?’

  She’d forgotten about this Australian practice in which the storyteller made the listener ask for the story.

  ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘I learned this from Keith Officer. When you’re entertaining officially in your own home it can become rather tiresome because you always have trouble getting people to leave. So you get the dog trained to come to you at about 9.30, wagging its tail. The dog gets everyone’s attention there in the room and you say in a loud voice, “Yes, Rover, I know it’s getting late and you want to be put to bed. Or taken for a walk—whatever. Won’t be long now.” People present get the message.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  He looked at her as if wondering what official entertaining she might do back in Geneva.

  When might she have a dog?

  She badly wanted a dog, or any animal.

  She talked on, about dogs, ‘I remember that a memorandum came around before the meeting of Assembly—don’t remember which it was, maybe the Seventh Assembly—that dogs should not be brought into the building. Evidently a delegate, I was told, had a phobia about dogs.’

  Oh dear, was that a how-we-do-it-at-the-League story?

  ‘Might have been the Chinese delegation,’ he said.

  She wondered what he meant and it must have shown on her face.

  ‘Made them hungry,’ he said, deadpan.

  She smiled. No one had made that joke at the time the dogs were banned. Not even Liverright. She would certainly tell it when she got back.

  If she got back.

  He said, ‘The dog reminds me that there is life outside this office.’

  He complimented her on her rather imposing letters of introduction and then they chatted about the news from the League.

  She’d written to Colonel Hodgson outlining her background with the League and had suggested that it might be useful to exchange views.

  In the letter, she’d said she was considering returning to live in Australia.

  She hoped that by bringing these two ideas together in his head, she would create a third idea—that of using her in a position in the new department. She hadn’t mentioned, in her brief curriculum vitae, that she was married. And today, she was still not wearing her wedding ring. But she could not be sure that John or Frank hadn’t mentioned her marital status.

  She went through the formalities, and asked about the new department. ‘I gather you are recruiting under S.47 of the PS regulations—taking people from outside the Public Service?’

  ‘That’s really for duties which cannot be performed by others already in the Public Service,’ he said.

  She moved herself to another attitude about the interview—when, and if, she was invited to accept a position, she would then ask herself if she wanted the position, whether she could live here in the Unfinished City.

  She brought some energy to the interview.

  ‘I’ve heard that you are going to bring out a bulletin—Current Notes?’ Gertrude Dixon did the same job back at the League.

  ‘Yes.’

  They then went into general conversation about Canberra and about the new League Palais.

  He closed the interview rather abruptly, by standing and extending his hand, but not before she’d managed to get in that she’d worked closely with Anthony Eden on sanctions.

  ‘I very much want you to talk with some of my staff,’ he said.

  He then buzzed for his secretary who came in and she was taken to meet two men from the International Co-operation Division.

  Again, the two men, maybe older than she, chatted to her about her opinion of Canberra, this time over tea and biscuits. Rather good porcelain.

  She realised after a time that she was being humoured.

  She realised that she, in turn, was relaxing into a supercilious aloofness. The patronising attitude of the men and her superciliousness were locked in the midair of the conversation, both increasingly unbending and stubborn.

  ‘Sinking ship’ was one of the expressions which had now been used twice by one of the men.

  ‘Rat leaving’ was left unsaid.

  Behind all these generalities and exchanges, were they assessing her?

  Or just putting up with her visit?

  ‘Your education is in science?’ the thin one said.

  ‘That was a fair way back,’ she said, in reply. ‘And I’ve more than ten years now in diplomatic circles. And I’ve done a number of odd jobs around the League. Special missions. I even had a bomb go off outside my hotel while in Lebanon on refugee work.’ That was enough about that. She didn’t want to overwhelm them with her adventures. In fact, she’d fired shots from her revolver.

  ‘That was truly an education,’ she said, knowingly.

  She might as well give them a little more of her life. ‘One of the loveliest letters I’ve ever drafted was to the Commissioner for Refugees and it had in it the sentence, “I am engaged in compiling a list of the names of three hundred Assyrians together with the names of their animals, who are to cross to the Ghab during the winter.” ’ She then added, ‘I was there briefly filling in for a sick officer.’

  This whiff from her adventurous life did not seem to engage them.

  ‘You have not been promoted as such?’

  The questions were thrown at her like shies at a fair doll.

  Surely these two were not the appointments committee?

  Oh, well.

  ‘I am now in the A Division. However, my actual position is much more complicated than it sounds. I work as a sort of private secretary—in the parliamentary sense—to Under Secretary-General Bartou.’

  ‘That is not a gazetted position?’

  ‘You must understand …’ how she loved that expression, ‘… that even within an administration as structured as that of the League, there are some of us who fulfill duties not perceived by the original administrative planning. Arthur Sweetser, for instance, handles liaison with America—surely one of the more important roles—yet he’s not listed as such.’

  ‘And you handle Australian matters in the League?’

  ‘No.’

  Then she added, ‘There are not that many Australian matters.’

  That sounded a little wrong.

  ‘I suppose, in another role, I could be considered Chef du Protocole. And I act sometimes as a sort of Inspector-General—seeing things are done properly in the Sections and so on.’

  That was stretching it a bit.

  There was a brief silence. She broke it. ‘The Public Service is taking on university graduates at last, I underst
and?’

  ‘At last. The returned servicemen are starting to retire. Making room for us younger ones.’

  They didn’t seem that ‘younger’.

  But she recalled the resentment of some of her university friends at missing out on jobs after the War because they hadn’t served.

  ‘How do you feel about the High Court ruling that Australia, and not London, should now handle its relations with the International Labor Office?’ the not-so-thin one said.

  ‘I have always thought that Australia should handle its own relations with the world.’

  ‘Everything?’

  She thought about this. Before she could answer the thin one said, ‘Obviously relations with the other Empire countries should be coordinated through Westminster, for example? And when the Empire should go to war?’

  She sensed it was a controversy within the new department and she was being asked to take sides.

  ‘I realise that we need the protection of the Empire. I realise that it’s very much to our advantage to sidle up to London. But ultimately, we alone should decide if we go to war.’

  ‘You think the Chanak matter cleared that up?’

  She did not know what the Chanak matter was. She kept coming across references to Australian issues and personalities which she did not know. She had to admit she was somewhat out of touch. She’d tried to catch up by browsing in back issues of newspapers at the Mitchell Library but one couldn’t anticipate everything. She’d learned the names of the state premiers and the cabinet ministers.

  She hated admitting ignorance but there was no way out. ‘Chanak?’

  ‘Back in 1922, Great Britain nearly went to war with Turkey and simply assumed we would go up the hills of Gallipoli again without consulting us.’

  She felt caught out. And she had been in Australia when that had happened, working with John on his campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives. How could she not remember this Chanak matter?

  Then it came to her—she realised that it was resolved by the Treaty of Lausanne. It came to her now from her League experience. Out of another box entirely. She knew the matter by another name.