‘How about a welcoming kiss?’ Robert said, approaching her, his breath heavy with alcohol.
She pushed him away. ‘Get out. You have no rights here.’
Even for Robert, this behaviour was really beyond the pale and out of character.
‘Control yourself.’
‘We’re still married, remember,’ he said. ‘Have rights.’
Probably true in Swiss law, she thought. She was chilled and frightened by his tone and the whole mess.
‘As a civilised person you have no rights,’ she said. ‘Please go.’
Gray was now standing at the bookshelves of the apartment, feigning an interest in the books.
Robert and she glared at each other.
There was the click of the door of Ambrose’s room opening, and they all looked around.
Ambrose had not changed into male attire.
He was in a feminine silk robe—black, plain enough, but clearly feminine. He had on embroidered velvet slippers. The lipstick was still evident, his eye make-up quite striking.
Silver rings on fingers of both hands.
She thought that he looked tasteful, exquisite.
She could only shudder about how he must appear to Robert and Gray.
She was somewhat startled by his coming out of the room but then felt hysterically pleased and released.
By his appearance Ambrose had broken through all the hypocrisy of it.
Perhaps it brought with it ruin and disaster, but it also brought with it a special kind of splintering relief. She smiled at him and went to him, taking his hand, taking it up to her lips, kissing his ringed fingers for strength.
Strength for both of them.
Robert was disconcerted. He turned to Gray and said, ‘May I introduce Miss Westwood?’
The schoolboy joke sounded weak and uncouth.
Gray tried to laugh, holding in his hand a book taken from the shelf, now obviously embarrassed by it all. For once he seemed not willing to play Robert’s game. His eyes went nervously back to the book, as if he’d been interrupted in his reading, and then up from the book to Ambrose for a surreptitious glance, and then back to the book.
Ambrose said, ‘Hadn’t we all better settle down, darlings? Get some sleep?’
She was impressed by his composure.
She said, ‘Why don’t you leave, Robert? I’m sure you can find an hotel that’ll put you up.’
‘I intend to stay,’ he said, in a voice she hardly recognised. The voice, she guessed, of a fierce male, fighting for what he saw as his marriage or even his home.
She saw that Robert was trying to hold his ground—or what he saw as his ground. ‘For God’s sake then, go to your room—’ she immediately repudiated her use of the word ‘your’ and corrected herself—‘sleep in the guest room, the bed is made up. Gray, you can sleep on the settee, Robert knows where the bed linen is. Both of you get to sleep and you can find accommodation in the morning. And stop gawking like schoolboys. Surely you men of the world have seen things more incredible than this. Try to be urbane. And good night.’
‘Good night, Robert. Good night, Gray,’ Ambrose said sweetly, but in the almost theatrical sweetness of his voice there was a barbed strength.
Gray’s head came up out of the book again and like a polite boy he said, ‘Oh, yes—good night all.’ And then he went back to staring at the open book.
Ambrose and she went to his room, closing the door behind them. She turned the key.
They took off their robes and lay down in a loose embrace. She was trembling.
‘I apologise. I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. They’re both soused. We know he’s not a bad fellow. Generally speaking.’
Ambrose then managed a chuckle, a strained chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless, ‘And he’s had a nasty shock.’
She smiled in the darkness. ‘A very nasty shock. But was it nasty enough?’
‘They will probably awake as if from a dream,’ Ambrose said. ‘It’s their Midsummer Night’s.’
She chuckled. ‘With Gray as Bottom.’
‘Have you ever told him?’ Ambrose asked.
‘Told him what?’
‘For a start—that we were lovers.’
‘I thought I had. But that wasn’t the nature of his shock tonight.’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps I hadn’t quite prepared him for that. For the reality of that. He knew, but I don’t think he ever quite imagined it. Not in fine detail.’
‘Difficult thing to put in a letter. Difficult for a chap such as he is, to picture, I would think.’
‘The word will be around the traps tomorrow, I suppose.’
‘He may feel that he should keep silent. Because of you. Maybe he’ll think his pride is at stake also.’
‘Let’s hope so. And that dreadful Potato Gray.’
‘Potato’ll probably think he dreamt it. Maybe one of his better dreams.’
She chuckled. ‘Oh, what a dreadful thing to have happened.’
‘Not something one would’ve chosen to have happen at 2 a.m.’
‘And why are these two rats here in Geneva? Surely not for the Assembly. Something must be in the wind.’
‘The Spanish war? Czechoslovakia?’
‘They’ve smelled something.’
Ambrose and she eventually got back to a restless sleep.
In the morning, Ambrose and she lay awake, dreading the breakfast confrontation.
‘I don’t have to rush,’ she said. ‘The Assembly can do without me this morning. I’ll get up and deal with Robert. Sadly, I’d rather face dreadful Robert than the dreadful Assembly.’
‘If you want, I’ll hang about—moral support and so on.’
‘No, no—it’s my mess. I have to sweep it up once and for all.’
There was a knock on the door.
‘Awake?’ It was Robert.
‘Yes,’ she said, formally.
‘Offering apologies. Buy you both breakfast?’ There was some contrition in his voice.
Ambrose and she looked at each other. Ambrose raised his eyebrows.
‘I accept,’ she said. ‘Late breakfast—at nine down at the café.’
‘Fine. I’m going out for a walk.’
They heard him talking to Gray and then the front door opened and closed.
‘It has to be divorce,’ she said.
‘Probably best,’ he said.
‘I’ll make an appointment with a lawyer today. Do you think Gray went with him?’
‘I’ll look.’
‘No—I’ll do it.’ Before she could leave the bed, Ambrose rose, removed his make-up as best he could there in the bedroom with cold cream, wiping it with a bedside towel. He put on a male lounging robe over his nightdress.
‘Wear the black satin,’ she said.
‘Might inflame him with lust.’
She giggled. ‘Could very well—what a fearful idea.’
Ambrose went out into the apartment and then came back. ‘All clear. Gray and his luggage seem to have gone.’
‘Thank heavens.’
He went then to his bathroom.
She lay there in the bed exhausted rather than rested.
Ambrose returned and dressed.
‘Want me to come to breakfast with you—moral support—immoral support?’
‘Thank you, dear. I have to do this on my own.’
They hugged and kissed and he left for his office.
She eventually dressed and joined Robert in the café.
Robert stood up as she came to the table. Being the gentleman.
Awkwardly, he shook her hand.
Embarrassment was making him awkward.
They sat down.
She was trembling but did not think that it could be noticed.
He’d had a coffee but ordered again when she did.
‘We were rather tight. I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘I accept your apology.’ She wondered i
f she really did. ‘You were outrageous.’
‘We were.’
‘Has Potato gone?’
‘He’s out finding some rooms.’
‘Might be difficult because of the Assembly,’ she said, trying to make normal conversation.
She hoped he didn’t take that as an invitation to stay. ‘If you have trouble with hotels let McGeachy know—she’ll find you something.’
They remained silent as the waiter brought the breakfast.
Robert said, ‘Dull agenda.’
She decided to dump their attempts at companionable conversation.
She said, ‘The marriage has to be tidied up.’
‘I did notice you’re not wearing the ring.’
‘Haven’t for some time.’
She was confused about the ring. For the purposes of the world at large it sometimes seemed better to wear it.
But it had no sentimental meaning for her.
She said, ‘We have to settle things. I’m happy to pay whatever the law requires me to pay to you, as it is I who owns the assets.’
‘No need to get into legal issues.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Happy to leave things the way they are—neither of us is going to marry. Why bother? Or are you planning to marry again?’
It was dawning on her that he thought they had a marriage of a kind. He was holding on. This had never occurred to her.
She looked at him, at the ageing, at the attempted correctness of his manner.
She saw a small, smoky wisp of desperation.
He spoke again, ‘You and Westwood seem to be more than chummy.’
‘Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t know. And it’s none of your business.’
‘My business—in a theoretical sense, perhaps.’
His voice was still trying to be companionable. To be somewhat worldly.
‘I’d like the key of the apartment back.’
‘Rather need a base, you know. A place to hang my hat.’
‘It’s not your home anymore.’
‘We’ll call it a bolthole, then. I’d be happy to pay something.’
‘I’d rather we settle the matter and make a clean break. It’s long overdue.’
She sipped her milky coffee without shaking. ‘I’d like your things out of the apartment.’
‘Edith—no need for this formality.’
‘I think a return to formality is long overdue.’
‘Surely you’re not intending to go on living with Westwood indefinitely? That’s hardly a proper set-up.’
‘Leave Ambrose out of the discussion.’
‘You don’t see this ménage with him as being acceptable, do you?’
He always pronounced his French with an English intonation. As if giving up his English intonation would Frenchify him and he’d be diminished in some way.
‘It’s been a satisfactory ménage for some time now. I see no reason why it shouldn’t continue. That is not the issue here.’
She found that she wanted temporary relief from the intensity of the subject.
She asked him why he was in Geneva. ‘Surely the Assembly isn’t hot news?’
‘We’ve heard that Chamberlain is going to Bad Godesberg. Or Munich. To meet Hitler again. We’re on our way up there. Thought we might check things here first.’
‘Are you trying to scare up a war?’
‘There’ll be war. Chamberlain will give Hitler what he wants. And then there’ll be a war, anyhow.’
He was willing a war. But arguing with Robert had passed from her life now. ‘How was it down in Spain?’ she asked.
‘Haven’t you read my dispatches?’
‘I haven’t had much time. But I’m going with the League Commission to Spain and then to New York for the World’s Fair.’
‘My, my, you’re becoming the regular traveller. What’s the Commission?’
‘The Assembly has agreed to supervise the repatriation of foreign combatants—from the Republican side.’
‘That seems all the League is capable of.’
She shrugged.
‘Thinking of getting out?’
She shrugged. ‘Tertius gaudens.’
He laughed to himself, ‘Still playing the diplomat, Edith. I don’t know that tag.’
She considered not telling him. Oh, she wasn’t interested in point-scoring anymore. ‘Tertius gaudens—we will wait upon the turn of events in hope of advantage.’
‘Not much of a policy.’
‘Not much of a world. As a policy it will do.’
He looked at her, assessing her.
‘I see that the Assembly has abandoned sanctions and collective security.’
‘That’s right. We’re to be a forum of consultation and nothing more. More realistic.’
‘A talking shop.’
‘There’s still work to be done.’
‘Such as putting on an exhibition at the World’s Fair?’ His voice was drifting away from the companionable.
‘Yes, like putting on an exhibition at the World’s Fair.’
He laughed. ‘The theme of the fair is “Tomorrow’s World”.’
She didn’t laugh. She played with the sugar. They had to return to the matter of the marriage.
‘And you’ll be at the League exhibition in New York?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘When do you leave?’
‘After Christmas.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Should we go to the lawyers together?’
He drank the last of his coffee, and said, ‘I don’t particularly want a divorce. Don’t want the trouble of it.’
‘I do. I shall go to the lawyers myself. No need for you to bother yourself. I’ll find out how it is to be done.’
She stood up. ‘I want your luggage out of the place today. Anything you leave I will put in storage. And put the key on the mantelpiece after you’re gone.’
He remained seated. ‘I am still in law your husband.’
‘Technically.’
She then felt she had to guard Ambrose. ‘I hope you will respect both Ambrose’s and my privacy.’
He looked at her quizzically, ‘You mean, will I make a good bar-room story out of my wife’s perverted tastes?’
The companionable tone had gone entirely now.
She coloured.
He went on, ‘Will I put it around about her and her nancyboy?’
In a quiet voice she said, ‘I expect you to respect our privacy and to tell Gray to do likewise.’
He didn’t say anything.
She tried a wild card. ‘You might consider that if you put it around in any way whatsoever, it could enter people’s minds that being my former husband, you yourself may have had similar tastes.’
‘I don’t think my virility is in question. Not in this town.’ He laughed meanly. Was that meant to imply that he had an affair in Geneva while married to her? Or after they’d separated?
She’d never considered that possibility. With whom did he have an affair? One of her colleagues?
But the jibe assumed, too, that she still had feelings for him and that those feelings would be wounded now by that.
She was slightly wounded. She didn’t show it.
And she was not going to ask and would, presumably, never know.
With quiet deliberation she said, ‘If I hear a breath of rumour about Ambrose which could’ve come from you or Gray I will certainly make some remarks which will change the way people view your so-called virility. After all, you did not father a child with me.’
‘That, as you well know, was never on the cards,’ he came back. But his voice was not confident.
He smiled at her in a tough way, trying to smile her threat away.
‘Goodbye, Robert. I’m sorry that it has come so abruptly. But you brought it on. And it’s long overdue.’
He looked away.
‘And I mean what I say.’
He didn’t respond.
‘You’ll hear from
the lawyers. Should we send it care of your newspaper?’
‘That will find me.’
‘Or to your rooms in London?’
He was taken by surprise but recovered quickly.
‘No—send whatever to me care of the newspaper.’
She took what she thought would probably be her last close look at him. He appeared as a stranger.
How could all that passionate love have disappeared? Where were all those fine conversations? Where had the tenderness gone? Where had all their mutuality and empathy gone?
Gone, gone, gone.
Was there a black chasm in the ground somewhere, a chasm where all the lost love of the world was dumped?
Outside the café, she was visibly trembling, truly upset.
She had been inwardly affected by having said that they’d not had a child. The words were so potent. Charged with life.
She was affected too in a way she had not expected, by the actual acknowledgement that the marriage was at an end.
She had never felt such sickening anger before in her life and the anger was directed inwards against herself.
But at last she was cleaning up the mess of her life.
She looked out at the traffic of the street, to the life of the shops and stalls, and people buying and selling, coming and going.
How distant she felt from all this buying and selling and coming and going.
The Flag Will Fly
At the New York World’s Fair of 1939, by the Lagoon of Nations, Edith Alison Campbell Berry sat down and lightly and privately wept.
Thankfully, the Fair’s gawking, hungrily expectant crowds ambling with fairground weariness, hoping for a flash of sensation around the next corner, did not pay any heed to her and her private tears.
She kept her head down and away, looking out over the lagoon, her weeping concealed by her arm.
At this, the Fair of world harmony, she was already in discord and in tears.
And what made it worse, she was up against Sweetser. And she was one of those who appreciated Sweetser. Sweetser was one of the old gang. Sweetser was true blue.
Although, over the years in Geneva—at, say, the League Tennis Club and so on—while appreciating him, it was true that she had not always warmed to him.
The crisis was now over the flying of the League flag.
It was Sweetser who had actually designed the flag. He’d personally taken it to a tailor in downtown Manhattan and had it hand sewn.
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