Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  The streets seemed full of people—as if everyone needed to be with other people—and, for Geneva, there seemed to be much more clustering together. It seemed that people were lingering in the streets and around the shop doors, not wishing to go home.

  Strangers appeared to be talking with strangers.

  She reached the old Palais Woodrow Wilson, the building she most loved in the whole world. True, the new Palais was her temple, but this shabby building was her spiritual birthplace where she had arrived as a fresh young woman to a fresh young organisation, formed to save the world.

  It was the old homestead.

  Ambrose was in the corridor speaking to Dot Arnold from the Women’s Peace and Disarmament Committee, which had an office down the hall from his.

  They were talking about the latest BBC broadcast on short-wave and piecing together what they had gleaned despite the interference of German jamming.

  She and Dot kissed and hugged.

  Ambrose went to get his coat. She wanted to go with Ambrose but felt she had to stay to comfort Dot, whom she hadn’t seen for a while.

  ‘How’s it all been, Dot?’

  ‘Correspondence has just stopped dead,’ Dot said. ‘I’m afraid we will have to close up shop. Not one letter in over two weeks. I thought it was the international mail but it’s just that everyone’s simply given up writing or answering letters.’

  ‘Have you had any interesting information at all?’

  ‘The last private thing I heard was that peace talks would begin in September.’

  ‘Peace talks?’

  ‘To bring calm and order to the Continent.’

  ‘Who said? And isn’t that a trifle defeatist?’

  Dot became wet-eyed and shrugged. ‘We don’t want more bloodshed. The Committee is trying to call peace talks.’

  ‘Churchill won’t be talking peace with Hitler,’ Edith said strongly, speaking for Churchill.

  ‘The last I heard is that there are some in the Commons and in the Lords who want to make peace.’

  Edith didn’t want to hear this sort of talk and changed the subject by asking after some of their mutual acquaintances.

  ‘The last I heard was that Mary is still a pacifist. But I’m not. Not any more. All that we have which is of any value would be swept away under the Nazis. All I am saying is, I think there should be peace made with the Germans for now. That’s all.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You are so strong, Edith.’

  ‘Not really. Just desperate.’

  ‘Miss Nobs wants to wire Madame Ciano and ask her to approach Mussolini and ask him to withdraw from the war. Do you think it’s of any use?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Nor do I. When I took this job I promised myself two things: that I wouldn’t quarrel with anyone and that I wouldn’t compromise the Committee by foolish action.’

  ‘You haven’t, Dot.’

  ‘But Miss Bauer wants me to send a telegram to America urging them to participate in the war but I am not clear whether to send it directly to President Roosevelt or to our affiliated organisations, asking them to bring pressure on the President. What do you think?’

  ‘Do nothing.’

  ‘That’s Mrs Morgan’s position and she is working to have both ideas quashed by the executive.’

  That wasn’t right. Anything could help. ‘No—send it. Who knows what will tip the balance?’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I should think it best to go home, Dot—to England.’

  ‘I can’t really because we have an emergency meeting in June—Miss Bauer’s doing again. I suppose as long as Mrs Morgan’s still here everything is under control. She’s a pillar of commonsense.’

  ‘Go home, Dot.’

  ‘I still believe in an evolutionary future.’

  ‘Good. Don’t lose your nerve, Dot.’

  ‘What’s happening at the League?’

  Edith felt she couldn’t show her feeling of hopelessness. ‘We will rally around.’

  She couldn’t say that the League too was disintegrating. The Assembly and the Council had failed, and now the Secretariat was disintegrating.

  She joked. ‘We have des masques gaz and we have l’abris, Dot. What else do we need?’

  Dot began picking wool balls from her cardigan, a lost English idealist in a crumbling Geneva. Her office gone silent. Her work petered out. Her pacifism renounced.

  She touched Dot’s arm. ‘I must go, Dot. Ambrose will be waiting.’

  ‘Go?’ Dot was apprehensive.

  She feared that Dot would want to stay with Ambrose and her. That wouldn’t work. She had to stop herself inviting Dot to join them.

  She hugged Dot again. ‘We’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘You know the gathering point for the English?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve pinned it on the office wall.’

  ‘It might be best to go there now. See what the next move is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dot looked at her watch as if unsure whether to close the office early or not.

  Dot, usually so capable, was now a beached dolphin.

  She couldn’t look after Dot. ‘Go, Dot. Go now to the gathering point. Take your haversack and gas mask.’

  ‘I think I shall.’

  Edith walked to Ambrose’s office. Looking back, she saw that Dot was still standing in the corridor.

  Oh dear.

  Nothing to be done.

  She entered Ambrose’s wretched little office.

  Ambrose had the two emergency haversacks and the gas masks ready on his desk.

  ‘Planning a walking tour?’ she asked, going to him and kissing him.

  ‘I thought Australia via India. I got some tablets today to keep us awake. Everyone says we should also have our Pervitin tablets. And I have a bottle of cognac.’

  ‘Morphine?’

  ‘I have morphine.’

  ‘Who will work the needle?’

  ‘We will have to ask someone to assist when the need arises.’

  ‘I have never given a needle. I daresay I could learn. Junior Red Cross should’ve taught us that.’

  ‘Heard on the BBC that about three million people have fled Paris. The Germans found Paris closed up and deserted. The Parisians have gone—on bikes, pushing baby carriages, horse-drawn carts. Anything that moves. Three million of them. Germans found there were no fresh baguettes.’

  As they locked up and walked out of the Palais Wilson, carrying their haversacks and gas masks, she described Avenol’s collapse and his talk of surrendering the League.

  ‘He could very well give the League to the Nazis,’ Ambrose said. ‘How remarkable. How unexpected it always is. Always.’

  ‘Giraud said that Avenol is discovering Hitler’s virtues even before a surrender is signed.’

  ‘The war’s not over. My contacts at Buckingham Palace tell me that the Queen does not intend to evacuate and is learning to fire a pistol.’

  ‘Your contacts at the Palace?’

  ‘Well, my one contact. I thought that I might be able to get one call out before it all went dead and decided that it might be useful to know exactly what the King was doing. You know, as a way of knowing what to do next. So I called my one friend at the Palace and was told the Queen is learning to shoot.’

  ‘We must pack my pistol—if I can find it. You should have offered to be the Queen’s instructor.’

  ‘We must clean that pistol of yours. And find some more ammunition. Do you recall how much ammunition you have?’

  She was surprised by the seriousness with which he took the pistol matter.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I wonder where we could get another pistol?’

  ‘Didn’t you say that pistols were being sold at the Molly?’

  ‘Not the only thing sold at the Molly—and yes, I did. I might follow that up.’

  ‘Do we really need an arsenal?’

  ‘Who knows? In a life-
threatening situation, the rule is use all the violence you can as quickly as you can.’

  ‘There is a meeting tonight of the conspirators.’

  ‘You plan a coup d’état?’

  ‘We will have to remove Avenol from office, surely?’

  ‘And how, pray, will you do that?’

  She realised that she didn’t know how they would remove him. ‘Haul him out into the Cour d’Honneur and shoot him.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Must be something in the standing orders about fitness for office.’

  ‘Must be. Will have to study it. He has to go.’

  ‘Drinks?’

  ‘Quite right. When in doubt—drinks.’

  They went to the Hôtel Richemond for drinks. They found that they were alone in the lounge. No staff were about. A wireless set could be heard coming from an office.

  From the public telephone cabin, she rang Lester and told him where she was, while Ambrose went in search of a drink.

  When she came back, Ambrose was opening a bottle of champagne on the terrace.

  He said, ‘The Swiss franc had fallen so far that there was no reason not to buy the best champagne. And every bottle we drink is one less left for the Boche.’

  Perhaps this was a time to drink champagne. Maybe the disaster of the day would give champagne back its zing for her.

  Ambrose toasted, ‘To dear fallen France and to dear fallen Paris.’ His eyes were moist. He pulled himself together, ‘And to the fallen franc. And to a fallen League.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not to a fallen League. Not yet. To a fallen Secretary-General—without a doubt. It is time for us to say “In the name of God, Avenol, go”.’

  Their glasses touched and they drank, saying ‘In the name of God, Avenol, go.’

  To her, the sound of the glasses touching reminded her of a pistol breech closing on a bullet.

  ‘When we drink champagne, we must always remember that we drink the tears of the world,’ Ambrose said.

  ‘On this day, we surely do.’

  They drank their first mouthful silently, looking into each other’s eyes, and she felt unspecified frightened meanings in their glance. She felt their binding dependence which was now beginning to grip them like iron.

  They were alone together in a disintegrating world.

  She had never felt so bound to another person.

  He spoke first. ‘London cabled me to pack it in,’ he said. ‘My salary expires at the end of the month. Of course, I wish to stay. But no funds in the old bank. Suppose I could work at the Molly.’

  ‘As a cigarette girl?’

  ‘Mistress of the corps de ballet,’ Ambrose said.

  She looked at him and had a thought. ‘Would you like to work for me?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘As a kind of private secretary. You know the League has no funds to employ anyone. I think that I will need fortifying. And I have some private schemes. There will be things to do. You will be needed.’

  ‘Schemes?’

  ‘I want to find out about the opposition in Germany, if any. We can help refugees. All sorts of things apart from League business.’

  She thought about it while they watched the sparrows play among their drinks, searching for biscuit crumbs on the terrace.

  ‘You aren’t thinking of leaving then?’

  ‘No. And I want to be double my size,’ she said. That was it. ‘I want to double the size of my army. I want to be twice as strong. So I’m recruiting you.’

  Ambrose stared at her. ‘Edith Campbell Berry—sorry: Edith Berry—you are remarkable. You really intend to stay?’

  ‘If Switzerland holds out, I think the League will last. As you know, some of us are going to Princeton although Avenol thinks this an American plot to steal the best parts of the League. Treasury’s going to London. But I’m sure some of us will stay here to man the fort. Make the peace.’

  ‘Would you be a hard taskmaster?’ Ambrose asked.

  ‘Oh, very hard. As hard as you like.’

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘You accept, then, my offer of a position on my personal staff?’

  ‘I see no other job offers on the horizon. One proviso.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If Bernard offers me Mistress of the corps de ballet, may I accept that instead?’

  ‘How could I stand in the way of an artistic career.’

  He reached over to her. ‘I really require no salary. Only bed and board.’

  ‘There has to be a salary, otherwise I can’t boss you about. I shall need a private office for our informal operations.’

  ‘I suppose I could rent the office I’m in.’

  ‘I want you out of that wretched office. You need something more your size.’

  He stared at the bubbles rising in his champagne glass, his finger running around the rim of the glass.

  He then looked up at her. ‘We’ve travelled far since we met on that train to Geneva.’

  ‘We have, dear Ambrose, we have.’

  She felt herself begin to weep again.

  ‘Adding to the tears of the world?’ he asked, placing his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Just twenty or so.’

  She kept crying.

  ‘God counts the tears of women.’

  His words caused her to cry harder. ‘I’d hoped he might be able to do more than just count them,’ she said, through the tears. ‘And how come you know so much about tears? Or God?’

  Her tears changed to a small, light laughter, ‘Dot …’ she sniffed, wiping her nose, ‘… Dot still believes in an evolutionary future.’

  ‘That’s reassuring.’

  She managed a giggle and they then smiled deeply at each other, gripping each other’s hands.

  Coils

  Again the conspirators gathered, this time in a bedroom of the Hôtel de la Paix. This time Ambrose was present at her request.

  Coffee and galettes arrived up from the hotel kitchen as she’d ordered but there was also a bottle of whisky and glasses on the sideboard, Irish whisky which she hadn’t ordered. Edith supposed the whisky was Sean Lester’s contribution.

  Again the meeting began with war talk.

  Since their last meeting on the day of the Fall of Paris, Germany had divided France into two parts and allowed the French the pretence of an independent government based at the town of Vichy.

  Everyone wanted to believe that some of the French spirit and at least a token government had survived the German invasion. But in another part of their heads, everyone knew that, as an independent government, it was a farce.

  For a start, the French government at Vichy had refused to hand over the French fleet to the British.

  To prevent the fleet falling into German hands, the British had yesterday, without warning, bombed it at Oran and Mers-el-Kebir and hundreds of French sailors had died.

  There could be no pretence now that France was a potential ally, except for remnants of its army which had ended up in England after Dunkirk and which remained in the unoccupied French colonies.

  The bombing of the fleet had shaken the world. Churchill had turned on France. Ally had turned on ally.

  The United States was still resolute that it would not join in the war.

  In fact, some said that because the United States had such sentimental attachments to the French, the British bombing might have alienated them even further from coming to the help of the British Empire.

  And now Roosevelt had recognised the Vichy government.

  The Soviet Union had congratulated Hitler on his capture of Paris.

  Avenol was still occupying the office of the Secretary-General but the Secretariat—what was left of it—was reporting to Lester, behind Avenol’s back.

  Things were grim.

  Edith noticed that much smoking was being done.

  ‘Not smoking, Edith?’

  ‘Having mastered the art, Sean, I have now abandoned it. Had a frightful cough f
rom it.’

  That wasn’t true. She’d used the cough reason to avoid stating the truth. She’d stopped because she felt it was not something a woman in her position should do. She supposed that this sort of thinking let the suffragette side down because smoking was seen by Florence and her bolshie crowd as being a rather progressive thing to do. As well as being trés chic.

  But Florence had gone home to Canada and most of her crowd had also dispersed.

  Smoking did not seem quite right. Not in public anyhow. Maybe she was getting old.

  It wasn’t as if she had always maintained a high standard of decorum in other areas of her life. Still, one didn’t have to have every vice, and cigarette smoking was one vice she felt she could drop.

  And she didn’t want to give out the suggestion that her smoking showed she had a case of nerves.

  The way people were smoking these days around the place gave the impression of near panic.

  After the war gossip, Lester said he would like to read a letter he received from Sweetser, ‘If that’s agreeable to all? It’s typical Sweetser prose.’

  They all nodded. Lester read from the letter, ‘ “So at 12.40 p.m., we said goodbye to Geneva which had been our home for twenty rich years. We passed out of the Rigot courtyard, down past the League buildings and the International Tennis Club, down by the Labor Office and off onto the Lausanne road. Never, as long as I live will I forget that ride. Switzerland at its most perfect season. The mountains stood out firm and strong on the horizon, their tops still capped with a glistening white snow; the lake was its deepest and richest blue; the fruit-trees were in their fullest bloom all about; the manifold little gardens were just springing out of the ground. Nature was giving everything she had to give …” ’

  They were chuckling. Ambrose said, ‘Indeed, Sweetser at his purple prose best.’

  Lester, regardless of the joking, seemed quite moved by it, and read on, ‘ “Yet war was all about us, even here in Switzerland. Not once, or twice or thrice were we stopped by the military on this beautiful ride, but no less than ten times. First we would be slowed by a warning sentinel, with machine guns set on either side of the road, then a guard would look at our papers, another would examine the baggage for chance guns or munitions. It was done very efficiently and thoroughly with grim determination but democratic good humour. The country teemed with soldiers and they were a fine upstanding manly group of people …” ’