Cold Light Page 9

  As unworldly as it was to take the invitation as a sign, it did restore some confidence to her. That week she arranged afternoon tea with Alan Watt, with whom she had stayed before the war when she had been on home leave from the League. He had been new to the Department then. Formerly a lawyer, he had been recruited in his late thirties under regulation S.47, which allowed recruitment of mature people into the public service. Although Watt and she were hardly close friends, here he was, returning now from being Australia’s ambassador to Moscow as she was returned from the UNRRA and Europe. So in a sense, they were both returning. She thought that this minor coincidence of mutual return, together with his original mature recruitment into External Affairs, might make him sympathetic to her predicament. Ambrose said that the rumour was that he would be made Head of the Department of External Affairs. John Burton, the current head, had mysteriously taken leave of absence since the election of Menzies. Some said Burton was incompatible with Menzies because of his leftish views. She had got nowhere with Burton. Neither her experience nor her patrons – Bruce and Latham – impressed him. Regardless of their pairing in a slim coincidence, she would not be too pushy with Watt.

  At afternoon tea, Watt surprised her by saying that the Russians felt encircled by capitalist nations and feared their aggression. But he said that they had stopped him from visiting the important inland industrial cities. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said.

  He did not think there would be war in the near future.

  She was interested that his position was in contradiction to his Prime Minister.

  She did not mention that she had been invited to the Prime Minister’s for dinner, in case he had not been invited and expected to have been. She very much hoped he would be there, that the dinner would cement something, lead to something.

  He did not mention his brother, Ray, and she did not mention him either. She had been told they did not get along. She had known Ray as the former secretary of the League of Nations Union in Australia. The last she had heard about him was that he had fallen on hard times, following the collapse of the League, and was selling encyclopaedias door-to-door after unsuccessfully running for a seat in the federal elections. Ray had been a great apostle for the League and a friend of Latham.

  Watt and she skirted around the question of appointment of the new department head – Watt from some sort of professional reticence and good form; she because she did not wish to be seen as blatantly self-promoting and trying to ride on his back. She simply stressed she was back in Australia and would be staying, and that she felt it would be good to be ‘put back in harness in the diplomatic sphere’.

  She even made some inquiries about regulation S.47, using a tone of voice that made it sound as if she were professionally curious about it as ‘a recruitment method generally in the public service’. He said that, after a rocky start, the idea of diplomatic cadets recruited from university graduates was working well. He said that Ruth Dobson was a curious case in point. He said that last year in London, where Dobson worked as a clerk with the Australian High Commission, she was appointed as temporary third secretary, and her work led to her selection for the Geneva office of the Australian UN Delegation. Watt said that Dobson was always trying to be appointed full-time to the Australian diplomatic corps but didn’t stand much of a chance. ‘Age, and so on.’

  Edith wondered if this was a signal to her that her case, too, was hopeless.

  He told her he regretted not having met Stalin while he was ambassador. He said, ‘confidentially’, that they had found listening devices or what he called ‘bugs’ in the embassy building, but the discovery had to be kept quiet because of other political considerations. The bugs were removed discreetly during the remont of the building. She had not heard the word remont before, but did not ask. He said all food had to be locked up because the Russian servants stole it.

  She felt his Russia anecdotes were a way of pushing the conversation away from the possibility of her joining the department if he were to be secretary.

  He said one thing that interested her: ‘I find that living in Canberra makes it easier to think about Australia as a whole, than if I lived, say, in Sydney or Melbourne. I’m convinced that building a capital city was the right decision.’

  Although he gave no hint or encouragement about her aspirations, or even any hint that she was on his mind in any way at all, she did not abandon all hope. It could be that he was being discreet. Or had she carried off too well the pose of being unambitious, which Bruce had taught her?

  Ambrose said that the word remont was French. ‘He guessed that it meant, in this context, refurbishing – perhaps refitting – of the building. ‘How odd.’

  She realised then that Watt had used the French word to impress her, or to treat her as belonging to his ‘club’ of internationally experienced people. Perhaps that was a hopeful sign.

  Ambrose was interested in hearing that Watt had one of the bugs sent back to Canberra in the diplomatic bag for examination.

  Although Ambrose and she did not discuss the matter again, Edith also felt somewhat emboldened about the Adelaide business; less oppressed. She felt some of her urbane invulnerability returning. After all, she told herself, Canberra was not like Adelaide or the other cities. Canberra was trying to make itself different, would be different, a city of political people, of diplomatic staff, of public servants, of journalists, of internationally recruited scholars at the new National University. It would be a planned city full of lively people. Maybe Ambrose and she could inspire – or find – some accepting, protective, Bloomsbury-like bohemian spirit in this place.

  She had to admit that Bloomsbury still seemed a somewhat wobbly idea in this city of parks and trees, blazing street lights along streets without pedestrians and without houses.

  Although, looking at the flow of her life in recent weeks, it could be said that she had already begun something of a Bloomsbury set, what with communists, the ambiguous hugging of a serving girl, an invitation to dinner with the aristocracy of Canberra, and with Ambrose, her own exotic Bloomsbury creature.

  Yes. Even if Bloomsbury was a somewhat wobbly idea in the life of her mind, in her way she had, she thought, tried to be brave and unconventional in her public face, and had often boldly displayed a taste for the outré, even if she was not, in her brother and Janice’s terms, in any way a revolutionary.

  Dinner at the Lodge, and Adam Lindsay Gordon

  At pre-dinner drinks there were martinis for the men, and sherry – not Spanish – for the women. There was much talk of Bradman’s retirement and his knighthood and the future of Australian cricket. She supposed the knighthood was for being clever at hitting a ball with a bat, but no one seemed to find this odd.

  She had hoped that Spender, the minister of External Affairs, or Watt would be there, but they weren’t. She recognised no one except Bruce, who she assumed had put her up for the Lodge dinner.

  To all present, the Prime Minister launched into a story about being at Neville Chamberlain’s house for dinner on his last visit to London, and having what he called ‘a set to’ with the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘who put forward as a claim to my regard that he’d helped secure approval for a bust of Adam Lindsay Gordon in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey’. The Prime Minister paused, with a twinkle of a smile, an index finger raised. ‘I took the war to his camp by saying that no good purpose was ever served by elevating the third-rate to the company of the great. He was bitterly disappointed. I told him nothing could be worse for young poets than to be told that the works of Gordon represented the summum bonum . . .’ He chuckled to himself and added, ‘I think the Archbishop felt me a thoroughly ungrateful fellow.’

  The gathering laughed rather loudly along with the Prime Minister. Edith did not hold back and laughed too – it always felt good, generally speaking, to be with the laughter.

  But she felt for Adam Lindsay Gordon, and in her head Edith heard the words of The Sick Stockrider, learned as a child and chanted bac
k at school in Jasper’s Brush.

  Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade.

  Old man, you’ve had your work cut out to guide

  Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I sway’d,

  All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride.

  She rather liked the poem.

  She bet that most of those present knew the lines and would have been confused at why Menzies opposed the bust. She bet they all remembered the last lines of The Sick Stockrider.

  Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave,

  With never stone or rail to fence my bed;

  Should the sturdy station children pull the bush flowers on my grave,

  I may chance to hear them romping overhead.

  And she remembered also liking the lines:

  The dawn at ‘Moorabinda’ was a mist rack dull and dense,

  The sunrise was a sullen, sluggish lamp . . .

  She wondered if she should raise it with the PM if the opportunity arose. She doubted it. She looked around at the gathering and did not get the impression that any of them would take it up with him.

  A few of the wives present admired her Dior outfit, and she whispered to them, ‘It’s a copy.’

  When the table was seated, the Prime Minister tapped his glass with a fork, calling to himself the attention of the table. He said he wanted to welcome the new arrivals to the capital, ‘especially Major Westwood MBchB Edinburgh, representing the British High Commission, and his wife, Edith’.

  Edith bridled. The invitation had come to her and not to the HC, but the PM seemed to want to use the mention of the High Commission to state his affection ‘for what I call, perhaps now old-fashionedly, the “British Empire” – I know we are all looking across the Pacific these days to the Americans, but I argue that our security, indeed our very cultural existence, lies in our bond with Britain and will always lie with Britain’.

  Some of the table said, ‘Hear, hear.’

  He then made reference to the time Edith had spent with the League and UNRRA, ‘in the service of Australia’. She again felt like correcting him. She was not over there ‘in the service of Australia’. She was there in service to the world.

  ‘Hear, hear.’

  She smiled modestly to the table. She had a pang of disappointment – somehow she had thought the PM might be going to announce her appointment to some diplomatic position. A fantasy.

  The Prime Minister also welcomed ‘Canberra’s first town planner, Trevor Gibson . . .’

  Clapping.

  He added, ‘Perhaps he could give us a hand in planning the country.’

  Chuckles.

  She discerned that the dinner was a mixed gathering of a certain level – odds and ends. Oh well, that was what she was – an odd or an end, one or the other.

  Gibson was seated on Edith’s right. She turned and nodded to him and they shook hands. Couples had been separated in the modern way. Ambrose was across from her at the other end.

  The first course was lobster cocktail, followed, rather quickly, by a consommé, with the first wine being another dry sherry.

  At the beginning there were moments when the table fell silent and the Prime Minister’s conversation flowed down the table. All turned their attention to him, and when he noticed this he raised his volume and altered the aim of his remarks to claim the table at large. She heard him say, ‘We are in what we now know as a cold war, and we are not at peace and cannot enjoy the liberties and privileges of a nation at peace . . .’

  The table echoed agreement with a quiet ‘hear, hear’. One man across from her lightly slapped the table with his palm.

  Edith remembered her discussion of military necessity with Frederick – revolutionary necessity. Perhaps now the world was in the grip of cold-war necessity.

  Perhaps her brother and the Prime Minister were as one on this.

  The Prime Minister grabbed the last receding hold he had on the table, which had begun returning to side and cross conversation, and said with a twinkle of eyes and face, ‘And, of course, the banning will also inconvenience the Labor Party – grievously, we hope.’

  Chuckles again.

  When the conversation returned to twos and threes, her end talked about Canberra; admired the Lodge and the elegant table setting – the high silver candlesticks; the need for a larger room; Don Bradman; the possibility of a Korean war.

  She introduced herself to the man on her left – Richard someone. She did not catch his second name. He explained that he had been seconded to a position on Menzies’ new uranium committee. He was younger than she.

  ‘What does it mean now that we have discovered uranium?’ she asked, rather fascinated by a man involved with uranium, the frightening and magical element.

  ‘Do you know much about uranium?’

  ‘It has the symbol U and atomic number 92.’

  He acted impressed. ‘Good for you. What does the discovery of uranium mean? It means that – if we choose – we could build a big bomb and scare away those whom we wish to scare. And we could supply Australia with electricity at a penny a month. But tell me more about yourself. Does the Australian way of life satisfy you after the heady sophistication of Europe?’

  He gave the word ‘satisfy’ a peculiar emphasis, something of a mocking tone, yet wanted her to say, she knew, that yes, of course, Australia satisfied her, of course Australia was best, of course the sophistication of Europe was over-vaunted. She doubted that he entertained the possibility that she might say, no, Australia, despite its beaches and cricketers, was an unsatisfactory place in a number of the higher categories.

  He went on before she could answer, perhaps having now entertained the possibility of a dissenting reply, ‘But I assume that the so-called sophistication of Europe has well and truly been lost in the rubble and the rationing. Or is there a black market also in sophistication?’

  ‘I have not visited the black market in sophistication, although I would consider it worth a visit. Europe is reconstructing –’ More data came to her from university science, and she thought she may as well show off – ‘and uranium when refined is a silvery white, weakly radioactive metal, which is slightly softer than steel, much denser than lead; however, in our science course we never handled any.’

  The question about the satisfactoriness of Australia had drifted away, but he had introduced the equally touchy word, sophistication. She knew that speaking up for sophistication was itself a vexed business, and should always be accompanied in Australia by the words ‘so-called’. She answered him, ‘I suspect that if you have a sufficiently energetic curiosity, politics anywhere, in every place, contains within it all the great philosophical questions and raises us all, one way or another, to a level of what could be called sophistication. A serious life asks us the same questions, whether it be Rome, Geneva, London or Bourke, New South Wales.’ She tried to make it sound uncombative, yet, she hoped, on the other hand, not patronising. ‘Or Jasper’s Brush.’

  In her own mind, she acknowledged how unconfident she felt about her own sophistication, even after all these years of living abroad. She could – but would never – mention some of her social gaffes and gaucheries from over the years. We are all unsophisticated about something. It was, after all, simply learning how best to enjoy the basics of life – eating, drinking, art, thinking. Oh, was that all?

  He nodded in appreciation of her reply. ‘Jasper’s Brush has a place in your life? You grew up there?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She said it in such a way as to make certain to him that she did not consider it a place of humble beginning.

  ‘And what would those great philosophical questions be that Jasper’s Brush Council faces in the shire hall? Or was it part of Berry Council?’

  She thought that was a good enough return.

  ‘Oh, well, how should we live? What do we owe to the gods, and what do we owe to the polis, and what do we owe to ourselves.’ She laughed to lighten it u
p. ‘And with whom should we live!’ she said, laughing more. ‘And where should we live? Socrates and Aristotle, as far as I recall, did not deal with these last two questions.’ She threw in some more laughter.

  He joined her. ‘From what I remember of my university days – I did a BA as well as a BSc – I think Socrates had an answer to whether it is best to live in the capital or in the country or in exile. I seem to recall he addressed this question.’

  Well. That was a very strong return.

  She came back, ‘If he were to come to Canberra, he could enjoy the privileges and discomforts of all three modes of living in one place – the capital, the rural life and exile.’

  He almost roared with laughter, capturing the attention of two people opposite, to whom he repeated her joke. They too laughed loudly. One woman said, ‘How true, how true.’

  Behind the laughter, Edith was both pleased with herself and cautious. Her joke about Canberra might be on the edge of being unpatriotic. She knew that if you were someone who had Lived Abroad, there were socially acceptable ways of talking about Australia – but as for Canberra, she was still uncertain of what was permitted in the way of jokes by those who lived there. There was one way of talking when speaking to another person who had travelled or lived abroad, and another if you were speaking to an Australian who hadn’t travelled. There was yet another way of speaking if you were driven to flaunting your worldliness by exasperation and irritation because of arrant provincialism. From something he had said, she knew that this civil servant Richard had been to London before the war, but had not travelled elsewhere and that he wasn’t a returned soldier. Expatriates were always required to say some things to prove themselves as ‘true blue’. And there was another group who seemed to love to hear Australia denigrated, and Europe – or especially England – praised to the skies; they were people who dreamed of leaving and living there, and you confirmed their fantasies and endorsed their dissatisfactions, permitted them to attribute their personal failings to the dreadful accident of place of birth.