Cold Light (20 page)

‘The position doesn’t call for an office,’ he said. He tried to joke. ‘Nor for a deep concentrator.’

‘I think it best, for the appearances of the department and for the impression that you should make as the Senior Planner of the city, that I, as your special assistant, have a personal office.’

He put his hand to his hair. ‘I suppose in deference to your age and experience we can find you an office – of your own. Hadn’t planned on you having an office. Nor, let it be said, on having a “special assistant”. There’s no real title that goes with the job. It is more a job for a typist.’

‘I shall be your
special assistant
,’ Edith said.

He touched his hair again.

He turned them both around and they walked in the other direction to an office where two clerks were working. Gibson spoke to one, asking about ‘Conrad’s office’. One of the clerks said, ‘Vacant.’ Gibson asked for the keys, and the clerk took them from a hook board and handed them to Gibson. ‘Sign here,’ the clerk said, taking up a form from a tray. Gibson handed the form to Edith. ‘You may as well take responsibility for the key.’ He said it as if she were taking over the whole building. She signed it and handed the form to the clerk. She then introduced herself to the two clerks in the office, who hastily stood up from their chairs and shook her offered hand. ‘From today, I am special assistant to Mr Gibson. You may call me –’ She was about to use her married name, behind which she had decided to hide from the connection to her brother, but then decided that it
was
cowardice – ‘You may call me Campbell Berry.’ They introduced themselves as Mr Thomas and Mr Harry.

Outside on the steps, Gibson asked why she was using her maiden name. She said that it was best to maintain one’s professional name.

‘Then I shall call you Campbell Berry.’

‘You could call me Edith, if you wish, if it’s not too informal.’

He said he might alternate between the two. She didn’t know what to make of that.

She then said to Gibson, ‘I like Griffin’s geometrical lake – putting water into geometrical shapes. Perhaps it’s art deco. But with room enough for fairies.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Lake fairies. Don’t worry, I’m being playful.’ She glanced at his face. ‘Lakes have fairies, I’m led to believe. Naiads. I should have mentioned this to McLaren.’

Gibson looked at her. She touched his elbow. ‘I’m having a joke. I rush to assure you that I do not believe in fairies.’

‘That’s somewhat of a relief,’ Gibson said.

‘But the lake will bring birds and fishes into the heart of our lives.’

He was, she could tell already, overloaded by her. She must stop being bubbly.

They arrived at ‘Conrad’s office’, which Gibson unlocked, and they entered. It was small but clean, smelling of public-service wax, furnished in standard PS stock. But she would change all that.

‘Do you think Griffin worked here?’

Gibson laughed. ‘If you would like to believe so.’ He turned to smile at her, showing his unsureness in her presence, and handed her the keys. ‘If you need any piece of furniture, make requisitions through public works, as long as it’s within the inventory scale for the position – and given there is no position I guess there is no scale. When you’re ready, you can come to my office and collect all my files about the Congress. Oh, the ladies’ washrooms, and so on, are down the corridor on the left. I’ll see that you are issued with a handtowel.’

‘I shall bring my own towels and toiletries.’

‘Of course.’ He rushed off, both from her office and from that subject.

There was no window as such. She put down her handbag and took off her gloves, then took off her beret, hanging it on the hat stand.

She sat in the wooden chair and swung. She’d had an awareness – what she would once have called
une prise de conscience.
The drawings by Mrs Griffin had done it. And the Griffin plans. The vision of it had gripped her for now, for now at this point of history. This was good work for her. It was fertile ground. She had found her way to a point in the scheme of things where she could flourish and move things. She had not thought that it could happen, but it had.

She had taken the correct turn on the crossroads of circumstance: by taking the path she had not intended to take. By confounding her destiny, and, hey presto, she was now out of the shadow lands.

On the surface of things, she was back at the level of Gerty, her own personal assistant back at the League, but she sensed both with McLaren and with Gibson that she was being somewhat humoured and would make her own status.

She went outside to read the number of her office, and then took out some notepaper and worked on her
carte de visite
.

In a drawer of the well-waxed desk with its green leather top, she found a roneoed government office telephone directory, picked up the telephone and had the switch put her through to the government printery.

To a clerk at the other end of the phone line, she dictated her business card. The clerk said that she would have to have it authorised through the relevant officer. She told them to go ahead and print one hundred cards and that she would get the proper form of authority sent over to them. She would dictate as it was urgent.

The
carte de visite
she dictated said:

She reasoned that the card would be more a reminder to Australia of who she was.

She had added the office number and the telephone extension number from there on the telephone in her office. The clerk said, ‘I assume that will be a lady-sized card?’

She paused. ‘No, make it the size that men usually have their cards.’

He was silent and then said, ‘Okay. If you say so.’

She considered spelling Capital as Capitol, but thought that a proofreader would change it.

She reasoned that neither Gibson nor McLaren would ever see the card, which was, she thought, anyhow, not at all too much of a twist on accuracy.

She then connected to the telephone switch again and introduced herself. She asked the switch to record her office number and enter her in the revisions for the directory, and then to book a call for her to Peter Harrison at the University of Sydney.

She put down the telephone and again swivelled in the chair. The images of the Griffins’ Canberra still lit her mind; the geometric world of Mr Griffin arcing electrically with the illustrated world of Mrs Griffin. This Marion.

Poor Ambrose. He would have to unpack again. Or unpack his already packed-up mind.

She telephoned him.

‘I am now Controller of the Controller of the Capitolium, sitting in Office 302 with telephone extension number 117. Not exactly a situation on Capitoline Hill, but close. And I have a
carte de visite
printing as we speak.’

‘Dear, dear, Edith.’

‘And I may use the name “Berry”. To hell with my brother and to hell with hiding.’

‘I would expect nothing less.’

‘I felt a need to restore my . . . valour. And another thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘Remember the story about the lampshade shop, the nancy-boys in Adelaide?’

‘Of course.’

‘I am ashamed that I allowed myself to be frightened.’

‘It is, in a way, a frightening thing.’

‘If the police ever come we will simply brazen it out.’

‘Brazen it out?’

‘Brazen it out. Nonchalance will save us. Insouciance will save us.’

‘Very good. You do the brazening while I simper in the corner.’

‘You will not simper. You will flaunt yourself. There are some magnificent drawings I wish to show you of how the capitol will look. They were lying in a box over in a hut at the Department of Works. At last I feel some elation, some way forward. As Gerty – remember Gerty, my personal assistant from the League? – would say, “I now have the world spinning on my thumb” – or, at least, the capitol of the nation spinning on my thumb.’

‘You are a marvel,’ he said. ‘And a whim-wham.’

‘I don’t like that expression “whim-wham”.’

‘You cannot control the English language.’

‘We’ll see.’

After she hung up, she sat and thought about the exchange with Ambrose. She should be careful with him. She was enthused but he was not happy.

A
mbrose had eventually taken her decision to stay on in Canberra with his usual grace – or was it the compliance of defeat? In fact, he seemed to have accepted it too readily. He insisted they celebrate her appointment at the Gloucester, which was as high as you could go in high living. She found the Australian diet still relied too heavily on condiments, and not enough on stock, sauces and marinades.

They drank a superb French claret from the HC cellar, which seemed not to have suffered from the voyage. The glasses at the Gloucester left something to be desired. She said, ‘We must remember to bring our own wine glasses. I said that last time.’

She described to him her awakening to the possibilities of a noble capitol. ‘
At last I see.
’

‘I was blind but now I see.’

‘Is that from a hymn? “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” And I am going to keep calling it the capi
tol
until someone stops me.’

Ambrose smiled. ‘I think the line comes from the Book of John. And they wouldn’t dare.’

Ambrose was tipsy and not really in a celebratory mood.

‘A capitol serves human society in two grand ways –’

He cut across her. ‘Except that this capitol is in a country that is ninety per cent uninhabited . . . and mostly desert.’ He poured wine into their glasses, even though they were still rather full.

She ignored him. ‘A capitol is not only the place of governance – a place where how we are to live our lives is decided, as if that isn’t dramatic enough.’ She put a hand on his. ‘I’ve realised that a capitol is also the place of communal memory. Hence the old capitols and their museums and monuments and so on, their spoils of war. Memorials. The national memory. In a capitol we are inside the living memory of the nation.’

She was proud of her revelation. She had read every file on the forthcoming Congress – and more. She had begun reading the National Capital Planning and Development Committee minutes and memoranda, and had ordered books from the library.

Ambrose said, ‘If there is anything worthwhile to be remembered. There is no history. The “city” is being built before the country has a history. This capitol has planted more trees than it has inhabitants.’

‘Shush. Trees are monuments too. This is another amazing thing – we plant them to mark occasions; we put plaques on them; we see them grow, remembering the time that they were planted; we marvel at their age. One day people will say, “These trees were planted when parliament opened.” Or, I remember when this avenue was planted. So there . . .’ She trailed off.

Ambrose was shaking his head, not from disagreement but as a way of showing his refusal to join with her in the fever of her discoveries. He did not want to be excited about Canberra. Nothing as dulling as a dutiful celebrant, even if he were an affectionate one. It was unlike him to not join with the occasion. He was a master of conviviality.

She had read far into the night on all that she could find on the planning of cities. At least she had something to be passionate about. It would stop her being a whim-wham. ‘Do you think I was becoming what you call a whim-wham because I had no position in life? Because I was stuck in those rooms? Or because I am becoming an “older woman” ’

‘I do not see you as an “older woman”.’

‘As a one-time doctor you must know about hormones?’

He thought. ‘Studied Starling – he had much to say on hormones. We all studied Starling –
Principles of Human Physiology.
’

‘So did I! It was one of our texts in physiology. But I recall nothing very much about hormones.’