Cold Light (13 page)

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 back at school in Jasper’s Brush.

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.

And she remembered also liking the lines:

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 up. ‘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.

Tonight, she decided to be somewhat straightforward with this Richard. ‘I’m surprised to find such a struggle going on for the soul of the nation. I suppose that shows there is no settled Australian way of life, even yet.’

This statement, she knew, would truly be a matter for strong discussion. Perhaps too strong for a Prime Minister’s dinner party. She wished she had not said it.

‘There’s an Australian way of life, surely?’ he said, too quickly, not allowing himself time to walk around the question. ‘What are these struggles you think you see for our souls?’ He was somewhat guarded, as if what she had said contained a challenge to the native virtues.

‘There wouldn’t be such political struggles if there was a settled Australian way,’ she said, feeling she should back off. She touched his hand lightly. ‘I do not mean it in any derogatory way. Or about the present company.’ He had hairs on the back of his hand. Jungle hairs. Ambrose had no hairs.

‘Who, then, is out for our soul – apart from the devil?’ He had calmed. ‘And the communists.’

‘We seem to think they’re the same thing.’ She laughed. Which ‘we’ was that?

‘For the politicians here,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘there are three menaces – rabbits, Catholics and communists.’ He laughed, too. ‘Hope you’re not any of those.’

‘You’re safe. I am not a rabbit, I am not a Catholic and I am not a communist.’ She stopped herself saying, ‘But I have a brother who is a communist.’

‘Wouldn’t be at the PM’s table if you were, I suppose.’

‘Unless I were a rabbit – but I suppose grand dinner parties do not serve rabbit.’ She almost said ‘in Australia’, but dropped that bit. Maybe she
was
being served.

He again laughed loudly but did not share her joke with the table. He lowered his voice and said to her, ‘There are those who want us to be as British as can be, and there are some who think we would be better off aping the Americans with their Rotary Clubs, slang, chewing gum and jitterbug, and so on. And bow ties.’

He took a drink; his statement judiciously did not take a position on these alternatives. She saw him take another look at her. Perhaps she was being too complicated for a dinner party. Or just downright snooty.

He put down his glass and said, without looking at her, ‘There are the old bush ways – mateship, pioneering, all that. Banjo Paterson. That, I suppose, is what I mean about the real Australia.’

‘Do you let Adam Lindsay Gordon in?’

‘Oh yes.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘I think the PM is wrong about Adam Lindsay Gordon.’ He whispered, ‘
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush flowers on my grave
,
I may chance to hear them romping overhead
.’

She smiled at him and whispered back, ‘
Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade . . .
’

But she would not become bland. To hell with it; she was here and she would be pesky if the mood took her or circumstances demanded. This was her debut, and they may as well know her for what she was. ‘From what I’ve seen since I’ve returned, there are still different classes who have different quarrels and different dreams. And live different Australian ways.’

‘There wouldn’t be classes if it weren’t for the unions and the communists going on about classes.’

She let that pass. What he said, if he were correct, was perhaps an example of the Communist Party planting what her brother liked to identify as a ‘false consciousness’ in the workers. Which consciousness was false, and who decided? Her brother and his friends? Sound Marxist analysis? ‘I suppose that with the immigrants flooding in we’ll become something like Europeans.’