Cold Light (30 page)

‘Yes. Maybe you’re right.’

After dinner, Ambrose went off to do some work in his room, and she listened to a concert on the wireless, but her mind kept drifting off the music.

Ambrose and she had had a dinner and a picnic with Janice and Frederick, but Frederick was quite often away – doing his organising. Her chats with Janice had gone from her life now that she had a position; still, she had tea with her now and then. She kept hoping, she supposed, that any contact with Frederick would be the last time. The Causeway, for example. But it was Ambrose who had urged her on because of his so-called fact-finding mission.

It was the being a sister that was still besetting her. She had realised that being a sister also carried with it something of a maternal response; something passed from the mother’s obligations and duties to her, the daughter. Obligations to the brother and to the father after the mother had gone. True, she had got as far as deciding that being a sister was not an inescapable onus or compact – that we decide to accept the blood bond or kin bond or we don’t, and that siblings could change into strangers and disappear, as it were, into the crowd. What percentage of this man Frederick who had presented himself as her brother
was her brother
, as she had known him as a child? Was any of that person left?

She turned off the concert and went to the connecting door. ‘Ambrose, I am going to slip something on and go down to the lounge for a Scotch. We are out of Scotch.’

‘Have a bottle sent up.’

‘It would take ages. I will bring up a bottle. I feel restless. I need to take a turn around the deck.’

In the lounge she chased up Janice, who was finishing work and had changed into her street clothes. Edith studied Janice’s clothing. Should she take a lead from her? Or was her style too young?

‘May I buy you a drink? Are staff allowed in the lounge? I’ve never been sure of that.’

Janice winked. ‘I think we can get away with it.’

They sat down and Edith ordered drinks.

After some chat, she looked at Janice and said, ‘Did Frederick and you winkle this house for us?’

‘Not really. Ask him. Fred said he would use one of his union connections to push your name up the list.’

‘I’m not sure that is a correct thing to do.’

‘He said you were already on priority and getting near the top.’

‘It’s still not quite proper.’

Janice was uncomfortable. ‘You are, after all, his sister. He was being brotherly.’

‘Or is he obligating me?’ This could have repercussions. Was she worried about repercussions or about fairness?

‘Edith, you’re a tough one. I think he did it as a gift. Or maybe he did it to show off to you. Perhaps he wanted to impress you, his sister.’

‘To impress his sister?’

‘The Party has power in its own way. And anyhow, as I said, you were entitled to a house and it was only a matter of weeks before you got one.’

Janice took her hand. ‘Accept it for everything that it is. Nothing bad could come of it.’ She then laced her fingers into Edith’s. Edith found it strengthening. Janice finished her drink quickly and said that she must go. ‘A meeting, of course.’ She stood up, leaned over and kissed Edith’s cheek. Edith devoured the kiss.

‘I’ll walk you to the car.’

Outside, at the car she said, ‘I’ll have to get a car, you must advise me . . .’ She smiled. ‘I know there’s a waiting list for cars, but please do not pull strings for me.’

They laughed.

‘I don’t think the Communist Party has much influence with the Morris Motor Company or Rolls-Royce, although you never know.’

‘We won’t be getting a Rolls.’

‘A Holden? The people’s car.’

‘Somehow I don’t think so.’ As she said it, she wondered whether Ambrose was entitled to a car. The HC had a Bentley, which they used when the HC wasn’t using it. Couldn’t have a car superior to the HC. Edith changed the subject, and it was she who took Janice’s hand this time. ‘I hate it when you wait on us and clean our room, but that will change now that we are moving out. I miss our chats.’

Janice wagged a finger at her. ‘How class-conscious. It’s my job to clean. People who do those jobs are not demeaning themselves unless those who use their services demean them. Work itself in any form is not demeaning, only our relationship to it. Capitalism makes it demeaning because it is the old servant–master relationship.’

‘I know, I know. We’ve been through this.’

Edith had been making a social apology, and although Janice used a lenient tone for her unexpected rebuke, it was still a rebuke. Edith felt abruptly as if she were somehow behind in her understanding of the world; that there were ways of thinking that had passed her by. Maybe it was time for her to take a seat back in the school of life and listen to these young, passionate teachers. Frederick had given her books; she had made random excursions into them but had not read them systematically yet. When he first gave her books to read he said that he had not read Marx and Lenin to become a communist – from the age of twelve he was already a communist.

Quietly, Edith said, ‘I suppose I’m saying that one shouldn’t be waited on by someone they know personally. Especially when one is fond – very fond – of that person.’

She resisted taking Janice by the shoulders and shaking her.

‘It’s not as if I’m socially excluded by you. We take tea together. Or do you mean that someone of my background shouldn’t have to do it – it is work that belongs to the lower classes?’

In the darkness, Edith’s face warmed. There was truth in that, but it was not the full answer. ‘It’s more that it’s an arrangement of awkwardness. In the dining room, for example, you cannot sit down with us. And yes, I do consider you to be capable of better work as well.’ She wondered what error of political etiquette lay within that sentence. ‘And I can’t bear it that you clean our toilet bowl.’

‘Your bowl is always spotless.’

‘Because I make sure it is. In any hotel.’

They both made faces at each other about the ricocheting complications and personal detail contained within this remark, and laughed.

Janice spoke first. ‘That means you are cleaning the toilet bowl
for me.
’

‘I suppose so. And when we stand back and look at it, anthropologically, it doesn’t really matter. It is very Victorian to even raise it.’

‘I think it does me good as a formerly privileged person to clean toilet bowls. It does me a power of good,’ Janice said. ‘If it helps to put you at ease, I consider my work not to be waiting on tables, cleaning rooms. I am an agitator. I agitate.’

The thing Edith did not say, and suppressed immediately, was that she was jealous when Janice joked and chatted with other diners. She could see that she had old-world expectations for Janice, and that this was a limited view of Janice’s world.

Janice continued, ‘Everyone who has worked learns one deep thing: that bosses have a feudal power; that to be kept out of employment or sacked can devastate a family and a future. That to be abused by a so-called superior puts the fear of God into a worker.’ Janice then began quietly to sing:

Edith broke in, ‘We must talk more about these things.’

Janice continued to sing:

She finished singing. Janice had the last word. ‘Remember that my work isn’t only doing things for the boss. It’s eight hours – longer – of people together chatting about their families, about money worries, about problems with their husbands, their illnesses, sharing accidents, mishaps, little victories and political things. That is what work is about, too. And at least you say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – that’s a big leap forward for servants. And twice in the past year I was left a tip. The Party is against tipping but I took it anyhow.’ She giggled. ‘Gave it to the Union strike fund.’

Janice took both Edith’s hands and then kissed her on the lips, with some suggestion of passion, which moved through Edith like fire and dissolved their discord. Edith hugged her close and tumbled back into the happy chaos of their undefined eddies of swirling affection.

She stood while Janice drove off, waving to her as she pulled out onto the road, somehow chastised but feeling good about it, recognising that she must settle her views and feelings as a way of self-renewal. As a way of sealing – advancing – her bond with Janice and coming to be an equal in their discussions.

She went back into the lounge of the hotel, sat down and ordered another drink.

There was now an employee in the department who was obviously affiliated with Frederick and Janice – a Party member – and who had helped with the getting of the house. This linked her to Frederick. And it meant that Frederick and his sidekick were behaving incorrectly, although she supposed that would be ideologically explained as something else.
Appropriating the appropriators
. She supposed they would explain it in the pompously authoritative language of the communists. In reality, it was nothing more than nepotism: it wasn’t stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Or did Janice and Frederick consider her ‘one of them’? Or, perhaps, a candidate?

Having picked up a bottle of Scotch from the cellar man, she went back to the rooms, still uncertain about telling Ambrose about Frederick’s role in the house business.

She was accumulating in her head too much that she was hesitant to share with him, at least until she had her thinking clarified and knew what to do next.

She hated this loneliness of mind. What was it that now frightened her in Ambrose? Fear that, as so often, his wisdom when summoned forth would be superior to hers? She had been the superior force, the stronger partner, for a few years when he had worked for her as a personal assistant in the last years of the League. Now, again, something had changed. He had the position now – that was part of it. Despite his unorthodox private predilections, he had become more formal. He had become more of a man. The other part of it was that when she brought him into her thinking, she inescapably had also to bring in the High Commission, and with it the whole bloody British Empire and its preoccupations and concerns. Or Commonwealth, as it was now called.

Surprisingly, Ambrose was of little use in helping her to come to an understanding of Marxism. It was as if he had done with it and come out the other side of it, and that for him the other side was simply defence of the realm and decency, and that any international organisation would inevitably be one of the battlefields. She supposed they both believed in what could be called proceduralism – the egalitarian practices we created that allowed the best possible arrangements for living together.

She looked in to Ambrose, who was in the second bed, reading. She sat on his bed and stroked his hair. He had decided to sleep alone.

‘You took your time,’ he said.

‘Will we go to look at the new house tomorrow?’

‘Of course.’

She could tell he was still unsettled about it.

He said, ‘I will talk with Marjoribanks about it. Fix up the who’s-paying bit. Straighten the formalities.’

‘You do that.’ She leaned in and kissed him goodnight. ‘Straighten the formalities. Light off?’

‘Yes.’

She turned off the light and went to their main bedroom, noting that they seemed not to sleep together as much anymore. Perhaps it was Canberra. Perhaps it was a change of life. It did not worry her.

She did worry that when he straightened the formalities he would stumble on the irregularities and Frederick’s fingerprints. If, indeed, there were irregularities. Perhaps she was making too much of it.