Cold Light (53 page)

A
lthough it was now some time back, the hand-on-the-leg incident at the Prime Minister’s dinner did cross her mind from time to time. She had seen the man at one reception and was tempted to go across to him, but thought she should allow him to approach her. He didn’t. She assumed that whatever attraction he had felt on the night of the dinner no longer moved him. And, of course, he was a married man. Still, at receptions at the legations she always looked for his face. She had discovered that he was a middle-ranking public servant, somehow connected to uranium and the beginning of mining at Rum Jungle, but left it at that. Perhaps he was away at the mine much of the time.

However, his face did appear one morning at breakfast in the garden at Arthur Circle, rising up from the pages of the
Canberra Times
, from a news story of a tragedy.

His wife had been killed in a car accident, but he and his two children – two young boys – had survived with minor injury.

She did not bring this to Ambrose’s attention as he sat reading a week-old
London Telegraph
. She did not know why she didn’t. No, she did know. This now tragic man was handsome to her and he had begun something, or at least ventured something, at the dinner, which was not yet finished and which, in her, called out for something more. Now, today, at breakfast, seeing his photograph, she felt a quiver pass through her. And it was something she did not, at this very moment, wish to share with Ambrose; she did not know how to share it with herself, except to follow its tantalisation and to invite the quiver to stay, for a moment or two, in a small, flashing fantasy.

She now assumed that it had been his family that had restrained him from pursuing her further, whatever his impulses had been that night at the Prime Minister’s dinner. Or she chose to so assume. He had not behaved as a family man on the night in question. Perhaps honour had corrected his behaviour after that night, and the hand on the knee had been just a man’s tipsy divertissement.

She saw from the newspaper that he was attached to the new Atomic Energy Commission, and she remembered that he had mentioned this on the night of the dinner party. Recently, she had discovered a renewed interest in the science of it all, spurred by Frederick and Janice, who seemed enthused that the Soviets had an electricity plant powered by uranium, skiting that it was further evidence of the superiority of the Soviet economy, which they claimed was producing over five times that of the USA. Ambrose doubted the Soviet figure – all Soviet statistics – but even if one halved it, it was still twice that of the USA.

She still found that there was something glamorously modern about a man who worked with a substance of such power, potential and danger.

She decided to send him a condolence card. That was itself a guilty move, because it would not be a condolence card: it would be an overture, and an overture of unforeseeable consequences. Which a hand on the knee also was. One overture of unforeseeable – well, to be honest, of reasonably foreseeable – consequence must not be surprised by a like overture, even if some time had passed since that first overture.

Although it had to be admitted that, given the timing, it was a rather ghoulish use of the tragedy, she brushed aside questions of taste and etiquette, something of which until now she would have thought herself incapable. It would be obvious to him that she did not know him well enough to send condolences, and that the condolence could only mean something else.

Her libido was unconcerned with such matters, seeing only the cleverness of an overture to seduction concealed within a card of condolence.

If she’d had any certain expectations about his response, it was to expect an unnaturally quick reply or no reply. The reply came unnaturally fast. She had used her work address as the return address – more evidence of her feminine slyness – and the response suggested a meeting over lunch at the new Commonwealth Club, which was now in the former High Commission residency, just up from where she worked. She knew it well – Ambrose and she had been at the opening night of the club, but she did not recollect seeing him on that night. The venue was a clever choice for a recently widowed man and a married woman to meet. It was a place where they would certainly be seen by people who knew them both, but by being so open about the meeting it proved their innocence. Nevertheless, she made sure that Ambrose, who had Diplomatic Membership at the club, would not be lunching there, without revealing that she would be.

Richard greeted her at reception and they entered the dining room together. He stopped at one table to accept condolences, and she to acknowledge acquaintances from her Canberra social life. They both brazenly introduced each other at the respective tables.

For the lunch – well, assignation – she had brightened her eyes with cosmetic drops she had seen advertised in a magazine. She wore her newest clothes: a simple day dress made of fine wool with a slim skirt; a stylised bowler with a satin band and bow; and her favourite lingerie – those items that pleased her most against her skin and in the mirror.

She believed that lingerie changed the way one moved – especially a well-fitted corset – and she always had clear, definite views when dressing as to which underwear the occasion required, or even the mood of the day required, or which her spirits required. And, who knows? Perhaps today the errant spirit of her
lingerie de jour
would communicate itself to him.

As he pulled out her chair and she sat down, she felt her lingerie against her body and liked the way the low-waisted corset held her. In reality, she had not much hope that the lunch itself would evolve into an erotic assignation during which he might get to view her in her lingerie, but one never knew. His state of mind would play a part, along with the severe limitations on such a thing happening easily in Canberra. She had placed in her handbag her diaphragm, renewed after the war but unused since Vienna, where she had indulged in a couple of
amourettes
. She had kept it in its Bakelite container, talcum-powdered, unneeded with the unfertile Ambrose.

Bringing the diaphragm was a rather sad, fanciful little challenge to age, to physiology; a wry, mocking denial of nature. It was a piece of play-acting by her psyche. The possibility of conception had passed from her life. She’d had none of the medical book symptoms. No hot flushing. She did not seem to be less sexual with Ambrose. She still became wet during sex. She knew that not all women had the same symptoms when they reached the climacteric.

While not unbecoming, he seemed rather nervously cheerier than he should for a man in mourning, but she knew enough about death to know that mourning was a convention and that people met the death of their intimates with many responses that were not outwardly mournful, and that she thought sometimes included unexpressed feelings of relief.

‘The children are making sense, in their own ways, of something that has no sense,’ he said, talking quickly as they sipped their gin and tonics. She had followed his choice of drink. ‘They’re with their grandparents in Sydney – my parents. Their mother’s parents are in the west. Quite elderly. Osborne’s arm is out of plaster now. An arm in plaster made him something of a hero at school. He’s the youngest.’

Then he said, or blurted, ‘You do not feel that I behaved like a reprobate on that night of the dinner? I couldn’t believe I did what I did.’

‘I couldn’t believe I let you.’

‘And I couldn’t believe you let it happen. Came from your having been so long in Europe, I assumed. Used to that sort of thing.’

Did this imply that he thought her easy or wicked? Or that she was somehow responsible for it happening? ‘And at a PM’s dinner,’ she said, not betraying her slight pulling-back from him.

‘I didn’t mean to imply anything when I said that about your being, well, European.’

Good.

‘Then I will take it as a compliment.’

They smiled at each other: a smile to calm and reassure. So often in situations of grief and gravity, humour seemed to find a way to slip in, to jostle with the solemnity we granted death.

She said, ‘I suppose if anyone had observed it they would not have believed their eyes and could not anyhow have said anything.’

‘Who was on your right?’ he asked.

‘Gibson, the city planner. I work with him at Interior.’

‘I know.’

‘Of course, you replied to me at my office address.’

‘I kept track of you, but could do nothing . . . about you.’ He looked to her for understanding. ‘I saw you at that reception, but did not know what to do or say if I were to approach you.’

Her eyes went down to the table as her breathing quickened, and then rose to meet his eyes, which were waiting for hers.

He reached for her hand, which she gave to him – then both hands, held for a few quick seconds, and then released in the interests of decorum and of subterfuge. If observed, she thought, it would be interpreted by onlookers as an act of consolation.

She looked for his age in his face and fancied he was younger by a couple of years. On closer view, she thought maybe ten years younger, which was quite flattering, although it was also a caution. What psychological need was she expected to fulfil for a younger man? But he was not a youth. She doubted that this was a rash impulse. He must have begun his family late. She had once told Ambrose to act his age, and he had answered, ‘And which age would you like me to be?’ At the League, she had ‘played old’, and also with Ambrose’s friends so as to align herself with Ambrose’s age. But with Janice, she had been given a chance to act young, even dress younger, and she had changed her age again. For no reason, she blushed.

He queried her blush with a raised eyebrow. She said saucily, ‘Hands are so expressive.’ She then leaned across and whispered, ‘Especially when placed on a lady’s leg.’

He smiled, enjoying being released from his guilt by her. He seemed so less brash than she remembered.

‘So,’ she said, trying to correct her breathing.

‘So,’ he said, heightened.

It was a word both asserting and securely sealing their seductive intentions.

He said, softly, ‘You must think me cold-hearted, given the circumstances.’

‘I’ve known intimate loss and observed intimate loss. I think we sometimes display conventional feelings as a way of reflecting the expectations of the person who, say, comes bearing condolence.’

‘That’s true.’

Without consideration, regardless that they had not had lunch, almost as a cry of need but also as something of a command, she said, ‘Where should we go?’

He looked at her and this time he flushed. ‘What about the Major?’

He didn’t use the rank in the teasing way Janice used it. It was more a respectful use. Oddly, it was Janice’s reaction to all this that sprang to her mind and pricked her in a small way. What was it with her and women? Why worry about Janice? The intrusion did not linger. Their mood was so heady, she realised, that it excluded nearly all other considerations.

She shrugged.

He said, ‘Maybe we should eat lunch? For appearances?’

‘I don’t think I could eat lunch.’