Dark Palace (29 page)

‘That's not an embarrassment.'

He was particularly interested in her new travelling writing box.

She showed him the stationery holders, the screwtop ink-wells, the pencil case.

‘It even has a secret compartment,' she said. ‘It opens if you push this divider.' She showed him.

He laughed with boyish pleasure. ‘Very nice piece of woodwork.'

She stopped her unpacking when she came across a drawer of her childhood things.

She held up some of her wooden animals, made by her father. He was something of a woodcraftsman.

‘Want me to throw away any of that junk?' her father asked ‘While you're here, you'd best sort out what you want to keep.'

‘These are not to be thrown out. Not these—not ever. I might throw some of the other stuff away.'

‘Keep some of it for your own kids.'

How much did parents feel the absence of grandchildren?

How to choose what to keep? Well-chosen memories—was that possible? Perhaps in what we chose to remind ourselves of about ourselves. Much like the facts of history. Who chooses what is to be remembered?

Be careful about which memories you surround yourself with.

At the graveside, she wept a little while her father pulled at stray weeds which were encroaching onto the stone slab.

He stopped and put an affectionate hand on his wife's tombstone which read, with perfectly chosen words,

Her mother had decided the words.

‘They are the right words for her,' she said.

‘Your mother became more atheistic as she approached death. You know, she was very strong.'

‘She wasn't that much of a Rationalist when she was alive, was she?'

‘She was a bit like Ella Latham. She came to it gradually. She began as a secularist, thinking that, even if there were a spirit world, then the material world, as we know it, demanded our whole attention and service. Then she became an agnostic, feeling that the human mind would never understand the origin of the universe so there was no point in worrying about it, except as a rather early part of a long scientific inquiry. And then she realised that religion was a story people told to keep fear at bay and not a very interesting story at that. And that she didn't need it. She was an atheist in the end.'

She laughed out loud. Her father had always placed people in his many divisions of free-thinking, each with their attendant definitions, each held in different esteem, all graded. The Rationalists were like Believers, they had their categories, heresies, and hierarchy of righteousness. She'd forgotten that. ‘I'm laughing at your wonderfully endless definitions of people's positions,' she said, as her father showed surprise at her laughter.

‘Differences exist. Why not know them? Helps to find your true friends and enemies.'

Sometimes his comeback was quicker and cleverer than she ever expected.

‘Before it's too late,' he added.

‘How did the locals take a non-religious burial?'

‘As I told you at the time, there was a great to-do. The Reverend Baker rang me and wanted to carry through the service. He said it would avoid any scandalising of her death. I told them that her wishes were to buried with a Rationalist service. The crowd came down from Sydney for the burial,' he said.

‘I've put some of the earnings from Mum's inheritance in the League International School. And I spent some on a gathering at the time of the Disarmament Conference. A picnic, actually. Tried to drum some sense into the pacifists. Didn't do any good. A b—disaster, in fact.'

‘Those causes would have met with her approval. What went wrong at the picnic?'

‘They turned their backs on me—and all the cripples of the world turned up.'

‘Cripples?'

‘Those crippled in the war.'

He left it at that, as if his daughter's life were now beyond his reach.

She stood then in the insect-noisy afternoon at the grave, brushing away the flies from her face, her father still finding weeds to pull as if trying to keep busy and as if trying to reach out and care for his departed wife.

Mother, father, patrimony. She remembered something that Huneeus had said to her in Geneva when asked where he came from. He had said, ‘I come from the belly of my mother and from the belly of my country.'

She had a dead mother and a country which seemed resistant to her.

‘I am plagued with regret about not coming home before she died.'

‘She was happy that you stayed. She was proud that you worked for the League.'

‘I should've come.'

He found another weed to pull from the adjoining grave.

‘The doctor in Geneva thinks that it was a big issue for me. It was a revealing action.'

‘Is he smart, this doctor?'

‘I think he's smart. On some days.'

‘I wished you'd come back before she died,' he said then but it was without rebuke. He was speaking for himself, about his need to have her with him at the time of death. She should have come back for him. And for herself.

‘I was wrong.'

‘Nothing to be got from fretting about it now.'

‘No.'

He said, ‘When I look at the beauty of nature I think how it has come out of the dust of all the dead plants, animals, insects, humans, and I think sometimes it's Mother grinning back at us through the flowers. And so forth.'

They moved away from the grave and started for home.

‘Don't suppose you and Robert are ready to retire to Jasper's Brush?' he asked, suddenly.

‘Retire?'

‘You could have the house. I could be the handyman about the place.'

She tried to laugh it off. ‘What on earth would we do in Jasper's Brush?'

‘Didn't think so.'

She saw clearly what she would do in Jasper's. Look after him. It was a looming problem. What to do about caring for him. Take him to Geneva?

She linked arms with him, and tried to say lightly, ‘You could come to Geneva,' hoping she wasn't promising something she couldn't give. ‘Or who knows? I may well be in Canberra. You could come up there.'

That was feasible.

‘Might like that. Too old to travel to Geneva. Good place to raise kids, Jasper's Brush.'

She wondered if that were true. Everyone fancied country life for children. Wasn't there more for them in a city?

She saw now that the care of her father was another mission arising from her visit home. She would speak with George and Thelma about it.

Or did a daughter belong with her failing father at the end of his life?

‘Let's go home—have an
apéritif
.'

Her father lightened. ‘Sounds better than just having a drink.'

Edith wanted to feel at home, at least in her childhood home, if not in the country at large.

Didn't the Secretariat believe in home visits as a necessary therapy?

She wanted to feel like an internationalist at ‘home', which should be a very special feeling—a special new and powerfully felt association to home and the world—but instead she felt very much adrift.

And, indeed, she was.

Very much adrift.

I am not home, I am at sea.

Her first social engagement in the district was with her old friends, Thelma and George.

The dinner party began badly.

She had brought an arrangement of cut flowers from the new Nowra florist for Thelma who said, laughingly but pointedly, that Edith must come over in daylight and inspect her garden one day, meaning that flowers were the last thing the McDowell Family needed as a gift.

‘Daresay the bringing of flowers is a very Continental practice but it hasn't caught on here. And perhaps isn't necessary. Every Australian has a garden. I would guess that the bringing of flowers has to do with living in flats. I don't think the Nowra florist will survive.'

Thelma was quite correct, realised Edith. The bringing of flowers to a country home was fatuous. Her father's garden was abandoned and there'd been no flowers there. But she'd hardly thought to look.

‘You're so right, Thelma,' she said. ‘I'm a fool.'

Modesty always stopped a conversation dead.

She scratched around, and came out with, ‘I'll come over tomorrow and look at your garden, if I may?'

That sounded as if she were doing so with condescension.

It was just the three of them. If it had been a large dinner party, Edith would've known to avoid bringing flowers, that the arrival of a guest carrying flowers simply added another little task to the hostess's evening—that of dealing with the flowers amid the arrival of guests, unless, of course, servants were on duty. One should assume that the flower-arranging for the house had been done.

Thelma and George showed Edith through the house, leaving her holding the unwanted flowers until Thelma felt she'd punished Edith sufficiently and took them from her, carrying them to the kitchen as she would a dead rabbit, by the legs, or in the case of the flowers, by the stems with the blooms facing down to the floor, shamed.

‘How was the trip out?' Thelma said. ‘Did you have fun and games when you crossed the equator? Everyone always says that's a high point? George said it was.'

‘Oh yes—we did all that. Someone dressed as Neptune and we got up in fancy dress. Hula girls, mermaids and so on.'

‘Were you a hula girl?' George asked with a wink at Thelma.

‘I considered coming as Queen Victoria—but settled on being a Gypsy.'

She had a trip story ready.

‘You will love this. At our table on the ship there was an American who'd never been to France—a Mr Goldberg—and we had a Frenchman at the table—a wonderful man, M. Motte, who knew very little English. When M. Motte came to the table the first time, he sat down and said politely “
Bon appetit
” and Mr Goldberg said “Goldberg” and offered his hand.'

Please, let Thelma understand this story.

‘This happened at the next two meals'—she looked at Thelma—‘the Frenchman always said “
Bon appetit
”. Finally, Goldberg asked me why the French always introduce
themselves at each meal. I had to tell him what the misunderstanding was. He laughed and at the next meal said to M. Motte, “
Bon appetit
” and M. Motte said, “Goldberg”.'

George turned to Thelma and said, ‘
Bon appetit
means have a good meal in French.'

‘I know that! I may not have travelled but I'm not completely ignorant.'

The last part of her story was lost.

‘I did the plan of this house myself,' George said.

‘I wouldn't have thought otherwise.'

‘Turned out well, if I may say so myself.'

‘Splendid. A very efficient house.'

The three of them had been at school together right through infants' and primary schools.

She knew that Thelma had been piqued by Edith having then gone away from the district to boarding school and then to university while Thelma had stayed on at Nowra and left school at the Intermediate Certificate and worked in a bank. A pretty good job for a woman to get.

Edith had gone to Melbourne and then to Europe. And, in Thelma's eyes, she supposed, ever higher.

She'd bought a silver hairbrush and handmirror as a gift for their daughter Gweneth, who was four.

Thelma had again laughingly reprimanded her for buying something ‘too expensive for a child'.

She laughed along with Thelma, hiding her exasperation. ‘It does no harm for a child to have a few fine things,' Edith said, and then wondered if this would be seen as a criticism of Thelma and George's style of providing for their child. She hoped they did see it as criticism. ‘She'll grow into it.'

Edith found the child Gweneth winning in her ways and pleasing in her appearance, and thought, as she played with her, that if she'd married George this would have been her child. She watched the child and fantasised. She tried to create the feeling of how it would be for her if she had taken that
path. How her womb would've felt? How would she look now? Thelma and George would've been married nearly ten years. She wondered why George and Thelma had waited so long to start their family. Perhaps the Depression had worried them. Or were the early years of marriage a little unsettled, causing them to wait?

Thelma's voice broke into her reverie there with the child. ‘And when do you and Robert intend to start your family?' Edith observed that Thelma's voice was more posh than she recalled. She must have attended elocution classes. Perhaps George thought it good for business to have a wife who was a bit more posh. George was always strong on self-improvement.

Or was Thelma putting it on for her? Oh, she hoped not. That would be miserable.

‘We'll get around to it.' How the mouth could so convincingly and simply conceal a tremor of the spirit, the tremor which the question and answer set off. ‘Do you intend to have a large family?' Edith asked.

Thelma had a formula. ‘The fashionable three: one for each parent and one for the nation,' she announced. ‘Now that we've started.'

‘Three is nice. Manageable.' ‘Nice' wasn't one of her words. She was reining herself back to the vocabulary of her hosts.

‘But we're spacing them.'

Thelma then took Gweneth from Edith, and said it was time for her to go to bed.

They all went with Thelma to the nursery. ‘How long will you be in Australia?' Thelma asked, pushing questions and statements out in a breathless way as if she feared that any silence would smother them all.

‘I intend to look at the possibility of a position in Canberra.'

‘In Canberra?!' George said, laughing, ‘Who would go there out of choice?'

‘Have you been to have a look?'

‘I went up to see if there were business opportunities. You can't spit without a permit.'

‘I should hope so,' Thelma said.

Edith laughed, taking it as a good joke by Thelma.

Thelma looked somewhat confused by Edith's laughter but came back saying, ‘How would one go about finding out “the possibilities of a position” in Canberra?'

Thelma's voice carried a fearfulness, the fear that Edith once again would soar to great heights above Thelma. This time closer to home.

‘I thought my League experience might count for something. The Public Service is recruiting people for the new Department of External Affairs.'

‘Are they taking on women?' George asked.

‘I suppose not,' she said and then laughed wearily. ‘I don't have high hopes. Not a married woman.'

‘That's hardly like you, Edith,' Thelma said. ‘You always seemed to have high hopes.'

‘We need to get into the Public Service—keep the Roman Catholics out,' George said.

Her father had said something like that too. Seemed that they all feared the Roman Catholics getting control of the Public Service.

Oh dear. She looked down at her second sherry—how well Ambrose had instilled in her the need to count, although it would be the last count she would make this night as she realised that Thelma and she were not going to get along. Back at school they'd been so close. But there seemed nothing left of their merry, racing-about, flurried childhood fun and games, or the other elaborately invented games of complicated rules and penalties, resulting in disputes and temper.

Maybe the making of the rules and the disputes were the real game.

And as Edith remembered, it was always
she
, of course,
who laid down the law, interpreting the labyrinthine rules of their childhood games.

‘Edith is rather high up in the League now,' George said, as if defending Edith.

‘Not really,' Edith said. ‘Not really high at all. I do have some influence, I suppose, by now.'

‘Well done,' George said.

‘So you're back,' Thelma said, looking at her watchfully. ‘And your husband? Robert. Is he coming to live here? If you find this position in Canberra?'

‘All my—our—plans are very tentative at this stage, Thelma.'

‘Are things not going well for you then, back in Geneva?' Thelma persisted.

‘Oh no. Everything is going just fine.'

She wondered when—or if—her contract renewal would arrive. It was overdue. Ambrose was to cable her the minute it arrived. If it arrived.

‘This will be my third five-year term. They seem to like me.'

‘Congratulations,' Thelma said.

‘Yes, well done,' said George. ‘Good for you.'

There was a silence. Boasting and modesty both stopped conversation.

‘I see you aren't wearing your wedding ring,' Thelma at last blurted out.

Edith gave her explanation.

‘Oh.'

‘Of course, the League could always change their minds—decide they've had enough of me …' she added.

‘They wouldn't do that,' George said.

‘We have a French Secretary-General now—Joseph Avenol—anything could happen to those of us of British descent. Felt it was a good time to go to Canberra, with the Department of External Affairs opening up. Australia'll have
its own ambassadors. A good time to show my face. Get the lie of the land.'

‘Do you think you'd be made an ambassador?' Thelma said, her voice on the edge of mockery and envy, unsure of what Edith might be capable.

‘Hardly. Something in the office, more likely.' She would dearly love to be an ambassador. It was one of her favourite words. It was a position she yearned to have.

‘I'd vote for Edith as ambassador,' George said, loyally.

‘Your husband's career? What is to become of that if you up stumps and come back here to live?' Thelma snooped on.

‘It's all very tentative.' Thelma was probing. Somewhere in the conversation she'd said something which had alerted Thelma to the irregularity of her life. If Thelma knew only the half of it she would shriek with shock and relish. Or more likely, crow with triumph, that she, Thelma, at least had a home and family started, while the high and mighty Edith was in a mess.

‘You'll have, of course, to think about your father now,' Thelma said.

‘I wanted to talk with you both about that.'

‘He's getting on.'

‘I'm going to arrange for a housekeeper.'

‘You could do it yourself—if you were coming home.'

‘I think a local woman would meet his needs. Don't think I'd be much good at that kind of housekeeping.'

‘We went to your mother's funeral.'

And you, as the high and mighty being you now are, you could not spare the time.

‘I will regret for the rest of my life my not coming home to see her before she died.' She looked at them both with an expression of remorse.

They respected this confession with a silence. Thelma reached over and squeezed her hand, and then withdrew it, the hand like a mouse darting across the table.

George cleared his throat and said, ‘When I was there in
Geneva, I saw that you were close to the Secretary-General.' Turning to Thelma, he said, ‘Edith and I had an interview with Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary-General of the League.'

‘I know that,' Thelma said, with a hard laugh. ‘I don't have to be reminded of that. Heavens, I've heard you tell the story a thousand times.'

George laughed at himself, ‘I suppose you have.' He smiled across to mollify her.

Edith felt again, passing gently through her, those ambiguous carnal feelings she'd had for Sir Eric, which she was sure he'd also harboured for her. That was all a long way back now. The good old days.

‘Sir Eric is now British Ambassador to Rome,' she said. ‘He's Anglo-Catholic.'

‘The Catholics are all on Mussolini's side, I suppose,' George said. ‘The Vatican.'

‘Oh, Musso and the Vatican have strong differences. The Vatican feels it should run Italy. Or at least run Rome.'

She must be careful not to be forever correcting people.

George returned to his Geneva story, ignoring Thelma's earlier objection to the retelling. ‘Edith arranged for me to see Sir Eric Drummond and I put a proposition to him.' It was one of those stories which she suspected that George just had to tell once it was upon his lips.

Or was it to nettle Thelma?

He turned to her, ‘Did anything come of that meeting? Was there follow through?'

She had trouble remembering what it was that George had put to Sir Eric. She had been embarrassed that while in Geneva, George had demanded a meeting with Sir Eric. He'd wanted her to arrange that appointment but she'd stalled and, in the end, George had achieved it himself. That had impressed her.

‘As I remember, George, you arranged that appointment yourself.'

‘That was a grand trip,' he said with relish, turning to Thelma. ‘We had such grand food.'

Thelma rolled her eyes, ‘While I was stuck in the bank counting coins.'

Had George concealed that Thelma and he had been engaged when he'd come to Geneva? She had thought at the time that George seemed to have come to Geneva to court
her
.