Grand Days (48 page)

She observed that she was glad to be alone.

‘We're going as Australians,' Ambrose said to her in the Secretariat lounge. ‘Edith, you will be my mask. He hates the British — even circulated a fraudulent document claiming the British want to bring America back to the Empire. Fairly amazing, you must admit, seeing we can't get them into the League.'

Edith looked Ambrose over, as if ‘going as an Australian' was somehow a matter of looks. ‘There is a respectable body of opinion that believes the Americans should be back in the Empire.'

‘Lord Strabolgi!'

‘And Bernard Shaw.'

‘Hardly that respectable a body of opinion. Well, I can tell you now, it's not going to happen.' He smiled. ‘Of all the diplomatic predictions I might make, this is the one of which I am most sure.'

Jeanne, sipping her drink, asked the barman for more gin. ‘Too much vermouth.' She also looked at Ambrose as if to appraise his passing as an Australian. ‘As an Australian, you'll not do,' Jeanne said to him. ‘Even for Edith, passing as an Australian is a difficulty these days.'

Edith made a face at Jeanne.

‘I can but try,' Ambrose said, putting on what he considered an Australian outback accent.

‘And if you don't pass, we'll all be thrown into Lac Léman by Mr Shearer's bodyguards,' Edith said.

‘Could say I was a British newspaperman. Could say I was Robert Doleful.' He looked at her. Ambrose seemed now openly jealous of her and Robert Dole, although nothing romantic had happened between them. Well, she was discussing more with Robert Dole, which could be seen as a ‘romance of the intellect', she supposed. There was nothing on the horizon and she was still very unsure of Robert Dole. ‘You might find that intriguing,' he said, looking at Edith.

Jeanne also looked sideways at Edith to see how she reacted. Jeanne herself was obviously curious about what was developing there.

She was about to let Ambrose's innuendo pass, but instead said to him, ‘For you to act as a Robert Dole type of man might be even more intriguing.' She didn't know exactly what she meant but it was an unkind wave in the direction of Dole's obviously surer masculinity. Characteristically, Ambrose ran away from this needling. ‘Whatever the subterfuge, we must get into the party — Sir E. wants a report on this odd American chap and his efforts to make trouble at the conference.' He tasted Jeanne's drink. ‘That drink really bucks. What is it?'

‘A Gin Turin — gin and vermouth.'

‘I think it's what back in London we used to call a Gin and It.'

‘I had it for the first time here in Genève. Not in Turin. Never visited Turin.'

Ambrose savoured it, closing his eyes, focusing his attention on his taste. ‘A multifarious combination — what flavours have we got here? In the gin we have the juniper berry, coriander, maybe licorice, and in the vermouth, I can detect the dried grapes. Have I missed anything?'

‘Herbs in the vermouth,' Edith said.

‘Yes, the herbs —
plantes aromatiques
galore. Very nice. A multifarious combination.'

Edith enjoyed Ambrose when he talked food and drink. He analysed all the flavours of his meal while she argued for experiencing the whole, in the mouth, unanalysed, although she tried to hold each mouthful until she had captured it as an experience of the palate. But often she forgot to do this.

 

There was no problem getting to the party in Shearer's apartment in Champel, up among the decent dwellings of the better-off part of Geneva. The party was crowded with hangers-on from the Naval Conference and a few press, but naturally no League staff.

And Edith danced with a woman for the first time.

A rather beautiful American woman in a green beaded dress with bare shoulders asked Edith to dance. The woman's invitation was so natural that Edith wondered if women dancing with women was becoming the done thing. The woman then danced very close to her. Body against body. All the more iniquitous because the woman had introduced herself as ‘a merchant of death'. Edith felt her neck at last relaxing, from the gin and the rhythmic movement of her body.

‘And you're an Australian journalist?' the American woman asked. ‘Would an Australian newspaper send you all the way here to cover this Naval Conference? A woman reporter?'

‘We're sent over from London, not from Australia.'

‘How interesting.' The American woman weighed this lie and stowed it. ‘You don't seem to mind dancing with a woman?'

‘I did it a lot back in Australia,' Edith said, with a foxy smile.

‘You have such clubs — in Australia?'

Edith doubted it, but thought of her experiences with the Molly Club. She laughed. ‘Those sorts of clubs in Australia are called “boarding schools”. I danced with other girls at dancing classes at boarding school.'

‘How charming.'

‘We had to take either the man's part and lead or the woman's part and follow. Actually, never with a woman before.' She was aware that the American woman was ‘leading'.

She smiled at Edith's playful answer. ‘You don't mind me taking the man's part then?'

Edith caught the innuendo in this question.

‘Not at all,' she said softly, not sure, as she made her pliable reply, whether it was the real her or the spying Edith who was accepting the misty invitation, feeling safe from it at that moment in a crowded party in an apartment in Champel. ‘Tell me about Mr Shearer,' Edith urged the attractive American woman. ‘Mr Shearer is the talk of the town this week.'

‘As a reporter, I thought you might know all about Mr Shearer.'

‘Never enough is known about someone like Mr Shearer.'

The American was amused by this reply. Edith was pleased with it.

Edith said, ‘I heard he'd run a nightclub in London before he became spokesman for the arms-makers.'

‘You think he's a spokesman for the armaments people?'

‘For the American naval interests, yes.'

‘Mr Shearer did — “promote”, I think might be the right word — the first nightclub in London and I worked there — the Lotus Club.'

‘How interesting.' Edith was pleased that she had turned that phrase back on the woman. ‘You say you “worked” at the nightclub?'

‘I was an entertainer.'

‘“Entertainer”?'

‘I can be very entertaining,' the attractive American woman said. Having said that, she led Edith by the hand away from the dancing couples into another room and out to the balcony among the geraniums. Edith had not expected to be led away like that.

The American sat Edith on a balcony settee in the summer air and sat beside her, still holding Edith's hand. Edith felt that it was all right for this familiarity to develop because, she reminded herself, she was there as a spy and was licensed to pretend to be anything which she needed to pretend. It would perhaps lead to her finding out a thing or two about this man Shearer to give to Ambrose to give to Sir Eric to give to the man who lived in the house that Jack built. ‘All in a good cause' were the words that formed in Edith's mind, in case she needed them. She thought also of the owl and the colourful ruff of its neck. The ruff, she recalled, was for acoustics, and increased the ability of the owl to hear by ten times. Tonight her body was serving as her ruff.

The woman had taken Edith's other hand and placed it on her breast. Edith allowed her fingers to move a little and felt the fullness of the woman's breast and the breathing of the woman through the beaded satin. The fullness was unexpected because it was fashionably disguised by the dress. She felt then the woman's hand on her breast and felt her own breathing quicken.

‘Is Mr Shearer your lover?' By asking this, Edith surprised herself but felt that the woman's fondling of her breasts earned her the right to boldness, earned her one searching question in return.

‘Oh no,' the woman said.

‘Are you then, perhaps, a lover of women?' Edith impressed herself with her audacity.

‘I have loved women and I have loved men,' the attractive American woman said, nonchalantly.

Edith had a mental compendium now on ways of loving which she'd observed, one way or another, in Europe. But she had never experienced such a woman. I could, she thought to herself, also put this down to Continental experience as well as to the good of the cause. Edith felt she might need an additional moral justification for what she felt was happening, or what she vaguely felt was on the way to happening. Although she also reminded herself that she had decreed that such irregular ‘experiencing' was now over for her. That she had done enough experiencing to last a lifetime.

The attractive American woman was fondling her breast and had leaned towards her, her lips approaching Edith's. Their lips met and they kissed, Edith being reminded momentarily of kissing Ambrose's lips when he wore lipstick. They kissed lightly and then the American woman urged the kiss towards intensity, towards passion. The touching of their velvet headbands was also sensuous; their pearls swung out from their necks and clicked together like dice. The meeting of their lips, the smoothness of the lipstick on their lips and the powdered smoothness of their faces was calming to Edith, although without thrill, and mild in sentiment. But although mild, there was a strong proposal in the kissing, a proposal of an alien voluptuousness. I now know what that feels like, Edith thought, to kiss a woman fully, trying to use her mental notetaking as a way of remaining composed. But she found she could not hold herself in complete indifference, and her breathing was hurried.

As their lips parted, the woman said, ‘Mr Shearer is a happily married man who is devoted to his ships,' as if the words were
formed during the kiss and could only come out when the kiss ceased and her mouth was free.

‘Warships?'

‘All ships.'

The woman continued to fondle her, and Edith gave herself to snuggling up to the other woman, indulging in small kisses.

‘Why does he want to wreck the Naval Conference?'

‘Does he want to wreck the Naval Conference?'

‘It would seem so.'

Edith found her hand was making play with the woman's breast as some cover or consideration for being rudely inquisitive and Edith was surprised by the knowingness of her hand which seemed to know what it was that it wanted to do, and to enjoy the doing of it.

‘Because, my darling nosy Australian,' she said, moving again to kiss, maybe feeling that Edith's pointed question had earned her another, ‘he wants to build ships and wholesale disarmament would be bad for that business. Very bad.'

They kissed and Edith met the American woman almost halfway this time, moving her breasts against the American woman's breasts, meeting her lips and encountering again a proposal to voluptuousness. From perhaps a truly evil woman.

When they came out of the kiss it was Edith who spoke first. ‘He's a shipbuilder?'

‘He is a friend of those who build ships.'

‘And they pay him to come to Geneva to make this trouble?'

‘They pay him well and he pays me well,' she laughed, ‘and that is a secret. And does he make trouble?'

Edith was aware that she was going father and faster than a careful spy should and that she would have to pay for this information, now so readily dangled before her by the attractive American woman in the beaded dress, although maybe it was
the American woman who was being extravagant with her information as a way to hurry what Edith assumed was her seduction.

She was aware that the American woman had put her hand into her dress and freed one of Edith's breasts from the brassière of her corset and was moving her tongue languidly around her nipple, and suckling, then nibbling with her teeth to give the nipple exquisite twinges which she felt all the way through her body to her crotch.

It felt exotic and off-course but Edith stroked the American woman's hair, breathing her perfume, cradling her head.

Edith was aware that she was becoming aroused throughout her entire body but that she had no idea of how and where this arousal, this playing each with the other, was leading nor what to do about it.

It was then that she heard shouting from the next room.

The American woman's head moved away from her nipple, leaving it wetly cold to the air, as she turned towards the shouting. They were both abruptly returned to the wider reality. And Edith used this distraction to put her breast back inside its brassière cup in the dress, turning things back to normal.

They heard Ambrose's voice and another voice that was almost certainly that of Shearer.

The music stopped. Someone had stopped the gramophone.

Edith registered that Ambrose's voice had given up any pretence at being ‘Australian' and that he was being his indignant British self. Surprisingly, it sounded as if the argument was about Boy Scouts and Girl Guides but she decided that she must have missed some of the exchange.

‘I think we'd better go back,' Edith said to the attractive American woman, using the shouting as an excuse for running away. ‘My friend seems to be in trouble with your Mr Shearer.'

The American woman, although seemingly disappointed,
rose also, perhaps feeling the pull of the situation and perhaps also a duty to the party and to Mr Shearer. But scared of decadence, no, she did not seem at all scared of decadence. ‘Promise that we will see each other again — soon?' the American whispered, taking her hands and kissing Edith's ear.

‘Yes,' said Edith knowing that when she left the party, she would dissolve into the night and slip back into her identity and be gone from this woman's reach, although at the same time she secreted away the option of seeing the woman again, if the urge should ever come to her.

‘Check my face,' the woman said to Edith, doing the same for her, cleaning off some lipstick with a handkerchief she moistened with her mouth. They then returned to the party.