Grand Days (49 page)

In the diffuse purple light of the party, Ambrose and Mr Shearer were indeed in dispute, standing aggressively close to each other, surrounded by spectators.

Edith was relieved that no one paid attention to her return or her absence.

‘I am saying,' Mr Shearer said, his finger pointing his remarks into Ambrose, ‘that you British have enrolled one million of our American boys in this British Boy Scout thing and nearly sixty thousand of our girls in the Girl Scout thing. And who's the head of these movements? I will tell you who is the head of these movements. A Lord and a Lady from England. We have put the cream of our youth in the hands of the British.'

‘What arrant nonsense,' was all that Ambrose came out with, as Edith reached his side.

Mr Shearer turned on her. ‘And you, I suppose, are also British. I will not have the British here in this house — you are in conspiracy to weaken our navy, our youth, our nation. Furthermore, I can prove that the YMCA and the YWCA have Directors who are also in the British Scout movement. What
other country would permit the forming of a foreign legion of the young, pledged to a British Lord and Lady?!'

‘What nonsense,' said Ambrose.

Edith was bemused, having never heard of anyone fearing the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides but then she saw them the way that Shearer saw them, as something like the Action Civique, or like Mussolini's youth squads.

‘They are being turned into colonists for England and, as a patriotic American, I have, sir, to ask you to leave, for having abused my hospitality by posing as something you were not. Australians you are clearly not.'

The attractive American woman hadn't gone to Shearer's side but was over at the drinks cabinet pouring drinks. Edith thought that she would bring a drink to her and wondered how she could distance herself from the woman, but instead, to Edith's relief, the woman took the drink to Mr Shearer, linking her arm and his, maybe in a move meant to calm him but by doing so, placing herself clearly apart from Edith, and then she smiled at her surreptitiously. Edith flashed a quick surreptitious smile back, wondering what tangled allegiance she was accepting by the exchange of smiles.

Edith then went to find her and Ambrose's coats.

As they left, watched by the intrigued crowd, the attractive American woman blew a small quick kiss to her but did not come to her to say goodbye, clearly having to stay clear of the Britishers. Edith realised that she'd been searching for the woman's eyes, to have one last exchanged glance.

Out in chemin de Miremont she and Ambrose walked for a while, arm-in-arm.

‘We weren't very good spies,' she said to Ambrose.

‘How do you mean good spies?' Ambrose said crossly, still disconcerted by it all.

‘Spies for Sir Eric — we were unmasked.'

‘Oh yes, that business. I have enough from the newspaper people to put something together.'

‘I found out things.'

‘You did?' He looked at her.

‘I had to trade with my body to get the information.'

‘You did what with your body?'

‘Traded with my body.'

‘With
Shearer?
'

‘With a woman friend of Shearer.'

Ambrose turned to her with closer attention. ‘Go on!'

She told him what had happened and gave him her scraps of information.

They walked for a while and then Ambrose burst out, ‘The fool — it's not only about how many sixteen-inch guns and fourteen-inch guns each country has. We're quite happy to ban submarines. The others say, of course, that would leave England master of the seas.'

‘I traded my body with a merchant of death and you don't even thank me?' And, Edith thought, it would indeed leave England master of the seas, even though she was for the banning of submarines.

‘Sorry.' He gave her a small hug. ‘Bad manners. Thank you, Edith. I hope it was pleasurable, this trading with your body.'

Edith thought that, yes, she'd found small unusual pleasures with the female voluptuary, the merchant of death, that she would like to follow the woman's overtures into further voluptuousness. If she had another life to lead. If she were still ‘seeking experience on the Continent'. But really she was also relieved that there were so many obstacles to her following the woman into voluptuousness, and was glad of the barriers.

‘I was not sure how pleasurable it was,' she told him. ‘Boy
Scouts and Girl Guides interrupted my Sapphic adventure.'

‘Again, thank you, Edith — how very Weimar of you.' He squeezed her arm with his. ‘You are a wizard spy.'

 

That Sunday, Edith was at Ambrose's apartment and she happened to glance at what he'd been writing in his typewriter. She saw that it was about the man Shearer. The word ‘Sapphist' attracted her eye, standing out on the page, and reading it, she was alarmed to find that the happenings at the party, while without naming her, made it obvious to those in the Secretariat that she was Ambrose's woman ‘sub-agent'. She had begun to read the whole document when Ambrose came into the room and, joking about ‘matters of state', rolled the page out of the typewriter, gathered the other pages and put the document away.

She was astonished by his action. Earlier that day, they'd spent time together while she recounted in detail what she'd learned from the attractive American woman and consequently she felt she knew already much of what was in the document — had herself contributed to it. ‘Come on, Ambrose, we've never concealed things!' she said, her sense of offence growing.

‘It is a confidential report to the Old Man.'

‘So? Can't you see that it pretty much identifies me? And can't a fellow member of the Secretariat be trusted?' She felt she had stumbled on an echelon of secrecy within the League of which she had not been aware and it unsettled her.

‘You aren't in the
haute direction
,' he said.

‘But I'm mentioned in the report!'

‘I'll remove anything that could identify you. I promise.'

‘You link me to that Sapphist!'

‘You told me that he employed one. You seemed to be happy in her company that night.'

On that night, she had not been herself — she'd been acting someone else. ‘I didn't quite say that. And anyhow, what are
you?
The League employs you and you're hardly a paragon of purity.'

It was a harsh thing to say. They stood in heated silence. She had obviously hurt him.

He said in an injured voice, ‘I said I would delete anything which could identify you.'

‘Good.' Her anger was still high.

‘I can't let you read it.'

‘That's your business,' she said.

‘I'm afraid that it is.'

‘I don't care.'

They looked away from each other and moved about the room in high tension.

She decided to trust that he would delete the references and not to pursue it. She left the room to sit out on the balcony until she'd regained her composure. She later apologised for her ugly personal retort. Of course she was not in the
haute direction
of the League and she supposed the League had to have confidentiality on some matters.

 

In her office the following Monday, her curiosity and her fear about the report drove her to call Registry and ask Victoria if she could see Ambrose's report on Shearer. Victoria hated these irregular requests but always gave in.

She called Edith back later on the inter-office telephone. ‘There is no such report.'

Edith pondered this. ‘Thank you, Victoria.'

Maybe the report had gone straight to Sir Eric and had not been filed. But that would be irregular.

After thinking about it, something about the report occurred
to her and she rang Victoria again. ‘Victoria, as a Registry person, what do the letters “MI-c Attn: NO” mean to you?'

‘It is not a League file number.'

‘I know that.'

Victoria asked her to repeat it and then said, ‘MI would mean, to me, Military Intelligence.'

‘Whose military intelligence?' Edith was confused, although the League did have a permanent miltary commission. Maybe that was where the report had gone. ‘You mean the military commission?'

‘No, I don't mean the military commission, not unless they are playing soldiers or doing something against regulations. I would say English intelligence. And it's directed for attention of the Naval Office — the letters NO.'

Edith was sure they were the letters which had headed up the document in Ambrose's typewriter. She thanked Victoria and hung up the telephone. Edith felt a wave of shock move through her mind. She sat there in her office feeling cold and lost. The document in Ambrose's typewriter had been definitely headed MI. This must mean that Ambrose was making a report to the British intelligence service — that he was working for the British.

She called Victoria again. ‘And the League — we don't use those file references ever? You're absolutely sure?' Edith noticed that her hands were trembling.

‘You know full well what filing system we use.'

It was absolutely wrong conduct. She sat trying to think. Very, very wrong.

‘Why do you ask? What are you doing with military intelligence?' It was the voice of Victoria still on the line, a voice which had changed from impatience at the request to curiosity.

‘Sorry, Victoria. I'm not doing anything with military intelligence, nothing at all. Thank you.'

‘You sound queer.'

‘I'm all right, thank you, Victoria.' She put down the telephone.

Plainly something had now to happen. Either she confronted Ambrose, and then what? He would admit or deny it. If admitted, then what? And if denied, then what? Should she induce him to stop or to resign? Or she could go to Sir Eric and alert him to Ambrose. What kind of loyalty did she owe to Ambrose as a friend — her lover — or to the League? And could he be a friend if he secretly worked against the League and concealed this from her? Maybe he used things he'd heard from her. How was this part of friendship? What would she do if the matter required her to inform the Swiss police? She could not see herself doing that. Her ethic was clear there. Friendship was a sanctuary and a protection. A source of counsel. A friend lent herself to advocacy for a friend, lent herself to giving the best possible defence of her friend, if defence were feasible — although not complicity — a friend was not required to deny guilt when there was guilt. A friend should make all efforts at the best vindication and mitigation of consequences. The immunity of the life and welfare of the friend, that was the obligation of a friend. About this, she was clear. There was no obligation to do the work of the police or government in making a case against a friend. A friend's obligation was to look to her friend's welfare. Others would impersonally do the work of prosecution.

But the League was different — the League was not a police force. The League was her very life and the hope of the world and she had always believed it to be Ambrose's very life. The League was not a government, nor an employer as such. It was a unique entity and of a distinctively higher order than anything else in the world.

Was not an enemy of the League an enemy of hers?

That was, perhaps, too dramatic.

Yet it was clearly understood that League officers would regulate their conduct with only the interests of the League in mind. And that they should never receive instruction from any government or other authority. Including the Pope. True, no oath of allegiance was taken. But Edith felt that everything she said at the League was a statement under oath.

A huge painful emptiness opened in her heart about Ambrose and his deception of her and of the League. She couldn't consult with Jeanne who seemed to have a different cultural ethic from her. They had never quite found common ground. Victoria was too much a woman of practical matters, not a person to consult on complicated ethical behaviour. She certainly couldn't consult with Robert Dole who was a competitor with Ambrose for her affections, and a reporter. Caroline was erratic in her judgements, occasionally wise, sometimes just cranky and wayward. They had become close since the stoning business but Caroline had left the League and was leaving Geneva that week to make her life as a writer or a ‘surrealist' in Paris, London or Vienna. Another loss. Liverright, too. Sometimes she was frightened that the old gang was going.

She did go to talk with Caroline.

Over tea at the Hôtel de la Paix she told a simple version of events and tried to be hypothetical and not to mention Ambrose.

Caroline saw through the hypothetical camouflage. ‘You mean Ambrose is a rotten spy.'

She nodded to Caroline.

Caroline played with the sugar bowl, obviously taking in both the sensation of the information and the seriousness of the advice she'd been asked for.

‘You have to decide whether you are A Person Who Has Spies as Friends or whether you are not.'

The answer
was
simple. It was dazzlingly simple. ‘And I am not.'

‘No, Edith. You are not.'

‘As my mother would have said, “The forks shouldn't be in with the spoons.”'

‘And especially not with the knives.'

‘Are you, Caroline, someone who has spies for friends?'

‘I have every sort as friends. I even have Liverright.'

Edith managed a cheerless laugh. Then she asked, ‘Do you also have earnest members of the Secretariat as your friends?'

‘I do indeed, if that earnest but very interesting officer is named Edith Berry.'

They held hands.

‘Thank you,' Edith said, feeling the turmoil of having gained a friend who was about to leave her life.

‘I also think that while you are definitely not A Person Who Has Spies as Friends, you could very well be A Person Who Has Writers as Friends.'