Grand Days (50 page)

‘If that writer is named Caroline Bailey,' she said, thinking also of Robert Dole.

They held hands tightly, looking directly into each other's eyes, confirming all that they were saying.

‘I have observed you, Edith Berry, and although I know you are an earnest officer, you are more, much more. Remember that. Not a vamp — I've already told you I was wrong about all that. That was just Caroline having an hysterical night and that was long, long ago. No. You are uncommon.'

Her spirits were lifted by Caroline's praise. She hadn't heard praise for a while. Everyone went on with their work, no one really had much time for praising each other. At any other time, she would have been wildly elated by this character analysis and praise but now she could only store it like a squirrel, to savour
at some other time when, if ever, her personal crisis had lost its distress, had stopped spoiling all her feelings.

Caroline empathised with her. She said it was a nasty dilemma which tainted all. It was important, she said, that Edith came through it as well as possible, and safely.

Caroline said, ‘One promise? When this dreadful thing is all over, write to me and tell me all.'

‘A promise.'

‘I ask for your sake as well as out of my writer's need to know all.'

She also sensed that she could tell Caroline about her darker experiences. She wanted one day to show Caroline that she wasn't just an earnest officer. Not a vamp, but nor was she a woman who hid from the strangeness of life.

What sort of person would she be after this mess?

 

In one simple sentence, Caroline had made the next move clear. Heavy-hearted, she decided to consult with Under Secretary Bartou although such an action came perilously close to making it an official matter. He'd been good to her in the past. She remembered him speaking encouragingly to her at her first, and only, Directors' meeting, way back in the early days.

In arranging the appointment with Under Secretary Bartou she tried to make it clear to him that it was not an official report she was about to make, more an ‘
échange de vues
'.

He said that he understood. ‘An exchange of notes which precedes the opening of a file. Is that it?'

‘No file may be required.' Deep in her heart, she knew that there would eventually be a file and that the matter was grave, that she was delaying the moment of crisis.

He'd suggested then, an informal meeting place, the parc
l'Ariana, where they were unlikely to be observed.

In the park, seated at a park table, he gestured around them. ‘Can you imagine the new Palais des Nations built here?'

That wasn't really on her mind but she looked about her. ‘Oh, yes — yes I can.'

He turned back to her. ‘Well?'

She outlined what she knew of Ambrose's spying activity with Shearer and possibly other things. ‘That is, I think he's spying on the League.' She frowned at a tone of self-importance she detected in herself. It was not the most actively present of her broiling sentiments but it was lurking there dishonourably, like the nasty child in the playground. She hoped Under Secretary Bartou couldn't detect it.

As Under Secretary Bartou sat listening and thinking, he took out two oranges from a paper bag and from his pocket he took out a folding fruit knife. He offered an orange to Edith which she refused, feeling that she could not, that afternoon, handle the matter of Ambrose and an orange.

He told her that Robespierre had a passion for oranges, adding, ‘I do not compare myself in any way with Robespierre. If anything, I am a Mirabeau.'

She smiled nervously, although not having enough of a command of history to understand the reference. Would there come a day when she would understand all the references and allusions?

On the park table, he peeled the orange in a way that Edith had never seen before. He cut off a lid of skin from around the top of the orange and then with a sharp knife cut down the orange peel, top to bottom, cutting only into the skin, making four or five incisions into the skin from top to bottom. He then peeled away the skin segments like the petals of a flower to reveal the orange. The peel formed a sort of plate for the orange.

She watched him eat his orange, impatient for him to
comment. Under Secretary Bartou carefully removed the core and all rind and membrane, and ate first the juicy reservoir from the crown, and then delicately broke away each segment. No juice ran down
his
arm. She observed to herself then, strangely, that she wanted him to wish it all away, for it to be resolved somehow by him, so that she need do nothing more, to have the burden of it taken from her. But she also saw that there was no way he could do that — that no one could do that — and she began to feel the impending wound to herself — the wound of the breach looming between her and Ambrose and the ruin of Ambrose. She could not be released from doing something and yet whatever she did, she would suffer for it. She felt like crying out that she did not deserve another wound. She had been wounded at the Molly Club and she had been wounded by Florence, and somehow also wounded by the stone-throwing. These wounds had healed and become scars. She did not think she could take another. She then saw herself, her spirit, as being scarred and said to herself, I am becoming a scarred person. She remembered then, her father once saying to her as a little girl that the world judged people not by their medals and diplomas but by their scars. Back then, she'd thought of scarred knees and only now did she understand that he'd used the word scars to mean the marks of a courageously led life, but she felt she had no courage left to open herself to another wound.

He then said that he was not sure that it was so serious.

She was taken aback. It seemed to her the most serious thing in her world.

He then said, ‘You are a close friend of Major Westwood?'

‘I am.' Or was the friendship in suspension?

‘I will rephrase. Seeing that we are dealing with what could become a serious matter, but which, on closer examination, may not be so serious, may I be frank?'

‘Certainly.'

‘I have been told by friends more experienced than I with diplomacy in eastern cultures, that eunuchs make good diplomats. They do not waste their time chasing the pleasures of the flesh, they sharpen their wits so as to be ready to retaliate against insult, they pose as the confidants of all, and they have a sceptical advantage of living between the world of men and the world of women. As well, they possess a feminine intuition.'

Edith felt that eunuchs were outside her world and her specifications of human conduct and, in so far as it was a reference to Ambrose, she was uncertain how it applied. She showed that she was uncertain.

‘There is talk about Major Westwood's nature. Yet, on the other hand, talk that he is your lover.'

She took his meaning, wondered how they — who? — were talking about him. ‘Do I have to answer?'

‘You could — if you take what I say as a question.'

‘I would rather not take it as a question.'

Under Secretary Bartou didn't say anything, waiting to see whether she would speak. She knew that stratagem, the Way of the Silent Void, although she had not consciously used her Ways for some time now. She, too, knew the defence, and remained silent.

Under Secretary Bartou broke first. ‘They sometimes simulate masculinity,' he said.

Edith blushed at this; her blushing had returned after she'd thought that it'd gone from her life. Maybe her blushes were telling him what he needed to know.

He left that subject and went on, ‘Don't judge too harshly, or too quickly, about this spying business,' he said, touching her hand briefly and lightly, signalling the end of the other line of questions. ‘Remember the words of Taine: “for a young person
the world always seems a scandalous place”. Later in life, the world seems only to be an imperfect place which can be worked on here and there. I'm told that finally, in old age, the world becomes either infinitely amusing or infinitely annoying — according to one's temperament.'

‘I am over thirty,' she said, putting her age up a little, sensing at the same time that one didn't say ‘over thirty'. It occurred to her that maybe she knew more about the ambivalence of masculinity than Under Secretary Bartou.

He went on, ‘Despite what we say in the League, we cannot build a Republic of Virtue,' and again changing direction, he said, ‘The League is your vocation?'

She couldn't see where he was headed in his thinking. ‘I see it that way,' she said, although Under Secretary Bartou did not need to reinforce her loyalty.

He went on to say that as long as British foreign policy was not in conflict with the League's policies and Britain was a preeminent supporter of the League, both in concept and spirit, he could not see a great danger to the interests of the League in the conduct of Major Westwood. However, that could always change, he supposed.

She was amazed to hear him so unperturbed about the spying which she felt to be self-evidently alarming.

Secondly, he said, it could well be that Major Westwood did not spy on the League as such but could be seen as reporting on those matters which were of interest to the British Foreign Office in Genevan life. ‘What you describe — this report on Mr Shearer — that is not League business, not directly. Although we all wish Mr Shearer would go home.'

Thirdly, he said, it could be that he was bringing to the attention of the Foreign Office only those things which, while
being in the public domain, were buried under the weight of documents which the League begat. This may be to everyone's advantage.

He let this sink in before he said, ‘It could be argued that we should leave things be and let him go on with his work.'

She had trouble comprehending this.

‘Even assist him in his work without his knowledge,' Under Secretary Bartou said, watching her closely.

‘That would mean that I would not mention all this to him?'

‘And you would go on as if nothing had happened.'

She was stunned by this proposal. She couldn't imagine how that could ever be.

‘After all, he has gone on as if everything between you were as you thought it to be.'

‘But that I couldn't contemplate doing it means that I am different from him.'

‘It means you are not good spy material, yes.'

Under Secretary Bartou spoke no more about this possibility and went on with his analysis. Fourthly, Major Westwood may be aggrandising himself in the eyes of the British Foreign Office by pretending to them that what he sends is very secret. Unintentionally — intentionally? — he could be doing nothing more than being a publicist for the League within the British Foreign Office. ‘In that sense, he may be working to our advantage,' Under Secretary Bartou said, again confounding her.

‘Are you telling me that perhaps he's working for the League in this underhand way?' For a mad minute, Edith thought that she had been relieved of the burden, that in some twisted way Under Secretary Bartou was saying that Ambrose was innocent, was working for the League, that therefore nothing need be done. She even felt the beginnings of a crazy elation.

‘I am not telling you that. And I doubt it as a hypothesis.'

She ventured then to ask directly whether perhaps there was nothing to be done.

‘Something has to be done,' he replied. ‘It would be a disaster if we did nothing and a member state discovered this. What we have to do is determine how bad that danger is, how harmful to our interests, and how much alarm should be taken.'

She took this in.

‘It's up to you to determine this,' he said.

‘How can I do that!'

‘By looking into what he has been doing — by spying on the spy.'

The interview had not gone the way she had foreseen it. Not at all.

‘Me on him?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm afraid that I couldn't do that,' she said.

‘To spy on a spy is no crime,' Under Secretary Bartou said.

She was against spying. She supposed. Edith told Under Secretary Bartou this. ‘It goes against my nature.'

‘Spying is best justified simply as a way of knowing what other secret agents are doing against you,' he said. ‘In our case, we want to know so that we can protect ourselves. Secrecy and publicity — both do their own kinds of harm. But remember, secrecy is not a badge of fraud or evidence of conspiracy.'

‘It goes against my sense of what is right. We are supposed to be bringing to the world the rules of fair play in international affairs.'

‘That may be. We haven't achieved that yet. We can't really function by pretending that the world is already humane. You forget one thing. You've made an allegation against Major West
wood. I have no evidence which would establish that allegation in my eyes.' His voice hardened somewhat.

She blushed again, this time with embarrassment at her innocence and the warmth of the blush quickly turned to a chill. She had assumed that she would be believed, that she was above doubt.

‘From all I know of you and have heard of you,' he said, ‘you are a sound officer. But I think, on reflection, you might see why others would doubt you, suspect personal motives — that perhaps he has in some way injured you, wronged you.'

She sat in silence, confounded by this shift in the course of the matter. Then she nodded; she understood. ‘Could I perhaps drop the whole thing then?'

‘You could. How would you be then in relationship to him?'

‘An accomplice by default.'

‘Precisely. And even though this is not yet a formal matter, I would have to personally adopt some precautions on behalf of the League, without Major Westwood knowing, and perhaps precaution against you unwittingly serving Major Westwood, and we would all find ourselves in some unspoken conspiracy against each other. It is best that we know just what it is that he's doing.'