Grand Days (55 page)

The President sealed the cavity with the silver trowel but his words were still distorted. The wretched loudspeaker man.

Edith was watching so intently that she had trouble realising that it was done and over. She was striving to exact something emotional and historical from the placing of the casket, from the foundation stone, from the occasion. To make herself feel something, to stir her deadness. And now it was over.

This strange, so immediate vanishing of ‘the occasion' reminded her of a day from her childhood when the first aeroplane had landed in the town, in a paddock, and she, together with the whole town, had been there to watch. She had strained to watch as the plane circled and then approached, and then bumped down and across the grass and stopped. She'd been as close as was allowed and as close also to Uncle Fred, the Shire President, closer than any of the other children, even back then, intent on approaching the experience as closely as possible. But after the plane had bumped to a halt, and its engine had died and its propeller had stopped, the leather-clad pilot had hoisted himself out of the cockpit and had a cup of tea from a Thermos flask. And that was it. Nothing more ‘happened'. The shock she recalled was in realising that the experience was over and done. The aeroplane had landed and stopped.

She'd expected so much more from her first landing of an aeroplane.

Here in Geneva, she felt she was back in the paddock watching the plane land. There were even a few dogs, as there had been back then. The men all wore frock coats which helped. She'd heard that during the planning Lloyd had argued for having a brass band but Sir Eric had opposed it. A band might have helped. If she'd been back in Internal, she would've convinced Sir Eric to have a band.

Now it was over. Just like that.

And she had wanted a sign that she was over the loss of her Lover and his betrayal. There was no sign.

Oh well, the fact was that the stone was laid and that the Palais would be built. Miss Dickinson's chair would be in it, though the drama of the chair all seemed a long time ago. When she passed it in the Council room now, the chair didn't look as glorious as it once had. It was beginning to be, well, part of the furniture.

In his speech, the President of the Swiss Confederation had said that the League had become for all mankind a definite path, a meeting place, a common workshop, a bond, a way of life. She had felt almost moved by this. However he had gone on to say too much, and the power of these words was smothered out.

She'd liked best President Foroughi saying that in monuments and buildings the lessons of civilisation were preserved. They were the common patrimony of mankind. He said that while some famous buildings and magical towns seemed to belong to all of us in our minds, the Palais des Nations, for the first time in history, was to be a building erected as the common property of all peoples united in brotherhood. That was a new idea in the world — that the world should construct buildings.

But when she looked at the event, apart from these sentiments and this new thought, she was left with very little.

After some uncertain clapping, the crowd broke up, unsure whether that was all there was and without having a sense of much having happened, or a sense of conclusion. She wiped away a small tear of disappointment about the ceremony. She saw that Mr Zumeta from Venezuela, whose idea it had been to have a grand ceremony, was not happy either. His country had also missed out on having a coin in the capsule. She wanted to
go over to him and say something kind but she had nothing to say.

She watched Robert Dole go over and touch the foundation stone, as if testing that it was truly stone and not a fake. She resisted going over and talking to him.

After checking with Bartou that she wasn't needed, she too strolled away across the park, and fell in with some of the British delegation as they walked over to the motor-cars. Not that she felt that much at home with them. Over the years she'd had trouble with Mrs Swanwick, especially.

‘That was one of the worst managed and dullest functions I have ever attended,' Mrs Swanwick was saying.

‘Oh no,' Edith said loudly, involuntarily, pained, ‘it wasn't like that.'

‘Oh?' said Mrs Swanwick in an encouraging conversational tone used for gals from the colonies. ‘And how then should I see it?'

‘Well, nothing like this has ever happened — it could never be said to be dull. Surely?' Edith tried to bring in a note of self-doubt to modify the strength of her reply to Mrs Swanwick. She tried to sound not so defensive. ‘It is to be the first building built and owned by the entire world.'

‘But my dear, I felt there should have been pageantry, flags and flowers and singing, didn't you?'

‘The appropriate pageantry hasn't been thought of yet. No pageantry would be suitable. Any pageantry would just be borrowed from some lesser activity. There just isn't any pageantry suitable yet,' Edith struggled to say. ‘For me, it was a simple event of the most magnificent order,' and then added, rather pompously, ‘and we were invited by history to witness it.'

That wasn't really quite what she felt.

Mrs Swanwick said she would've liked some Swiss choral singing and ‘people from the countryside in peasant clothing'.

That was the last thing Edith wanted. It would then have been nothing more than a Swiss fête. But in general, if she didn't grate so much with Mrs Swanwick, she would have allowed herself to agree with her more. She would have agreed that the event had needed something else.

Although she had a lot of time for the other people from the Union for Democratic Control, Mrs Swanwick had always put her teeth on edge. At any banquet, she always made a point of never taking all the courses, as if to say, Look at all you gluttons, look at how frugal and sensible I am, why can't you all be as frugal and as sensible as me?

At other Assemblies where Mrs Swanwick had been a delegate, or a supplementary delegate, she was always going bemoaning the banquets and balls and the lavishness of the social life around the League. She didn't realise that people with less puritanical ardour than she came to the League and supported the League and they needed refreshment and reward to keep their spirits up. Edith felt banquets and so on kept up people's confidence. And celebrated their labours. Ye gods, what were a few glasses of champagne? People had to feel valued.

And as for herself, she wanted to take from life as generously as she gave to life.

She had to admit that Mrs Swanwick was good about always refusing to speak ‘on behalf of women' because a man never spoke ‘on behalf of men'.

Edith declined an invitation to dine with Mrs Swanwick and the others.

‘It was a new type of History,' she expounded to Jeanne over tea at Jeanne's apartment. Jeanne couldn't come to the laying of the stone because of a sprained ankle.

Edith felt pressingly that she had to get Jeanne to agree with her about the solemn symbolism of the laying of the stone — and to make herself feel something. ‘Even if it was like a shire council function. It will be the first time a building will belong to the whole world.' She was still struggling to feel right about the day.

‘You make it sound dull, Edith. Oh so dull. I hate to agree with Mrs Swanwick. But certainly not Swiss peasants in costumes.'

Jeanne asked her to explain what a shire council function was, which, impatiently, she did. ‘But, Jeanne, for the first time, the world is creating a building. And I was there. I was one of the handful of people in the world who saw it happen! Jeanne?'

‘It was one way to look at it.'

‘The grandeur was inherent. It couldn't be expressed by a brass band. Or by ceremonials.'

‘Edith! But I thought you were for ceremonials? I hear you at other times carrying on about the need for ceremonials.' She laughed.

‘I was. I am. But no one else is — except for Mrs Swanwick who gets it all wrong and wants peasants in Swiss national costume, and anyhow, she's usually the one who wants less pomp and ceremony. The trouble was that all the ceremonials anyone could think of were from some other time and place and not made for our historical time and place which has never before existed. That was where I was wrong.' She heard herself declaiming. ‘Maybe I ask too much of the world.'

‘That is probably a truth, Edith. But why not ask too much of the world, I say.'

Edith sometimes worried that the world did not know how to live properly, and that she did. Ye gods, she had often said that the League existed to teach the world manners. Did she, in turn, have to teach the League how to live?

Really her mood had to do with the leftover feelings of the break with Ambrose. She suspected that Jeanne knew that.

‘I wouldn't mind a glass of something,' she said to Jeanne.

‘Look in the cabinet — some port maybe, some pastis?'

‘Et pour toi?'

‘Une goutte de porto, peût-etre.'

These drinks didn't appeal. Edith got up and poured Jeanne a port. From Jerome's flask in her handbag, she poured herself a Scotch.

‘That flask? You hint at the history of the flask but I have never heard the history of that flask.'

Edith smiled. She wasn't going to risk another confidence. She stared at her Scotch, ate another madeleine. Her sixth. Her father would frown at her for eating cake and drinking good Scotch. ‘One day, over lunch. It's a long story. A romantic story.' Romantic?

What of ceremonials? Weren't they part of the complete picture of an institution? The Catholic Church, for example. Ceremonials were the theatre of the institution. The periodical display of the institution's inner self. Ceremonials were a commitment in a dignified form. Did the paltryness of the League's ceremonials mean that the League was sober, determined to be about more important matters of substance and that it had no time for the trappings and the pomp of a Church?

She was grumpy with herself too because of the strength of the remarks she'd made to Mrs Swanwick. In a way she had been put against herself by Mrs Swanwick.

Last week Mrs Swanwick had talked some of them into
going to the Armenian restaurant and eating a peasant's meal or something of that sort as a political stunt. They all paid what they would have for a five-course French dinner and the money went to some Armenian fund or other. Those people couldn't enjoy themselves unless it was for a good cause.

She tried to explain to Jeanne how her exchange with Mrs Swanwick had unintentionally led her to see the stone-laying as ‘simple magnificent history', quite properly stripped of all commonplace pageantry. She wouldn't have been forced to see it that way if she hadn't disliked Mrs Swanwick.

That raised other terrors. What if there was a whole false way of seeing things which she and other people customarily had, and which she would have gone on having had she not been tripped or trapped into seeing another way by chance encounters such as this?

It was not because the person you disagreed with saw the world correctly, but that you were forced to see it in an altogether different way, both from how you had seen it and from how the other person had seen it. Through the collision with that person, you were deflected into another third trajectory by the impact. By wanting to distance yourself from that person, you ended up in a new place entirely. But that was hardly a way to find one's position in life.

It had been a laying of a simple stone in an empty field, with a casket of languages and money. With words said over the stone.

But upon that stone would be built the first building owned by the world.

‘You know, Jeanne,' she said, wondering if she was going to weep, ‘I thought it was going to be the most wonderful day of my life. And it wasn't.'

‘Oh, Edith.' Jeanne awkwardly leaned out of her chaise longue and gave Edith a clumsy half-hug in sympathy, and they
remained in this awkward but comforting embrace. ‘What about if you marry — your wedding day! That will be the most wonderful day of your life, will it not?'

‘You are a true
romantique
, Jeanne.'

‘And you, Edith?'

She smiled at Jeanne. ‘If I marry. Well, that would be something else. But historically the most wonderful day of my life should've been today.'

‘Maybe you watch for history too hard, Edith. And me, I search for the
romantique
too hard?'

‘I think you're right about me, Jeanne.'

‘Wedding night might be more likely the most important day, if you can say that in English,' Jeanne said.

‘We aren't the sort of people who wait, are we? For the wedding night?'

They both smiled. She knew Jeanne understood what was still disheartening her.

Jeanne said, ‘It would be nice to wait, I think, sometimes. But — too late.' Jeanne gave the impression of having had many lovers.

‘Yes, too late for girls like us.'

Something grand should have happened tonight after the laying of the stone. There should have been a banquet in every village, town and city, the whole world should have been banqueting, watching fireworks. Something should have happened on this day of all days, some celebration not yet imagined. Everyone remembered where they were on Armistice Day — no one would remember where they were on the day of the laying of the foundation stone of the new Palais of the League of Nations.