Grand Days (7 page)

‘As distinct from the new school of Italians in black shirts?'

‘Correct. Back in the early days, Vare and some others invented this mythical state of Zembla and put a nameplate on an empty desk at the Assembly. Some of the Italian delegation sat at this desk and made a contribution to the debate — as delegates of the mythical state of Zembla. I believe Zembla can be found in the minutes of the second or third Assembly. I haven't looked. Ever since then, people around here have fan
tasies about Zembla. It's cited as the perfect member state. Never makes trouble. Pays up its dues on time. Doesn't expect us to find hotel rooms or “companions of the night” for delegates. Doesn't leave unpaid bills around Geneva. That sort of thing. Zembla is the only perfectly well-behaved nation state.'

‘What a charming idea.' She would write to John about that.

‘I suppose it is.'

‘But you were all in on the jape this morning?'

‘Well, we all knew about Zembla, yes.'

‘Is it used as a test for all newcomers?'

‘Test?'

‘Do you always put newcomers through the Zembla game?'

‘I don't.'

‘But you knew that Liverright would be testing me?'

‘Heavens, no. That was his idea. Spur of the moment. Thought of it as he came in the door, I would imagine.'

She looked at him. She decided to trust him. She relaxed and felt warm towards all those around her in the café. ‘You talk about the “early days” of the League. It's only a matter of a few years.'

‘I suppose it is. Seems a long time ago.'

She again glimpsed an immense tiredness in Ambrose which he quickly wiped away with his smile.

Relaxing into the atmosphere and to the taste of Dubonnet, Edith decided she liked being the friend of someone who knew the ropes. Though, she thought, it would be nice also to have a friend who was just beginning. At Parliament House she'd had a first-day twin who'd begun on the same day as herself.

Ambrose said, ‘I thought we made a good team.'

‘We did.'

‘You colonials are so good at cutting through to the issue.'

‘Oh? We think of you British and Europeans as the supreme schemers. I suppose we are always fearful that something is “going on” behind our backs.'

‘That's why we'll make a good team. You can see through the scheming for me and I can teach you how to scheme.'

‘Agreed,' He seemed genuine about wanting her companionship.

‘How's the Pension Levant?'

‘I haven't seen much of it yet!'

‘Your trunk arrive safely?'

‘It was there waiting for me. No breakages. One room looks out on a courtyard.'

‘It was an acceptable lunch we had on the train, wasn't it?'

‘I thought it marvellous.'

He seemed already to be moving their couple of shared experiences into an album of memories. That was fine by her. She was sure now that he was wooing her. But she was more nervous about handling a romance on the Continent than she would be back home. She imagined that the rules of the game were vastly different.

After they had finished their aperitif, he suggested they dine at the Hôtel des Bergues to celebrate her arrival.

‘But,' she looked down at herself, ‘I'm not dressed for that kind of dinner.' She looked at him. ‘We aren't dressed.'

‘You'll pass muster. I like your outfit — for something in grey,' he said. ‘As for me, I see lounge suits at dinner these days. They'll admit me with a frown.'

‘I would prefer to go home and change.'

‘Won't hear of it. We'll simply go. The French stay at the Bergues when they come to Geneva.'

She wasn't at all sure about it. ‘The chef must be good.'

‘Knowing the French, I would imagine they'd bring their own chef.'

Oh, was that so? ‘Can we sit at the table where Aristide Briand sits when in Geneva?'

Without answering, Ambrose got up, went to another table and came back with a cigarette. He then put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, drooped the corners of his mouth, mussed his hair, stooped forward and said in French, ‘Madame, may I have the pleasure — Aristide Briand.' He gave a French half-bow.

She laughed.

Still impersonating Briand, he said, ‘They say those who believe in peace are goats.' He paused, doing a Briand impersonation with the cigarette. ‘If that is so,
Baaaaah
. I am a goat.
Baaaaah
.'

She laughed and clapped him.

As they left the Bavaria she noticed that it had two entrances. ‘I see that the Bavaria, like the Palais, has two entrances.'

‘It's the answer to the dreadful wind here. The Bise. You'll see why when the Bise hits. They close one entrance and open the other.'

She laughed. ‘The Queen would like that.'

‘The Queen?'

‘The Queen from
Alice in Wonderland
would say that in a nasty world it is better that you have two fronts and no back.'

‘Indeed she would,' he said.

They walked from the Bavaria back across the lake to the dining room of the Hôtel des Bergues. At the hotel it became clear that sometime during the day Ambrose had reserved a table for dinner. She liked that.

Ambrose took the head waiter aside and spoke to him in fast French.

The head waiter then took them to a corner table saying,
‘In my opinion, Briand is France's finest statesman.' As he pulled back the chairs for them he said, ‘Monsieur, Madame, the table of Monsieur Briand.'

Her first day at the League and here she was, seated at Briand's table. She leaned over and put her hand on Ambrose's. ‘Thank you.'

Ambrose said, ‘We will not, I repeat
not
, tell anecdotes concerning each course of the meal.'

‘That was fun,' she said. ‘But yes, no encore.'

‘We are now in Geneva. In Geneva we make gossip.'

She was about to ask for gossip about Liverright but, given what she sensed was Liverright's flirtatious interest, she thought it tactful to refrain.

But Ambrose and she were thinking on the same track. Perhaps Ambrose wanted to eliminate Liverright immediately and absolutely.

‘Don't worry about Liverright. He's part of the flotsam and jetsam of Europe.'

‘Which?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Flotsam or jetsam?'

‘Oh, you're out to test me. See whether I went to a good school?'

‘One person is rarely both flotsam and jetsam.'

‘He's jetsam — I believe he was flung out of Austria. When he was talking of the desert chaps eating flies I thought of the Austrians eating rats, eating their zoo after the War. Until the League pulled them out of trouble. Put them back on their feet.'

Returning to the business of the afternoon, she asked Ambrose why the committee meeting had been called when it must have been obvious that it could not reach any decision.

‘Consultation sometimes must be seen to have been done,' he said.

She didn't like that approach. ‘I think that wastes everyone's time.'

‘Oh?' He stared at her. ‘How would you have done it?'

‘Perhaps we could have looked more closely at which sections really need to be close to the Council room and to the day-to-day business of the Secretariat — statistically.'

‘You would consult the crystal ball of numbers?'

She coloured a little. She'd been teased about this back in Australia.

‘Government by numbers?' he persisted.

‘For some questions I think they're the only escape from the guess and the false claim.'

‘What about political intuition and the wise insight?'

‘In the absence of those rare capacities, I opt for statistics.' She felt then that she'd asserted enough for one day. She thought she'd better shrink back to being more charming and womanly, as befitted a young woman new to the Continent spending the evening with a debonair older Englishman at the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva, seated at Briand's table. She said, in a soft voice, ‘I'm here to learn. I am a bemused and lost colonial lass.'

He looked across at her. ‘Not so bemused it seems to me. Not so lost.'

She could see that she had soothed him somewhat. But she couldn't resist another remark about the meeting. ‘It might have helped if we'd changed the name of the Annex. Called it the Petit Palais. Something like that.'

He smiled widely. ‘I do believe you're right,' he nodded with regard, ‘and that is not a statistical solution.'

They had what was perhaps the finest dinner that Edith had eaten in her life. It was not the sort of dinner that a chap bought
for a girl if he were not seriously establishing something.

In his company, her conversation seemed much funnier than it usually was, and she found that her knowledge of the affairs of the world, while still limited, flowed readily to her mind. As good manners were a means of putting people at ease, he practised good conversation which was the skill of making others perform well at conversation.

After dinner they had a cognac in the lounge and listened to piano music. He walked her to her pension and, still standing, they kissed quite passionately in the empty parlour and held each other in a full embrace, their breathing rapid.

But they kissed only once and he then drew back, as if observing some sort of courtesy, and began to take his leave in an awkward way, as if the passionate kiss were enough to handle just now, or as if he were uncertain about traveling further in the direction that other kisses might go.

She wondered whether the rules of romance on the Continent might require her to be more forward than she would be usually, back home, or even according to her nature. As she understood her nature.

As he made noises rather than words and pulled on his gloves and coat and took up his hat, it occurred to her that he was also unable to conclude the evening in such a way as to set up a momentum which would lead to happy developments in the weeks to follow. It was not shyness that she felt in him. It was an incapacity to take the romantic leadership. She could see that he would be able to propose drinks and dinners where the rules were unequivocal, but that he was nervously reluctant to initiate any more intricate intimacy. She decided that she wanted things to unfold. She wanted to hold on to him. She also wanted to leap into the experience of being on the Continent. She wanted
it all to happen to her. She wanted to be experienced as a woman, fully and finally, and this man would help her do that, just nicely.

As she was about to let him out of the pension, she followed her grandmother's advice that one should begin as one intended to continue, and this being her first day, she began as she, at least,
hoped
to continue. ‘Perhaps we could do something together at the weekend?' she suggested, crossing her fingers, hoping that she had not committed a social gaffe, seeing that it was a breathtaking proposal that she'd made. She had spoken in a worldly voice, which she hoped didn't sound more worldly than she could eventually carry off.

‘I'd like that,' he rushed to say.

She pushed on. ‘We could perhaps hire a motor-car. We shan't need a driver. I can drive. If motor-cars can be hired.'

‘You can drive? Excellent. We could go touring. Motor-cars can be hired. Leave that part to me.'

She immediately regretted her boast as unwomanly, but moved quickly to undercut it, ‘However, I have never driven in snow. If it should snow we would have to abandon the idea.'

‘I am sure you could drive in snow, or through anything.'

‘Thank you for your expression of confidence. Perhaps we could stay at a village inn in the Alps? Or is that a cliché for you?'

‘Not a cliché at all, on the contrary, an enchanting proposal. Excellent. Take in the Alpine air.'

She realised that it was now some months since she'd driven and that the rules of the road were different — indeed, here they drove on the other side of the road. She said this as they stood there at the door, her hand in his.

‘Oh, not much traffic around the countryside. As a foreigner, you'll be forgiven if you hit a cow. Show them your
carte de légitimation
; they'll salute and tell you to drive on.'

The hand-holding then became a shaking of hands, they said good night, and this time they kissed lightly and he ducked out of the door and away into the cold night.

In her rooms, brushing her hair at the dressing table, she imagined the Alpine village inn, and imagined Ambrose, in a very Continental way, creeping to her room after they'd retired for the night. Or would she have to do the creeping? In a very Continental way? She sang, ‘“Your love belongs to me, At night when you are asleep, Into your tent I'll creep”.'

 

On their first night in the Alps, after eating fondue, drinking kirsch — for her, another First Time — and after two or three glasses of champagne beside the fire in the parlour with the only other two guests, they retired up the stairs hand in hand.

Although she did not want another drink, on the landing she said she would come to his room for a nightcap from his regimental hip flask but would first go to her room.

‘Splendid,' he whispered on the stairs.

In her room she examined her make-up, decided not to remove it, brushed her hair, poured water from the jug into the hand basin and washed her hands. She opened the window and the shutters and breathed deeply of the freezing Alpine air, cooling her face. She found it curious that she had no qualms about what she was now intending to happen. She wondered whether to take her nightgown with her to his room and decided that was too brazen.

She closed the window and the shutters and gave the fire a poke and then she crept to his room along the corridors of the chilly, dark chalet.

In his room she also opened the shutters so they could look out at the Alpine landscape, the room lit by the glow of the fire
and the moon. They held hands, heads touching, and fell into a shy, tentative but arousing embrace and kissing.