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How Edith Campbell Berry Ate Six Courses and Practised the Seven Ways in the Dining Car on the Train from Paris to Geneva


On the train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry, at twenty-six, having heard the gong, made her way to the first sitting and her first lunch in a railway dining car.

She moved, in what she felt was a gathered-together way, along to the dining car, having remembered not to leave anything of value back at her seat, even if it were a first-class seat, and yet not having things in her hands — something she had a phobia about, having too many things in her hands. To have free hands allowed her to ward and hold, which she considered important in the technique of travelling. It could be considered as one of her Ways of Going. She also quickly noted to herself that, in life, she wanted to be a holding person and not always a warding person, and would describe herself as a holding person in all its meanings, which she would one day list. Fear in foreign places made one a permanent sentry, and more of a warding person than one would be in a familiar place. However, as she moved along the swaying train, trying not to need to use her hands or to lose her balance, Edith considered that she conducted her body well. In travel and in life. So far.

Her Ways of Going were mostly what she had thought about during the early part of the journey after the train had left the Gare de Lyon, especially as they applied to conversation. She had developed most of the Ways on the voyage over from Australia but they now needed refinement and further practice.

On the train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry, at twenty-six, made her way to her first lunch in a railway dining car, in first class, at the first sitting, conducting herself well.

To keep her hands free she had a sensible, leather shoulder bag with outside pockets and a glove loop, a travelling bag which had belonged to her mother and, though far from new, was well-cared for, and had a remote odour of coachaline and polish. A bag which she privately considered to have a well-bred look and although she was an egalitarian through and through, she did not mind the well-bred look or what she took to be a well-bred look. She was, after all, well-bred. The bag was an Object of Ancestry.

She stood inside the door of the dining car and read the notice, Reclami, reclamations, complaints, more times than was necessary for comprehension, until the waiter showed her to her table.

At her table was a man in his late thirties. The waiter said something in French about whether she minded sharing a table with a gentleman. Edith said something in French about not minding the sharing of the table with a gentleman. The gentleman half-stood, half-bowed, holding his napkin to his lap with one hand, and smiled.

As the waiter seated her, the man spoke in English.

‘I was about …’ he said, the half-sentence hovering between them. Edith watched. Edith already knew the Way of Circumspection, and she waited to see how long he would allow the sentence to hover, she holding herself ready, of course, to save things, as always. He looked away and then said, ‘… to order a sherry. Would you care to join me in a sherry?’ The sentence, having finished hovering, landed like a friendly bird.

‘Why, yes, I will join you in a sherry,’ she said strongly, and her joining him in the drinking of a sherry magically changed the bird into a warm cloud. The small green-shaded table lamp also now included them in its unnecessary daytime illumination, as the situation changed from what it had been — a nervous seating of two strangers at lunch in a railway dining car — into, indeed, lunch for two.

‘The railway catering services …’ he said incompletely, the half-sentence no longer birdlike, but now a sentence wanting to be joined, desiring the company of another part, to be overlapped by words to be given by her, the overlapping of his words with her words in the manner of sociability, a touching of a kind, not as intimate as a hand on another hand, but reflecting the nature of two strangers dining amiably. Edith joined him not with some words but with an amiable smile, which allowed him to be sure that she was within the conversation.

‘I have been told —’ Edith said, finding a thought forming.

But his words nervously ran into hers. ‘Oh, but, well, let me put it this way —’

This time she saw his words as a shawl which he was placing around her shoulder to make sure that she was, indeed, comfortably in, maybe forgetting what it was he had begun to say, or maybe it was an English way.

From incompleteness he leapt to mock assertion. ‘I do firmly believe one thing,’ he said, firmly. He believed that, as an aperitif, sherry was coming back and that the cocktail would go, but he believed with all his heart, and thankfully, that the serving of olives with drinks would not go, and that the serving of wine biscuits would not come back now that sherry was. Then he trailed off into silence, making courteous space for her in the conversation, to let her well and truly in, and, she could tell, also trying to avoid going from half-statements to overtalking which was caused, she appraised, by his pleasure at her joining with him in conversational lunch, and maybe from his taking pleasure at the way she looked and also pleasure from her having granted him the special bond which was taken to exist between those who took alcoholic drinks together, a bond she could not analyse just now, but which had to do with sharing a heightened openness — maybe the willingness to take a small subtle risk?

‘Yes,’ Edith said simply, having nothing much to say in favour of wine biscuits and having eaten olives only once, and with difficulty.

‘What I really meant was — no, please — first you say what you intended to say earlier.’

‘I’d rather you went on …’

‘All right, then. I was going to say that the railway catering service is an institution which has few to praise it and very few indeed to love it.’ The sentence seemed quite long, given the slow start to the conversation.

‘I know,’ Edith hastened to say, not knowing at all, conscious that she’d agreed too quickly because of her own enthusiasm for the conversation. ‘Please, go on.’

‘I have never met anyone who would praise or admit to love …’ he said, then as if looking down at his words and seeing that he needed a few more, ‘… to love of the railway dining car as an institution.’

‘I was told never to order soup on trains,’ she said, happily finding something to say, hoping that it was, in fact, something to say. ‘And Lord Curzon says that only the middle classes have soup for luncheon.’ She felt that she would like to add a touch to this sentence, and so said, ‘And that is all I know of soup and of railway dining cars as an institution.’ Pleased with her humorous use of the Way of Companionable Confession. If only a confession of unsophistication of the minor order.

‘As for the first proposition,’ he said, his words slowing as he relaxed, ‘I have recently performed the train soup splash-and-spill test on the Paris Nord …’ he paused, showing on his face an effort of recollection, ‘… and on the London, Midland and Scottish,’ a further effort of recollection, ‘… and the Great Northern and, whether due to slower trains, or to twelve-wheeled bogies, or to smaller portions, I have not splashed or spilled.’ He didn’t smile when he told her this; he could very well have been correcting her. She wasn’t sure. He went on, ‘Turning now to your second proposition, did you know Lord Curzon?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘A fellow countryman, John Latham, reported that to me.’

‘I have heard of Latham,’ he said. ‘As it happens, I worked with Lord Curzon. Went to his funeral last month. Stood there at the service saying to myself, “My name is George Nathaniel Curzon, I am a most superior person.” And then, at the graveside, changing it to, “was a most superior person”. Lord Curzon never spoke to me of soup, but he did speak to me of inkstands.’

‘Inkstands?’

‘I was in the Foreign Office when he was Secretary of State and he called me in and pointed at the inkstand on the table and said, “A Secretary of State must have an inkstand of crystal and silver, not of brass and glass.”’

Edith was interested to surmise that this man could be on his way to Geneva to do business with the League but she felt that on the matter of Lord Curzon she had nothing more to say. On the matter of crystal and silver inkstands and on the matter of brass and glass inkstands, she could, once started, have too much to say. She had, perhaps, a disproportionate interest in the things that went on tables, and in the decoration and design of things. To put it more precisely, she had an abiding passion for l’art de la table. Only yesterday in Paris, she had again visited the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. For her to begin to speak at this point on such matters would bring about an avalanche of attitude from her, and she restrained herself. Instead she examined his gambit-in-response, and felt that he had not fully understood about the eating of soup on trains, or had not been listening closely; that he was, in part, pretending to understand what she’d said about soup and trains and that the theme of his answer had been more to display his travelled life than to exchange wisdom about soup and dining cars.

She would not let it pass. Otherwise they might stray further and further from mutual understanding. She always feared that in some unforeseeable way small early confusions led later to giant embarrassments.

‘It is not to do so much with the soup in the plate, I am told, but more to do with the soup in the spoon on its way to the mouth. That is where the difficulty lies. It is not a problem of portions small or large in the plate. Or bogies. Further, I am told that it has to do with the unexpected stopping of the train — that’s the incontestable danger point. It jerks. The train jerks.’ She wanted him to understand, to get this soup business, at least, clear. ‘I am, of course, only told this, this being my first meal on a train.’ Throwing him another confession of unsophistication when she had not meant to. She felt the conversation stumble from her having talked too long and too intensely. It was almost lost, she thought, the easiness of the conversation, almost lost. She noticed also how much deceptive pose there was in her pedantic prattle about soup which hid her happy, inner anticipation of her first meal on a train, on the train from Paris to Geneva, with a strange man, a man she liked the look of, all of which she feared showing because her artless exhilaration would make her appear unworldly.

‘I see, of course.’ He tried then to fortify his statement. ‘But the size of portions and the shape of the plate can matter when the train sways at high speeds.’

Edith felt he was on lost ground and left him there. He would, on reflection at some future time, understand her clarification on the matter of soups and trains.

‘I am not,’ Edith said, courageously and wilfully deciding to save the conversation as she looked at the menu, ‘overly accustomed to six courses.’

‘When on a train, I would advise, but advise only …’

Edith watched him trying to regain his leadership in the conversation’s slipping stream, a struggling British bird trying to gain altitude. He would advise her, would he?

‘… I would advise you to order the full obligatory six courses, for one reason only.’

‘Which is?’

‘The killing of time.’

‘I shall, then,’ she said, ‘join you in the killing of time.’ She warmed to his tone.

‘Together, then, we shall wage utter war on time,’ he said, in a frolicking voice. She laughed. They settled now, both chuckling, perhaps more loudly than the exchange merited, but making it serve as a relaxing truce, allowing them to sit back in their chairs to read the menu and to order. She felt almost equal with him. That surprised and heartened her.

‘I have an idea. Why don’t each of us tell a food or wine story, with each course, an anecdote, one of us or the other,’ he said boyishly, ‘if we can, not as a task, only if we can come up with one easily, either you or I? Only if it’s fun.’

‘That suits me,’ said Edith, already feeling it as a pressing task, losing the relaxation gained only a second before, wondering if this was an illustration of the British liking for games about which John Latham had told her, along with his advice on soup and other matters of the world. He said the British loved games but chose only those at which they had the skills and where they knew the rules.

After they’d ordered, both taking the menu à prix fixe, with him choosing the wine, he introduced himself as Major Ambrose Westwood. She introduced herself as Edith Berry, failing to put in her middle name, Campbell, forgetting momentarily that she now intended to use this middle name. They vigorously shook hands across the table.

She said, ‘You were in the War?’

‘Oh, I like being called the Major. I was in the War, but only as a doctor soldier, I’m afraid,’ he said with a grimace, showing the customary diffidence she’d seen before in soldiers. She had trouble reconciling his being a doctor and yet being in the Foreign Office. She guessed that it would be eventually explained.

The soup Julienne arrived and he whisked it with his fork and laughed. ‘Observe the bubbles — that’s soap — we can be assured that the plates were washed.’

‘I dare say we have eaten soap in one form or another all our lives and not suffered from it, but it doesn’t stimulate the appetite. Does the talk of soap count as an anecdote about soup Julienne?’

‘My apologies for having drawn attention to it. Childish. That doesn’t count. You did the soup anecdote marvellously, antedate, as it were, and I have nothing to top that. Have you dined much in Paris?’

‘A little.’ Were three or four times sufficient to be described as having dined a little in Paris?

‘This is my anecdote. Last night I dined at the Club des Cent. It was founded about ten years ago by some men who, besides a love of good food and good wine, love also the open road and motoring. They explore the food and hotels of France and, apart from lunching every Thursday in Paris, they put on feasts in other parts of France. The club has its own rooms and library and bar in the Faubourg St Honoré. Do you know the thing that surprised me at my visit to the club?’

‘I do not accept the demand of the question,’ she said, meaning it, because she hated those sorts of questions, but smiling to take away any edge of impatience. ‘Given that I have no way of knowing what surprised you in the Club des Cent.’

‘Objection accepted. What surprised me was this: the way they served the salmon — which, I have to say, was première classe. They placed the salmon on thick slices of crustless bread. Chunks of salmon on chunks of bread. At White’s — in London — we serve it delicately, ever so thin slices on ever so thin biscuits.’ He laughed as a prelude to what he was about to say. ‘You see, we, the English, think of our way of serving salmon as being the French way. We think of the French gourmets as finicky, and so my surprise at the robustness of the servings.’ He closed the anecdote in laughter, perhaps laughing to safeguard it from any chance of it failing to meet the tests of amusement. ‘There was much discussion.’

‘Much discussion?’

‘You know how it is with food and wine enthusiasts.’

‘I don’t, really, you see we don’t make much of a fuss about food back in Australia. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t care more. In all things.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true — which city do you come from?’

What wasn’t true? How would he know?

She realised she was being prickly, and should stop it.

‘Sydney and Melbourne, but before that I came from a small town on the coast of New South Wales, the south coast of New South Wales.’

And she was, at twenty-six, having her first lunch in a railway dining car, at the first sitting, holding her own with an English gentleman to whom she didn’t object, and she was disregarding the advice of both Lord Curzon and John Latham by having soup.

‘I am a member of a dining club — the Saintsbury. Vyvyan Holland is a member of the Saintsbury.’

She observed that this was a conversational move which was not simple, maybe was not wholly kind, had something hiding within it. It was not only that she did not know the name Vyvyan Holland, and it was not that he was perhaps important and she should know — what was, perhaps, unkind was that this Major Westwood had said it with a teasing voice. As the conversation was running, she didn’t have time to detect his secret theme. Was it, again, to give himself altitude, through displaying glamorous, worldly information about himself?

‘Vyvyan with two ys,’ he said, in the same teasing voice.

‘Vyvyan with two ys,’ she repeated, but she didn’t make this a question; she wouldn’t ask for his help. Not yet. As she said the name, she wrote it in her mind’s eye, seeing the word with its two ys.

To ask, ‘Who is Vyvyan Holland?’ would lead her into the ambush of his tease. He knew that she did not know. She decided then to use the Way of the Silent Void, which she’d devised to overcome such conversational teasing and to hide her disadvantage. In her experience, the Way of the Silent Void usually forced the other person to explain themselves, and deflated the teasing.

As she allowed a silence to form in the conversation, it appeared to her, though, that he might be a Master of the Silent Void because he, too, looked at her without speaking, his mouth holding a small smile.

She continued to hold her silence, also bringing a small smile to her mouth. She steered another spoonful of soup to her mouth.

The silence was long enough and the void wide enough for them to both hear the clack of the train over the track, and the conversation and laughter of the other diners.

She thought she heard a church bell somewhere out in the countryside of France.

She heard another diner say, in English, ‘Buy Ford.’

At last he spoke, going into the void she had created. She quietly congratulated herself. However it did not release her from the tease or from her ignorance, because he said, ‘In London, our club, the Saintsbury, meets twice yearly — on Shakespeare’s birthday and on the birthday of Professor George Saintsbury. The club is devoted to wine and books.’

He was years older than she, at least, and from the FO, although as she examined his face, she felt uncertain of his age. He was boyish, but there was an exhaustion which dragged at his face. But he would have his Ways for All Occasions by now. Or maybe some people did not have Ways?

He was being inexplicable, being a dodger, trying to detour around her void.

But he was falling into the void, because he spoke again just as she was preparing to throw herself on the mercy of the conversation. This time he seemed to be presenting a clue but it didn’t assist her.

‘In Paris, at the Club des Cent, we ate,’ he looked meaningfully at her, ‘ortolans des Landes wrapped in Sicilian vine leaves.’ He used his glance to prance the tease even further. She did not know what an ortolan was. She decided she could no longer either play with his tease or widen the void. She decided to Tip It All Up.

‘You are teasing me. I don’t know who Vyvyan Holland with two ys is and I do not understand your other references and I am not sure that I want to know what your tease is about.’ She wrapped her Tip-Up in a simulation of gleeful laughter, to make it pleasant. She felt she was correct in using Tip It All Up to stop him treating her like a girl. She laughed gleefully again to make sure that she was not spoiling things entirely and for all time.

He now dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and he seemed uncomfortable, but put on a smile to show he was not too uncomfortable. She could see that he had embarked on the tease without foreseeing its end, and without knowing what it was he hoped to whet in her by teasing her. She looked across at him as the waiter served the oxtail Florentine. He was still uncomfortable. He had moved into his tease and now found himself without pleasure and without a way of gracefully concluding. Not very good for a man from the FO. Teasing could arouse unpleasant things in the person teased but usually, in her experience, it had to do with flirtation. Was he drawing back from the flirtation? Teasing was verbal tickling and, like tickling, could be bullying. She ruled out bullying. The thrill of flirtation, then, was what he hoped to achieve. She’d spotted the true shadow thrown by this anecdote. She’d Tipped It All Up when perhaps she shouldn’t have been so impatient or insecure. Perhaps she should have allowed him to continue to tickle her into confusion and submission. She did not know how to revive the flirt.

In the silence the sound of the train seemed loud.

‘It’s really very silly of me,’ he said.

‘How is it silly of you?’

‘There is no reason why you should have read De Profundis.’ He was letting her off, but not immediately — not before making this not-so-enigmatic reference to De Profundis. She knew what De Profundis was. He was trying to go on with the flirtatious tease. Good. She let him finish a mouthful of food while waiting for the elucidation she needed. He was not being nasty; he wanted to pleasure her by teasing her so that she would not be in full control of herself, which was perhaps permissible for this kind of luncheon. ‘Oscar Wilde. The manuscript itself is in the British Museum but no one has ever had access to it — some of it came out in the court case in 1913. And there’s the disputed Methuen edition.’

He then delivered what she took to be his principal item. ‘I have seen it — Vyvyan Holland’s copy.’

She laughed, relaxing at the end of the tease, relieved by the smallness of the item. She was not overwhelmed at all.

He responded to her laugh by saying, ‘I am being rather superior. Sorry.’ He was now flustered. Having gained a little superiority he found it an encumbrance. He was not good with his Ways at all. There was nothing she could do to relieve him from his bother because the conversation had become unneat, they were both in confusion and it was of his making.

Ah. The name Oscar Wilde was what it was all about. That was the secret of his gambit. It was a name he believed could titillate her as a woman. It was a name about which hung sniggers and taboos. Although she was a modern woman and had talked about that subject — of men loving men — she couldn’t lightly do so with a strange man on a train. But she sensed that the titillation he wanted to cause in her was to make her display something of her nature, to find out something about her responsiveness. Again, she quickly saw that it was not a nasty embarrassment he wished upon her. She decided to try her most difficult way, the Way of All Doors, which required her to try to be adept at talking of all things with all people. It would be the grandest way of all if she could ever confidently install it.

But he spoke. ‘I’ll begin again.’ He was not teasing now and was going back to comradeship. ‘You see, Vyvyan Holland, who is a member of the Saintsbury Club, is Oscar Wilde’s son.’

‘Oscar Wilde’s son?’ There was still more to the anecdote. The play was not finished.

‘The mother adopted her family name because of the scandal.’

‘I know of the scandal of Oscar Wilde,’ she said firmly, testing her footing along the ledge of the Way of All Doors. ‘Even in Australia we have heard of the scandal of Oscar Wilde.’ As she said it she was disappointed with herself. She’d sworn never to apologise for her nationality.

‘Of course you have. Anyhow, Oscar Wilde’s son is a member of my club and, in De Profundis, Oscar Wilde recalls a meal he had with Lord Alfred Douglas.’

‘His lover,’ she said. ‘Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend.’ She strengthened it with spice. ‘His concubine.’ Again firmly using the Way of All Doors and finding that she could go that Way with poise.

He seemed eased by her frankness. ‘Yes, his lover. Wilde describes a meal of ortolans eaten at the Savoy with Lord Alfred, and there I was, eating these with Vyvyan Wilde-Holland just last night at the Club des Cent. So, you see — that is my anecdote.’

The warmth of shared purpose returned to the lunch for two, in the railway dining car, at the first sitting, on the train from Paris to Geneva.

As she looked over his anecdote she forgave him for his playing with her, and appreciated it as a rather breathtaking anecdote. Rather fine. The teasing had been more like gentle tickling. But the anecdote had, still, a question mark hooked into it, which she hadn’t time to unhook.

She said to him, ‘That was a fine anecdote.’

‘Thank you. I’m glad it pleased you. Finally.’

‘I have not eaten ortolans,’ she said cautiously, his conversation having not told her what ortolans were.

‘I was shown how to eat them only last night by Monsieur Massenat,’ he said, and she noted that by his confession of a minor ignorance he was either admitting their equality or pretending to an equality, or appealing for an equality, careful now not to play with her or to try to overwhelm her. ‘Monsieur Massenat took the bird by the head and put its body into his mouth. Thus.’ He mimed this.

Conversationally, the waiting, at least, had worked. She now knew something of what an ortolan was.

‘Biting through the neck, you chew gently, rejecting any tough morsels. The tiny bones will break. I felt like a cat. So small are the birds that three make only a moderate size course. We accompanied it with a burgundy from 1919, Clos de Tart.’

‘We have had to travel some distance to reach the conclusion of this anecdote,’ she laughed, ‘which I now observe — checking back over the conversation — makes no reference to oxtail Florentine.’ They both laughed.

‘I apologise. I talk in riddles.’

It was no riddle, it was a tease, but she had wriggled out of it and Tipped him Up, even enjoyed the tickling a little, and they were back together in the conversation. She had wriggled out of it affectionately and had not recoiled. She had granted him, she hoped, some of the pleasure of his tease, and she hoped she had not gone out of the reach of his flirting.

She laughed, and executed the Way of Companionable Directness. ‘It was a tease — you were trying to tease me, if not to embarrass me, for your own fun, and to flirt.’ They laughed as he agreed, and they moved into a closer understanding. She said, ‘At my school, new girls were not to be encouraged. But nor were they to be teased or baited.’

‘You’re very good,’ he said sincerely. ‘Edith Berry — Edith.’ Using her name for the first time.

‘Really, it’s Edith Campbell Berry.’ Wanting him to know her full and proper name, and then being quietly abashed at hearing how pretentious it sounded now, at least between them. Though she was absolutely sure, and her friends back home had agreed, that she needed a spirited name if she was to make her way here on the Continent. Anyhow, her visiting cards said Edith Campbell Berry. She would, at some point, get one out and give it to him.

He asked her whether she was bound for Geneva. She said yes, to take up a posting with the League of Nations. She enjoyed a tremor of importance as she said it.

‘How remarkable! I’m with the League myself. Which section?’

‘Internal Administration, division 1 class B.’ She laughed, enjoying the sound of it and enjoying her feeling of self-importance.

‘It’s a shambles. Whereabouts in Internal?’

‘In the Under Secretary’s bureau. To start with, at least.’

‘We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, but I’m a notch or two above you, I’m afraid — I’m in with Tony Buxton, helping Sir Eric — in the haute direction,’ he told her, also laughing at the pomp of the language. ‘I’m dogsbody to the haute direction. Buxton’s a great chap — one of the old gang — came over to Geneva with us at the start.’

She was pleasantly surprised that he’d be working there too. She tried to be mature and not show how pleased she was to meet someone else from the League. ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘will they — we — admit Germany?’

‘You’ll find the Secretariat pretty much all for Germany. As for my countrymen, “unwise and premature” were Chamberlain’s words.’

‘If Germany could be admitted she would then cease to be a leper nation, could be taught the ways of civilisation, perhaps, through membership of the League.’ Edith felt that what she’d contributed wasn’t quite up to scratch. She tried to improve it by adding, ‘Butler thinks it should happen.’ Hoping that sounded authoritative, hoping that he respected Butler’s book, which she’d studied on the voyage over.

‘Brazil is the problem.’

‘Brazil?’ Edith feared she’d been caught way off the point.

‘Brazil wants a permanent seat on the Council. Top secret. Only myself and Sir Eric know. And you.’ He laughed. ‘And Jules the messenger. The Germans want a seat on the Council but not at the same time as Brazil. Feel it lowers their status to that of Brazil. Which is exactly where I would put it. I’m inclined to keep Germany a prisoner, twenty years’ hard labour, repay and repent, and certainly unarmed.’ He held up a hand. ‘We mustn’t talk shop — in Geneva nothing else is talked. On the train from Paris to Geneva we can at least talk of frivolous matters. And, of course, as international civil servants, we have no opinions.’

It wasn’t a rebuke. He seemed not to want to talk about Germany, as if it were exhausted as a subject for him. Maybe it had to do with having been in the War. Did international civil servants have no opinions?

‘At least your government has conceded that the Germans didn’t boil down corpses of soldiers to make grease for their machinery,’ she said, finishing the topic in her own way and in her own time, thinking, then, that she had no right to talk that way, given that he’d been in the War. She watched to see if the criticism of his country had hurt him. He did not let on.

‘Someone at Intelligence got it wrong, it seems, misread some German document during the War.’ Ambrose appeared uncomfortable with this confession of British error, or perhaps with talk of the War.

‘It’s taken seven years for your intelligence section to improve its German.’ Edith bit her tongue, feeling that again she was perhaps pushing it too far and too hard, and backed quickly away. ‘This is my first posting. I have not been to Geneva,’ she said, taking a subordinate place in the conversation as a slap to herself for being a bit hard on the British.

He didn’t let it go. ‘They did tie people to the locomotives.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they did things that were bad.’ She looked out the window at the snowy fields of France, hugging the landscape to her.

He said, ‘You’ll dine well, and you’ll talk nothing but League. You will even enjoy yourself. There are young people on the staff. The esprit d’équipe is fine.’

The waiter served the roast pheasant, Parmentier potatoes, and fresh beans.

To her pleasure, Edith found an anecdote rising to her mind without any effort. ‘Chestnuts go well with pheasant. Do you know why that is?’

She waited to see if he had the answer. He did not.

‘Because chestnuts are the favourite food of the pheasant. It isn’t one of life’s great stories, but it’s an anecdote of sorts.’

‘It is indeed. And I had not made that connection between pheasants and chestnuts. Oh yes, that definitely counts as an anecdote.’

‘I also know that peasants, as distinct from pheasants, did not like chestnuts and would not eat them in France, even during times of great hunger.’

‘Very good — two anecdotes for the price of one.’ He chuckled and then said, ‘Should lamb, then, be served with grass?’

She smiled. ‘That, I think, annuls my anecdote. Must I pay a forfeit?’

‘No, not at all, but my little joke must count as an anecdote.’

‘Agreed.’

Edith let herself become aware that her curiosity about Vyvyan with two ys had been stifled earlier by apprehension and she had not, in fact, been fully true to the Way of All Doors.

She had been frightened, she was ashamed to note, to ask her way on into the hidden depths of his anecdote.

As they ate the roast pheasant, she concentrated herself to ask, and when ready, said as a preliminary, ‘I do like one thing Oscar Wilde said — he said that he couldn’t understand why we talk of red and white wine, when wine is in fact yellow. We should speak of red and yellow wine.’

Ambrose savoured this with a loud chuckle, which pleased her. ‘The good thing about Wilde — now that he is quotable again — is that he said so many good things that one forgets them, so when they come up again they seem really quite new.’

He told her that on the PLM line she was entitled to second helpings if she wanted. She did not want second helpings.

She pushed herself back towards the perturbing gist of the earlier conversation. ‘This Vyvyan with the two ys — is he as his father?’

‘Is he “as his father”?’ Ambrose repeated her expression as a way of grasping it. ‘You mean, of the Greek inclination?’ Edith supposed that was another way of saying it, his euphemism being a show of propriety.

She again reprimanded herself for not being true to the Way of All Doors. Euphemisms did not belong to the Way of All Doors.

‘Does he take men as lovers, is what I mean,’ she said explicitly.

She listened closely to her voice as the words came out. It sounded firm, not nervously firm, and not impatient. Just fine.

‘I would say, no.’ He then added, ‘He is as his father, I suppose, in enjoying the good things of life.’

‘Was Vyvyan aware of the reference in De Profundis to ortolans, as you ate them? Together.’

‘No mention was made of that, no.’

She wanted now to ask if Ambrose was, whether he, Ambrose, was of the way of Oscar Wilde, but saw that she could not ask — not by any of the rules of casual conversation, nor by any of her private Ways — although she felt sure now that Ambrose had moved the conversation in this direction. Was that the confession loitering in his remarks? She knew that some conversations contained such latent confessions, especially perhaps with a stranger on a train, but they’d moved significantly from being strangers. Indeed, they were now colleagues. New rules now applied.

She considered again whether the Way of All Doors could be used to satisfy her inquisitiveness.

No, she could not ask.

Edith stared out the window of the train and said to herself, Edith Campbell Berry, at twenty-six, sits in the first-class dining car of the train from Paris to Geneva, eating six courses with a strange gentleman, a friend of Oscar Wilde’s son, and disregarding the advice of Lord Curzon and John Latham about eating soup, and realises that she has no conversational way of finding out whether her male companion, whom she finds exceedingly attractive, is of ‘the Greek inclination’.

She had, in disregard of another of John Latham’s rules for a young diplomat, also lost track of how much wine she’d drunk.

The sorbet arrived and they agreed not to treat that as a course requiring an anecdote.

She then had a decisive realisation. It would be revealed. At some time it would be made clear whether or not her companion was of the Greek inclination. That was the Way of Compulsive Revelation, which was not a Way, strictly speaking, because it didn’t have to be taken — it occurred; in fact, it was the Way which asked that no efforts be made, only that it be given space, time and implicit invitation to allow the compulsive revelation, timidly and appropriately, to appear at its rightful time. It could not be hurried. Though, she joked to herself, it must occur before the wedding night. If he were of that inclination, the earlier teasing took on a different character; might, in fact, have been meant as a warning. Or he himself may not know what revelation was trying to find its way out into his conversation. Surely not?

Picking up the conversation, he said, ‘In places where there is dancing and dim lights, the label on a bottle of wine may not have any relationship to its contents. Geneva is a place where much dancing is done, some say only dancing.’

She grasped his meaning about the nature of the international diplomacy in Geneva and then again wondered if he were talking also of himself.

‘Better banquets than bullets,’ she said, feeling that it was a worldly thing to say, even if it lacked originality and was something of a non sequitur. It filled a space.

At the appearance of the cheese, she was quick to remember that the French had it before dessert. She also came up with an anecdote. ‘I am told, although I have not been to Italy, that the Italians refer to the aroma of the cheese shop as “the feet of God”.’

Ambrose thought that this was very good. ‘Having begun this silly game, I seem to be the one always without an anecdote.’

‘You told a rather complicated one to start things rolling. It could count as at least two.’ And, nor, she thought, has it finished all its resoundings.

The bananas glacé chantilly arrived, with vanilla wafers and a glass of Tokay. Her first Tokay.

The swaying of the train and the wines now made Edith oblivious to any separation between her body and her social manoeuvres or, for that matter, of any separation between the train and her body. The wine and the train gave her a happy awareness of her body as she moved against the leather seat, of both the flesh of her buttocks and her loins, and of her fashionable new Parisian corset and elegant underwear. She was drawn to Ambrose and if she were to advance this attraction, it was best she determine whether he was the way of Oscar Wilde, who if she recalled correctly had said that going to a whore was like eating chewed mutton, a description she found objectionable. Maybe she could venture a Lure and see what reaction it caused. But Ploys and Lures could go off all over the place. Could go off in one’s face. Not that she always resisted the unforeseeable. Knowing what was going on in a conversation was part of her training as an international civil servant, and also, was a way of becoming a woman to whom nice things happened.

There was no reason, she argued, why one couldn’t nudge Compulsive Revelation along by using a Lure. Edith Campbell Berry plunged on.

‘Oscar Wilde did, however, go with women — I remember reading somewhere that he said going with a whore in Paris was like eating chewed mutton. And he fathered Vyvyan with two ys and two vs.’

She felt that Ambrose could either find this amusing, or find it appalling that a woman should tell such an anecdote, or find the idea of a carnal experience with a woman beyond his knowledge or unimportant to his experience or he could find it objectionable as a way for Wilde to speak about a woman, about a forlorn person. Or he could pretend to any one of these positions.

Ambrose said nothing, but nodded.

That was not revealing. The Lure had flopped.

She struggled on. ‘I find it rather appalling, that a man of alleged high sensibility should speak that way of another human being, a forlorn person, that he should speak that way of a human encounter …’

Say it, Edith, say it.

‘… that he should speak that way of a carnal encounter.’ That was the best she could do.

Ambrose’s face became alert. ‘Why, yes, that’s my response exactly. I’m so glad, I’m so glad that you didn’t find it amusing. The way you told it seemed to suggest that you found it amusing. It’s not amusing at all.’

Which established that Ambrose was a person of fine sensibility but did not establish whether he was the way of Oscar Wilde. Why was it that she could not tell from the conversational clues? Was it his diplomatic training or was it that she had trouble understanding the British? Sometimes the nature of a man was revealed by the gesture and line of his talk, although she and her friends back home now agreed that one could only sometimes tell.

‘How do you account for him having gone with a whore in Paris when he was so definitely the other way?’ She felt this question would cause him to jump in one direction or another. Into her life or out of her life.

‘Oh, I suspect that he was just revisiting, going back to that way to see if it was as unacceptable as he recalled it, or not the right way for him.’

‘It would be distasteful for a man such as Wilde? Distasteful to go with a woman?’

He looked directly across at her. Perhaps he was now aware that he was being investigated. ‘I imagine so.’

Was that it then? Was the use of the word ‘imagine’ a way of saying that he had no personal knowledge or feelings which could be brought to bear on this matter?

She pushed on. ‘It is a line that cannot be crossed, do you think? Not happily?’

His face had become unrelaxed. He stared out of the window into the snowy fields. Ambrose was not at ease with this Probe.

She was tempted to talk away from the subject now, and go to lighter things, but she held back, feeling that because of his earlier flirting that she was justified in being curious, and in using the Way of the Silent Void to see what it might now elicit. She refused to relieve him from his subject, kept looking at him for a response.

He turned his eyes to hers.

‘Oh, there are men who can cross the line back and forth, so to speak.’ He tried to say this lightly, but it came out unsteadily.

Edith was unsure whether he was speaking of himself but he was revealing something about the practices of carnal love which she had not met before. This crossing of the borders. She was nonplussed. That was the trouble with the Way of All Doors — it sometimes plopped you down in the thistles. This was not an idea she had confronted before, that men might love both men and women. She felt she should leave it for now. Quickly. But she could not move the conversation fast enough and Ambrose went on. ‘And there are those who live damned near the border but just to one side of it. There is another devilish zone there.’ He said this with force, with the full effort of honesty, implying that it was not a serene place to dwell. ‘The free city of Danzig,’ he laughed, making a semi-private joke. She took his reference, a city belonging to no country, and maybe also the private meaning he was giving it. And, now, now, he was talking of himself.

Edith took fright and the Way of Cowardly Flight.

They were, thankfully, confronted by the fruit plate and she found herself again with something to say.

He had fallen into a careworn silence and she felt that it was her fault. That she had better carry things for a while. ‘Orange, apple, and banana,’ she said brightly, examining the fruit plate with more attention than it deserved. ‘The three musketeers of the English winter.’ She smiled at him, relieving him of the investigation not only because of her perturbation but also from tenderness. ‘I count that as my anecdote on the matter of fruit.’

Edith was still in silent disarray from her efforts to use conversation detectively. Maybe she’d been successful by her code, had dared to go to a new place in ideas. She’d been fearfully close to a blunder, and a blunder could not be claimed as a manoeuvre. But a conversation couldn’t be fully managed all the way. Not on trains. Part of the confusion was that it had begun as a conversation with a stranger on a train and had changed to a conversation with a colleague. It had at some point changed again to being flirtation, although she felt she wasn’t always good at knowing flirtation from friendliness. She even suspected the flirtation had been moving towards seduction.

The meal was over. Ambrose told her not to pay the bill unless it was written out in her presence and never to make payment on a French train without a bill. ‘Just good practice,’ he told her. ‘Keep the bill for the dreadful people in Finance.’

They returned to her compartment, which she had to herself, and he sat beside her and they sipped Singleton’s, which Ambrose described as a single malt Scotch whisky, from Ambrose’s well-worn and dented hip flask, in the small silver cups which went with the hip flask, embossed with Ambrose’s corps insignia, and they talked of their childhoods and other things through the few remaining hours of the darkening winter’s afternoon.

She’d drunk Scotch with her father back in Australia and it reminded her of those conversations where the presence of the Scotch decanter had marked his recognition of her maturity. She relaxed into the motion of the train with its sensation of velocity, the play of the light and dusk at the window, enjoying the landscape blurred by speed, winter snow, the feeling of rushing through time, the alcohol and its rug of carefree warmth, the steam-heating of the train, and the faint smell of burning coal from the engine. If she let her eyes become lazy, the window view became an abstraction of light and shapes. It was a winter dark when the train stopped at Bellegarde. Ambrose told her it was the border. They’d already showed their League lettre de mission and other papers to the customs officers who’d moved through the train earlier.

Standing together in the dim corridor after the train moved out on its last few miles to Geneva, looking out of the window, she admitted to him that she was rather elated at the idea of arriving in Geneva and with working for the League and she hoped that, when there, he might guide her in her work and watch over her a little.

‘So you should be elated,’ he said, ‘Geneva’s the place to be. And I should be proudly happy to be your guide, dear Edith, and to watch over you.’

Having, by her youthful admission, delivered herself into his care, she then let the train rock their bodies together, and she realised that the body also asked questions, and Ambrose kissed her, and as she played with his kiss, and gave herself to the kiss, she could not tell whether there was a difference to the kiss of a man who inhabited a place at or near the border, knowing more about conversation than she did about kissing. If, indeed, he did. As she looked over his shoulder, she wondered what a lady should do to give pleasure to a gentleman who inhabited this border place. And did she not believe in the ending of national borders? She returned then to the mild swoon of another kiss and, just before she entered the delight of the kiss, his body against hers, the swelling of his groin gave her the message that he belonged to the domain of men and women, definitely in that domain.