Confidence and the Giving of Confidences

Sophie Langer, from the ILO, let the Drama Club use the big front room in her apartment for rehearsals, ‘As long as I don’t, as honorary President, have to sit through them.’

She’d also added, ‘I will adjudicate tantrums only among nation states but never among theatrical types.’

But this night there were no rehearsals. Caroline Bailey was to read from her novel set at the League, and the drama club cast and supporters and a few outsiders were crammed into the big room. Rumours about the novel had been going around for months.

Caroline was a South African in her twenties, who tried to pass as English. She was only a filing clerk but was well educated and proud of her English accent, which Edith acknowledged was very good.

Caroline had masses of self-assurance and said she wasn’t at all nervous about reading to an audience. She said she believed that stories were really meant to be read or recited and that she would do what Dickens did and, one day, tour, reading her work.

Edith sat on the floor of Sophie’s big room next to Florence and Victoria, jammed in with the others, nearly all women. Ambrose would have nothing to do with it and some of the other men had been scared off from what they’d heard about the book. Perhaps everyone there secretly hoped to be in the book. Favourably. The lights went out and the audience sat in darkness for a minute or so. Then a reading light came on, revealing in half-light the face of Caroline who sat on a high-backed oak chair next to a table on which there was a vase containing a single red tulip, a water jug, a glass, the reading lamp, and her manuscript in a leather folder. She wore a shirt-blouse buttoned down the front, a large floppy bow tie, and a long jacket almost to her knees. Her hat was a striking stylised turban. It was all very theatrical but passed Edith’s tests except for the tulip. Edith was still fascinated by seeing tulips and thought that they seemed to be made of wax.

Caroline opened her manuscript with studied care.

She looked up and around at her audience before speaking, as if she’d been told to do it. ‘In this rendition, I intend to jump around a little in the story. It deals with my male character, Humphrey Hume — described in the opening pages of the novel as a “lanky young man who no rain could dismay and, despite his enthusiasm for work, was liked by everyone”.’ Caroline made herself pause here to collect laughter from the audience, which she did receive. She continued, ‘Some of his colleagues are discussing him in the Office.’ She cleared her throat, took a sip of water, and looked up from her manuscript.

For all her boasting about going on tour like Dickens, Caroline was shaking a little as she held the leather-bound manuscript.

She added to her introduction by saying, ‘First, we learn something of Humphrey Hume from his colleague Barlow, less well loved.’ She began reading. ‘“Barlow was a Jew with a dolorous face. Long ago he had done something wrong, no one knew what, but everyone knew it was something dreadful, which had ruined a brilliant career and made him glad enough to use his trick of languages to earn his keep as a translator in the Office. His life had stopped when he did this dreadful thing, whatever it was, and now he led a posthumous existence, drinking a spectacular amount, and from time to time, just in time, in fact, doing a month’s work in a night.”’

There was uneasy laughter as people recognised, or thought they recognised, this character as Liverright. Some looked around in case he was there. Edith thought it a cruel portrayal. He and Caroline were friends although something might have gone wrong there.

Caroline continued, ‘“It was odd to picture him eating, getting into his pyjamas, or shaving in the morning. It was as horrible as imagining a dead man doing these things. In the Office he appeared in character as ‘that disgusting beast, Barlow’, frightening the typists by talking innuendo to them in whatever might be their own tongue and rolling half-drunk about the corridors. Some of the men, especially Mr Whibley, used to drop in to see him, lured by the malevolent charm of his conversation, and his appalling comments on the lives of their colleagues. Sometimes he described alleged vices and practices among their colleagues so unnatural and far-fetched that if the Office had, in fact, held one single specimen who practised them, it would have been an unique organisation indeed.”’

While many might have guessed that Barlow was Liverright, Edith alone thought she knew, perhaps along with Liverright, that some of the unnatural practices alluded to were not as far from the Office as Caroline thought. It was amusing that Caroline thought the unnatural practices existed only in Barlow’s imagination. And Edith recalled meeting Liverright’s malevolence on her first day.

‘“Mr Whibley, monologist by nature, in Barlow’s company humbly took the part of feeder. Now this name, now that, he placed the lamb or the goat in the jaws of his lion and sat back to hear the bones cracking. This time, he asked Barlow about Humphrey Hume. Barlow replied, ‘He went to the War. A medical man. I don’t somehow see him grinning behind a bayonet, but he was there, and no one, on either side, put a bullet into him. But it smashed him just the same, smashed his little soul. When it was over, there was nothing left and he dared not feel about in the dark for bits which might have been worth sticking together — he dared not. If you can imagine a dying man who thinks he can be cured by telling himself and his friends that he is quite well. Then, in the very nick, as I said, the politicians made this place, the Office, and he sprang to it, and pulled it round him, warm and comfortable, clerks and typewriters and committees and minutes and resolutions, and he lifted up his shaking voice and cried, “There shall be no more war!” Everyone said, “What an excellent young man!” They are still saying it; he looks fine, talks fine, feels fine, but n’y touchez pas, il est brisé!’”’

Victoria said to Edith in a whisper, ‘Is Humphrey Hume Ambrose?’

She whispered back, ‘I don’t know. Could be.’ The description of Hume could fit a few of the men who were in the Secretariat, especially the men who’d fought in the War. His being a medical doctor narrowed it somewhat.

Caroline went on. ‘“‘And when will his crash come?’ Mr Whibley asked Barlow.

‘“‘Never,’ said Barlow. ‘He’s saved. Got religion. The Office is his religion.’

‘“Barlow sat smoking, a great bulk, staring with dull eyes at the patch of sky outside the window, surrounded by his own peculiar atmosphere of idleness, and defeat, and emptiness.”’

Caroline looked up from her manuscript and said, ‘We next meet Humphrey who has just returned from a disappointing interview with the Chief Secretary … “The moment had appeared to him ripe for intervention by the Office in a peculiarly abominable situation in the Near East. He had pressed his point with fervour. The Chief Secretary, of necessity, had listened with attention, since the ultimate responsibility for Humphrey’s actions rested with him. He had been very kind, had agreed with Humphrey down to the last detail, and then, blandly, genially, almost as if he were continuing to agree, he had vetoed any action in the affair.

‘“‘Too expensive,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry — as sorry as you are. We might do something’ — by ‘we’ this time, he meant the British Government, not the Office — ‘but any action on the Office’s part would be resented by the French: not a hope of cooperation from them; and if they did not cooperate, none of the little fellows on the spot, who all look to the French, would do anything, and then where would we be? — but you’ve had your head too close to it these last weeks; you see it a little out of proportion.’

‘“‘They’ve appealed to us for help,’ urged Humphrey.”’

There were titters at hearing Sir Eric and the procedures of the League presented so critically.

‘“‘If you like, we can circulate these telegrams to the member governments without comment. I think we had better, and in acknowledging the telegrams, say they have been circulated.’

‘“‘I should so much prefer—’

‘“‘To do something, and explain later. Of course you would, it’s perfectly natural; but I’m sorry, it’s also perfectly impossible.’

‘“Humphrey returned to his room and threw the pile of telegrams on the table and went and stood in the bay window overlooking the courtyard, and stared at the insipid lake with its transparent summer blue. It was the pale blue which little girls couple with pale pink as their favourite colours. He shifted his gaze to Captain Creighton-Downes’s bull-terrier chained up in the courtyard.”’

Again at the mention of the bull terrier, there were titters of recognition; everyone knew whose dog this was. Caroline looked out and smiled at the shared recognition, enjoying all signs of appreciation for whatever reason.

‘“Humphrey tried patiently to accommodate himself to his disappointment, seeking with his agile mind for some sidelight of action. He yearned for the life of action. Instead he circulated telegrams.”’

Edith smiled to herself as she recognised her own urges to a life of action but she didn’t share Caroline’s sneer at Sir Eric’s decision. Caroline’s was the typical view of someone who had no feel for political reality.

Caroline then turned pages. ‘We move on now. Humphrey’s in love with a woman named June who dies tragically in a mysterious operation.’ Caroline paused, waiting for signs of recognition at the mention of this office scandal. There was a rustle of recognition — one of the girls from typing had died just before Edith’d come to the League. At the time, everyone said she had been trying to terminate her pregnancy. She’d been considered morally loose.

Caroline continued. ‘This part is before she dies. It is set at a dance at Maxim’s. I think we’ve all been there.’ Chuckles of acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps too often,’ she added, again winning appreciative laughs.

‘“‘You’ve come?’ cried June, as Humphrey arrived at the dance. Among the heightened complexions and brutally emphasised prettiness of the other women, June looked, at first sight, almost plain. Her hair was not even tidy, and her dress was not suitable and was badly put on; she was careless. Then she tilted her head casually, and it was immediately obvious that beauty was the simplest thing in the world for her, and that her beauty was unlike anyone else’s in the room. She laid her hand on the lapel of Humphrey’s coat.

‘“‘Dance the next with me,’ she said.

‘“The orchestra began to play a waltz, the ‘Clair de lune’, and the manager, according to his custom, obliterated the lights, all except the green ones.

‘“‘Dance this with me,’ repeated June in her alluring voice.

‘“Humphrey, with a dazed smile, put his arm around her. She laid her head on his breast, and they moved away to the heaving tune.

‘“Heaving, throbbing, almost breaking with emotion, the tune reverberated with a brazen laughter, and heaved and throbbed and almost broke again; under the green light, eyes gleamed out of the pools of darkness, lips were black and heavy, joined to the shadow they cast on the chin, and the arms of the women looked unearthly against the black sleeves of the men. The couples moved with close-pressed thighs and swooning looks and clung together as if they were united in the last intimacy of love.”’

There were chuckles of embarrassed recognition at the dance hall behaviour. Caroline threw the room a quick smile.

‘“The room grew very hot, but the music was merciless: forty francs per couple, and they got their money’s worth. The manager appeared during one of the brief intervals followed by waiters carrying paper caps and toys and balloons on trays. Everyone shrieked with joy and the men fought to get toys for the women, and the women made the men put on paper caps.”’

Caroline looked up and said that the romance between Humphrey Hume and June took off from here and ended tragically in the mysterious operation. She was enjoying saying the words ‘mysterious operation’. She went on to read other sections about the allure of June, the office vamp, and its havoc on other men in the Office but most of all on Humphrey.

‘After her death in the mysterious operation, Humphrey is devastated. The other men who had been involved with her all distance themselves and try to avoid being implicated. Humphrey, already a man broken by the War, cannot avoid showing his feelings when faced with this second catastrophe in his life. He alone publicly acknowledges his involvement with the girl by going to visit her in hospital at her final hour. Captain Downes, an old colleague from the War, also working at the Office, tries to look after Humphrey in the only way he knows, and takes him out on the lake in his boat.’

Again, titters of recognition.

‘Finally, we meet Barlow again: “‘Downes thinks fresh air will cure anything,’ said Barlow. ‘Even a broken heart. And so it would; fresh air would cure Downes of anything. May I shut the window?’”’

There were peals of laughter at the mention of windows and fresh air as the audience willingly turned away from the unhappy part of the story. A struggle went on in the League offices between the those who wanted the windows open, usually the British and colonials, and the Continentals who wanted the windows closed. These tussles were called ‘international incidents’. Last year one of the drama club sketches had shown a French man committing suicide by standing in a draught.

‘“‘You may shut the window,’ said Whibley. ‘If you will take that red handkerchief off your throat.’

‘“‘It isn’t a handkerchief; it’s a fine-quality scarf, worn for two reasons.’

‘“‘What are they?’ Mr Whibley had the curiosity to ask.

‘“‘Loyalty to my political party, and loyalty to my body which I protect from draughts, and which I place above elegance.’ Barlow looked down at his bulging waistcoat.

‘“‘Ugh,’ said Captain Downes. ‘You don’t really believe in that socialist stuff?’

‘“‘Believe in it!’ said Barlow. ‘My dear man, you don’t know our family. My elder brother is working with Lenin now. We are very proud of him. Mother says —’

‘“‘Do you mean to tell me —?’ began Captain Downes.

‘“‘Yes, we all played our little part in the business of 1917, but only Morris stayed on. Russian Jews, you know.’

‘“‘I don’t believe you,’ said Captain Downes, red and flurried. ‘You speak English as well as I do and Barlow isn’t a Russian name.’

‘“‘Nor a Jewish one and you’ll hardly deny I’m a Jew, I suppose?’ Barlow laid his forefinger pointedly against his nose. ‘It’s all right, Downes. I went to Oxford like the rest of us.’”’

Apart from allusions to the office scandal of the mysterious operation, the audience was enjoying the reading because it was, for some of them, a look into the world of the men of the League and some of the identifiable people from the haute direction.

‘“‘Well, well, poor Hume!’ Barlow said. ‘He’s going mad, cracking up. Of course, the fact is, we are all going mad here — some quickly, some slowly, but all going the same way; it’s the departmental work, which is known to lead to insanity, and this appalling town where even the ordinary citizens are constantly going out of their minds.’”’

Again the audience broke into knowing laughter. Cursing Geneva was a favourite pastime.

‘“‘Some of us take a drink, and some to women …’”’

‘And some to men,’ a woman’s voice called out from the darkness, getting a few laughs. Everyone looked around to see who had called out, and Victoria whispered to Edith, ‘Who said that?!’

Caroline ignored the interjecter. ‘“‘ … and others turn to — but we won’t go into that — and even Hume, even he has stopped serving the cause and now runs after strange gods.’

‘“Barlow turned his opaque eyes on them questioningly. ‘You don’t know if we are all mad? Neither do I. Give my love to Hume and tell him when he is over the worst, if he does get over it, I know just the little girl for him, not mixed up with the Office, completement dévouée a son métier, you know. There is quite as much purchasable vice here as in Paris, whatever people say. Only it’s more expensive.’

‘“Captain Downes sighed. This was what he hated most, picking over and slandering a man who wasn’t there, like a pack of gossiping women.”’

There was scornful laughter from the women in the audience.

‘“After Barlow had left the room, Mr Whibley said, ‘I never knew that Barlow minded about being Jew.’

‘“‘Minded? Why the fellow was bragging about it,’ Captain Downes said, ‘positively shoving it down our throats. And, pray tell, who or what are these strange gods, to which he so knowingly refers?’”’

Caroline finished her reading, looked up and said, ‘I thank you for your kind attention. Good evening.’ She closed the manuscript, and theatrically turned off the light, leaving all in darkness.

The audience applauded enthusiastically. Edith had never realised that Liverright was Jewish. Apart from Liverright, she had never met a Jew.

Later, over coffee in the Café du Siècle, Victoria, Florence and Edith discussed the reading. Florence and Victoria smoked cigarettes.

They were all stunned at the unsympathetic portrayal of Liverright.

‘He’ll be devastated,’ Victoria said. ‘Someone should warn him.’ Victoria, who was stuck down in Registry and didn’t see as much of office life as Edith and Florence did, felt it wasn’t true to the life of the Secretariat. ‘I mean, how could a woman know what men say when there’re no women present? Unless she eavesdropped.’ Victoria, who in her job spent all day reading other people’s mail, would not condone eavesdropping, even for the sake of art.

Florence thought it was true to life, and liked the sniping at the Secretariat men. Florence was also sure that Humphrey was Ambrose — ‘except his heart isn’t broken,’ she laughed, turning to Edith, ‘and you didn’t die “in a mysterious operation” .’ She looked hard at Edith. ‘Was Ambrose tangled up with her — June, the one who died? Before you, I mean.’

In reply, Edith simply shrugged. Ambrose had never mentioned any involvement with the typist. She was a little embarrassed at Florence’s careless assumptions about her real life and the fiction of the book. She supposed that she hadn’t really told all to Florence either, but she had tried hard to describe her feelings about Ambrose to her, of how it resembled love, but probably wasn’t love. Florence had said that it was important to describe a thing correctly to oneself. If you described it as true love and it fell apart then you had a tragedy and had to act out a tragedy. If you described it as an affair and it fell apart, you could then simply describe it as an ‘interesting chapter’ in your life.

Victoria thought it was a picture of Ambrose to a point and she repeated her criticism that she couldn’t see how a woman like Caroline could know what men said when women weren’t around.

Edith said that at the League the filing clerks and typists were invisible and the men didn’t see them and talked as if they weren’t there. ‘As we become more important we become more visible.’ She was also, in another part of her mind, wondering if Caroline knew more about Ambrose than she did, whether Ambrose had yet another secret life, and had been connected to the typist who died in the ‘mysterious operation’, although she knew that Ambrose was infertile and couldn’t have caused the pregnancy which brought about her death. That would make his public identification with the dying girl more chivalrous.

Florence said, ‘They’re not invisible when they’re pretty filing clerks and typists. Then they suffer from always being looked at.’ They all laughed. Especially coming down the stairs.’

Victoria said she wished she wasn’t so invisible and could ‘suffer’ being looked at. They laughed.

Florence broke in with more gossip. ‘But it’s Caroline who has the broken heart — surely you’ve heard that?’ she said. ‘That part of her is in Humphrey Hume. She came here to get away from her lover in England who jilted her. Jilted her very publicly.’

Victoria answered herself. ‘I suppose she could ask men what they say to each other when we aren’t there. But would she get an honest answer?’ Victoria then turned to the gossip. ‘You say her heart is broken? In Registry we miss all this. Even the messengers know more. Tell.’

‘She was left standing at the altar. A church full of guests. Her work still suffers after all this time. She’s been close to the sack too, for sloppy work. She writes away in this book in office time and mopes about her lost love. And makes mistakes in the office, as well as in life, it seems. She is the one suffering brisée. She can’t get over it. Probably never will.’

They sat for a moment trying to contemplate the idea of a broken heart that never healed.

Edith said, ‘I don’t think calling it the Office instead of the League and referring to the Chief Secretary instead of Secretary-General, is going to fool anyone or get her off the hook if there are legal problems with the book.’

‘She might have legal problems with Liverright,’ Victoria said.

Edith also thought that Caroline showed no understanding of the subtleties of diplomacy. It was clear that Caroline was on the side of ‘why can’t we just get on and do it’, the ‘to hell with the stupid politicans’ school of thinking. Edith had left that behind, although she still puzzled over how and where room could be made for initiative and drive and individualistic schemes and solutions within the League.

Victoria kept on, ‘Humphrey wouldn’t know what colours little girls like — that’s a woman talking. And what does she mean when the character talks about unnatural acts and vices and so on? Harlots, I suppose,’ she said, again answering herself.

Edith and Florence snorted. They were always laughing at Victoria, who expected it and played up to it.

‘A little more than that, Victoria,’ Florence said, in a worldly voice, husky from too much smoking.

‘I suppose so.’ But Victoria was obviously unable to imagine what additional unnatural acts there might be.

‘I do wonder what strange gods Humphrey Hume could find in Geneva,’ said Florence.

Edith was interested in Florence’s remark. For all her so-called worldliness, Florence wasn’t that far ahead of Victoria when it came to knowing about strange gods. The Molly Club, for instance. If that were a church of strange gods. Did Caroline Bailey know about the Molly Club?

‘I will say that I think her book is better than Ulysses,’ said Victoria, backhandedly.

They had all been reading James Joyce’s Ulysses which someone had brought back from Paris, but Victoria had given up.

Edith was finding it hard going too but she was certainly going to push on and finish it, and defend it. Florence, of course, claimed to have read it all and to have loved it, which Edith found doubtful.

‘Come off it, Victoria, Ulysses is a masterpiece,’ Florence said.

‘You’ve only read the scandalous bits,’ Victoria said to Florence.

‘Victoria, you reveal yourself. I thought you hadn’t read it — how do you know about the scandalous bits?’

Victoria coloured. ‘I can see why it’s banned in England.’

‘But not in France?’

‘The French are too far gone,’ Victoria said.

They all laughed.

Victoria said that she still felt that Caroline’s book wasn’t true to life. ‘Life is much duller,’ she said, really meaning it, but winning unintended laughter from Edith and Florence, which Victoria happily accepted. ‘Well, life really is — much duller. My life is, at least. You two aren’t in Registry.’

‘You get to read everyone else’s mail,’ said Florence.

‘Not the personal mail,’ she said regretfully. ‘Unless “opened in error”.’

They laughed.

After a while, Victoria went home. She was always frightened, above all else, of ‘not getting enough sleep’. Her daily anxiety centred on this — her conversations were often elaborate calculations of her nightly and weekly hours of sleep and of sleep ‘lost’.

Although she liked Victoria, Edith was relieved to be alone with Florence, to be able to slacken from work talk to personal talk. Every person in a conversation changed the nature of that conversation.

‘What did you really think of it?’ Florence asked Edith after Victoria left.

‘Oh, quite good. Weak on the science of politics. I wonder if she’ll ever get it published?’

‘She says that the Hogarth Press will publish it. That’s the story she’s put around.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘That’s what she’s been saying. I think the book’s trying to embellish life at the League with all those references to unnatural acts and strange gods. And the mysterious operation.’ Edith felt troubled about keeping back from Florence her private knowledge of the Molly Club and also her secret life with Ambrose. She wanted also to talk about Jerome and what had happened in Paris. Keeping secrets made her feel dishonest with her friend. Secrets separated you from people. She no longer wanted secrets from Florence. It occurred to her also, that maybe Caroline hadn’t been explicit about these things because she didn’t really know of these things. Not in any detail. But Edith wanted to find out if others were finding the carnal life as strange as she was finding it and perhaps she wanted to boast a little.

‘Geneva has its secrets, Florence.’ It came out a little smugly.

‘Oh really, Edith. You have a secret life?’ Florence was teasing.

‘As a matter of fact, Florence, I do know about one secret world. Here in Geneva.’

Florence blew a smoke ring towards her in playful disbelief.

‘All right, I won’t tell you.’

Florence stared at her and then said, ‘Out with it, then. Tell me about Geneva’s secret life.’ Florence looked at her as if expecting an anticlimax.

‘It’s difficult because it involves others.’ And that was a real problem — how much of Ambrose’s secrets should she reveal? How to tell it without hurting him.

‘Pooh to confidences. Tell me.’

‘All right, but let’s order some more coffee.’

‘If you don’t tell me everything I’ll certainly not tell you any of my secrets. Best friends aren’t supposed to have secrets.’

Edith’s heart warmed at Florence’s indirect declaration of deeper friendship. She sometimes felt inferior to Florence because of her self-assured ways and she’d noticed herself becoming somewhat jealous when Florence had outings and meals with others without her. She felt very happy that Florence now declared her as ‘best friend’. Or ‘a best friend’ though maybe she was doing it only to get her to open up. ‘I suppose we are best friends now,’ Edith said, angling for further confirmation.

‘Of course we are.’

‘I’m truly glad, Florence.’

‘Now get on with it — tell me that dark, secret story.’

Edith wanted to linger and savour their declaration of friendship. Wanted to give it time to set, to celebrate it, but Florence wanted to gallop on to the confidences. Edith now found herself frightened to tell because it might alter everything. It might blow up in her face. If she had Florence as a best friend, she did not need to win her by further confidences of an outlandish kind.

She’d gone too far to retreat. ‘It’s bizarre … I warn you.’

‘Better still. God knows we need some of the bizarre in our lives. Caroline Bailey should have had more of the bizarre instead of all that coy hinting at strange gods and unnatural practices.’ She snorted. ‘If Caroline Bailey knows, she should tell. She’s a milksop.’

‘What I have to tell, Florence, is truly bizarre.’

‘Edith! Tell it! For Heaven’s sake, tell!’

‘It’s in strictest confidence.’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’ She went through this childhood ritual.

‘Do Canadians say that? In Australia we say, cross my heart and spit my blood and hope to die.’

‘All very interesting, but get on with it.’

‘A male friend, who will remain nameless, from the Secretariat, took me to a club called the Molly Club.’

‘Never heard of it. And you mean Ambrose took you.’

‘I said I wasn’t going to use names. This club doesn’t advertise.’

Florence gave a knowing smile. ‘What sort of club?’

‘Be patient, Florence. Do you want to hear the story or not? This is a club for those who do not like being the way God made them.’

‘Say that again?’

‘Travestis — you know about those? Men who want to be women and women who want to be men. Actually it’s not that simple, I’ve discovered.’

‘Of course I know about those — but a club for them?’

Florence’s voice betrayed that she was now outside her experience. ‘Where is this club — what street?’ She could tell that Florence was slowing the revelation to allow herself to digest it. ‘So we have one in our Secretariat? A transvestite?’ Edith realised that she hadn’t quite been sure there was a word in English to describe them. But the way Florence said the word further told Edith that this was an unknown realm for her. ‘How high up? And why you? Why did you go with him?’

Edith also realised that Florence thought that was the end of the story — that it ended there. ‘I said that I wouldn’t name any names. He likes to dress in women’s clothes but I don’t think he’s a … transvestite? Is that the word?’

‘But why you?’

Why her, indeed. ‘Just say, I share his secret.’

‘The secret being that he likes dressing up disguised as a woman?’

Ambrose would say it was the opposite of disguise. ‘Because of this, he asked me to go.’

‘Fancy dress?’

‘Not quite.’ She smilingly remembered herself having used that expression with Ambrose.

‘Were other members of the Secretariat there?’

‘I wouldn’t know. You see, it’s bizarre: everyone — everyone except me that is — nearly everyone was dressed as the opposite sex. It’s a bit like a masked ball.’

‘That’s what it was then — a fancy-dress masked ball?’

‘Nothing like a ball. There are two parts to my confession.’

‘I want everything.’ Florence’s voice was both ravenous for the secrets, and at the same time beginning to sound resisting, as if she couldn’t bear to be ‘told’ about something, couldn’t bear being the one who didn’t have prior knowledge of all things.

Edith could tell also that there was something resentful in Florence’s voice which was a warning. A part of Florence did not want to hear any more. She saw that she wouldn’t be able to tell all. ‘The ugly bit is that while I was there at this club, the Action Civique came in and pushed people around, including me. They were very threatening and ugly and we had to flee. I was, in fact, assaulted.’

‘They assaulted you? They always seem rather dashing to me when I’ve seen them on parade at the Place behind my pension.’

She could tell Florence was not quite believing her. ‘They hit one of our party with a club — a Mr Huneeus, a former cabinet minister from Azerbaijan.’

Florence looked at Edith with some disbelief. ‘You’re making all this up.’

‘When things became very dangerous, we ran for it.’

‘It all sounds very far-fetched.’

‘If you find that far-fetched, listen to this. Last month I was invited to the embassy of Azerbaijan — it’s up in Servette. They named a river after me.’

‘Edith! There’s no such embassy.’

‘It’s a government-in-exile.’

‘You’re making this up! Why would they do that?’ Florence was becoming almost grouchy now.

Edith ploughed on — what else could she do? — but she resolved to make it short. ‘I missed a bit: when the Action Civique were pushing people around, they picked on Mr Hunceus, the Ambassador, and I stood in front of him to protect him. That’s why they named the river after me.’

She flashingly recalled to herself the real ugliness of that evening, and a deep shudder passed through her. She saw that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Florence about that particular ugliness yet. Maybe later in the night. ‘He named the river after me because of that.’

‘He doesn’t have the authority. It’s a Soviet republic.’

‘It could one day be restored to independence.’

‘And the League doesn’t recognise them. They have been trying for years to get us to recognise them.’

‘Florence, I don’t care. I don’t care whether Mr Huneeus is the King of Azerbaijan or whether he’s an impostor or whether he’s a waiter at the Bavaria — the point is that he made this gesture.’

‘It’s not the legitimate government.’

Florence had a leaning towards the Soviets. They did not share that.

‘Do you want to hear the rest?’ she smiled at Florence, trying to mollify her.

‘There’s more? I take it that you help your friend dress as a lady?’

‘Yes. On this particular night he wore a tulle evening dress.’

‘Your tulle evening dress with the sequins?’

‘Yes,’ Edith hesitated, ‘my tulle evening dress.’ Which perhaps would never seem the same again to her. She might give it to Ambrose.

This could be too much for Florence; she realised quite distinctly that she’d moved a great distance from Florence’s experience. She doubted also whether she had the aplomb to tell it, But it would be a test, too, of the friendship. She had to share it. It was something she needed to tell another woman. She knew also, perversely, that she was boasting as well as sharing, boasting of her sophisticated other life. But she was hearing a caution bell ringing, that it was too bizarre and might cast her for ever in a bad light with Florence. Or the other possibility was that Florence would want to come to the club. That was a possible reaction. Yet if she could not predict Florence’s reactions, then she did not know Florence that well yet. She did have difficulty seeing Florence at the Molly Club, but then she’d had difficulty seeing herself there. Florence had male escorts, and had confided a sexual experience. They had shared in a guarded and hinted way a curiosity about sexual matters, and when talking about herself, Florence always claimed to have been ‘wild’ back to Canada.

Florence then blurted out, ‘Did you have an affair with this man in the dress?’

‘Yes.’

‘When he was dressed like that!’

‘Yes.’

Florence stared at her. Edith could not read her expression.

Edith decided to leave the story at that. ‘That’s the story. About the darker side of Geneva.’ She laughed to bring the confession to a close.

‘I don’t believe this. You’re making it up. To compete with Bailey’s book.’ An almost relieved smile came to Florence’s face, as she grasped at this idea.

‘I’m not making it up.’

The smile went. ‘Then you’re becoming a neurasthenic.’

‘It has been the strangest experience in my life and I told it to you, to share it with you as a friend. As a gift. And to show that bizarre things can happen here. Here in Geneva. Even to me. I didn’t go looking for it. Isn’t that something of what we’re here for? On the Continent? To experience life?’

‘Not that sort of experience and I don’t want to share it. You could hardly call me a Dismal Jane but I find it sordid.’

‘I didn’t find it sordid. I suppose it sounds sordid. Perhaps I told it rather badly.’

Florence was certainly sounding like a Dismal Jane.

‘Edith, I can’t accept this. And your mother’s only been dead a matter of months. You are doing dirt on your womanhood.’

Edith didn’t know what her mother’s death had to do with it. Edith was frightened at Florence’s vehement recoil from her. For a second, she considered saying that she’d made it all up. Too late for that. ‘Florence — it was just an escapade.’ She was now trying desperately to find a word to describe it that would blow away the abhorrence which had leapt to Florence’s mind.

‘It’s debasing. I’m a free thinker, Edith, but really, this is going too far. What about your womanhood?’

Their voices were rising. ‘My womanhood? Florence, this was an escapade. I told you about it as experience of this strange world.’ Edith hated hearing herself disowning her life with Ambrose this way.

‘I find it objectionable. You have besmirched your womanhood.’

‘You don’t have to worry about my womanhood, Florence. I’ll look after my own womanhood.’

Florence’s comment about womanhood struck her hard. It was just what she had not faced. What it meant, the incident about her sense of her own sex, being among those people. Perhaps she had gone beyond the pale. She felt herself tightening with tension. She wanted to get back to their warm friendship. She had tried to move from friendship to intimacy too fast and she’d offered the wrong confidences.

‘Florence — it was an escapade.’

‘You have humiliated yourself.’

Florence fished some money out of her purse and dumped it on the table.

‘What are you doing!’ she asked Florence, seeing only too well what Florence was doing. Her voice sounded assertive but inside she was plunging.

‘I’m going,’ Florence said coldly. ‘I’ve heard more than I wanted to hear.’

‘Stay, Florence, let me explain more …’ She held up her hand to Florence but Florence walked away.

Edith found herself alone with smoke curling from a half-stubbed-out cigarette in the ashtray. At first she did not let herself understand what had happened. She sat there as if the departure of Florence had been as ordinary as the departure of Victoria. How odd. Good night, Florence.

She then let herself realise that she was sitting there rigidly alone, had not moved. Her mind tentatively opened again to the light of what had happened and she felt shock, social shock. She couldn’t accept that Florence had walked out on her. After their avowal of friendship. She then looked to the door, expecting Florence to return any minute, having had second thoughts, to have realised that walking out was hurtful, to have begun to worry about their friendship.

Minutes went by and Florence did not return. The waiter came and asked if she wanted anything and she said no. What sort of friendship, then, was it? Worse, a second shock came rushing at her, a panic about the correctness of what Florence had said. Florence’s words about the besmirching of her womanhood now ricocheted. She had been all too aware of the violation of the Action Civique. But what of the club itself? To be audience to nature debauched, and thus be, herself, debauched as a woman? She had trouble recalling the justifying pleasure of it now, sitting there in the Café du Siècle. She tried to find her way back to the legitimatising pleasure of it when she was with Ambrose. She felt she might cry. She had not told her secrets at all well. Nor fully. She had not told of Paris and Jerome which was what she had really wanted to tell. Yet on the other hand, nor had Florence waited to hear it out. Florence’s manner had been against hearing the truth, had warded away the truth. She hadn’t had the chance to tell Florence that she might never again listen to this siren song. Or was she trying to remake the situation and her true feelings in a way which would win Florence back? She had to state that, yes, that on that strange night with Jerome something within her had sung. The fault was that Florence by her tone, even before she left, had blocked her full confidences. She felt her hurt turning to resentment. How could Florence ride a high horse when she was herself so crafty? At the notion of ‘defect of character’, her spirit rebelled: she was not telling Florence about her ‘defects of character’ — she had been about to tell of a remarkable episode, sharing it. My God, she remembered giggling with Florence every time they ate spaghetti, because Florence once told her what the sound of cooked spaghetti and olive oil reminded her of. Florence was a hypocrite, a person who pretended to modern views but was really censoriously unchanging. Being ‘wild’ back in Canada was probably as innocent as being wild in Sydney. Had probably meant drinking beer from a bottle. Not wearing gloves.

She hoped that whatever her anger and whatever offence Florence had taken that she would still respect the confidence.

‘May I join you? Are you alone?’

Edith looked up hoping to see Florence back, smiling, apologetic, but instead saw Caroline Bailey still in her striking turban and outfit.

‘Yes.’ Edith gestured at the chairs ungraciously.

Caroline Bailey, too, looked unhappy.

She forced herself to smile at Caroline. ‘Congratulations, Caroline. It was a fine evening — your book is marvellous. We were all just saying it.’ Edith gestured to indicate that there had been others.

‘Would you mind if I ordered a drink? I feel wretched.’

‘I’ll have one with you. Whatever you’re having.’

Caroline ordered three Scotches; two, evidently, for herself. Unless she expected someone else. She lit up a cigarette, offering one to Edith who declined. ‘But, Caroline, you were marvellous — it was a first-rate show. You should be chuffed.’

‘Everyone just went off. Left me. Sophie made me some tea and I had to sit with her and make dreary conversation about the dreary ILO, when I wanted to be with real people and have a drink. You’re alone?’

‘Yes, the others took an early night.’ Edith realised that the drama club audience back at Sophie’s might have snubbed Caroline because of the book’s revelations. Or more likely, no one thought to ask her to go with them to a café or wherever. ‘People are probably shy of you, now that you’re a novelist.’

‘Do you think so? I think they’re snubbing me. I think they were all put off by the book and think I went too far.’

‘Robert Dole told me that the other journalists began behaving strangely to him when they knew he was writing a novel.’

‘He’s writing a novel too! The bookshops’ll be flooded.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘A hundred novels about the League of Nations. Ugh. At least I have a publisher. The Hogarth Press are going to take it. I sent them a few chapters.’

‘That’s marvellous.’

‘Don’t tell anyone.’

‘I’ll keep your secret.’

‘Don’t tell Robert Dole — he’ll send his book there and they’ll take his rather than mine.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Yes, he would. Newspaper people.’

Edith saw dourly that she had been socially switched from tending to her own distress about Florence’s behaviour to listening to the moaning of this temperamental, rather jumped-up young woman. Part of her mind continued to fret about whether she had truly lost Florence or whether it would all be healed in the morning.

‘Did you really like my book?’

‘I really did. I liked the way you showed the men finding out about each other’s secret self. And the problem of the League itself taking a lead,’ Edith added, scratching for something more to say.

Caroline lapped it up. ‘Ambrose is your friend, isn’t he?’

The implication was obvious. Why lie? ‘Yes.’

‘I suppose you recognised something of him in Humphrey Hume?’

‘A little.’

‘I don’t draw exactly from life in my work. I am more an impressionist. You don’t think he’ll be angry?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. But how well do you know Ambrose?’

If it were Ambrose depicted in the book, Edith wondered, what had been his connection with the typist who died in the mysterious operation? More, what was his relationship to Caroline Bailey? He had mentioned her and her book once or twice. There was the trip to Paris together. Caroline was on the edge of the Bavaria crowd, but had never become a friend. Surely she hadn’t gone to the Molly Club with Ambrose? Ambrose had said in some general way that he had not lived the life of a monk before she’d arrived in Geneva.

Caroline burbled on, ‘I see him around the office, at the Bavaria. I move about, I see things. God, I hate this town. Did you like the bit about the insipid blue of the dreadful lake? I must be the first writer in history to criticise their sacred lake.’

Edith loved the lake. She knew all about the mysteries of the origins of lakes, springs, and artesian wells. ‘Someone said that it was perfectly described, but maybe a man wouldn’t describe it like that. It’s more the way a woman might see it.’ Was Caroline secretly observing her and Ambrose? Was their life, her life, revealed in the book, and about to come tumbling out for all to see?

Caroline was immediately defensive. ‘The bit about pale blue and little girls coupling it with pale pink? Men have little sisters. Men know about these things.’

‘I suppose that’s right.’

Caroline seemed hurt. ‘Little boys grow up with their sisters.’

‘I didn’t mean it as a serious criticism.’

‘I think that it’s perfectly all right for a man to think that. The lake reminded him of, say, the way his little sister would see it.’

‘Of course.’

‘Heavens, most of Chaucer’s tales are about women or told by women. Have you read Chaucer? Anyhow, who cares. I’m going to live in Paris. When we were all down in Paris that time I went to the Café Certa. Where the surrealist crowd goes. I don’t know what you were all doing.’

‘Nothing much.’ Edith enjoyed, in a joyless way, having her secret to herself. She half-listened to Caroline’s frenzied talk, knowing that Caroline didn’t want answers to the questions she threw out.

‘Ambrose wasn’t mixed up with the typist — the one who died?’ Edith wanted answers.

‘Wasn’t he?’ Caroline was being enigmatic.

‘I’m asking you the question,’ Edith said, keeping an over-friendly smile on her face.

‘Every man in the section was mixed up with her.’ Caroline kept glancing about her at the strangers in the café as if waiting for them to come over and congratulate her. ‘I hate this city. And I hate this café.’

Edith decided to let it pass. Caroline was temperamental and restive and, for a writer, was not a person who seemed to care much about the precision of things.

Edith had to defend the League. ‘You shouldn’t be so hard on everyone.’

‘The Secretariat is a toy shop of broken dolls. Everyone here is busted up somehow. That’s what the book is about.’

Edith held back a sharp answer, remembering what Florence had said about Caroline’s broken heart, which explained other things. And I, for one, she thought, am not a broken doll.

The Scotches came and Caroline threw both hers down, one-two, like a Boer, Edith thought. She watched to see how they affected her. They appeared not to affect her at all, yet.

‘I have no faith,’ Caroline said, and called to the waiter, ‘Monsieur! Encore, s’il vous plait.’ Edith said she didn’t want another.

‘“The road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom”,’ Caroline said. ‘Let’s hope Blake’s right — but anyhow, at least you get the excess even if you don’t get to the wisdom.’

Edith stored away this quote from Blake, smiling inwardly as she recognised it as part of Liverright’s repertoire of quotations. Although she didn’t believe excess led to wisdom, she might say it to Florence when she attempted a reconciliation tomorrow. She was finding Caroline objectionable. ‘I think we have to learn to work with perplexity,’ she said to her, wanting to say something much harsher.

‘You think I don’t understand?’

‘I don’t believe we should throw up our hands in horror. I think there are better things to do than that.’

‘It’s about time someone threw up their hands in horror. It’s about time we all threw up our hands in horror. But my book’s about more than that.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of your book so much. We were wondering what you meant by “strange gods”?’

‘Nothing. I just like the expression — “strange gods” — I like the mystery of it. “Strange gods”. Everyone is going to hate me when the book comes out.’

Edith struggled to be civil. ‘You’ll be the toast of quai Woodrow Wilson, although you were hard on Liverright. Don’t you care what he feels?’

She giggled like a bad schoolgirl. ‘I’ve read it out to him and he doesn’t give a damn. He’s not that sort. Anyhow, by the time it comes out, I’ll be back in Bloomsbury, I hope. Or Paris. Out of this bloody place. We must have a talk one day about “older men”.’

Edith doubted that they would. ‘Leonard Woolf owns the publishing company?’

‘Leonard Woolf owns the Hogarth Press. He liked the book because he’s interested in international matters. Don’t know what Virginia thinks of it. Don’t particularly care.’

Apart from Robert Dole, who hadn’t yet published a book either, Caroline Bailey was the first author Edith had known. Though Caroline hadn’t published anything she seemed closer to it than Robert Dole. Yet Robert Dole seemed more ‘like’ a writer. She wondered whether she was a ‘writer’ herself, having written eleven poems. None ever submitted for publication. She hadn’t told anyone except Florence and hadn’t shown anyone, including Florence, and now probably wouldn’t.

‘I’m cynical through and through,’ Caroline said. ‘To the core.’

‘I’m not,’ Edith said, stubbornly. ‘In fact, I’m rather engrossed by it all.’

‘Bully for you.’

‘That’s a little rude.’

‘You said something earlier about me not using my intelligence. I found that rather rude. I think anyone who’s not cynical isn’t using their intelligence.’

Caroline Bailey looked around her in disgust at the café, Geneva, the League, the world. ‘The most boring place on earth. And this café! Why do you all come to this wretched place?’

Edith kept herself in control. She wanted to find out what Caroline knew and didn’t know. ‘You made Geneva sound rather glamorous, with mentions of vice and dark practices and so on.’

‘Oh, every town has maisons closes but this bloody city has them discreetly out of the city on the French border. Did you know that?’ Caroline blew smoke out at Geneva, and said in a voice which sounded full of regret, as if talking about art museums or street markets, ‘This town really doesn’t have any true vice.’

‘Your characters aren’t being truthful then.’

Caroline looked at her with derision. ‘You’re a rather naïve woman for your age. About novels.’

Edith didn’t respond, allowing a formal silence to settle. She did not know whether it was the reference to her age or to her naïvety which nettled her most but still, Caroline’s rudeness was unsuccessful.

Caroline said dismissively, ‘I thought, after the Paris trip, that you might be different from the rest of them. I thought your carry-on about the black woman singer was very astute.’

This came as a surprise to Edith, but she didn’t want to talk with Caroline. ‘I’m rather tired. I think I’ll say good night.’

‘Say good night then. Go along with all the rest. Bye bye.’ Caroline rudely waved her hand in front of her face.

As Edith stood up, Caroline added offensively, ‘Oh, by the way, you should be careful — they say you’re becoming the office vamp, now that June-alias-Rose is dead.’

‘Good night, Caroline.’

Edith gathered her things.

Caroline went on. ‘I observe things. I see you vamping around those people at the top.’ It was as if she would say anything to keep her there as company, did not want to be alone.

What Caroline was saying was astonishing to her but she wasn’t going to stay to hear it.

Aware that she was, in a way, repeating Florence’s behaviour, Edith worked out from the waiter’s tickets how much she owed, took money from her purse, placed it on the table, and left.

At the door she glanced back to see the beturbanned Caroline looking about for the waiter, for another Scotch, no doubt. Edith wondered whether it was true that the road of excess led to the Palace of Wisdom. She hoped, for Caroline’s sake, that it was.

As she walked home through the night, still cold although winter was almost gone, Edith felt miserable and alone. How could she possibly be a vamp? What exactly was a vamp? Is that how people saw her? She vaguely remembered Jerome calling her belle vamp australienne. But that had been friendly. Within the League she hadn’t had intimate relations with anyone but Ambrose and considered that in the office she conducted herself with men in a pally, but correct, manner. Too pally, maybe? What she’d done for Sir Eric during the crisis wasn’t vamping. That was comradeship. But Caroline’s perception couldn’t be trusted.

Together with this disconcerting idea, recklessly thrown at her by Caroline, there was still the earlier alarm from the unreconciled sense of herself, the sense of herself as daring, as having had a strange adventure in human passion, against the sense of her proper womanhood, about which Florence had so strongly reminded her. Somehow those had to be reconciled. Maybe her sense of womanhood was changing. Maybe some episodes which occurred in one’s life could, in fact, be put aside from one’s life, had no bearing on what one really was. Or were we the sum total of all that we allowed to happen to us? Were we made from everything that happened to us?

She arrived at another troubling thought. If her experiences were in fact ‘untellable’ to her friends, she was doomed to being a liar and a sneak with them, having those parts of her which she could not show. Or was there no obligation to tell all? What about if she married? When and how should she explain these things then? She realised that Ambrose was the only person on earth who truly knew her. And, of course, now Florence. Although Florence now ‘knew’ things about her, she didn’t feel that Florence knew her — fairly.

That made her feel very much alone.

She thought of calling in on Ambrose and worming her way into his bed. But she saw herself, once there, beginning a cross-examination in the middle of the night about his connections with the typist who had the mysterious operation and died. That would be a nice way to end the night and anyhow she had the Disarmanent Preparatory Commission beginning tomorrow. At least she would not have to face Florence for a few days.

She used self-control and went home, having lost a friend, although deep in her heart she believed there would be reconciliation in the morning, a friend who had called her a neurasthenic, and on top of that, a silly young writer had called her naïve and also branded her as the office vamp. A top night, a real top night. She tried to smile away her fears with this flippant Ambrose-style expression, but she was, she saw suddenly, at risk in the world.