The Key to All Predicaments

At first, Edith was perturbed that Ambrose had been invited to the next Directors’ meeting and had been given permission to make a statement on Agriculture. Apart from it not being his field of expertise, she supposed that she felt that he should have been denied access to the Directors’ meeting totally and for ever more, as part of his punishment, but more than that, she didn’t like the idea of being in the room while he made his statement, though she wasn’t going to miss a meeting because of him. Since their parting of the ways, now over a year ago, she’d barely seen him, except to say hello while passing in the corridor, and consequently no etiquette had evolved to allow them to exist socially or professionally in close proximity. Bluntly, her opposition to him attending the meeting came from a selfish reasoning. She had an equivocal status at the Directors’ meetings, as a stand-in for Bartou. She wanted eventually to be seen as a bona fide part of the meeting and she certainly didn’t want to have to cope with a disgraced former lover at a Directors’ meeting when she had enough to struggle with already.

Ambrose didn’t seem in any way to hold her actions against her and in the corridor he always tried to ensnare her, while she, on the other hand, always kept going, waving and smiling, but not stopping. She felt she had nothing to say to him. When she’d seen him around the Palais or, very occasionally, at the Bavaria he appeared to her to be going off somewhat. His smile seemed to be overanxious to find a smile in return; his clothes, while still well-made, were not properly cared for. She was also irritated that his going off was still being interpreted by those who didn’t know the full story as being a result of a broken heart.

Sitting at his large desk, smoking his pipe, Bartou said that Ambrose had been given leave to address the meeting because everyone had a special respect for those officers who’d been there from the beginning.

‘Even if that long service was somewhat disloyal?’ she said, grumpily, standing at the window looking at the first snow of winter. ‘Even if it isn’t his field of expertise?’

Bartou shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s his attempt to find grace again. He can’t be punished for ever.’

She still felt much more strongly about this matter than he did. Perhaps she didn’t accept that one could regain grace once having fallen from it the way he had. She said she couldn’t see why Ambrose wasn’t asked to put his statement or whatever in writing.

‘He said he couldn’t put it in writing — it was philosophically too involved.’

She could tell there was amusement in Bartou’s tone.

Bartou added, ‘I suspect that the Latins think that he might be about to tell them a British secret — as penance.’

‘It’s a big mystery then?’

‘It is, I suspect, a small mystery. And over a fine lunch some time this week, perhaps, I expect you to tell it to me as a good mystery story should be told.’

‘You won’t be going to the meeting?’

‘This is one for you, Edith.’

The fine lunches were too common now, and although she described them as luncheon ‘tutorials’, he was teaching her more about lunching than the League. In the old days, Ambrose had taught her about the importance of dinner as a gastronomic expedition whose course was plotted by wine, and a conversational event where wine was the master of ceremonies. Now Bartou expounded the value of the lunch. Back in the office after these lunches, Bartou tended to doze. He was growing old and had earned easy afternoons. And in her case, the guilt of a good lunch made her work even harder and longer. She’d begun also to take telephone calls and answer letters on his behalf, making his decisions.

Bartou had taken to sending her along to the Directors’ meetings more often than not, unless he had something very pressing to say at a meeting. She felt he was pushing her forward, although at the same time, he was withdrawing somewhat from the internal life of the League to get on with preparing the ground for the world disarmament conference which had become his overriding mission. And by devolvement and choice, it was also becoming her overriding mission. The third leg of the tripod — arbitration was in place with the court of international justice, economic sanctions had replaced war, and now followed disarmament.

He returned to the subject of Ambrose saying, ‘Diplomacy sometimes requires the capacity to forget. Or, more precisely, it requires some officers who remember and some who forget. Those who can forget are free to get on with making things afresh with optimism, while those who can’t forget issue warnings. If everyone remembered everything in politics, we would all stand eternally condemned and frozen. I think that is why the world forgives and forgets its liars, cheats and other villains. I know we pretend that people in public life who make a serious error are finished. They seldom are if they stay alive and stay in the game. There but for the grace of God, go I.’ He said he thought that knowing ‘when to forget’ was a diplomatic art. And a social art.

‘Not I. In this particular case,’ she said. She didn’t care if it sounded priggish.

But by the time the meeting came around, she’d softened her position a little about Ambrose, and felt that maybe it was time for him to be given a chance to redeem himself, although she would oppose any permanent return to the haute direction. She was also curious to hear what he’d been thinking about and what he’d come up with.

Her arrival at the meeting room was always carefully timed so that she was not the first there, not wanting to appear an eager beaver, nor the last, fearing that either way she would draw attention to herself, and perhaps bring into question the legitimacy of her presence there. Entering the room, she said hello and sat, as usual, beside Dame Rachel.

She looked down the agenda. She saw that Ambrose was to be called to the meeting first.

He entered the room rather loudly with photographs clumsily pinned to a board and Jules coming behind him carrying an easel. Jules wasn’t a messenger in Ambrose’s section and must have been there as a favour to Ambrose. The photographs seemed to be of a tractor and farming implements. She recalled with a smile her first ever Directors’ meeting and Ambrose’s successful arguments for emergency procedures, with working models. She mentioned it to Dame Rachel who said, ‘Oh yes, I remember very well.’

After Jules had put the easel in place, he said, ‘Is that all, Major?’ and Ambrose, in a brisk voice, said, ‘Thank you, Jules,’ and Jules left the room.

Ambrose came across to Dame Rachel and her, saying hello to Dame Rachel and then turning to her and taking her hand, ‘Edith, it’s so good to see you up here with the gods. And good to have a friend in court,’ he said warmly. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘We’re all agog about your mysterious presentation,’ she said, in a restrained but sociable tone, uncomfortable with his assumption that she was unquestionably a friend in court. He seemed to have made an effort with his appearance. She glanced at his polished shoes with private unhappy amusement. He had once showed her how he tied his shoes with a double cross in the laces, saying, ‘Things like that are important to me.’

He narrowed his eyes mysteriously. ‘I think you’ll all be somewhat bowled over.’

She hoped they would, and that he’d be back in favour again, something of his old self, and that she would be relieved of the guilt she occasionally, and unjustly, felt for his downfall.

The meeting was opened by Sir Eric and he invited Ambrose to talk to them.

In his best English accent, as if also polished for the occasion, Ambrose thanked the Directors and other heads of section for permitting him to speak. He said it was good to be back in such exalted altitudes again, since his own ‘change of circumstances’.

There were supportive chuckles. Edith tried not to chuckle but did, pulled in by the laughter of the others.

‘I want to begin philosophically. In my banishment, I have been able to give much time to thinking philosophically. What has come home to me is that we, in the League, have been dealing with all things in isolation, in compartments, when we should’ve been looking at them as a whole, as a planetary system, with the planets revolving in fixed axes to each other. We have not been thinking universally. I blame myself as much as I blame anyone. Believe me, it was how I thought until recently. More anon.

‘I see all international predicaments as linked one with the other, all in cause and effect. If we are to wallop these predicaments, I would now argue that we must begin at one correct and vital place. Not at all places at once. And it is at this one point that we must apply all our coffers. That somewhere, that beginning point, is the key to all our endeavours.

‘For having once found this point, and then having changed this one cardinal part of our universe in an absolute and productive way, it will follow that all other parts will therefore change in an absolute and productive way. There will be a cause-and-effect repercussion through to all the other predicaments — an explosive chain of consequence — through the whole of the universe of predicaments which bedevil us. In medicine we once called it the reflex arc, the theory that one organ can sicken another.’

This was a tantalising, if fanciful, beginning and Ambrose had the attention of the meeting.

‘Down in my place of banishment, my Siberia, I asked myself which predicament it was to which all others are linked.

‘I knew that if I could determine this, then I would have the key to all predicaments. Time went by and no answer came to me.’

He went on with a tense enthusiasm. ‘While on leave, I saw an invention and was struck by the whole philosophical and organic connection to this one invention and I said to myself, “Why, here it is!” We look to conferences and assemblies and parliaments to solve the calamities of the human condition when here before our very eyes — my very eyes in this case — ’ he smiled, but went on without waiting for any responsive laughter, ‘here then was the answer, in a field of hay. It is not political theory which will save us, but one simple useful invention. How obvious it now looks!

‘It came to me that all predicaments of the world are linked to a very rudimentary thing — they are all linked to hunger. That if we solved the predicament of hunger then all others would be resolved, as it were, overnight: war and so on, good health — here I speak as a doctor.’

There were some glances one to the other now as Ambrose talked. He was sounding not like a doctor at all, and less and less like a League official — more like someone at Hyde Park Corner. Or one of the many crank correspondents who wrote to the League.

‘If people are well fed, nourished correctly, they will resist all illness. I believe this. That correct diet will armour people against all illness. I see your first objection. That surely it also matters what persuasions and beliefs these people have to life, that also determines their health mentally. I argue that persuasions and beliefs flow from good diet — good politics comes from good diet.’

Everyone in the room now seemed to know that it was going wrong and that Ambrose was not well, but they were immobilised by courtesy.

He was oblivious to the change in the mood of the meeting. ‘With my haversack and birch staff — very English — ’ he smiled at the non-English members, ‘here I was, on a walking trip through Wiltshire in the sunshine, listening to the birds, smelling the flowers, smelling the hay, and I stopped to watch the hay-makers at work. For anyone wanting to refresh their spirits, I would recommend Wiltshire at the end of summer — I have some inns, some addresses if anyone is interested — it was here in Wiltshire and in a field of hay that I saw the answer to all to which we have dedicated our lives: the simple invention which will revolutionise all our lives — trust the British to come up with it, I thought — gentlemen, ladies, this invention is called the New Century Hay Sweep.’

He paused for dramatic effect.

For a single minute, as he stood there expectantly with his pointer, she was able to look at him dispassionately and she saw that he was unbalanced — perhaps the shock of being demoted and the continuing mental strains from the War had now unbalanced him seriously. There was a desperate tension oozing through his affable manner. She could see now that the affable manner was, in fact, an imitation of an affable manner. There were some nervous clearings of throats, some shuffling. Oh my God, thought Edith, and she looked at Dame Rachel who had closed her eyes.

‘I know what some of you are thinking.’ Ambrose tried for a joke, sensing for the first time, perhaps, that the audience was not altogether with him. ‘You are thinking, some of you, that I have a financial interest in the New Century Hay Sweep or that I am connected by family or something like that to the inventor. Not true. Not true at all. No fiduciary connection exists at all. None whatsoever, I assure you.

‘I saw the New Century Hay Sweep being used both with horses and with tractor and the farmers and men using it have nothing but praise for it.

‘It is an absurdly simple contrivance and until you see it in use it looks quite impractical, quite ungainly — clumsy even.

‘The hay is left in long rough lines on the field and the sweep is drawn either by two horses or a tractor.

‘The machine consists of long wooden prongs which can be raised or lowered by a lever in the hand of a single driver. The prongs are lowered until they just scrape the ground when picking up the hay and raised when the sweep is empty or has a load.

‘The sweep takes the hay right up to the stack or barn. I saw it at work on a hot day and the horse hardly lathered at all. I touched the rump of the horse to test if it was straining. I can assure you gentlemen, ladies, that it was not.’ He said this with inappropriate intensity.

‘If the sweep, as often occurs, drops or fails to pick up a lump of hay, it merely stops, backs at once out of its load which remains on the ground, and then picks up the bit it has left together with the main load and goes forward again. Do you all follow?

‘Now for the revolutionary fact: I am told that the sweep does the work of four men and eight horses.’

Edith looked around. Dame Rachel was now trying to catch Sir Eric’s eye to stop the embarrassment. But Sir Eric was looking fixedly at the papers in front of him, as if frozen. He’d worked so closely with Ambrose as far back as the Peace Conference and then in the early days of the League. For Edith, it was an agony of empathy together with personal mortification. She had never been in a meeting caught in such a paralysing tension of embarrassment.

Ambrose, unaware of the mood of the meeting, went on with his speech. ‘With a tractor, the result is even more striking. The sweep is fixed at the front of the tractor and the lever for raising and lowering it is at the driver’s right hand. The man at the wheel said he could do a steady eight miles an hour. He said he had not broken a single prong during the season. I confess that the machine looks as if it would perpetually be dropping part of its load and as if the prongs would always be catching in the ground and breaking off, but these things do not occur.

‘There is one problem, and I rush to admit this. The sweep is wider than most gates. But in countries with no fences this should not be a problem — that is, in the poorer countries which desperately need such an invention.

‘What I am saying is this: if we can speed up agricultural production worldwide by eight times, we can feed eight times more people, roughly speaking. Hence, banishing hunger for all time.

‘So, in conclusion, with your permission Sir Eric, I would ask the meeting, with respect, to consider urgently putting information about this sweep before our new Subcommittee of Agricultural Experts and before all governments across the world.

‘I have since sought out the man who patented it and he would be happy to arrange for a demonstration in Geneva for all interested governments.’

He beamed out a smile which begged for applause and for compliments. Maybe for a standing ovation. Ambrose must have sensed at this point that there was considerable unease in the meeting and that he had not convinced them, had been somehow off the mark. No one was looking at him directly; no eye would meet his eye.

She forced herself to look across at him and smile, but it was a pained smile. He mouthed something back to her — maybe something like ‘Am I going well?’ — but she looked away.

After an agony of silence he started up again, ‘I suppose the meeting is worried about the sweep being too wide for farm gates. I knew that this would worry some people and it worried me. One of the answers is that the widening of gates could be subsidised by the better-off farmers and governments …’ he began to scramble, ‘… or if that proves impracticable then the farmers themselves might consider widening their gates. Not a big job. After all, what originally back in the mists of time determined the width of a gate? The width of a gate is not God-given.’ He stared into space as if wondering whether to go on further into the history of gates and then turned away from that direction.

‘Surely no one could say that this is an expensive item. It costs about twenty-four pounds sterling.’

He faltered again as some of those at the meeting began now to frown at him while others began leafing through their papers. Someone should have thanked him and let him go, but no one moved. Sir Eric was still staring at his papers and consequently Ambrose stood in the room with his notes in his hand beside the photographs on the display board. These now caught his eye.

He tapped the board. ‘You can study the photographs which I took personally. Not too brilliant in terms of focus, but the points I have mentioned are illustrated by them well enough … to recap: the New Century Hay Sweep is the answer to hay-gathering. Hay-gathering and preservation is the secret to the feeding of animals through winter. Maybe I forgot to mention that. Oh yes, that is important. Keep that in mind. Hay is the secret to good husbandry, good husbandry is the secret of good farming, good farming is the secret to famine, the elimination of famine is the secret to the ending of disease and war.’

He stood before the Directors, now sensing that something had gone wrong but clearly unable to make any assessment of what it was that had gone wrong. He groped through his notes, maybe thinking that it was some piece of information which he’d missed out that would make everything more convincingly complete and sway the meeting.

Edith felt a squirming discomfort in her muscles, wanting for the situation to stop but not knowing how to stop it.

‘Oh — yes!’ He seemed to think that he’d found a solution to his dilemma. ‘Questions — of course! Are there any questions? How silly — of course you must have questions. I am no farmer, but bowl them up.’ And then, speaking to himself, said the word ‘questions’ as a reprimand, as if to say, how silly of me to forget to call for questions, that of course everyone was waiting to be invited to ask questions — that was what was wrong. ‘You must be bursting with questions. Don’t worry — I don’t expect you to know about agriculture.’

Nearly everyone was looking now at Sir Eric, their gaze almost demanding him to bring the embarrassment to a close. He looked up slowly. ‘Thank you, Ambrose. Very informative. We must, you understand, get on with our agenda, and I’ll be in touch in due course.’ She had never heard Sir Eric refer to anyone by their first name.

Ambrose was nonplussed that there were no questions, no applause, and perhaps at hearing his first name.

‘But … ? Of course, I am glad, Sir Eric, that you found it so informative — when I was there in the field, in Wiltshire, in the sunshine, I found it remarkable — dazzling — that I should’ve come across the answer there in a field of hay in Wiltshire. I am so glad that you all see what I mean …’

He was struggling to find conviction now, hoping that soon he would hear the right words of acclamation spoken by Sir Eric or by someone in the group, the words which would recognise his discovery and applaud it.

‘Yes, well, good man, keep on with your philosophising, and now we must be on with our work here.’ Sir Eric sounded as if he were talking to the man driving the tractor, not to a former close colleague.

It was as though one of the cranks had climbed over the Palais walls and into the very heart of the League.

‘Perhaps, Sir Eric, if there are questions which occur to anyone, they could contact me down in Siberia?’ He beamed out his entreating smile. ‘Glad that all is now forgiven and so on and so forth.’ He still stood there, unable to break away from the place where he so desperately wanted to be and where he wished to belong.

Edith could stand it no longer and she got to her feet, feeling that she had to take responsibility for Ambrose as he stood at the edge of his chasm. She went over to him, taking his arm, saying quietly, ‘Thank you, Ambrose, that was useful,’ and led him to the door.

‘You’re convinced then?’ he said grasping at her words, then looked behind him. ‘My photographs …’ He made to go back into the room. She stopped him, saying that she’d get Jules to bring them down to him, adding, ‘People might like to study them.’ She wanted him out of the room.

At the door, he looked across again at Sir Eric and the others and waved. She guided him out, closing the door behind them.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘they’ll want to study them. It’s a delightfully simple idea, isn’t it?’

‘It is, indeed.’

‘One second — something else to tell.’

Before she could stop him, he ducked back in the room. She called, ‘Ambrose — no.’ But he poked his head into the room and said, ‘One point — forgot it — to convert the horse sweep to a tractor sweep costs only ten guineas. Sorry. Forgot. Thanks again, chaps.’

She was about to go after him and tug him out of the room, but he came back to her. He still had an ingratiating, boyish smile.

He was now optimistically insensible to what had happened. ‘I think they liked the idea of the hay sweep but they may need time to understand the philosophical point — that all is related — like the planets — and that all is soluble — all is … well, all is whatever.’ He laughed. ‘That’s it: “All is whatever”.’

It was almost a glimpse of the old self-teasing Ambrose laughing at himself, but it wasn’t really the old Ambrose. It was not the laughter of someone confident in the uncertainty of life. His laughter and his expression were different; they expressed the forlorn hope that what he’d said was not something about which to laugh, but was indeed a remarkable expression of genius.

Out in the corridor, he still kept on. ‘In Australia it would be fine. No gates there.’

‘I expect that it would be.’ She smelled his breath for the first time, and detected no alcohol. She wished he’d been drunk and that it could all be explained by that.

She almost steered him down the corridor, standing until she was sure he was going. He turned twice to wave.

She stood until he had turned the corridor corner. She was struck by an unworthy feeling, that she’d been embarrassed by the idea that the others might still associate him with her, and that she’d made a mistaken move by getting up and seeing him out. Still, what mattered was that her decent self had got to its feet and helped him. And surely long ago gossip had made sure that everyone knew that they were no longer in any way a couple. She went back into the room. She heard someone say, ‘Yes, with Curzon for a time …’

Sir Eric looked at her and said, ‘Thank you, Berry, nicely done. Now let’s get on.’

 

After work, she talked with Claude, who was now Ambrose’s superior. Claude knew what she was talking about. He agreed that Ambrose needed help.

‘His work is no longer really good enough. I’ve talked to him — gently — but he’s declining.’

‘Why don’t you do something!’

‘Me? I can hardly go to someone like Westwood and tell him that he’s shell-shocked or whatever. It’s hard enough being his superior. In other circumstances, he’d be my superior.’

She asked about Ambrose’s friends.

‘He’s become something of a recluse. I can’t think who I would designate as his close friend.’

She recalled seeing him drinking alone in the Bavaria. Sometimes someone would drift over to him to say hello.

‘Anyone who talks to him simply stands at his table and chats but they never sit,’ Claude said.

‘You and I do that to him.’

‘Precisely,’ Claude said.

Immediately after his demotion he’d still drop into the Bavaria as if nothing had changed, as a way of keeping up appearances. At first she’d thought he was coming there to be pathetic, to indict her, but Edith realised that she had no idea who knew or who didn’t know about the reasons for his fall.

Claude said nervously, ‘Have a talk to him, Berry. I know it’s hard to do. Might have to pack him off back to England. Let the FO have him back. His relatives, maybe.’

‘He has no relatives that I know of.’

‘I can’t manufacture relatives or friends for a chap.’ Claude tried to be light but she could see that he was feeling the sadness of it.

 

In her rooms at the pension, she collapsed in her armchair, her eyes closed, reliving the nausea of the meeting.

It was growing on her that she was obliged to do something about Ambrose and this agitated her. But too often people one knew at work, or socially — or worse, former lovers — were observed to be breaking down but no one talked with the person about it; everyone pretended everything was all right, acquaintances just let the person slide into catastrophe until they were taken seriously ill. She’d wondered about herself at times. After the stoning of the Palais Wilson, when she’d gone to Chamonix — she had hidden the fact that she was a bit odd. In those cases a holiday, or the passing of time, had cured her.

There was the added difficulty of taking such an action with a former lover. She searched her mind for another person she could ask to intercede, to go to him and help, but she couldn’t think of anyone on whom she could off-load the responsibility. Claude had dodged it and, as he’d confirmed, Ambrose had become somewhat isolated. She imagined that his old associates were probably steering clear of him. She would have to go to him.

What could one do to help a person in decline? She could lead him to seek help from a physician or a clinic. One could offer solace — if the person was a friend. One could amuse and keep the person cheerful for an hour or so. One could participate in the person’s illusion that everything was unexceptional. Drink with them while they died in drunkenness night after night.

She had to get it off her mind now, and heavily she forced herself up, put on her coat and went out again, dog-tired. She would take him to dinner.

She rang the bell and Ambrose came to the door and let her in, obviously delighted by her visit. She hadn’t been there since the night they’d parted ways.

He was welcoming and seemingly in good spirits.

‘How good of you to call — what a pleasant surprise. During the afternoon I was expecting some of the others to drop down and talk about the hay sweep. No one came by.’

The apartment was dusty but tidy, still very much the way they’d done it together back in the mad, giggling days. There was a smell of cooking, well, of toast burning, and under that, a smell which she would describe as the smell of a man, a man alone, of self-neglect.

He wore a dressing robe over his work clothes. He still had on his tie. He had an open bottle of Scotch on the glass-topped round table, drink in hand. He had changed his shoes and had on his tasselled loafers.

He hugged her, she offered her cheek for a kiss but he kissed her lips, still holding his glass. ‘I was drowning my indigestion,’ he said, waving the Scotch glass.

‘You always said that if you had indigestion Scotch only stirred up the frogs in the swamp,’ she said for want of something to say, taking off her coat.

‘The first one does but then the others knock them on the head. But, oh, this calls for champagne.’

‘No — a Scotch will be fine.’

‘Not good enough,’ and he went off to the kitchen, calling out to her, ‘A champagne day. My lecturette. Return of a long lost friend.’ He returned with the bottle of Lanson, labouring with the cork.

‘Please, Ambrose, no champagne.’

Ambrose ignored her, and the cork popped. He went to the glasses cabinet and took out two cut-glass champagne goblets, pouring the foaming champagne until it overflowed onto the carpet, which was not like him at all. ‘I was just about to have something to eat — not much really, but you’re welcome,’ he said.

She took the glass of champagne with sad reluctance.

‘It’s early for dinner,’ she said. ‘But thank you, if you have enough.’

‘I was just having something eggy on a tray.’

Somehow his saying that confirmed her apprehensions about Ambrose, Ambrose who’d always been a fastidious eater. ‘Something eggy on a tray and something horrid on toast,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it! You abhor people who eat like that!’ She found she was thinking before she spoke, and she said this, hoping that he could be perhaps teased or shamed into pulling himself together, and she decided then to say, ‘Remember, we both swore to each other than we’d never end up living like that, that we would always eat the French way, come what may?’

‘Oh, standards have slipped a bit around here. Back to trench food. Cheers. What a grand day!’ He touched glasses with her. ‘To the return of a friend.’

She then suspected that his description of his evening meal was intended to sound pathetic, especially to her, that he was twisting her sympathies, although she noticed that he didn’t renew the invitation to eat with him nor did he go near the kitchen. Thankfully, he let pass the idea of their having something eggy on a tray or something horrid on toast.

And she, in turn, decided not to invite him out to dinner, recalling their last trying meal together. She couldn’t face sitting through dinner with him.

‘I think I know why you’ve come,’ he said, propelling her to the lounge, sitting her down and sitting himself too closely beside her, assuming a manly command which teetered a little.

‘What’s your guess?’ Without having touched it, she put down the glass of champagne on the dusty glass-topped table. It left a ring. She felt, given her inner thoughts, that it would be perfidious of her to let the champagne touch her lips.

‘Sir E. has sent you. I’m again persona grata? You and Bartou put your heads together? Had me reinstated? Am I correct? I know you are a Power in the Land these days. More so than I — even in my heyday. Hay-day today? Like the play on words? You liked all my games,’ he said with empty flirtation.

He was speaking quickly, rambling on, perhaps not wanting to face her reply just yet, in case it was other than he wished.

She smiled, wishing that the momentum of his chatter would carry him far enough away from his hopeful questions, so that she wouldn’t have to answer.

But eventually he asked, ‘Well, what did Sir E. say? Am I back in?’

‘Too soon for that, I’m afraid — for now …’ She hated herself for sugaring her reply.

‘I knew the meeting had a long agenda. Sir E. told me that I really could only ask for ten minutes or so. I tried to keep it short. That wasn’t the problem, was it? Too long? I timed it. I may’ve gone over a minute or so — they aren’t holding that against me, are they? It was, after all, rather top-line stuff. Couldn’t expect that the reinstatement of old Ambrose would pop up on the agenda. You know, don’t you, that my lecturette was an attempt to resuscitate my fortunes? Save the world: save Ambrose. Get back to form. I tried to keep it short but telling at the same time. Did you think it went over?’

He stood up, with slight agitation, and poured himself a second glass of champagne, having quickly, burpingly, drunk the first.

There was no easy way to do it. ‘Ambrose, sit down and let me talk with you.’

‘Oh — right!’ He sat down again, like an obedient schoolboy. ‘You have Something to Say. I can tell. I’ve become rather good at picking when someone has Something to Say.’

Looking into his eyes she said, quietly, ‘I am worried about you. We are all worried about you.’

‘You did talk about me then, the meeting?’

‘I mean generally. Your friends.’

‘My friends?’ He seemed to be searching his mind to remember who his friends could be.

‘I am worried about you, Ambrose,’ she took his hands in hers, ‘dear Ambrose.’

‘Oh, come on — I might be a bit … well, I am a bit absentminded one way or another … but not too bad. I was in good form today, wasn’t I? Forgot to call for questions, but they didn’t hold that against me, did they?’

She had to plough on and get it over with. ‘No, Ambrose, you were not in good form. Not at all.’

He started to show indignation. ‘Comert seemed to be won over. He was taking notes and so on. Sir E. said that it was all “highly informative”.’

‘Ambrose, look at me.’ She took his hands and held them firmly. ‘It was something of a disaster. They weren’t impressed. It’s a misguided idea you have about this hay sweep. You sounded very fatigued, you sounded worn down by things, you’ve been pushed beyond your limit. It’s time for you to stop for a while — to take care of yourself.’

‘But I’m just back from leave.’

That was right. She’d forgotten Wiltshire. He was, then, truly ill — it was more than a holiday that he needed. Before she could find the words to bring home to him his condition, he jumped in with another rally. ‘I agree with you now, I can see that it was my mention of the British — when I said “trust the British to come up with the answer”, that line — that was what put their backs up. The non-English-speaking chaps don’t like that. Error of judgement on my part.’ Ambrose released one of his hands from hers and slapped his wrist. He looked at her conspiratorially. ‘Obviously the British were with me. Even if they couldn’t come out with it at the meeting.’

‘Ambrose, it wasn’t anything like that. It was that the whole thing, the idea of the hay sweeper solving the problems of the world — Ambrose, it’s fanciful, it’s not aligned to reality.’

This registered with him. ‘You think I’m going potty?’

‘I think you need a long rest, a break from this sort of work, and a little loving care.’

He seemed to brighten at her saying this. ‘I did it for you, you know — trying to impress. Say it did. Today was all for you. Are you offering?’

She didn’t quite understand. ‘Offering?’

‘Loving care.’

Oh, God. ‘No, Ambrose, it was not for me. Today was something else. I don’t think it’s me you need to help you.’

‘You think I’m potty!’ He huffed.

‘I think you’re under strain. Maybe it’s something left over from the War, as well.’

‘You don’t see that you might be a bit to blame?’

‘Me? How?’ she said, tiredly.

‘Turning a chap down.’

‘Ambrose …’ She felt expended and ineffective. ‘We were never going to marry — that wasn’t why we were together back then. And there was the spy thing.’

‘Fuss over nothing. I was on the right side. In a balloon with a telescope. Just doing my bit.’

She saw now that she really couldn’t help him, that he saw her as part of the blizzard blowing against him and blowing deep inside him. She also saw that he had no repentance about the spying business.

He became self-defensive and haughty. ‘I don’t see you for almost a year, then you show up to tell me I’m potty — trying to blame it all on the War.’

‘I came to tell you to get help — if you don’t you’ll be left to rot where you are and never rehabilitated. You might even be let go.’

‘You don’t understand. You don’t really understand, do you? They can’t do that.’

‘I’ll make an appointment with someone you can talk to about what’s worrying you, and then when you’re well again we can talk to Sir Eric about getting things back to normal.’ She was trying to use the possibility of reinstatement as a carrot. She turned it into a rule, something like, ‘Promises made to sick people to help them get better are not binding.’

‘I think you’ve misunderstood everything,’ he said, with a patronising tone. ‘I would expect Sir Eric to be talking to me before too long. He said he would be in touch. It will mean exports for the British, you see. I should’ve emphasised that. We like that, we British, doing good and selling a few machines at the same time. Especially now we have this economic silliness.’

He went to a drawer and took out pencil and paper and began making a calculation on the scrap of paper.

She stood up. ‘You’re not well, Ambrose. Think about it. I am going to call to see you again tomorrow at the Palais. I’ll bring Joshi.’

‘If you haven’t anything funnier to say, don’t bother. Don’t bother to bring Joshi either. I haven’t got malaria and anyhow, I’m a doctor myself. Can look after myself. You lack caprice, Edith. Always said that.’

He was very nervous and went on scribbling figures on the sheet of paper.

How did you help? Did you let them go completely mad? Did they have to start wearing pyjamas in the street before anyone took notice? She remembered a Mrs Cobb from back home who’d lost a son in the War and who had gone to the corner of their street each day expecting his return. She sometimes argued that those people close to someone who suicided should be held responsible, should be questioned about their negligence. She would talk to Joshi about it.

She was letting herself out of the apartment when he looked up, realising that she was leaving, and came to the door. He took her arm. ‘Don’t go yet.’ His voice sounded normal and was so pleading that it hurt her heart.

She leaned to him and kissed his cheek. ‘I must, Ambrose, I’ll call in to see you at the office. Think about what I’ve said.’ She thought that his body had changed its smell.

‘If you came back — if we could get together and make things work — promise no more dresses. Scout’s honour.’ He made a Boy Scout salute. ‘Will be a regular chap. What do you say? We might make a go of things? I’d be much improved. I think you’d set me right. I’ll become a gastropath instead.’

‘Ambrose, I can’t help you. You have to go to a physician.’

He frowned and then smiled in an exaggerated way. ‘Oh well, can’t blame a chap for trying with a girl, can you? Fare thee well, pleasant evening, all that.’ Without looking at her, he went back inside the apartment, and closed the door behind him.

 

Bartou agreed with her. He’d heard the painful story of the meeting from others and he, too, was worried about Ambrose. ‘Some of us have seen it happening over the years.’

‘Over the years?’ This perturbed her. Did he mean that others could see that Ambrose was ill when she’d been with him? That she hadn’t been able to see this? ‘What exactly?’

‘There was his overconcern with detail below his rank. I remember him worrying about the soap. The soap the cleaners used. Matters like that. He said the soap was too strong. Would eat into the soil.’

She remembered the business about the soap but she hadn’t listened to him. She now remembered other things. She realised how little one actually saw of one’s lover. Even when they worked in the same building. ‘What is to be done?’

‘There is,’ he said, ‘the Swiss way of handling it and the British way.’ He said that if Ambrose went back to England, he might be looked upon as a lovable eccentric. ‘“Tis no great matter there.”’

‘Or an unlovable eccentric.’

‘Quite so. Here they would place him in a beautiful Alpine clinic and treat him with machines and long walks and keep him there until he recovered. I hear they eat well.’ He said something about the Fogel clinic at Montreux where Zelda Fitzgerald, the author’s wife, had gone — and a couple of League people.

‘Machines?’

‘Oh, exercise machines, I think. Nothing from the Inquisition.’

‘There is also the Viennese way.’

‘For that you have to get him onto the couch. Can you get him onto the couch?’

‘I can’t see him going onto a couch. No. How could we get him into a clinic?’

The ugly word ‘commit’ leapt at her, from its use in Australia, from the grim world of lunatic asylums. ‘It wouldn’t be a lunatic asylum? He’s not a lunatic.’ She wondered if he were. Was he going mad?

‘The Swiss word is kinder,’ he said. ‘When we say “asylum” we mean it. As in political asylum. A refuge from trouble.’

‘But are the Swiss? Kinder?’

He shrugged.

At least if he went to a Swiss clinic, she could visit. Would she visit? Would anyone visit? There was no pretty way of doing it.

‘I’ll talk with Joshi.’

‘I have doctor friends here in Geneva who will help.’

‘Thank you.’

 

She talked with Joshi, telling him everything except to mention Ambrose’s sexual predilection. She did not want to be the one to mention that to anyone. Nor was she sure that it was a part of the illness. Maybe it was part of his health.

Joshi said he would visit Ambrose himself, examine him, and then talk with Bartou’s doctor friends.

A day later, Joshi called to see her and to report on his visit. He agreed that Ambrose should be given help. ‘He seemed to realise why I was there but tried to suggest that you had your reasons for going about telling people he was mad.’

She felt cold at the unthinkable possibility that Joshi or anyone else might possibly believe that of her. ‘How unjust.’

‘It’s clear to me that the man is sick.’ Joshi knew of the Directors’ meeting, had talked to others. Joshi looked at her and said, ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Are you going to put him in the clinic?’

‘Me?’

‘Someone has to initiate it. Someone has to say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘That he is a danger to the public — or to himself.’

Was he a danger to anyone? He was certainly in danger of hurting his professional standing. His health?

She looked hopefully at Joshi. ‘Can’t you?’

‘If I were licensed to practise here and if he were running amok.’

She saw that Joshi was putting the responsibility onto her.

He said, ‘Usually it would be next of kin.’

She stared at the wall. ‘I suppose I am the nearest to him. But I am not “next of kin”.’

He nodded. ‘Legally you could pass as wife, de facto. Stretching it a bit.’

‘But I’m not. I shouldn’t be responsible for him. That’s hardly right. It certainly is stretching it a bit.’

‘I accept that it’s stretching it a bit. Not fair at all. But someone known to be close to him has to sign.’

‘The clinic? This clinic will make him well again?’

Joshi’s face showed sad scepticism. ‘It is his best chance. Though some might prescribe love and the passing of time.’

She wondered whether she had the time or the love to give Ambrose. No, she couldn’t give Ambrose the type of love that he needed.

She looked at the Laurencin lithograph of Les deux soeurs on the wall of her corner. She and Ambrose? Her selves? The sisters she didn’t have and wanted? A postcard of The Three Sisters, three huge rock projections in the Blue Mountains. Until that moment she hadn’t seen the connection between the painting and the postcard.

She looked back to Joshi. ‘I will do it.’

He said he would arrange for Ambrose’s admission to a good clinic, probably the one at Montreux.

On the following Saturday, she and Joshi went to Ambrose’s apartment and explained to Ambrose what was happening.

Her glass of undrunk champagne was where she had left it, flat and untouched. The bottle had not been finished.

He tried to laugh them off. They had to wrestle a bottle of Scotch away from him and then he broke down. Joshi talked him into allowing him to inject him with a calming drug.

The ambulance arrived while she was packing some clothing for him. They went with him to the ambulance. He was unsteady on his feet from the drug and was helped into the ambulance by two attendants.

She had no urge to stop them taking him.

Joshi and she stood together on the pavement as the ambulance drew away.

‘And about you, how is it with you, then?’ Joshi said, turning to her. ‘Are you bearing up?’ He held her face in both hands, looking at her closely, kindly.

‘I am not all right at all.’

‘I’ll walk with you back to your pension.’

‘Thank you. Please walk with me.’ She took his arm, feeling absolutely blighted by Ambrose’s crash.