Cold Light (23 page)

He didn’t reply and she had left the room.

The lake was important, if only to bring placidity to the capitol – although she had stopped saying that, saying instead that large bodies of water did seem to affect us, that it was perhaps always a reconnection with our evolutionary past, when we had been nothing more than shellfish. That didn’t seem to convince anyone.

However, for whatever reason, she usually found agreement that people like to live near expanses of water.

She could see where the residential centres were to be as the city grew, and that they would inevitably be examples of the best architecture and planning practice of their decade. She debated with herself and Gibson (when he would give her his attention) whether they should be designed according to grades of income and status. She thought that people did tend to gather like with like for social comfort and security – look at the bohemian arts districts in any great city. There should be a bohemian arts community, but these would just happen, she guessed, without surrendering to the delusion of ‘organic’ development. Even the bohemian life could be
planned
and assisted. Perhaps secretly. But she also feared that it could create a community of castes. She could not see how that could be avoided. During the war everyone knew their rank. But within the same rank there were castes – majors who fought, majors who had desk jobs, majors who came from the regular army, majors who were from civilian life and so on. Maybe after the revolution, when all incomes were pretty much the same, people would learn not to look down on some occupations, although Frederick said that the Soviet Union was no longer following that policy.

And the nature of the neighbourhoods was that they would make their own civic arrangements and pursue their own ideas and schemes, and even their own architecture, when the time came for them to be built. People could resist and argue with the planning – the Causeway seemed to be an example. And people would do things with their homes – their gardens and their yards, their letterboxes, their doorknobs.

She shared Gibson’s and the other planners’ fears of vociferous, visionless and banal constituencies, which could be led astray by persistent and energetic ratbags and tricked by uninspired commercial interests. They should have their say, but should be convinced that they needed to be guided and led, if breathtaking things were to be achieved.

When she was not listened to, she calmed herself by saying that, after all, errors in planning and architecture could nearly always be erased and corrected. For God’s sake, things could be pulled down. Roads could be redirected. Trees moved.

She agreed that every child should be able to walk or ride, bike or horse, to school.

The population of the city was endlessly discussed, but who would ever know what the eventual population or ideal size the city should be? How could that be calculated? There might be a formula somewhere.

She could see there was the triangular cluster of the government buildings – the temples. When they were built, they would be the symbolic relationship of the nation-state – the university temple of learning; the library, literature; the art gallery; the law, the high court; a temple of science; the temple of the warrior, the remembrance of war and its relics at the War Memorial and of evolution of the culture; and of course a national museum.

She thought it rightful that the military and the new War Memorial should have a symbolic but distanced relationship – to be remembered and called on when needed but not to be too close to the administration and legislature.

As Mr Griffin had demonstrated, the city should serve and celebrate and demonstrate these civic connections.

And then the inner circle of hills should play a part, as Mr Griffin had foreseen, making the city into an enclosed and safe domain, perhaps a naturally walled city – no, not a fort; it was a gentler enclosure, more like good spirits linking arms around the city. Enfolding. Maybe the hills were like sleeping dogs, always alert for danger, one eye open, one ear up.

And the relationship to nature – the Garden City – to see a tree when you awoke and to see trees during your working day. To work among trees. Of the value of this she had no doubt. It must be a Garden City to serve clean air and health.

Perhaps, there was no need for a ‘centre’ – rather, many small centres in neighbourhoods. The idea of the city centre was an idea from older times, when the citizens needed to gather to hear oratory – to receive commands or warnings, and information. We now had radio for that.

There were some culs-de-sac and looped streets. She liked culs-de-sac – they were safe compounds offering security. She would have liked more. The planned lake looked physiological. It was intestinal. It was, to put it crudely, the guts of the city. The boundary lines of the city and neighbourhoods were the skin. The streets were the bones, the skeletons. Or the nervous systems. Yes. She could see it.

People were the blood circulating through the street veins.

Now that Edith was no longer hanging around her rooms at the hotel, she did not see Janice in the daily cycle of the hotel and had not talked with her for a while, except briefly on occasion when Janice waited table. The four of them had not come together yet, although Ambrose was still keen to get together for his own nefarious reasons. One afternoon, after finishing work, she walked home along the track across the dry riverbed and found Janice waiting for her in the gardens of the hotel, in hotel uniform.

Coming face to face with Janice again boosted her, and they cheek-kissed French-style there among the shrubs. They were both overflowing with things to tell.

Janice had an invitation. The invitation was to a public meeting – a rally – where those worried about the threat to freedom from the new anti-communist legislation could plan their opposition.

‘I’ve been to many sorts of meetings, but I don’t think I’ve been to a rally,’ Edith said.

‘It’s really a meeting. There’ll be all sorts there, not just us coms. Perhaps Doctor Evatt will be there.’

‘I’ll come,’ Edith said impulsively. She saw that she held both Janice’s hands. They were both full of smiles. ‘I’ve so much to tell – and I want you to see my new office. You will think it posh. It is posh.’

‘Love to.’

‘On the night of the rally, I’ll pick you up and we’ll go to that café in Manuka, the Liberty –’

‘Very appropriate.’

‘Yes – at, say, sixish. I take it that Major W. will not be with us?’

‘I don’t think it falls within his duties.’ It occurred to her that he might wish to spy on this one but would also stand out, and his presence would probably be seen as suspect.

Janice refused an invitation to a G and T and, in her words, had to ‘race off’.

Edith went to her rooms. Since the aborted lunch, she hadn’t had contact with Frederick and thought that maybe he had faded out of her life, something that she would not altogether resist. Perhaps he had also seen what he needed to see and then disappeared again.

But now, it seemed, both he and Janice were back in her life. Even if she was required back in their lives only to ‘make up the numbers’ at a rally.

A
s she dressed to meet Janice at the Liberty Café, Edith felt she was engaged in resistance activity in France during the war, or involved again in the secret activity that went on around the Molly Club and the League back in Geneva before the war.

She first dressed up and then down, in so far as her wardrobe would go down. Slacks were as down as her wardrobe went. She tried to imagine how Janice would dress, but realised that, apart from one occasion, she had not seen Janice out of hotel uniform, either chambermaid or waitress. And anyhow, they were of a different age, though, she suspected, of the same restrained taste.

‘I’m wearing stocking with the new slacks – for warmth. I feel undressed without stockings.’

At first Ambrose had been dismissive about the meeting, but did not harp. Then she had noticed that he changed his attitude and almost urged her to go. She had said that it was a meeting to support the first clause of UNO’s Universal Declaration and she felt she should be there. ‘I sometimes feel I thought up the Universal Declaration,’ she joked. ‘So the least I could do is go to a meeting and speak up for them. Can I be put in gaol for that?’

He said, ‘Remember, the Soviet Union didn’t vote for the Universal Declaration. I don’t think you will hear much mention of it.’

‘But Australia did. I suppose the Russians didn’t like the right to own property. You don’t believe I can hold my own with the communists.’

‘They don’t play by the rules.’

In the mirror, she examined her back view in the slacks. Not bad. ‘Why do we think that cheating is clever? If you win by cheating you’re thereby cheated of the pleasure of
truly
winning. Playing by the rules is always a smarter move than cheating. The loss involved in being found out at cheating is greater than losing fairly. You are at great risk when you cheat because everyone who thinks you’re cheating sets out to defeat and expose you. You inflame your opponents. I think I am a little more attuned to the reality of the world than many of those who will be there.’

‘You are, dear Edith. And they are not tuned to any reality at all, as we understand it. The minutes will not be true, your name will be misused, you will be . . .’ He trailed off, fluttering his hand.

‘Duped? I think that’s the word being used. I will be duped?’

‘It is a perfect word to use. No, you will not be duped. You’ll see what I mean when you’re there.’

‘I shall see for myself.’

‘I look forward to your report.’

She looked at him. Yes, he wanted to know what went on. He was sending her along for his own reasons. ‘My
report
?’

He winked at her. ‘I am not mad about slacks. I still love the skirt. When I sit at my desk tomorrow I expect I will see your name on a list sent by the Australians.’

‘You have said that it’s not very British to go about banning those people you don’t believe in. When Frederick and I were growing up we sometimes received black looks in the streets and at school because we were atheists and were proud of it. We used to say that even if it was proved there was a god, we would be opposed to him. But we weren’t banned. And we stuck up for each other. I am sticking up for some other Australians.’

‘I have always been unsure whether I believe that all humans “are endowed with reason and conscience”, which is what the Declaration claims, does it not?’

‘We have both worried about that – at least conscience. We both said that at the time.’

‘If we were so endowed as a species, we should not need to have it proclaimed, urged or taught. And look at us British – bastions of freedom, except for the Catholics. And the Irish. And a dozen other races around the world that we at present dominate. And conscientious objectors. And others who don’t fit the mould.’

‘Including you.’

‘Oh, they would just frown on me.’

He gestured at his skirt and pearls, his earrings. ‘They may perhaps criticise my taste.’

‘They would frown on you wearing too many pearls.’