Cold Light (40 page)

Chifley was alluding to the huge embarrassment for the Prime Minister when he had found out that details about five of the fifty-three people he had named in Parliament as communists were not correct.

Menzies had to publicly correct this error in the newspapers, but it was seen as a stunning example of the dangers of a government having the power to declare people enemies of the state.

There had been worried joking about it. Ambrose had said it was a tremendous blunder by Menzies from which he and the bill might never recover.

Chifley went on, ‘I was shocked last week when the Prime Minister, speaking as the chief citizen of the country, took it upon himself to besmear and attempt to damn members of the Labor Party. He said afterwards that his remark had been jocular. If so, it was a very grisly sort of jocularity. What appalled me at the time was that supporters of the government, who talk about liberty and freedom, laughed loudly when an accusation was made against a fellow member of this parliament. His remarks seemed to open up the limitless possibility of people being penalised and, indeed, crucified, under this legislation. Most people sincerely believe that something ought to be done about communism, but they will be disillusioned if this legislation is put into effect. Communism cannot be destroyed by legislation of this character. We intend to amend, if possible, provisions that we regard as a complete negation of the principles of human justice and liberty. If charges can be made by the Prime Minister against members of the parliament that besmirch their reputation, how will the humble and innocent citizen fare when some person who does not have to disclose his identity or substantiate his charges gives secret information that may lead to action against the innocent citizen?’

Edith became agitated at the interruptions to Chifley’s speech by the government parliamentarians. ‘Chifley’s people didn’t interrupt Menzies,’ she whispered.

Ambrose whispered back, ‘Oh, the government members are all unruly boys from elite schools who think that the Labor Party are all gardeners and carpenters and trades people who have no right being in parliament. And the Labor Party didn’t interrupt the other side because they were trying to show that they know how to behave and are imitating gentlemen. Everyone here is imitating what they imagine is correct behaviour in England.’

This was his favourite theme at present. It was growing in him, this alienation. He was not settling in. She had noticed it before, but as yet had said nothing.

The word around the press and diplomats was that the Labor Party, although holding the balance of power in the Senate, would not block the bill for fear of being seen as pro-communist.

She turned over in her mind the expression used by Menzies in his speech, ‘And there is no health in us.’ She wondered if that revealed something about him. Some said that part of him did not want to make this legislation. Maybe he was a political man in conflict with a lawyerly man inside. ‘And we have done those things we ought not to have done / And there is no health in us.’

As for the mistakes in the names, Ambrose and she wondered if it were a trap set for the Prime Minister by someone in the ASIO. More likely, sheer incompetence.

Afterwards, at their house, Arthur Circle, she said, ‘Won’t Menzies and his legislation be disgraced, now that he has made such dreadful mistakes in naming the wrong people?’

‘You have to have an accepted public standard of grace to be disgraced.’ Ambrose swirled his drink and became thoughtful. ‘You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Janice turned out to be Frederick’s boss.’

‘No . . .’ This had never crossed her mind. ‘She makes fun of him. Of the Party.’ She looked at him inquiringly. ‘Do you
know
something?’

He shrugged. ‘Just an idle thought. Women ran the Party during the war while the men were in the army.’

She considered whether Janice’s joking about Frederick and the Party was a ploy to win her over. Or was this thought just the sort of mistrustful thinking that all the public talk of conspiracy was now inspiring?

The debate had taken even her mind to distasteful considerations.

What was more disturbing was that she found it difficult to assess the integrity of Menzies’ description of the international situation, which she suspected had some weight to it. She did not know how she would voice this when she next met Frederick and Janice, and wondered how this might affect their connection. What did not, in her assessment, have integrity was Menzies’ party’s response to the threat of Russian communism, even if real. The abandonment of civil liberty. And what had even less integrity was his handling of the launch of that response.

That much she could say.

Why was she guarding her opinions and grading them for those around her? She was doing that because, in the bee-like swarm of opinions about her, she had become irresolute and her moods had become undependable. Was it the hormone thing taking her over? Or was it the magnitude of the situation? Or both? Or neither?

She did not trust the interpretations of the world made by Frederick and Janice. She did not trust those made by Menzies. And she had had to discount Ambrose because of his increasingly jaded and soured attitude to the world.

She felt that the way forward for her was to be honest about her irresoluteness with those around her, instead of being jostled by them into strong opinions she did not quite hold.

At work Mr T was good. He never jostled.

As Ambrose was fond of saying, ‘Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.’

He was quoting Shakespeare, she supposed. She might adopt it. That is, when she herself had identified the ‘good we oft might win’.

O
n the day that the bill was to pass the Senate, Janice called Edith and said she and Frederick wanted to speak to her urgently – ‘Best we meet somewhere not in public.’

She told them that they could come to the house, that she was not yet calling it home, and that Ambrose was still at his office. ‘Best he
not
be there,’ Janice said.

Sometime later, she heard Janice’s car pull into the drive and opened the front door to them. ‘Is it about the bill?’ she asked as they came in, and they nodded.

As they sat down, she was enfolded by the perplexed relationship she still had with them both: her errant affection for Janice; her unconfident feelings of sisterliness towards Frederick. The latter was accompanied by a sense that there was a bemusing male mirroring of herself in his passion for grand schemes for humanity, and in their shared idealistic aspirations for the betterment of the world, though she resisted his revolutionary politics. There was also a frisson from the dangers that Frederick and Janice faced and the jeopardy they introduced into her life; and a growing pleasure in their social company in a place where that was so rare. All this fitted awkwardly around her, like some eighteenth-century hoop skirt.

When they were all seated and drinking tea, Frederick, self-importantly serious, said, ‘We know it’s going through. It will have to be signed into law by the GG. I suppose he could refer the bill to the King or knock it back . . .’ He laughed. ‘But they will crack down immediately. Then some unions and others will challenge it in the High Court, which takes time. We are trying to injunct.’

‘And?’ She looked at them. What fresh hell, as Dorothy Parker would say.

Janice glanced at Frederick and took over. ‘We have a plan that involves you. We need to store our records and files somewhere, until the matter is resolved one way or another. Just for a short time. It occurred to us that not only are you above suspicion, but Ambrose gives you diplomatic immunity. They could hardly raid the house of an English diplomat, so no one is really at risk.’

‘And if they did raid us?’

They had not considered this. Frederick looked to Janice – interesting that he should be looking to her for leadership. Perhaps Ambrose’s hunch had been right all along, that it was Janice who was the superior either in the Party hierarchy or in their personal relationship. She thought it had to do with their relationship.

Frederick said, without much confidence, that it just wouldn’t happen.

Janice said that it would be a serious breach of Australian and British relations. ‘Menzies licks the boots of England – wouldn’t do it.’

‘But if it
did
happen, I would be arrested and Ambrose would be sent back to England.’

‘His diplomatic status would extend to you. They couldn’t arrest anyone,’ Janice said.

It was a clever move, but she would appreciate the cleverness of the plot more if she were not central to it.

Edith remembered that since her first marriage to Robert Dole she had been officially British, although she did not think that way and nor had anyone really asked her what her nationality was. As she understood it, Australians were all British subjects, but now also Australian citizens. There had been a time as a young woman when she had tried to feel that she was an international civil servant, a citizen of the world. But that applied only to her League work and fell away during the war, when the League staff began to belong to ‘blocs’.

Janice said, ‘We thought, anyhow, that this should be between you and us and that Ambrose may not be happy with this arrangement.’

‘Indeed, he would not.’

‘We understand that,’ Janice said.

Was Janice doing the talking because they had decided she would have stronger personal influence with her? ‘You mean you’re asking me to conspire with you and with the Party – soon to become illegal – in a way that would ensnare Ambrose and me?’

‘That is not the correct description of the situation,’ Janice said. ‘We’re asking you to help protect our political liberties and the Universal Declaration. There are times to be covert.’

Edith laughed. ‘I don’t know if I am personally bound by the Universal Declaration to involve myself in a conspiracy.’

‘Defending Australian political liberties,’ Frederick broke in.

Edith said, ‘I once joked that that was what the Liberal Party and the Communist Party had in common – if in power, they would ban each other.’

Frederick put on the face and tone of the party theoretician and lit up his pipe. ‘If the situation in Australia evolved to the point that the Communist Party was able to take power, the Liberal Party and the other parties would by then have withered away. The Labor Party would’ve been subsumed into the Communist Party. The party system, as we know it, would’ve died away. All constructive argument would now be within the Party and not carried on in an antagonistic and nationally divisive, wasteful party system. It would’ve evolved naturally.’

‘Oh, I see. Thank you, wise brother.’

Janice seemed a little impatient with Frederick and said, ‘We thought you could store the stuff under the house or wherever. It could go there in among your own stored possessions.’

‘So if the police found it, they would assume that I was one of your secret-list members? Or that I am what is called a “fellow traveller” ’

‘A
compagnon de voyage
?’ Janice said, looking to Edith for affirmation of her French; another attempt to personally connect with her. Trying, perhaps, to make it another of their personal adventures.