Cold Light (43 page)

That night, Ambrose took her to the small new Arrow Theatre, where they saw what could be described as a controversial production of Oscar Wilde’s
Salome
. Edith wondered if he had been told about it by deviant consulate people or by his friend Courtenay Young. She was glad Courtenay didn’t join them.

It was very much in Ambrose’s taste, but she could have done without the rather too convincing gore. Somehow she could handle real-life blood better than she could theatre gore. A young toga-clad actor, Frank Thring, played Herod in a drawling effeminate way to a very merry young audience. But it felt good to be back again with such a crowd, to be reminded that she and Ambrose were not alone, that regardless of the harsh laws, these Melburnians – the outlandish, the androgynous, the raffish, the flamboyant, and the extraordinarily pretty, but
sincere
, young boys – were brave enough to make such theatre and to flaunt themselves in public.

Outside, after the performance, she said, ‘You see, there is something of a Molly Club scene in Australia.’ She linked arms with him.

‘Yes,’ Ambrose said. ‘Encouraging.’ He did not seem convinced. In fact, his voice was sad. ‘Encouraging. In its way.’

She knew that what they had glimpsed in the theatre was probably all there was in Australia, and it was a long way from Canberra. ‘We could visit more.’

He did not reply and she knew he took no comfort from her suggestion. The consulate car and driver were waiting.

B
efore coming to Melbourne, she had written to John Latham to arrange for a dinner during her visit. She now wondered how that might work out socially, given the strength of her reaction to his judgement, but it was too late to dodge it.

Latham had suggested to her that they dine at the Melbourne Club. She did not tell Janice and Frederick, for fear they might decide, as a revolutionary act, to try to ‘just turn up’. And, anyhow, she didn’t want to put up with their jibes.

She was unsure about including Ambrose and suggested, as a social compromise, that the three of them meet for aperitifs. Ambrose could then withdraw, leaving her to a tête-à-tête dinner with John. John was not inviting his wife, Ella, to the evening. There had always been a little possessive coolness between Ella and her, although she always found Ella admirably convivial to everyone else.

She had been to the club before the war and found it just as she remembered it, and just as a club should be in its mannish way. There were always questions about its attitude to the Jewish community, which dismayed her. More so since the horrors in Germany during the war. In Sydney, she preferred the Queens Club or the Royal Automobile Club, to which her parents had belonged, where women had always been equals and where she had heard no reference to Jewish exclusion. The RAC had its own more beautiful building, superior to that of the Melbourne Club.

The sitting room had an honour system for drinks. John poured them sherries without questioning their preference, and an older gentleman stopped to talk with him. He told Edith and Ambrose that his family had been among the founding members of the club, and that the clock in the great hall was given to the club by his great-great-grandfather sometime in the last century – ‘Not that anyone remembers you for having given a clock.’

Latham politely excused the man from their company, mentioning ‘private matters’.

The old man said, ‘Of course. Enjoy your tucker.’

As she had many times observed, Ambrose was very much at home in these gentlemen’s clubs, which was so at odds with his aberrant, clandestine life. She sipped her dry sherry, which she had an urge to drink straight down, wishing she’d had a large Scotch, and listened to Ambrose exchange men’s world gossip with Latham. She realised that, after all these years, she did not know if Ambrose was a
happy
person. Perhaps it was more that, in life, he successfully
contrived
his life within glaringly different worlds. The split in his nature must have been at times wearing, making him feel never authentic in either part; or was that where his authenticity lay – in the division of himself, in the split? Was his
duality
his true self? Not one or the other of his personas? Perhaps his integrity lay in his management of his dilemma. Did Ambrose himself know?

Latham told a story about Menzies. ‘I remember once meeting old Billy Hughes coming out of Parliament House in Canberra, and he said he’d had an argument in the Liberal party room with Menzies. Hughes said that Menzies argued his case for over an hour. I asked Hughes what point Menzies was making. Hughes, with that great wit he had, said, “He didn’t say.” ’

Edith wondered whether the point of the anecdote was payback for Menzies occasionally describing Latham as a ‘crashing bore’.

They avoided the judgement with chit-chat. They then talked about Geneva and the old days of the League. John and Ambrose had British Foreign Office and legation acquaintances in common. After the hour of chit-chat, Ambrose, as arranged, excused himself, and John and she were left together.

‘You’re cross,’ Latham said, serving the second sherry. ‘You’re cross about my judgement.’

‘I am probably more bemused than cross.’ That was not true, she was very cross. ‘I think I understood your position from the judgement, but, of course, I’m a layperson. I think I am well aware of the way you think from the long time we have known each other – that the court should not put any limit on the parliament as long as the parliament is within its constitutional powers. But I thought that you could have leaned towards, well, the Universal Declaration – that we should lean that way whenever the situation allows us. That we should now take the Declaration as a fundamental, the foundation for any just government. I see it as a higher constitution.’

She felt she had gone in too hard, too early in the conversation, and softened it. ‘But first, John, I want to congratulate you – not on your High Court decision, we’ll return to that –’

‘I’m sure we will, Edith,’ he said, breaking across her. ‘I’m sure we will.’

She smiled. ‘I want to congratulate you on your stand as Chief Justice in refusing to sign the
Call to the People of Australia.
I hear that the chief justices of the states signed it. And all the church leaders. All the bigwigs.’

‘I thought that, at least, would please you. It isn’t because I’m not patriotic that I didn’t sign it – it was that the wording of the
Call
was too . . .
clerical
. The wording worried me. The “Fear God, Honour the King” preamble. And I don’t think the Australian people need finger-wagging warnings by church leaders and judges such as me against alien philosophies, “Which sap the will and darken the understanding and breed evil dissentions.” ’ He made a derisive noise.

He leaned towards her, perhaps not wanting to be overheard by his fellow Melbourne Club members. ‘You know what is frightening them?’

‘I thought it was just fear that Australia will become socialist and atheist.’

‘Oh, that too, but what really frightens them is that the women who worked while their men were at the war won’t go back to the home. They fear working women will find earning a wage more interesting than marriage. The
Call
is for women to stop working and stay at home.’

‘Maybe women could learn to do both – work and raise children.’

‘I was the only judge who didn’t sign. I’m surprised you know about the
Call
. It’s not being launched until later this year.’

‘We hear things ahead of time in Canberra.’

She thanked him for having gone to her father’s funeral. ‘Did you give the oration?’

‘A local chap gave it.’ He laughed. ‘It was rather odd, but perhaps moving in its own way. He thought that as local mayor he outranked me.’

‘George McDowell?’

‘Yes.’

‘Old friend of the family.’

He nodded. ‘My other news is that I’ve accepted the position of President of the Congress for Cultural Freedom – actually, I think in Australia we call it the Association for Cultural Freedom – but on condition we keep the churches well away from it. That was my first condition of acceptance.’

‘What’s this Association for Cultural Freedom?’

‘Trying to stop the communists controlling the arts and so on. We’re going to have our own magazine.’

Latham didn’t go on about the Association for Cultural Freedom and, instead, bit the bullet about his judgement. He went into his teacherly tone. ‘Edith, the case was about the role of the court. It wasn’t about the Universal Declaration.’

‘But surely it was underlying everything that was argued in the case. The Declaration must have been in your mind and the minds of other judges: freedom of expression, free association, peaceful assembly, freedom from want, fear. Even the right to worship must have come into it.’ She laughed. ‘When I find myself supporting freedom of worship, I remember that Jefferson said that freedom of worship meant that no church could ever be the official religion, and that meant that many sects would flourish. The more religious sects there were, the weaker they became. And they would just fight among themselves about who was the true voice of God.’

Latham smiled and nodded at this. ‘See my judgement in
Adelaide Company of Jehovah’s Witnesses Inc v. Commonwealth.
’

She returned to the point. ‘But, John, Australia helped draft the Declaration and we signed up for it three years ago. It must now be taken as pre-existing in the political and legal consciousness of the world, surely? Even the War Memorial’s new main sculpture will symbolise the Four Freedoms.’

‘I haven’t heard about the War Memorial sculpture,’ he said with slight acerbity. He was a man who hated not to know everything that was going on.

‘Napier Waller and a sculptor named Bowles have been commissioned. It’s for the Hall of Memory.’

‘Waller does wonderful work. Haven’t heard of Bowles.’

‘He did Monash in Kings Domain.’

‘Oh yes. Very good. On horseback.’

‘Anyhow, getting back to your judgement. The Communist Party constitution states its opposition to political violence.’

‘You believe the Communist Party constitution? Come on, Edith!’

‘I’m not foolish enough to think that a constitution of a revolutionary party is to be believed. Of course a document such as a Communist Party constitution may be a
ruse de guerre
, a smokescreen. But what matters is that those in the Communist Party who drafted it knew that it was in some way a decent code – good values to espouse, even if in the short run they intended to disregard them for tactical reasons.’

Good God, Janice and Frederick were making her conspiratorial.

Latham said he would pick up the communist constitution with a pair of tongs. ‘Goebbels said, “We want to conquer power legally, but what we will do with the power once we’ve got it is up to us.” I believe Menzies is right when he says that within forty-eight hours of the Third World War breaking out we would have communist militias in this country.’

‘But we are not at war. It’s only when war breaks out and they take up arms that he should be putting them in gaol.’

‘After war breaks out it might be too late to gaol them. And the Declaration has not been signed into our law. Cabinet simply ratified it. You should understand that.’