Dark Palace (19 page)

Edith laughed even though she did not get the point of the ‘
cocottes
and commandants' and supposed it was the arcane talk of gentlemen to gentlemen and left it at that. Or gentlemen to gentlemen and Lady Cunard. Even if these days she were more familiar with the dinner talk of gentlemen and ladies of high rank.

She had enough in her life to puzzle about, without puzzling about
cocottes
and their commandants.

Despite their tactical differences, Edith was exhilarated that the sanctions instrument was now going to be tested. They would drag France along, and the Assembly was reasonably solid.

She heard herself say, ‘I don't think I understand the joke about the
cocottes
and their commandants. Maybe I come from too genteel a background.'

‘Oh?' He seemed disconcerted.

She should not have asked.

‘Oh, I don't think it's really a joke at all—I think de Castellane was saving me from Emerald's indiscreet questioning, showing me at the same time that he knew I was in a hot seat. It's what diplomatic chaps do for each other. Sometimes.'

‘Oh, I see.'

His face became bemused. ‘Must be a joke in there somewhere though. I suppose.' He looked at her sheepishly. ‘Could be that I missed the joke. In the fluster of it all.'

She smiled widely and fully for the first time in days. She felt her facial muscles relax.

Eden stumbled on. ‘I will, Berry, endeavour to find out the point of the joke—if joke it be—and report back to you.'

‘I would enjoy that.'

She dropped her report for Avenol in to the Night Officer so that it would be there for him first thing.

She did not report on the Léger incident and she implied his ‘opposition' at the meeting.

She'd decided that, on balance, the protection of Léger was a priority.

She'd been manipulated, but not so unwillingly. She'd hardly had time to consider how she should handle the things which had happened that day.

She was too tired to care.

She was bone weary.

Was that how wars began? Because everyone was too tired to bother?

Edith got home to the apartment one night after a late meeting of the Committee, took her attaché case and papers from the League driver who had carried them to the door, said goodnight to him, backed herself in through the door, pushed it closed with her foot, went on into the sitting room—which Ambrose insisted on calling the drawing room—dropped her handbag, attaché case and papers on to the floor, went over and kissed Ambrose on the cheek, noting that he was wearing light
maquillage
, flopped into an armchair and took off her shoes.

Had he been ‘out'?

She placed her shoes side by side, but then staring at them for a second, she tipped them over with her foot, looked at them again, and then bad-temperedly but lightly kicked them across the room.

She looked at the attaché case and handbag in matching leather. In a cupboard somewhere there was a travelling case as well. A sometime gift from Robert. Tonight it did not please her. Tonight it embarrassed her. ‘Matching' was not one of the higher principles of aesthetics. She thought it was on a par with neatness. That was the limit of his aesthetics. Still, he had
thought out
the gift.

It was
too
thought-out—in the duller sense.

Or was she being an ungrateful harridan?

Yes. Ungrateful harridan.

In the early years at the League, she'd used her briefcase from university, until it had become too scruffed and would not respond to polish. She'd hung on to it—for whatever sentimental reason—for as long as she could.

She looked at Ambrose but couldn't find the energy to speak.

Ambrose had raised his head from his book and watched her testy entry but had said nothing.

Her entry barely expressed the ire she'd brought home. It was not in any way a rebellion against the shipshape order which Ambrose had brought to the apartment over the time he'd been there, but she may as well rage against that as well. They had, on his suggestion, let the housekeeper go. Even Robert, on his last flying visit home, had commented on the order of the place.

Ambrose's order would tonight have to stand in for all that beset her and take the brunt.

‘Shipshape' was not an aesthetic for which she cared, either. Although she'd been relieved that Ambrose was no longer the slightly unkempt bohemian bachelor of yesteryear. If bachelor were the word in his case.

He was now, she thought, if anything, a little prissy. Perhaps prim.

Yes, he was now a little
prissy
.

She looked at him and he looked at her looking at him.

Prissiness was a defensible enough aesthetic.

Perhaps.

If it came with elegance.

In Ambrose's case, it did. How imperturbably elegant he always looked these days. So much composure.

Maybe it was serenity.

She was sure it was.

He should not be serene while she was
beset
.

Robert, on the other hand, had been downright slovenly.

Better prissy than slovenly, of that she was sure.

She was perhaps prissy herself.

Yes, she was prissy. With a touch of elegance. At times. When at her best.

Poor rhyming. Shocking.

Maybe that was what Ambrose and she were—one of nature's poorly rhymed couplets.

Or maybe
too
rhymed.

In personality, they were, she supposed, both by nature
aides-de-camp
. In a way, while she was an
aide-de-camp
in work, she felt she needed, well, a ‘wife' at home. And perhaps that was what Ambrose had become.

While she, alas, had turned out not to be quite a wife. Not at all a wife.

You could, of course, be a Leader of Men at work, and a wife at home.

If you chose.

Or if you were chosen.

He was dressed in his knee-length, blue satin lounging jacket with flared sleeves and its fetching, high, round neckline—very Chinoise—over cream silk-satin trousers. Blue velvet slippers.

She coveted the jacket. It was always a fight to see who got to it first.

She admitted that his appearance, at least, pleased her. His calm did not please her.

Mr Femality.

They continued to silently look at each other.

If she left the shoes where they were, would Ambrose pick them up and put them away before bed?

She pulled a face at him.

Book on his knees, he continued to look at her.

She broke first. ‘Do you think I drink too much?' she said, challenging him. Not quite recognising her voice. It was a difficult question to get out. Exposing. Well, it was out now.

‘Why do you ask?' He sounded decidedly unchallenged by her question.

‘Sweetser said something tonight about my drinking—jokingly, of course—but his jokes are so ponderous. It was obviously a stone wrapped in cellophane.'

Ambrose watched her, expressionless, but she had his attention.

‘Well?!' she said.

He closed the book on the bookmark.

Don't lose your place just because of me, Little Miss Serenity. Mr Femality.

‘What did Sweetser say, exactly?'

‘He suggested I “hadn't come to terms” with Robert's “leaving” and that this was causing me to hit the bottle.'

‘He said “hit the bottle”?!'

‘He used some euphemism: “finding comfort in cocktails”, I think it was. Hell's bells—Robert's been gone for ages. And he does return.'

‘Sweetser said
that
?'

That wasn't exactly what had been said by Sweetser, but that would do for now. What he
had
said, she remembered precisely—in flaming letters. ‘How dare he!'

‘And what did you say to Sweetser?'

She sniggered, but the snigger did not in any way relieve her injured fury. ‘Ah—what did I say!? I turned to him and held him in my gaze and said, “Arthur,” I said, “if I drink a lot, it's because I have a lot to drink about.” '

Ambrose laughed. ‘Very good, Edith.'

‘And while on the question of annoyance,' Edith said, ‘I wish people—namely you, dear Ambrose—would stop expressing surprise when I make a joke. I make many jokes. Yet people—namely, you—refuse to see me as a dazzling wit. All my life that's happened, even at university. I have wanted, now and then, to be seen as a lovable clown. Instead, people see me as Earnest Edith. It's something about my hair. There are no red-headed clowns.'

‘I seem to recall that there
are
red-headed clowns. Or red-nosed clowns,' Ambrose said. ‘Maybe you're becoming a red-nosed clown.'

‘Don't be cruel.' She tried for it to come out as a funny complaint but it came out just as a bald old complaint.

He glanced at her, showing that he'd registered her pique.

She looked over at the drinks table. She found herself arguing with herself about having a drink. ‘The Good Edith and the Bad Edith are arguing now about having a drink. That's how piqued I am by Sweetser.'

‘Listen to the Bad Edith,' Ambrose advised. ‘Have a drink.'

‘Hah—you're wrong. It's the Bad Edith who says not to drink; the Good Edith wants me to have a drink.'

He laughed again.

‘And don't say, ‘
‘Very good, Edith
.” '

‘It's probably best that you not be seen as a clown,' he said. ‘The problem with being a clown is that you can ridicule a chief but never
be
a chief. And, sorry to say, you are correct—you've never been seen as a clown.'

‘A wit—do you see me as a wit then?' She paused. ‘Well?'

‘You
are
in a bad mood. Were you squiffed when Sweetser said this to you?'

‘I'd had lunch and dinner wine, if that's what you mean. No different to any other day. A
pichet
or so of wine. For mercy sake, don't you start.'

‘I wasn't “starting”—I was asking you what caused Sweetser to make this remark.'

‘I think he has been observing me. He hates that Avenol has attached me to the Committee and that I'm buddies with Eden.'

‘There is a theory,' Ambrose said, ‘that it's not the alcohol that's bad for you: it's the late nights which accompany the drinking.'

‘I never show my drink.'

Ambrose went to the drinks table and poured them both a port.

He came over to her, and handed her the drink and kissed her forehead, ‘Have you eaten?'

‘Yes. Thank you.' She drank from the glass and then added, ‘Dear.'

He returned to his seat. ‘Are you sure that you've eaten?'

‘
Yes, I am sure that I've eaten. Sure, sure, sure
.'

‘Mustn't skip meals.'

‘And
you
mustn't become a
mother
. You can be a girlfriend, you can be a big sister. You can, if you so wish, be a chorus girl, you can be a hussy, you can even be courtesan. But do not, not ever, try to become a mother.'

‘To that, dear Edith, I have never made claim.'

‘You would never be good at it. Not at all. And do not ever become matronly.'

‘Woefully, I dare say I will.'

She turned the idea over in her head and then said, wearily, ‘I dare say that we'll both become matronly. What a sickening thought. Sickening.'

She was hiding in the chatter, hiding from the hideous encounter with Sweetser.

She returned to the burning issue. ‘I do not show my drink.'

Ambrose examined his nails, picked up a nail file and worked on them. He said, quietly, as if taking a conversational risk, ‘The Manual to the Diplomacy of Bibulation states that one should never assume that people don't know you've been drinking. It's the Drinkers' Grand Delusion. Sober people
pretty much always know. And drinkers pretty much always know. Always assume that people know.'

‘I am not a “drinker”,' she said tersely. ‘I am a person who drinks.'

She stared at him feeling unpleasantly annoyed. Annoyed by everything. ‘Oh, put down the nail file.'

It reminded her of how bad her own nails were. Her grooming at present was a disaster. No time.

‘Nancyboy.'

She didn't say it with good humour.

She knew that his rule was that youth let you off much of the boredom of grooming but at their age grooming was everything.

He looked across at her and did put down the nail file and gave her full eye attention, crossing his legs as if to emphasise the attention he was giving her. And then he said, ‘Another precept of the Diplomacy of Bibulation is: Don't drink when with sober people; and don't stay completely sober when with drinking people.'

‘Nancyboy.'

‘Drinking is civilisation flirting with anarchy.'

‘Pansy.'

He didn't respond.

‘Nancyboy,' she said, staring at him, not really feeling any personal antagonism, more a free-floating antagonism. ‘Pansy nancyboy.'

He opened his book and began to read.

She watched him read and then said, ‘Stop talking to me as if I am eighteen years old. Drinking is a slight relaxation of discipline or it's nothing. It's to do with frivolity and frivolity has no rules. Pleasure maybe has rules. But not fun.'

He again closed his book and returned his attention to her.

‘Nancyboy. Pansy.'

‘Have I ever told you that in my part of the country the pansy is called “heart's-ease”?'

‘Fascinating.'

He continued with his sermonising, ‘The saddest thing of all about the drinking life is that when one was young and innocent and one drank to excess it appeared to others to be “enchanting”, perhaps “daring”, even amusing: now that we're older, we appear simply as, well, mundanely, people who've had too much to drink.'

‘Is that what they taught you in the Foreign Office? The Diplomacy of Drinking?'

‘As a matter of fact, they did give us some advice on drinking. Basically, it was that one should never be drunk at the wrong time of the day. Don't be seven o'clock in the bar when it is only five. We all scoffed, of course. Hence my downwards career. Hence the state of the Empire.'

She drank the port. ‘I'm going to bed.' She stood up and went over to Ambrose, giving him a goodnight kiss, ‘See you in the morning, darling. Sorry—didn't intend to be mean—I'm done in.'

‘The more I think about the state of the Empire, it's curious—as long as we've had an empire it's been considered to be in a bad state. Bit like the jokes in
Punch
. Not as good as they used to be and always have been.'

She gave a weak grin of appreciation at his efforts towards good humour.

She glanced at her papers, attaché case and stuff dumped in the room and at her scattered shoes.

She left it all.

In her bedroom, she felt a desperate need to be free of all tightness: the earrings, the waistband of her skirt, the tightness of her underclothing—girdle, stockings, brassiere, the elastic waistband of her underpants, her garter belt—her stockings, the rings on her fingers, her watchband. The lot.

She pulled them off and let them stay where they fell.

Her body was bridling at constraint. Even her make-up felt tight.

She chose a flowing ankle-length crepe-de-chine nightgown which left her shoulders and arms bare and her breasts swinging free and, putting it on, went to her bathroom, washed her make-up off with a hand cloth, came back to her bedroom and fell with relief onto the bed. She did not put on night cream.

Only after breathing deeply and worming her way down into her bed did she let Sweetser's words fully return to her, and his words returned to her over and over as she lay there. He'd said more than she'd told. Sweetser had said, ‘I heard Walters and Bartou talking about you and the question of your drinking came up, that's all. Thought I should mention it. Word to the wise.' She kept going over Sweetser's remarks and her clever rejoinder, a rejoinder which she knew had not nullified the situation at all.