Dark Palace (5 page)

Oh dear. All too hard.

She left the note unchanged.

She wanted to be there before Sweetser, who had been temporarily seconded to Bartou's office from Information during the emergency.

Getting there first, no matter how hard she had played up the night before, was an office game for her, although she doubted that Sweetser, or anyone, was aware of it.

She still had a head.

Suffer it through. Have a nap in the nurse's room later in the day. Nurse Hollander was always indulgent of her morning-after condition. Nurse Hollander might give her one of her special sniffing capsules for such conditions, to clear the head.

She loved to see Sweetser's face when he came in and saw that she was already at work. She suspected that he had, on a few mornings, tried to outdo her but had since given up before he looked ridiculous—before he began arriving before daylight. Not that he didn't work as hard as she. His life was all work for the League, his lunches were work, and so were his dinners, his golf, his tennis. He was dedicated. There was no doubt of that.

She reached her office and had her papers out and was working when the telephone rang on Sweetser's desk. She went across and answered it.

It was the American Consul, Prentiss Gilbert. He too was up early.

‘Good morning, Consul.'

‘Good morning, Berry. Is Sweetser in?'

‘Not yet. May I be of assistance?'

There was a pause while Consul Gilbert considered the competence, perhaps, of her offer. ‘I think that you could well be. I am never sure to whom I should speak about some matters. I did not wish to bother Sir Eric. It's a matter of procedure. What will be the order of business today? Who speaks and when?'

She was ready with these details.

‘The invitation to your Secretary of State will be confirmed by Council this morning. There will be no debate—that was established yesterday at a private meeting of Council.'

Consul Gilbert queried the invitation formalities.

‘Sweetser or I will bring the invitation to you by hand and you can telegraph it to Washington. We will wait with you until confirmation of acceptance is telegraphed back from Washington. You will then accompany us to the Council with your advisers.'

She was privately amused by this conversation. She knew that Gilbert already had the authority from Washington to accept the invitation and that the talk of telegraphing was a necessary fiction and, further, that Sweetser had drafted both the invitation and the American acceptance.

‘And seating?'

‘I have placed you at the left end of the inner table, opposite the Chinese, with seats for two advisers. Three seats have been reserved in the diplomatic section of the gallery. You will be seated in these until your acceptance is formalised. You will then be invited to come down and join the Council table.'

Edith had decided overnight that placing them in the delegates' lounge would risk a protest. Sweetser had been right about that. It was not a time for playing Secretariat games.

Sweetser came in puffing, arms bulging with papers. He stood listening to her conversation. He mouthed urgently the question, ‘Gilbert?' and pointed at the 'phone. She nodded to him.

He gestured to her to pass the telephone handpiece to him.

With a delicious exercise of command, she held up a restraining finger at him, a finger which asked him to wait, and she went on to tell the Consul, ‘I think it best that we include the complete text of the Council's proposal to you and your government—to avoid the dangers of summary.' Edith loved hearing herself say, ‘I think it best …'

Sweetser jigged about. She held his impatience at bay with an outstretched hand, nails still painted from last night—perhaps wrong for the office—as he continued to gesture to her to hand the telephone to him.

She'd silently ruled that this was a matter of protocol, which was her business. ‘Consul Gilbert, Mr Sweetser is here now and would like to speak with you. Thank you. I will put him on the line—handing over now.'

She was about to hand the telephone to Sweetser but heard Gilbert's voice still talking to her and took it back from Sweetser's eager hand, ‘Yes, Consul, I agree entirely. It will be truly an historic day.'

Sweetser slid into his chair as she left it, taking the telephone handpiece from her, arranging his body in a self-important way, taking off his hat, throwing it towards the hat rack, which it missed. He put his hand to his tie. ‘Good morning, Consul,' he said, in his diplomatic voice. ‘My apologies for not being here when you called. Yes, it is early, but we all have a momentous day ahead of us. Let me run through the procedure.' There was a pause, ‘Oh, she has? Good. Oh yes. No. She is in some ways our
Chef du Protocole
. Yes. I am sure that she was correct in everything she said. But I would like to run through it to be sure.'

Another pause.

She went over, picked up his hat, and put it on the hat stand.

‘No? If you are satisfied. We will leave it as it stands.'

And then it was obvious that Gilbert had rung off.

Sweetser looked at her balefully. ‘I wish I'd been in earlier. Bad practice to not be here to take his call. Damn and blast it.'

‘Don't fret, Arthur, I handled it.' She relished rubbing it in. ‘I've put them in the diplomatic gallery.'

‘That's best,' he said grudgingly.

He looked over at her. ‘Stop gloating, Edith.'

She made a face at him.

He screwed up a sheet of paper and threw it at her.

When Sweetser and she went down to the Council room, the place was already filling.

Mary McGeachy from Information told them that around two hundred journalists had asked for tickets. ‘They are arriving from all over Europe as fast as transport will carry them.'

‘They can't have all known about the Americans so quickly?' she said to McGeachy.

‘Oh, they'd sensed something. And regardless of the Americans, they know that the League has to do something about stopping the Japanese.'

In the Council room, the chairs had been placed by the
huissiers
according to her directions, which she'd passed down to them through Gerty. Gerty was putting out the nameplates of the member states.

Sweetser went over to check the American placecard. She called over to him, ‘I told Gerty not to put the name “United States”, but to use the word “Reserved”. I reasoned that it was premature to put up the name of the United States—it not being a member of Council.'

‘Yet.'

She'd been inclined to put out the name of the United States as a way of nudging history along, but had resisted. Those sorts of Secretariat manoeuvres had their time and place. Today was not such a time nor place.

She then noticed that one chair had been taken from behind the Japanese to make up the two behind the US. ‘The Japanese are a chair short,' she called to Gerty.

Sweetser said, ‘I took one from them to give to the Americans.'

‘Arthur! That isn't correct.' Her reprimand came out in a motherly way.

He winked at her.

‘No, Arthur. That's not correct. We'll have them feeling slighted and then walking out.'

Gerty came over. Edith instructed her to find another chair. ‘If it isn't a matching chair, then find two matching chairs,' she told her.

Sir Eric came in to look at the arrangements. He came over to her, said good morning to them and then said, ‘Berry—a word?'

He placed an arm behind her and took her to the side of the chamber, leaving Sweetser standing, as lonely as a cloud. ‘Who should speak first? After the formalities, that is?' he said.

She said without hesitation that the US should speak first. ‘Gilbert should have an opportunity to state the terms on which he represents his country, so that everyone knows what the situation is. Where the Americans stand.'

Sir Eric said, ‘My thinking entirely.'

‘And furthermore, as a newcomer, Gilbert'll be nervous. Let him get it over with. Put him out of his misery.'

‘Exactly.' Sir Eric left her, saying, ‘Well done, Berry.'

She went over to Sweetser who wanted to know what Sir Eric'd wanted. She told him. They then circled about, pausing to chat with the gathering journalists. Robert arrived. He looked rumpled.

She prepared herself for his displeasure but he gave a small smile.

He said, ‘Thank you for your note. Understood.'

She smiled at him. ‘Thank you. I'm sorry.'

McGeachy handed out information papers to the reporters and Robert was taken away into his newspaper world.

The buzzer sounded for the start of Council and she glanced at her watch. It looked as if this would perhaps be the first League Council meeting to begin on time.

The delegates came in from their lounge through the delegates' door.

Sweetser and she took their seats off to the side of President Briand.

Briand declared the Council meeting open.

At the very beginning, in direct contradiction of yesterday's agreement, the Japanese delegate Yoshizawa, rose on a point of order and began, in painfully slow English, to reargue the case against allowing the US into the Council meeting.

‘This was all settled yesterday,' Sweetser said to her in a fierce whisper.

Damn. She'd told Gilbert that there'd be no debate about this. Damn them.

The Japanese went on with their public objections to the presence of the Americans.

She sat there bemoaning the diplomatic breach. Things could always go wrong beyond all the expectations of the most experienced diplomats. Or as Bartou once said, nothing ever happened the same way twice which, he said, made ‘experience' of limited value. Experience was useful as a lesson in one way only: you were not then immobilised by surprise when a situation went contrary to expectation. She'd been through this with Germany's admission to the League back in '26. Brazil had vetoed it at the last minute, creating international consternation.

She was, therefore, disappointed but not thrown off balance that the Japanese had taken the opportunity of putting their position in front of two hundred of the world's journalists.

Who could blame them?

She could.

Yoshizawa argued that allowing a nation such as the US into the Council deliberations who was not formally a member of Council, who was not even a member of the League, was a dangerous precedent, and an illegal act.

He was, of course, correct. Damn him all the same.

He said that the admission of a non-member state into deliberations was such an important matter that he wished for it to be referred to the International Court at The Hague for a ruling.

Failing this, he felt that, given that it was a matter of substance, League practice required the admission of the US to deliberations to be not just a majority decision, but a unanimous vote.

Which would give the Japanese a right of veto.

She whispered to Sweetser, ‘This is a disaster—there'll be a walk-out by Japan if they are not given their way. Or the Americans will walk out. I'll talk to Harada.'

She spotted the Japanese Under-Secretary Harada listening to the debate in the crowded diplomatic gallery and she left the Council room, found a
huissier
and sent him to bring Harada to her in the delegates' lounge.

In the empty delegates' lounge, she told Harada of her fears and he agreed. He would go in to the Japanese delegation, find out their intentions, and curb them if necessary.

She watched while Harada scribbled a note in Japanese and then through the peephole she watched him make his way to the Japanese delegation where he discreetly handed them his note. The note was handed to Yoshizawa who paused in his speech, asked President Briand for his indulgence and read the note. He turned, shook his head, and whispered to Harada.

She saw Harada bow and then make his way back to the lounge. ‘There will be no diplomatic incident,' he said. ‘I have the assurances of the Japanese delegation.'

She thanked him and he left her. She still did not trust the situation.

She locked the door from the Council room to the delegates' lounge. Their route of departure would be through the lounge and that was now blocked. What would be their reaction if they did walk out and found they couldn't? Would they return to their table? She reasoned that they would retire to the diplomatic section of the gallery. At least they would then still be in the Council room, could be appealed to. They might calm down and perhaps return to the table. It made for more possibility. She decided to stay at the delegates' door and watch the proceedings through the peephole.

Yoshizawa finished speaking, and slowly resumed his place.

All eyes turned to President Aristide Briand.

He stood like a great lion.

Her palms were sweating.

Edith could almost see Briand's French diplomatic mind sharpening away at the solution. She was becoming as bad as Jeanne with her mind reading.