Dark Palace (52 page)

‘Which is?' Lester said, sounding disconcerted by the bumpy way the meeting was going.

‘The French government in Vichy is going to leave the League and it's asked Avenol to resign from the League.'

‘The French have asked Avenol to resign?!' Bartou was astounded.

Edith was stunned for a double reason. It was a surprising move—and why hadn't Ambrose told her!?

‘That's what my informants tell me,' Ambrose said. ‘I was talking to someone very close to the French government in Vichy.'

The group was seriously surprised.

Her stomach was churning with the emotional reaction to Ambrose's silence about this with her.

‘I gather that the French feel it's inappropriate for a Frenchman to be Secretary-General given the circumstances,' he added.

‘That makes sense and it means it's over—the crisis,' Aghnides said. ‘Avenol is out.'

‘If he takes his instructions from Vichy,' Ambrose said. ‘That we don't know.'

‘Yes, he will take his instructions. Vichy has no foreign policy other than that which pleases the Germans. He may well wish to be part of the Vichy government,' Aghnides said.

‘From what I've heard, that may well be,' said Ambrose.

Ambrose had been withholding things from her. He was leading a secret life again. He had been sitting on this information which implied that he was, well, seeing people and hearing things and not passing what he heard on to her.

And she employed him.

True, they'd lived apart for a month or so. But still, they'd seen each other frequently.

She struggled to dismiss her sense of betrayal.

She'd hoped never again to feel as sickened as she had years back, when she found out that Ambrose had been passing information to the British while working at the League and while being her friend. And had not told her.

What he'd done back then had been wrong and clandestine, and she'd felt betrayed. She'd thought that was now all behind them. She now felt betrayed again.

‘What happens,' she managed to get out, ‘when Avenol resigns? Who appoints his replacement?'

‘The resignation would go to the Chairman of the Supervisory Commission—Hambro. We assume he has power to appoint a replacement,' Bartou said.

‘And that would be you, Sean,' said Aghnides.

‘Or you, Thanassis.'

Oh God, were they going to fight over the bone now?

‘We are both from neutral nations—but you are Deputy Secretary-General,' Aghnides said. ‘Furthermore, it would upset Avenol more if you become S-G. That is reason enough.'

Chuckles.

While paying attention to the discussion, Edith's mind kept returning to the sense of injury she felt from Ambrose's withholding.

She was scarcely able to think.

The meeting seemed to have had the wind taken from its sails by the news of Avenol's imminent demise and fell silent.

Events had decided the day: not them. Just as it had been with the League.

We can't even make a successful conspiracy, she thought. We weren't even able to manage a
coup
.

She had envisaged calling in the League
huissiers
—or perhaps people from Securitas—to have Avenol forcibly removed from the office. Instead, he'd fallen like rotten fruit.

She would have preferred the dramatic removal.

And now, for all their plotting, it seemed she alone had been betrayed.

Lester tried for humour. ‘I suppose all that remains now for us is to arrange his farewell party. Perhaps that will push him along. Maybe we should just go ahead and organise it. Surprise him with it.'

There was much relieved laughter, except from her. She wasn't going to organise a farewell.

Lester said that it looked as if this would be their last meeting.

‘And congratulations to you—Mr Secretary-General elect,' said Aghnides.

The meeting broke up.

She and Ambrose remained on at her suggestion. She said to Lester that she would close up. The others went off in a happy mood.

Lester gave Edith money to pay for the room. She waved it away. ‘They have given us this room, compliments of the management.'

‘Well done, Edith.'

The whisky had not been opened. Lester looked at it, smiled at her and left it where it was.

Ambrose and she remained.

She got up and went over and opened it and poured herself a drink. She didn't pour Ambrose a drink.

To hell with him, too.

He got up and poured himself a drink.

She waited to see if he would comment on the situation—whether he was even aware of it.

He was. He said, ‘You're hurt?'

Sounding like a young girl, she denied it.

‘You are—about the information I had on Avenol's resignation.'

‘Why didn't you tell me?!'

He reached over to her, ‘Don't be hurt. It's a messy situation.'

She avoided his hand. ‘Tell me, then. Explain why you wouldn't let me in on it?'

‘It was information which came through Bernard.'

‘Oh, the Molly telegraph—the Molly Gossip Circle,' she said with derision. ‘The Buggery Club.'

‘Edith, Bernard, as you well know, is a very good source of information and I can't always break the confidences he asks of me.'

‘Am I, then, out of his confidence? Because I am a woman and not a bugger? Why?'

She stood up, drink in hand, and went to the window. ‘Is it because I can't bugger?'

‘Now, now. I know that you're sensitive because of the bloody silly things I did before—in the old days. This is not like that. I've apologised for that. And I've paid for it, God knows. I lost you for a time. I lost my position. You know that I would never put our friendship at risk, Edith, ever.'

‘It's not just a friendship.'

‘Quite right. It's not just a friendship. Edith—we're living in dangerous times and all information has to be handled carefully now. Gossip is deadly and dangerous. People's lives now depend on this information and we must make sure that it goes only to those who must have it. Today at the group meeting here, for example, are people who should have the information which I had. You alone—maybe not.'

‘Why not me
alone
?!'

‘We can all make slips of the tongue. And remember that you yourself were, until recently, in a strange game of double deception with Avenol. With those around you.'

‘I feel betrayed. You promised no more secrets.'

‘There are no personal secrets: there may have to be secrets of war.'

‘Bernard usually tells me everything,' she said, still
sounding like a sulky girl. ‘My little heroine,' she mimicked.

‘He admires you enormously.'

‘But can't trust me?'

‘He does. The situation is changing daily and information becomes more dangerous and more fraught. And there is something else you should know about Bernard, which I will tell you even though it's confidential. Highly confidential. Seriously confidential.'

‘What? More secrets of the Buggery Club?'

What was the full extent of Ambrose's private relations with Bernard anyhow? She had never questioned them until now. They seemed to be simply close friends. Maybe they were more than that? God knows.

‘Bernard is a delegate for the International Red Cross. He goes on missions for the Red Cross to gather facts about, say, treatment of political prisoners and others—to the prison camps in Germany—and reports back here to the Red Cross. This is not a public fact. If it were he would be jeopardised. He is not supposed to share his information with anyone.'

She was surprised and impressed. ‘I didn't know he was a delegate.'

‘Delegates are not supposed to be publicly known. We have to be careful not to compromise him. What he gathers as a delegate is not available to the public. But he sometimes chooses to pass that on to people who might be able to help in some private way.'

She had not calmed down.

‘Think of it like this,' he said. ‘The public—the voters, if you like—have the right to the truth from every minister except the Foreign Secretary. Maybe the Secretary for Defence, as well, is exempt from always telling the truth.'

‘Why the Foreign Secretary?'

‘All citizens realise that in a military or international crisis you have to take what is being said as an interim statement of affairs. That more will come later. That all cannot be told now.'

‘I do not accept that.'

‘Because in foreign relations the telling of the truth is not always in the national interest at a given time. The truth must ultimately be told but cannot always be told there and then. Sometimes the Foreign Secretary has to leave it to history to tell the truth, because telling the truth in the heat of a situation could, for example, endanger lives, or make negotiations impossible to complete successfully. It is the unspoken understanding between the public and the Foreign Secretary. Of course, when he lies he must have damned good justification for that lying. And almost always, he will be held accountable for that suppression of the truth. But withholding is part of the responsibility of his office, at times.'

‘Give me an example.'

‘Oh, I don't know—say if one's nationals were to be secretly evacuated—from some country and that to say so would endanger the evacuation—the Foreign Secretary in this situation might deny that an evacuation was taking place.'

‘And you see yourself in the position of Foreign Secretary of the Buggery Club?'

‘Please stop using that expression. Maybe yes. I'm your Personal Secretary but I also play a role in the secrecy of the Molly Club.'

‘The other palace. The Buggery Palace.'

‘Perhaps you and I are both Foreign Secretaries—on the same side, but from different countries.'

‘I thought I was a member of the Molly circle?'

He pondered this.

‘You are as close as anyone to Bernard, but you cannot escape your other position, your position as member of the League inner circle. I suppose the interests of both overlap but are not identical. Damned tricky at times. You do this with Bernard too, you may not be aware of it. Sometimes you duck or mislead in your answers to him.'

He had made his point. Things were messy.

‘Couldn't we form an overriding alliance—an alliance of two?' she said, calmer now.

He smiled but looked perplexed.

She went to him and kissed his hair, then stood near him, her arm on his shoulder. ‘There's some sort of other thing isn't there, with Bernard and the Molly? It's not only the Red Cross—it's a …' she tried to find the words for it. ‘You're bound together because of your way of life, shall we say? A brotherhood of sorts?'

He looked at her. He seemed to have considered things and come to a decision, ‘I think you should consider yourself part of that brotherhood, as you put it.'

‘As a woman?'

‘As a woman.'

‘What caused you to change your mind?'

‘As I said, the situation is changing daily.'

‘We haven't seen
those women
who used to come some nights to the Molly. I suppose they have gone. They worked at the ILO. All sent home.'

‘You are another kind of woman.'

‘And what kind of woman am I, pray tell?'

‘I don't know what kind.'

She smiled at him. ‘What a mess it all is.'

‘It is a mess and it's going to be a bigger mess.'

‘Can you trust all at the Molly?'

‘Not all.'

‘There are many new shapes for friendships, alliances and bonds,' she said.

They were all in webs of strange allegiances.

Sticky webs.

He poured them another drink.

She suddenly laughed.

Ambrose looked at her.

‘When you were asked to give a summary of the situation they all thought you would tell them insider Foreign Office
thinking,' she said, laughing. ‘If only they knew. If they knew where you got the information. Which Foreign Office you really represent now.'

He smiled. ‘I don't get all my information that way, Edith.'

She went on laughing. ‘Oh hell, we could give up on the world—go to South America,' she said. ‘The Peruvian Permanent Delegate offered me a posting there this week.'

‘It's tempting.'

‘However, I made up the A List. So I have to stay.'

‘The A List?'

‘We now have four lists in the League. A List is the sixty-nine people, including me, who are to stay on as a nucleus whatever happens. The B List is a smaller group who will now go home but remain on call, the C List is most of the League personnel who have now been given choice of suspension or resignation, and List D is some Swiss staff who would become caretakers of the building if all of us had to go or were arrested by the Germans or whatever.'

‘The A List are those you would invite to your party, I presume.'

‘And the circular reminds those staff being sacked to leave the keys of their apartments or houses with their
régisseurs
. Avenol is on no list.'

They looked at each other.

‘So the League dwindles,' he said.

‘The lights are going out in the offices. It's becoming darker. Victoria is going across to the Red Cross. At least she'll still be around.'

She sat down beside him, her arm around him. ‘I don't think my parents raised me to be a member of the Buggery Club.'

‘I hate that expression. Would they mind?'

She thought back to her father and mother. ‘Perhaps. We always think our parents have a childlike innocence. I guess they don't.'

She stood up and faced him, and taking his hands pulled him to his feet and led him over to the bed in the room.

‘Edith Berry, you amaze me.'

She folded down the bedclothes.