Grand Days (52 page)

‘It is not for me to say.' Under Secretary Bartou looked at her closely. ‘Are you not suffering? Remorse perhaps?'

‘It's mostly anger and disappointment now.'

‘How do you fortify yourself? To defeat your remorse?'

‘“To spy on a spy is no crime”,' she replied, and they both smiled without the zest of humour.

‘If it will help, I can contribute another maxim: to lie to a spy is no crime.'

Had Ambrose within this hour ceased to be a lover and become simply ‘a spy'?

She then said something which she had been saying to herself to justify her actions: ‘I believed that he and I shared that higher allegiance to the League. He betrayed it — and me — by having, in fact, a concealed allegiance.'

Under Secretary Bartou nodded, making a gesture of under standing. ‘This secret allegiance which Major Westwood has is
sometimes not fully understood by the person who has sworn it. It begins often as a patriotic virtue but it can lead that person into very savage and grim decisions in times of conflict of interest. The secret allegiance can ask of its servant that he turn against all around him.'

‘It's a clear case of
rebus sic stantibus
,' she said, thinking that it was such a case where the conditions of the original treaty of love and friendship between Ambrose and she had changed, had been nullified, adding, ‘both in my relationship to him and his to the League.'

Under Secretary Bartou thought for a moment and said, ‘There is a strict view of
rebus sic stantibus
which says that no party can ever liberate itself from a treaty without the consent of the other party.'

‘But what if conditions have changed?' She didn't want a diplomatic argument. She wanted comfort.

‘
You
say conditions have changed. But you are right, the strict view is untenable. But so, too, is the lax view which would allow any party to disregard a treaty on any pretext.'

Her hold on
rebus sic stantibus
began to collapse in her mind. This must have showed.

‘A nation has to be very skilful sometimes in deciding whether conditions have changed. Or whether the dishonouring of a treaty is going to carry penalties unforeseen.'

She didn't know if Under Secretary Bartou was warning her about treaties and penalties. ‘Are you warning me? Is there something that I do not understand which I should fear?' she asked, fearing his answer.

‘More a lesson than a warning.' He said that for him the sad part of the matter was that Ambrose was ‘a spy with nothing upon which to spy', playing at espionage at great professional and personal risk. A spy without value. ‘I suspect that he wanted
to keep a special relationship with his FO. I also suspect that they didn't treat it all that seriously.'

He stared out the window and she prepared to leave although she felt unable to return to her everyday work, too pent up with diverse feelings, most of which were disturbing.

‘Why are treaties ever made if they are so fragile?' she asked.

‘Because they are sometimes respected.' He began cleaning his pipe. ‘And to use a treaty as a trick works only once.'

‘Will we ever need spies? The League?' she asked, trying to extend the discussion of the whole matter and to have the afternoon exhaust itself, and so as not to be alone. Looking afresh at what she had always thought of as the abominable custom of espionage.

‘Maybe. Maybe we will have need of other people's spies to inform ourselves at times of crisis. Yes, I can see that.' He looked at her. ‘I have a question for you — about something which intrigues me,' he said. He seemed to want to spend the afternoon mulling over the matter also.

‘Yes?' She tensed herself against more probing into her intimate life with Ambrose.

‘The pain of turning against a friend I can understand, but as an Australian, your soul began where Major Westwood's soul began — in the heartlands of England, with some Nordic blood perhaps. You are of the same stock — do you not feel allegiance? Loyalty? Can you so easily turn against him? I suppose I ask as a former Swiss diplomat with a very great curiosity about the English and their empire.'

Sitting there, she thought about it as best she could. She'd had too many other complications concerning standards of self and friendship to have had time to think of grander notions. She had not thought of the allegiance of British blood. ‘It did not come to me in those terms at all,' she concluded, wondering if
this was another dagger which would come sooner or later to cut her in the dead of night.

‘Interesting. Your soul came from the same place but it has been altered. Altered by the sun and by the pioneering and by the distance in under a hundred and fifty years. I am interested in what happens to the national soul when it's transplanted.'

‘What happens to our souls when we are transplanted to Geneva?' She gestured at the unseen thousand people working away in the Palais Wilson and the other buildings. ‘Or what about you? Seemingly still on the soil of your own country but legally in a diplomatic nether region.'

‘The discovery of our international soul?' He smiled. ‘You're right. Those of us who come to work at the League are all immigrants.'

‘You return home though when you step outside the door, back onto Swiss soil.'

‘True. But I can never be Swiss again in the same way. Another question: is there an Australian way of handling a friend who turns out to be a spy?'

She thought of the romanticising of the bushrangers in Australia, which she didn't like. She said that a spy might stand a chance of becoming a popular legend like a bushranger — if he or she spied for the right country at the right time.

‘But I grew up in a family which believed in polity — my father's word: that we were involved in the making of the polity, the making of our new culture. Openly doing this. People secretly serving foreign masters — even spies serving English masters — were considered to be something of a danger.' She smiled. ‘Especially those serving the Pope.'

‘What was your father's occupation that led him to use words such as “polity”?'

‘My father was in business but he was also something of a
private scholar. He had a large library. He read a lot.'

‘What business?'

‘He had a small factory which made water tanks. And other things. He sold anything to do with water — piping, pumps. He said that Australia was always going to worry about water and that's the business he went into.'

‘Tell me of your upbringing.'

‘My mother put everything into the Red Cross. That was her life. After being a mother. She was State President and held all sorts of positions. Although now it's a bit inactive in the town.' She was away a lot, Edith thought. Perhaps a good mother should not be around too much. Edith found herself at last on prepared ground, having thought much about her upbringing while in Chamonix. ‘I was raised on Six Ethics. The Ethic of Rationalism which kept me away from religion and pushed me towards science although as it turns out, I am not a very good scientist. My father's mother was a follower of Ingersoil.' She looked at him to see if he knew Ingersoll. ‘The great American agnostic,' she said, in case he didn't know. ‘He believed in what he called the “enfranchisement of the human mind”. He liked good wine and good food, too.' She tried to be light. ‘I follow him on that as well.' That was perhaps enough about Colonel Ingersoll. ‘That's how my family came to know the Lathams. John Latham worked for the Rationalist Society for a while.

‘The Work Ethic — which as a Swiss you understand — pride in work, thoroughness, the making of things.

‘The Study Ethic. I grew up in a house of books and talk of books and of magazines; we had Ingersoll's magazine in the house for as long as I remember — my father still sends me issues — and we were Democrats who believed we were responsible for our domain.

‘The Obligation to Participate. The citizen had to participate — my father would say, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of fighting for it.” That sort of thing. Both my mother and father talked of democratic voting as “the ceremony of the whole”. The family were forever at meetings and the family itself was a continuous meeting. They would quote Ingersoll: “every family a republic, every fireside a democracy”.

‘And my mother taught me the Ethic of the Domestic, how to make a beautiful life around oneself, the ceremonies and graces of domesticity. There were codes of conduct which followed from these ethics. That's how I understand being Australian.'

She sat there with a satisfied smile. He sat there with a surprised and interested smile.

‘My father also drilled wells. He searched for water but he wasn't a water diviner. He used geology.'

‘To me it sounds like Calvinism sans Calvin. I see why you are at the League of Nations.' He said he thought she had mentioned only five ethics.

She ran through them again in her head, cursing herself. Was there something deficient in someone who couldn't hold six points in their head? ‘I missed the Bush Ethic. Self-reliance yet willingness to give help to others and to combine to do things together as a community — mutual aid. We liked to go out into the bush as a way of exploring the country and nature.' She decided she'd said enough. She hoped it didn't sound as though her family was dreadfully serious. But she supposed it was a serious family.

‘One day you might explain to me further about what you call the Bush Ethic? Do you know the bush?'

‘I know how to find water.'

He seemed very pleased with her answer. ‘I believe you would know.'

‘When I say that I was not a very good scientist, I should say that I passed well. At university my herbarium was much praised. I think I had more species than required. I remember I had more fungi than required.' She stopped herself, sensing how she was babbling on.

He took his pipe from his mouth and held it at arm's length as if studying it. She had once been told that the distance he took his pipe from his mouth was a measure of the importance of what he was about to say.

He then asked her if she would like to work with him.

She hesitated. Was this a reward for her informing on her lover? She wanted no reward which would be tarnished, which would carry with it a load of remorse, and be an enduring reminder of this affair. And people were right about the pipe.

‘Why are you offering me this?'

‘I have asked people about you. I know something of your flair. I remember very well the day you instructed the Directors on how to run the business side of the League. I have followed your files which begin with the visit of an American showman. You've handled well what you've been given. It's time you were given more.'

Strongbow. That was so far back and she often felt that others knew what she had really done. Of course, they couldn't know.

‘Would you have offered me this position if I hadn't — exposed Ambrose Westwood?'

He thought about it. ‘This matter has brought you into my focus. I like the way you handled it. There was no “clean” way
of handling it. You rolled up your sleeves and did the job. I imagine that's an Australian characteristic. And a Swiss characteristic also.'

Dirty work. He was right, she had done some dirty work.

‘You did not come to me as an informer. You came to me as a concerned colleague.'

She did not want to go on working for the Marquis Paulucci. Her realistic expectations had been eventually to transfer into Social Questions with Dame Rachel to work with
La Commission Sentimentale
. ‘At what level would my appointment be?'

‘You would be, in British parliamentary rank, my Private Secretary, as it were. However, because of the accommodation problems you'd not have your own office, you'd work in here with me.'

‘Would I be able to attend Directors' meetings? That'd be good training for me.'

He looked at her, smiling. ‘The League of Nations was not created for you to complete your education, Berry.' He continued to smile at her. ‘Although the new countries, I notice, treat us as a college in international affairs.'

She said she would like a short time to think about it.

‘Remember that ill-defined appointments suit ambitious personalities — you can expand the appointment to suit your aspirations.'

As she got up to leave, he said to her, ‘Do you know what this agency is — the address that was in Westwood's secret papers?'

She could guess at some licentious possibilities. She shook her head.

‘It's strange. It's an agency which, for a fee, will post your letters from any part of the world.'

‘So that you can pretend to be where you are not?'

‘Precisely.'

‘How odd.' As she walked down the corridor, she wondered how Under Secretary Bartou knew the function of such an agency. She remembered how she had originally seen Ambrose as a proper English civil servant with endearing vices, and had been rather proud at having him as an escort. But this sort of Englishness held no appeal for her now.

She was unsure how she would like Under Secretary Bartou, but it was not a question of friendship — it was vocation. Under Secretary Bartou seemed to have become her ally. She smiled grimly at something Ambrose had once said about allies — the surest ally is one with whom you share the spoils. This made her uncomfortable. She assumed that Under Secretary Bartou would earn some commendation from presenting the discovery to Sir Eric and presumably to Council.

After she left his office, she sat in the parc Mon Repos over from the Palais Wilson but felt no repose. Edith saw now that she'd arrived at yet another position in life. She was going deeper into the hierarchy of the League and closer to it. Ambrose was going further away from it, if not totally away from it, and she from him. She wondered whether, for all his perfidy, she could continue to accept Ambrose as a colleague — if, that is, they permitted him to remain. She now believed that the situation as it had developed excluded Ambrose from any protection from the consequences of breaching that allegiance, and she would not extend sanctuary to Ambrose, nor protection from the repercussions of her actions upon him. He had negated, within the friendship, one of its highest requirements and was entitled now to only a lesser relationship of, say, acquaintanceship. She would have to confront Ambrose with this. Another dreadful deed ahead of her.