Cold Light (5 page)

Edith said, ‘You look the part today, Janice.’ The voice of a guest to a servant who is perhaps not what she seems. Staring at her, trying to decipher the playlet.

Janice then said, ‘These black stockings prickle.’

‘Remind you of schooldays?’

‘At my school we had better quality.’

Edith was tempted to ask the name of her school but decided against that.

After Janice left, Frederick said, ‘Have you been to Russia?’

She shook her head.

‘I was there at a cadre school before the war. In Russia, lunch, or
obed
, is the largest meal – several courses, the soup comes after a salad. And the salads are a meal in themselves. Topped with meat or fish. Pickled vegetables. Then meat or fish and roasted vegetables. And, of course, vodka.’

Then he said, ‘Very egalitarian of you, introducing the serving classes to your guest.’ This sounded odd.

‘I am becoming fond of her. She is usually in her chambermaid outfit, though sometimes she waits table. In our mother’s day, Janice would have been called the parlourmaid and expected to do both jobs, maybe even answer the door. Remember how our parlourmaids at Jasper’s Brush came and went?’

‘With or without parlourmaids, the house was always a mess,’ Frederick said.

Edith pinned her brother. ‘You and she know each other.’

He smiled, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘Yes, Janice is in the Party. We’re friends.’ He then broke eye contact and looked at the wall, finishing his sherry.

She fiddled with her drink. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘We observe the niceties of the work situation, when it’s required – on the rare occasions I visit this posh place. Anyhow, we were joking around. And now you’re in on the joke.’ He put his glass down on the table. ‘I would’ve told you.’

So. This Janice was
the friend.
And what did this Janice observe as she had come and gone from their rooms over the months? This would not make Ambrose happy. Although Ambrose was not supposed to take files and cables from the office, he did. What about her own correspondence to people such as John Latham? To her UNO friends in Flushing Meadow? She was not happy. The orbit of the planets had been further disturbed.

This was a new dilemma, to be put to one side.

‘Why do you wear that dreadful suit?’

He looked down at himself. ‘I try to blend with the workforce.’ He smiled. ‘The suit is from Prague and, I suspect, doesn’t blend at all.’

He added, ‘I suppose I try to set an example. Somehow. Not –’ He hesitated – ‘not sartorially.’ He grinned at the word. ‘I try to set an example in hut hygiene. I set an example about drinking on the job. I urge them to respect each other’s property. I urge them not to pilfer. We have undesirables turning up.’

‘Undesirables?’

‘Urgers – bludgers – scroungers.’

He said these words in a voice she had not heard before. A tough, moralistic voice.

‘My morning callisthenics programme was a flop.’ He laughed. ‘Only because I couldn’t keep it up.’ He was being self-deprecating. ‘And I try to get a discussion of world affairs going at the weekend, but only two or three give a damn.’

‘Father sent you to Newington – why didn’t you go to university?’

‘Took me five years to get rid of the Newington accent.’

‘You failed. Do they rib you about your accent?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘It’s not a bad accent.’

He gave their family short laugh. ‘You have a bit of a foreign accent.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The French language has sandpapered it up a bit.’

‘I was so long abroad, I don’t notice it.’

‘It’s there alright. But so is Jasper’s Brush. Jasper’s Brush is still there in your voice.’

‘I’m glad. What’s a Jasper’s Brush accent?’

He thought. ‘Not an accent, I suppose. At Jasper’s Brush we had words for things. I remember we used to say “dressed out” – as in “she was all dressed out”. Or “the town was all dressed out” – say, for a parade.’

She found it interesting that he remembered such things.

They chattered about Jasper’s Brush days, while waiting for the food. Edith said, ‘Remember when I would address the trees? I would say to an ironbark, “Good morning, Iron Bark,” and to the wattle, “Good morning, Yellow Alice.” I used to say that the trees were my friends, but I have to be honest, I never felt they were my friends. Secretly, I was even disloyal to the Australian trees. I preferred the trees in the
Girls’ Own Annual
– oaks, elms, chestnuts and birches. That was when I was trying to be poetical. When I decided to be a scientist, I learned their Latin botanical names and I would say, “Good morning,
Acacia pycnantha.
” You ridiculed it. You argued that you couldn’t see an Australian tree if you gave it a Latin name. You said that was the wrong way of seeing.’

‘I think I was right,’ he said.

‘Now I think you
were
right.’

He reminded her of how they rode their horses bareback through the bush tracks to Seven Mile Beach and into the sea, and lit fires from the driftwood to dry out.

They went through their favourite names from the coast: Foxground, Flying Fox Creek, Fairy Meadow, Mollymook, Jerry Bailey and, of course, Jasper’s Brush. ‘Did you ever see a fairy at Fairy Meadow?’

There was a knock and she went to the door, opening it to allow Janice to back into the room with a tray loaded with food, glasses, wine and cutlery. Edith helped her clear a space on the table and together they laid the tablecloth. Now armed with something Janice didn’t know she knew, she watched Janice. The ball was back in her court. Janice laid out the cutlery and put down their first course. ‘I’ll bring up the other courses when they’re ready.’ She had returned to her serving-girl voice.

Frederick and Janice did not make any sort of eye or verbal contact.

She felt like saying something, but now, slightly amused, she would leave them stranded in their own game.

She dipped a little finger in the oyster sauce and tried it. The sauces were unpredictable. At least the oyster forks were there.

‘Thank you, Janice.’

‘My pleasure.’

Janice left. She said to Frederick, ‘What did you do with your share of the inheritance from Mother and then from Father?’

He shrugged and tried an oyster.

Edith persisted with her inquiry. ‘Mother transferred money and assets to us before she died – divided between you, me and Father. It must be sitting there in the bank waiting for you to collect it. Or at the solicitor’s.’

He didn’t respond.

‘It must be in the hands of the estate – the family lawyer, Morris Phillips, at Phillips, Fox & Masel. You remember him? His sons run the firm now. A good deal of money and some shares.’

On his second oyster, he said, ‘The solicitors did track me down – I’d had other business with Morris from time to time.’

‘And?’

‘I gave it to the Party.’

She didn’t say anything.

He said, ‘It would’ve, well, hindered me. Contaminated me in some way.’

She was not sure why she was dismayed. It was, after all, his inheritance. And she had given some of her inheritance to the International School in Geneva.

‘But when, and if, the Communist Party comes to power, you – as a top official, a commissar – will be well paid.’

‘Ah, but there will be no great difference between what I earn, if I am socialist president, and what a waitress such as Janice earns. Even you accept that inheritance is grossly unjust to poor kids – gives rich kids a flying start.’

‘From each according to ability, to each according to need?’ she said.

Frederick frowned. ‘Anyhow, it’s not
what
we do or what we’re paid, as long as everyone has enough to eat and a roof. It is that we do our work
well
that makes work good for us – a good society allows us to find the work we are able to do well. Gives everyone a fair go.’

She watched him as she ate her oysters. The sauce was successfully made.

He said, ‘And, by the way, we say now, “
From each according to his ability, to each according to his work
.” ’

She could see he enjoyed teaching.

He went on, ‘Back in the early 1930s, Stalin abolished wage equalisation. Skilled workers, he argued, should be paid something more than unskilled.’

She said, ‘I rather like the older doctrine of “according to need” . . . I must be more of a socialist than you. The Good Society does not measure itself by its geniuses or millionaires or great artists; more by how decently the low-achievers – those not so good at much, those with low IQ scores – live and are treated. The winners can look after themselves.’

But she found herself cautious about how she argued with her brother. He had thought all this through. Or the Party had. Even though she had heard these sorts of arguments, back in the Café Landolt and the other cafés of Geneva before the war, and more so in Vienna after the war, she had never really done much more than throw in a smart, superior comment. She suspected that he would outplay her in an argument.

She broke from the subject and asked him rather abruptly, ‘What should we do about us? Us – as brother and sister?’

‘
What, then, is to be done?
’ He looked at her as if assessing a painting in an art museum. ‘I have thought about this. At first, I thought perhaps it was better we not meet. But we have to face the objective reality: we are indeed brother and sister and we live in the same town. But what is the question? Can a consciousness be developed from this relationship that will benefit us?’

He continued looking at her with unblinking eyes. ‘Do you follow me?’

Did he always talk like this? ‘In so far as your language equates with everyday language,’ she said, laughing.

She wondered if he was, in part, mocking himself, but she could see that there was a methodology at work.

He thought for a second and said, ‘As for my language, well, that can’t be helped – the Party vocabulary is disciplined, the words we use are packed with theory and conclusion, all the hard thinking that Lenin and others did. Perhaps it is a form of telegraphese. An educated communist uses these words to save time and to be precise. You need to do some more reading, Edith.’

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she had been rather mentally numbed by the collapse of the League.

She decided to talk on his terms, in so far as she understood them in any precise way. ‘What consciousness do you think can be developed from us acknowledging a brother and sister relationship?’

‘I am more concerned with false consciousness. Around the biological objective reality of our being brother and sister, there are old ideologies – remember that in feudal days we would be part of a productive family unit. There is still some of that attitude hanging over from the feudal past. Under bourgeois ideology, as my sister, you would’ve been offered the same work in the factory but paid less . . .’

She broke in, ‘And it would still be the case.’

He doggedly continued, ‘You would get the job in the weaving factory, not me – we would’ve been forced to compete against each other.’

She said, ‘And under communism?’

‘Already in the Soviet Union, the government takes over many of the responsibilities of the family. But as far as you and I are concerned, I’m more interested in analysing what impediments it brings to my role here and now.’

He ate some food and then continued, ‘There was a revolutionary in Russia named Nechaev – he was not a communist – who wrote something called
The Catechism of the Revolutionary
. He said if he, the revolutionary, had any relations with parents, friends or lovers, and if he allowed himself to be swayed by these relationships,
he was no longer a revolutionary
. Stalin has said something similar. I was relieved when Mother and Father died because I did not have to in any way consider them in the conduct of my life. That was, in part, why I shot through – to cut myself free. I do now have to consider you. I have a sister in the enemy camp.’

The revolutionary teacher was now strongly present. She found this hardly believable. So. She was a problem to him. Well, he was probably an even bigger problem for her.

‘Do you think the Bloomsbury crowd renovated marriage?’

‘Who?’

‘Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson – did you know he nearly became Secretary-General of the League? – the writer Virginia Woolf. All those people who made their own rules about marriage and sex.’

‘Intelligentsia. They play games. They are not making a revolution. Lenin said we cannot really deal with family relations and the renovation of marriage at this point in the revolution; it will be solved when we have socialism.’

She enjoyed a secret smile about herself and Ambrose – they had renovated marriage.

‘You don’t know about Bloomsbury?’

His body moved defensively, his fingers locked. ‘I know the category.’

She would leave that. ‘The Dreiser story must have had special meaning for you? A particular meaning?’

He became animated. ‘Yes, I was interested that you mentioned that story and I thought about it again. The children go on with their lives without
considering
their parents. But the story’s real message is that economics determine the nature of families – they have to go where the capitalist system wants them to go. If the parents can’t support the children, they’re dumped. If the parents become a burden, they’re dumped. Dog eat dog.’

She had not quite read it that way. ‘Most families aren’t like that.’

He shook his head. ‘Edith, Edith – families are an economic unit.’

‘The New World was built by people who had to break from their parents – had to migrate to survive. Split up.’

He stared out the window. ‘I think I have the personal will to be a true revolutionary. I see my life as part of the revolutionary capital placed at the disposal of the Party.’

He frowned, and his face now seemed to show a disappointment with himself. He looked at the floor and said, ‘To be honest, there are times even now when I feel I only come
close
to being a true revolutionary.’

She couldn’t stop herself laughing, but swallowed it back. ‘How close?’ She measured the air with two fingers. ‘This close?’ She then brought them closer together. ‘This close?’