Cold Light (62 page)

They nodded.

She left the room and found Amelia. ‘I am too old; they are too young.’

Amelia hugged her and said, ‘It’ll work out. But it won’t be easy – you’re breaking the ice.’

‘They say that the Meccano sets are the wrong colour. Can you believe that?’

‘With boys I can believe it,’ Amelia said. ‘I didn’t know there were different colours.’

‘I cannot explain why but, yes, there are, it appears, different colours.’

She leaned on the sink.

She pulled herself together and took a plate of mixed sandwiches. Amelia drained the frankfurts and gathered up some coloured paper serviettes, and together they returned to the party.

She was relieved to see that they had at least begun unpacking the Meccano sets and had put the missiles aside.

Osborne complained that George’s set was larger.

She explained, ‘That’s because you’re different ages. At your next birthday, I will give you a 6A and that will make your set a 7.’

That seemed to satisfy him, but then he did a calculation. ‘But you’ll give him a 7A and his set will be ahead of mine again.’

‘You could share your sets.’

George mumbled something about how that ‘wouldn’t work’.

Richard told them to take a napkin and have some food. Osborne turned to his father and said, ‘What do we call her?

Edith thought,
Oh God, we haven’t discussed the name business
.

‘You can call her . . .’ He stopped, looking to her.

She did not want to be called stepmother; she did not want to be an evil character from a fairytale.

‘You could call me Mam.’

George said, ‘That’s another word for mother.’

She said, ‘You could call me Edith.’

George said, ‘Children don’t call grownups by their first name.’

She wondered if she could be called Mrs Westwood. Or go back to her maiden name – Mrs Berry. That would be madness. Her new official married name would be same as that of their dead mother and was thus disqualified.

Osborne said to George, ‘We could call her What The Cat Dragged In.’ And they both giggled.

There was humour in it, but it was mostly malicious.

Richard said, ‘Don’t be rude. You will call her Mother. That is what she will be from now on.’

They were sullenly silent.

Then George said, ‘I won’t.’

Osborne said, ‘I won’t either.’

‘What about Mrs E?’ she offered. It made her sound like a charlady. What a mess.

They didn’t reply.

‘We’ll work something out,’ Richard said.

‘For today,’ she said, trying hard, smiling so that it hurt, ‘you may call me What The Cat Dragged In.’

Osborne smiled and George tried not to.

She called out for Amelia to join them. ‘And bring three beers.’

The boys went to bed and she said goodnight to them in their room. They accepted kisses from Richard, but not from her. She didn’t force it, simply running her hand over their hair.

In bed that night, Richard comforted her and they agreed that it was a difficult thing for the children to take on.

He went to sleep before she did, and she lay there fearing that it had all been a wrong move; that her love for this man did not spill over to the children and nor did his love for her.

She could see now that that was not how it worked. It would take time and other approaches.

S
he continued to see Janice and Frederick outside the house over coffee, but not as frequently.

They never ceased to tell her the Soviet Union looked good: that it seemed ready to overtake the US in industrial production and that its wealth-per-head would also leave the US behind. Communism was turning out to be the success story of the century. Even when she did what Ambrose did – halve the Soviet figures – they looked good. Who knew the facts?

They were leading in nuclear science, had nuclear weaponry and the first nuclear power plant. Frederick said the Soviet Union would also be the first into space and would dominate it. They still admired the success of Czechoslovakia as the first independent communist republic outside the Soviet Union.

She had told him that she really didn’t read the Communist Party’s
Tribune
, but it was still regularly put in their letterbox each week, rolled up tightly and tied with string for discretion. She did try the
Communist Review
– the so-called theoretical magazine. She also flicked through the glossy Soviet propaganda magazines – well, socialist glossy, the colours seemed off – which he gave her every time they got together.

Richard invited her to visit the Rum Jungle uranium mine, with her travelling as his researcher, which required security papers. She told Richard about the interview with the ASIO and about her brother, but he had laughed. ‘I doubt very much you would have a security problem.’ She did not know why he would be so sure.

The security clearance came and she was relieved that the ASIO did not seem to have any objection to her going. As they flew to Rum Jungle, the cabin-window blinds were drawn so that the passengers could not see the layout of the mine.

The mine gave off an atmosphere of important purpose and secrecy. Those working there were aware that their work was with something new, valuable and very potent, but the site was open-cut and unspectacular, and the buildings make-shift. Only the reputation of its product was in any way spectacular.

Back home, Richard and she listened to President Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ broadcast.

President Eisenhower foreshadowed the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency to control the use of uranium.

She saw that it would be a small League of Nations, and that this sort of organisation could be the future of international diplomacy – specialised organisations to solve one problem rather than one organisation attempting to solve all the world’s problems.

‘Nuclear power is the future,’ Richard had said, and, standing up, he pulled her to her feet. ‘We are on the winning team.’ He was excited. ‘We are the future.’ He said that since the discovery of uranium, Menzies was preoccupied with making Australia a uranium power among nations. He wanted to be in on the secrets – wanted to be seated at the table with the Brits and the Americans.

She decided that, because of the way things were going in the world, uranium and nuclear energy was where she should put her efforts.

She resigned from her dogsbody job with Gibson at Interior and actually felt a little sorry at giving up on the planning of the city. Gibson seemed sorry to see her and her office furniture go.

Mr T was weepy and she gave him one of her cumquat trees.

‘I won’t have the courage to put it in my corner.’

‘Yes you will, Mr T. It’s the one you saved with your first aid. You saved its life.’

He looked down at the cumquat, reaching down to touch its leaves. ‘The others will be jealous.’

‘Let them be.’

He picked up the cumquat, cradling it in his arms. ‘I will let them be jealous. And I will treasure it.’

‘We will still see each other?’

‘Definitely. Oh yes. Please.’

After considerable research and with Richard’s guidance, she wrote a scientific essay, ‘Atoms for Peace and the Future of Specialised Diplomacy’, a commentary on Eisenhower’s speech, for the ANZAAS journal
Search
, signed Edith Campbell Berry BSc (Syd), and she was thrilled when they accepted it. It was the most substantial thing she had done since returning to Australia.

Richard and their friends celebrated the publication of her essay at the Gloucester.

She then decided to expand the essay into a handbook for schools on nuclear energy –
The Nuclear Environment: A Handbook on Nuclear Power for Schools and the Community
. Richard thought that the government would fund it, and it did. Most of the state education departments distributed it and she even made some money on royalties.

At first Richard worked with her on the book – his library on uranium was very useful – but that led to disagreements over grammar and style, and she found he always wanted to be accepted as the final arbiter. They agreed that collaboration was not for them. He sometimes looked over her shoulder while she typed but made no comment. She wished he wouldn’t.

Gradually, she found herself invited to talk to schools about uranium.

In her talks, she put much emphasis on the peaceful uses of radiation and the likely creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency. She wrote to an old friend, Sigvard Eklund, who was helping with the planning of the agency, and sent him a copy of her essay. He had replied, complimenting her on it.

She was interviewed by the ABC about the Canadians finding a cure for cancer in cobalt radiation. She told the reporter, ‘A patient in a plaster cast is wheeled into a room in Victoria Hospital in Ontario. One end of a large metal cylinder is positioned over her body. Everyone leaves the room. Outside, a technician presses a button. A powerful dose of radiation surges deep into the patient’s body, destroying cancerous cells. The cancer has gone.’

Because of the essay, she had received an invitation to afternoon tea at the National University from Sir Ernest Titterton, where he now held the chair of Nuclear Physics. It was a great honour and she felt it went well. He was very much for peaceful use of nuclear energy and lent her a book.

Richard arranged for her to meet with Menzies. He claimed to remember the dinner at which they had met and seemed to have read the essay – or at least a summary – and said something about finding a place for someone ‘with your background’.

She thanked him and queried whether any such place for her, if it were to be found, would be connected to the new Australian Atomic Energy Commission.

He raised his eyebrow. ‘I will need someone here in Canberra who can explain it all to me. I want you inside the tent.’

The Prime Minister had said that things were happening fast with atomic energy – ‘the Russians are ahead of us with nuclear electricity and weaponry. We have the mines.’

He then looked around conspiratorially and said to her and Richard, ‘We’ve already had a bang or two in the desert north of Adelaide and, just between us, I think we’ll have a permanent testing ground around there soon. And the Rum Jungle mine is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in my life. Whatever we may think about dreadful atomic instruments such as the atomic bombs and their terrible consequences, part of our security in these tremulous conditions depends upon the superiority of the free world. We’re lucky that we should have found, within our own boundaries, deposits of this ore, which will bring power and light and the amenities of life to us all.’