Dark Palace (13 page)

They all laughed. It sounded achingly true of Victoria.

Everyone's reaction to the disarmament picnic had been pretty much the same—razzing. They teased her mercilessly.

‘What's your secret diplomacy?' asked Follett, but he alone did not indulge in the playful derision. He seemed genuinely curious.

‘I want to introduce that pacifist crowd to champagne,' she said laughing, trying to lighten things up. ‘They're so prudish. They're out to stop more than just war. They have a whole list of things to stop.'

‘They seem to wish to stop every single one of my vices. Including some I will not list,' Follet said.

She did not want to talk about the picnic but she had to
say something. ‘As you all know, the Disarmament Conference simply plans to reduce the armed forces of all countries to a level compatible with national safety. The pacifists and their lot want all armaments to go. And they want them to go now,
immédiatement
. Actually, I just want them to accept the idea of permanent and unpredictable danger.'

‘Advanced weapons are the answer—not the threat,' Follett said, ‘Old weapons are dangerous. Last month the Bedouins managed to kill two thousand people by wielding knives.'

Jeanne sprang into the argument. ‘New weapons make new problems. The Bedouins could kill two thousand but that was probably all they could kill.'

‘Until they'd had their dates and wine at the oasis and could begin again,' said Ambrose.

‘Bombs are only another form of artillery,' Follett said. ‘The projectile is carried and dropped instead of being propelled by a gun. And the artillery shell is only a new form of a rock thrown by a savage. Or by David's slingshot at Goliath. Both can kill. You can't ban rocks.'

‘It seems to me,' said Victoria, reaching for the cognac flask, ‘that it's an entirely different thing, dropping a bomb on someone's head from a great height.'

Follett continued his argument in favour of the new weapons. ‘My point is this, the aircraft and the bomber can bring about a preclusion of war. Take the North West Frontier. Drop a bomb on warring villages and you stop them dead in their tracks.'

Edith felt delightfully woozy from the cognac, rolling along there in the crisp chill of the snowy landscape. Woozy or not, she couldn't help but note that the genial nightclub proprietor Follett had strong ideas—this man who'd created a club where the outside political world seemingly did not exist. His club was a place where the world and its dangerous madness had no place, yet where everything that was amusingly bizarre and darkly pleasurable had a place and a home. She remembered it
as a club which banished the pain of existence for a night—a long night.

In fact, she had rarely if ever seen him in daylight or in a situation such as today, outside the Molly Club.

And they were more than ideas that he seemed to have—he had
information
.

She would keep an eye on this other Mr Follett.

‘Dead in their tracks is correct,' Jeanne said.

‘That's why we have to study how to improve weapons. It may give us the dream of the short war, at least.'

‘Happier if we are the ones with the bigger bombs,' said Victoria.

‘Of course,' said Follett.

‘You should tell the pacifists that,' Ambrose said. ‘Tell them that peace lies in the very opposite to their position.'

There in the landau, they all chortled.

‘I wouldn't go as far as defending bombing,' Edith said, laughing, trying to keep it all light. ‘But I do think that the pacifists have to see that abolition of all aircraft isn't possible.'

‘It is possible!' Jeanne exclaimed passionately.

‘Jeanne, you can't stop history and put it back to where it once was,' Victoria said. ‘At least, I don't think you can,' she said, as ever immediately reconsidering her position.

Jeanne attacked Victoria gleefully. ‘You
can
put the clock back. Mr Winston Churchill said that because of our military misuse of air travel, humanity had proved unworthy of the gift of air travel. He said it should be taken back from us.'

‘Jeanne,' Follett said patiently, ‘if something is invented it cannot be uninvented.'

‘I have never seen the force of that argument,' Jeanne said blithely. ‘We invented slavery and then abolished it. We invented the rack and now we don't use it.'

‘There may be other examples in history,' said Victoria. ‘I would have to research that.'

‘The beauty of the abolition of all aircraft would be that
you would know immediately if someone had breached the treaty,' said Jeanne. ‘The plane would be spotted and reported to the League. Every pair of eyes would be a keeper of the peace.'

The others laughed.

Victoria said, ‘I would love to fly one myself. May become something of a pilot. I would be good at the controls, I suspect.'

‘And I, dear Victoria, would be rather bad at the controls, I suspect,' said Ambrose.

Victoria had been quick to forgive Ambrose during the time of his disgrace in the Secretariat. ‘Oh Ambrose, dear, I could teach you the controls.'

‘I fear not, Vicki, I fear not. But if ever I were to learn control it would be to you that I would come.'

‘Perhaps it is I who needs to come to you—for lessons in getting out of control,' Victoria said.

‘The world was a very good place before aeroplanes came,' Jeanne said, ‘and we made our life well enough without them.'

Follett was playful in the delivery of his ideas, but Edith felt he probably believed in this use of bombing. She suspected she might too. ‘Who said that once nations had the weapons to annihilate each other in a second, war would cease?'

‘Alfred Nobel—having invented dynamite, he had a vested interest,' Follett said.

‘I suppose the aeroplane is a weapon of retaliation and of aggression,' Edith said.

‘Which shows that the whole effort to separate defensive weapons and aggressive weapons and weapons of retaliation is rather slippery,' Ambrose said.

‘Perhaps we should abolish military aircraft,' Edith said.

‘That is not enough,' said Jeanne. ‘I'm told that a civilian aeroplane can become a bomber simply by putting on a bomb
rack and installing a bomb sight. To abolish bombs you must abolish all aeroplanes. All of them.'

‘Oscar Wilde said that soon war would simply be one chemist approaching another chemist at the border, each carrying a deadly phial,' Ambrose said, in a voice which implied that he'd had enough of the disarmament arguments.

Edith herself had nothing more to say.

She leaned back with her flask in her hand. She drank deeply from it directly, rather than using her cup. It was
infra dig
, but what the hell. She let the disarmament questions play on around her like a tennis match. The flask was always a comfort, both the contents and the silver flask, embodying her memories of Jerome, the black musician in the Paris club years before, when she had behaved so scandalously.
Jerome's sweaty, sultry smell and smile rolling over to her, lapping her face. The sultry smell she knew was typical of the Negro. His fingernails were manicured. She felt entranced by their white moons. His lap, his groin
. Away in her distant consciousness she heard the other four go on with their interminable discussions of weaponry down ever steeper spirals of befuddling detail. Funny that it had been Jerome who had finally come between Robert and her …
she was back there in the hot nightclub in Paris. Jerome had taken the flask and drunk from it, and passed it to her, she drank, the spirit in it tasting like milk. She handed it back to him and with it the offer of her hand, which he took and gracefully drew her to him, onto his knee. Time and movement then became slippery, as she gracefully slid, and without thinking too much at all about things, it seemed his warm dark hands were on her exposed and very alive breasts, which she had opened to him, it all seemed to happen in flowing, preordained movements, something like a waltz, except that they were not moving from where they were, she sliding from his lap, and then without any guidance at all and in no time at all, and with no impediment, with no thought at all, she'd slid between his legs, and it was all so warm, fleshly and flowing, it was
finishing, and she took her lips, tongue, and gentle teeth away, and opened her eyes …

Follett's voice came through to her, ‘What will you tell them, Edith, at your Grand Winter Picnic?'

‘What will I tell them?'

‘You will make a speech?'

She rallied herself from her reverie. ‘When they talk about removing the causes of war, I will tell them that some wars are about nothing at all.'

‘Very good.' Follett seemed amused.

‘Oh, I don't believe there is such a thing as a human conflict without a cause,' Victoria said. ‘I've never read a theory about that.'

‘I thought you Rationalists believe there was a cause for everything. Everything could be analysed,' Ambrose joshed.

‘Montaigne said that any theory of human conduct which did not take into account the irrationality of humans was flawed,' she said. Something which came from family discussions long ago. ‘Maybe nothing has a cause,' Edith's mind was drifting to nihilistic exhaustion. ‘I will tell them that there are not only just wars there are also inescapable wars.'

‘You won't be popular,' Follett said. ‘They won't give you a prize, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh, I will say that war just, causeless, and even inescapable is all finished. We can stop war in its tracks now with sanctions. They'll be happy with that.'

‘They will all fall for the Soviet position of total abolition of all arms except rifles,' said Ambrose, ‘The lion looks sideways at the eagle and says wings must be abolished—'

‘Oh, Ambrose,' Edith laughed, ‘spare us that hoary fable.'

The others tried to shout Ambrose down.

He went on with it as if gripped in the trance of the story, as if he couldn't stop himself. He knew they'd all heard it a hundred times.

‘—the eagle looks at the bull and declares horns must be abolished. The bull looks at the tiger and says claws must be abolished—'

‘Ambrose! Stop!' They all put their fingers in their ears.

He went on, ‘The Russian bear in his turn says all claws, wings and horns must be abolished. All that is necessary, says the Russian bear, is a universal embrace of fraternity. Come to me.'

‘Like so.' He grabbed Jeanne in a playful hug.

‘I knew you'd all heard that story. Do you know why I repeated myself?'

No one asked him why.

‘For the enjoyment of
telling a story
as much as for
pleasing an audience
. And go on, admit it, there are some stories we tell
because we've all heard them a hundred times
. And that is one of them.'

They booed him.

They reached the chalet at Thoiry where they were stopping briefly and they all dismounted from the coach. Stamping their feet, running about in the snow with scarves flying and, inevitably, throwing snowballs at each other, there in the fine shining blue Swiss day.

Edith slipped, tottered and then fell backwards into the snow. She found she couldn't get up.

They all laughed at her.

‘Help me up, someone.'

They laughed at her and didn't come to her rescue. She tried again to rise but she couldn't quite make it.

‘Ambrose, help me.
Aide-moi
.'

Ambrose came over to help her. ‘Edith, I think you're a little tipsy,' he said, as he helped her to her feet.

She realised that she was indeed a little tipsy and so soon in the day, but she laughingly blamed it on a patch of ice.

And, in all truth, her life in recent times had suffered One Very Great Upheaval. Let that be said.

Two Very Great Upheavals, if Ambrose's arrival were included.

And she knew that some of them there today, Ambrose and Jeanne, at least, knew it.

And let it also be said that she had not had a sober night since Robert had rolled away in the train to Shanghai.

She brushed the snow from her and took a deep breath, still holding on to Ambrose as they all went in.

On the trip home, she slept the uneasy and gritty sleep of inebriation.

Edith had had to book the American Library in Geneva for her indoors picnic because all other public halls were taken most nights and days for talks and lectures and meetings—even though the city of Geneva had built two new hotels and a special conference hall to house the Disarmament Conference delegates and others.

Geneva had been swamped by three thousand delegates, lobbyists, journalists, observers and others—including the armaments lobby, in panic and disarray.

Her picnic was set to begin at lunchtime on the seventh day of the conference, the day when public organisations from around the world were to have a morning to present their petitions to a conference plenary session.

The organisations had been given the time to speak as ordinary people to the diplomats and statesmen at the conference. She'd hoped to have had the picnic the day before this but that couldn't be arranged. She had to take what she could get as far as accommodation and timing went.

Edith briefed Tony, chef from the Perle du Lac, to carry on in her absence so that she could join the petition procession through Geneva in the morning. The city had fixed
prices for meals and accommodation for the duration of the conference so that there would be no overcharging, and she wondered if Chef Tony would obey that in his calculations when charging her for the cost of the picnic food.

She made her way to the Old Town for the start of the procession wearing the green sash and white armband emblazoned with the word Pax which the International Women for Permanent Peace were handing out.

Officially, she was there on League business along with McGeachy, the League officer responsible for the non-government groups, but given that it was a League conference and that disarmament was part of the mission of the League, Edith felt she could wear the garb of the International Women for Permanent Peace without compromising her official position.

If someone complained that she'd identified herself on such an occasion with an organisation outside the League, it was hardly a hanging offence.

The sash and armband had, anyhow, almost become the official insignia for the conference.

At the procession startpoint, hundreds of women and quite a few men were gathered and most of them carried their ‘Christmas presents' to the world—their petitions calling for disarmament.

Even the journalists accepted the estimate that the petitions contained more than eight million signatures.

As Edith arrived at the procession, she spotted Viscount Cecil from the League of Nations Associations, there in his long overcoat talking with Ambrose and Fred Pickering.

She went over and said hello. They were joined by Leon Jouhaux, who said he was there as a delegate for the fourteen million French trades unionists.

The Belgian delegate, Emile Vandervelde, the great internationalist and statesman, went by carrying a placard which said, ‘We do not ask—we demand.'

‘I wonder if that is an all-purpose slogan which he can carry in any procession for a good cause?' she said.

They laughed.

She left them to get on with her supervision. She said hello to the feminist Mary Dingman, the American who had told her that she represented forty-five million American women from many organisations.

Edith silently doubted the figure.

She chatted with a young man—an American student, James Green—who said he was not presenting a petition but an ultimatum from the students of America. His placard said simply, ‘Disarm or else.' She wished him well.

As she moved along the procession, talking with the march officials, Edith came across the crippled and blind War veterans. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

They were trying to assemble in military-style ranks, shuffling on their crutches, the blind guided by friends. The marshals were even moving those in wheelchairs into lines as their leader called out military orders.

Some of their faces were virtually erased by injury. All seemed to have missing arms and legs. Noses and ears were missing, jaws were missing.

It was ghastly.

She was stopped in her tracks.

She turned back and got herself under control and then turned around again to face them but even then she kept looking away, both from a sense of propriety and distress, and then her eyes would be drawn back.

She'd not seen men with faces such as these.

An official told her that they were gathered there from most European organisations of former servicemen from the War, including Germans.

He used the French word for these millions of men who were mutilated by war—the
mutilés
.

They had, less than fifteen years ago, as virile young men,
fought against each other; now they tried to hug or touch as best they could and yet still be soldier-like.

She choked with tears and at the same time tried to close the tears off, causing a cramp in her face, trying to retain the composure expected of her.

She couldn't and she turned away yet again and went off into an alley to hide herself. She was wrestling to contain the tears, her face was spasming. She feared letting herself cry. She might never stop, she would be engulfed.

She stood there in the alley, fighting to control her emotions and her breathing. After she had calmed herself, she went back to the swelling crowd of mutilated soldiers and found that the journalists and photographers were now there paying attention to the
mutilés
.

From habit, she looked for Robert and then remembered he'd gone.

As she watched the newspaper men, she realised then that she was seeing something rather strange. Some of the photographers and the most hardened of newspaper men had begun to cry—even Norman Hillson was crying. So was Edgar Mowrer from the
Chicago Daily News
, one of Robert's mates.

She'd never seen press people cry.

The newspaper men were turning away with handkerchiefs at their faces.

A photographer had put down his camera and was openly bawling as they all watched the struggling attempts by the
mutilés
to be soldier-like and to form proud ranks with military bearing, trying to carry out the drills they'd learned as young men.

Some wore their old uniforms, some had pieces of uniform, some had only military hats, and many had ribbons and medals.

She saw then that many of the glasses they were wearing were mended in an amateurish way with wire or sticking
plaster, that crutches badly needed repair, that artificial limbs were themselves sometimes broken. These would have been issued after the War and had obviously deteriorated over the passing years. It was heartrending.

Seeing the newspaper people crying brought her to tears again.

‘They make their point,' Hillson said, his voice struggling to find control through gruffness, and then he gave in and wiped tears from his eyes.

‘Journalists and nurses shouldn't cry,' he said.

‘Or League Officials,' she said, allowing her tears to flow.

‘Good luck with your picnic,' Hillson said, his voice changed by the emotions he was trying to suppress. ‘I'll give it a mention.' There was a huskiness to his voice, a voice that sounded like that of a young boy.

She thanked him softly.

‘Heard from Robert? Too soon, I suppose,' he said, turning away from the
mutilés
.

She shook her head.

‘I heard from Potato—he's already there. Seemed to expect Robert any day.'

She told the two journalists that the Swiss telegraph service couldn't cope with the telegrams of good wishes coming to the Disarmament Conference from town councils, mothers' groups, scout troops, and all sorts of other citizen groups from around the world.

‘The whole telegraphic system has been swamped for the first time in its history,' she said. ‘We can't get cables out from the League—we're using our wireless station instead.'

Unable to take it anymore, she left the journalists and the
mutilés
, and joined the women's group further up in the procession.

The procession filed through Geneva, the women in their green sashes and white armbands, the trades unionists, Rotary, chambers of commerce, the school children, the scouts and
guides, the mutilated soldiers, in its own dignified pace along the Geneva streets. Swiss men stopped and held their hats at their breast, women cried into handkerchiefs, some people waved, some men saluted, assistants from the stores came out to watch in their aprons, some people threw flowers.

The procession was slow and solemn, almost funereal.

There was no music.

The procession arrived at the Bâtiment Electoral, the most imposing of the halls in Geneva, where like some giant snake it was swallowed by the doors of the building.

Those marchers who could be accommodated filed into the hall and took their seats in front of the official delegates seated on stage, who were dressed in cut-away coats and striped trousers.

After the official welcome by the conference president, Arthur Henderson, each group came up to deposit its petition at the front of the hall where clerks recorded details.

The petitions were piled so high that Mary Dingman had to speak with a growing wall of paper stretching out either side of her, as yet more groups came in and placed their petitions, creating as it were a paper peace monument.

Edith told her aides to move the petitions away from the front of the hall before they obscured the speakers and officials seated on the rostra, although she hesitated to spoil the visual effect of it all.

Still the petitions arrived as more representatives came in and laid down their bundles of signatures, some of them mayors wearing the ceremonial robes and gold chains of office, bringing petitions painstakingly collected in towns and villages across the world.

Edith moved to the back of the hall, and found the sight astounding, something the like of which she had never seen.

Looking at the scene professionally, she concluded that the four-level rostrum was appropriate for this momentous occasion.

It was like a wedding cake.

The higher level was occupied by the President of the Conference, Arthur Henderson, backed by his personal staff, including Bartou.

At the next level down was the platform and lectern for the speakers and the shorthand reporters.

The next level was for Secretariat members serving the conference.

The final level was for official delegates and then at the side and back were special sections or ‘tribunals'—for the press, for representatives of organisations, for visiting diplomats and statesmen observers, and then for the public.

‘Yes,' Edith thought, ‘this is truly the pinnacle of my days at the League. All our work, whatever tedious paperwork, whatever tiresome committee, had ultimately been for this—to this magnificent end.'

That lunchtime, there on the floor among the shelves of books in the American Library, Edith's caterers had managed to spread out twenty red-and blue-checked tablecloths and lay out on them a picnic. The tables had been pushed to the side and the chairs had been removed.

Edith herself preferred plain white tablecloths but had decided that she needed the checks to give colour to the occasion. Each tablecloth seated eight people; 160 people in all had been invited—two representatives from every peace organisation known to be in Geneva for the conference.

Ambrose was standing with her at the door.

‘Red and blue check was right, wasn't it?' she asked.

‘Oh yes, a splash of colour—definitely.'

Each of the tablecloths had a wicker picnic basket containing chickens and sliced hams, salads, breads and cakes and, despite the objections of the caterers, vegetarian rissoles. There were four bottles of wine on each tablecloth.

‘I will put temptation in their way,' she'd said to herself.

Arranged around each of the wicker baskets were eight well-polished wine glasses.

She had decided against placement. She would obey Thomas Jefferson's view on placement. When he'd been President he'd introduced pell-mell seating at the White House. She hoped the British and the Europeans could cope with such informality.

Sitting on the floor could itself help relax them from the overall formality and solemnity of the conference atmosphere. She had provided cushions and rugs but still it would be a jolt, she suspected, when they realised they would have to sit on the floor.

What she did hope was that the seating might shake them out of their pious poses.

Change the chairs: change the
mentalité
. Edith's Rule. How many times had she said that people thought and argued differently if the speaker were seated rather than standing and that the practices by which policy is executed are commonly as important as the policy itself. Salisbury's rule, to be honest: the methods by which policy is executed are commonly as important as the policy itself.

She caught sight of herself again and thought that she should freshen her make-up. ‘How's my face?' she asked Ambrose.