Dark Palace (3 page)

She looked at her wristwatch. It was not past Robert's newspaper's deadline. She could slip out and telephone him from the lobby. No.

Her mind leapt back to the matter of the US, through the official entrance or not?

She changed her mind. ‘They could be invited to the delegates' lounge as
guests
. To hell with strict protocol. Flatter them. Make them immediately members of the club. Let us, as Secretariat, throw them into an allegiance with the League. The allegiance of the delegates' lounge.'

‘Perhaps,' he nodded. ‘Or is it likely to cause some protest or other?'

Across the lobby she saw Robert come in with ‘Potato' Gray, his journalist mate. She waved.

‘Here's Robert and Potato,' she warned Sweetser.

They saw Robert say goodnight to Gray—thank God, she detested Gray—and then make his way across to their table.

She watched her husband approach. He was terribly good looking in a bohemian-journalist way although he still didn't respond to her coaching on dress. He wore the same clothes for days. And she could see a spot on his hat even from this distance.

Robert leaned over and kissed her cheek and almost in the breath which came with the kiss, he spoke to Sweetser. ‘You don't have to look evasive, Arthur. I've heard about the American diplomatic note.'

She hadn't. She glanced at Sweetser. She could tell that he hadn't either.

‘Robert, no business talk. Not just yet,' she said.

Robert sat down and drank from her glass of wine. To her pleasure, he looked at her, taking in her appearance, showing in his look that he found her unusually appealing.

She had caught even her husband's eye.

‘What's happening, Arthur?' Robert said, turning his gaze away from her. ‘You have news written all over your face.'

Edith spoke to Sweetser, ‘Arthur, I think we should wait until
all this is cleared.' Sweetser was known to have the Urge to Tell.

‘I can say this,' Sweetser said, in a faux-ambassadorial tone. ‘There is talk of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of Peace being invoked. That is all I can say.'

Sweetser was hopeless. Robert knew that if this were true it meant that as a signatory of the Pact, the US would become involved with the League.

The Pact to renounce war had been negotiated outside the League, but ultimately the nations which signed the Pact and the members of the League would be entangled now.

‘So.' Robert was obviously bowled over by this news. He glanced at Sweetser and at her again. He narrowed his eyes and stared at Sweetser, ‘The US is coming to the League? That's it, isn't it?' Even Robert's voice had quickened.

He turned his inquiring look to her, demanding an answer from her.

As his wife?

Edith cut across. ‘What's the American note?'

‘I've heard that the Secretary of State has written to the League pledging US support for any League action against the Japanese. But I hadn't heard they were joining the League as such.' Uncharacteristically, Robert let his astonishment show. ‘Is that confirmed?'

He looked at his watch.

‘Can we leave this matter now? It's very late.' She was frightened of jinxing the matter.

At the same time, she found herself taking petty pleasure by withholding something from Robert.

In their marriage, they had an understood tension about her work and its diplomatic secrets and his newspaperman's need to find out. But they had managed it well, she thought.

For whatever reason, Robert did not pursue the matter.

He began a perverse bar-room line of talk, defending Japan, and at the same time searching around for a waiter to order more drinks. ‘Japan's just looking after business.'

He went on, ‘They built Manchuria: now they want to run it. You're just ganging up on them. And look at the Americans—they seized the Philippines and Hawaii. Why shouldn't the Japanese grab something for themselves?'

‘Oh come off it, Robert, the world is done with aggressive expansion,' she said. ‘That may have been fine in the last century.'

His surly perverseness no longer threw the fear of God into her, although she could sometimes detect in herself the young bride's fear of being offside with him. But generally, the pugnacious arrogance of Robert The Knowing Journalist had become simply a husband's bombast. And tonight a somewhat crocked husband, as well, she suspected.

‘ “Outlawing war,” ' he said. ‘War is itself already “outside the law” … you can't outlaw lawlessness. You can't outlaw crime.'

This was a tired old line.

In this mood, Robert always moved to explosive positions. And to inversion. He was a person who always said of a bold or idealistic statement, ‘What we see as helpful may be harmful.' His mind simply holidayed there in the limbo of inversion. He never thought it through. Which, then, was the harmful way? Was the opposite true or not true?

He cheated himself into thinking that one could never know the truth.

Coffee was served together with more cognacs.

‘And anyhow,' Robert rambled on, ‘why is China a member state of the League? It's barely a nation. It's an antiquated civilisation. Barbaric. At least Japan's a modernising nation state. China needs uplifting. Needs to be awakened from a sleep of twenty centuries. Who better than Japan to do it?'

Jeanne reappeared. She did not care for Robert. She and Robert coolly nodded at each other. ‘Am I permitted back now,
Artur
?'

Robert glanced at Jeanne and Sweetser, realising probably
that Jeanne had left the table so that something could be discussed between Sweetser and her.

It was close to his deadline.

He again looked at her, ‘Something is happening—is the US coming?'

She could have gestured to him that her lips were sealed. That in turn, would have tipped him off. Instead, she said, ‘Nothing that you don't already know.'

He searched her face and then let the matter go.

Robert could very well be the only person in the hotel who didn't know about the US coming to Council.

Sweetser was in Jeanne's chair. He surrendered it back and beckoned to a waiter for another chair to be brought to the table.

Robert glanced at him standing there. ‘Arthur, aren't you rather hot in that overcoat?'

Sweetser looked down as if discovering it. He at last took off the overcoat which he handed to a waiter.

Robert carried on. ‘The League has this World Disarmament Conference about to happen and now you have a war which has blown up in your face. Doesn't that tell you anything about the hopelessness of disarmament?'

‘This war between Japan and China is the best thing that could have happened for disarmament,' Edith said.

‘How!?'

‘The war will either be a bloody reminder to the world of the need for disarmament or if the war is stopped it will show that collective security works and that therefore there is no need for a build-up of armaments.'

Before Robert could respond, Edith said, ‘Come on, Robert, let's go. I have to call at the Palais. And you should go home to bed. You'll have a big day tomorrow. I can promise you that much.'

There, saying that was
wifely
.

As he stood, Robert tried again with Sweetser. ‘Are you
trying to get the US into the League on the back of the Kellogg-Briand Pact?'

‘I would think they're going to support the League,' Sweetser said. ‘That's as far as I'm prepared to go.'

After saying her goodbyes, Edith took Robert's arm and urged him towards the door.

‘You're a dreamer, Arthur,' Robert said.

Sweetser couldn't resist a further superior retort to Robert. ‘Wait and you shall see.'

Robert doffed his hat sardonically at Sweetser, placed it back on his head, and smiled.

After calling in at the Palais and finding that Bartou had left, she rejoined Robert in the waiting taxi.

He continued in his difficult mood. ‘How do you bear to be around Sweetser?'

She squeezed his arm to indicate that she didn't wish to talk about League matters in front of the taxi driver.

Robert leaned across to the open communication panel, and said to the driver in his coarse French, ‘Driver, this passenger beside me is an important person in the
Société des Nations
. Put your hands over your ears.'

The driver ignored Robert.

She pulled him back. ‘Robert, be good.'

He slumped in the seat. She always had to jolly Robert out of these waves of surliness. She defended his moods as some sort of frustrated, fretful reaction by him to the derangement of the world. Something he suffered but could never find ways of handling. Journalism was an occupation without solutions. Every certainty of today unravelled tomorrow.

She then whispered to him. ‘The Americans are coming to Council tomorrow.'

She braced herself for a storm.

‘So,' he said.

She could almost feel him struggling to hold back his anger. ‘I wish you'd rung me at the office. Even if you'd told me back there I could have tried to get it through.' He compulsively looked at his watch. ‘Damn. There would've been time.'

His voice was a brewing storm.

‘You know I couldn't do that.'

‘You should've told me.'

‘It's confidential League business.'

‘You should've told me.'

‘How could I?'

‘You know why, damnit.'

That was the first time he'd put it that way. They drove in silence. He again looked at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Damn, damn.'

‘You'll have the news tomorrow.'

‘Everyone will have the news tomorrow. If they haven't got it already. How could you let me sit there and not tell me?'

‘It's great news for the world—regardless of when it's published. Publishing it today or tomorrow won't change anything.'

He didn't answer.

‘I didn't want to jinx it,' she said quietly.

‘Jinx it!'

He pulled away from her. ‘I thought Rationalists didn't believe in jinxs?'

‘We're allowed to believe in one jinx a year,' she said in her playful voice.

She moved over to him, undid her overcoat and then nestled her breast on to Robert's arm, wondering if a wife's breast had the same effect after marriage as before, sensing that her stylish femininity tonight was stimulating him.

‘I intend to teach you the Theory of Diplomatic
Esprit
,' she said softly.

‘What is the Theory of Diplomatic
Esprit
?' he said, still miffed.

‘It is a way of working against jinxs. If you're a player in world events, even a minor player, then
spirit
is a factor in the outcome. If you behave as if something will succeed, it helps it succeed.'

‘How so?'

‘All the attitudes of the players on the diplomatic stage have an impact on the psychology of those at the discussions—especially the Secretariat.'

‘Does
pretending
to be optimistic still work? Like pretending not to be afraid of a dog? Does that work?'

‘Precisely, it's like pretending not to be afraid of a dog. It's the role of the Secretariat to engender an affirmative temperature in international negotiations. Fervour is a diplomatic tool. The Secretariat are engineers of
mentalité
.'

She wondered why a dog would not know if a person was pretending.

He grunted but it was a grunt she knew, the grunt before giving up and becoming pliable, becoming her pet.

‘What will you write about it?'

‘About the US and the League?'

‘Yes.'

Robert adopted the voice of a radio announcer and said, ‘ “President Woodrow Wilson helped establish the League after the War but the United States Senate voted to stay out. Now it looks as if the United States is joining the world community and that the vacant chair kept for the United States will at last be filled etc, etc, etc.” '

She'd got him to be playful. Her breast pressing against his arm through the lace of her brassiere and the silk of her gown was working its magic.

She took his hand and amorously put both their hands on her knee.

His fingers closed on her leg and the silk stocking.

‘Talking of Manchuria, I heard a strange story today,' she said. She told him of the suicide of the Japanese woman.
‘Have you ever heard of a woman doing such a thing?'

‘The Japanese have higher levels of devotion to the state.'

‘Do wives have these higher levels of devotion—to their husbands and the state?'

‘I suspect so.' Then he added, ‘On another scale, isn't that what's supposed to happen in marriage? Devotion.'

‘I suppose so.'

She waited for him to press home this point against her behaviour tonight but he veered.

‘I once talked with a Japanese general who said that from a military point of view earthquakes were good for the national character and useful for military training,' he laughed. ‘He welcomed a good earthquake.'