Dark Palace (51 page)

‘Mistress of the
corps de ballet
,' Ambrose said.

She looked at him and had a thought. ‘Would you like to work for me?'

‘How so?'

‘As a kind of private secretary. You know the League has no funds to employ anyone. I think that I will need
fortifying
. And I have some private schemes. There will be things to do. You will be needed.'

‘Schemes?'

‘I want to find out about the opposition in Germany, if any. We can help refugees. All sorts of things apart from League business.'

She thought about it while they watched the sparrows play among their drinks, searching for biscuit crumbs on the terrace.

‘You aren't thinking of leaving then?'

‘No. And I want to be double my size,' she said. That was it. ‘I want to double the size of my army. I want to be twice as strong. So I'm recruiting you.'

Ambrose stared at her. ‘Edith Campbell Berry—sorry: Edith Berry—you are remarkable. You really intend to stay?'

‘If Switzerland holds out, I think the League will last. As you know, some of us are going to Princeton although Avenol thinks this an American plot to steal the best parts of the League. Treasury's going to London. But I'm sure some of us will stay here to man the fort. Make the peace.'

‘Would you be a hard taskmaster?' Ambrose asked.

‘Oh, very hard. As hard as you like.'

They smiled at each other.

‘You accept, then, my offer of a position on my personal staff?'

‘I see no other job offers on the horizon. One proviso.'

‘Yes?'

‘If Bernard offers me Mistress of the
corps de ballet
, may I accept that instead?'

‘How could I stand in the way of an artistic career.'

He reached over to her. ‘I really require no salary. Only bed and board.'

‘There has to be a salary, otherwise I can't boss you about. I shall need a private office for our informal operations.'

‘I suppose I could rent the office I'm in.'

‘I want you out of that wretched office. You need something more your size.'

He stared at the bubbles rising in his champagne glass, his finger running around the rim of the glass.

He then looked up at her. ‘We've travelled far since we met on that train to Geneva.'

‘We have, dear Ambrose, we have.'

She felt herself begin to weep again.

‘Adding to the tears of the world?' he asked, placing his arm around her shoulder.

‘Just twenty or so.'

She kept crying.

‘God counts the tears of women.'

His words caused her to cry harder. ‘I'd hoped he might be able to do more than just count them,' she said, through the tears. ‘And how come you know so much about tears? Or God?'

Her tears changed to a small, light laughter, ‘Dot …' she sniffed, wiping her nose, ‘… Dot still believes in an evolutionary future.'

‘That's reassuring.'

She managed a giggle and they then smiled deeply at each other, gripping each other's hands.

Again the conspirators gathered, this time in a bedroom of the Hôtel de la Paix. This time Ambrose was present at her request.

Coffee and
galettes
arrived up from the hotel kitchen as she'd ordered but there was also a bottle of whisky and glasses on the sideboard, Irish whisky which she hadn't ordered. Edith supposed the whisky was Sean Lester's contribution.

Again the meeting began with war talk.

Since their last meeting on the day of the Fall of Paris, Germany had divided France into two parts and allowed the French the pretence of an independent government based at the town of Vichy.

Everyone wanted to believe that some of the French spirit and at least a token government had survived the German invasion. But in another part of their heads, everyone knew that, as an independent government, it was a farce.

For a start, the French government at Vichy had refused to hand over the French fleet to the British.

To prevent the fleet falling into German hands, the British had yesterday, without warning, bombed it at Oran and Mers-el-Kebir and hundreds of French sailors had died.

There could be no pretence now that France was a potential ally, except for remnants of its army which had ended up in England after Dunkirk and which remained in the unoccupied French colonies.

The bombing of the fleet had shaken the world. Churchill had turned on France. Ally had turned on ally.

The United States was still resolute that it would not join in the war.

In fact, some said that because the United States had such sentimental attachments to the French, the British bombing might have alienated them even further from coming to the help of the British Empire.

And now Roosevelt had recognised the Vichy government.

The Soviet Union had congratulated Hitler on his capture of Paris.

Avenol was still occupying the office of the Secretary-General but the Secretariat—what was left of it—was reporting to Lester, behind Avenol's back.

Things were grim.

Edith noticed that much smoking was being done.

‘Not smoking, Edith?'

‘Having mastered the art, Sean, I have now abandoned it. Had a frightful cough from it.'

That wasn't true. She'd used the cough reason to avoid stating the truth. She'd stopped because she felt it was not something a woman in her position should do. She supposed that this sort of thinking let the suffragette side down because smoking was seen by Florence and her bolshie crowd as being a rather progressive thing to do. As well as being
trés chic
.

But Florence had gone home to Canada and most of her crowd had also dispersed.

Smoking did not seem quite right. Not in public anyhow. Maybe she was getting old.

It wasn't as if she had always maintained a high standard of decorum in other areas of her life. Still, one didn't have
to have
every
vice, and cigarette smoking was one vice she felt she could drop.

And she didn't want to give out the suggestion that her smoking showed she had a case of nerves.

The way people were smoking these days around the place gave the impression of near panic.

After the war gossip, Lester said he would like to read a letter he received from Sweetser, ‘If that's agreeable to all? It's typical Sweetser prose.'

They all nodded. Lester read from the letter, ‘ “So at 12.40 p.m., we said goodbye to Geneva which had been our home for twenty rich years. We passed out of the Rigot courtyard, down past the League buildings and the International Tennis Club, down by the Labor Office and off onto the Lausanne road. Never, as long as I live will I forget that ride. Switzerland at its most perfect season. The mountains stood out firm and strong on the horizon, their tops still capped with a glistening white snow; the lake was its deepest and richest blue; the fruit-trees were in their fullest bloom all about; the manifold little gardens were just springing out of the ground. Nature was giving everything she had to give …” '

They were chuckling. Ambrose said, ‘Indeed, Sweetser at his purple prose best.'

Lester, regardless of the joking, seemed quite moved by it, and read on, ‘ “Yet war was all about us, even here in Switzerland. Not once, or twice or thrice were we stopped by the military on this beautiful ride, but no less than ten times. First we would be slowed by a warning sentinel, with machine guns set on either side of the road, then a guard would look at our papers, another would examine the baggage for chance guns or munitions. It was done very efficiently and thoroughly with grim determination but democratic good humour. The country teemed with soldiers and they were a fine upstanding manly group of people …” '

Lester looked up just as Ambrose and she glanced at each other and suppressed giggles.

Lester ignored them like a tired schoolteacher. ‘Sweetser now says something here which we, the League, should take steps to look after. He points out that twelve thousand Spanish Republicans who fled Spain after the civil war and were housed in France under our auspices …' Lester looked up. ‘Edith, you had something to do with that—you went down to Spain with the Commission in '38?'

‘I did.'

And she had had a strange, short fling down there with an anarchist.

My, my. What
had
she been doing!?

‘Sweetser says that we have the personal records of these Republicans with us here in Geneva. Is that correct?'

‘It is. They're in the Registry basement.'

‘Sweetser points out that the Germans might want to get their hands on those—if the Germans ever overran Switzerland. We may have to ship them out or even destroy them. Could you look into that, Edith?'

She nodded. ‘You think we should burn them?'

‘Might be best.'

‘Or we could bury them.'

‘Whatever's best. You look after it. I'll read on. He says that the ship from Genoa was nightmarish, overcrowded, and those on board gathered around the radio to listen to the BBC every night. He says that the journalist Dorothy Thompson was on board and was receiving radio telephone calls from New York. Her assessment of the situation was that it was hopeless and that Germany would soon be in total command of Europe. Sweetser said that those on board thought it wouldn't be long before England went under. He goes on. Rather depressing …'

‘He seems to have been infected with defeatism,' Bartou said.

Bartou was losing heart.

‘Not Sweetser,' said Lester. ‘Just gloom.'

‘If not defeatism, perhaps American isolationism,' Bartou said, with some animosity.

‘You probably don't know this, but Sweetser offered to accept a forty percent reduction in his salary if Avenol would allow him to stay on—did you know that?' Lester said, looking around.

‘Remarkable,' said Aghnides.

‘He didn't even get a reply. Avenol just wanted him out.'

‘It's true that he brought in more money to the League than any single individual in its history—millions,' Bartou said. ‘He even got the money to buy La Pelouse where Avenol sits brooding and plotting every night with his mistress.'

‘I've some other news,' Lester said. ‘The Registrar, the President and ten officials of the International Court have arrived in Geneva from The Hague.'

‘At least they got here,' Aghnides said.

‘They used the diplomatic immunity of their League papers, which seems to have been honoured by the Germans. Which is interesting.'

Lester reported that Avenol had offered him unlimited leave back home in Ireland in an effort to get rid of him from the office. ‘The idea of fishing my way through the war was tempting. It shows you what sort of man he is: first he tries to freeze me out by ignoring me; then he tries to get me to resign; then he tries to bribe me to leave with his indefinite vacation offer.'

Despite his bravado, she could tell that Lester was rattled.

Everyone was a bit rattled.

Aghnides said that Avenol thought it possible that the Germans might parachute into the Palais and make it a fortress. He said that Avenol had asked him to make contact with Wolfgang Krauel, the German Consul-General in Geneva. ‘I think that further confirms all we have feared.'

‘He must think you're still on his side,' Lester said.

‘He calls me in. We never talk politics. And of course I haven't acted on his instruction.'

‘Dear God,' Lester said with disgust. ‘I'm surprised he hasn't hoisted the swastika as a flag of welcome.'

Lester pulled himself together and addressed himself to Ambrose, perhaps showing some deference to Ambrose's Foreign Office background and the informal connections he still had with it. ‘Let's hear your summation, Westwood—would you object to us using first names?'

‘By all means—first names are fine with me. You would like me to start?'

‘If you don't mind—will give us all a fresh point of view.'

‘I hope I don't add to the gloom of Sweetser's letter. We have to accept that France is well and truly out of the war. It's just the British and the Empire now that are still fighting. As for the League, there are the Scandinavians, the South Americans and the Empire left as countries still on the membership list—still in the club, as it were. The Scandinavians are neutral, so they're shy of the war. The South Americans—well, as Sweetser used to say, in his colourful American way, “They don't have a dog in this fight.” '

There were chuckles.

‘Quite so,' Lester said. ‘And the Irish remain neutral. I suppose we don't have a dog in the fight either.'

‘And Greece,' said Aghnides.

‘Sorry, Ambrose—please continue. Afraid our discussions here are often a bit disorderly,' Lester said.

Ambrose went on, ‘The League, I'm afraid, doesn't quite enter anyone's picture. It could, of course, at a later time, enter the picture. Could be that the League will make the peace and so forth.'

Lester turned to the others. ‘Any disagreement with that?'

Bartou had grown red and seemed angry. ‘I see the neutrals including Switzerland playing a part in bringing a cessation to hostilities. You discount the neutrals too quickly.'

‘If Germany lets you remain neutral,' Ambrose said. ‘They didn't let Belgium and Holland remain neutral.'

‘Switzerland can defend itself against any invader.'

Edith was surprised to hear Bartou letting his patriotism express itself. It was the first time he'd ever shown it. Nerves. And age.

‘I'm not saying that it couldn't, Auguste,' Ambrose said. ‘I am saying that Switzerland and the other neutrals may not have much time to think about the League. Or be able to do anything with it.'

‘Disagree,' said Bartou irritatedly, trying to find his composure.

Lester tried to calm the jittery atmosphere, saying, ‘Let's stay calm. Let's put national allegiances aside as best we can.'

‘You don't see your posturing as a mask for being on the British side?' Bartou shot back. ‘National allegiance is a bit like bad breath—everyone can smell other people's bad breath but not their own.'

They laughed.

It dispelled the jitters a little.

Lester said, ‘How are we to get rid of Avenol before he makes some sort of contact with the Germans? He's sacking Jews. Two poor devils have gone from Opium Section. I tried to countermand it but I'm afraid Avenol still holds the office.'

Edith spoke up, impatient with Lester's rambling from the point. ‘It's time for us to put our efforts into holding the fort at the League—above the conflict, as it were.'

‘The peace effort or the war effort?' said Bartou, calmer now. ‘Isn't that the choice most are making?'

‘I think we are all agreed about who we wish to have win,' Lester said, glancing around. ‘Even if we should as international civil servants try to stand aside, as it were, from the war.'

All nodded.

‘I can't see how that's possible—to stand above the conflict,' Bartou said.

Edith spoke up, ‘I think there can be a happy overlap of positions.'

They all looked to her.

‘How so?' said Lester.

‘As I see it, the British—all those who want to defeat Germany and its allies—need something to fight
for
.'

‘You mean war aims?' Lester asked.

‘That's what I mean, precisely. The League might be one of the things people would consider fighting for … well, a bright, new and better League. We might see ourselves as a war aim. Ostensibly, this should be the preferred outcome whatever side wins, but we know that only one side would consider it truly admirable.'

There was an odd silence.

‘As I understand it from the dribbles I get from home,' Ambrose said, ‘there is precious little time at present to think about After the War. It's all that Churchill can do to keep fighting on.'

‘That gives us a job to do. We should communicate to Churchill our thinking on life after the war,' she said. ‘And After the War is something
we
could think about. We have the time if Churchill doesn't.'

‘To do that we need sane leadership,' said Lester, ‘Which brings us back to getting rid of Avenol.'

‘As members of the Secretariat we have no authority: the member states will have to force him out.' Bartou said. ‘But there's no way that the members of the Supervisory Commission can meet: Norway, Canada, India, UK, Mexico and Bolivia—impossible.'

Lester said he would get back to the British and to Hambro in Norway. ‘Hambro's still Chairman of the Supervisory Commission and President of Assembly.'

‘May I again interpose?' Ambrose asked.

‘Of course,' Lester said. ‘You're one of us.' He laughed, ‘That is, if you want to be one of us.'

‘Thank you. As a non-League person I cannot really be one of you—but I realise now, listening to you all, that I know something which I had assumed you all knew. And which may take the worry out of much of what you say.'