Grand Days (11 page)

Edith lied and told them that her pistol would go into the League of Nation's armoury. Maybe, in a sense, it was the first weapon in the armoury. They engaged in small talk about her background, kangaroos, the condition of the roads of Australia, and she was told about the team's planned trip across Europe and Asia with the motor-cars.

The tea arrived and Strongbow said he would now make his proposition.

He outlined a parade through Geneva to launch the people's
ballot. ‘We want you to ride with us because we want a woman in every vehicle.'

‘That is out of the question.'

‘Don't rush to say no. I swear that you will not be advertised as a representative of the League. You will simply represent Womanhood and add, may I say, a refinement and loveliness to the occasion.'

Edith shrugged off the flattery along with the preposterous idea of the parade.

Athena said she was recruiting women to be representatives of Womanhood in each vehicle.

‘I am afraid,' Edith said, in her official voice, ‘that it is out of the question.'

But she was brought face-to-face with a persuasive line. ‘We must all come up with trail-blazing ideas for untried times,' said Strongbow. He raised a hand for a pause in the discussion. ‘Before you make up your mind, Ambassador Berry, there is a warning. This could be a dangerous mission. We will probably draw their fire.'

‘Draw fire? I don't follow. And I am not an ambassador.'

‘In my eyes and in the eyes of the world, you are one of the New Ambassadors, an ambassador of the planet. This is no easy thing we do — if the cavalcade attracts the notice of dangerous elements and brings them into the open, we could expect that they may truly try disruption or worse.'

Edith saw herself being brave. The voice of her old headmistress said, ‘We choose the way of peril because it offers the possibility of glory. And if we fail we will be remembered as having behaved well.'

Strongbow boomed on, ‘However if that be so, then, so be it. We will have exposed them and they will, we hope, be caught. Better the bombs, if they be thrown, be thrown at us in our
motor-cars than at the vulnerable League Secretariat.'

Edith mustered herself and tried to apply her new ways. ‘How many people are there against the League and what is the name of their organisation?' she asked, using the Way of Numbers. ‘Round figures will do.' She had been waiting for places in the conversation to apply the tests, feeling a growing apprehension that she would not be able to find convincing answers which would allow her behaviour to proceed with prudent certainty. Maybe behaviour could only proceed with confidence, never certainty. Maybe behaviour proceeded on the footing of something even less than confidence. She saw now why people needed doctrines and dogma and effrontery to propel them into action. Maybe the will to action went by hunch and by lurch more than by the Way of Numbers.

‘Can we take your silence as meaning assent?' asked Strongbow. ‘Or at least serious consideration?

She looked up and out from her thoughts. The man had not answered her. What did one do now?

‘Oh, no,' she said. ‘It is truly out of the question. As an officer of the League there is no way. And you have not answered my enquiry.'

Instead of answering, Strongbow asked her to promise him one thing.

‘What is that, Captain Strongbow?' Oh damn. She'd been trying to get through the conversation without granting him his title. She told herself she was granting it only as an honorific.

‘I want you to promise not to make up your mind. Not to give a decision now. Go away and do not give an answer until twenty-four hours have lapsed.'

‘I would like the evidence,' she asked again, ‘of this collusion against the League, in round numbers.' She ploughed on with
her enquiry. ‘Maybe you could supply me with references — someone who knows of your organisation?'

‘Evidence is for juries,' he said, rising to his feet. He went to stand at the window with his back to them, booted feet apart, hands behind his back. ‘We are at the visionary stage of mankind. I am a vision maker.'

She stared at him, trying to decide whether he had aura. He obviously had no statistics.

It was more swagger than aura.

‘Not for twenty-four hours — no decision,' he said, turning from the window and standing before her. ‘Agreed?'

‘I will consider the matter further.'

‘Grand,' he said. ‘Grand. I sense that I am talking to a visionary.'

‘I am first and foremost an officer of the League.'

‘And we salute that,' he said, ‘we salute that.' And he did, quite solemnly.

She stood and he led her to the door. She found herself then in the lobby, saying goodbye to Athena, who had accompanied her down in the lift.

‘I know,' Athena said, ‘that you will dare to be.'

Edith then found herself walking towards the Palais Wilson.

She thought that the language of the group was excessive, but she put it down to their American manner. She was disappointed in herself, for she had found out nothing which would allow her to assess them. Were they a circus, and was that bad? Were they charlatans? They stayed at the Richemond in a suite of rooms — that was something. They drank champagne during the day. What did that mean? Did Captain Strongbow have aura?

But wasn't that what made her different from the others? Strongbow had an American flair and that was something else. She could join with the American flair more readily than she
could join with the diplomacy of the old world.

She turned and walked back to the Hôtel Richemond. The League may be against secret diplomacy but it was not against confidentiality in action. This was her confidential mission of sorts. Cooper had implied that she should investigate this man and his proposals. I must dare, Edith said to herself. The way to investigate was to go into the field.

She asked the desk clerk to call Captain Strongbow and to tell him to meet her down in the lounge.

Nor would she be told by Captain Strongbow how long to wait before making a decision. She was not one of those people who took twenty-four hours to make up her mind. She would make it now. She would make her decisions, however, on the neutral ground of the lobby.

The Captain, Athena, and Mr Kennedy, all came down the stairs.

She told Captain Strongbow that she would ride in the motor-car.

‘Grand,' said Strongbow.

‘Why, that's terrific,' said Athena.

‘Welcome aboard,' said Mr Kennedy.

‘You are a visionary, but more — you are a dauntless visionary,' said Captain Strongbow. He looked at his watch. ‘And you made a decision in twenty-four minutes, not twenty-four hours.' He looked to Athena and to Mr Kennedy and said, ‘This is a woman who acts with alacrity.'

‘Indeed,' said Mr Kennedy. ‘Indeed she does. With dispatch.'

Captain Strongbow turned to her and said, ‘I will leave you with Athena to talk details. Thank you for the vote of confidence.' Captain Strongbow and Mr Kennedy both shook her hand strongly.

Athena and she sat in the lounge, and Athena told her
that the plan was for each woman in the cavalcade to wear a national costume.

‘National costume?' Edith felt sick. She did not like fancy dress at any time. ‘Australia has no national costume.'

‘You can be a cowgirl from the golden west. I know that Australia has cowboys. They must, then, have cowgirls.'

‘A cowgirl?'

‘A cowgirl. I myself am dressing as a Hawaiian. In a grass skirt.'

A grass skirt.

Edith's spirit shied. She had seen it more as, well, a sober parade of serious concern. ‘I cannot see myself dressed up. Dressed up as a cowgirl.' Saying that made her feel staid.

Athena said that they had to put on a show. These were show business times. She said that Captain Strongbow often said the League of Nations was the ‘biggest show in town'.

Edith didn't quite see the League or the world ballot as a ‘show'.

Athena explained that there was a time for attracting attention to an idea and that anything that served that purpose was right. ‘I would take off my clothes for this idea,' Athena said.

Edith privately thought that Athena would take off her clothes for just about any persuasive reason. Athena had something of the chorus girl about her.

Edith was about to get up and go, once again, and once again she was filled with exasperation, disappointed with her reserve. ‘Is there any other costume? Apart from cowgirl?'

‘We really only have cowgirl left. I could swap with you. You could be Hawaiian.'

‘Oh no,' she said, aghast, ‘I'll be the cowgirl. But Athena …?'

‘Yes, Edith, what is it?'

‘Could I be disguised? Could I wear, say a hairpiece or something which would disguise me?'

‘No one will recognise you, I promise. I will make you up. I will get a wig from the costume wardrobe and you will be another person. I promise you, Edith. I am so thrilled you are joining us.'

Edith was not feeling ‘glad' or ‘thrilled' about anything. She was feeling trepidation. She had made decisions which were breathtaking. She prayed that the disguise would work, though should a bullet strike her breast, or if a bomb should take her life, she would be revealed as Edith Campbell Berry of Internal Administration, League of Nations Secretariat. Heroine. Or Nincompoop?

Back at the Palais Wilson, amid the scent of magnolias from the garden, she pondered her decision and tried to write an amusing minute on the encounter but it sounded more like a confession, or a will and testament, and she decided not to file it, just yet. If she died, Cooper would at least find it and see that she had done her work according to procedure. However, she did not mark it ‘to be opened in case of death'. The magnolias reminded her of a funeral parlour. Usually she considered magnolias somehow ‘blowzy'.

She told herself that she had until the next day to change her mind, but she knew that if she did change her mind she would feel that she had betrayed herself and the quest for a new diplomacy. If she did not do this, did not go out into the field and test the situation one more step, she would never know whether the ideas were tenable or not.

She had also to honour her audacious self, the country girl. She did not want to lose that part of herself. Not yet. There was betrayal enough in her desire to be disguised, but the wilder self was satisfied with that.

Of one thing I am certain, she said to herself: that this is an historically unprecedented action — an officer of the League dressed as a cowgirl sitting on the back of an open touring motor-car in the interests of the ballot for world government.

She told no one about her plans, not even her new friend Florence Travers, and certainly not Ambrose. Maybe when it was all over.

 

On the day, she first worried about what lingerie she should wear under a leather cowgirl outfit.

She went to the Richemond, still shivering with trepidation but resolved to go through with it. She loaded her new pistol and put it in her leather travelling handbag, saying to herself, If I am to need a pistol, it will probably be this very day. It gave her fortitude. She also thought that Captain Strongbow would expect it of her.

At the Richemond, Athena led her into a room of the suite which contained, it seemed, many costumes. Three other women — of the showgirl kind, to put it generously — were dressing in national costumes although which nations they represented was far from obvious to Edith.

Athena handed her a glass of champagne. She was thankful for that, drinking it in three gulps.

She was introduced to Simone and Nicole but not to the others.

Athena whispered, too loudly for Edith's comfort, that they were from an artists' model agency.

As she dressed in the outfit, the sweaty smell of its leather brought memories of childhood riding and she resolved to arrange to go riding regularly, there in Geneva, when all this was over — if she came through. As she shed her corset and other
unneeded underwear she felt as she hadn't for a long time, like a young country girl, running free.

Nervously she put on the cowgirl suit with Athena's help, accepting, also nervously, Athena's praise of her underwear, her panties and brassière, and Athena's fondling of her brassière. The first woman, apart from her mother, to touch her body intimately. She put on the long blue denim trousers, Mexican boots with hand-tooled designs, leather chaps which tied behind the legs, an embroidered satin shirt with pearl buttons, a leather waistcoat and a bandanna. Edith tried to assure herself that there were times when one had to live at a high pitch. Though she was suddenly appreciative, also, of the place in life for times that passed in a quiet and ordinary way.

Edith did not like the way that Captain Strongbow, in his uniform of a captain but now with badges and medals that she could not identify, walked in and out of the ‘dressing room', though she thought that it was probably acceptable in show business, that sort of thing. Athena kept her promise and fitted a blonde wig over Edith's red hair and changed her make-up quite dramatically, though not in a direction that a genteel woman would normally go with make-up. Still, Edith reminded herself, it was all show business. The wig and the make-up brought both a sense of hiding to Edith and oddly, a sense of becoming some other ‘Edith'. But then Edith felt she became ‘different' every time she had her hair styled by a hairdresser.

The final touch for the cowgirl costume was a coiled stock-whip which she was to carry over her shoulder.

‘All set are we?' were Captain Strongbow's words. He looked them over as though he was — what? Inspecting the troops? Or a buyer of slave girls? He wore a revolver in a polished holster on his belt.

‘I must congratulate you all on your bravery,' he said. ‘And
before we set off on this historic mission, I wish to address you.'