Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse Page A

the bedroom and dressed herself, choosing her favourite day dress – even choosing her underwear – with thought. She made up her face. Put on her rings.
    She then put through a telephone call to Ambrose, and told him of the invitation. ‘Someone might whisper in my ear,’ she said to him.
    ‘Indeed they might,’ he said. ‘How did it arrive?’
    ‘Delivered by two footmen in crimson livery with powdered wigs, carried on a silken cushion.’
    ‘Naturally. You see – you are not forgotten.’
    ‘The invitation is for me – “and husband”,’ she said.
    ‘It is a husband, then, that I must be.’
    ‘Indeed, you must. It’s semi-formal. I think it is what we used to call Late Afternoon. I thought I would wear that new la ligne Corolla , which I got in Paris last year. You know it. It’s an afternoon dress – black wool, a large silk velvet bow and a square neckline? Haven’t had occasion to wear it since returning to Australia. Would that do?’
    ‘The Dior.’
    ‘I think last year’s Paris style will pass muster on the night.’
    ‘At least it’s an original.’
    As she spoke, she placed the invitation in pride of place upright on the telephone table.
    She put down the telephone. She could tell he was relieved by the rising of her spirits.
    Janice would see the displayed invitation. Let her make of it what she would.
    And she also marvelled that Voltaire, or whoever, was right when he said that if you sit on your porch the whole world will eventually pass by. In a sense, the whole world had found its way to her here in her hotel rooms in an outpost of the Empire – the looming Third World War had come in the door with her brother and with guided missiles from Firestone, and now the Prime Minister, his most important enemy, had also entered. More disconcertingly, the Adelaide business – the vice squad – had also come through the door. Yet another menacing reality.
    Enough reality for one morning, to be sure.
    On second thought, she removed the invitation from display. It was immature boasting and it was provocative. It was an argument she did not wish to have. Do not start fights you do not need.

    As unworldly as it was to take the invitation as a sign, it did restore some confidence to her. That week she arranged afternoon tea with Alan Watt, with whom she had stayed before the war when she had been on home leave from the League. He had been new to the Department then. Formerly a lawyer, he had been recruited in his late thirties under regulation S.47, which allowed recruitment of mature people into the public service. Although Watt and she were hardly close friends, here he was, returning now from being Australia’s ambassador to Moscow as she was returned from the UNRRA and Europe. So in a sense, they were both returning. She thought that this minor coincidence of mutual return, together with his original mature recruitment into External Affairs, might make him sympathetic to her predicament. Ambrose said that the rumour was that he would be made Head of the Department of External Affairs. John Burton, the current head, had mysteriously taken leave of absence since the election of Menzies. Some said Burton was incompatible with Menzies because of his leftish views. She had got nowhere with Burton. Neither her experience nor her patrons – Bruce and Latham – impressed him. Regardless of their pairing in a slim coincidence, she would not be too pushy with Watt.
    At afternoon tea, Watt surprised her by saying that the Russians felt encircled by capitalist nations and feared their aggression. But he said that they had stopped him from visiting the important inland industrial cities. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said.
    He did not think there would be war in the near future.
    She was interested that his position was in contradiction to his Prime Minister.
    She did not mention that she had been invited to the Prime Minister’s for dinner, in case he had not been invited and expected to have been.