Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse Page B

She very much hoped he would be there, that the dinner would cement something, lead to something.
    He did not mention his brother, Ray, and she did not mention him either. She had been told they did not get along. She had known Ray as the former secretary of the League of Nations Union in Australia. The last she had heard about him was that he had fallen on hard times, following the collapse of the League, and was selling encyclopaedias door-to-door after unsuccessfully running for a seat in the federal elections. Ray had been a great apostle for the League and a friend of Latham.
    Watt and she skirted around the question of appointment of the new department head – Watt from some sort of professional reticence and good form; she because she did not wish to be seen as blatantly self-promoting and trying to ride on his back. She simply stressed she was back in Australia and would be staying, and that she felt it would be good to be ‘put back in harness in the diplomatic sphere’.
    She even made some inquiries about regulation S.47, using a tone of voice that made it sound as if she were professionally curious about it as ‘a recruitment method generally in the public service’. He said that, after a rocky start, the idea of diplomatic cadets recruited from university graduates was working well. He said that Ruth Dobson was a curious case in point. He said that last year in London, where Dobson worked as a clerk with the Australian High Commission, she was appointed as temporary third secretary, and her work led to her selection for the Geneva office of the Australian UN Delegation. Watt said that Dobson was always trying to be appointed full-time to the Australian diplomatic corps but didn’t stand much of a chance. ‘Age, and so on.’
    Edith wondered if this was a signal to her that her case, too, was hopeless.
    He told her he regretted not having met Stalin while he was ambassador. He said, ‘confidentially’, that they had found listening devices or what he called ‘bugs’ in the embassy building, but the discovery had to be kept quiet because of other political considerations. The bugs were removed discreetly during the remont of the building. She had not heard the word remont before, but did not ask. He said all food had to be locked up because the Russian servants stole it.
    She felt his Russia anecdotes were a way of pushing the conversation away from the possibility of her joining the department if he were to be secretary.
    He said one thing that interested her: ‘I find that living in Canberra makes it easier to think about Australia as a whole, than if I lived, say, in Sydney or Melbourne. I’m convinced that building a capital city was the right decision.’
    Although he gave no hint or encouragement about her aspirations, or even any hint that she was on his mind in any way at all, she did not abandon all hope. It could be that he was being discreet. Or had she carried off too well the pose of being unambitious, which Bruce had taught her?

    Ambrose said that the word remont was French. ‘He guessed that it meant, in this context, refurbishing – perhaps refitting – of the building. ‘How odd.’
    She realised then that Watt had used the French word to impress her, or to treat her as belonging to his ‘club’ of internationally experienced people. Perhaps that was a hopeful sign.
    Ambrose was interested in hearing that Watt had one of the bugs sent back to Canberra in the diplomatic bag for examination.
    Although Ambrose and she did not discuss the matter again, Edith also felt somewhat emboldened about the Adelaide business; less oppressed. She felt some of her urbane invulnerability returning. After all, she told herself, Canberra was not like Adelaide or the other cities. Canberra was trying to make itself different, would be different, a city of political people, of diplomatic staff, of public servants, of journalists, of internationally recruited scholars at the new National University. It