Read Online Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse - Free Book Online

up the document, the draft agenda. She could see that the peace congress was a door to public life, but she could not see clearly enough where the doorway led. While she was not the Dean of Canterbury, she could see that she would be something of a prize speaker for the congress.
    It would be some way back into public life.
    One of the favourite quotations she had used back in the old days, in café talk about these things, was from The House in Paris , where Karen, speaking of the socialist revolution, had said, ‘I should always work against it, but I should like it to happen in spite of me.’
    She realised, as an objective reality, that her arranging of a fancy lunch – as fancy as Canberra had to offer – was a way of concealing from her brother her own stalled, marooned state of life.

    Over dinner that evening, Edith revealed the facts about Janice to Ambrose.
    He patted his mouth with his napkin and frowned. ‘That’s rather serious – security of the realm and such.’
    ‘I don’t suppose we can ask for a different chambermaid without causing embarrassment.’
    ‘I shall be more circumspect about my papers. Not that the HC has any secrets.’
    He liked to say things like that, but she knew that important things about Britain and the US were shared with the Australian government and came to the HC. He sometimes indulged in the pleasure of reading things to her from these official papers. He gave state secrets as small gifts to keep her alive to that world. And these papers did tend to lie around for a day or so.
    He laughed. ‘I could leave things out for her to read which we want Stalin to believe. In the craft it’s called disinformation .’
    ‘I doubt that my brother or Janice talk with Stalin that often.’
    ‘We may be surprised. I agree that there’s nothing to be done about this Janice. And your brother? What is happening there?’
    ‘I think my brother and I have said all that we have to say to each other. But we mentioned another meeting.’
    ‘The word is that the Party will be banned.’
    ‘And my brother will go to gaol?’
    ‘I think it’s highly likely that someone such as he would go to gaol.’
    Ambrose then looked at her sternly. ‘Let us be careful that we do not go with him.’
    ‘Have you heard of internment camps?’
    ‘Frederick mentioned internment camps?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Ambrose put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘You know, I would like for us to meet with them again.’
    She was surprised. ‘Why?’
    ‘I’d like to get a feel for what they are thinking – on their side of the fence.’
    ‘You want to spy on them?’
    ‘I am sure there are things they could tell me that I will not learn from sitting in the High Commission. Call it a fact-finding mission.’
    He sat there, considering this move. ‘I will clear it with the HC so that we don’t get arrested when the balloon goes up, or so that we do not have to defect to Moscow.’
    She didn’t know quite how she felt about this. ‘Do you think I should speak at their congress?’
    ‘No, I do not. That would really land us in the soup.’
    She then faced another question her sisterly mind had avoided. ‘Do you think my brother decided to contact me after all these years because I could serve his purpose at the peace congress?’
    ‘What answer do you want? The political or the jolly?’
    ‘Both.’
    ‘I cannot discount that your being in the same city together after all these years of being apart – that pure filial curiosity – caused even a hard-bitten Bolshevik to visit you. But nor would it be wise to not consider that he may have another motive. Or that the two motives live side by side and are of equal or unequal strength.’
    He put a hand on her arm. ‘I do have to ask you not to speak at their congress.’
    How unlike Ambrose. The chains of marriage. She would see about that. ‘Do you think the communists run the peace congresses?’
    ‘Probably. Throughout history the enemy