Read Online Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse - Free Book Online Page B

personal matters on them. The rules didn’t quite apply with Janice; this was somewhat different. Still, she did restrain her impulse to offer Janice a cup of tea.
    She would feel her way. Janice was, after all, somehow, now family.
    ‘You’re somewhat younger than my brother,’ she said, one woman to another.
    Janice said, ‘And you and your husband seem also to have an age difference. If that’s not too personal a thing for a chambermaid to say.’
    Edith heard Janice’s riposte and thought, She turned that back on me.
    ‘Romance is not a word we would use. We are comrades . And more.’
    ‘Frederick’s not romantic?’ Edith laughed.
    ‘The Revolution – that’s his romance.’ Janice said it in a way that poked fun at Frederick, and her voice slipped to a more modulated, educated accent, away from her workplace voice.
    ‘I take it you don’t hold the idea of revolution as seriously as he?’
    Janice, feather duster still in hand, smiled at Edith, enigmatically. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
    ‘You’ve had an education?’ Edith wondered whether she sounded as though she were a parent interviewing Janice as a prospective wife for Frederick.
    ‘Ah, the private-school accent has betrayed me.’ She laughed again. ‘I went to SCEGGS. I did my snobbery and class training there.’
    ‘And why then does a SCEGGS girl deign to wait on me, an Ascham girl?’
    They shared a laugh.
    And then, in a challenging, harder, but teasing voice, Janice said, ‘But you believe there’s a class destined to wait on you? And that I am not of the serving class?’
    Edith looked away. She supposed that was what she’d meant, but if Janice wanted to play politics then she could play too. ‘I was not evaluating the class system, Janice, I was speaking about expectation. I was sorting out our reality here and now in this room. Our “objective reality”.’
    Janice smiled, obviously appreciating Edith’s return serve. ‘ Objective reality. Fred has been at work.’
    Edith took the tease and added, ‘Naturally, I don’t support class distinction, but we have to live in a world with those who do.’
    Janice made a resigned face, nodded and moved the conversation on. ‘I know a lot about you, through Frederick. Other people know about you too – your time at the League. I had serious theoretical objections to the League, but I admire you. As a woman.’
    She was pleased to be admired by a smart-talking young communist. Janice was shifting before her eyes, from chambermaid, to her brother’s lover and her de facto sister-in-law, to hotel spy, to communist, to potential friend. ‘Frederick and I were out of touch for such a long time.’
    ‘He seems to have followed your career, one way or another. And the Party has its spies too.’ She smiled. ‘Including me – it was I who told Frederick that you were living here at the hotel.’
    ‘You did?’
    ‘After I saw the piece in the newspaper. I felt a brother should know. Leaving aside the Party line, I would see that the League was a beginning, misconceived, of another sort of internationalism. It might have met up with the brotherhood of man at some point in history. Don’t tell Fred I said that.’
    Janice’s request for confidentiality reminded her of a third rule her mother had about servants: never ask them to lie for you. But here the servant was asking her employer to lie for her. In a sense. ‘You seem to take your communism lightly?’
    Janice became alert. ‘Don’t be misled. I like the dedication of the Party. I like the organisation – although I have to say that it is more impressive on paper. And don’t tell Fred I said that . He’ll have me up before a verification committee. Some bitchy comrades say that I am not a communist, I just sleep with one. Fred thinks no one knows; they all know.’ She ran her hand through the feather duster. ‘I am a communist.’
    ‘I had better keep a list of things I shouldn’t tell Frederick. I suppose I lean more