Free Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse

out of trouble. Put them back on their feet.’
    Returning to the business of the afternoon, she asked Ambrose why the committee meeting had been called when it must have been obvious that it could not reach any decision.
    â€˜Consultation sometimes must be seen to have been done,’ he said.
    She didn’t like that approach. ‘I think that wastes everyone’s time.’
    â€˜Oh?’ He stared at her. ‘How would you have done it?’
    â€˜Perhaps we could have looked more closely at which sections really need to be close to the Council room and to the day-to-day business of the Secretariat — statistically.’
    â€˜You would consult the crystal ball of numbers?’
    She coloured a little. She’d been teased about this back in Australia.
    â€˜Government by numbers?’ he persisted.
    â€˜For some questions I think they’re the only escape from the guess and the false claim.’
    â€˜What about political intuition and the wise insight?’
    â€˜In the absence of those rare capacities, I opt for statistics.’ She felt then that she’d asserted enough for one day. She thought she’d better shrink back to being more charming and womanly, as befitted a young woman new to the Continent spending the evening with a debonair older Englishman at the Hôtel des Bergues in Geneva, seated at Briand’s table. She said, in a soft voice, ‘I’m here to learn. I am a bemused and lost colonial lass.’
    He looked across at her. ‘Not so bemused it seems to me. Not so lost.’
    She could see that she had soothed him somewhat. But she couldn’t resist another remark about the meeting. ‘It might have helped if we’d changed the name of the Annex. Called it the Petit Palais. Something like that.’
    He smiled widely. ‘I do believe you’re right,’ he nodded with regard, ‘and that is not a statistical solution.’
    They had what was perhaps the finest dinner that Edith had eaten in her life. It was not the sort of dinner that a chap boughtfor a girl if he were not seriously establishing something.
    In his company, her conversation seemed much funnier than it usually was, and she found that her knowledge of the affairs of the world, while still limited, flowed readily to her mind. As good manners were a means of putting people at ease, he practised good conversation which was the skill of making others perform well at conversation.
    After dinner they had a cognac in the lounge and listened to piano music. He walked her to her pension and, still standing, they kissed quite passionately in the empty parlour and held each other in a full embrace, their breathing rapid.
    But they kissed only once and he then drew back, as if observing some sort of courtesy, and began to take his leave in an awkward way, as if the passionate kiss were enough to handle just now, or as if he were uncertain about traveling further in the direction that other kisses might go.
    She wondered whether the rules of romance on the Continent might require her to be more forward than she would be usually, back home, or even according to her nature. As she understood her nature.
    As he made noises rather than words and pulled on his gloves and coat and took up his hat, it occurred to her that he was also unable to conclude the evening in such a way as to set up a momentum which would lead to happy developments in the weeks to follow. It was not shyness that she felt in him. It was an incapacity to take the romantic leadership. She could see that he would be able to propose drinks and dinners where the rules were unequivocal, but that he was nervously reluctant to initiate any more intricate intimacy. She decided that she wanted things to unfold. She wanted to hold on to him. She also wanted to leap into the experience of being on the Continent. She wantedit all to happen to her. She wanted to be experienced as a woman, fully and finally, and this man