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what expression would be correct in his vocabulary.
    There was no way around it; they were face-to-face with the communist thing. ‘And when did you join the Communist Party?’
    ‘In my early twenties.’
    Edith recalled that in the communist movement the date of membership was important. Everything was important to them. It was coming back to her. For communists, everything was deliberate. She looked at her brother. Was he to be her Dangerous Brother?
    ‘And you live in Canberra?’ she asked again, perhaps hoping for a different answer.
    ‘At the Capital Hill camp.’
    ‘You live there as a Communist Party organiser?’
    ‘A silent arrangement there.’
    He was sharing secrets.
    She then thought of the USSR embassy. He was probably on their guest list. Ambrose and she had been there last week for a reception and to watch a film. Part of the diplomatic round.
    She needed Ambrose to help her with her brother. What would Ambrose make of this?
    ‘You must come to our rooms now and have tea. Meet Ambrose. I’ll send a message and let Ambrose know to expect us. Now that I am composed.’
    Her brother nodded. She said, ‘Wait here for a minute; I’ll go myself instead of sending a message. I will come back to collect you.’
    She was relieved to have a small separation from him. She went to their rooms and Ambrose let her in. ‘My brother is here. My long-lost brother. My long-lost now-communist brother. Frederick.’
    ‘A Bolshevik brother?’
    ‘We’ll get to that. I’ll bring him here for afternoon tea, if that is agreeable to you. Is that agreeable to you?’
    ‘You’ll order some afternoon tea from the kitchen?’ he asked.
    ‘We have a bottle of Scotch, don’t we?’
    ‘Our bottle is rather at half-mast.’
    ‘We may very well need more than that. I should warn you, he could well be a demented Bolshevik brother.’
    ‘It is what we might call a turn of events .’
    ‘Indeed, a turn of events.’
    She went back to the lobby, waved to Frederick while she went about ordering tea, scones and a bottle of Scotch to be brought to their rooms. She looked at herself in the wall mirror behind the desk and saw a perplexed woman.
    She went back to Frederick, less shaky now from simply knowing that the bottle of Scotch was on its way.
    ‘Come, Frederick, let’s go to my rooms.’
    ‘I still call myself Fred.’
    ‘And I will continue to call you Frederick.’ As they walked, she linked arms with him and felt that it was a self-consciously sisterly thing for her to do.
    He smiled. ‘Always ordering things to your own way.’
    ‘I never called you Fred.’
    ‘Throughout my life, everyone called me Fred except you.’
    ‘We have a suite. It’s described as a luxurious suite – two bedrooms, a sitting room in between, an en suite, with communicating doors and a verandah. And we have a powerful short-wave wireless from the HC – the High Commission.’ Which was hardly relevant. Was she boasting to her younger brother? ‘We listen to jazz. We listen to Jo Stafford on Voice of America.’ That would not, she guessed, impress her brother, nor gain his approval. ‘I suppose Ambrose is something of the enemy. To a communist. Now that we are in this cold war.’
    He gave a short laugh. ‘I suppose he is.’ And then he said seriously, ‘For some of us, the cold war began in 1917.’
    ‘Of course.’ The Revolution. ‘The Revolution,’ she said.
    Was she also an enemy? She was definitely not a communist. Some might say she was socialistically inclined – she thought capitalism could be changed from within and through the ILO. And in some ways she could be seen as a Socialist Woman, having never worked for profit or commerce, always in the service of the public good – although some of her friends were conservatives. Latham and Bruce, for example. This did not have to be pursued at this point.
    ‘We were all allies in the war,’ she said. ‘Until the iron curtain came thundering down.’
    ‘We should