Good riddance to that narcissistic traitor Lafayette — she wouldn’t have to look over her shoulder any more. If an election were forced, he would get his reward, a deserved burial of the Progressive Reform Party.
So it was opposition 154, government 152, and to scramble for that, Clara had had to promise the seven-toed member for Twillingate that if he hobbled in on crutches he’d be in line for secretary of state for sport and tourism. The vote was set for the day after tomorrow.
Percival Galbraith-Smythe rang. “Ms. Blake is in the foyer. Shall I send her in?”
“Of course not. I’ll come out to greet her.”
She put on her most winning smile, butted her smoke, and headed out, turning the wrong way, finally getting directions from one of her staff.
Margaret was in the foyer by the grand staircase, looking aghast at its leopard spot carpet, a garish memento from the Mulroney years.
“Don’t blame me,” Clara said. “Every P.M. since St. Laurent has left his spoor.” Finnerty’s contribution: several hidden bottles of rye.
They settled in a parlour overlooking the river and the distant twinkling lights of Hull. Margaret chose a settee, crossed her legs, wary, a little tense. She had a good inkling of what this was about. “Stick to your guns,” Pierette had said. “Buyer beware.”
She had respect for Clara: it took grit and intelligence to manoeuvre through the old boys’ club to 24 Sussex. But she was an economist wedded to the old thinking, a pedigreed Tory playing the old games, out of touch with the realities facing this besieged planet.
“White or red?”
“The white, thank you.”
“Mandarins, nuts, granola chews — sorry, I’m trying to lose weight. Look at you, you’ve never had that problem.”
Margaret picked out a nut from the offered tray. Clara poured from a boutique B.C. Chardonnay, not hiding the label.
“Certified organic,” Margaret said, acknowledging the gesture.
“They’re always a little more expensive, aren’t they?”
“Surprising, given the cost of herbicides, fungicides, and the other poisons most of them use.”
Clara was having trouble with the concept of growing grapes with poison. She didn’t care to mention that winemakers were big contributors.
Trying not to sound effusive, she dished out compliments on Margaret’s performance on and off the floor, for representing so persuasively Canada’s growing green electorate. “I’m so proud of you. Especially as a woman.”
“One of those unfortunate accidents of birth, I guess.”
Clara laughed. This is what she wanted, a little feminist bipartisanship. “Congratulations, by the way. The last Gallup had you at thirteen per cent.”
“Thank you, but it’s spread too thinly, isn’t it?”
“That’s our electoral system, sadly.”
“If I recall right, Clara, a few years ago you were calling it a skewed system.”
Clara kicked herself for opening the topic, but Margaret wasn’t through. “It’s a great curiosity, isn’t it, that when in opposition the traditional parties forever talk about a reformed Senate and proportional representation, but it vanishes from the agenda when they’re in power. Here you are at thirty-three per cent with almost half the seats; while our thirteen points translates to one, and I squeaked in.”
Clara sipped her wine, wondering how to get back on track. “Christ knows you’ll have little trouble holding on to it, Margaret.” A gamble: “Just between friends, and if you repeat this, I’ll deny, but I doubt we’ll try very hard to win Cowichan back. We may just throw a nobody in there for laughs.”
“Oh? I had understood you were targeting it.”
“Strategies change.” A deep breath. “Margaret, you’re nobody’s fool. You know why I wanted this little gab with you.”
Little gab. Girl talk. The P.M. had slipped a rung in Margaret’s esteem. “I’m open to hear you, Clara. I have to warn you — I’ve never learned how to play political prostitute.”
If the insinuation was meant to draw blood, it worked. Clara sought to control herself, covered by tilting her glass and emptying it.
Margaret told herself to stop this sniping, it wasn’t very mature. She searched for the source of it — maybe resentment of Clara, that she was to the manner born, thanks to a powerful, connected family, all the breaks and all the perks. “I’m sorry if that seemed sexist or personal. Political compromise is what I have a problem with. Some people think I suffer a stubbornness disability.”
Clara laughed it off with “Save your shots for the floor of the House,” but it took effort not to lecture this idealist. Compromise — her prostitution — was the lifeblood of the art of politics.
Down to business. “Okay, Margaret, I don’t have to tell you these are difficult economic times, but here’s what’s on the table.” Clara went down the list, renewable energy, species at risk, five hundred thousand hectares of national park. No reaction, just that impenetrable steel-grey gaze.
Clara wanted a refill but noticed Margaret’s wine was nearly untouched. She splashed a little in her own glass anyway. She was starting to understand why Finnerty became a drunk on this job.
“Here’s my counter-offer,” Margaret said. “We’re committed to a carbon tax, one that is neither token nor symbolic. Fifty dollars per metric ton of non-renewables, doubling in ten years. Plus an end to all subsidies to oil and coal producers. Full compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Those are fundamental.”
Clara had intended Kyoto as a sweetener anyway if things got desperate, so she topped up her bid with a ten-year plan to comply. But a carbon tax — fifty a ton or ten, it didn’t matter — sent a chill down her spine. She’d crusaded against the concept as grossly unaffordable for a country struggling from recession. “Believe me, Margaret, a carbon tax won’t get past the cabinet. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
“I know what you’re dealing with. A bunch of non-renewables.” It’s not the economy, stupid, she wanted to say. It’s planetary survival.
“Take it to your people.” Clara couldn’t believe they were all as bullheaded as their parliamentary leader.
Margaret was finding this ticklish. She didn’t want to be tarred as the rotten apple in the Opposition barrel, the M.P. who saved an unpopular government, but a hamper of rations had been offered, and she could be spanked for not snatching it. This was not her call to make alone.
“Is anyone off limits? The press, I assume.”
“I suppose they’ll find out eventually. Later the better. For now, can we keep this among friends?”
“You’ll take my counter-offer to your people?”
“Absolutely.” Clara had zero hope.
Before escorting her guest to the front door, she showed her around a bit, talking about this and that: how Lafayette took a jump off the cliff, the Bhashyistan standoff, the alleged kidnapping of Abzal Erzhan, the clever job by Margaret’s husband in using a press conference to set up an alibi defence. They even shared a laugh over Charley Thiessen’s ham-handed performance at that event.
Margaret took one last look about as an attendant bowed and scraped at the open door. All the hoary old paintings and urns and vases and bric-a-brac. She’d heard it cost sixty thousand a year to heat the joint.
“Watch out,” said Clara. “The day may come when you’ll be sleeping in the main bedroom, having nightmares.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Margaret, setting off for the waiting limo.
Clara felt a headache, the kind that came from banging your head against a wall.
Nine o’clock Wednesday morning. In half an hour Thiessen would be joining the rest of the cabinet to debate a dying effort to stave off defeat the next day and an election that could send the Tories tumbling to a grab bag of seats. His was safe, maybe the safest in the country outside the Bible belt. Clara Gracey’s wasn’t, the Toronto burbs.