I hope Mom settled in okay. Hi Mom! Don’t let the girls get away with murder. Lockup is ten except weekends. Cassie, Katie, Jessie, don’t be making heavy demands on your grandma and dad. Running out of room. Love from me and Auntie Maxine and Cousin Ivy. (I’m still surrounded by girls! Help!)
Jill XOXO
3
It was warm now, at noon, but Arthur had risen to the sparkle of frost on lawns, an unseasonable October cold snap. The maples on Wellington Street had been nipped too, a blood-red spatter on outer leaves. Maybe it wasn’t unseasonable — this was Ottawa, the Canadian Shield. In brief but glorious amends for the coming winter, he would have a month of beauty, the famed turning of the leaves, a spectacle denied the West Coast. Today, even the Gothic turrets of the Centre Block and the Peace Tower were shining verdigris bright under the midday sun. But the regal effect of these spires rising from manicured lawns and coddled flowerbeds was marred by the scruffy picketers marching in a loop below the steps.
Arthur guiltily avoided them, the Poverty Action Coalition — he was in a dark suit, they might mistake him for an elected member, harangue him, get pushy: there had been acts of violence as the economy bottomed out and unemployment lines grew. A smaller group of protesters, an environmental group, held signs exhorting “Stop Trawling Now!” and declaring “Finnerty Is a Bottom-Feeder.”
The prime minister’s family owned a fleet of ocean trawlers. He claimed to have sold his interest but remained a pet target for Greenpeacers and Sea Shepherds. P.M. for not quite a year since his predecessor resigned after being caught covering up bribes by the late, disgraced justice minister. Won the Conservative leadership as everybody’s third choice.
Arthur passed through the portals — as an M.P.’s spouse, he had security credentials — and proceeded into the cathedral-like rotunda with its high vaulted ceiling. Clerks, pages, recorders, and interpreters scooted about, priming themselves for the afternoon sitting. He mounted the staircase to the Commons foyer, the scrum zone, where reporters circled like wolves, waiting for prey, a junior minister who might return limping after a kneecapping in Question Period. A couple of M.P.s were being interviewed, others avoiding comment but preening for the cameras as they headed through the members’ doorways.
Reporters waved and smiled at Arthur, who was a personage here, a hoary old sage, all the more quotable since the publishing house of McClelland amp; Stewart announced it had bought the rights to his life and times — a biographer was already on the job. Arthur had given up trying to persuade them his surname was properly pronounced Beechem, as anglicized centuries ago. But here, at the dividing line between French and English Canada, Beau-champ reigned, as in beautiful field.
The press had eagerly followed Hamish McCoy’s trial, found much hilarity in it. Meanly, during post-trial interviews, Arthur hadn’t denied speculation that the sculpture was intended as a sardonic take on the prime minister.
A correspondent for Le Devoir sidled up. “Why do we have the honour today, M. Beauchamp?”
Arthur explained that Margaret had got on today’s list for Question Period after a Bloc Quebecois member gave her his spot. Julien Chambleau, Iberville-Chambly.
“Ah, Julien — I believe he has taken a fancy to Ms. Blake. But not to worry.”
Worry? Why should Arthur worry? He’d gotten over all those petty jealousies, a bad habit induced by decades of playing the spineless cuckold to his first wife. It bothered him not at all that Margaret was regularly surrounded by charming men at cocktail events. Her only affair was with politics.
“And what issue has she chosen?”
“Bhashyistan.”
“She must use care duelling with Lafayette.”
Arthur continued on up to the Members’ Gallery, settled near the front, with a full view of Opposition desks. Including Margaret’s, tucked behind the Liberal backbenchers. It was rare she got a shot at Question Period. It happened maybe once a month.
The Opposition leader and prime minister in waiting, Claude McRory — known by all as Cloudy — was in his seat glaring at nothing in particular, a short morose man of pensionable age with a caustic manner and a deficient sense of humour.
The tribal rituals of the House were under way, Orders of the Day, bills introduced, the welcoming of constituents in the gallery. Today’s lot included a championship Saguenay bowling team, a young woman from Southern Ontario who’d rescued twelve cows from a burning barn, and the winner of the Prince Edward Island Monster Potato Contest.
Here came Margaret, bending the ear of … yes, that must be the separatiste Chambleau, young and dapper, a ring in his ear. Arthur could remember when that used to mean gay, but these days it was anybody’s guess. A Green sympathizer, tres vert.
Question Period opened with Opposition Leader McRory rising to a standing ovation from his members: a form of silliness that both sides of the House engaged in for the TV cameras. Arthur was constantly amazed at the puerility on display here; it reinforced his disdain for politics.
McRory seemed unable to frame a question, contenting himself with a blustery speech about “an exponential rise” in home foreclosures. Clara Gracey had numbers at her fingertips and taunted the Liberal chief for relying on an aberrant statistic — in fact, foreclosures had held steady in the last quarter and were projected to fall. Tory backbenchers rose like marionettes in furious applause.
She and Lafayette were the bright lights of a lustreless cabinet, a patchwork group chosen more for regional interest than keen intellect. Arthur found the Liberal Opposition no more impressive, while the smaller parties of the moderate left, the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois, were relegated to the role of irritants. The country was in a sorry state.
A question from the NDP leader about a stalled bill to control gasoline prices was quickly parried by Prime Minister Finnerty. “I recognize that the honourable member has a serious problem with gas …” The rest was drowned out by laughter, shouts of derision, applause, table pounding.
Awaiting her call, Margaret looked serene and confident in a smart tailored suit. Arthur was finding it hard to bring back a picture of her in muddy jeans pitching hay at Blunder Bay. Constant in her vows, committed to her ideals, quick as a whip — how unlike his first wife, Annabelle, from whose perfidy he’d found escape in a bottle.
“Recognize the member for Cowichan and the Islands.”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs inform the House why he is proposing an exchange of ambassadors with the so-called Democratic Republic of Bhashyistan, a tyrannical regime whose jails are bursting with dissidents, people of faith, and homosexuals, and which makes virtual slaves of half its remaining population — those unfortunate enough not to have been born with penises?”
Gerard Lafayette, who had been conferring with the prime minister, looked up, seemingly startled at the bold mention of the male reproductive organ. There was a stirring in the House, some gasps — was this beyond the pale, unparliamentary? — but also some laughter.
Lafayette quickly regained composure. “I hope it will not offend the honourable member if I frame my response in more delicate language. While it may be true that Bhashyistan has suffered some growing pains, we on this side conceive it as our democratic duty, indeed an international imperative, to help bring this young republic from isolation into the world of free nations. To that end, we propose not merely to give their visiting delegation a big-hearted Canadian welcome but also to demonstrate the blessings of democracy and the rule of law.”