Man in the Shadows (11 page)

When Tex disappeared, heading deeper into the bush to work on a railway, the Oblate priests continued the lessons. Although Thomas insisted “no religion,” they applied the occasional Bible story to their lessons. Conor found the stories appealing, but didn’t tell his father.

Though illiterate and innumerate, Thomas O’Dea sent for books. Huge white pine logs tumbled downriver and pages of knowledge were carted back on corduroy country roads, all to supplement Conor’s education and ensure his escape from this rough and dangerous life.

Sinbad. The Arabian Nights. Ivanhoe.
Conor devoured the books like a wood stove eating dry wood. He shared Tom Brown’s school-days, fought alongside Rob Roy and was stranded on a desert island with Robinson Crusoe. As he got older, he turned from adventure stories to biographies of Elizabethan swashbucklers: Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher. His father was not aware that the British librarians were sending
him heroic tomes of empire builders, discoverers and conquerors. Conor travelled the Pacific with James Cook, scaled the heights to Quebec with James Wolfe and conquered Bengal with Robert Clive. He became enthralled by their dedication to empire.

He loved to read books about British society. The Brontë sisters and Jane Austen opened a world of prestige, refinement and dignity. Society luncheons, fancy-dress dances, social intrigue and mischief. That’s how he had wanted to live.

When Conor reached his teens, Thomas made sure that his son never headed into the woods to do the heavy work. He worked out a deal with the cook so Conor could stay indoors as a cook’s apprentice. He earned his keep in the “camboose,” a square of logs in the middle of the shanty where a cooking fire was always burning. It was claustrophobic, smoky, noisy and hot as hell’s kitchen, but it was safe. Conor spent hours boiling bricks of salt pork while other young men cut and hauled lumber. The others made more money, but they risked their lives.

He grew up around rowdy, coarse, lonely men. There was camaraderie among the loggers; they were proud and competitive, and strong as oxen. There was order to their lives. They settled disputes with their fists and they earned respect by proving themselves in the forest. Every year, at first snowfall, with the promise of short days and severe weather to come, some deserted. Those who stayed were a class unto themselves. Workers. Lumberjacks. Timbermen. The toughest of all men.

It amazed Conor how the men so rarely complained. He would know if they did because indoor workers didn’t just feed the men, they fixed them when they were hurting. Their remedies could be worse than the pain. Pine gum to close cuts, rusting implements to pull teeth. Conor watched one cook give a skidder with indigestion a few pinches of gunpowder in boiling water. “It’ll scare your problems away.” The
skidder survived and never came back with another medical problem. Boiled pine bark with brandy was the usual stomach-ache tonic. One cook swore that boiled beaver kidney was the best medicine. Conor became a backwoods doctor. The men started trusting him. After all, “Cookie” could boil up potions and “Bookie” could read the manuals. Of course, there were no written instructions, just traditional antidotes and balms.

Growing up in a male world, Conor viewed girls as a frightening mystery, and mothers a total unknown. The loggers would talk obsessively about women—wives, girlfriends and lovers—but never mothers or sisters. Women were something to chase in the off-season. Conquests. Prizes. Trophies. Thomas kept the off-colour stories away from his son as much as he could, but some of the men took delight in teaching him their versions of the ways of the world.

Why, he wondered now, had he not missed a mother’s love or longed for a mother’s comfort? Why—and this is what seemed extraordinary to him now—did he not even wonder much about his mother? Margaret. What was she like?

“You,” his father had said.

Maybe he was too busy planning his own life to think about others. Maybe he was too self-centred. No, not maybe. He
was.
He took another swig of whisky.

Mothers to him were characters in novels, like Mrs. Bennett nagging her long-suffering husband, planning parties, instructing her daughters with pride and considerable prejudice. Books were his links—his only links—to the outside world of society, gentility and petticoats. No one sent him books about famine, fever ships and Irish dead along the banks of the Boyne River.

When a rogue log almost killed his father and Thomas’s back gave out, they moved down the river to Ottawa full time. Conor was now free to choose his own books, or at least the ones he could afford.
He absorbed the world of politics and parliamentary democracy. He turned to practical books that might prepare him for an important future. The rise of responsible government. How a bill is passed. The role of the backbencher. If he had taken these subjects in school, he might have found them boring, but by discovering them for himself, he found them riveting. This was real adventure spiced with vested interests, big money and burning ambition.

In this small, unlikely capital, politicians were all around him. Most were puffed up and self-important, but there was something vital about them as they plotted, negotiated, schemed and occasionally actually achieved. They were devising a blueprint for a new country. And they were gentlemen. He studied their movements, practised their accents and copied their dress. He strove to become as shrewd as John Macdonald, as dogged as George Brown, as overbearing as George-Étienne Cartier, as eloquent as D’Arcy McGee—and more determined than the lot of them. If he met the right people, if he accomplished the right things, he would become as rich as a railway baron and as happy as a prince. And he would leave far behind his life in a hardscrabble lumber camp and dirt-poor Irish shanty town.

Conor began enjoying the space between his old life and the new. It was liberating, proof that he was advancing. Annoying his father was a sign of his emerging success. He went through the motions of helping his father out at the tavern, sharing the occasional meal, talking the smallest of small talk, but a coldness developed. What did they really have to say to each other anymore? Conor was preparing for a life that didn’t include Thomas. He was nice to the people in the neighbourhood, but he found them more quaint than inspiring.

“I am worse than a snob,” he told his emptying glass. “I’m a brat and a bully.”

He rubbed smoke from his eyes and thought, The masquerade is over. No more sneaking into the halls of power, acting as if he belonged. No more saying he was a speechwriter when he was really just an assistant. No more posing.

He ordered another whisky. The liquor made him think clearly. How had he thanked his father for years of sacrifice? By taking Thomas for granted and belittling his ignorance. He had betrayed his own people. He had been … Come on, he thought, you’re a man of words,
think …
He had been …
cavorting with the enemy.
That was it.
Cavorting with the enemy.
Macdonald was one of them; so was Meg’s father. What kind of judge of character was he? These were the sorts of people he admired? He was a fool who would never amount to anything. And he didn’t deserve to. He said aloud, “Jane Austen can—”

“Conor! I’ve finally found you.” It was Meg.

He almost dropped the glass of whisky.

“Meg, you can’t come in here,” he slurred.

“I can go wherever I want.
You
do.”

He looked around. No one seemed to notice. By now, everyone had drunk so much that they were engrossed in their own stories, telling their own lies. Drunks don’t listen, they talk; they don’t think, they react. He learned that at Lapierre’s.

“Come.” She tried to pull him out of his chair. “Let’s go.”

He resisted and reached for a beer to wash down the whisky.

“I’m happy here.”

“You don’t look that happy to me.”

She let him stay seated and went over to the bartender. “How much?” she asked. She was shocked by the price. Either he had drunk an extraordinary amount or she was being cheated. She paid the barkeep, left a modest tip and dragged Conor out to the street. He was wavering unsteadily, but was able to walk the few blocks to
Parliament Hill. “Lie down,” she instructed. He did as he was told, stumbling to the ground. He lay on his back and watched the sky spin madly. It was a clear night, and the stars glistened and spun like a kaleidoscope. He was afraid he might be ill.

“What do you see?” she said.

“I see stars.” It came out as
shtarshs.

“Look at them as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen them, and tell me what you see.”

He composed himself staring at the Big Dipper. It was the only collection of stars he knew by name. “I feel I can reach up, pull the handle and grab them,” he said.

“Pull them from the sky?”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

She let the moment lie; let him think about this for a minute; let the other stars come into focus. Her mother had taught her to love nature, not manmade idols; to worship God’s creation, not an imaginary creator; but when she looked at the stars, she felt there must be something else. Some purpose. Something greater than simple existence.

“There are things nobody can take away from us,” she said.

“Is this that nature stuff you admire?” He was trying to be cruel.

She ignored him. “It’s a simple truth,” she said and sighed. “What’s wrong, Conor? You’re not a good enough actor to affect sarcasm. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I lied to you by the river. I have read some Tennyson. I told you I hadn’t.”

She looked confused. That was just idle small talk.

“A man in one of the lumber camps had a book of poetry, but I didn’t understand it. I don’t understand anything. I just say things to sound impressive.”

“How old were you when you read it?”

“I don’t know. Ten, maybe twelve. His name was Tex. He was trying to teach me, but I couldn’t follow it.”

“Everything has been so hard for you,” she said. “I can’t imagine.”

“I don’t know that. All I know is …” He braced himself and said it: “I’ve been cavorting with the enemy.”

“Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “Do you know how stupid that sounds?”

It did sound melodramatic. But melodrama fuels a drunk.

“Are you saying I’m the enemy?”

“You, Macdonald, the drumming marcher, your father, your—”

“People marching. So what? I thought if you didn’t like something, you’d want to change it.”

“Why bother?”

Why bother? Wasn’t that the point: to bother to change what you don’t like, to bother to get it right? “What about Mr. McGee? He’s as Irish as St. Patrick, and he’s not running away.”

“That’s different,” he said. But he knew it wasn’t. Somehow, McGee made sense of the contradictions and confusions of life.

She moved closer to him. “While you wallow in self-pity, there’s a world out there. You wanted it so much. Don’t lose it.” He didn’t respond, and she added, “Don’t run away. Get bothered. I like you that way.”

He leaned toward her, his breath reeking of cheap whisky. She gently pushed his nose up toward the heavens and they stared at the night sky together. The Milky Way looked like painter’s strokes on a jet-black canvas. The North Star beckoned amid the clutter of lights. She loved the sky. It was eternal. Infinite. Mystic.

Conor closed his eyes tightly and tried to think like his father. Meg’s life had been so much easier than his. Sure, her father had been killed, but off she went to London for an education. She may not be upper-crust, but she had a rich aunt who helped the family out
and an understanding, deep-thinking mother. He had nobody. She was right about one thing: she couldn’t imagine how hard it had been for him and how hard it was still going to be. She couldn’t picture herself trying to claw her way out of poverty, working to open doors in a closed society.

“Open your eyes,” she said, “and look at me.” He let his eyes adjust to the sky’s splendour. “You know what you need to do?” He didn’t answer, and she didn’t wait for a response. “Just be yourself. Quit trying to be someone you’re not. You don’t need to try to impress people; you are impressive.” Her hair was falling in her face. She brushed it aside. “Don’t forget about the Orange Parade. It happened. It’ll happen again. But don’t let the bigots stomp over your own ambitions.”

He smiled to himself and thought, That’s the kind of thing D’Arcy McGee might say.

“What happened with your father was a shame, but you won’t find forgiveness in a bar. You’ll find it out here, or”—she touched his left arm—“you’ll find it with me.” She pulled him closer, and he felt his anger dissolving. He couldn’t summon his father’s resentment and fury, not in the arms of this Protestant girl. They kissed cautiously.

“What’s happening, Meg?” Conor was afraid she would see his eyes filling with tears. “It’s all spinning too fast.”

“I don’t know. All I know is that you are a complicated mess of a man, and I rather like the idea of trying to sort you out.”

He looked deeply into her beautiful blue eyes. “Don’t ask me to speak to my father. Not yet.”

“I will ask you, but no, not yet.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“You will go to Montreal to work on Mr. McGee’s election. You will go back to work.”

“And you?”

She leaned over and kissed him softly. It was a gentle kiss—not passionate, but inviting, certainly not the kiss of a friend.

“And I will …” she said, “I will be waiting here.”

He felt so inept, so inexperienced. “In the lumber camps, I didn’t really get to know many girls.”

“Shhh. Words, words, words. Can’t you just be quiet?” She held him tighter.

“I need you, Meg,” he muttered into her long black curls.

“I know you do.”

I
t was late afternoon in Westboro, a sleepy little village west of Ottawa. Nothing much had happened here since a fox bit the Duke of Richmond and he died, far from the comforts of home. They named a rough road that ran along the valley after him. These days, farmers from “up the line” would travel that road for provisions, and the occasional logger would stop en route to Ottawa. It was not uncommon to find strangers on the tree-lined streets. A weathered sign over the door of a tiny shop read
j.p.
willard: gunsmith and general
merchandise.