Children in the Morning (35 page)

“Dress me!” The earthy tones of Robertson’s ensemble were an uncanny match for those of his wife. The man’s face was red, and his eyes were bulging.

“Sorry I’m late! I don’t know if anybody has had to do business with the local bmw dealership recently. They’re so busy you have to stand in line.”

“It’s a tough cruel world,” Brennan said with just enough volume for me to hear.

“The stresses of a two-Beemer family,” I muttered back.

Mrs. Robertson spoke to the assembled group. “This is my husband, Murdoch. I don’t know everybody’s name, so maybe you could all introduce yourselves.” Introductions were made around the room.

One name struck a chord with Murdoch Robertson. “Reverend Burke, you’re the director of the school, am I right?”

Burke nodded.

“Great school.”

“Thank you.”

“At least for music and literature, history, math, science, all that.”

The man paused. “But it could be more forward-looking. Know what I mean?”

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“No.”

“You don’t teach economics, right?”

Burke looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

“Economics,” Robertson tried again.

“The dismal science,” Burke replied. “No.”

“I’m an economist by training,” Robertson said.

“Ah.”

“I’d be happy to come in and teach a few lessons in the subject. In fact, we could start a ‘young entrepreneurs’ group at the school. Give the kids early exposure to a business world view.”

Burke stared at him blankly.

“So,” Robertson said then, “how is my son doing in school?”

It dawned on me then that this was the first time Richard’s father had met Burke, despite the fact that Richard had been in the school for at least two years.

“Richard is doing brilliantly. He has the voice of an angel, and his written work is excellent. A sly wit, has Richard, and we all enjoy his sense of humour.”

Mrs. Robertson leaned forward in her chair. “Class clown is not the goal we have in mind for our son. Richard has to become more focused.

We have a tutor for him in French. A virtual necessity, given the job market in this country. He’s not doing very well in that, do you think?”

“He sounds better than I do in French, I can tell you that much!”

Burke replied. “I wouldn’t be too concerned about Richard getting a job. He’s a long way from that, and he’ll do fine wherever he winds up.”

“I think not. Richard doesn’t take things seriously. He has a personal coach, but even there he doesn’t seem to meet expectations.

We’ll have to step up our efforts, obviously.”

I sat there wondering what the hell she was on about. A personal coach? What on earth . . .

Richard came bounding in at that point, with his hair slicked down and the arse of his pants wet where he had tried to scrub off the grass stains.

“Richard!” his mother began, but the boy interrupted.

“Psst!” He crooked his finger at my daughter, who was playing a board game with the other kids. “Normie! Where’s Kim at?”

“She’s supposed to be here! Maybe she couldn’t find your house!”

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“Okay. Come on downstairs. I got something to show you. Ian, you too. Monty, you come too, and Father Burke.”

“Richard! You’re not taking people down there! You have guests, and we are hoping for a little recital from you.”

“Yeah, okay, after. Please, Mum? Come on, you guys.”

Normie and Ian followed him from the room. Burke gave me the eye, and we got up.

“Oh, Reverend! You won’t want to go down there . . .”

“Sure it will be fine.”

We both made our escape. Whatever Richard wanted to show us downstairs, whether it was a busted pipe or a web full of spiders, would be better than spending one more minute in that stifling living room. Burke and I went through the kitchen, where I noticed an array of appliances and gadgets I could not even begin to identify.

We found the basement stairs and saw the kids ahead of us. Richard said to his companions: “I hope Brrrennan O’Burrrke comes to see this. It will freak him right out of his collar!” I recalled Richard’s humorously rolled Rs, which had started when Burke took him to task for his failure, despite his Scottish name, to roll them sufficiently when required in singing.

“Brrrennan O’Burrrke is right behind you, laddie,” Brennan replied, and Richard turned around and blushed from his neck to his eyebrows.

“Sorry, Father. I was just, you know . . .”

“Te absolvo
, my son. Go and sin no more.”

When we got to the basement, we heard the voice of Neil Young coming from behind a closed door. “That’s my uncle’s room,”

Richard explained.

He led us to a wooden crate in the corner of the basement. He pried the lid off carefully.

“Ooh!” Normie squealed. “Can it get out of there?”

“Cool!” Ian exclaimed. “Where did you get it?”

It was a snake of some sort, brown with a pattern on it, about two feet long, writhing around in a makeshift pen.

Burke shuddered at the sight of it, and Richard grinned. “They don’t have snakes in Ireland ’cause of Saint Patrick, right, Father?”

“Patrick must have done an exemplary job because this is the first 228

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time in my long and eventful life I’ve ever had the misfortune to see a serpent of any kind.”

“Hey, man!”

We heard the voice and turned towards it. At the same time, I thought I detected a faint odour of cannabis. The closed door had opened, and standing there was a youngish man with John Lennon glasses and long shaggy curly hair; he wore a pair of cut-off shorts and a T-shirt that showed a heart bleeding all over the white fabric. He looked vaguely familiar.

“How ya doin’?” he said to us all.

“Hey! You guys, this is my uncle, Dad’s brother, but I just call him Gordo. And this is Father Burke from school, and Ian and Normie and her dad, Mr. Collins.”

“Monty,” I said, and we shook hands.

“Gordo’s living with us for a while. Until he gets his own place.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “How long have you been living here, Gordo?”

“What is it now, Dickie? Five, six years, something like that?”

“I think so. I was just little when you moved in.”

“Yeah. Good times, eh?”

“Yeah!”

Gordo looked at me and Burke. “I can’t move till I get some legal matters settled. I buy a house, the sheriff moves in, takes it all. You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Come on in, have a seat.”

We entered Gordo’s room. My imagination presented me with delightful images of Mrs. Robertson coming in for a gab with her guest. The room could have been a film set, labelled “The Free -

loading Brother-in-Law.”

He turned down Neil Young, who would no doubt appreciate the fact that he was being played in vinyl on an ancient turntable, and invited us to sit on a saggy chesterfield covered with a worn grey army blanket with a red stripe.

“You promised Ellie you were going to get a new blanket, Gordo.

Ellie’s his girlfriend,” Richard explained.

“Yeah, I asked at the Salvation Army counter the other day; they still 229

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don’t have anything in. Maybe I’ll try Frenchy’s,” he said to Richard.

Then, to us: “I don’t buy anything retail.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

His room was decorated with rock band posters and protest signs bearing slogans such as “Resist!” and “Make Brownies Not War.”

One wall was dedicated to the campaign posters of the Cannabis Garden Party.

That’s why he was familiar. “You’re the U.S. invasion guy!”

“That’s me,” he agreed. “Defence critic for the Cannabis Garden Party.”

Any time the defence minister or a military spokesman made a public appearance in Halifax, Gordo showed up to needle him on the country’s inadequate defence spending. But where other defence critics, on the right, took the government to task for failing to anticipate an attack from rogue leftist states or terrorists, Gordo railed about the dangers of an invasion from the south. Which he considered immi-nent.

“And never has it been more urgent that I get my message out.”

He lay back on a pile of Indian-print pillows, and retrieved a home-rolled cigarette that was burning in an ashtray. He took a leisurely drag. His posture bespoke anything but urgency. But then he roused himself to give a stump speech.

“It could happen at any time. People don’t realize that. We do anything to really piss the Yanks off, they’re over the border in minutes.

We’re a bunch of unreliable commies, far as they’re concerned. The only reason they tolerate us is that we lie down for them and enjoy it. The minute we stop playing that role, the minute, say, the ndp gets in and tries to curb foreign takeovers of our industry, bingo!

We’re Guatemala, United Fruit Company is pissed, and the demo-cratically elected government of Canada is overthrown. Think Iran 1953, think Guatemala 1954, think Chile 1973, and all the other legitimate governments that were overthrown and replaced with torture states friendly to the U.S. of A. The list goes on and on. But here’s the difference: it won’t be the usual American practice of engineering a coup and installing a friendly puppet.”

Gordo made his hands and feet jerk up and down spasmodically as if on strings, to the delight of his young audience. “Yes, sir, Billy 230

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Bob, we’ll mow down those protesters in the name of freedom. No, sir, Bobby Joe, we won’t nationalize Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Then the puppet collapsed on the bed.

He roused himself again and said: “No, they won’t stop at that with us. It will be the tanks rolling in, it will be an invasion, an occupation, and they’ll never leave. We’ll simply be annexed as part of the usa. Canada will cease to exist as a country. I’ve got my ticket to the Netherlands for the day they move in. How about you guys?”

The kids were staring at him, wide-eyed.

We heard heels tapping smartly on tile, and looked up to see Mrs.

Robertson, who was nearly frantic as she surveyed the party in her brother-in-law’s den.

“Gordon! Richard has responsibilities upstairs this evening.

Reverend! Mr. Collins! Don’t let my husband’s . . . sibling detain you here in this . . . this . . . My heavens! We’re serving pad Thai upstairs.

Please join us. It’s the newest thing!”

“Ah, we’re grand here, Mrs. Robertson,” Burke replied. “No worries. We’ll be joining you anon.”

“I don’t believe this!” she wailed as she turned away.

“Are you enjoying your time here, Gordo?” I asked when she had stalked up the stairs.

“I enjoy my time everywhere, Monty. And I certainly enjoy the company of young Dickie here.”

“I hope you stay forever, Gordo!”

“I hope so, too,” Brennan muttered just loud enough for me to hear. I concurred.

“Monty Collins!” Gordo exclaimed. “I just realized who you are.

You represented Beau Delaney. Good job, congratulations! Beau’s my lawyer, has been for years. I was entangled in some nasty legal proceedings; he represented me.”

“What was the trouble?”

“I used to own a house, and there was an oil spill. Actually, years of leakage that I didn’t know about. And it contaminated the neighbours’

properties, and there was a hundred thousand dollars in clean-up costs, and the neighbours sued me, and I sued the oil company and the dis-tributor, and I had to sue my own insurance company. It went on for years. I lost my house, and there were judgments against me. Hence 231

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my inability to become a responsible property owner again. None of this was Beau’s fault. The cards were stacked against us. He got me out of some other scrapes, no problem. Great guy, great lawyer.

“Except the time he left me stranded. It was after the oil spill litigation, and all the parties were fighting over legal costs. I stood to lose, big time. Again. We were in Beau’s office getting ready for the hearing. But he forgot about an appointment he had in Toronto. A conference. He remembered quick enough when his secretary came in. ‘Dr. Brayer’s office on the line for you, Beau.’ Beau looked as if he’d got caught coming out of the shitter with his pants down. He must have thought I knew who this guy was, the doctor. Well-known, I guess, on the subject of psychopaths. Shows up every once in a while apparently as a talking head with Mansbridge on CBC.

But I’d never heard of him. So Delaney had to fly out on the next flight, and I had to go to court on my own. He told me to get an adjournment till he came back, but I decided to wing it. Bad idea. I got nailed for contempt of court when I called the judge a tool of the insurance industry and a lackey for big oil. I ended up in jail for two nights. What the hell, it happens. I rag Beau about it whenever I see him, but it’s my fault, not his. And he did appeal the costs ruling, so it wasn’t as bad as it was going to be.

“But enough about that, eh, Dick? Time to dip into the news files?”

“Yeah!”

“What’ll it be today? How about ‘Wedding cake icing protruding from buttocks our first clue, police say, after arrest of man in fairy-tale wedding fiasco’? Or ‘Granny gulps her dentures’?”

“Granny and the false teeth! Read that one. You guys are going to love this,” Richard said to Normie and Ian.

Gordo reached down behind his bed and pulled up a binder. He opened it and displayed a collection of news items. “Here we go: Granny gulps her dentures in whoopee cushion scare. By Crandall McIntosh, the Halifax
Daily News
.