Dead & Buried (31 page)

“I didn’t bring any snuff, Frank,” I said, when I got my breath again. “What’s a wake without snuff?”

“Ah, there’s no lack of it, Benny. Rest assured. Wally Lamb has some, for one.” I looked across the room now that I had a name to go with the familiar face. Lamb was a local painter. The room was full of semi-strangers. We’d all been pals of Martin’s, but we hardly knew one another at all, unless those factors that tend to throw people together in a small town surfaced. For instance, I recognized a couple of professors from Secord. I didn’t know their names. One was telling the other about a happy working sabbatical in Texas. When he finished, the other began telling a long story about interviewing the head of the Greek Orthodox Church at a dinner in Istanbul. A third learned head, this one with a red beard,
moved into the group and began asking questions about movies on videotape.

I was going mad, of course. It was all in my imagination. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t I being taken for a ride by Tony Pritchett’s boys? This couldn’t be a real wake for Martin Lyster. Maybe I’d passed out. Maybe this was all I was going to get of my life passing before my eyes as I slowly bled to death in a ditch. It was the pressure of Anna’s hand on my arm that brought me back to the world of acid rain, skinheads and unleaded gas.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look like you’ve had a shock.”

“I’m fine,” I said and she could read the lie on my face.

“Here, drink a little of this Irish whiskey. Frank has a private supply in the kitchen.” She handed me the glass and I killed most of it. The three professors had stopped whirling around in my head. Now they were just three friends of the departed Martin and not figures from a personal allegory. I thought that perhaps I should sit down. It seemed like a good idea. But before I could move, a grey cat skipped between my legs and disappeared in the curtains. He was followed a second or two later by another, this time a greyish tabby with an orange nose. At the same time, a song was beginning in another part of the room. Bill Palmer was leading, with the painter Wally Lamb chiming in with his arm around Bill’s shoulders.

They say there’s a troopship just leaving Bombay,

Bound for Old Blighty shore,

Heavily laden with time expired men …

“That’s right,” said Frank Bushmill, “let’s give ’em a song! ‘Bless ’em All’” Frank wasn’t my idea of a singsong kind of person, nor do I think he thought of himself that way, but here he was joining in with his own version of the lyrics. Even Jonah Abraham added his voice. I found a chair and sank into it, feeling a little more weight than I thought I was carrying. Was the drink getting to me? Couldn’t be. Shock would have carried off the sting of twice what I’d had. Anna came over to me again. She was lovely as ever. She had a way of surprising me with sides of her that I’d never seen before. She was wearing a long pearly linen jacket over a skirt with a floral print. Under the jacket was a shirt that buttoned up the front, but she was only partly buttoned, as though it was a crime against nature to button the rest of the way.

“Any better?”

“Sitting works better than standing up. I took your drink, I guess. Is the real stuff in short supply?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get us both one when you want it.” She sat down on the arm of my chair and we watched the wake in progress for a few minutes without talking.

In the middle of the room a song had ended. Now Bill Palmer, who must have been among the earliest arrivals at Frank’s apartment by the look and sound of him, began reciting a mock epic of some kind. With his right hand
thrust into his jacket and with a Napoleonic intensity, he declaimed something like the following:

I lost my arm at the Battle of the Marne,

I lost my leg in the Navy,

I lost my biscuit in the soup

And I lost my spoon in the gravy!

The verse was so bad, they made him say it again, this time those close to him recited along with him, lengthening out the syllables
Nay-vee
and
gray-vee
with delight. They went through it a third time and we all joined in. This time the last words in each line were exaggerated even more. The words
Nayyy-veee
and
grayyy-veee
stuck in my head.

Pia Morley came over to us. She was holding a glass of soda water, by the look of it. She looked terrific in a simple dress that probably cost the earth in Toronto or New York. I asked her how she was after making appropriate introductions.

“Me? Hell, Benny, haven’t you heard? I’m a momma. A real downright, up-all-night momma. And my kid’s the baby from hell. He’s six months old and chewing the paint off his windowsill. If he can’t get into the New York Marathon in a few months, he’s going to be very frustrated. You want pictures? I got pictures.” She dipped into a large leather bag and pulled out several pictures of a baby with most of Pia’s own features but the smile of his father, Sid Geller. I didn’t have to ask about the paternity.
I went through the pictures a second time, with Pia adding comments from the arm of the chair. The names of baby playthings filled the room. I heard Anna ask about Jolly-Jumpers and Kanga-rock-eroos. I felt the walls closing in on me and I wanted to get out of there.

TWENTY-NINE

When I left the wake, it was nearly eight o’clock. Anna had gone with her father back to the house on the hill. Pia Morley had gone home to her husband and son. I walked back to the Stephenson House to pick up my car. It was a chilly night with the moon in its first quarter, scudding about the back-lit clouds like a picture in a Mother Goose book. I walked around the car once to make sure I couldn’t see any wires attached to it that didn’t belong there. I was getting jumpy and I didn’t care if it showed.

I think we’d done well by Martin’s memory. I think it was a party he would have enjoyed, snuff or no snuff. I had had rather too much to drink at the beginning, but I mellowed towards the end when everybody began telling his favourite Martin stories. Since many of my fellow wakers knew Martin through the book trade, a lot of the detail went over my head. What was “foxing,” for instance? I asked Anna, who stayed close to me until she had to leave.

“You know those liver-spots that old books get, Benny?” She gave me a warm kiss goodbye, which Jonah, standing by, accepted as the lot of every father
with a grown daughter. It goes with the territory, whether you’re a millionaire or a pauper.

I turned off Ontario Street into Church, still thinking of the wake and Martin and the Blue Jays training camp down in Florida and losing my arm at the Battle of the Marne and losing my leg in the
Nay-vee.
I was thinking of the cunning way Anna’s shirt buttoned, when I saw a familiar shape getting out of a car. I slowed the Olds to a walk. It was Fred McAuliffe from the office. I slid into the parking space behind him and turned off the ignition.

“Mr. McAuliffe!” I called out, as soon as I’d achieved the sidewalk. Fred turned around and came slowly over to me. He was dressed with a little more care than I’d seen before. These were his best clothes I was willing to bet, things he had been saving to wear at Sherry’s wedding last Saturday.

“Why, hello, there, Mr. Cooperman. Glad to see you. Are you coming in?”

“‘Coming in?’” ‘Coming in’ where?” McAuliffe smiled at my apparently dumb question and looked over at the big house on the corner.

“Why, to the Forbes’s, I mean. Didn’t you recognize the house?” I examined the scalloped tile shingles on the turret and the round porch and conservatory to one side, all illuminated by a streetlight. “This is where they all grew up,” McAuliffe said.

“Ah, right. I remember it from the picture of the Grantham Hunt, now that you mention it. It looks a little different at night and without the horses.” Fred smiled
politely. “Don’t tell me they are entertaining tonight? I shouldn’t have thought there’d be anybody home. Ross is in jail, Mrs. Forbes is in the hospital and Sherry’s on her honeymoon.”

“You’re forgetting the people from out of town. And of course you might not know yet that Mr. Ross was released late this afternoon.”

“They didn’t have enough to lay a charge, I guess. Enough to arrest him, but not enough to make it stick.” I nodded my head, recalling the conversation I’d had with Chris Savas. “Have you been summoned by the family, Mr. McAuliffe?”

“Please, outside the office ‘Fred’ will do,” he said. “In answer to your question, no. There was no general muster or call to assemble. Concerned friends pay calls at times like this. That’s all.”

“I don’t think I qualify there,” I said. “I hardly knew the Commander. I’d be wrong to intrude now.”

“Nonsense, Benny—if I may call you Benny—I’m sure you’ll be welcome. You did have lunch with Mr. Ross quite recently, didn’t you? I’m sure you’ll be welcome.”

“Well, if you think I won’t stand out like a styrofoam cup with a silver tea service, I’d be happy to go in with you.”

Together we walked up the walk and climbed the curved front steps, where the door swung open without our knocking.

“Good-evening, Mr. McAuliffe,” said the man on the other side. “It’s good of you to come.”

“Good-evening, Edward. This is Mr. Cooperman who is working with me at the office.”

“You are very welcome, Mr. Cooperman. Most of the people are in the upstairs sitting-room, Mr. McAuliffe. It’s a little less formal than downstairs, don’t you think?” We climbed the stairs. I counted the shining brass rods holding the carpet runner in place as it cascaded down the curving staircase. As we reached the top, the sound of voices could be heard. We made our way in dignified silence to the sitting-room.

While my introduction into Frank Bushmill’s apartment and the wake for Martin Lyster had been unusual, it was still a million miles more relaxed than the sitting-room in the late Murdo Forbes’s house. Both men and women, many of them middle-aged or older, were standing and sitting in the large, high-ceilinged room. While no one was formally dressed, the feeling was one of formality, and in spite of a fire in the grate, I felt an icy draught reaching for the small of my back. The most dominating feature in the room was the Commander himself glowering down at us from his portrait above the fireplace. His bulk and his presence had been captured by the painter. It was quite like him to dominate his own funeral assembly. It wasn’t cheerful enough to be a wake. I didn’t get the feeling that we were here to celebrate the life of the departed. I wasn’t going to hear stories about good old Murdo. Nobody was going to sing “Bless ’em
All” or recite memorable lines about losing my leg in the
Nay-vee,
even though there were a few present who could give an account of themselves at the Battle of the Marne, by the look of them.

“Let me get you something to drink, Benny,” said McAuliffe. He moved away from me before I could open my mouth. At my side he was a bigger comfort to me than ten drinks. I searched the room for a familiar face. My first survey turned up nothing, but panning back to where I started, I did a little better. There was Dr. Carswell with his wife talking to Harold Grier and his wife. Were the women sisters? I tried to remember. No. Grier was married to Carswell’s sister. Carswell’s wife must come from somewhere in the general population. That possibility raised my spirits marginally. Then I caught the eye of Ross Forbes, who was looking over the stooped shoulders of a voluble elderly man with his back to me. In that setting, Forbes was a friend and I grinned foolishly at him, and immediately regretted it. Two weeks ago Forbes was the man who’d bloodied my nose; today he was a familiar quarter in a mess of strange foreign money. As soon as he could free himself, he came across the room. I tried to read what I could from his face.

“I’m sorry for your trouble, Mr. Forbes,” I said as he shook my hand. “If you want me out of here, I’ll understand.”

“I can’t blame this on you, Cooperman. No matter how much I might want to.”

“I didn’t think the police would hold you. I’m glad I was right,” I said.

“I’m still their best bet. I have no illusions that it’s all over. I’ve been warned not to stray from town. They’re doing their best to put me away for good. Would you like a drink?”

“Frank McAuliffe’s getting me one, thanks.” Forbes wasn’t holding a glass and I mentioned it.

“Circumstances are not helping me to stay away from the booze, Mr. Cooperman. For instance, did you know that Teddie is engaged to that lawyer of hers? That was the big news when I got home.”

“Jim Colling and Teddie?”

“Yes, they’ll make a lovely couple. I picked a bad time to go on the wagon.”

“You didn’t try by yourself this time. I’m guessing, but it seems to me you’re getting help.”

“I suppose I won’t be able to keep it a secret,” he said. “Yes, I’ve gone underground, become anonymous. I’m Ross F., Cooperman. Funny, it’s the last thing I told my father. I’ve been pretty shy about mentioning it. Everybody’s ashamed of something.” We traded more small talk and then he was off to refill a glass for a tall woman with shoulder-length grey hair.

“You’ve been talking to Mr. Ross?” McAuliffe said, handing me a cocktail glass with a shot of rye in the bottom. We touched glasses and exchanged suitably sombre smiles. “How did he seem to you?”

“He’s tough,” I said, “tougher than I thought.” Fred was watching Forbes move in and out of groups across the room. He seemed to approve. “Fred, I wonder if you remember hinting to me that there was more to the stories about Ross and the firm’s involvement with toxic fuels than ever appeared in the newspapers. I wonder, now that the Commander is dead, whether you are any freer to talk about it?”

“It was wrong of me to have mentioned that at all.” I steered Fred into a book-lined corner where we were not so conspicuous.

“Were you trying to say that it was the Commander who had acted improperly and not Ross? Was Ross covering up for his father and taking the blame on himself?”

“Oh, more than blame, Benny!” McAuliffe was looking up at the oil painting of the old man frowning down at his family and friends. “There have been formal charges. And more will be made when the present provincial inquiry is made public.” McAuliffe shook his head. “The Commander was not keeping up with the changes in business, you know. He came from an old free-wheeling school where there were few rules and no supervision. Mr. Ross tried to make him see that times had changed. But Murdo always knew better. He knew people in the federal cabinet, he had friends in the provincial government. He wined and dined judges and senators. He was used to having his own way.”