The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (61 page)

It is hard to convey to someone who knows how things turned out what it was like back then, when no one knew how a victory by
one side would be received by the other, or what margin of victory would be acceptable.

I went out with my bodyguards and my revolver in my pocket on those last few summer nights before the vote, got up in some disguise, a pulled-down hat, an up-turned collar, clothing of the sort I was never known to wear. Out of every door left open to let a cooling breeze blow through, the same din of contending voices carried into the streets. Every bar we passed was in an uproar. When the bars were shut and those men who lingered outside on the street after closing time had drifted off, we walked, the three of us, through a city that was eerily quiet.

It was inevitable, what with me being the leader of the confederates and my parents being independents, that there would occur in the Smallwood house just such a bloodletting as occurred in houses throughout the country.

Ours took place during a Sunday dinner just days before the second referendum. My father had recently made a point of being out whenever I came by but was ominously present on this occasion.

I saw his toting pole in the corner of the porch and prepared myself for what I knew was coming and because of the possibility of which I had left Clara and the children home. The only other member of the family on hand was my brother David.

We managed to get through dinner without talking much, but then my father went out on the deck that overlooked the city. We could see him through the sitting-room window. It was a warm day. The doors to both decks were open to let a breeze blow through the house. I could see my bodyguards standing on the ocean-facing deck, smoking cigarettes. My mother looked at me beseechingly, begging me to draw upon all the reserves of forbearance that I possessed.

My father raised his arms as if to address a multitude. It was years since I had heard him hold forth on the deck. I had many times since I moved out cut short a visit the second he went out
there, determined that I would never again be a part of his captive audience.

“OLD LOST LAND,” he roared, in a voice that would have drowned out Hines’s from a hundred yards away. My mother closed her eyes, blessed herself, clasped her hands so tightly that her fingertips went white.

“A country that might have been but may never be because of one of mine. ONE OF MINE,” he roared, smacking the rail of the deck with both hands. “One of Charlie Smallwood’s. It galls me, Minnie May, it galls me to know that in the history books, they will record me as his father, that when they look for explanations they will point to me, as if I made him what he was. The sins of the son will be visited upon the father.”

I stood up, stepped aside from David, who tried to block my way.

“Whatever I am, I am in spite of you,” I said, standing in the doorway, addressing his back. He did not turn round. He was facing the setting sun and the tiered row houses of St. John’s across the harbour, the whole city looking as if it had been arranged to show off to best effect the towering basilica of St. John the Baptist, shaped like an about-to-take-flight dove with wings outspread.

“Better to be an honourable failure,” he said to his imaginary multitude, “than a treacherous success. Better to accept what you were born to than sell your soul to get ahead.”

“If you had accepted what you were born to,” I said, “you might have made something of yourself.”

“I could have done great things,” he said, “had I been unscrupulous. All that ever stood between me and the big time was my conscience, which would not let me compromise myself. I bypassed many opportunities rather than betray myself or someone else.”

I was about to reply when he turned around, strode past me and went upstairs, taking the steps two at a time as if to assure me
that he was coming back. I looked at my mother, who sat there exactly as before, eyes closed, hands clasped.

“Joe,” David said pleadingly, but before he could finish, my father came running down the stairs with the two volumes of my failed encyclopedia,
The Book of Newfoundland
, tucked beneath his arm. He had not spoken a word to me about the book until this moment. He put one volume on the coffee table.

“What have we here?” he said, holding the other out in front of him, as if the better to identify it. “
The Book of Newfoundland
,” he said. He turned to the title page. “Edited by Joseph R. Smallwood.” He read the dedication out loud, “To my parents, Charles and Minnie May Smallwood,” then cocked his head as if to say, “Now isn’t that something?” He thumbed through the book, scornfully reciting the names he saw inside, those of famous Newfoundlanders, as if I had been taken in by them, fooled by them into thinking anyone would want to read about them.

“Why didn’t you get one of your editorial board members to sign it for me? Sir Richard, for instance. “ ‘To Charlie. Your son and I are friends. Friends as you and I might have been had you kissed my arse.’ ”

My mother ran upstairs to her room. While my father paused, we heard her pacing overhead, convinced, I had no doubt, that all this was her fault, that this was what came of vainglorious books.

“I’m not in here,” he said. “The old man and Freddie and you, my first born, and God knows how many other Smallwoods are in here, but not me. Except in the dedication. ‘Dedicated to my parents, Charles and Minnie May Smallwood.’ I have thought about that a lot. Oh, yes. At night, out there on that deck all by myself, I have pondered on it. A dedication is the only way I could ever get my name into a book like this. He seeks to appease me for deeming me unworthy of inclusion in his book by working my name into the dedication. I am honoured, deeply honoured, and not at all offended as some men might be.”

The fact that what he said about my trying to appease him was not entirely untrue did not make it any easier to take.

“Under what heading would I have put you?” I shouted. “Noted drunks of Newfoundland? Noted good-for-nothings? Noted ne’er-do-wells? I should walk out of here and never speak to you again. I would if I didn’t think it would break my mother’s heart.”

David tried to intervene, but my father waved him off. “Charlie Smallwood,” he said. “Noted for nothing and therefore not noted. But you haven’t outdone the judge, if that was your intention, as I’m sure it was. What would the judge make of your book, I wonder? What would old Prowse think if he saw it on the shelf beside his own? How would the judge judge you? I believe he would tell you that people will still be reading his book long after they’ve forgotten yours.”

“He’s … he’s drunk,” David said. My mother had stopped pacing overhead. I knew she must be listening. Her ear to the door, or even the floor perhaps.

“He’s always drunk,” I said, looking at him but talking to David in low tones, as if my father could not hear me. “If that’s an excuse, then he’s not to blame for anything he’s ever done. He’s been drunk since before I was born.”

I turned to him. “I’ll never speak to you again. You are no longer my father. I am no longer your son.”

My father hurried to the sofa, and with the book still in his hand, huddled side-on into the cushions, his face averted in the manner of someone about to receive a beating that he knows he deserves, or that he provoked so his attacker would come off looking shameful.

I stared at my father for a full minute, but he did not look back. His eyes opened and closed as if he were on the verge of sleep or collapse, suddenly sober and exhausted. He had provoked it. This confrontation was something he had long been contemplating.

I felt a surge of perverse affection for him. Ridiculous, fearful, helpless old man. I suddenly realized how old he was, how drained of energy he was from having held forth on the deck for but a few minutes, he who had once done it all night long.

The one thing he feared more than life was death. How he had trembled, how terrified he seemed when I threatened to disown him, as if this was the first casting off, the first severance of many that, when they ended, would end him.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” he said, beginning to cry. “Don’t mind me, boy. You know me, boy. You know what I can get like when I’m drinking.”

I looked at David, looked upstairs when I heard the floorboards creak.

“It’s all right,” I said. I held out my hand to him and, smiling up at me appealingly, he took it. Though he looked as if he was putting everything he could into it, his whole arm shaking, there was no strength in his grasp. He was an old man, my father. An old man who had never had his day.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s forgotten.”

But of course, it was not forgotten, as such things never are. I had disowned him in spirit and retracted only for pity’s sake, form’s sake, my mother’s sake. Not out of love, and we both knew it. And it was always there between us after that.

Second Referendum Night
,
July 22, 1948

I had done my share of celebrating. I did not trust myself to drive. Everyone I knew who owned a car was roaring drunk, even my bodyguards.

I dared not call a cab. The driver would be as likely to kill me as to kiss me. Twice as likely, here in St. John’s. On this night, even
a confederate cabbie might not want to chance having Joe Smallwood in his car.

It did not matter; I felt like walking anyway. It was between three and four in the morning when I went outside, alone, my bodyguards let me think, or believed they had, for as I walked I knew they were behind me somewhere, I could hear them, laughing, probably too drunk to do me any good, more likely to draw attention to me than anything else. I decided I would lose them if I could.

A few brave souls walked, arms linked, through the streets with bottles in their hands, confederates who walked right past me without giving me a second look. The streets, strewn with confetti, were otherwise deserted.

I heard, from somewhere in the east end, a solitary, punctuating shotgun blast that echoed back and forth between the harbour hills. Earlier, guns had fired almost constantly for hours, not so much in celebration, it seemed, as in symbolic execution of the losers.

I felt the weight of my revolver in the pocket of my jacket, and the iron ingot I had worn in the other pocket for three months now as a counterweight, so my jacket would hang evenly. I felt the pull of both weights on my shoulders. They caused me to hunch slightly and I wondered if I would ever walk upright again. And how much longer I would need the gun.

Everywhere, it seemed, the pink, white and green flew at half-mast. Let the old flag fall. The anti-confederates, looking out their windows the next day, must have wondered how they lost; there were so many more of them than us.

But only in the city. Not in the outports where the antis had never been. They had been to London and they had been to New York, but they had never been to Bonavista or La Poile, and that was why they lost. Here and there the Union Jack flew at full mast.

I knew my father was still up, though the southside hills were dark. I didn’t have to write about others any more. From now on, others would write about me. I would make history, had made it.
I no longer had to write it. Yes, I knew that my father was out on the deck and that he knew that his son was somewhere in the city down below.

I tried to imagine what the city must look like from the Brow. A couple of hours ago, it would have looked like a relief map, the confederate one-third lit up, the rest dark. But there were just a few lights now. Anti-confederates, I suspected, though I was not sure why. Keeping bitter vigil. I knew that my mother had voted for the losing side and that my father, if he voted, had done so, too, each for their different reasons.

I walked down Bonaventure, past Fort Townshend, turned left where Harvey Road met Military Road. I walked past the Colonial Building, Government House, hurried across Cavendish Square in front of the Newfoundland Hotel, outside of which huddled a knot of men I knew were anti-confederates because of the aggrieved, subdued way they stood there, smoking cigarettes. It did not occur to them I might be
him
. Though I was wearing no disguise, they paid me no attention.

By the time I reached Battery Road, I was sure I had lost my bodyguards. I felt safer here among the houses of the city poor, the fishermen who I knew had voted for Confederation.

I walked to the end of the road, and though it was so dark I could barely see, I followed the trail that led down towards the Narrows, felt my way with my left hand on the cliff-face, grateful I could not see the precipice that I knew was on my right.

The boat was there when I arrived, anchored within a few feet of the Boot. Instead of tearing down the Boot, the anti-confederates had shot it as though it were an effigy of me, so it was only just still boot-shaped, ragged-edged, and you could only just make out the splintered, perforated letters that spelled Smallwood.

The man on board threw me the mooring line, and I pulled the boat in closer to the shore and to the Boot until the man put up his hand. I threaded a line through a hole drilled in the rock and tied a knot.

It took the man, using a steel saw, ten minutes to cut through the iron bar drilled into the cliff, ten minutes to bring down the Boot, which landed with a thud on the prow of his boat. At a nod from the man in the boat, I untied the mooring line and threw it to him. I turned, and as I headed back up the trail, the cliff-face on my right now, I heard the boat, in low throttle, pull away from shore.

VI
 
TWO HEMISPHERES