The High Road (21 page)

The next morning, the
Crier
’s coverage of the all-candidates meeting could not have been better for our side. That is, unless André Fontaine had been with us later the previous night when we’d discovered the rotund Ramsay Rumplun plugged fast in our air-conditioning duct. Though several hours had passed, that final image of him quivering on the floor was still so fresh, vivid, and constant in my mind that I was considering hypnosis to exorcise it. I hoped my appetite might one day return. Had Muriel and I been in charge, the front-page
Crier
photo would have captured the naked truth of our bloated burglar and his botched break-in. (Ex-speechwriters are often plagued with chronic alliteration, and I was no exception.) But Angus dug in his heels and simply would not be moved. No matter. Muriel’s grainy cellphone snap would surely have made Cumberland voters queasy as they sat around their breakfast tables. I wondered if Angus might be taking this high-road sentiment a little too seriously. I was convinced Emerson Fox, knowing how devastating the loss of our marked lists would be for us, had put his plump protégé up to the burglary attempt, but Angus would hear none of it. He shut us down hard and fast.

But I could hardly complain about the front-page photo that ran instead. It was a great shot taken from the side of the Cumberland Collegiate auditorium. About a dozen GOUT agents could be seen standing amid the audience, their spindly arms either winding up or following through, as a distressed Emerson Fox took cover behind the podium from the volley of
cookies arcing his way. The photo was timed perfectly as the full vacuum bag had just hit its mark with the dust cloud germinating, obscuring Fox from the waist down. André really did have a gift for photography. After such a priceless photo, it didn’t really matter what the story said. Best of all, the shot hit the wires and went national. The political bloggers had a field day invoking what they coined the “Cameron Curse.”

Lindsay was out on the canvass with the two Petes, a rose between two thorns, and Muriel and I were in the constit office with Angus. I’d tried to convince him to forego constituency work until the campaign was over so we could concentrate all our efforts on getting re-elected. But I knew I’d lose that argument, too. As it turned out, the few hours we spent on constit business that morning were well worth it and might even give us a solid late-campaign announcement to make – what Bradley Stanton routinely called an “announcible.” Our poor, poor language.

Angus and I spent an hour or so with a local group to talk about their dream of opening a seasonal ecotourism operation, offering kayaking trips up the Ottawa River. They were looking for a base of operations. In another patented McLintock win-win, Angus picked up the phone in the middle of the meeting and brokered an impromptu discussion with the other organization we’d already met that wanted to open an environmental education school in the abandoned aggregate operation on the river. For Angus, the idea had been immediately obvious. It took the rest of us a little longer to catch up, but we got there eventually. Even though the call to the camp people was unexpected and unplanned, the next forty-five minutes yielded a brilliant solution, at least in principle. Angus proposed that the two groups join forces to refurbish and then share the use of the shut-down aggregate facility.

The ecotourism group really only needed a home base from June to September, while the environmental education school would be in full swing during the academic year. Neither group had the resources to spruce up the place on their own. But
together, they could. This, along with the complementary timing of their operations, made the partnership a perfect arrangement. Both groups could have a home, and the old aggregate mill would be redeemed. Three birds with one stone. Not bad for a morning’s work. Angus had suggested that the two teams hammer out a plan together and we would try to facilitate the transfer of the moribund property from the municipality to the new partnership at a reasonable price. I wanted to move as quickly as possible in the hopes of nailing everything down in the next couple of weeks so we could announce it for a last-minute boost before the election.

I walked over to Muriel’s desk to report on the successful meeting. She was putting in her regular weekday morning shift.

“Angus seems down today,” Muriel remarked. “He’s more cranky and taciturn than usual.”

(I liked a woman who could correctly use “taciturn” in a sentence.) I hadn’t really picked up anything, but my radar is not particularly sensitive, and I’d come to trust Muriel’s instincts.

“He seemed okay in the meeting, but now that you mention it, as soon as the ecotourism group left, he did go all quiet on me,” I remembered. “Then waved me out of his office and shut the door.”

“Something is gnawing at him today, I can feel it,” Muriel replied. “By the look of him around the gills, I have a hunch it might be Marin-related. Maybe it’s her birthday today. Can you use your magical googly thing and find out?”

“Google, Muriel. It’s Google.”

I opened my laptop. It took me under a minute on Wikipedia to determine that it wasn’t Marin’s birthday. I spent a few more minutes searching, without really knowing what I was looking for, when my BlackBerry chirped. I looked at the screen. Shit.

“Hey Bradley,” I opened.

“Addison?” he said.

“Yes Bradley, it’s Daniel. That’s how it works. You dial my BlackBerry, and then I answer,” I replied.

“Thank you, dickwad, that’s very helpful.”

I let the ice thaw for just a second or two.

“So how goes the national battle?” I asked.

“Well, you better fasten your seat belt because in an hour, the national battle will be coming to your backyard. So clear the decks and pull all the volunteers you can to greet the big bus when we get there.”

“Whoa! Come again?” I replied, understanding dawning. “The Leader is coming here? To Cumberland? Today? Now?”

“I don’t care what everyone else says, I really think you are a quick study,” he mocked. “We were supposed to be glad-handing in Gatineau-South with Kerry Doorpat, but she’s got food poisoning from one of her own coffee parties and is in the Ottawa Civic on an I V. So it’s going to be main-streeting with honest Angus instead. And you know how happy that makes me. Where do you want us to go when we pull in?”

Our campaign office was a bit of a disaster with the damaged air conditioner leaking in the corner and the general chaos that comes with running an election with more volunteers than we knew what to do with. Add a little smoke and you’d swear we’d been hit by mortar fire.

“Ahhhh, it’s kind of crazy here at HQ. Let’s meet at Angus’s home on the river. We can brief the Leader there and then head downtown for a walkabout,” I proposed.

“You want me to bring the Leader, the press, and the bus to McLintock’s house?”

“The journos can wait for fifteen minutes on the bus while the Leader sits down with Angus. They like downtime. Give them their lunch, or throw
All the President’s Men
back on the DVD,” I replied. “Then Angus and I will ride the bus with you back in to Cumberland.”

This was a classic good news/bad news scenario. The good news was that a Leader’s stop in Cumberland meant that the centre now considered C-P to be a winnable riding; it was worth it to come, even though we’d made Stanton’s life a living hell in
the last three months. The bad news was we were going to have a Leader’s stop in Cumberland. Putting Angus together with the Leader was a crap shoot at best, and the odds-makers were calling for at least a mishap (5–1) or perhaps even a disaster (2–1). Either way, the trouble potential was off the charts.

I gave Bradley the directions and got him off the phone as quickly as I could. Muriel had been by my side for the whole call.

“He’s really not, is he? Not here?” she asked with a hunted look about her.

“He certainly is, in less than an hour.”

I briefed Muriel as quickly as I could. Then I took her arm and guided her to Angus’s door. We knocked and entered without waiting for a response. Angus was sitting behind his desk, his left palm supporting his forehead as he twiddled a pencil in his right hand. He was the very picture of melancholy, but we had no time to put him on the couch and diagnose his demons.

“Sorry to interrupt, Angus, but we have a bit of a situation,” I started.

I didn’t want to tell him what it was right away. We needed to get him into the car. Muriel was in a stronger position to make that happen, so she shuffled over to him on her own (all part of the plan), whereupon she offered her elbow to him.

“Would you mind getting me out to the car, Angus?” she asked sweetly but firmly. “Daniel, bring it around to the front door, would you?”

Muriel swayed a bit next to him, perhaps even legitimately, so Angus had no choice but to leap to his feet and take her arm. I grabbed his car keys from the desk and dashed for the Camry out back. By the time I’d pulled up to the front door, they were there on the sidewalk in their unbuttoned coats.

“I’ll get in the back. Why, thank you, sir,” Muriel cooed as he helped her in. “Now please get in the front seat, Angus. We’ll explain on the way.”

Bewildered, Angus got in and I pulled away from the curb.

I let Muriel explain the situation to Angus while I drove and
briefed the two Petes via my cell. I had no choice but to leave them in charge of mobilizing the volunteers to greet the bus when it eventually arrived downtown. By the time I hung up, Angus seemed to be taking the news in stride.

“No, no. Not today, not today. I cannae do it today,” he whined. “Why doesn’t the buffoon go somewhere else? Anywhere else!”

Well, he was sort of taking the news in stride.

As usual, his house was pristine. For someone who cared so little about his own appearance, Angus seemed to take great pride in his home. It really was beautiful and very tastefully decorated. Marin may well have been the driving force behind the interior design, but I’d long since learned the hard way not to make assumptions about the breadth of Angus McLintock’s knowledge and interests.

We sat in the living room looking out over the frozen river, awaiting the arrival of the Leader’s bus.

“This is great news for us, it really is. It means it’s possible we could actually win C-P. They wouldn’t waste the Leader’s time in a no-hope riding,” I explained. “We must be closing the gap.”

“But how does this help us?” Angus asked. “Everyone knows I don’t see eye to eye with the man. How does it help us?”

I tagged with Muriel and she jumped into the ring. My BlackBerry vibrated with a text message. It was from Bradley Stanton and read “5 mins out.”

“You’ll get national media coverage tonight. The voters of Cumberland-Prescott will turn on their TVs tonight and see the next Prime Minister of Canada walking and talking with the famous and respected maverick MP Angus McLintock. Whatever you think of the man, his presence in this riding at this time is only good news for us,” Muriel concluded.

Angus fell silent and we kept the peace until we all heard the hiss of the air brakes as the bus pulled up. Angus bowed his head and then turned it slowly, side to side.

“I see no trap door that would release me from what I’m certain will be a tedious and superficial afternoon. So let’s get it over with.”

Muriel stayed on the couch while Angus and I headed to the front door and put our coats back on.

“You need to lead on this, Angus. This is your riding, your home, and your show,” I noted as I peeked through the small leaded-pane window in the front door. “Wait, wait. Almost ready. Okay, the Leader is off the bus and headed this way.”

I opened the door so Angus could meet the Leader on the stone steps out front amid the belching diesel fumes from what looked like a Depression-era bus. Most of the reporters, photogs, and vidcam shooters had already piled off to record the historic meeting. Wearing a pale-blue long-sleeved dress shirt, grey suit pants, a red ski jacket (surprise, surprise), and dressy black boots, the Leader looked like the classic downtown city-dweller come to the country for the day. But he looked confident and relaxed, striding up the clear, dry, and salted walk. Just as he came within about four feet of Angus, the shiny polished toe of his right boot didn’t quite clear the small flagstone step. I’d already experienced far too many scenes with Angus that played out in slow motion. I didn’t really need another. But I got one anyway. The Leader actually seemed to lift off the ground as if the flagstone had been spring loaded. His eyes and his mouth opened wider than seemed anatomically possible and his arms became propellers as he tried to regain his balance for landing. I wasn’t close enough to do anything useful, so I opted for the traditional hands-over-mouth look of shock. The shutters clicked away as Angus caught the Leader just before he went down hard. It was over in an instant, but not fast enough, I feared. That’s all Bradley Stanton needed, a Gerald Ford moment. He would surely find a way to blame me for it. He glared at me when our backs were to the cameras.

“Would you rather Angus had let him face-plant on the stonework?” I hissed.

Five minutes later, Stanton, the Leader, Muriel, Angus, and I were safely inside. Outside, the reporters stayed in the relative warmth of the idling bus and did what they did so much of the
time on the campaign trail: they sat and waited. We were all comfortably seated in the living room. All, that is, except the Leader. He walked around the room looking as if he’d just fallen in love.

“Angus, this is just spectacular. What a beautiful home you have. And what a glorious view of the river,” he gushed. “It must be amazing in the fall.”

“Well, I thank you, sir. Yes, we’re very happy in this home,” said Angus. “Or rather, I am.”

“It looks like you’ve been preparing for my arrival for weeks,” the Leader droned on, rubber-necking and snooping around. “It’s absolutely pristine.”

“Actually, it always looks like this, sir,” I interjected. “We didn’t know you were coming until half an hour ago. This is just the normal state of Chateau McLintock.”