He hoped she might say something about the Episode, about having discussed it with Margaret. But she’d rarely been forthcoming about her disorder. The rumours could not have escaped her. Instead, as she toured him about, she chronicled her run-ins with local fauna: the Great Sheep Escape, the bum-butting ram, the deer that squeezed past the garden gate.
He praised her skills at farm management. She admitted to having been less adept at local politics: apathy and promises of food, drink, and music had subverted the Norbert Road campaign. Two of those who’d turned out for her last meeting had been wearing Starkers Cove T-shirts.
But the developers had made concessions, narrowing the swath to be cleared along Lower Mount Norbert Road.
Finally she said, softly: “I’m sorry I embarrassed you. Stoney and his big mouth.”
“Margaret thought it was funny.”
“Well, it is a lark, isn’t it?”
She laughed and took his arm, and they made their way to the house — despite his better judgment he was titillated, it was as if they were sharing an intimate conspiracy. On the veranda, as he kicked off his muddy brogans, he gestured toward Zack and Ray. “What’s up with those two?”
“They’re getting on like Batman and Robin. They’re planning some kind of political hanky-panky.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Nothing serious, a diversion, misinformation, something to do with the tar sands. Ray’s idea. He’s pretty imaginative.”
Arthur chose his words carefully in warning that DiPalma was being checked out and asking her to be circumspect in dealing with him. “He may not be what he appears to be.”
“No kidding. He’s convinced the locals he’s queer, but that didn’t stop him making a pass at me. He’s the poor man’s James Bond — he only has a licence to fuck. Maybe he swings both ways work-wise too. One day he’s spying for them, the next day for us. I guess that’s fair. He totally admires you — or so he says.”
“I suspect he suffers some ill-defined neurosis relating to his father, but I think I’d prefer not to know the details.”
“Hey, we’re just playing him along, Zack and me. We keep testing him. He never quite gets the language of protest. With him, it’s like, ‘Down with the imperialist warmongers, power to the working class.’ With Zack, it’s a mind game, he’s enjoying Ray, and if he can’t convert him he’s going to outsmart him. It’s a kind of male thing, dogs sniffing at each other’s balls.”
Arthur decided to leave it at that — this wasn’t the time to confront DiPalma.
While Savannah went off to collect eggs, Arthur tested his club chair, which lacked its old comfortable fit. He had indeed lost weight, in the bottom and shanks. Exercise and political stress had dampened his appetite.
He put his feet up, opened his briefcase, frowned over the letter from Hanife Bejko, seeking but not finding hidden meaning. He tried to picture the southern Balkans, a region unvisited during his occasional sallies to Europe. Maybe Albania was like Garibaldi, full of sheep and characters.
He saw Stoney through the window, jumping around, holding his thumb, a mis-hit with the hammer. Dog was flopping about on the beach like a spastic seal, struggling out of his underwater gear. The workday was coming to an end.
Savannah came in, humming off key. She swung by him toward the laundry room, stripping off her T-shirt, tossing it in the hamper, lowering her jeans. Nude bending over by Degas.
There came back, suppressed till now, the tingle he’d felt on awakening beside her, her breast plump as a pillow, her cradling arm, her warm breath in his ear …
As Zack and Savannah bickered in the kitchen, Arthur and DiPalma hunkered by the fireplace, Arthur sipping tea, DiPalma wincing as he pulled the tab on a can of beer. His second. He’d chugged the first.
“It isn’t easy being green,” he said, “but it’s a darn sight harder being gay. That was not the most skilful of moves. Now I’m being courted by Kurt Zoller.”
The accordion-playing island trustee. Arthur was astonished. He’d known him for eight years, hadn’t assumed he preferred men — in fact hadn’t presumed he had any sexual leanings whatsoever.
“He wants us to come out publicly. Otherwise, I’m an object of pity more than homophobia around this island. People detour when they see me coming, especially the machos.”
“Amazing. Have you ever considered a career in theatre, Ray?”
“Played a creditable Stanley Kowalski in an Ottawa Free Theatre production. Ask your neighbour in 1 °C if the Alumni Theatre still remembers my ‘Mourning Becomes Electra.’” He arched his back, grimacing. “I’m a government employee — I’m used to shovelling papers.”
A secret sense of humour was unveiled. Arthur said, “I, on the other hand, am healthier now than I was in my youth. Never was much for organized sports.” He wondered if he was playing that mind game himself, the sniffing of balls.
DiPalma didn’t hesitate. “You’re looking at the man who scored the winning point in the 1990 college intramural water polo championships. Chased some pucks for the Ravens. Those days are over, alas.”
If it was indeed a mind game, DiPalma had just scored another winning point. The awkwardness he’d displayed on earlier encounters had to be related either to drink or the nervousness of one assigned to probe a prominent couple.
“Well, Ray, there’s always old-timers’ sports.”
“Not for me. My medical examiner found some early symptoms of PD.”
Parkinson’s disease. Thus the impaired balance, the occasional slight tremor. Arthur found himself empathizing with DiPalma. Suddenly it was all making sense, the shuffling walk, the ill-advised comforts of cigarettes and booze, the reaching out to religion. Arthur’s talent at judging character was not flawed after all; his first instincts had been right.
DiPalma had both a beer and a cigarette going now, the smoke rising up the flue. “Anyway, I’ve finished my stint on Garibaldi. I’m on the road, I’m Zack Flett’s consigliore now. My boss is delighted. He put me in charge of the eco-terrorist section, with my own office.”
From the kitchen: “Wash your hands before you even fucking touch that cinnamon roll.”
“Wash your fucking mouth.”
“Don’t those guys ever stop?” DiPalma sat stiffly, words tumbling out between sips and puffs. “Okay, I talked to the agent I mentioned, Sullivan Clugg, Sully — he liaises with the limeys. He has good intel that an international security firm working out of London — mercenaries, basically, ex-MI5, KGB, Stasi — set up a ghost flight from Montreal last month. On contract for unknown employers. Destination, Albania.”
DiPalma’s information resonated with such credibility that Arthur wondered why he’d ever doubted him. He showed him Hanife Bejko’s letter. DiPalma lit a fresh cigarette off the one he hadn’t finished, fixed his glasses over his nose, and his mouth fell open as he read the note.
Finally he looked up. “Oh, baby. Gjirokaster — I’ve been in that town.” He yelped, sucked a knuckle burned by the cigarette in his left hand. “I have to cut down.” He read the note one more time, then looked up with a gleeful smile.
“Albania. Let’s go.”
20
Clara Gracey had moved into 24 Sussex and felt cowed, even bullied, by the thirty-four-room, energy-guzzling limestone mansion, the uncomfortable home of prime ministers since the 1940s. With its creaks and groans and hissing radiators, it was like living in the belly of a wheezy old whale.
She’d debated whether to move in — tenancy could be brief — but had felt guilty smoking in her chic apartment; here she could make the rules. And hold private council without intrusions.
Four acres and the Ottawa River and the cover of darkness would shelter Margaret Blake’s arrival. A couple of the gals talking over a glass of wine — it was worth a try. The last hope, really. An expanded, loophole-free Species at Risk Act, half a billion for renewable energy, two more national parks — the cabinet wouldn’t balk at those in exchange for a tie vote, with a compliant Speaker to break it.