In the first week of December, Father announced a shutdown. It was temporary, he said. He hoped it would be very temporary. He talked about retreating and retrenching in order to regroup. He asked for understanding and patience, and was greeted with a watchful silence by the assembled workers. After the announcement he went back to Avilion and shut himself up in his turret and drank himself blind. Things were broken up there - glass objects. Bottles, no doubt. Laura and I sat in my room, on my bed, holding hands tightly and listening to the fury and grief rampaging around up there, right above our heads, like an interior thunderstorm. Father hadn't done anything on that grand a scale for some time.
He must have felt he'd let his men down. That he'd failed. That nothing he could do had been enough.
"I will pray for him," said Laura.
"Does God care?" I said. "I don't think he gives a tinker's damn, actually. If there is a God."
"You can't know that," said Laura, "until after."
After what? I knew well enough, we'd had this conversation before. After we're dead.
Several days after Father's announcement, the union revealed its power. There was already a core group of members, and now they wanted everyone in. A meeting was held outside the locked button factory and a call issued to all the workers to join up, because when Father reopened the factories, it was said, he would cut to the bone and they'd all be expected to take starvation wages. He was just like all the rest of them, he'd stuff his money into a bank in hard times like these, then sit on his hands until people were beaten down and driven right into the ground; then he'd seize the opportunity to grow fat off the backs of the workers. Him and his big house and fancy daughters - those frivolous parasites who lived off the sweat of the masses.
You could tell these so-called organizers were from out of town, said Reenie, who was telling us about all this as we sat at the kitchen table. (We'd stopped having meals in the dining room, because Father had stopped eating there. He was barricaded in his turret; Reenie took a tray up.) Those roughnecks had no sense of what was decent, bringing the two of us into it like that, when everyone knew we had nothing to do with anything. She told us to pay no attention, which was easier said than done.
There were still some who were loyal to Father. At the meeting, we heard, there had been disagreements, then voices raised, then scuffling. Tempers were set loose. One man was kicked in the head, and carted off to the hospital with concussion. It was one of the strikers - they were calling themselves the strikers, now - but this injury was blamed on the strikers themselves, because once you started that sort of disruption, who could tell where it would end?
Better not to start. Better to keep your mouth shut. Much better.
Callie Fitzsimmons came to see Father. She was very worried about him, she said. She was worried that he was going down the drain. Morally , is what she meant. How could he treat his workers in this cavalier and also cheapskate fashion? Father told her to face reality. He called her a Job's comforter. He also said, Who put you up to this, one of your pinko pals? She said she had come on her own hook, out of love, because although a capitalist he'd always been a decent man, but now she found he'd turned into a heartless plutocrat. He said you couldn't be a plutocrat if you were broke. She said he could liquidate his assets. He said his assets weren't worth much more than her ass, which as far as he could tell she'd been giving away for nothing to anybody who'd asked. She said he hadn't scorned the free handouts. He said yes, but the hidden costs had been too high - first all the food in his house for her artistic pals, then his blood and now his soul. She called him a bourgeois reactionary. He called her a corpse fly. By that time they were shouting at each other. Then there was a slamming of doors, and a car skidded away down the gravel, and that was the end of that.
Was Reenie glad or sorry? Sorry. She hadn't liked Callie, but she'd got used to her, and Callie had been good for Father once upon a time. Who would replace her? Some other floozie, and better the devil you know.
The next week there was a call for a general strike, to show solidarity with the Chase and Sons workers. All stores and businesses must close, was the edict. All public services must be shut down. The telephones, the mail delivery. No milk, no bread, no ice. (Who was issuing these edicts? No one thought they were really coming from the man who actually spoke the words of them. This man claimed to be local, right from our own town, and was once thought to be - he was a Morton, a Morgan, something like that - but surely it had become clear that he was not local, not underneath it. He couldn't have been, to behave like that. Who was his grandfather, anyway?)
So it was not this man. He was not the brains behind it, said Reenie, because he did not have any brains to begin with. Dark forces were at work.
Laura was worried about Alex Thomas. He was mixed up in it somehow, she said. She knew he was. He was bound to be, according to his lights.
In the early afternoon of that same day, Richard Griffen arrived at Avilion in a car, with two other cars accompanying him. They were large cars, sleek and low-slung. There were five other men altogether, four of them quite big, in dark overcoats and grey fedoras. Richard Griffen and one of the men went into Father's study, along with Father. Two of the others posted themselves at the house doors, front and back, and two went off somewhere in one of the expensive cars. Laura and I watched the comings and goings of the cars from Laura's bedroom window. We'd been told to keep out of the way, which meant out of earshot as well. When we asked Reenie what was going on, she looked worried, and said our guess was as good as hers, but she was keeping her ear to the track.
Richard Griffen did not stay to dinner. When he left, two of the cars went with him. The third one stayed behind, and three of the big men stayed with it. They took up unobtrusive residence in the former chauffeur's quarters, over the garage.
They were detectives, said Reenie. They must be. That was why they always had their overcoats on: it hid the guns, which they kept in their armpits. The guns were revolvers. She knew this from her various magazines. She said they were there to protect us, and if we saw anyone out of the ordinary creeping around the garden at night - besides these three men, of course - we were to scream.
The next day there was rioting, along the main streets of the town. Many men present at it had never been seen before, or if they had been seen, they hadn't been remembered. Who'd remember a tramp? But some of them hadn't been tramps, they'd been international agitators in disguise. They'd been spying, all along. How had they got here so quickly? On the tops of trains, it was said. That was how men like them travelled around.
The rioting started at a rally outside the town hall. First there were speeches in which goons and company thugs were mentioned; then Father, rendered in cardboard and wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar - not things he ever did - was burned in effigy, to loud cheering. Two rag dolls in frilly pink dresses were soaked in kerosene and tossed onto the flames as well. They were supposed to be us - Laura and me, said Reenie. Jokes had been made about them being hot little dollies. (Laura's strolls around town with Alex had not gone unremarked.) It was Ron Hincks who'd told her this, said Reenie, thinking she should know. He said the two of us shouldn't go downtown right now because feelings were running high and you never knew. He said we should stay at Avilion, where we would be safe. He said it was a crying shame about the dolls, and he'd like to get his hands on whoever had cooked that one up.
Those main-street stores and businesses that had refused to close down had their windows broken. Then the ones that had closed also had their windows broken. After that, looting took place, and matters got severely out of hand. The newspaper was invaded and the offices wrecked; Elwood Murray was roughed up, and the machines in the printing shop at the back were smashed. His darkroom escaped, but his camera did not. It was a mournful time for him, which we heard all about, many times, afterwards.
That night the button factory caught on fire. Flames shot out the windows on the lower floor: I couldn't see them from my room,
but the fire truck clanged past, going to the rescue. I was dismayed and frightened, of course, but I have to admit there was something exciting about this as well. As I was listening to the clanging, and to the distant shouts from the same direction, I heard someone coming up the back stairs. I thought it might be Reenie, but it wasn't. It was Laura; she had her outdoor coat on.
"Where have you been?" I asked her. "We're supposed to stay put. Father has enough worries without you wandering off."
"I was only in the conservatory," she said. "I was praying. I needed a quiet place."
They did manage to put out the fire, but a lot of damage had been done to the building. That was the first report. Then Mrs. Hillcoate arrived, out of breath and bearing clean laundry, and was allowed in past the guards. Arson, she said: they'd found the cans of gasoline. The night watchman was lying dead on the floor. He had a bump on his head.
Two men had been seen running away. Had they been recognized? Not conclusively, but it was being rumoured that one of them was Miss Laura's young man. Reenie said he wasn't her young man, Laura didn't have a young man, he was only an acquaintance. Well, whatever he was, said Mrs. Hillcoate, he'd most likely burnt down the button factory and conked poor Al Davidson on the head and killed him dead as a rat, and he'd better make himself scarce around this town if he knew what was good for him.
At dinner Laura said she wasn't hungry. She said she couldn't eat right then: she would make up a tray for herself, to have later. I watched her carrying it up the back stairs to her room. It had double helpings of everything - rabbit, squash, boiled potatoes. Usually she treated eating as a kind of fidgeting - something to do with your hands at the dinner table, while other people were talking - or else as a chore she had to get through, like polishing the silver. A sort of tedious maintenance routine. I wondered when she had suddenly developed such optimism about food.
The next day, troops from the Royal Canadian Regiment arrived to restore order. This was Father's old regiment, from the war. He took it very hard, to see these soldiers turned against their own people - his own people, or the people he'd thought were his. That they no longer shared his view of them did not require any great genius to figure out, but he took that hard as well. Had they loved him, then, only for his money? It appeared so.
After the Royal Canadian Regiment had got things under control, the Mounties arrived. Three of them appeared outside our front door. They knocked politely, then stood in the hall, their shiny boots creaking against the waxed parquet, their stiff brown hats in their hands. They wanted to talk to Laura.
"Come with me, please, Iris," Laura whispered when summoned. "I can't see them alone." She looked very young, very white.
The two of us sat together on the settee in the morning room, beside the old gramophone. The Mounties sat in chairs. They did not look like my idea of a Mountie, being too old, too thick around the waist. One of them was younger, but he was not in charge. The middle one did the talking. He said that they apologized for disturbing us at what must be a difficult time, but the matter was of some urgency. What they wanted to talk about was Mr. Alex Thomas. Was Laura aware that this man was a known subversive and radical, and had been in the relief camps, causing agitation and stirring up trouble?
Laura said that as far as she knew he had just been teaching the men how to read.
That was one way of looking at it, said the Mountie. And if he was innocent, then he naturally had nothing to hide, and would come forward if required, didn't she agree? Where might he be keeping himself these days?
Laura said she couldn't say.
The question was repeated in a different way. This man was under suspicion: didn't Laura want to help locate the criminal who might well have set fire to her father's factory and may have been the cause of death of a loyal employee? If eyewitnesses were to be trusted, that is.
I said that eyewitnesses were not to be trusted, because whoever was seen running away had been viewed only from the back, and besides it had been dark.
"Miss Laura?" said the Mountie, ignoring me.
Laura said that even if she could say, she wouldn't. She said you were innocent until proven guilty. Also it was against her Christian principles to throw a man to the lions. She said she was sorry about the dead watchman, but it was not Alex Thomas's fault, because Alex Thomas would never have done such a thing. But she could not say anything more.
She was holding on to my arm, down near the wrist; I could feel the tremors coming from her, like a train track vibrating.
The chief Mountie said something about obstructing justice.
At this point I said that Laura was only just fifteen, and could not be held responsible in the way an adult would be. I said that what she had told them was of course confidential, and if it went any farther than this room - to the newspapers, for instance - then Father would know who to thank.
The Mounties smiled, and stood up, and took their leave; they were decorous and reassuring. They may have seen the impropriety of pursuing this line of investigation. Although on the ropes, Father still had friends.
"All right," I said to Laura, once they were gone. "I know you've got him in this house. You'd better tell me where."
"I put him in the cold cellar," said Laura, her bottom lip trembling.
"The cold cellar!" I said. "What a stupid place! Why there?"
"So he would have enough to eat, in an emergency," said Laura, and burst into tears. I wrapped my arms around her, and she snuffled against my shoulder.
"Enough to eat?" I said. "Enough jam and jelly and pickles? Really Laura, you take the cake." Then we both began to laugh, and after we had laughed and Laura had wiped her eyes, I said, "We've got to get him out of there. What if Reenie goes down for a jar of jam or something and comes across him by mistake? She'd have a heart attack."
We laughed some more. We were very on edge. Then I said the attic would be better, because nobody ever went up there. I would arrange it all, I said. She'd better go up to bed: it was obvious that the strain was telling on her and she was all worn out. She sighed a little, like a tired child, then did as I'd suggested. She'd been living on her nerves, carrying around this immense weight of knowledge like some evil packsack, and now she'd handed it over to me she was free to sleep.
Was it my belief that I was doing this only to spare her - to help her, to take care of her, as I had always done?
Yes. That is what I did believe.
I waited until Reenie had cleared up in the kitchen and turned in for the night. Then I went down the cellar stairs, into the chill, the dimness, the smell of spidery dampness. I went past the door to the coal cellar, the locked wine cellar door. The door to the cold cellar closed with a latch. I knocked, lifted it, went in. There was a scuttling noise. It was dark, of course; just the light from the corridor. The top of the apple barrel held the remains of Laura's dinner - the rabbit bones. It looked like some primitive altar.
I didn't see him at first; he was behind the apple barrel. Then I could make him out. A knee, a foot. "It's all right," I whispered. "It's only me."
"Ah," he said in his normal voice. "The devoted sister."
"Shh," I said. The light switch was a chain hanging from the bulb. I pulled it, the light went on. Alex Thomas was unwinding himself, scrambling out from behind the barrel. He crouched, blinking, sheepish, like a man caught with his pants undone.
"You should be ashamed of yourself," I said.
"You've come to kick me out, or turn me over to the proper authorities, I assume," he said with a smile.
"Don't be silly," I said. "I certainly wouldn't want you to be discovered here. Father couldn't stand the scandal."
"Capitalist's Daughter Aids Bolshevik Murderer?" he said. "Love Nest Among the Jelly Jars Revealed? That sort of scandal?"
I frowned at him. This was not a joking matter.
"Rest easy. Laura and I aren't up to anything," he said. "She's a great kid, but she's a saint in training, and I'm not a baby snatcher." He'd stood up
by now and was dusting himself off.
"Then why is she hiding you?" I asked.
"Matter of principle. Once I asked, she had to accept. I fall into the right category for her."
"What category?"
"'The least of these,' I guess," he said. "To quote Jesus." I found that quite cynical. Then he said that bumping into Laura had been a sort of accident. He'd run into her in the conservatory. What had he been doing there? Hiding, obviously. He'd hoped also, he said, to be able to talk to me.
"Me?" I said. "Why on earth, me?"
"I thought you'd know what to do. You seem like the practical type. Your sister is less..."
"Laura seems to have managed well enough," I said shortly. I didn't like it when other people criticized Laura - her vagueness, her simplicity, her fecklessness. Criticism of Laura was reserved for me. "How did she get you past those men at the doors?" I said. "Into the house? The ones in overcoats."
"Even men in overcoats have to take a leak sometimes," he said.
I was taken aback by this vulgarity - it was at odds with his dinner-party politeness - but perhaps it was a sample of the orphanish jeering Reenie had predicted. I decided to ignore it. "You didn't set the fire, I take it," I said.I meant to sound sarcastic, but it wasn't received that way.
"I'm not that stupid," he said. "I wouldn't set a fire for no reason."
"Everyone thinks it was you."
"It wasn't, though," he said. "But it would be very convenient for certain people to take that view."
"What certain people? Why?" I wasn't pushing him this time; I was baffled.
"Use your head," he said. But he wouldn't say any more.
The attic
The Blind Assassin Page 22