In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  Ah, Cloustons! Usurping Cloustons! They had saved our kingdom and they’d stolen our kingdom and yet the sharp twinge of pique that tweaked our sides told us no one had more right to be there than they. For Hiawatha was their kin—they held the ancient rite to send smoke signals to their gods, the right to worship with the long-dead souls, worship that planet of the night—the mother of earth. They could come here at will, to sit on the grass and watch the moonbeams creep through the gun holes in the ruined walls and feel the force of that bond which held them fast and forever to their cousins under the earth.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CRUMBLING PAST

  I had come upon that scene simply covered in weather and Edwardian colonialism. The background score, had there been one, would have sounded like a bizarre mix of Elgar and “Gentille Alouette,” the fife and drum of Kipling’s Empire and “En roulant ma boule!”

  My gran and grandad had long since moved into a more modest house on the old property. Because Mother’s old-fashioned divorce had left us with nowhere to go, she and I moved in with them. It was close by the fort where I could dig for Indians and their skulls. A charming house dating back to the sixteen hundreds and of quite good size, which we called “The Cottage,” would never be big enough for four formidable ladies plus Granddad, a Nanny, a maid and a cook!

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  It took me some time to realize this was my family—this stoic, forthright little regiment of women, all exceptionally well read, well spoken, each one a skilled athlete—all staunch and devout members of the Audubon Society. Most weekends became, from dawn to dusk, one long bird-watching expedition as, armed to the teeth with picnic baskets, cameras and field glasses, they made their reverent way into the deep woods, treading as softly as Indians with me in tow. Not too much fun for yours truly. In spite of what the poets say, youth is not always the happiest of seasons. None of my aunts ever bothered to conceal their displeasure at my ignorance on the subject of ornithology and remained for the most part coolly disapproving. Until one day when I petulantly ran from an unfinished lunch to seek relief in the great outdoors—there, on top of a spruce which was bent over from the weight of it, sat an enormous bird with strange claws the likes of which I’d never seen. Forgetting all unsettled scores, I ran back inside and announced my discovery. They all came out onto the lawn and stared so hard at the poor creature, I thought it would fall off. The experts identified it immediately, in hushed tones, as an Arctic three-toed woodpecker—probably the first ever to be seen in our part of the world. Thank God and Mister Audubon! For a little while at least, I was to be treated with a certain deference and a courteous if grudging respect.

  My granddad, who had the most explosive laugh

  The younger of my two maiden aunts and the most athletic of the three sisters was Phyllis, and I am quite positive she had lived her almost forty years a virgin. Suddenly one day, she fell in love, perhaps for the very first time deeply, deeply in love. He was tall and swarthy and was the most gentle of men. His name was William Beatty and he lived across the lake at Como. He worshipped the ground she walked on, and she worshipped him. He proposed. It was, in those days, for someone of Phyllis’s age more than a little late for such a thing as marriage, but here it was—it had come at last like a gift at sunset.

  Early on the morning of the event, for the umpteenth time, she tried on her wedding dress. Willie was expected much later. She was so excited her fingers were all thumbs as she struggled with the countless buttons and hooks, but my mother took pity and came to her aid and at last it was on. There stood Phyllis, in her wedding dress, straight and tall, confident and radiant, waiting for her man. Willie never did make it that day, for on the way his car apparently spun out of all control, and he was killed instantly. My poor mother had to break the news. For the longest time, there was only silence except for the sound the corsage made as it slipped from Phyllis’s hand to the floor.

  Mother told me afterwards that a strange, faraway look had come into Phyllis’s eyes, and her mouth closed in a thin, tight, angry line as she whispered so softly she could hardly be heard, “I knew it was too good to be true.” Slowly, mechanically, she began to unbutton her dress. For a whole week, I remember, Phyllis remained in her room; she never came out. Then one day she finally emerged, head held high as if nothing had happened and life went on.

  She spent most of it looking after her mother and the entire family, and she always seemed quite happy and content with her lot. But on that fateful day her heart had snapped and, convinced that she brought nothing but bad luck, never once did Phyllis date another man.

  Whenever there was a household drama or any sort of domestic problem, the women would form a silent phalanx and close ranks—a combined force that was, to say the least, intimidating.

  All the older family members were bilingual by necessity and choice. So I was made to read La Fontaine as well as Aesop, Ronsard as well as Keats, Balzac and Gabrielle Roy on the one hand, Robert Service and William Henry Drummond on the other. And then there was Stephen. For giggles there was always Stephen—good old Professor Stephen Lea-cock, that illustrious progenitor of utter nonsense. Several nights a week we would indulge in that quaint but delightful Victorian diversion—we read aloud to each other after dinner. On my own I rattled my chains with Marley’s ghost, snuggled up with Peter and the Lost Boys in Barrie’s Never-Never Land and whiled away the time by the river with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Even further back, when I identified with “Yeller DogDingo” or “Lobo the Wolf” from the animal world of Ernest Thompson Seton, Mr. Toad in The Wind and the Willows or Lancelot in Le Mort d’Artur, I already knew some Shakespeare, the Lake poets and Robert Louis Stevenson. The ladies had seen to that. The ladies saw to everything! In fact Grandpa and I seemed to be the last two males on earth.

  Let’s go up to the pigsties and sit on the farmyard rails!

  Let’s say things to the bunnies, and watch ’em skitter their tails!

  Let’s—oh, anything, Grandpa, so long as it’s you and me,

  And going truly exploring, and not being in till tea!

  (Apologies to Kipling)

  Teatime, daily at five, was a splendid affair—the women bustling, the food plentiful. Hot buttered crumpets by the fire, scones, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, two cakes, one with icing, one without, and always gingerbread. This ritual was by no means an indication of the day’s close, for there were huge suppers to follow. And the breakfasts were just as piggish: two kinds of porridge, various choices under silver covers; finnan haddie or eggs, bacon and sausages, kippers, kedgeree or veal kidneys on toast. Astoundingly, no one ever had a weight problem. Granddad and I had become Peer Gynt, Sr., and Peer, Jr., surrounded as we were by female trolls, and like the Gynt family of those northern fjords, so the purse strings of the Abbott family had been severely cut, but we still managed to hang on in a world of country mansions, regattas and croquet on the lawn.

  There was always a scattering of flappers about and numerous lounge lizards doing very little of anything and, of course, the usual “piranha fish” and attendant eccentrics. One such was a very posh-looking colonel, who paid the occasional abortive visit to my grandmother’s house—I don’t know quite why as he never uttered. One day, he arrived in immaculate blazer and white flannels; he was only in his late forties but already boasted a “companion,” who took him by the hand and literally pulled him toward the house where we were all waiting to greet him. It took almost five minutes to get him from the car to the front door (a distance of several feet only) as my grandmother advanced and held out her hand for him to shake. The colonel extended his very slowly and then suddenly with a great deal of warmth and vigor shook the doorknob instead! An explosion erupted inside me and got strangled somewhere in my throat as my grandmother wheeled on me and hissed, “Behave yourself at once! Don’t you realize that Uncle Fred is blind?!” “Blind? Blind drunk, you mean!” I thought as a waf
t of dragon breath from Uncle Fred hit my mother and me at one and the same time, which sent us reeling into the next room, where, collapsing on separate sofas, we buried our faces in the cushions to silence our uncontrollable hysteria!

  Several years later, I had a mad crush on Uncle Fred’s eighteen-year-old daughter. It happened at her “coming out” dance. The average age that evening was from sixteen to nineteen. Suddenly the doors were flung open and Uncle Fred, this time in white tie and tails, was being pulled in by yet another “companion,” who led him to the center of the dance floor, where she promptly deserted him. Very red in the face, he rocked back and forth on his pins and gazed lustfully at the fair young maidens around him with a leer that would have made Humbert Humbert look like a choirboy and then, without warning, plunged forward onto the dance floor flat on his face! That was the last I ever saw of Uncle Fred. To this day, I don’t believe he ever got up!

  Me as a repulsive youth of indeterminate age

  Peering through an upstairs window at Gran’s house, I would watch visitors arrive in a variety of spectacular automobiles—old Pierce-Arrows, Lincolns, McLaughlin-Buicks, Dusenbergs, the great Packard limousines with the wooden spokes, and on one gloriously special day, an ancient Hispano-Suiza. I would sneak down the stairs and make friends with the waiting chauffeurs, who allowed me to sit inside and marvel at the plush interiors and smell the seductive scent of polished leather. My affair with the motorcar had begun.

  To keep up with my sports-conscious family, I knew I must compete. There was always sailing, riding, golf, squash and tennis. Tennis parties galore! Tennis till the cows came home. Everyone in the surrounding countryside had their own courts—gravel, cement, en-tout-cas—à votre choix. Ours was grass, one of the only private grass courts in Quebec—rather ambitious in a climate known for its eight months of winter and four of mosquitoes, but it attracted enthusiasts from all over, so consequently it had to be kept in mint condition. If there was an overflow at Montreal’s exclusive Mount Royal Tennis Club (where before the war, Mother had partnered with the Nazi bigwig vön Ribbentrop in mixed doubles), the visiting Davis Cup teams would use ours to warm up before their tournaments.

  I remember feeling proud as Punch as I watched, awestruck, the great Fred Perry play on it. My entire family were all good club players (my uncle a potential Davis Cupper himself), and especially my grandparents—she, still in skirts down to the ankles, he in long white flannels, both of them gracefully moving about the courts showing off their tricky “between the leg” shots and dazzling us with their quicker-than-the-eye half volleys. Grandad was the country’s racquets champion five years running and that mode of play had crept into his tennis.

  Tradition demanded that teas, ices and cold drinks such as ginger beer in stone bottles be served at courtside under colourful umbrellas or in the tennis pavilions. These parties were always carefully organized as proper matches, “very professional,” and treated as an occasion. No matter whose court it was, my granny used to silence anyone who dared talk during a rally. Guests would bring their own guests—you never knew who would turn up—one day, our gov. gen., the old Earl of Bess-borough, appeared, incongruously attired in white flannels and winter overshoes!

  The tennis parties I loved most were those given by a stylish lady everyone called “Aunt Mary” (Mrs. Forbes Angus)—her grub was the best! She was always moving at great speed across the grounds, swathed in long flowing chiffon scarves attached to her bracelets billowing out behind her, as peacocks in her path scurried away squawking. Her red-clay court was superbly situated on a promontory overlooking the lake with a gigantic aviary stretching the whole length of one side of it. The air was filled with the screeching of exotic birds of paradise, an assortment of parrots and some startlingly colourful macaws. The noise was so overwhelming, you could never hear the score.

  With Machiavellian intent, unbeknownst to Aunt Mary, her gardeners had been secretly giving the macaws elocution lessons—with great success, I shudder to say. Their vocabulary was bilingual and fairly extensive but certainly not dulcet. At one particularly sedate tennis gathering I remember hiding under the bushes trying unsuccessfully to stifle my giggling as one of the macaws, who had managed to get worked up over something, decided to shatter the afternoon’s serenity by shrieking, at regular intervals, a volley of ear-piercing “Mange la merde!” and “Cocksuckers!” Incredibly, no one reacted and like some old forgotten quadrille, the tennis continued in stately fashion without missing a single beat.

  Grandpa (second from the left). Canadian “Racquets” champion

  Grannie: that proud and warlike Campbell

  WHEN THE WINDS ceased and all was still, the look of that time might have been described as pre-Raphaelite. Everything seemed slightly posed, waiting to be painted. Even mundane daily tasks were executed with extra care and style. In summer, fresh bread (pain chinois and galette au beurre) would be delivered in gaily painted calèches drawn by four horses; and in winter, the same, only this time in colourful sleds and the same horses had bells on their harnesses.

  You could also be certain there was always some graceful sailing vessel caught in the rays of the moon rippling on the water. Grandad sketched hundreds of them. Every so often in the late evening on the Oka Mountains across the lake, you could see through the pines the flames of many torches held by invisible Trappist monks, zigzagging their way up the hill for the Seven Steps of the Seven Crosses. It was these very Trappists who made the now famous Oka cheese. “They pound it with their bare feet; that’s why it smells so bad” was a familiar local saying. They also tilled the fields on the hillsides by day and were permitted to voice one note only, one note of finality—“Demain nous mourrons.” Then they would retreat into their strict and more familiar world of impenetrable silence.

  The bleak, endless winters, which resembled an old, faded rotogravure, were only relieved at day’s end by an occasional Slavic sunset.

  My mother, about the time she was a VAD in World War I, France

  A later picture of Mother as I knew her

  They were all most Chekhovian in atmosphere but much too long, and I never stopped whining. No one paid any attention, of course, so at an embarrassingly early age, I began to hit the sauce. Booze was a national sport up north. It was essential!—(a) to keep you warm, (b) to keep you from going mad, (c) to keep your madness going. How often as a mere teenager, tanked to the gills on cheap rye whiskey and Molson chasers, did I stagger home in the blinding cold. One night, stewed to the gills, I lurched off the road and completely passed out in a snow drift! I remember nothing except that I woke up in my own bed late the next afternoon! My mother, after hours of searching, had finally found me pickled and frozen, asleep in the snow and had half carried me home. She’d actually saved my life! A deed for which she was never quite forgiven.

  The great blues singer Gertrude Niesen sang on my gramophone, I got Harlem on mah mind / I’ve a longin’ to be lowdown, and the feeling was mutual. I’d found myself caught in a web of good manners and suppressed emotions—a late version of la belle époque which hung on in the colonies long after the auld country had abandoned it, as if trying to force good appearances upon an upstart age. “Rags to riches” could never then be my road, rather the reverse, with an exceedingly strong leaning toward the gutter. In the beginning, I had no struggle; I didn’t know what it meant. Not exactly coming from the streets, there was no urgent need to improve, no clear path up which to climb.

  “Roundabout,” said Peer Gynt. “Backwards or forwards,

  it’s just as far, out or in it’s just as narrow.”

  Well, the gutters and pavements of the harsh outside world beckoned sooner than expected, for as in all fables, the magic eventually had to end, and the elder members of my family once again came to grief and began to lose control of what holdings they had, and my mother, approaching fifty and already a divorcée, was forced to go to work—in the nineteen thirties two shameful no-no’s dans les salons de la politesse.<
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  She had been a very young and decorated VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse in the Great War in Ypres, Rouen and the Somme; was exposed to deadly gas; tended soldiers whose faces had been blown away; helped amputate, without anesthetic, limbs rotting with gangrene; witnessed the results of shell shock. So with all that tough backlog of horror behind her, she admirably braced herself for the onslaught. Many a time as a boy, I watched Mother, in her fifties, skiing at breakneck speed straight down the Laurentien hills on her long Norwegian hickories, in those days, barely a harness to speak of; her ankles strong as steel, her skis, so close together they touched; before the slalom, before the “christie,” the tassels from her colourful ceinture flechée flying in the wind as she neared the bottom, only to kneel down on one ski and execute that most beautiful of turns—the graceful Telemark. She was one of the few women to pioneer that turn in our country.

  Mother had such incredible energy. If she ran out of things to do, she would take a little hatchet and cut paths through the woods, and she literally threw herself into her work at McGill, assisting Polly’s husband, the dean of science. Then followed the long hours late into the night which she tirelessly spent as secretary to the Canadian Handicrafts Guild, the organization that first brought to light the primitive beauty of Inuit sculpture. In spite of all this, she always had time for me and never lost her patience. Even on bird-watching expeditions, deep in the forest when I, as a brat, would selfishly demand not just water out of nowhere but a glass of water, she would quietly remind me, “You have nature all about you—drink that in, while you can.”