by Don Gillmor
Dexter Fleming couldn’t imagine Bertie Beckton as a farmer. And when he finally arrived—after an interminable train ride and an uncomfortable slog on horseback—Bertie was standing outside the limestone mansion, cradling a drink, dressed to shoot.
“Dexter!” he said. “Welcome to the New World!”
“It looks somewhat like the old one,” Dexter said. “Only without the scenery.”
“And without the dreary convention, and without the dreary relatives, dear boy. And those nagging laws. No nagging in-laws or nagging laws. You look like a pile of buffalo dung. Got you out here just in time.”
Bertie, Dexter was suddenly reminded, was the kind of person you tired of rather quickly, his boundless energy for mischief eventually a burden.
If this was his prison, Dexter thought, it could be worse. He had quietly failed at several things—school, the military, a legal career—and his father had finally sat him down in his barely illuminated study and presented him with this opportunity: go to the colonies. They both knew it wasn’t an invitation. Go to the New World or be cut off. He may shame them there, but it would be a distant and diluted shame. And perhaps, Dexter thought, in the way he thought of all new beginnings, and since his life was made up exclusively of beginnings—a life of fresh starts and routine failure—he might actually accomplish something here. Maybe what he needed was this blank canvas. Also, to succeed at something might send his father to an early grave, reward in itself.
“Let’s get you a drink and a weapon,” Bertie said.
His valet brought out a glass of gin and a shotgun, handing Dexter the glass and following the two to the stables with the gun.
Dexter picked out a horse and the stable boy led it outside. Dexter examined the shotgun, then slipped it into the sheath and finished his drink.
“Do you have any idea how free you are?” Bertie said.
Cannington wasn’t the only social experiment in the North West. There was Benbecula, a Scottish crofter colony, the East London Artisan’s Colony, New Sweden, Thingvalla, and the Harmony Industrial Association. Inspired by the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, this utopian putsch into the New World replaced the state with a sense of brotherhood and co-operative labour. A dozen visions of man’s higher instincts, most of them slowly failing. The Barr Colony, like Cannington, had a British theme, although it was more imperial in its aim: “Let us take possession of Canada,” it counselled. At Cannington there were fox hunts, cricket matches, tennis, football, and gin.
Bertie and Dexter played billiards at Didsbury, sipping their drinks.
“This is a novelty, Bertie, but it’s bound to become tiresome,” Dexter said. “Then what?”
“I can’t wait for Pierce to die,” Bertie said. “Then Cannington will be paradise.”
“I’m not sure of that,” Dexter said. “He does rather a lot.”
“The man’s a dictator. He’s in the wrong colony. He should have his own African state to bully.”
Pierce was an autocratic leader, certainly, though he was also the driving force behind the various industries that had grown up at Cannington Manor, and effectively the force for moral order. There was still an element of education under his tutelage. Dexter had taken some instruction in farming and ranching, and had a loose sense of how to manage an enterprise out here, a tenuous grasp of crops, markets, and weather.
When Pierce did die, in 1888, the deterioration was almost immediate. The balance between industry and recreation veered suddenly toward the latter, culminating in a fox hunt that Bertie staged. Dexter sat his horse and examined his handmade gun, his head a pleasant buzz. Perhaps forty people milled, their horses skittering in the afternoon sun. It was autumn and the leaves were a sombre yellow, the whiff of decay in the western breeze. Eight servants loaded baskets with food and port that straddled their own horses. The horn sounded, the electric possibility of the hunt, the distant pull of blood, and Dexter rode west, the dogs yapping ahead.
He felt free of London’s formal pall, the small pile of disappointments he delivered monthly to his father, and thought he could do something here, perhaps something grand. The plains spoke of possibility. If he started a ranch, made a success of it. There were ranches to the west that were half the size of Scotland.
On the other hand, pulling with equal force, was Bertie, with his gift for dissipation. He had been sleeping with women of the Whitebear nation, as well as the wife of the miller in town. He was drunk by noon most days. A witty companion, a decent sportsman, but dangerous company, and this dissolute life was veering into tedium.
The hunt moved noisily over the prairie. They would drive off everything, Dexter thought, would frighten buffalo if any were left. A few pleasant hours were spent riding, then they stopped to eat and drink and target shoot. Then they rode again into the lurid sunset beginning to glare in front of them. The dogs rousted a den of coyotes, and in the ensuing fight seven of the dogs were torn so badly they either died of their wounds or had to be shot by Bertie, who drunkenly wept when he blew Sadie’s head off, a cherished dog. The coyotes, three adults and four pups, were also dying or dead and had to be finished off. The ride back was sullen.
Dexter finished the evening in Bertie’s billiard room, swanned on gin, a dozen men collapsing in the chairs that ringed the room, the floor wet with vomit, spilled drinks, and smatterings of blood. In the moment before he lost consciousness Dexter resolved to leave Cannington Manor, to go farther west, to a purer state, and there become a gentleman rancher. He would fill the space with purpose; he would put himself on the map.
9
JOHN A. MACDONALD, 1886
It hadn’t occurred to Macdonald to actually ride on his grandest accomplishment. Agnes had already taken a railway trip through the Rocky Mountains and declared it a tonic. With an election looming, perhaps this would be a good way of drawing favourable publicity. The Globe wouldn’t let Riel’s corpse rest (nor would Quebec, as McIlvoy had predicted). The paper was as fervently against him as it had been when Brown was its publisher. Now Brown was dead, shot by an unhappy employee, and when Macdonald heard the news he had inquired only why it hadn’t happened sooner.
On a bright day Macdonald climbed, with effort, aboard the Jamaica, the eighty-foot train carriage that had been named for Agnes’s childhood home. Waiting inside amid the fresh-cut flowers, plush sofas, and wine were Agnes, McIlvoy, and a dozen others. Macdonald accepted a glass of wine and toasted their voyage.
The train lurched out of Ottawa and Macdonald pondered the landscape; the farmlands of Ontario, its occasional villages all giving way finally to cleaved rock where the dynamite had done its work. Macdonald did paperwork, read, and gazed outside at the hypnotizing forest. East of Winnipeg, the train emerged onto the prairie. In Winnipeg they stayed for a few days while Macdonald assessed the political terrain. Agnes shopped. She had once imagined a role in government for herself, an equal who discussed (perhaps even dictated) policy. But now she was content to shop.
The train crossed the eventless prairies to Regina, where there was a reassuring crowd. Not all of them were supporters, Macdonald suspected as he waved and shook a few hands. Some merely wanted to see the devil in the flesh, to see who it was they hated with such conviction. Macdonald went to Government House and met with local politicians and some Indian chiefs, and as he moved among them making amiable noises about their various complaints, he wondered if he had the stomach for another campaign, or another term for that matter.
The train stopped in Gleichen where a meeting was scheduled with Crowfoot. What would the Blackfoot chief want? Macdonald wondered. What they all wanted: a government that solved every problem. Macdonald had sent the largest share of rations to the Blackfoot—“Send the food to where the tomahawks are sharpest,” he had ordered, and the Blackfoot were the mightiest of the Plains Indians. To the south the bloody purges had decimated the Indian and ensured a hostile relationship with the government. Macdonald had avoided the former but not the latte
r. With an Indian war no longer possible, the rations they sent had dwindled. There was a responsibility: The railway had driven the last of the buffalo off the plains, and the final hunting parties were a dreadful parody—drunken German sportsmen firing guns out of the windows of the moving train, shooting into the last herds.
As the train slowed to a stop, Macdonald looked out the window at hundreds of Blackfoot assembled in formation. At the head was Crowfoot. Macdonald stepped off the train and approached the Blackfoot chief with his hand out. Most of those present were men, and their faces were painted. For war? Macdonald wondered. No, the time for war was gone. In its place, theatre.
Where are the rations? Crowfoot asked.
“The Government Treaty signed by the illustrious chiefs”—in truth a series of Xs after a selective explanation of what the contract contained—“didn’t promise food,” Macdonald said. “It promised seeds. And on that count, we have delivered. It is time for your people to join the other settlers in this beautiful land, to grow crops, to enter into the new spirit of the West. You can grow crops to feed your people, and sell the surplus to provide for your other needs.”
The railway burned the land near the tracks, Crowfoot said.
“White men work hard for their food and clothing,” Macdonald said. “And we expect the Indians to do the same.”
There were low murmurs among the several hundred Blackfoot. Crowfoot stood motionless. All of his twelve children were dead, of tuberculosis, smallpox, or starvation. More Blackfoot would certainly die; they were a nation of warriors and hunters, not farmers.
There followed a perfunctory exchange of gifts, Macdonald motioning for the servants to come forward with rolls of canvas sheeting and tobacco. One of the Blackfoot men beat a drum, a beat that was insistent and rose in tempo. The Indians began a kind of keening.
Back on the train, Macdonald watched the Blackfoot get on their horses and ride alongside the train, firing their Winchesters into the air. This spectacle had an element of menace, Macdonald thought, but their moment had passed.
10
DEXTER FLEMING, 1905
Dexter Fleming woke in the crisp autumn air to see the shimmering perfection of his uselessness, his frivolity set in bold relief against this place, which rewarded practicality and perseverance. He saw this with the clarity that nearly two decades of heavy drinking brings. He occupied the landscape like spilled gin at a summer party. The sun shone through the window onto the four-poster bed and its messed bedclothes. He dressed with deliberation, finally pulling on the polished boots that had been made in London by his bootmaker. He debated taking the dogs, but when they charged out of the house, he had no choice. The air was fine and the sun warmed his back as he walked west, first along the path that led past the barn, and then through the grass that was still wet. The dogs yelped ahead of him.
He recalled that first winter when he had taken Catherine in as a domestic to clean the house and tend to his dogs and horses. She arrived wearing her red dress.
For a year she was quiet, existing between the spirit world and the real. She did his laundry and cleaned up after his parties. She worked the horses and walked the dogs, three black Labradors that leaped on her as they meandered through the foothills. She polished his silverware. For two hours every morning, she went to school, a three-mile walk, her favourite part of the day. The school had been Fleming’s idea; literacy was a civilizing force. In the small house that was the school, she practised scratching shapes on paper, and the meanings slowly became clear, like an animal walking hesitantly out of the morning fog.
Catherine would never love him. Dexter knew this but had kept this secret from himself for as long as possible, knowing he couldn’t bear its impact. His love had grown so quietly, stealthily, watching her do the books in the evening, the way the soft light played against her face. He had sold almost all of his land and still there were debts. There wasn’t enough acreage left really to call it a ranch anymore. It supported a few head, a hobby. It had always been a hobby, he supposed. By the time he realized he had some attachment to the land, to this life, that he wanted to occupy his own life as something other than a squatter, it was too late. It wasn’t mismanagement, but rather an absence of management that had done it. Without Catherine, he would have lost the place years ago. His mother was gone, thank God, and his father had cut him off, tired finally of sending money after reading his letters describing the empire he was building in the New World. His father had heard the truth from Gallagher, who had returned to London to settle his own parents’ estate. Gallagher outlined the dwindling assets, the house in need of repair, his fine furniture and sterling silver service and endless gin. The parties and dead cattle. The gambling debts, and of course Gallagher told his father of Catherine. Your son has gone native, sir. Hate to be the one to say it, but it must be said. Two whelps into the bargain. He thinks it’s hush-hush, whole world knows. Frankly, sir, the gin isn’t helping. Made a bit of a mess of things out there, I’m afraid.
Yes, a bit of a mess. The letter came from his father’s solicitor: we are informing you of the immediate cessation of funds, etc. The house certainly wasn’t grand, but it was adequate. He supposed the silver was worth something. He had five good horses, a few cattle. The sheep experiment had been a failure, one that invited ridicule rather than admiration for attempting something bold.
There was much to ridicule. He had been to the grand house of the Vincenzy brothers, both of them counts (or so they claimed), their house with its silly turrets, its fine china and dark paintings, the trappings of the Austro-Hungarian Empire out here in the foothills. They had dreadful parties, though the wine was good. The German, what was his name? Baron Liepzeig, more nobility. Everyone who owned a pig in the old country was nobility here. Liepzeig had indeed roasted a pig and invited the local ranchers. They all drank the sweet, lethal home-made wine and played a drunken game of croquet that had been set up over several acres, croquet on a grand scale to suit the land. The balls were lost in the grass, or disappeared into groundhog holes. Dexter finally had someone throw one of the wooden balls up in the air and he shot at it. This prompted a shooting party, tossing up the croquet balls and firing at them until they began to lose their light. In an hour of shooting only three balls were hit, each prompting a great cheer.
The smattering of European royalty was overwhelmed by the earnest ranchers who had come up from Montana or Virginia and who understood horses and cattle. They were building another society that was practical, refined, Godfearing, and, most surprising, profitable. Among this company, Dexter felt like a fop. This wasn’t England; the West didn’t tolerate eccentricities and failure. It wasn’t a question of society (from which he’d been subtly excluded) but of the elements. Nature wouldn’t tolerate him. He had been rejected by the seasons, by the weather, the soil, by God.
Catherine was thirty years old, Dexter forty-nine, though he supposed he looked older. Stanford was four, Michael only two. He had no idea how to be a father to them. He couldn’t really. There wasn’t the advantage of distance that he had known as a child. As an infant he had lived on the third floor with the nanny—Kempy? Could that have been her name, as unlikely as it seemed? Odd that he couldn’t recall it. He remembered her smell: lavender soap and starched clothes. She had shown him some kindnesses. Raised in captivity in South Kensington until school age, and then off to Scotland to be educated and tortured. And finally the colonies, the place where those of little promise come to sort themselves. Michael and Stanford were two silent, perfect reproaches that were never far. He was reminded daily of his irresponsibility, of his cowardice. He was their biological father but they were Catherine’s sons. He had become the drunken uncle pulling pennies out of ears.
The pleasant cloud that the gin brought wasn’t enough anymore. It had been, a decade ago, when the ranch was still the semblance of one. He had squandered most of it. The money, the friends even. He supposed he had squandered Catherine too, though she was never his. He h
adn’t seen his own love creeping up, had failed to recognize the signs. The education he had insisted on, perhaps it was as early as that. The spindly child, first an employee, a colonial responsibility, then becoming something like a daughter. The daughter grew up. And what did she become then? From the age of sixteen it was clear that she was a better judge of horses than he. At twenty she was effectively running the ranch. For two perilously besotted years, a period of drunken fox hunts (substituting the clever coyote), polo matches, summer parties where he sometimes awoke in the damp grass, miraculously uneaten: For those two years he congratulated himself on having hired her, on educating her. He was bursting with nobility. It was when she was in her early twenties that he noticed her light step, the slight, delicate curves beneath the dress. He noticed her skin, its unblemished, copper-hued perfection. The light softened it even more, until her skin seemed liquid, something he could fall into. Those dark eyes that gave up so little. She was keeping the books by then, tending to the horses, buying the cattle. The dogs ran to her. She was the ranch. In his pleasant alcohol dreams she had become a mirage, some shining idea of paradise that moved within the house just out of reach.
And then he touched her. His hand lingered, a kiss. Those few seconds. What was contained in them? On days when Fleming was bedridden, his head an anvil, his limbs aching and useless, swearing off gin, a promise that lasted until the evening, she was the employer and he was the invalid who had come with the property, an inherited burden. The taste of her, he should have known then certainly. A taste that was elemental, like a dream that one can’t quite recall upon waking, a world suddenly vanished that contained every secret. At first it was simply business as usual, an Englishman in the colonies, sampling the local sweets. A national pastime, like cricket. She always withheld a part of herself. His face gluey with effort, out of tricks. He should have seen the signs. Perhaps that was what divided the successful ones from the failures. The successful ones saw the signs, and acted accordingly. He could live with his failure, with his regret, perhaps (though perhaps not), but the longing was too much.