Man in the Shadows

by Gordon Henderson

  He saluted the soldiers as they marched past, singing the Fenian marching song:

  Many battles have we won,

  Along with boys in blue.

  And we’ll go and conquer Canada,

  For we’ve nothing else to do.

  O’Hagan laughed at the ditty. He knew the power of a marching song. It motivated the men and legitimized the cause. He had recently composed a proclamation for General O’Neill to sign, which would soon be sent to Canada. He had laboured over the wording and knew it by heart. Not a marching song, but marching orders:

  A Fenian army is being equipped in the interest of Irish liberty throughout the world. It will be soon again summoned to the field in the cause of Irish nationality, and will warn its enemies that the arrogance of British power must and shall be stricken down. Fifty thousand armed patriots will march. Let every devotee of the sunburst of Erin prepare to strike for his country and God.

  The President and Commander-in-Chief

  The Irish Republican Army

  Wordy, but you needed extravagant language to make a point. He had actually sent even more flowery proclamations north. This one was direct and to the point. It was more than a threat: it announced that the liberators were coming; it was a call to arms. And he loved the new name, the Irish Republican Army. By the time he made the proclamation public in August, Canada would be in an election and he would have had a chance to meet with politicians in Washington. It still stung that they turned back after the Battle of Ridgeway. But this time a real battalion was preparing, and he had that man laying the groundwork in Canada. They would not fail again.

  At best, the United States would recognize a Fenian country, New Ireland, to their north. He would be just as happy to present President Johnson with new northern states maybe someday under his command. Those were dreams. Simply holding the country for ransom would be fine. If the Fenian army took Canada by force—essentially kidnapping the country—they would name a free Ireland as the ransom price. The British Parliament would have to submit.

  A few obstacles stood in their way. This character Macdonald was busy appeasing Canada’s warring factions. He was an astute and cunning politician. Macdonald’s power must be smashed. And there was D’Arcy McGee. McGee was the only person in Canada who seemed to understand the scope of Fenian ambitions. McGee was a thorn in their side. Luckily, the loudmouth had become so strident that people weren’t listening to him. But that might not last.

  O’Hagan wondered how the man he had hired was doing up in Canada. He prayed for his success.

  HE was staying in Uppertown. He changed hotels every three days and adapted his look with each move. In his suitcase he carried costumes, wigs and make-up. Sometimes he wore the long grey coat; sometimes he didn’t. It depended whether it suited his plan, to be a presence and then to disappear.

  He actually liked July 12. Every time the Orangemen paraded, they created more angry Irish republicans. March, boys, he sneered. Chant your stupid rhymes. We’ll win. Yes, we’ll win. But he couldn’t face this night without help. July 12 meant bodies lying on the banks of the River Boyne. Irish dead and Englishmen cheering. Orangemen still celebrating generations later. Thrilling to the victory. Gloating.

  He pulled withered poppies out of a bag and picked out the poppy heads. He took a needle and carefully pierced the capsules, one by one, dropping them into a small crock. He lit a contained fire under the poppy heads. It was dangerous work in these wooden fire traps, but he was near a window with a steady out-draft. Eventually, a liquid emerged from the poppy heads. Like sweat. Sweet, dark, hallucinogenic sweat.

  Opium.

  When there was enough of the liquid, he mixed it with whisky and sugar. He could have gone to an apothecary and bought laudanum. But this was safer. It was also purer and much, much stronger.

  He drank it rather daintily—he never much liked the taste—and then lay back with swirling but vivid dreams of martyrs in Dublin and murders in Ottawa. Sometimes, the drug made him mournful and despondent. Tonight, it brought him peace and purpose.

  11

  Conor had never been much of a drinker. He knew how the bottle held people down. He’d seen it with his father and with so many others. But tonight he was determinedly drunk and trying to get drunker. He sat in an Elgin Street bar gulping beer, chasing it down with whisky and burning with anger.

  “Like father, like son,” he said to his glass. “Macdonald turns his drinking into a joke,” he slurred. “We Irish know it is serious business.”

  Ottawa was a town of unhappy drunks: boisterous lumbermen with their rotgut grunts and bored civil servants seeking companionship in a bottle. There wasn’t much else to do than fill the many bars.

  It would soon be last call, then closing time, and he didn’t know where he would go. He barely remembered how he got here.

  AFTER the Orange Parade, Conor had sat through—or endured—dinner at the boarding house. Mrs. Trotter tried to navigate the conversation into waters Conor would favour: politics and business. He conversed, politely, but without enthusiasm. Yes, he thought the railway men were too influential. No, he wasn’t worried about the secessionists in Nova Scotia. Yes, he would like more carrots.

  Will tried to help. “When will you be going to work with Mr. McGee?” he asked.

  “I might not,” Conor answered.

  The announcement hit those sitting at the table like a thunderbolt. D’Arcy McGee would need him in the upcoming election. That was his job: parliamentary assistant. And it was a job he loved. Everyone wanted an explanation, but no one dared ask. Not when Conor seemed so despondent.

  Instead, Meg addressed the afternoon’s spectacle. “Mother, that Orange Parade was terrible.”

  “Much of it is just silly boys acting like stupid men and stupid men acting like silly boys,” Mrs. Trotter responded. But she looked at Conor and thought more deeply. “Tradition can be wonderful, but it can have true dangers.”

  Conor stared at his carrots without speaking.

  “Customs burn deep in people’s souls,” she added. She’d read that somewhere.

  Meg wouldn’t let it go. “Is it customary to hate?”

  “Yes, that’s the point, dear. That’s the dreadful point.”

  Will joined in, trying to be helpful. “Conor, didn’t Mr. McGee say, ‘Hate, not love, was born in blind’?”

  “Something like that,” Conor muttered and excused himself from the table. He didn’t go upstairs to his room, or to the parlour. He walked out the front door.

  CONOR roamed the streets. Metcalfe Street. Maria Street. Elgin Street. He used to find Uppertown exciting; now he found it drab and dowdy. The boardwalks seemed to creak with boredom. Maybe there was more money uptown, but it was colourless and monotonous. This was a utilitarian place, a government town. Except for the orange day lilies, which had just started to bloom in front of many Protestant homes, there were few flowers. He found himself drawn toward the great divide between Uppertown and Lowertown: the Russell House on Wellington Street. He peered into the windows. There was some kind of reception going on. He could hear the noise of revelry but couldn’t quite make out any figures through the smoky glass.

  “The Russell” was Ottawa’s fanciest hotel. Its dining room served salmon from New Brunswick, buffalo from the North-Western Territory and venison from up the valley on silver plates over white tablecloths. Conor had dined there once with D’Arcy McGee and loved every minute of it. He had felt a little awkward, not quite knowing the etiquette of fine dining, but the lumber barons and politicians at the other tables were so loud and full of themselves that they didn’t seem to notice. McGee had spilt wine all over himself as he emphasized a point by flailing his arms. But that was a year ago, before he quit drinking.

  A carriage approached, and Conor stepped back. He watched the driver come into view behind the thunder of the horses. It was Patrick Buckley, Macdonald’s driver. Behind, in the carriage, sat the happy couple. Conor watched with some fascination as Buc
kley helped them down from the carriage. Sir John A. Macdonald was elegantly dressed with a cape over his formal suit and a top hat over his curly hair. He was sporting a bright red cravat; no one could miss him. Lady Macdonald was in a flowing, dark blue hoop skirt with rows and rows of flounces. It was cut high to her neck, and she must have pulled her corset terribly tight for her waist to have become that slim. She carried a handkerchief in her gloved right hand. It was probably perfumed. Conor had never noticed how regal Agnes Macdonald could look. He was about to approach the prime minister and say hello, but he hesitated when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a man bounding from the hotel’s entrance.

  John Hillyard Cameron, the grand master of the Orange Lodge, approached Macdonald, his hand extended, his orange sash glowing as he walked. Conor was keenly aware of who was important, and Cameron was one of Canada’s most prestigious lawyers. Conor stayed in the shadows and watched.

  Macdonald warmly took Cameron’s hand. Conor couldn’t believe his eyes. The cape had obscured it before, but now he could see: Macdonald wore the same sash, the Orangeman’s emblem. The grand master led Sir John and Lady Macdonald into what must be the Orangeman’s Ball.

  He heard the prime minister declare, “I say, Cameron, did God ever make a man as distinguished as you look?”

  Conor was distressed. John Macdonald may not have attended the parade, but he never missed a party. He had joined the ranks of the intolerant—and the intolerable. He was one of them.

  Once the door was closed and the Orangemen were inside, Conor walked up to Buckley, who was tending to the lead horse and chatting with a woman. Buckley was an Irish Catholic, and Conor had sometimes seen him with Thomas.

  “What do you think?” Conor said.

  “I’m paid to drive. And keep my opinions to myself.”

  Conor thought for a second, and concluded, “I’m paid to think, and I think it’s us and it’s them.”

  Until then, Conor hadn’t noticed that the woman talking with Buckley was Polly, the washerwoman.

  “Have you seen your father, Conor?” she asked.

  “No. Have you?”

  She looked down, embarrassed. Conor turned and walked away, leaving Buckley with Polly and Macdonald with his friends.

  CONOR considered going to Lapierre’s to try to speak to his father, but he couldn’t bear the rejection. He thought of going back to the cathedral. He had found peace there, but he didn’t seek a state of grace; he wanted to suffer in his own wrath. He stayed in Uppertown and wandered into the seediest Elgin Street bar he could find. It smelled of the common man: tobacco, beer, spit and urine. No white tablecloths here.

  He sat alone and kept himself company. “This is no place for a gentleman,” he told his glass of whisky. “Even a fraud with one suit and one tattered pair of shoes.”

  It was a mixed bar. There was a group of Protestant celebrants toasting the holy day over Bushmills, not of the class to be invited to the Russell House. A few people he assumed were “regulars” were pontificating about something or other as they sucked down whisky and spit out tobacco. Of course, there were the obligatory local drunks drinking cheap yellow whisky poured from the bucket. They hung on to the bar and stared into space. And there was a vagrant with no friends or family—him—slumped in a chair. Alone. With his drinks. And his resentment.

  This day had made so many things clear. Their Orange fraternity of hate held the keys to power. He was a poor Irish immigrant—a bogtrotter—and he always would be. Those who called him an upstart were dead right. He knew life’s surfaces, not its depths.

  How had he climbed this ladder leading nowhere? The phrase he once thought could sound clever in a political speech now rang far too true, and all about him.

  Thomas O’Dea had slaved and sacrificed so that his son could get an education. Book learning was unheard of among the labourers and drifters in the lumber camps. Thomas paid the bookkeeper as much as he could manage to teach Conor sums and arithmetic. At first, Conor resisted the discipline; gradually, he embraced learning as the numbers started to make magical sense. Oblate priests taught him the rudiments of reading and writing, but words on a page turned into stories when an itinerant romantic wandered into the lumber camp one January afternoon. He had a mysterious past, which enchanted Conor, and spoke with an upper-crust British accent, which inspired him. All he carried was a sack of books and plenty of tobacco for his pipe. He wore a huge Stetson hat and they nicknamed him Tex. He could spin stories of exotic adventures throughout America and as far away as Australia. Thomas paid him a small fortune to tutor his son. Tex taught Conor the basics of sentence construction, and together they read story after story. More important, he urged Conor to think for himself. Tex was helping Conor take his first steps away from Thomas’s world, and Thomas encouraged it because Tex was freeing his son from the chains of illiteracy and poverty. It had never occurred to Conor how incredibly generous his father had been.

  When Tex disappeared, heading deeper into the bush to work on a railway, the Oblate priests continued the lessons. Although Thomas insisted “no religion,” they applied the occasional Bible story to their lessons. Conor found the stories appealing, but didn’t tell his father.

  Though illiterate and innumerate, Thomas O’Dea sent for books. Huge white pine logs tumbled downriver and pages of knowledge were carted back on corduroy country roads, all to supplement Conor’s education and ensure his escape from this rough and dangerous life.

  Sinbad. The Arabian Nights. Ivanhoe. Conor devoured the books like a wood stove eating dry wood. He shared Tom Brown’s school-days, fought alongside Rob Roy and was stranded on a desert island with Robinson Crusoe. As he got older, he turned from adventure stories to biographies of Elizabethan swashbucklers: Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher. His father was not aware that the British librarians were sending him heroic tomes of empire builders, discoverers and conquerors. Conor travelled the Pacific with James Cook, scaled the heights to Quebec with James Wolfe and conquered Bengal with Robert Clive. He became enthralled by their dedication to empire.

  He loved to read books about British society. The Brontë sisters and Jane Austen opened a world of prestige, refinement and dignity. Society luncheons, fancy-dress dances, social intrigue and mischief. That’s how he had wanted to live.

  When Conor reached his teens, Thomas made sure that his son never headed into the woods to do the heavy work. He worked out a deal with the cook so Conor could stay indoors as a cook’s apprentice. He earned his keep in the “camboose,” a square of logs in the middle of the shanty where a cooking fire was always burning. It was claustrophobic, smoky, noisy and hot as hell’s kitchen, but it was safe. Conor spent hours boiling bricks of salt pork while other young men cut and hauled lumber. The others made more money, but they risked their lives.

  He grew up around rowdy, coarse, lonely men. There was camaraderie among the loggers; they were proud and competitive, and strong as oxen. There was order to their lives. They settled disputes with their fists and they earned respect by proving themselves in the forest. Every year, at first snowfall, with the promise of short days and severe weather to come, some deserted. Those who stayed were a class unto themselves. Workers. Lumberjacks. Timbermen. The toughest of all men.

  It amazed Conor how the men so rarely complained. He would know if they did because indoor workers didn’t just feed the men, they fixed them when they were hurting. Their remedies could be worse than the pain. Pine gum to close cuts, rusting implements to pull teeth. Conor watched one cook give a skidder with indigestion a few pinches of gunpowder in boiling water. “It’ll scare your problems away.” The skidder survived and never came back with another medical problem. Boiled pine bark with brandy was the usual stomach-ache tonic. One cook swore that boiled beaver kidney was the best medicine. Conor became a backwoods doctor. The men started trusting him. After all, “Cookie” could boil up potions and “Bookie” could read the manuals. Of course, there we
re no written instructions, just traditional antidotes and balms.

  Growing up in a male world, Conor viewed girls as a frightening mystery, and mothers a total unknown. The loggers would talk obsessively about women—wives, girlfriends and lovers—but never mothers or sisters. Women were something to chase in the off-season. Conquests. Prizes. Trophies. Thomas kept the off-colour stories away from his son as much as he could, but some of the men took delight in teaching him their versions of the ways of the world.

  Why, he wondered now, had he not missed a mother’s love or longed for a mother’s comfort? Why—and this is what seemed extraordinary to him now—did he not even wonder much about his mother? Margaret. What was she like?

  “You,” his father had said.

  Maybe he was too busy planning his own life to think about others. Maybe he was too self-centred. No, not maybe. He was. He took another swig of whisky.

  Mothers to him were characters in novels, like Mrs. Bennett nagging her long-suffering husband, planning parties, instructing her daughters with pride and considerable prejudice. Books were his links—his only links—to the outside world of society, gentility and petticoats. No one sent him books about famine, fever ships and Irish dead along the banks of the Boyne River.

  When a rogue log almost killed his father and Thomas’s back gave out, they moved down the river to Ottawa full time. Conor was now free to choose his own books, or at least the ones he could afford. He absorbed the world of politics and parliamentary democracy. He turned to practical books that might prepare him for an important future. The rise of responsible government. How a bill is passed. The role of the backbencher. If he had taken these subjects in school, he might have found them boring, but by discovering them for himself, he found them riveting. This was real adventure spiced with vested interests, big money and burning ambition.