Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  But she loved him still and wanted him to love her—it would be hard to change that. And she no longer felt a deep revulsion toward her past and St. John's Wood. So when her father suggested that she hang on to her shares in the company for a while, she let the matter slide: it wasn't of urgent importance to cease to have any connection with the place where she had spent so many unnecessary years.

  She had a busy and absorbing summer. She did everything she had intended to do and then some. Of all the things she had promised herself she would do, there was only one she did not have the energy for: she didn't go to a lawyer to file for divorce.

  ***

  "I'm selling up," her father said to her one evening in September. They were sitting by the pool drinking cocktails, enjoying the last of summer. Smith was lounging in a deck chair with her feet up on another, and at this she sat up with such a jerk she spilled her drink.

  "Selling up what?" she demanded, then, thinking she might have misunderstood, "The stock market?"

  "I'm selling St. John Forest Products," Cordwainer St. John said. "Lock, stock and chain saws."

  He had a half smile on his face, but Shulamith was aghast. "Why?"

  "Why?" He smiled more broadly and shook his head. He had expected her to understand without being told, expected, perhaps, that she had known what he would do. "Well, I had three reasons for coming to the decision. First, my health. I've been told that I got off very lightly with the heart attacks: either one could have been much worse. So unless I want to die, I can't work the way I have done in the past. If I can't work hard, St. John Forest Products will never be as valuable as it is right now. It needs a younger person at the helm to keep it growing.

  "Then, there's this damned problem with the Indians up in Cat Bite. Your husband's people: I have to bear that in mind, Shulamith. If the commission decides in our favour—as it almost certainly will—the decision of what to do with those damned trees will be on my plate. I don't usually back away from a decision. But I can't decide between something that might drive a permanent wedge between you and your husband, and something that, if economic conditions continue as they are for another two or three years, might mean the difference between the company's scraping through and disaster.

  "But most important—now that you're not interested in stepping into my shoes when I retire, what am I working for? A man doesn't kill himself to build a company when there's no one to pass it on to."

  He said it matter-of-factly, without reproach, but she felt a reproach anyway. She wondered how many times in their lives she had read things into his voice that were not there.

  "You should have had a son," she said.

  "I didn't want a son," he returned emphatically. "You are exactly what I wanted—you are tough and smart, smart as a whip, and you have enough of your mother in you to—" He broke off. "You're my child. Why should you have to be a son before I would want to pass the business on to you? You blame me for that now, because you've found out it wasn't what you wanted after all. But suppose I'd been different? Suppose I'd ignored your talent and your brain and wanted you to marry someone I could pass it on to? You'd have been telling me this summer I'd destroyed your confidence, your resourcefulness—whatever it is these women's libbers are saying. You expressed an interest in forestry—as I'd hoped you would, I admit—and I gave you every opportunity to prove yourself. If I pushed you, it was no more than I would have pushed anyone who was going to be CEO one day."

  It seemed it was her father's turn to respond to the charges she had levelled at him during the summer. He was right—his treatment of her, his expectations had always increased her sense of ability, her self-confidence. In the area of work. Perhaps the years under his tutelage had not, after all, been entirely wasted.

  "I guess there aren't many blacks and whites in human experience, are there?" She suddenly wanted to try to express to him her confusion over her view of the past. "I'm sorry, Dad," she said softly. "I'm trying to understand." She looked into his eyes in the fading light and knew that though she had hurt him, he had somehow accepted it without anger. They smiled ruefully at each other.

  "Have you worked out a deal yet?" she asked him then. "For the sale, I mean?"

  "The only part that isn't finalized yet is whether you want to sell out your shares along with mine or whether you'd like to keep an interest. Jake will give you back shares in the new company if you like, or you can take cash. I don't guarantee you'll have any control over what he decides about Cat Bite Valley, but at least you'll have the right to say your piece."

  "Who are you selling to?"

  "Conrad Corporation," said her father. "I wanted to get a—"

  "Conrad Corporation?" she nearly shrieked. It was almost dark now, and she bent to stare at her father's face, as though she might discover that he was joking. "You're not selling St. John's Wood to Jake Conrad?" She had never met Jake Conrad, but she had heard of him. He had started out in trucking, but he had not stayed there. Nor had he, like her father, been content to stay in one industry. His conglomerate was a mixed bag. Shulamith had heard his name every time his reach extended into the forestry industry. He was a bastard, she had learned. He was lucky, and he was a bastard.

  "He's an excellent, hard-working young man. He's exactly—"

  "He's a bastard! Daddy, he's a ruthless bastard. Everybody knows it—and you know it, too! He'll be cutting in Cat Bite before the ink is dry on the contract!"

  Her father stood up to flick on the patio lights and the bug light. There were cricket noises and soft night smells. It was pleasant here, Smith reflected. This was something she missed down in the city—the privacy. Even having the ocean and park so near didn't make up for this.

  "I don't think so," said her father, pouring himself another drink. "Jake Conrad has mellowed since his marriage. I don't think he'll do what you think. He's very shrewd and intelligent, and I expect him to give a lot of thought to whatever he does in Cat Bite Valley."

  "He's married? When did he get married?"

  "Last year. I suppose you were abroad. A very beautiful young widow. I've met her."

  "Well, if she can mellow Jake Conrad, I wish her luck! I still think—oh, never mind." What did it matter to her anyway? Indians' rights were being ignored and abused all across the country. What difference did it make to her whether it was the Chopa?

  "So what will you be doing?" she asked. "Are you retiring completely?"

  "No, I'm going to be chairman of the board, as befits my age," her father said with a twinkle.

  "Of Conrad Corporation?"

  "The new company will be called Concord Corporation. It will be a very big conglomerate," he said with satisfaction. "Probably one of the top one hundred, in terms of sales, in Canada."

  "The 'Cord' comes from Cordwainer?"

  "Your grandmother's maiden name. She was the last of her line. I think she'd be pleased that the name isn't quite going to die."

  Shulamith's middle name was Dayan, her mother's maiden name. Her mother had been related, though not closely, to Moshe Dayan. "You get your courage from the Dayans," Shulamith had been told over and over. "Also your strong chin."

  "Maman did the same thing," she said now. "If I ever have a child, look at all the family names it's going to be saddled with, to keep up the tradition. It'll be the last of the Cordwainers, the last of the St. Johns—"

  "You've got St. John cousins," her father said. The branch of the family he had not spoken to since going to Europe to study art. "Second cousins."

  "That's good," she said, the blackness coming on her, as it did at unexpected moments. "There are lots of Dayans, too. It's a good thing the Cordwainer name is on the business, because I won't be having children."

  There was a silence.

  "You never see your husband?"

  "He's not my husband." She shook her head and looked into her empty glass. "He's just..." She stood up. "It's getting late, I should go."

  "I haven't talked to you about the house yet,"
her father said. "We'll have to discuss it another time. I thought I'd sell it."

  Smith looked around at the pool, the house, the landscaped lawn. She had thought she didn't like this house, and yet it had a kind of peace.

  "It's funny," she said. "Do you remember who I wanted you to get when we were building—when you got Hughie to design this?"

  "Some young fellow who was barely starting out," her father said. "A little too innovative, I remember thinking at the time. Why?"

  "He wasn't exactly starting out—he was already designing a big office building that year," Smith told him. "Right now—" she had read it in the paper "—he's doing a hotel in Amsterdam. It was Johnny Winterhawk."

  ***

  On October 7, a Vancouver radio station aired 'Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye' for the first time. Smith had been alerted by Mel, so she was tuned in to the station while she worked that day, waiting to hear it, but still it was a shock to the system.

  "We didn't wait to fall in love, we loved and then we met..."

  I wrote this, was her first thought, and a flower of surprised pride unfolded inside her. This is my song!

  Suddenly she was remembering the day she wrote it. The morning she had wakened up, full of contentment, to find the bed empty beside her, and gone downstairs to write it straight from the pen. She laughed lightly. She hadn't known how lucky she was that day. She had thought then—if she had thought about it at all—that all her writing would be as easy and inspired.

  Oh, Johnny. The morning when she had sung the song to him, knowing that she loved him and that it was goodbye.

  "But now it's over, all that's left is just goodbye." Cimarron's voice had a quality in it that said everything the song did not say. She had found the truth of the song, which Smith hadn't understood while she was writing it, hadn't known herself until the morning at the island. "But in the morning when you wake and know deep down—" her voice caught, giving the lie to the next three words "—it's a mistake...." Smith wondered how it was she had never noticed before that Cimarron had added a whole new dimension to the song: that the singer was a woman who was afraid to ask for love.

  Thirty-three

  By mid-November Smith was being driven crazy by her own song. Wherever she turned, whatever she did, 'Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye' would sooner or later assail her ears. It was being played on every pop music station in Vancouver, perhaps every one in Canada.

  It kept Johnny constantly in her mind. She couldn't divorce the song from her memories of Johnny, and her memories of Johnny were going to drive her mad.

  In late November there was something else that kept him in the forefront of her mind: the Cartier Commission brought down its preliminary report, and it recommended against the Chopa. "In the light of various background and policy papers it had considered, as well as the 1974 Pierce Commission paper on forest tenure...in light of the fact that the new Charter of Rights had not seen fit to entrench aboriginal rights in such matters...the economic situation and the practical results...but also considering the very real concerns of the aboriginal people who enjoyed the use of the land...the commission recommended that the timber rights granted to St. John Forest Products on the land bounded by Salmontail Lake, Hackle Ridge, Feather Mountain and Cat Bite River, including Cat Bite Valley, be honoured. But it further recommended that care be taken to ensure 'that the damage inflicted on the environment be no more than is held to be necessary' and, as far as possible ensure 'the least damage to the wildlife habitat consistent with the cutting of the timber.'

  The full report would not be published until after Christmas, but everyone knew all it was necessary to know. Only fools would imagine that the concern for native claims and wildlife preservation was anything more than lip service.

  Smith was in a fury over it. A helpless fury. She could fire off a letter to the editor, which she did; she could buttonhole her friends at parties and over lunch and denounce the system, which she did; she could write to Victoria and Ottawa. She did that, too. What she could not do was convince herself that citizens had any voice in the running of the country.

  Her friends listened to her, of course. They all knew she was married to Johnny Winterhawk, who was a Chopa, and they all suspected it had gone wrong. Nobody knew how or why. To some, like Valerie and Lew and Mel, who knew how she was suffering from what they thought of as 'the breakup', this fury on his behalf came as no surprise. They listened because they knew she needed to vent her rage. Others, who knew nothing except the bare facts, were surprised at this revolutionary zeal toward her estranged husband's cause and listened because they hoped to find some clue to the still fascinating mystery of Shulamith St. John and Johnny Winterhawk.

  What she wanted to be doing, of course, was not blowing off steam to everyone who would listen, but comforting Johnny. She knew that comfort was impossible, yet she had learned from Johnny that sharing pain meant halving it, and she wanted to share the ugliness of the commission decision with him.

  Well, at least there could be no immediate cutting, she knew: lumbering operations had been packed up for the winter. She would have time to talk to Jake Conrad, try to convince him. When the deal had gone through she had taken shares in the new Concord Corporation rather than selling out. She could make a nuisance of herself if she had to.

  Perhaps if she could tell Johnny that there was still hope it might be a way of sharing the pain. She could do that without asking for anything. She could just phone and say "I've still got some influence...."

  On the third day after the decision was released Smith picked up the phone and called his office.

  "I'm sorry,'' said the receptionist, "Mr. Winterhawk isn't in town. He's still over in Amsterdam. But he should be back next week. Would you like to leave a message?"

  "No," said Smith. She hung up. She had been saved from her own stupidity once. She must be careful not to tempt fate again.

  ***

  "All right," said Mel, rubbing his hands and smiling. "We've got a hit, and we've got a star. I got nibbles—bites, in fact—from two American companies this week, and one of them is CBS. They are very excited about Cimarron and literally bowled over to know that we are only a few numbers short for an album and even have half of it laid down already."

  "Have we got half of it laid down?" asked Smith in surprise.

  "We will have by Christmas. We'll work flat out after this. They were suggesting Cimarron might do a promotional tour of the States in the spring." He stopped and looked around at their three amazed, incredulous faces. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what I am trying to tell you is—our ship has come in."

  "Holy fuck. Holy fuck!" Cimarron was swearing with a kind of religious awe, something Smith had long ago got used to. She herself swore when she was angry, but Cimarron swore to express any emotion, from excitement through minor annoyance. Smith had once threatened to write a song called "I Love You, Goddammit" for her, but the others had convinced her it would sound too Country for Cimarron's image.

  When she had sat a moment taking it in, Smith jumped up and ran to embrace Cimarron. "Congratulations," she said. "You're going to make us all rich. Isn't she, everybody?"

  "You're rich already." Cimarron protested stupidly, tears starting in her glistening dark eyes. She hugged Smith tightly and smiled at them all through her tears. "Oh, shit!" she choked on a half giggle, half sob. "What if I can't take it? What if I'm just not up to it?"

  "Then just remember," Mel said easily now, "'Lizzie—you bin ast.'"

  ***

  On an evening at the end of November Smith sat sprawled in her favourite armchair—a piece of furniture she had begged from her father when she'd moved—her feet over one arm, a glass of wine balanced on her stomach, gazing out the broad wall of windows to the lights of the ships moored out on the bay. The sun had disappeared into the sea, even the faint red glow on the water was gone. High clouds scudded over moon and stars.

  She was sitting in the warm glow of a single lamp, listening to a tape of Lew p
laying his latest composition. Actually, he had told her, it was not new—it was an old piece that he had resurrected and revamped in the hope that it might inspire her. And while it was certainly not Lew at his most inspired, there was something about the music that she liked.

  What it needed was an upbeat lyric that demanded no more of the listener than did the music. "You won't be happy till we come up with something with boop-boop-a-doo in it, will you?" she had laughed to Mel, who wanted nothing more than to cut an album of Cimarron with all original songs, composed only by Cimarron or by Lew and Smith.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Mel had said during their last conference, "the music business is very fragmented these days. Nobody knows what is going to be selling next week, let alone next year. I want Cimarron to cover as broad a base as possible—within her musical persona, of course. That means somebody has got to move out of Moody City here and cough up a pretty little song that holds out some hope for the human heart...."

  That was when Smith had said, "You won't be happy till we come up with something with boop-boop-a-doo in it."

  "Boop-boop-a-doo," she sang now. "Where are you you you?"

  Johnny was on her mind tonight—he was on her mind often when she sat here alone.

  She stood and moved to the glass door, gazing out at the moon. The view from her balcony was broad and open over the whole bay. She could see the lights of Grouse Mountain off to the right, Point Grey to her left. Not really like the view from Johnny's house, but still it took her back there. Was Johnny looking at the same moon? It felt like that, she could feel the moon as a connection between them, but Johnny was in Amsterdam and in Amsterdam it was morning already.

  "Where are you you you?" Smith sang again.

  The buzzer sounded from downstairs and Smith glanced at her watch. Pausing to turn down the volume, she crossed to the intercom. Not that late; it could be anybody. Valerie and Rolly had said they might drop in for a drink after some show they were going to nearby.