Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  “I know there’s some dissatisfaction over the Bomarc missiles. The Voodoo interceptors are sitting useless.”

  “The Pentagon’s getting mad. If this was Central America, there’d be a nasty coup and it’d be all over for your Diefenbaker.”

  Emmett took a bite of his clubhouse sandwich. “We call it an election up here.”

  “Guess it doesn’t affect you. You’re one of those deep-sea fish lying on the bottom while the storms pass over. Insulated by all that bilge.”

  “That’s a good thing, right? Public stability, bottom up.”

  “Maybe. Your life’s dull, though. So’s mine.”

  Emmett ordered another drink for each of them. “I don’t know why I’m buying lunch when you’re so insulting.”

  “I like you. I know you’re more than you pretend to be.”

  Emmett looked around the room, seeing familiar faces and some hardy types that suggested American military. The idea of a coup seemed almost plausible. Wilson’s green eyes observed him coldly, then quite abruptly, awash with affection, as if he’d turned on a tap. Emmett asked him to fill him in on where he’d been since Korea.

  “McCarthy kept me home,” Wilson said. “When I finally got a clean passport again, I did some work for Colliers, till it went down. Freelanced myself almost sober. Then I did a long piece on the slaughterhouses of Chicago. Won a prize, and got myself a Midwest syndicated column.” He laughed. “Serendipity.”

  Emmett thought that this sounded small compared with Wilson’s early career, but he said, “Congratulations.”

  “I’m not touching Indo China. Not with a ten-foot pole and a nickel-plated condom.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m a tough bird, but I can’t stand being considered an enemy of my own country. I can’t go through all that again.” The watery green eyes observing him. “And I’ll bet in that respect, we’re birds of a feather.”

  Emmett finished his second drink and said, “I have a meeting at one o’clock.” He stood. “Would you like to come to my home for dinner? Meet my wife.”

  “I hear there’s going to be some kind of rehearsal for Doomsday this evening.”

  “Christ,” Emmett said. “We don’t have to pay attention to that.”

  Wilson said he was tied up for dinner but would meet him later, here at the Press Club, at about nine. It was an odd suggestion. But Emmett agreed, he’d be here.

  Chapter Five

  At five minutes to one, Emmett walked back outside to a nearly deserted street. A patrol car slowed beside him and the cop looked at him carefully through the window. It was the kind of day that needs snow. Chilled, in his suit jacket, he ran across the street against the light. He took the stairs to his office, passing no one. His secretary was at her desk, and she jumped a little when he walked in. “Oh! Gosh, you startled me, Mr. Jones.”

  He said, “It’s quiet around here.”

  “Well, it’s the exercise day. You know, what’s it, the defence day against the Russians.”

  “Right. How could I forget?” He was passing through to his office, but she was so intently drawn that he stopped and asked her if anything was wrong.

  “Oh. No.” Her hand went instinctively to her phone. “It’s just my husband calling all morning. Honestly, he’s such a worrier.” Emmett asked what was worrying her husband now. “Oh, I don’t know. Just, he thinks it might be hard to come get me at five o’clock. If there’s a panic and people start leaving the city? We’re renting out in Westboro now, you know. And he’s afraid of the traffic if there’s a panic.”

  “Why would there be a panic?”

  “Oh. You know. If people start to think it’s real? My husband thinks some people might not get that it’s only playacting. They might think it’s real that the Russians are attacking and start to get into their cars and go who-knows-where. He thinks people are dumb.” She looked longingly at her telephone. “I told him not everybody’s stupid.”

  “Would you like to go home?”

  “Oh! That would be swell!” She dove under the desk and produced her purse. “You’re sure?”

  He told her he was sure, and she was pulling on her coat when he asked her, didn’t she need to phone her husband to tell him she had the afternoon off?

  “I bet he’s out back already, Mr. Jones. He left about an hour ago.” She tied a yellow scarf around her hair. “He says the Parliament’s going to be the first place the Russians bomb.”

  “But it’s just playacting.”

  She stopped and stood with her hand on the door handle, and in a low voice she said, “I know that. I really do. Anyways. If the Russians bomb us, we won’t have time to phone our husbands.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  “Really?” She looked him in the eye. “Well, of course I defer to your greater knowledge, Mr. Jones. But I also know we don’t have more than a candle in the wind if they ever do drop the Bomb. I don’t just sit here and type, you know. I read.”

  She slung the purse over her arm and backed out of the room, pulling the door shut with both hands.

  Alone, Emmett had a reflex of secret freedom, a physical rush of pleasure in being alone with state secrets, and now this made him squirm in shame. That love of secrets, a competitive quality, had made him easy to manipulate. His secretary’s fear leached into him like a bad dream. Restlessly he shuffled with the papers on his desk. He didn’t have a meeting, as he’d told Wilson; he needed some time alone. His phone rang.

  “Emmett?” It was Suzanne.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She seemed to be speaking away from the receiver; he could hear her take a step in the kitchen, hear her pulling at the cord the way she always did, wrapping it around her hand. Then he heard the siren through the phone even while it sounded in the room where he stood. A high plaintive wail rising insistently, the authority of fear. “There it goes. I’ve got to go get Lennie.”

  It was only one-thirty. He asked her why she was getting her so early and she answered angrily, “Oh for chrissake, Emmett, why do you think?” She slammed the receiver into its cradle.

  He walked out into the hall. A dozen people were standing there. The siren shrilled. He said, “It’s just an exercise.” They stood and listened. It was hypothetical as one’s own death is hypothetical, and someone said, “Imagine.”

  The secretary from across the hall shuddered visibly. “Thank god it’s not real.”

  The siren slowly descended in pitch till it sounded hollow and off-key and then it sputtered out. Several of the people in the hallway chuckled, and someone said, “Fire drill’s over, children, back to your desks.”

  Emmett walked to the stairs and down to the back exit, where he had parked his car. The Alfa embarrassed him today, struck him as frivolous. The police had stopped the car ahead of him to ask the driver for his papers, but they just took a quick look at the Alfa and waved him through.

  Suzanne was pulling into the driveway when he arrived, and he parked behind her. She got out, had started to walk back toward him when she saw that Lenore was still sitting in the car so she turned and went around to open the passenger door, leaning down. When he approached, he heard her trying to coax Lennie out of the car. “It’s all right, darling, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  He joined her; together they stuck their heads in to croon their words of comfort and persuasion and then a mild threat, “If you don’t get out of the car, Lennie, you’re not going to see the television.”

  Lenore wore a dazed, sullen look, but hearing this, her eyes moved to her parents’ faces and she viewed them closely and separately. Her skin was milky, shiny with sweat. More than frightened, she looked resentful. She put her legs out of the car as if following her own feet, Emmett and Suzanne backing away, then Suzanne running ahead to unlock the front door.

  Lennie went straight to the TV and turned it on. A man was standing in front of a map of Canada. He spoke with a severe, scolding tone. Emmett ca
me and tried to put Lennie on his lap, but her hard, thin body didn’t bend.

  The man on the television said, “The most common answer is that they’ll die. And there’s no need for it. Improve your chances of survival. At the sound of the alert, keep calm. Do not use your telephone. Gather your family and check the gas in your car. If you choose to leave the target areas, take a blanket, two quarts of water, baby food, medicines, a battery radio, eating utensils, an axe and rope. Know your destination. Have identification for any lost children. For those who choose to stay, find protection from the blasts and heat effects. Protect yourself with bedsprings. Remove small objects that would fly around. There might be twenty or thirty minutes before fallout comes, perhaps longer. Use a fire extinguisher. Ladies, know how to get rid of radioactive dust. Turn off gas and water and electricity. And wait for further instructions.”

  Chapter Six

  Lennie’s parents had the sun behind them. The day that had been sere revealed a radiant November sun unobstructed by leaves, the sky stark blue against the grey branches of the trees. Lennie wasn’t used to seeing the sun at that angle, like a yo-yo broken off its string, because normally she was at school at this hour of this month. It made a rainbow through the high window in the dining room and hit her parents so she could see the wrinkles in their clothes and the frizz of her mother’s hair, their arms raised to tell her, Wait, wait, you have to make us feel better. She couldn’t see their faces, and she didn’t want to. Screw them. Screw Screw Screw.

  She went up the stairs to her bedroom but hung around on the landing a few minutes to listen to them say, Her Her Her, She She She.

  “I had to,” her mother said. “They phoned. They told me to come and get her. They said she was disturbing the other children.”

  Her father said, “What about her? What about her feelings? Didn’t they think about that? What’s she going to do tomorrow when she has to go back? Now she’s a freak.”

  “Don’t you call her that,” her mother hissed.

  “I’m not. Jesus, Suzanne, of course I’m not calling her a freak.”

  But Lennie knew, he said it because he thought it. It came out of his head. Communist spies are the real freaks.

  Lennie went into her bedroom. To celebrate her ninth birthday because she was “nearly a decade old,” her mother “redecorated” her room last June and got floral skirts for her bed. Lennie found them beautiful — skirts for a bed, big blue flowers with yellow tongues. Lennie crawled under her bed. She was protecting herself with bedsprings. From downstairs she heard the distant vibrations of their voices.

  Emmett told Suzanne that he had to go back to work. She followed him out to the car, kept him talking in the driveway. He only wanted to be in his office, to close his door.

  He hadn’t been contacted in some time, not at all since John Norfield was sent as messenger. Emmett had made the decision; he’ll make contact with them, he’ll tell the Russians that he’s finished, he’ll tell them to leave him alone.

  No one ever did catch him in his work for the Russians, no one at External Affairs, no one in the FBI, no one in the CIA.

  The Americans think he’s one useful patsy, giving them stuff on his government’s plans in Cuba. Information, photographed documents that made the Americans feel in control. He was a success, a great success as a spy. Now the continent might be destroyed by an atom bomb.

  Celebrate the end of your brilliant career, he told himself, have a party all by yourself. He’d always had to work alone. There were no Spymasters Clubs, no conventions in Moscow. No professional conversation had ever been possible — that was the nature of the game, and he’d accepted it, even welcomed it, perceiving himself as exclusive, private. But he was merely desolate.

  His hand was on the car door. Suzanne was standing before him with her arms wrapped around her shoulders, shivering in the cold while she talked. Emmett felt a tremor of panic. His mind went up — he was in his airplane, his Lancaster, high above a city on fire. He was also, of course, in his driveway. It was daytime. His body was swept into a whirlwind, the wild wind of a firestorm. He shuddered, she didn’t notice. She never seemed to notice.

  She was talking. She must never know. He’d contact his Russian handler, he’d tell him that he was through, he would retrieve himself. He would be a husband and father, an ordinary civil servant, and if there were another war — if there was another war, it wouldn’t matter anymore, they’d all be dead. He needed to gather his son to him; maybe they should all go to Japan, it had already come through fire; it was hard to think clearly, and Suzanne was telling him, “I’m so worried.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t protect her. She’s strong, but it makes her vulnerable. Do you know what I mean? Am I making any sense?”

  “Yes.” He’d tell the Americans too, he was through. No more duplicates. His stuff on Cuba had seemed harmless. Even Kennedy had liked Castro in the days after the revolution. The Americans would cut off Aoi, his son would suffer. He had to go to his son; they should all go to Japan.

  She was talking about Lennie. “If she wasn’t so bright. If she was less, less of everything, and more, more silly, I wish she was silly.”

  “I have to get back to work.”

  Suzanne said, “Of course.” She stepped back from the car to let him go. “That goddamn siren.”

  He got into the car and rolled down the window.

  She leaned down and said, “Do you think they’d actually drop the Bomb on us?”

  “They might. I don’t know. We did.”

  “No we didn’t.”

  “Oh,” he said. She believed in countries; didn’t she know that there are no countries? There’s only power. Mad generals and a sad, crazy prime minister.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “What should I do with Lennie? She’s so scared.”

  “Read to her. Keep her away from the TV and the radio. Tell her she’s good. Tell her it’s going to be okay.”

  “I love you,” Suzanne said.

  Emmett drove back downtown. He thought about how Suzanne loved him.

  How? In the light of day with her conscious mind in all its sundry calculations.

  One day, when he’s clear, when they’re all clear, he’ll go away alone for a while, till he feels strong enough to ask himself if, in the world as it must be, without that ideal that had once loaned him a secret radiance, without his talent and that private light he’d thought he lived by, her sundry love will be enough.

  Chapter Seven

  Close to nine o’clock that night in cold, hard rain he parked in his spot near the East Block and walked down to Sparks Street. Wilson was standing under the store’s awning, smoking a cigarette. “Thanks for showing up,” Wilson said, taking his arm to guide him back out into the rain to where an Edsel Corsair four-door hardtop was parked at the curb. Wilson dropped his cigarette onto the sidewalk and said, “Rental. Shitty car. Jump in.”

  They were driving. It was raining very hard. Emmett asked where they were going.

  “We’re off to see the Wizard.” Wilson grinned. He was having a good time. Emmett felt his spirits lift. It had been too long since he’d spent time with a happy person. Maybe men are more naturally happy than women are. More foolishly optimistic.

  They actually went back to Jones’s neck of the woods, about half a mile from his home in Rockcliffe, and pulled into a circular driveway of the kind favoured by Ottawa socialites, replete with a green canvas umbrella funnelling from double front doors to the edge of the boulevard, fortification for hairdos. A large Stars and Stripes drooped in the rain. Wilson parked and tossed the keys cheerfully — “Back entrance” — leading him around to the back of the house, where somebody had built an addition, a modern contraption of sheet metal with steel beams that extruded from a brick facade. Emmett realized he was somewhere official, something subsidized by state money, American state money.

  They were greete
d by a tall, lanky man with an open, Nordic face, wearing the casual dress uniform of the American air force. “Hello, friends,” he said, “Chuck’s in here,” his voice warmly relaxed, his accent mid-west. “We’re winding down, but I know there’s still a cold beer with your name on it.” They followed him through a chilly, stylish room decorated with a lot of tiger-striped furniture, then down a set of stairs, the smell of wood smoke and cigars reaching up to greet them, and into a rec room with a pool table, football trophies, photographs of college football teams, a padded leather bar at one end, a stone fireplace at the other, where sofas and upholstered chairs were set up around a black bearskin rug. A stocky black maid was stacking dirty dishes with the remains of a late meal of spaghetti while another went around with clean ashtrays. Twenty men or so were sitting in bright contentment, drinking coffee or finishing a beer. Emmett recognized several journalists. Besides the lanky officer, there were others in military uniform, both RCAF and US air force. The American ambassador was here, speaking quietly and earnestly. An athletic forty-something fellow broke away and came to greet them. This was their host, Chuck, the ambassador’s assistant.

  Emmett was struck by a general atmosphere of gratitude and relief, and he knew that the reporters were getting an unofficial “backgrounder.” Chuck spoke in the hushed tone of a church steward. “Glad you could make it. Wilson, good of you go out in the rain to collect him. Emmett, right? Glad to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Emmett doubted this was true; it would be the kind of blanket statement Chuck would use often in every posting. Ambassadorial. Chuck murmured, “Come in,” and showed them where to sit. To the stocky maid he said, “Leave those a minute and get the gentlemen whatever they’d like.”

  The ambassador smoothly acknowledged them without pausing in his speech. “The cold and bitter truth is this,” he was saying, “if they decide to use the ICBMs, and you fellas don’t have the weaponry to meet that challenge, the whole continent will be destroyed.”