Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  “You don’t want to get lost, Oscar.”

  “I’ll find my way back. You don’t have to worry about me.” Oscar wiggled his eyebrows.

  He saw that Oscar’s levity was self-conscious, wilful. The gravel got sparse and soon they were driving over dried, rutted mud, the car bouncing so hard, Emmett banged his head on the roof.

  The car struggled up a hill. When they reached the summit, Oscar braked and turned off the ignition. The sound of crickets. Oscar got out, Emmett quickly following suit. He stood with the car between them, trying to see in the dark whether Oscar had a gun. Oscar said, “I could shoot you. Or I could be humane, and leave you here and make you walk home.”

  The pulse of crickets, and wind, warm for October.

  “Nice night for a walk,” Oscar said.

  Emmett didn’t wait around. He ran into the field and down the hill, tumbling down the incline to a hedge and a barbed wire fence, someone’s field. Oscar fired the gun. Just once. The sound went crackling through the air.

  He pressed his body down in the grasses that grew up around the fence. He watched the headlights of the car dip and swerve over the landscape as Oscar manoeuvred the car around to drive back from where he’d come.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emmett arrived at his home at about six a.m. His last ride had dropped him off at Rockcliffe Park, so he’d walked the last few blocks from there. It was still mild weather. When he limped up his driveway he made out, in a milky pre-dawn, his wife sitting on the front steps. Suzanne was wearing a silk bathrobe, wrapped in a mohair blanket. She watched him approach with dull eyes that gradually began to fill with life. Relief, he was pouring relief into her. She watched him wordlessly, closely; even when he’d sat down beside her, she didn’t speak but looked at him intently.

  “Why are you out here?” he asked.

  “Someone phoned last night,” she answered hoarsely. “He said he was a friend of yours. He said I should watch for you.”

  Emmett put his hands on her face and pulled her close. “Where’s Lennie?”

  “She’s all right,” Suzanne said. “She doesn’t know.” She clutched at him. “Where were you?”

  Emmett held her but didn’t answer. He could sense that she was thinking quickly, contrary to the drag he felt in her body. As the moment lengthened, she became more solid in his arms, more separate from him. He was too exhausted to do more than marvel, feeling a sort of mild horror, thinking about how separate they really were. She had never asked him for anything more intimate than a reassurance that he was all right; it was his role always to be all right, to perform his function. And now, when perhaps it had occurred to her that she might have, that she should have, asked him something more deeply, that she might have asked him, What drives you? What do you believe in? it was too late. Her position seemed so terrible to him then, he didn’t want her to be aware of it; even now he wanted to protect her.

  She was weeping; he realized she’d been weeping for a long time, her hair was wet at the temples, her face was salty. “I waited at the window all night. Then I came out here.” He recognized that type of weeping, deep and low in the throat. She was mourning him. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  She began to cry so hard her back convulsed. He held her and felt her euphoria. He’d died for her that night, and returned, a second chance. The complexities, the guilt, the discrepancies would resume, but for now she was taking refuge in the room that his imagined death had emptied, a zero, indivisible, and absolutely full. Innocent.

  He helped her to stand, and they went into the house. In the hallway, she looked up. Lennie was sitting at the top of the stairs.

  Lenore saw her father in yesterday’s clothes. She saw that he’d torn his pants. Even from here she could smell the sour dirt on him. She wearily pushed herself upright and went into her room, closing the door behind her.

  Emmett said, “She gets more like my mother every day.”

  Suzanne had one slippered foot on the first stair, but she froze when he said this and turned back to look at him. He saw, he understood, that if she said another word, everything in his life would explode. But what she might say, he couldn’t guess. In silence, he followed her past Lenore’s closed door, to their bedroom.

  He watched her kick the slippers from her narrow feet and sit on the bed and let the robe slip from her shoulders. She was wearing a fine white sleeveless nightdress he’d never seen before. He was so tired. He saw three small basins, two made by her clavicle and one formed at her throat, and he imagined them filled with dew.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harold Gembey was standing in Emmett’s office, looking out the window, when Emmett arrived there two hours later. Gembey was one of the chosen ones, whose smooth steady progress gave the department its shape, like a shoetree, a hat block.

  Even after all these years, Harold wouldn’t look him in the eye. Emmett did his best to capitalize on that. He’d had only thirty seconds to prepare himself for this encounter, since arriving, sleepless, and his secretary standing nervously to tell him that Mr. Gembey was waiting to see him. “He asked me to let him in,” she said. She looked scared and apologetic.

  “Hello, Harold,” Emmett said. Gembey turned away from the window to say, “Emmett.”

  Emmett took a moment to hang his coat on a hanger behind his door. Then he went to his desk to look at the messages his secretary had left beside his telephone. Nothing to indicate that Gembey was due to drop in. He asked Gembey what he could do for him. Then he remembered the prime minister’s demand that he question the head of Intelligence about “what’s going on.”

  Gembey stood where he was. “We found your car,” he began.

  “On MacKay Street.”

  Gembey looked surprised. “Yes.”

  “Thank god it didn’t get towed away.” Then mild chagrin. “Suzanne is displeased.”

  Gembey waited for further explanation, but when he received none, other than Jones rubbing his temples in a semaphore that indicated “hangover,” he said, “I see.”

  “Always sneaks up on you,” Emmett said ruefully. With a trace of piety, “As long as it’s only myself I’m harming. Anyway, Harold, it’s funny to see you here.”

  Harold was about to explain, the abandoned Alfa Romeo had raised an alarm, but Emmett interrupted. “Just yesterday, Mr. Diefenbaker was asking about you. You’ve saved me a trip.”

  Gembey was attentive but not wholly convinced; mention of Diefenbaker’s name didn’t necessarily command a salute. Gembey, warily, “Oh?”

  Emmett smiled. “You know how he is. Circuitous. And his leg’s troubling him. Anyway, he’s asked me to speak with you about the Intelligence summit in Washington, at the British Embassy, ‘the conference for spooks,’ he called it.” He laughed generously, watching Gembey stiffen. “Listen, Harold, I know better than most men how little you can say about these things, even to your prime minister. But can you give me something? Anything to put his mind at rest?”

  “I’ll speak with him myself.”

  “Good.” Emmett gave him a doubtful look. “And good luck.” He touched the pile of messages on his desk: work to do.

  Gembey sat down. “I’ve got some questions for you, Emmett.”

  “Go ahead.” Emmett leafed casually through his messages. He saw among them one from his journalist friend, Wilson, and the phone number from the local hotel Wilson used when he was in Ottawa. He said wryly, “Though it’s not exactly music to my ears, Harold.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged.

  Gembey said, “You didn’t make it home last night.”

  “Well, yes. Technically, it was dawn.”

  “One of our guys picked you up on the parkway. He dropped you off at Rockcliffe Park this morning at 5:25.”

  “He was one of yours, was he?”

  “When we saw your car parked near Sussex Drive at about four this morning, we got worried. We put some officers out to look for you. Perhaps you should tell me wha
t happened.”

  “A friend of mine is in town. I’m afraid we’re quite bad for each other.” He added, “An American journalist whom I met in Korea during the war.”

  “Ah.”

  “He has a fondness for Canadian whisky. We got talking and a bottle flew by.”

  “Where did this take place?”

  “I wish I knew. It was quite a bar crawl. Then we got it into our fool heads to cab it east. He knows someone out there. A woman. He decided to stay, and I hitchhiked home.”

  “Who is your journalist friend?”

  “Harold, am I under suspicion now? Or have you just got a habit of prying into my private life?”

  Gembey pursed his lips and apologized, saying that of course Emmett wasn’t “under suspicion,” he hadn’t intended to pry, adding brusquely, “I’ll let the department know that you’re fine.” He stood to leave. “I’m glad you’re all right. But if you could give me the name of your American friend, it might make everybody feel better.”

  “Let me speak to him first, if you don’t mind, Harold. It’s not just his reputation at stake, you see? There’s his friend. The woman.” He got up to walk Gembey to the door. “You’ll speak with poor Dief?”

  Gembey studied the brim of his hat. “As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to Sussex now.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s fine, then.” He thought that Gembey looked tired, strained, on the verge of being overwhelmed. He’d always looked that way. It was partly what made Ottawa trust Harold: he wasn’t a tall poppy; he was one among others trying to do an honest day’s work in Canadian Intelligence. Funny, Emmett thought, all the funny ways to be a spook.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Robert Morton parked several houses down and across the street and used the rear-view mirror to watch Suzanne carry narrow boxes from the front door of their house and out to the trunk of her car. The girl was helping her.

  He didn’t doubt that the boxes contained Suzanne’s photographs. He even surmised they were framed in slim black wood, the way she liked: he’d seen her shows before: tasteful, chic.

  Morton knew something about kids. He saw that Suzanne and the girl weren’t talking while they moved the boxes into the trunk. They worked unconsciously together, without conversation.

  The girl had grown tall. The wistful earnestness he’d seen in her childhood had come into its own; she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d ask for any favours nor grant any wishes. The independent type. Doesn’t yet know she’s intimidating. Sure, he knows something about kids, though he has only one daughter among the brood and that one is more regular than this one, and happier. When Morton was sure that there was no one else around, he didn’t linger but pulled out and slowly drove ahead. He drove back downtown to the Chateau Laurier to meet Dr. Kimura for lunch.

  The doctor was already seated in the dining room when Morton arrived, and he rose to shake Morton’s hand, greeting him with his cheerful smile and warmly saying his name, “Robert, Bob, you’re not late, I’m early. Overeager to forsake my patients.” Kimura took his seat again, smiling. “I cannot express how much fun it is to be a man of the world!” He stared as a clutch of suits walked past to take a nearby table. “So many celebrities!”

  Robert Morton looked. Mike Pearson was ordering lunch in the company of three other men. Morton knew them all. One of them was an American pollster, Lou Harris, granted leave by Kennedy to help Pearson’s floundering campaign last June.

  Dr. Kimura sipped his ice water, searching the other tables with undisguised delight. “You know what, Bob? Most ordinary humans are ugly when they’re naked.” He picked up the menu. “If we make a lot of money, my friend, I might just hang up my stethoscope forever.”

  Morton said, “You’ve given most of your life to other people. It’s time you had something for yourself.”

  “You too! We’re having our mid-life crisis together.” Kimura studied the menu. “You know, as a doctor, I use the word crisis specifically to indicate the turn, the critical stage of an illness. At its crisis, a disease will go one way or the other. But my life is not a disease, it’s a gift I cherish. Ever since I agreed to go into business with you, I’ve felt rejuvenated. I’m a doctor. It’s what I am. I awoke to my fate of being a doctor when I was six years old, when I learned that my life was mine to make, like a waking dream, a dream I can guide this way and that. I remember the moment clearly. I was walking home from school. The teacher had told us about a famous physician in ancient Egypt. I felt a jolt of lightning rip though me. Eureka! I’m a doctor. I walked home from school knowing, I am Takuya Kimura, doctor of medicine, even though I am only six.”

  The waitress came, and after she’d taken their order, Kimura said, “Is it this way with you? I am a policeman? Maintiens le droit! Right out of the starting gate?”

  Robert Morton said yes, that this was true of his own life, in a way, though he hadn’t had quite such a clear idea of how it might pan out. “I thought I was going to be a cowboy.”

  They ate their lunch and spoke about the small difficulties to overcome in importing the anaesthetic equipment from Ohio. Neither of them ordered a drink. They were having dessert when Kimura, in his most gentle, physician’s manner, mentioned that he was attending a “small gala” that evening at “a beatnik club.” “The wife of our mutual acquaintance,” he said with mild chagrin, “Emmett Jones’s lovely wife, Suzanne, is a photographer of some repute. But you know this.”

  “Of course I do. It’s how you and me met, remember?” Morton said.

  “At the gallery! When I was so angry. Really, I’m ashamed at how angry I was then. I went back alone to see her photographs of poverty. I was trying to make amends.”

  “You only got mad because you were worried.”

  “Yes. But it’s always shameful to be angry.”

  “You’ve more than made up for it, doc.”

  Kimura grew thoughtful. “Well, it’s natural for you to say so. I don’t think I’ll ever be sure.”

  “Emmett Jones needed you. I’m telling you, you’re a real friend.”

  “Is it a friend? One who spies, one who tells?”

  “Listen.” Morton lowered his voice. “That’s in the past. What information you gave me only helped to clear his name. You let us see what kind of man he is. Naive. Loyal. Ambitious. Am I right? He’ll never know how lucky he was that we found you. You’ve been the only real friend the man’s ever had.”

  Kimura said, “This isn’t true.”

  “No? Let me tell you something. Emmett was used by everybody who ever pretended to be on his side. They did nothing but take advantage of him.” He hesitated before adding, “Even his wife.”

  Kimura quickly protested, “That’s not true.”

  “Sure, okay.” Morton smiled and lightly shrugged. “Women do.” He tucked his tie in at his waist and smoothly continued, “You, on the other hand, understood him. Without your insights into this case, things might’ve gone very bad for him. You saved his life.”

  “I wish I could be sure. I’m fond of Emmett. I’ve known his daughter ever since she was a little baby. And I love his fearsome wife.”

  Morton said with a sincerity that surprised Kimura, “She’s a beauty all right.” He caught Kimura studying him. “They’re safe now. All of them.”

  “Have they been unsafe, Bob? From persecution, yes. But is there more?”

  “Not everybody is as reasonable as I am. There are some real nuts out there.” He took a look around. Kimura had gotten used to Robert Morton’s survey of a room, of a street, his quick inspection of cars at the curb with their windows down. “They don’t know when to stop. They don’t know any boundaries or borders.”

  “You refer to the fanatics. The enthusiasts.”

  Morton felt a warm wash of affection for his newfound friend. Briefly, he wished he could touch Kimura, just his shoulder, a small signal of appreciation for his insight. “The enthusiasts. That’s right.”

  “Yes. They are everywhere.”r />
  “Sure. But here? In this country?” Morton took a drink of water as if to clear his palate. “I don’t know. Maybe in Japan.”

  “Canada is my country of birth.”

  “Didn’t mean to offend.”

  “I’m merely clarifying. There are enthusiasts in Japan, we all know this, especially those of us who lived through the war. Canada has them too. Every country does.”

  Morton scratched his jaw. He looked at the ring on his left hand, made the diamond dance in the light from the chandeliers above their table.

  “A different shade of enthusiasm,” Kimura added. But he was searching, thinking, this country is not very enthusiastic.

  “Red?” Morton offered. Then, embarrassed at having made a poor joke, he pushed it, “Pinko?” He shifted himself uncomfortably in his chair.

  “This is a country of ‘dear-hearts and gentle people,’ like the song by Perry Como. Every person in Canada is at the centre of his own universe.”

  “Sometimes they’re not such dear-hearts. Sometimes they’re just fanatics. I hate communists. But hatred is putting us at the brink of nuclear war. Now’s the time to drain the acid from our blood. But there are men who like the feel of hate, and they can make a lot of righteous trouble for an odd fellow like your friend Emmett and his beautiful wife.” He pushed his heavy chair away from the table. He didn’t normally talk so much.