Sussex Drive: A Novel

by Linda Svendsen

  Finance, with a flip of mermaid hair, thanked the Speaker. This was usually the cue for riotous appreciation from the government benches. The Tories, however, were restrained; there was an extreme nervousness in their team demeanour, particularly after the announcement of fiscal genocide for the opposition. She smelled fear.

  The socialist leader, ever sentimental, had the floor. “Instead of an immediate stimulus package to attack the recession, the government is apparently going to attack democracy.”

  He received a minority standing ovation. And then the session was over.

  Greg and his posse—Chief, Doc, Finance Barbie and a few other loyals—exploded from the House.

  As Becky took her leave, she caught sight of the MPs in the opposition lobby. It was disturbing. A Bloc Member from Montreal hugged a Grit from Ontario. A female NDP MP hugged a former Liberal Cabinet minister, also female, a doctor, a person Becky had personally courted for the Tory cause, a prestigious catch. The fiscal update required a confidence vote, and Greg was obviously betting that the opposition wouldn’t vote against it; it was too soon to trigger yet another unnecessary $30 million election. And when they supported the update—by not showing up to vote against it—he’d have the pleasure of watching them cut off their own political welfare.

  She was en route to Greg’s second-floor office in Centre Block when she was accosted by Greg’s former mentor and a current member of the King’s Privy Council for Canada, Alice Nanton. Greg had eventually betrayed her, in a good way, by running against her, trouncing her, and then appointed her to the KPC, for which she wasn’t appropriately grateful as far as Greg was concerned.

  “Did you hear what he said?” Alice asked.

  “Who?” Becky said.

  “The Socialist. ‘The government is apparently going to attack democracy.’ Christ! It’s the first time I’ve ever agreed with that man.” Alice was spooked. “You look like we need a drink,” she said, taking her arm.

  “I’d love to,” Becky said, “but I’m popping in on the PM, and then the Pakistani delegation’s over with George at the Supreme Court.”

  Alice shrugged in closer to Becky; she’d already been dipping into the well. “What’s going on with him?” she whispered. “What’s the matter with that man?”

  Becky wanted to shut that down. “Greg’s fine, just tired. We’ve got the Governor General’s kid staying with us while she’s away.”

  “He’s a caution, that one,” Alice said.

  Becky stickhandled. “It’s hard to do the good work Greg wants to do. With the minority.”

  Alice rubbed Becky’s shoulder, commiserated. “Yes. It’s hard to cut the Leviathan down to size. Like trying to butcher a whale in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And they’re slippery.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pull you under.”

  “Possibly.”

  “But you know, Becky, I haven’t seen him like this—so, so dark—since the Nina Episode.”

  The Nina Episode. It took her a few seconds to realize that Alice wasn’t talking about a key political operative beheaded in the Horn of Africa, but about Greg’s depressed pre-Becky amour. “Yes, I know that was a tough time.”

  “Above and beyond tough.”

  Becky was silent. When she was unsure about where an ally was heading, she waited for her own inner direction.

  “He was head over heels about her. But, and I quote, after a few years she came to distinctly ‘dislike his vibe.’ And then she dumped him,” Alice said.

  “Pardon me?” Becky had always understood that Greg had done the deed.

  “Of course, he’s impossible. You know that first-hand. Nobody denies the will of the Great Leggatt, not least a young rural lass with no apparent mind of her own.”

  Becky quickly reshuffled her mental deck and dealt. “And such a tragedy, too, that she went off the deep end and was institutionalized, all that.”

  Alice looked at her as if she’d gone barking mad. “What are you talking about? Nina wasn’t institutionalized.”

  “Uh—”

  “She up and disappeared. Don’t you remember?”

  “It’s coming back to me now you mention it.”

  “She dumped him, he went nuts, berserk, quite frankly, and she had to get the order, so many metres distant, and he still didn’t observe it. So she disappeared. Halifax, Vancouver, someplace she could fade into the weather.”

  Becky was suddenly disoriented, crossing a high bridge in the pitch dark. “That’s right,” she ventured.

  “I encouraged her to give him a second chance—Greg begged me to ask her—but no cigar.”

  They were standing in the Hall of Honour and the portraits of the prime ministers, lining the hall, all stared at her, including benign Avril Phaedra (Kim!) Campbell, now living in Paris with Canada far to the east of her, and Charles Joseph Clark. A Hill decorator and flunky passed by, transporting one of the giant Sitka spruces intended to grace the Hall. She had to brace herself against a shining water fountain that nobody drank from.

  “Wait a minute,” Becky said.

  “You didn’t know this,” Alice said. “God. How could you not know this?”

  Becky wondered the same thing. Umpteen years, after the two or three kids, it should have come up, or Greg’s stepbrother, gregarious Paul, now steering a ministry in the Australian government, could have offered a diplomatically intimate aside—if he knew. Of course, when she’d been seducing Greg after the riding meeting, it was before the glory of Google, back in the nineties when one had to rely on old-fashioned gossip, and back when their grassroots organization was essentially manure for other more mature political parties, and back when the leader-in-waiting had to be groomed, nurtured, garlanded. But, given that this was the Prime Minister of a nation with a supposedly free press, wouldn’t some enterprising journalist have stuck his nib deep into this dirt? By now?

  “It might be an idea to talk to Greg about this, Becky, when he’s back.” Alice patted her arm.

  “Back?”

  “In the land of the sensible.” She spotted another old warhorse then, a skinny Grit senator with a briefcase of causes, and trotted away in the opposite direction before he could spring an arm-twister.

  The clock in the Peace Tower chimed the hour. On the floor above, in the Memorial Chamber, a page had been turned in one of the six Books of the Dead, a ritual that allowed every Canadian soldier who had fallen in a war, from South Africa to Afghanistan, to be honoured by the country one single day of the year. Where’s the book for girlfriends? Becky wondered. Where is the book for wives?

  A few minutes after Alice’s evaporation, Becky expedited herself to Greg’s office. The corridor outside, usually bustling with Cabinet ministers and their extraordinarily busy staffs, was roped off with velvet cables and quiet as a crematorium. In the antechamber, chock-a-block with stacks of the Economist, policy publications from the Rand Corporation and the Wall Street Journal, Becky listened as the executive assistant, Firstname Surname-Hyphenate—they changed so often—informed Greg that she was there.

  Her cellphone beeped. A text message from Glenn, which she read because she was practising self-hatred. My son-in-law is God. She deleted this. There were limits.

  Greg’s heavy oak door swung open and there was a miserable exodus of the faithful meek such as Chief, Doc, who held up a paw, Clark the Privy Clerk, and the heavy hitters Greg hauled out when he wanted to barbecue the opposition, the ministers commonly known as Cabinuts.

  The executive assistant nearly bowed to Becky. “The Prime Minister will see you now.”

  Becky had had the biscuit. “Oh, la de-f-ing-da,” she said. “This isn’t Westminster.”

  The assistant closed his eyes. If an offhand remark like that had zapped him, he’d definitely be gone by dawn. She could read the tea leaves as clearly as Maclean’s.

  Greg’s office was dark, drapes pulled tight. It had always struck her as abo
ut as comfortable as a dentist’s waiting room. Greg wasn’t behind his desk. She turned around. He was slouched in one of those nondescript eighties office chairs, something she’d stretch her calves on while waiting for a prescription at the pharmacy. He cradled his largish head, with its distinctive dark fringe, in his two hands.

  “Greg.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to talk.”

  “About?”

  “About what’s going on here.”

  “There’s nothing going on. Nothing. Nothing! Nothing to talk about. Got it?”

  “There’s a lot going on, Greg.”

  “Right.” And then he just lost it. “Becky. Becky. Oh, fuck me. We’re going down.”

  Becky was shocked. He’d never admitted defeat, not ever.

  “They’re going to form a coalition. Those fucking assholes.”

  Her throat tightened. She chose not to remind him that he’d basically attempted the very same move when he was in opposition. Don’t go there. She was nauseous, and then slowly the anger surged and was sucked up to her brain through a short straw.

  “Those fucking assholes couldn’t form Jell-O in a mould,” she said.

  Greg wouldn’t look at her. “They’ll draft a non-confidence motion.”

  It was very difficult for her not to say “I told you so,” but then, technically, she hadn’t been consulted. And he knew her well enough to know she would have vetoed, or at least tempered, his stupid suicidal move if they’d been in robust daily dialogue.

  He broke down. “I can’t do this by myself. I can’t. My government’s going to fall.”

  She handed him a tissue and he honked his nose, snot soaking through and onto his hand, which he wiped onto his other hand. She advanced a few more tissues, aggressively, and he wiped his fleshy appendage clean. Strangely, she felt no pity for him at all, but experienced a surge of venomous antipathy toward Chief.

  “I am so sorry, Becky.” He took hold of her skirt. “Our poor little girl.”

  By this, he meant Martha.

  Becky knew she was a lamb, a sponge, a victim for contrition in any form. She knew he knew this too. He was a tactician. Most of the time.

  She extended her hand until she reached his knuckles, where he was pinching her skirt. “Greg. I have to know.”

  He met her gaze.

  “What happened to Taylor Shymanski?”

  Because the Governor General had held a summit with her before dropping off antidepressant medication and Niko at 24 Sussex. Lise had demanded to know what had happened at the Gory Horror; the sanity of her crazy son depended upon this. Becky hadn’t come clean, of course. She’d said it was a training drill staged by Shymanski’s unit.

  There was a long pause and he did not blink or look away. “He’s on a mission.”

  “Really? I was with him. When they—took him.”

  “I know.” Greg’s other hand crushed a fistful of her skirt.

  “You swear on the life of your son?”

  He knew which one she meant. “I do.”

  The last few weeks she had been in nocturnal lockdown, sleeping on the top floor of Sussex in a mercifully quiet guest bedroom. She’d been a refugee in her own mansion, ducking somnolent Niko, misleading distant Martha, counting on the willed ignorance of the servants, while she avoided her spouse. But in the next few lengthened seconds of skirt-raising, jacket-shrugging and trouser-shedding, she ultimately perched herself on top in his Centre Block office with her eyes closed tight, tight, tight and thought of Canada, Canada, Canada, not Nina, Nina, Nina, Nina, but Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada. She would rule this roost.

  11

  IT WAS A FIFTEEN-HOUR TRIP from Ottawa’s Macdonald–Cartier International Airport, or YOW, to Camp Mirage, Canada’s openly flaunted secret base in the United Arab Emirates, with a two-hour stop for refuelling and mechanical putzing in Frankfurt. Lise found the Challenger 601 cabin about as comfortable as one of René’s trailers on set, le milieu camping-car saturated with Febreze, Windex and the stench of jitters, and also somewhat claustrophobic because she was cloistered with her thin-lipped underling, the omnipresent and ever-watchful Margaret Lee.

  Also, the Afghan ambassador to Canada, Jabar Khan, ex-mujahedeen and former Khost loans officer, sat across the aisle from her, skimming through People—the U.S. election special issue. Très étrange. They’d previously hovered together when repatriating dead daughters and sons at CFB Trenton, in solemn advance of the family convoy along the Highway of Heroes to forensics in Toronto. Jabar also threw a terrific levee every Eid, featuring a spread of kebabs with coriander, ketchup, cumin and mayo.

  After Greg had dropped his petit bomb at the Speech from the Throne, Defence had crossed the threshold at Rideau Hall later that afternoon, while she was in the panicked throes of packing for the trek through the stew of Africa, the sudden mini-parachute into the Afghan theatre and soothing jostled feathers at Senate security after Niko’s mini-scene. Defence, without his second, barred Margaret Lee from the meeting. The customary policy and procedure for a sensitive mission involved portentously slim briefing documents in svelte numbered binders, with code-issued pages and secure distribution lists, all kept under lock and key by a fastidious, constantly vetted clerk. In this case, Defence, a University of Waterloo engineer and Brahms buff, had said the mission was too Top Secret even to be committed to print. He’d been convinced to opt for a viceregal “verbal” and to discern her disposition toward the matter on the spot; she was to let him know immediately whether she was “in or out.”

  “I have a choice?” Lise had asked.

  “Really, no,” he said.

  “Will I be in danger?”

  He didn’t mince words. “Hell, yeah.”

  As she reflected on the scale of this op, Defence turned away and said, “So I take this as a oui.”

  Outside the plane window, the stars barely registered in the sky, like useless numbers scraped on an unlucky lotto ticket. Mon Dieu, she was depressed. René was below her, sleeping on Earth, back in Romania. Right then she could have been over the Caspian Sea, or the Black, and it didn’t matter. The pilot, an air force base commander, had invited her to the cockpit, but even his respectful conversation hadn’t distracted her from her concerns.

  And Niko. Becky had promised to treat him like her very own, even touting Exhibit Pablo and his experience with trauma. Dr. Pelletier was back in the Glebe, with twice-weekly sessions on the books. And Lise had sat down with Niko, after René headed back to Europe, and disclosed her conversation about the Corporal with Becky.

  Niko didn’t question anything. Either the meds were already subduing him or he bought the explanation, Lise wasn’t sure which.

  It was truly awful to leave him.

  To avoid small talk with the Kebab King across the aisle, she absorbed the backgrounder—updating herself on whatever the hell NATO, Canada and the gang of goons was doing in Afghanistan. She was unburdened, in a way, since René wasn’t with her; he scoffed at the simple military sentences marching to their self-congratulatory conclusions, at the graphs documenting successful CIMIC operations out of Camp Nathan Smith, the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, the ISAF updates about the number of Afghan girls attending elementary, middle and high school, the unemployed youth joining the ANA or ANP, the upsurge in organic pomegranate grow-ops, and the progress on the construction of the Dahla Dam, which would irrigate the entire province and revitalize the fields framing the Arghandab River—yielding peace, prosperity, microbreweries, vineyards, and so on and so forth. René claimed it wasn’t about al Qaeda or even the Taliban. If it was about al Qaeda, he said NATO would already be across the border in the province of Baluchistan, Pakistan, or drone-bombing downtown Waziristan.

  It was about resources, he always said. Which was what Brett Neeposh had always said too. A pipeline from Turkmenistan, oil from Angot in northern Afghanistan, iron and copper deposits, even opium. And she had to agree, becau
se after her photo ops with the Princess Pats, or standing shawled and sandwiched, hip to hip, between Meena and Hamid Karzai, and hugging the three-year-old Pashtun cherub who had lost half her face to an IED, with opium suppositories shoved up her tiny useless anus by an aunt who couldn’t afford 100 AFNs for proper pain meds, the bulk of the missions were devoted to governmental accords with private corporations, land appropriation, deals that would line the deep pockets of Canadian resource extraction and reconstruction firms, and private security concerns.

  Margaret Lee emerged from the washroom at the front of the jet and ruddered herself toward Lise. She held a metal portfolio case and Lise knew what this meant.

  “Open it on the Herc,” Margaret Lee advised, handing her the case.

  “Bien sûr.” Lise saluted her.

  Margaret Lee passed a fob key in a tacky plastic case.

  Then they were into the descent. It was too dark to see the exoskeleton of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, still studded with building cranes. The sixteen-lane highways rose invisibly out of the desert and drove straight into the sea. The Afghan ambassador lifted his hands, two puppets engaged in silent dialogue, and she saw he was praying.

  And then it was the middle of the night, two a.m., three, and she, son équipe and Jabar bade au revoir to the palm-pressing captain and his crew, to debark at the Camp Mirage supply depot and climb into full battle rattle, combat fatigues—eight-pound helmets and body armour weighing thirty-five pounds. She’d forgotten how heavy, literally, war could be. La guerre, c’est lourd. In the distance, while Dubai sparkled—a business dream, a Disneyland for the primarily blue-collar expat Indians—they were reminded by the base commander about military etiquette and told to follow their leader. Everyone stampeded the bathrooms, because the loos on the Herc were boot camp, a metal seat pronging out of a curtained semicircle. She used the satphone to call Niko and let him know she’d almost made it all the way to her final destination, but he didn’t answer his cell. She called Becky’s cell and Becky couldn’t talk because she was at the boys’ violin recital. This added to Lise’s cumulative list of concerns. They climbed into the looming ass of a C-130 Hercules; they were told that the same plane would be used for a ramp ceremony almost as soon as they landed at KAF.