What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  I can’t stop my trembling. I’m a blade of grass and they’re the wind, or the reapers come.

  To reason well and be sympathetic, so instructs The Storehouse of Thought and Expression, and I remember that it is all up to me. I have one chance, and one chance only, to send my story in a new direction.

  “I’d like to tell you more about Alan Macaulay,” I say.

  The chairman, to my surprise, folds his hands on the table and says, “What would you like to tell us?”

  I imagine myself dressed in a good suit with a watch-chain across the vest and a stiff collar circling my neck. My hands, in my pockets, hold back coattails. I stand with legs apart and slightly bent, my hair is neatly combed. I rock slightly on my well-polished shoes (Begone paper slippers!). I’m wearing spectacles from years of reading and thinking and studying and arguing in front of juries. I begin.

  “You have in front of you all that I can tell about how Alan Macaulay was sent to jail, but you have not heard about his attempts to have his conviction overturned.”

  There’s a general bustle of papers as they confirm what I’ve just said.

  The lawyer says, “You believe there are grounds on which this Alan Macaulay should have been pardoned?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “You’re saying there was a grave miscarriage of justice?” It’s not hard to behold the sneer that lurks within that argument-honed face. He wants me to overstate the case so that I show myself a fool, and he doesn’t want to be met on equal terms on his own territory.

  “I am saying, sir, that there were grounds, in my opinion, for remission. If you care to examine the dates involved”—more general shuffle of papers—“you’ll note that Macaulay was sentenced, jailed and executed all within three months. These days that would be considered…”

  “Barbarous!” the woman says. With her flushed cheeks she appears much younger.

  “Barbarous,” I agree. “It goes without saying that we cannot turn back the clock….”

  “I’ll go along with that,” the lawyer murmurs under his breath. I stop, turn politely to him in case there is more. He gives me a sour go-ahead nod. “As I was saying, there is no means of changing what happened, but it is still important, I believe, to clear Alan Macaulay’s name, for the sake of his family.”

  “You know them?” the senator says in a high, incredulous tone.

  “An execution for murder leaves its stain on a family. It is not so very long ago as these things go, less than thirty years. Macaulay’s mother may still be living. Almost certainly some of his brothers and friends are. Those who weren’t killed in the last Great War, that is.”

  Solemnity descends on us, and I have them in my palm, I think—this Board used to forcing its will on whomever it likes. Although I’m already over my allotted time, no one glances at his watch. The vast army of the war dead march through our minds.

  I lay it out for them: the petitions and letters and testimonials from Scotland; the request from the minister of justice to re-examine evidence; the slipshod nature of replies to this request; the further petitions signed by hundreds of citizens in Scotland and Canada begging that Alan not be hanged; the letter from the Scottish solicitor that so clearly put somebody’s back up; the incontrovertible evidence of the dates—the rushed procedures—that shows that a determination was reached by the Governor General in Council before all the evidence was in; and the pièce de resistance—the urgent telegram from the well-known Presbyterian minister David Knox to his dear friend the Solicitor General, Arthur Meighen, pleading, “There are extenuating circumstances!” All of it ignored in order that a man be cut down in his prime.

  When I finish, there’s quiet.

  The chairman clears his throat. “Yes, it does seem odd that nothing was done at the time.”

  “May I take it then that the Board will take this matter under advisement?”

  “Which matter?” the stickler lawyer says.

  “To have the conviction quashed and Macaulay pardoned.”

  “That’s not why we’re here,” Pete Cooper pipes up from the sidelines. And the spell is broken. Now they feel awkward at having listened to me, a purported madman, and of having had their hearts and minds changed. I hold my breath.

  “I’m sure the Board doesn’t want to waste any more of its time listening to this nonsense,” Cooper says. I smile to myself—he’s gone too far. They’ll remember his involvement with the rabbitry question. They turn, once more a unit, look down their noses, and prepare to put him in his place.

  “We’ll make up our own minds,” the woman says.

  “This isn’t a public gallery,” the chairman says.

  “You’re not on our speaker’s list,” the lawyer says.

  The senator contents himself with a “harrumph.”

  The woman addresses me. “Mr. Grey. You’ve been very persuasive. You’ve given us much to think about today. Our immediate question, though, is what to do with you!” Her smile softens any rebuke. “It’s my opinion, and I’ll have to consult with my colleagues, that looking into the case of Alan Macaulay might do some good. If a wrong has been done, then let’s right it. Where’s the harm in it? The publicity might be advantageous. I congratulate you on thinking about someone other than yourself. But we must return to the matter now before us.

  “Dr. Frank?”

  Dr. Frank scrapes to his feet.

  “Dr. Frank,” she continues, “you were Sandy Grey’s primary physician when he came to us. What is your opinion now?”

  “I’m still of the belief that this young man can be helped. We were on the road to completion of the investigation of the basis of his neurosis when there was the occurrence of this unfortunate incident.”

  “Yes,” the chairman says. “Let’s not forget what brought him here in the first place: the unprovoked attack on his father.”

  “Apparently unprovoked,” Dr. Frank says mildly.

  “You took a risk with this patient,” the lawyer says.

  “A considered risk. My trust hasn’t been misplaced.”

  “He’s obsessive and he…”

  “He’s completed a comprehensive case study, made himself useful, exactly as I’d asked him to. He demonstrates considerable intellectual and emotional acumen.”

  “In your opinion,” the lawyer says.

  “Well, I am the doctor,” Dr. Frank says.

  Now Dr. Love’s on his feet. He’s noticed what the others haven’t: I’m about done in. I won’t be able to hold myself together much longer. “Are we finished? I have another appointment,” he says. There’s a general epidemic of watch checking as Dr. Love gathers up his doctor’s bag, overcoat, gloves, hat.

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Our chairman gives a dismissal wave. “You may go.”

  “But you should watch that impulsive behaviour,” the lawyer, the blackguard, eager for the last word, says to me.

  Dr. Love has my elbow and the door shuts behind us. “Steady, steady now, Sandy, just a little longer. You’ve done well.”

  —

  I’m back in my top-tier cell, resting on my cot. I’ve had lunch—chicken noodle soup and a bun and coffee—which has helped to settle me. I’m thinking over what Dr. Love said on the way back: that I’d stood up to them and I’d demonstrated my reasoning abilities, my socialization, my ability to withstand pressure. “You’ve done what many of them couldn’t,” he told me. “They’d crumble, most of them, under such a mental assault. You don’t belong here, it’s evident.”

  “Here?”

  “In the East Wing, Sandy.” He touched my arm. “We’ll take one step at a time, shall we?”

  “Dr. Love?”

  “Yes, Sandy?”

  “Could I have paper and pencil again? I’d like to do some writing.”

  —

  One step. One step at a time. A voice isn’t a voice until it is fully expressed, so instructs The Storehouse. Any notion can be divided into smaller parts or be shown to be part of a bigger one. Th
is applies to both the concrete and abstract. It’s only natural that Alan Macaulay wants one more crack at the subject of his life and death.

  Och aye. Och aye. Och aye. It’s like a tap dripping, this mournful Scottish voice. It’s been at me full force ever since I met with the Board. Alan Macaulay wants me to fill in the blanks, to flesh out the bare bones that I presented to the Board on his behalf. Not fair. Not fair, the voice wails. I try to stop my ears against it. I grit my teeth and begin the hard work of organizing my thoughts. It’s a relief when the young guard delivers a notebook and pencil with my supper.

  Part V: My Sad Life

  I had never expected to find myself in such a situation. In the dank, cold jail cell, which was the last home I would know, I understood, as never before, my choices. In the short time left to me, I could attend to the needs of my soul, or I could fight. There wasn’t time enough for both.

  I spent a day during which I revisited, in my mind, and said goodbye to, all I held near and dear in life. Goodbye to Peggy Moffat, love, marriage and children. Farewell to a thriving furniture business in the New World with my new friend, Frank. So long to the prospects of an historical mention in the catalogues of botanical discoveries. Godspeed to old friends who knew and trusted me without question. Even if my hopes were to be realized and I were to be pardoned, my life would never be the same. I’d be launched—one way or the other—either into the cosmos (or as the Reverend Duncan would have it, to heaven or hell) or into another form of reinvention. Cut off, through shame from my family…and tied to my own loose ends.

  With a clean slate, I dusted off my hands and set to work.

  Within three weeks, sworn affidavits witnessed by the provost and two magistrates, solicited by telegram, had arrived from my mother and brothers, from three of my friends and from the family doctor. I do not mean to be critical, but I believe they—each of them—took the wrong tack, choosing to emphasize that I had tried to kill myself with laudanum and that afterwards I’d been a different man. My mother referred to my “frequent curious turns of mind”; William Watson to my being subsequently “restless, depressed in mind and in a dazed condition”; George Falconer wrote of my “rambling and incoherent manner.”

  What no one took the trouble to point out was that this had been an aberration! One that could, with little difficulty, be explained by my ruined arm and hand and the loss of my employment and self-respect as a man!

  I wept when I read these documents—not out of anger, but from knowledge of the wasted effort that lay behind them: the meetings in the village hall, in the manse, or in the church itself where all agreed as to a strategy to follow and to which all directed their minds. Wrong! Wrong! If I’d been there, I would have asked them to ask themselves if any of them had ever considered suicide when they’d been young: for it’s a truth I’ve often observed that the boundless enthusiasms of youth are perfectly matched by youth’s boundless despair. It’s only as we age and our dreams diminish that we understand life’s intrinsic preciousness….

  The minister of justice inquired as to whether or not I’d been examined as to my sanity, although it was evident that this would go nowhere. My conduct from the time of my arrest onward had shown explicitly that not only was I sane but I was willing to take responsibility, so far as it was mine, for the accident.

  I wrote to the minister. I pointed out the errors in my trial, the failures of my counsel in calling evidence, the various erroneous statements admitted into the record and so on. I wrote, too, about Kennedy and his role in the affair and I asked for a pardon not only for my own sake but for my poor mother’s.

  My letter and the other affidavits from Scotland were placed before His Royal Highness the Governor General in Council.

  Over two hundred and fifty men who had known me from Shawnigan, and the road gang work, and from the hotels and shops in the area sent a petition. I was moved by the kindness of those who had taken up pen in my cause. But here, again, what was meant to help, hindered. The petition stated they believed that I had “committed the deed while temporarily insane”! The basis of the petition, thus, was not the fundamental miscarriage of justice, but my state of mind!

  The Reverend Duncan wrote of my mother’s heartbreak and of the fine Christian conduct of the rest of my family: this was no doubt helpfully meant (as was everything else), but—pardon a murderer on the basis of his family’s church attendance! Duncan was too unworldly a man to do me much good.

  It was then November. I was brought out every few days for exercise in the courtyard. I’d been kept apart from my fellow prisoners, but they knew who I was. One managed to show me where they would soon construct the gallows. When he did this, fear creased my bowels and I soiled myself. I had not thought of my execution as being near at hand.

  I was led back inside and given a bucket of water to clean myself. It was Guy Fawkes’ Night: I remembered how, as a boy, I’d collected rubbish for the bonfire; how we’d built the fire at the end of the village street; how when it was lit, it coloured the whitewashed walls of the houses, and threw an oily bright stain over the park and sea; and how its smoke and stink and fire obscured the church. We’d danced like pagans around it. On one of those nights, as a young man, I’d taken my first girl.

  I spent that night in my cell enshrouded in the black weight of my sins. I suffered until I saw that no god could be so cruel as to punish the creature he’d created in this way. Ergo cogito sum. I think and therefore I make what I am. By morning, I was a non-believer.

  My mother wrote: “It will break my heart if the death penalty is carried out. As it is, I am beside myself with grief.”

  I could read between the lines. She’d already been bereaved, she was only quibbling about time.

  It was at this late date that Batterbury finally put in a word for me. As well as joining the chorus as to my “peculiarity” and emphasizing that I had once attempted suicide, he mentioned that “the judge charged very strongly against the prisoner.” Hurrah! I thought when I read this. I read on. But he did not dispute the judge’s charge or point out why and in what way the charge may have been mishandled. To my mind, Batterbury’s letter exuded fear of upsetting the apple cart, although he may have wanted to do the right thing.

  I imagined Batterbury, sleepless, picturing the letter’s consequences. Of which there were none.

  I lay awake anticipating the sequence of events that would take me to my death. What time of day would it come? How much warning would I be given? Would I feel the cold (it was set for January)? This mattered to me: I did not want to tremble in front of the witnesses. I did not want anyone to report that Alan Macaulay had died afraid. I began to plan my last words.

  In late November a petition containing the names of over fifteen hundred citizens—nearly the entire adult male population of the borough—was sent to the government. Although the issue of my so-called insanity was now dropped, this petition appealed on the grounds of my family’s “respectability”! As if such niceties would have any bearing! Oh, the naivety of my stay-at-home countrymen.

  I read the names and addresses on each page—I knew each one—and the signatories were not exclusively male. I looked for the name of Peggy Moffat, and I found it. The woman I’d hoped to marry had joined with the others to beg for my life. I felt my heart collapse with shame.

  We had reached December. The days were short and the nights were long. When I went outside, and I paused to break the ice on a puddle of water with the toe of my boot, the other men came to me and slipped candy and chocolate into my pockets, as if I were a child in need of treats. War news dribbled in from the guards. Off the Falkland Islands, a British squadron under command of Rear Admiral Sturdee sank three German cruisers which had destroyed the Good Hope and Monmouth on November 1. The escape from this battle of Dresden was on everyone’s lips. All over the world, men were dying and suddenly the rumour went round that we would all be released to fight. Why keep healthy young men in jail when there was need for them elsewhere? If
I was to die, why not in a trench? It made sense! My expectations recovered.

  I was not informed that a letter had already gone out from the sheriff’s office asking as to when to send for the executioner from Toronto.

  So little time!

  Night letters and telegrams clicked back and forth over the wires. The various provincial police officers involved in my case were asked to send “all particulars possible…which might have a bearing on the case….” One replied that I drank, another that he “could not add anything to the existing information.”

  A letter arrived from the Scottish solicitor to whom my mother and family had turned in their desperation, castigating Canadian officials for their mishandling and carelessness in my case:

  If the statements of Alan Macaulay are true, or if there is even a particle of truth in them, the matter should be fully investigated as no man can be condemned without a fair trial. I have to request therefore that you give very careful and serious consideration to the matter and order a retrial of the prisoner for the alleged crime.

  Failing this, I trust you will exercise your prerogative, commute the sentence of death and substitute a term of imprisonment. I shall be glad to receive satisfactory intelligence from you for submission to the prisoner’s mother and brothers who are anxiously awaiting the same.

  Did he not perceive the insult? Nothing could have been better designed, with its dismissal of Canadian justice, and its assumption of superiority of judgment, to raise the hackles of the minister of justice. To turn stubbornness into intransigence. A final telegram was sent on my behalf in late December from the Presbyterian minister who had come to visit me in prison. As a personal friend of the Solicitor General, his plea was on the basis of common decency, that I appeared to him “not to be a criminal.” Not even that cry, human to human, was enough.

  On the last day of December letters and telegrams went out from His Royal Highness the Governor General that in my case, the law was to be allowed to take its course.

  I awoke, that first day of a new year, to hear the carpenters in the yard hard at work on the scaffold. I prayed, in my fear, to the God in whom I no longer believed. I waited for a last minute commutation of my sentence.