CHAPTER 8
A PLUMP, HAPPY PIGEON
“My dominant emotion was jealousy … that she could be so free.”
THE PIERRE CHARACTER IN THE PLAY MAGGIE AND PIERRE, 1980, BY LINDA GRIFFITHS
Now began the happiest years of my life. All the uncertainty, all the loneliness, the sense of having no work and no purpose, faded away. I became, at last, the person I had always wanted to be. The relief, to me and to those around me, was enormous. There were a few hiccups to start with, but those I dealt with—or at least, I thought I did.
Though Dr. Fieve had told me that I should see a psychiatrist as soon as I returned to Ottawa, I hadn’t really taken in how carefully the lithium would need to be monitored. I was casual about making an appointment, perhaps because I was now, for the first time in many years, calm—too calm, as it turned out. And also extremely hungry. From the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I switched off my light at night, I thought about food. Dragging myself sleepily from my bed in the mornings, I would start longing to eat. At night, I woke from deep sleeps ravenously hungry and would get up and make myself toast and hot chocolate. When the boys were with me, I baked cakes and biscuits and cookies and pies, as if my life depended on it.
As the days passed, I sank further into a contented stupor. Those of my friends who noticed became worried, but as I made fewer and fewer efforts to contact anyone, I grew fat, and then fatter, largely on my own. None of my clothes fit. This was not life—hibernation, more like it.
Then came the day I was too embarrassed to go out; I noticed that I had begun to shake. At first this occurred just when I lifted something up and I could usually control it, but then I shook if I tried to use a knife or drink from a cup. I did seek medical advice.
The levels of lithium were checked, found to be too high and decreased. That was what accounted for my huge weight gain: many psychotropic drugs cause weight gain by slowing metabolism or fuelling appetite—many taking these drugs can’t seem to get enough carbohydrates and sugars. Not all doctors warn their patients to watch their diet, and what happens is this: a depressed patient gets fat, and the flab only worsens the depression. Many patients don’t need to take these drugs for years, but some patients do. Since I was complaining of lethargy, a new psychiatrist recommended an antidepressant called Tofranil. Seeing my size, he urged me to go on a diet, something I found virtually impossible. Lowering the dose of lithium had stopped the shaking. From time to time, I would catch sight of my bulk in a mirror and make strenuous efforts to cut the medication down further. Within days my head would begin to clear, but withdrawal symptoms followed, I felt sick and I returned to the old dose.
As Christmas 1979 approached, I felt so comatose that I realized I was not capable of making the necessary preparations. The idea of finding a tree, decorating it, and shopping for and cooking a Christmas dinner was inconceivable. A friend urged me to ring my mother in Vancouver.
“Mom,” I said weakly over the phone. “I don’t think I can manage without you. Will you come?” She was with me the next day and set about keeping me busy with baking, buying presents and decorating the house.
Aside from our New Years’s Eve drama, relations with Pierre had been going well. We had a wonderful Christmas all together, as a family; I had money in the bank, and I was once again imagining that I might get back together with him. We had settled down to a routine of sharing the boys, and if I slept most of the time they were with him, I somehow found the strength to stay awake when they were with me.
For the first nine months of my return to Ottawa, Pierre had been out of government, living in Stornoway—the official residence of the leader of the Opposition since 1950. The two-storey house in the Rockcliffe Park district of Ottawa—the setting for a great many embassies—was built in 1914 for a grocery-store magnate. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s seventh prime minister, was a godfather to one of the original owner’s sons and he had apparently visited often. The house was called Stornoway by its second occupants; their ancestral home had been in a town by that name on an island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The house is bright and well appointed, but I felt no sense of belonging there. Just as I had at 24 Sussex, I lodged in the attic until I moved into my new house.
When Pierre had moved out of 24 Sussex, all our things were carefully packed away into boxes and stored in Stornoway, but Pierre did not bother to unpack most of his as he did not expect to be out of government long. He was, however, frantic when he discovered that a valuable painting by the French cubist painter Georges Braque was missing, along with a precious jar of black truffles. He foraged, like one possessed, in his boxes, but there was no sign of either.
One day, some time later, I was unpacking my own crates in my new house when I found both the painting and the truffles concealed among my own things. Pierre was overjoyed. I discovered that they had, in fact, been put there on purpose by Hildegarde, the senior maid at 24 Sussex. She had despaired when she realized that I was moving into a new house with barely a single possession of my own, and she thought she would slip a few things into my boxes. Pierre had made it absolutely clear when we parted that there wasn’t much that I was entitled to.
“After all,” he pointed out, “you can’t have fifty–fifty of 24 Sussex—since that’s not ours.” What he didn’t add was that he didn’t really want me to have fifty–fifty of our wedding presents either, with the result that I had come away with almost nothing.
Pierre had been right to think that his period in the political wilderness would be brief. Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservative government had fallen after a defeat on a motion of non-confidence, and new elections had been called. Pierre’s exile had mellowed and humbled him into running the best election campaign of his life, and the results had proved it. He had taken 44 per cent of the vote—only 1 percentage point less than in his heyday of 1968. On March 3, 1980, Pierre and a thirty-two-member cabinet were sworn into office at Rideau Hall. Pierre was again prime minister.
The campaign had done something else. Since he had had to be away so much, I had sole care of the boys for a lot of that winter. That this arrangement had gone so well, that I was clearly proving myself to be a responsible and loving mother, made possible our agreement to share custody of the boys.
Spring approached slowly, very slowly, and I began to come out of hibernation. I felt a bit fitter, though I was still desperate for a job. A possible film of my book, Beyond Reason (published in 1979), was being talked about, but I refused even to discuss starring in it, knowing instinctively that I did not want to relive a past that I had truly put behind me.
Then one day came a call from Ottawa’s local television station, CJOH, asking me to participate in a telethon to raise funds for the Civic Hospital. It turned out that this was something that I was good at, and when the producer asked me to demonstrate cooking a Japanese meal in a half-hour special, I was delighted to do that too.
Out of this volunteer work came a more serious job invitation. Not long before, I would have been offended at the idea of appearing on anything less than Good Morning America. Now I was only too happy to accept a job as co-host with Bill Luxton on CJOH’s regular weekday show, Morning Magazine. The job, I reasoned, would introduce me to the world of everyday television, earn me some money, provide me with a regular job and perhaps lead to other things. Most important of all, I was grateful and profoundly happy to be working.
I wasn’t due to start work for some months, and that invitation acted like a wakeup call. When I looked in the mirror, what I could see was a little, very round, very plump pigeon. This was not what the producers wanted.
So one day I got up, said enough is enough and stopped taking the lithium. That was the hardest thing I have ever done. I threw away all my pills. Pierre, suspecting nothing, took the children off to Harrington Lake. Then I closed my front door and weathered the storm.
For ten days, I sweated constantly, I was sick, I had diarrhea. I felt weak, cold and shivery.
I was dizzy and paranoid. But I did it. The day came when I woke up feeling better. My head was clear and I no longer felt sick.
Now I needed to get thin. I started a ferocious diet, went running and swimming every day. I am lucky in being able to lose weight quickly. Within six weeks, I was fit and a great deal thinner.
Then came a totally improbable invitation. A Japanese nightclub owner wanted me to come to Tokyo to open a new club, and he was willing to pay the staggering sum of $20,000 for the job. I was a bit suspicious—so much money to do so little? But I needed the money, and Japan was one of the countries in which I felt happiest. A wealthy real estate developer was planning to invest in a club; he hoped to fly me, first class, to Tokyo, where I would make three half-hour personal appearances at his discotheque. The Japanese, he was reported as saying, “think of you as one of the foremost spokeswomen of your generation.” How could I refuse? It didn’t occur to me that things were not as they seemed.
I went to find Pierre to discuss my plans for the Japanese trip, and he seemed pleased that I was doing so well. I remember saying to him at the time words that would later fill me with horror. “Psychiatry as I experienced it,” I told Pierre, “is no more than a gigantic illusion.”
I believed myself totally well and I forgot all about Dr. Fieve’s warnings. All this talk of manic depression had been absurd. It was just as I had thought: my former life had been mad, not me. That life had made me lonely and down one day, frenetic and busy the next. Yet again, denial was playing its part. There was nothing wrong with me, only with everyone else. And so, for a while, it turned out.
On March 4, 1980—my ninth wedding anniversary, as it happened—I left for Japan. My Japanese hosts had sent me two first-class tickets, for myself and my sister Jan (who came along to keep me company), and a cheque for $4,000, some of which I used to buy new clothes. We were met at the airport by limousines, two charming young female interpreters and our escort, a good-looking young Japanese man driving his own silver-blue Mercedes. We were told that he would look after us during our stay. Our lodging was the presidential suite in the Hotel New Otani. Photographers were kept at a discreet distance. Everyone was courteous, charming and generous.
So began four days that were as enjoyable as they were bizarre. I was thinking of writing a Japanese cookbook and had brought my cameras with me. My hosts arranged that I should be taken everywhere that interested me. On the second evening came my first guest appearance. I had expected crowds, photographers, publicity. Instead, I spent half an hour sitting on a sofa in a fairly modest drinking club high up in a skyscraper, making desultory conversation with a small gathering of Japanese dignitaries. My next two appearances followed the same course. I asked about the music and the customers, only to be told that they were still waiting for their liquor and music licences.
I had also been invited to do a television interview, which I feared would match all the hostility I had experienced with the British and North American press. But the interviewer could not have been more charming. Did I like Japanese food? How many children did I have? What would my book on Japanese food be like? This was all very mystifying.
I spent my days enjoying myself, visiting Tokyo’s markets and taking photographs. An unofficial visit had also been arranged with Madame Shigeko Ohira, the prime minister’s wife, over cups of tea with Jun Ashida, Japan’s foremost dress designer. Moichi Tanabe, a noted Japanese writer who also founded a bookstore chain in Japan, took me to a restaurant where we were served thin slices of lobster and a nest of noodles full of delicious fish. When I had my final encounter with the developer, he tactfully slipped an envelope containing the remaining fee into my hand.
Only on the very last day did everything become clear. My invitation had just been a front. Beyond Reason, which had caused such a stir and so much scandal when it was published in Canada, had been bought by a Japanese publisher and was now being launched. Knowing that I would never have agreed to a publicity tour, the Japanese publishers had had the clever idea of hiding it behind something that I would do—namely, open a discreet club. I felt only a moment of annoyance. I had had a wonderful time, and I laughed when I looked carefully through all the photographs, taken day after day by a man I had assumed to be the developer’s photographer. In every caption appeared the words “Beyond Reason.”
I returned to Ottawa feeling rich, appreciated and laden down with presents. My reunion with the boys was happy. Leaving my suitcases unpacked, my cameras scattered around and my fur coat on the bed, I took the boys as a treat to see The Black Stallion. We got home at about nine o’clock, and I was irritated to see that the place was in even more of a mess than I remembered. There was chaos indeed. In our absence, the house had been burgled. My first thought was for the boys’ security. As calmly as possible, not to frighten them, I tucked them all up in my bed, closed the door and called the children’s security force, who were parked as usual outside our door after we got back from the cinema.
The burglars had been very thorough. All my cameras were gone, together with the undeveloped film—effectively nixing my Japanese cookbook. The suitcase with all the presents had vanished. So had the Andrew Grima gold pin studded with diamonds that the queen had given me on her state visit to Canada in 1974, along with a valuable and charming gold cross that Pierre had had specially made for me one Christmas. My $20,000 fisher fur coat was missing.
When I reported the theft to Pierre, he was very droll in his response: “Well, Margaret, it was a magnificent coat—but you no longer live a magnificent life.”
(Somewhat to my shame, the jewellery turned up some years later when I was searching for Christmas wrapping paper in my basement. As I pulled a roll off a shelf, a knapsack fell out from behind it. I unzipped it and found all the missing jewellery, which I myself had put there and forgotten all about. But the fur coat was never found).
After Pierre had moved to Stornoway, protection for both him and the boys had virtually ceased, but now that he was back in office, new arrangements would need to be made, especially in light of the burglary. While in the past I had hated and dreaded the guards, now I welcomed them. As long as the boys were with me, I had a police car parked constantly outside my front door. Police accompanied us while we shopped or went to the movies, and each boy, when on his own, had his own guard.
Justin, who was becoming an accomplished skier, took a guard from the RCMP security detail (“the children’s squad,” we called it) along with him on the slopes. Pierre, me, the three boys: we all had designations when security communicated with each other on their walkie-talkies. Pierre was Maple One, I was Maple Two, and the boys were Maples Three, Four and Five.
Security tightened still more when, not long afterwards, John Lennon was murdered in New York and there were fears that other cranks might copy the murderer. Though I resisted turning my house into Fort Knox, complete with iron grilles and gates, I did agree to stronger locks and reinforced doors, and I soon learned to appreciate the joys of not having to park my own car on a freezing day with three cold and impatient small boys in tow.
The protection also made me feel a lot safer. One extremely cold snowy day in midwinter, I was at home with a friend, Gro Southam. We were sitting talking when the bell went. I opened the front door and there was a dishevelled, barefoot man who spoke almost no English but managed to explain that he had seen a picture of me in the papers and that I had looked very sympathetic. He put his foot in the door and began to push his way in. At this moment, Gro, who is forceful, rushed up behind me, edged him out and slammed the door. We then used the newly installed black phone—one connected directly to the police—and within minutes squad cars were racing down the street. The man was found not far away, wandering in his bare feet through the snow. He turned out to be a Polish émigré with mental problems. The whole episode taught me how sensible our precautions were.
The moment had now come to talk to the boys about our lives. Justin was eight, Sacha six and Michel four, and they be
haved like all brothers do. Justin was the golden boy, very bright and quick and loving, though he tended to lead the others astray; Sacha was disciplined and serious, like Pierre; and Michel was always cheerful and lively. We had been able to get away without explanation until now because one of us could always be away “working.”
Before that moment, I had thought—from time to time and rather wistfully—of returning to Pierre. Not long ago I found a letter that I wrote to him in the summer of 1982 but never sent. “I am a happy woman,” I had written. “I am not turning to you in desperation and loneliness but rather in a positive, loving need … Do you think we could begin to even think about reconciliation, Pierre? I would do anything I could to allow the possibility of us all being together again as our whole family. I’m not too old to even think of adding to our size—but what a dreamer I am!” It was not to be.
For the moment, we had settled into a pattern and we both agreed that it was better for the boys if they understood what was going on. Pierre and I had had a few sessions with a family counsellor, which cleared both our minds and proved to us how fundamentally different we were from each other. Together, we explained to the boys that while Mom and Dad would always remain friends, we were better off living in two separate homes. This talk was especially hard on Sacha, and I hated having to tell him. But as the counsellor put it, Pierre and I were like two trains running in the same direction but on parallel tracks and those tracks would never converge.
Meanwhile, Pierre maintained discretion. When reporters asked him to comment on the state of his marriage, he turned the question around and asked them to talk about the state of their marriages. Asked about his party-girl wife, he said only, “She’s a good woman,” and he accepted part of the blame. In his book Memoirs, he conceded that he was in his fifties when he was learning about marriage, parenthood and the workings of politics, all simultaneously—”So perhaps it was a little too much for me and, regrettably, I didn’t succeed that well.”
Changing My Mind Page 16