The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

by Wayne Johnston

  One night in his study, Sir Richard said an election would be called within the year and he needed someone to do the “legwork” for the Liberal Party in the newly created Humber district on the southwest and lower-west coasts. I told him, invoking my walk across the island, that legwork was my specialty and that I would do what he asked if he would support my nomination as the Liberal candidate in Humber district when the election was called.

  “Do a good job there this winter,” Sir Richard said, “and the nomination’s yours.”

  I was in awe of him from that moment on. I had never been on the receiving end of such largesse. He had given me the Humber district nomination as if it were nothing but a trifle. He affected an aristocratic manner, as though his knighthood had been self-conferred, and yet there was something appealing about him. I still believed I put no value on refinement and sophistication, but the fact that he had worked to acquire these qualities, rather than having been born to them, made, I thought, a world of difference.

  I visited almost every settlement in Humber district, no matter how small. Most of the people there had never voted, had not the faintest idea what a political party was or what difference it would make to them if one party instead of another was elected. Only in Corner Brook and a few other larger towns was I able to do some real campaigning. I spoke to lodges, church groups, unions, urging them to vote for the Liberal Party and implying, but never stating outright, that in Humber district, I would be the Liberal candidate.

  From Corner Brook, I wired to Sir Richard that Humber district was ripe for the taking and I was eagerly awaiting his official endorsement of my candidacy, then made my way to a boarding-house.

  On waking the next morning and going downstairs, I was handed by the proprietor a telegram from Sir Richard that read: HAVE CONSIDERED THE POSITION OF THE HUMBER CONSTITUENCY CAREFULLY AND HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT AS THE LIBERAL PARTY HAS VIRTUALLY CREATED THIS DISTRICT IT IS MY DUTY TO OFFER MYSELF AS THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE STOP WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU WOULD MANAGE MY CAMPAIGN STOP SRS.

  I could not remember ever feeling so betrayed, or so foolish. I had been recruited from the ranks of the disposable months in advance for the very purpose I had served. He had known all along that he would run in Humber, the district where people were least likely to remember his first stint as prime minister, since it had not been a district then. When Sir Richard had received my letter of self-recommendation from out of the blue, it must have seemed to him a godsend. I pictured him composing the telegram back home in St. John’s and reading it aloud to an amused Lady Squires.

  I left the boarding-house and walked for several hours, concocting various improbable revenge schemes, fantasizing about answering his telegram with one of my own, announcing my intention to run against him as an independent, which the Tory candidate encouraged me to do, hoping I would split the Liberal vote. I almost convinced myself that over the winter I had so endeared myself to the people of Humber district that I could pull off such an upset. But even if I did, what future would there be for me in politics? There was no question of a man with my pink past ever running as a Tory, and the Liberals would never forgive me if I ran against Sir Richard, no matter how badly I lost. I wired back to St. John’s: NOT FOR ANYONE ELSE WOULD I DO THIS BUT I WILL FOR YOU STOP SMALLWOOD.

  Fielding’s Condensed

  History of Newfoundland

  Chapter Seventeen:

  MUDDENING THE GOVERNOR

  Throughout Sir Thomas Cochrane’s disastrous nine-year reign, certain changes take place in Newfoundland society that are characterized as “advances” by Reeves-reading agitators.

  Roads are built. Agriculture is encouraged. Men till the soil, thereby decreasing the surplus labour pool and bringing merchants perilously close to the brink of raising wages.

  Cochrane redeems himself somewhat, however, by opposing Dr. Carson’s campaign for a local legislature, declaring Newfoundlanders to be too backward a people to govern themselves.

  This constructive criticism is taken in the spirit in which it is intended by all but a minority of Newfoundlanders.

  When the time comes for Cochrane to leave Newfoundland, a great crowd turns out to see him off and there is inaugurated what will become a local tradition performed at the departure for home of each of England’s representatives, known as muddening the governor.

  Later, from England, Cochrane writes: “One might rather have had fond farewells thrown one’s way instead of gobs of mud, but in strange places strange rituals are practised to which one must submit or else give offence to one’s constituency.”

  The Dirt Poor and the Filthy Rich

  MY HUMILIATION BECAME common knowledge, though I played it down as much as I could, saying that the fact that I was still working for Sir Richard was proof enough that I did not feel ill-used. I had unwisely boasted to my father that I would soon be a member of the legislature. This utterance had so terrified him that he tried to mollify fate by assuring me that people like us did not wind up in the legislature. On hearing of my treatment at Sir Richard’s hands, he said betrayal was what came from associating with “the quality.” He also assured me that Sir Richard would, one way or another, pay for his success and the means he had used to acquire it. As if to prove that this was so, my father said he had looked up the word squire in the dictionary and “I’ll be goddamned if it doesn’t mean judge. Another judge, Joe. We have been judged again, boy. This country is plagued with judges.

  “I’m to blame, Joe, I’m to blame,” he obscurely added.

  “Oh, yes, you’re to blame,” my mother said scornfully. “You’re the reason the sun comes up and you’re the reason the sun goes down. You’re the reason it snows and you’re the reason it rains. Nothing can happen, good or bad, that wasn’t caused by you.”

  My mother had no doubt about who was to blame; it was Sir Richard’s “witch of a wife” who, through God only knew what sort of black magic, had prevented me from seeing what Sir Richard was really like. She said it was a well-known fact that Lady Squires was always boasting that she had salvaged her husband’s career, passing on to him advice her spiritualists had passed on to her from Satan.

  “It was her doing. She is an evil, evil woman,” my mother said bitterly, looking at me, driven to tears by the disappointment she read in my eyes. “I’m surprised that you would have anything more to do with them, Joe,” she said, “after what they’ve done to you. After what they’ve done to us.”

  When next I saw Sir Richard after sending him the telegram, he did not seem the least bit awkward or embarrassed. He invited me to dinner and the first thing he said to me was “Did you know that I was the Newfoundland Jubilee Scholar for 1898?”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t.”

  “Well, you have to know these things, Smallwood, if you’re to manage my campaign,” he said. “You can’t sing my praises if you don’t know my accomplishments.” He outlined his accomplishments while I took notes. He had graduated from Methodist College in St. John’s, as had my father. It occurred to me they would have been there at about the same time, though my father had never mentioned it. ‘Friends, as we might have been, had we gone to school together.’ He received his degree in law from Dalhousie Law School and had been made King’s Counsel in 1914 at the age of thirty-four.

  “I lost my first election by five votes, five votes, Smallwood, think of it. November 2, 1908. In Trinity district. I was your age, twenty-eight. Five votes. If three of the people who voted for the other fellow had voted for me, I would have won. Just three. That’s haunted me, I can tell you. I would lie awake nights for months afterwards and think about that house that I decided wasn’t worth a visit because it was so far down the shore, or some old fellow I forgot to wave to when we passed him on the road. Remember Trinity, Smallwood, remember Trinity when you’re out there on the Humber. No house is too far down the shore, no island is too small to bother with. Wave to everyone you see. Even a house with a Tory flag out front can be conve
rted. You should think of every person who’s old enough to vote as the person who holds the balance of power.…”

  He went on and on until I stopped taking notes.

  “Now, there’s the question of how to handle all that” — he waved his hand as if to shoo away a fly — “all that business back in ’23. They said ‘the charges were dropped for lack of evidence,’ which makes it sound like I was guilty but they couldn’t prove it. I don’t like that phrase. Say, if someone brings it up, that I was completely exonerated — ”

  “They won’t know what exonerated means,” I said.

  “Then tell them I was proven innocent,” Sir Richard said.

  The election was called for September. I went back to Humber district to campaign for Sir Richard, who said he could afford to spend only one or at most two days in his own riding, there being so many other ridings he had to visit where victory was not as certain. He knew he would win in Humber, he said, but he wanted to win by a landslide, and my reward for serving as his campaign manager would be proportionate to his margin of victory.

  “Every vote for me makes your future that much brighter, Smallwood, remember that,” he said, though I could not pin him down on exactly what range of rewards he had in mind. “I’ll make it well worth your trouble, you may be sure of that,” he said.

  Lady Squires’s interest in spiritualism proved to be something of a liability during the election campaign. She was frantic with anxiety, constantly seeking reassurance from her spiritualists that she and her husband, after their five years in exile, would be returned to power. Her spiritualists were only too glad to oblige, but she would accept no assurance of success as definitive. As though she was addicted to it, the more reassurance she got, the more she craved. Word got round that while Sir Richard was away campaigning, the Squires’s house was all but overrun with prognosticators and soothsayers of every kind. The Squireses became known among the ruling Conservatives as Witch and Rich, and Fielding in her column dubbed the Liberals the Hocus-Pocus Party, Sir Richard’s best trick, she said, being his ability to make funds from the public treasury disappear without a trace.

  The first thing Sir Richard did every morning was read Fielding’s column, searching, never in vain, for some mention of himself. Not a day passed when Fielding did not make some sort of “dig” at him or Lady Squires, and often her entire column was devoted to them. There was the column, for instance, in which she “described” an interview she had with the Squireses:

  Field Day, February 9, 1928

  I was welcomed at the door by Lady Squires, who said she had spent the morning with her soothsayer, who had been showing her how to tell the future by pawing through the entrails of a goat, hence the blood on her hands, which it seemed would never come off. You look like Lady MacBeth, I quipped, and we both laughed. She told me she was in the study entertaining a mind-reader whom Sir Richard was for some reason anxious to avoid, so the interview would take place in the dining room.

  Sir Richard expressed concern that his wife’s harmless hobby might affect the voters’ view of him, but seemed greatly relieved when I assured him that if they didn’t hold his criminal record against him, it was doubtful they would think any less of him for having a wife who spent her spare time communicating with the dead.

  Lady Squires, her mind-reader having left, joined us shortly after and sat in on the rest of the interview. Asked if she missed being the wife of the country’s prime minister and all the prestige and power that went with it, she said it was all the same to her what her husband did, as long as he was happy. She chuckled appreciatively when I joked that the doll-sized effigy she held on her lap and into which she was poking pins bore a remarkable resemblance to our present prime minister.

  We were then joined by an old friend of mine, Joe Smallwood, and he and I fondly reminisced about our school days. Smallwood, who used to be a socialist, has thrown in his lot with Sir Richard’s Liberals.

  “You might say we’ve formed an alliance of sorts,” Smallwood said. “The dirt poor and the filthy rich.”

  That, in fact, is Smallwood’s nickname for his new employer, Filthy Rich.

  “I love a pun at someone else’s expense,” Smallwood said, and we laughed, as did Sir Richard, eyeing Smallwood good-naturedly.

  Smallwood was on a break from campaigning for Sir Richard in the Humber district, where he himself once thought of running and every frozen inch of which he walked last winter.

  “You have to learn to walk before you can run,” Sir Richard said, smiling tenderly at Smallwood.

  “We’re a pun-loving pair, aren’t we, Sir Richard?” Smallwood said, and Sir Richard nodded.

  When I raised the delicate matter of the charges that were brought against Sir Richard after his last tenure as prime minister, he reminded me that the charges had been dropped and he had never gone to trial.

  “But where there’s smoke, there’s Squires,” I said, laughing, and it was all the pun-loving pair could do to keep from falling on the floor.

  I asked Sir Richard if he thought Smallwood had a future in politics.

  “When it comes to the future, I defer to Lady Squires,” Sir Richard said.

  Her Ladyship said she had recently dreamed of a small wooden cabinet, which she took to mean that Smallwood would one day be prime minister of Newfoundland.

  The high point of the afternoon’s hilarity came when I thought Sir Richard said something about libel and bribery, when in fact what he said was “I have to read the Bible in the library.”

  “She has a following, this Fielding woman,” Sir Richard said one night when I joined him in his study. “I’m told the Telegram has nearly doubled its subscription rate since she started writing for them.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I believe she’s caught on with a certain kind of reader.”

  “That’s just it. We’ve got the working-class vote,” Sir Richard said. “It’s the people who can read I’m not so sure about.”

  “Fielding’s gripe is with the world,” I said, “not you per se. She gives those two Tories, Monroe and Alderdice, as good as she gives you. She calls them the kissing cousins — ”

  “I don’t care what she calls Monroe and Alderdice,” Sir Richard said. “It’s what she calls me that I don’t like. I’m told that you know her.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Ehmmm, yes, I do. We’re not great friends or anything. We more or less went to school together. When I was at Bishop Feild, she was at Bishop Spencer.”

  “Do you think you could talk to her, ask her to let up on me a bit?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. If I were to ask Fielding to let up on you, she’d say so in her column.”

  I tried to placate him by playing down her column’s significance, saying it was so laden with irony and puns that no one understood it anyway. Sir Richard might have been convinced had the phrase “Where there’s smoke, there’s Squires” not been picked up by the Tory government, Prime Minister Alderdice using it at every opportunity to invoke Sir Richard’s scandal-racked administration. Signs bearing that slogan were printed up and plastered all over St. John’s and in ridings throughout the country.

  One night when I went to his house, Sir Richard said he had “found out” about what happened between Fielding and me at Bishop Feild, how she had tried to frame me for something she had done and had confessed only when threatened with a caning.

  “That’s not quite — ” I began, then thought better of correcting him before I knew who the source of his misinformation was. “I mean, who told you about that?”

  “He’ll be here in a moment,” Sir Richard said. “Together I think the two of you can do quite a job on Fielding.” Five minutes later there was a knock on the door, which Cantwell answered.

  “Show him in,” Sir Richard said.

  I did not recognize him at first, he had changed so much since I had last seen him, changed for the better, of course, as how else could Prowse have changed? He still wore that collusive, a
ren’t-we-a-pair-of-rascals grin of his. He had filled out but was not fat. He was a broad-shouldered, robust, confidence-exuding six-footer to whom success still came, I had no doubt, as a matter of course. He was the Prowse I had imagined upon reading the letter to the Backhomer in which he had paid his respects to Reeves in the slightly patronizing manner of a student who now occupied a station in life far superior to that of his former headmaster. I remembered how much of Fielding’s journal had been addressed to Prowse. Dear Prowse. Dear Prowse. He was wearing a wedding ring, I saw. He looked me up and down as if to say that I had turned out pretty much as he expected. We shook hands wordlessly.

  “No introductions necessary, I see,” Sir Richard said, as if we had hugged each other. “Prowse took his degree in law from Dalhousie just like me, Smallwood.” Prowse smiled. Sir Richard was under his spell, or else he would have seen in that smile what I saw: the hint of scornful amusement that the older man put so much store by such things as two men having graduated from the same school.

  Sir Richard had Prowse explain what had been done to Fielding, and why, back at Bishop Feild. Prowse related his story with relish, sitting forward on the edge of his chair and demonstrating how “we boys” had dragged Fielding into the training centre, where, under threat of flogging, she confessed. “I wasn’t going to flog her, of course,” Prowse said, “but she didn’t know that.” I wondered how Fielding would feel if she heard him lie like that. I wished she had. Prowse looked at me, apparently not worried that I would contradict this version of events, that I would remind him in front of Squires that Fielding had confessed before the threat was made. His complacency unnerved me and I said nothing.

  Sir Richard roared with laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before, you two?” Sir Richard said. “This is just the kind of thing we need. Fielding, the great moralist, so pure she will not take sides, kicked out of Bishop Spencer.”