The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

by Wayne Johnston

For a while it worked. The more tractable part of the mob, the rear one-third of it, stood aside when she prodded lightly at them with her cane. I followed her, my hand clinging to the belt of her overcoat, hiding behind her lest I be recognized. She tried to make her way to the front steps, but everyone else was trying to do the same, and we were gradually pushed to one side as the mob surged forward.

  “We’ll never get in through the front,” Fielding shouted. “We’ll have to try the side.” We doubled back and went along the fence, where the going was easier because the crowd was thinner. We made our way past the west corner. Fielding put her cap back on, tucked her hair up under it, buttoned up her coat. She looked like a ringleader-sized man.

  There was a door without a handle on the side of the building. We pounded on it; Fielding tried to break it down. “We already tried it,” said a man who mistook us for fellow rioters. “Someone’s gone off to get an axe.”

  “I can go up the drainage pipe,” I said. “It’s not that high.”

  “I might as well go with you,” Fielding said. As the two of us, Fielding second, began to scale the pipe, a clump of men still believing us to be of their faction gathered to cheer us on and a couple of them even gave Fielding’s rump a hoist to get her started. I had little trouble shinnying up the pipe, but I could hear it creaking with Fielding’s weight and that of the men who had started up after her.

  “Smallwood,” she gasped. I looked down. She was hugging the pipe, leaning her forehead against it, eyes closed, face beet red.

  “Go back,” I said. She shook her head.

  “Resting,” she said breathlessly, a lit cigarette at the corner of her mouth. I kept going. Just as I was climbing in through a broken window of the main chamber, I was set upon by a member of the constabulary, who tried to push me back out.

  “I’ve come to help Sir Richard,” I shouted, clinging to the window sill with both hands, which the constable eyed, billy club raised to strike. “I’m Joe Smallwood,” I said.

  “Smallwood?” I heard a voice I recognized as Sir Richard’s say from inside.

  “Yes,” I shouted just in time to freeze the constable in mid-swing.

  “Let him in, Byrne, let him in,” I heard another man say. The constable pulled me inside.

  “The woman behind me is with me, too,” I said, “but the men below her are part of the mob.” The constable looked down.

  “They’re all men,” he said. I checked to make sure that Fielding was still there.

  “That first one is Miss Fielding of the Telegram,” I said.

  A man I recognized as Chief Inspector Hutchings of the ’Stab joined the constable and me as we helped Fielding in through the window, after which she collapsed on the floor, clutching her chest, breath surging from her as if she had been immersed in ice-cold water. I knelt beside her.

  “Are you all right?” I said. She nodded.

  “Catch … breath … be all right,” she wheezed.

  “We’ve got to pry that drainage pipe loose or they’ll all come in this way,” Hutchings said.

  As the leading edge of the mob was progressing up the pipe, we looked about for something we could use as a lever and settled on the Speaker’s mace, the narrow end of which barely fit between the building and the drainage pipe. Fielding recovered, and with all four of us pulling on it, the mace dislodged the top joint of the pipe, making it impossible for anyone to climb beyond the first storey. The man farthest up the pipe shook his fist at us. “We’re coming back with ladders,” he said.

  All this time, Sir Richard and Lady Squires must have been standing as I saw them now, arm in arm on the legislature floor. Lady Squires wore a maroon cape pinned at the throat with a brooch but was otherwise not dressed for the outdoors; neither was Sir Richard, who wore a black longcoat and a vest.

  “Smallwood, Fielding,” Sir Richard said, “what are you two doing here?” It sounded as if by “here” he meant “together.”

  “God help you,” Fielding said, “but we’re the reinforcements.”

  The men we had prevented from scaling the drainage pipe hurled a volley of rocks through the broken windows.

  “We’ve got to take cover,” Hutchings said.

  “The Speaker’s room,” Lady Squires said, and we followed her to a large door behind the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker’s room adjoined the main chamber, and it was not much bigger than a kitchen, but the door, which we bolted and barred with the Speaker’s desk, was made of heavy mahogany. There was a lamp, but Hutchings advised we not use it, for fear the mob would see the light beneath the door. He said there were constabulary members outside the main chamber and they had so far been successful in holding back the mob.

  It was dark in the Speaker’s room and we could only vaguely make each other out. We all fell silent for a while. I looked at Fielding. She was here to help the Squireses if she could, had risked injuring herself to help them, showed no sign now of wanting to let them fend for themselves despite our situation. I could not reconcile this woman with the girl who had been so eaten up with bitterness that she had written that letter to the Morning Post to get me into trouble. It did not seem to me that even when drunk, she would stoop so low. She seemed now more like the sort of woman who would sacrifice herself for a lover, even one as ungrateful as Prowse had proved to be. The hunch I had had at Sir Richard’s house the night we hatched our own letter-writing scheme did not seem so far-fetched as it had then. She might have confessed for Prowse. I could not stand the thought that she had ever loved anyone but me that much, but perhaps she had. I had known myself what it was like to be favoured by Prowse, remembered how important he had made inclusion in his circle seem to be.

  Shouts of “Hurray” from outside, as if some new hurdle that lay between Sir Richard and the mob had just been cleared, brought me out of my revery.

  “What in God’s name do they want?” Sir Richard said.

  “You,” Fielding said.

  “Me?” Sir Richard said, as if this was the first he had heard that the riot had anything to do with him, as if he thought he had just been caught up in some pointless conflagration like everybody else, as if it was inconceivable to him that others might value his well-being less highly than he did.

  “Well, this is quite a fix we’re in,” Lady Squires said.

  Sir Richard turned to me. “Do you actually think they’ll do me harm, Smallwood?” he said.

  “As far as I can tell,” Fielding said, “the only remaining subject of debate is the mode of execution. Several have been proposed and dismissed on the grounds of being too good for you.”

  “Miss Fielding,” Lady Squires said, “I can barely hear you above the sound of your knees knocking together. Do you always talk this much or only when you’re terrified?”

  “My God, Smallwood,” Sir Richard said, “they really do mean to murder me?”

  “Nonsense,” Lady Squires said, taking off her cape and fanning herself with her hand, “there’ll be no one murdered here today.” She draped the cape across a chair. “They’re nothing but a crowd of ruffians and cowards. They wouldn’t dare do anything. We should march straight out the front door, that’s what we should do, and face them down.”

  “They’re drunk, Lady Squires,” Hutchings said. “They’re not in their right minds; they’re all worked up. There’s no telling what they’ll do. I don’t think we should leave this room.”

  “This is a fine state of affairs, I must say,” said Lady Squires. “The prime minister of a country forced to hide out from his own people in some cubby-hole. My God, what is the Empire coming to?” She looked at Sir Richard, but it was obvious that neither the outrage to the office of prime minister nor the unprecedented depths to which the Empire had sunk were uppermost in his mind.

  “I can’t believe it,” Lady Squires said. “It’s not like Newfoundlanders to carry on like this. It can’t just be booze that has them so worked up. The Tories started this, you mark my words.”

  “I hope no one w
ill stoop so low,” Fielding said, “as to invoke that old cliché about how poverty, chronic unemployment, malnutrition and disease bring out the worst in people. As to what inscrutable impulse causes people to take out their frustrations on the very politicians they voted into office — ” She shrugged.

  “If booze was their excuse,” said Lady Squires, “you, Miss Fielding, would be out there with them. You smell like a one-woman riot. I can just imagine what they’ll say about us at Whitehall, Richard, when they hear of this. Squires, the man who was prime minister when the Newfoundlanders ran amok, that’s how they’ll remember you. There’ll be no postings abroad for us after this, let me assure you.”

  Suddenly there was a loud pounding on the door.

  “Merciful God,” Sir Richard said, as Byrne and Hutchings drew their billy clubs and I picked up a poker from the fireplace.

  “Are you there, Sir Richard?” said a voice from outside. “Are you there? We’ve come to escort you out.”

  “Is that you, Emerson?” said Lady Squires. Emerson was a member of the opposition.

  “Oh, my God,” said Emerson, “are you in there, too, Lady Squires?”

  “Yes, I’m in here, too. I’m an elected member of the House of Assembly and the wife of your prime minister, where else would I be? This riot is all your fault — ”

  “We didn’t think they would take it this far,” Emerson said, his voice quavering. “It’s got out of hand; we can’t control it. We’re afraid they may set fire to the building.”

  “You lot should have thought of that when you got up this parade,” Lady Squires said.

  “Emerson,” Hutchings said, “how many of you are there?”

  “Thank God, it’s Hutchings,” Emerson said. “There are four of us, sir.”

  “Well then, you take Lady Squires out and the four of us will stay here with Sir Richard until you get back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without my husband,” Lady Squires said. I whispered to Sir Richard that he should tell her he would be safe and urge her to leave. He nodded distractedly, but said nothing.

  “If Richard and I go out together, they’ll leave him alone for fear of harming me,” Lady Squires said. “I’m everyone’s best chance of getting out of here unharmed.”

  “I don’t think we can count on them to act like gentlemen at this point,” Emerson said.

  “Don’t speak to me about gentlemen. You’re a disgrace, an absolute disgrace is what you are. You and your crowd put them up to this. You’re no better than Guy Fawkes. You should all be shot as traitors — ”

  “Lady Squires, please — ”

  “I believe,” Fielding said, “that Mr. Emerson’s main reason for wanting to save your life is to avoid being blamed for your death, which is to say that he will guard you as though you were his reputation, so you need have no fear.”

  She was nearest the door and, before Lady Squires could protest, unbolted it, grabbed her around the waist, threw her out into Emerson’s arms, then bolted the door again.

  “Let go of me,” we heard her say. “Let go of me, I’ll not be carried from the House by a handful of Tory backbenchers, let me go.…”

  By the sound of it, Emerson and the others had to lift her from the main chamber by the arms and legs. “If they hurt one hair on his head, you Tories will pay for it,” she shouted between grunts of exertion. “The country will know, the world will know who’s to blame for this.…”

  “Helena, I’ll be all right,” Sir Richard managed to say, his voice breaking as if it was himself he was trying to convince. I suppose the thought that it might have been more appropriate to assure her that she would be all right did not occur to him.

  “Richard, be careful,” she said, though we could barely hear her now. “Don’t make a move without Inspector Hutchings. Inspector Hutchings — ” Before she could admonish Hutchings, the chamber doors came to with a bang.

  “Miss Fielding goes next,” Hutchings said. “As soon as they get back.”

  Fielding lit up a cigarette. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “They won’t want to murder me unless someone tells them who I am.”

  We stood about in silence for a while. Whenever the furniture-fuelled bonfires outside flared up, we could see a faint flickering of light beneath the door and were better able to see one another. Sir Richard was wide-eyed with alarm and kept looking about appealingly, almost resentfully, at the rest of us, as if it was not fair, or was even somehow our fault, that in this roomful of people, he was the only one the mob was after, as if he had been randomly singled out for persecution.

  Another volley of rocks and bricks clattered against the Speaker’s door and a cheer went up that I feared might signal some new development. I wondered aloud when it would occur to the mob outside to scale the building with the ladders of a fire truck.

  “Thank God they’re so drunk,” Hutchings said.

  “Speaking of which,” Fielding said and took her silver flask from the inner pocket of her overcoat, drank from it, then passed it to Inspector Hutchings, who, after drinking from it, passed it to Sir Richard, who regarded it, as he was regarding everything now, as though it were a confirmation of his doom.

  “Take a drink, Sir Richard, sir,” Inspector Hutchings said, and Sir Richard looked around as if he was trying to read in our faces what we thought his chances were. Sir Richard took a drink, tipping the flask back too quickly, so that the Scotch went down the wrong way and he gagged and sputtered. Byrne looked away, embarrassed. Sir Richard dropped the flask and some of its contents spilled onto the floor. Fielding recovered the flask and, after offering Byrne and me a drink, which we declined, put it back in her pocket. Hutchings slapped Sir Richard on the back. After a while, Sir Richard nodded to indicate that he had recovered.

  “I don’t think Emerson will get back inside again,” I said. “We’ll have to get Sir Richard up in some disguise.”

  “Sir Richard and the constable here could switch clothes,” Hutchings said.

  “But Byrne is twice his size,” I said.

  “Then Byrne can give Sir Richard his helmet and his constabulary jacket,” Hutchings said. “They should at least buy us some time.”

  Byrne had not spoken a word since we had locked ourselves in the Speaker’s room. He was about my age and was awed into silence, I dare say, by his close proximity to the prime minister and Lady Squires, as well as Hutchings, at whom he kept darting nervous glances.

  “It’s worth a try,” Hutchings said. Byrne took off his helmet and his jacket, wordlessly handed them to Hutchings, who gave Sir Richard the jacket first after Sir Richard had removed his own. The constabulary jacket was much too big, less obviously so with the sleeves tucked in, but even then the corporal’s chevrons, which should have been at Sir Richard’s upper arms, were almost at his elbows. The helmet was an even worse fit. It was a London bobby-type helmet and all but enclosed Sir Richard’s entire head, the front of it well down past his nose.

  “All you need now is a suit of armour and a horse,” Fielding said.

  “We need to line it with something,” Hutchings said. I gave him the sweater I had been wearing inside my jacket. Hutchings stuffed the helmet, then put it on Sir Richard. It was still too big, but at least he was just able to see out from beneath the brim.

  It was decided that Byrne, Fielding and I would lead the way. Fielding gave Byrne her overcoat so he would not look conspicuously underdressed for the time of year, and so there would be no doubt even in what was left of the rioters’ minds what gender she was, and put on Lady Squires’s cape. Hutchings and Sir Richard followed close behind us. Hutchings unbolted the door, peered out and, satisfied there was no one in the chamber, motioned the three of us ahead of him and Sir Richard.

  We left the chamber by way of the cloakroom, and the building by the cloakroom door, which opened only from the inside — it was the one Fielding and I had pounded on with our fists — onto a set of steps that faced the park. To our advantage, it was dark and we
were a good distance from the nearest bonfire.

  The men who were jammed up against the steps begrudgingly made way for us, though we were jostled and sworn at.

  “Where’s Squires?” they said. “Where is the bastard? Is he still inside?” They recognized Hutchings first; several men shouted his name. They must have assumed that he and the “constable” were escorting three minor functionaries from the building. Then they recognized me as the man who had hours earlier spoken in Sir Richard’s defence.

  “That’s Crackie Smallwood, how did he get in there?” someone said, and someone else speculated that I was short and scrawny enough to have crawled beneath the door. Byrne and Fielding stood on either side of me. I was barely able to resist the urge to look back to see how far behind Sir Richard was.

  We had moved beyond the mob and were almost to the fence when Sir Richard, his vision impaired by the helmet, tripped over an iron gate that had been torn down. The gate clattered loudly on the pavement, and as Sir Richard stumbled and fell forward, the helmet toppled from his head.

  “There he is, the bastard,” the cry went up from the mob. “It’s Squires dressed up like the ’Stab.”

  They came after us with a roar, wielding clubs and rocks and torches.

  “Hutchings,” Sir Richard said despairingly as he tried to disengage his feet from the bars of the gate. Fielding, Byrne and I went back to help them. Fielding raised her cane above her head and some of the men stopped in their tracks. But most did not, and all five of us were bowled over by the mob.

  Sir Richard, now free of the gate, was first to his feet. “Run, Sir Richard, run,” Hutchings said. Sir Richard, helmetless, with the now-unrolled sleeves of Byrne’s jacket flapping at the ends of his arms, did as he was told. He dodged the leading edge of the mob and lit out across Bannerman Park with the mob behind him, our prime minister surreally pursued by his constituency. Had there been only five or six in pursuit of him, they would have run him down in seconds, but as every man in the mob wanted to lay hands on him, they moved as one for a while, impeding each other’s progress, and the bottle-neck at the gate was such that Sir Richard got a good head start.