The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

by Wayne Johnston

  And I was unsure of how Fielding would react if I treated Prowse shabbily. It might, I supposed, be one way to get at her, but how close they were or had ever been I was not exactly sure, despite what I had said to her when we last met about her having loved him all along. She had certainly seemed worried that I would do something that would damage his reputation. But I doubted her affection for him because the more I thought about the explanation she had given me for confessing to writing the letter to the Morning Post, the more it nagged at me that there was something wrong with it. I had only her word that she was telling the truth. The supposedly Hines-incriminating book proved nothing. That Hines had been involved I had no doubt, but his hasty departure from Newfoundland shed no light on exactly how he had been involved.

  It unsettled me that she seemed to have contrived a way to exist outside my world, not only beyond my influence, but also beyond my comphrehension. I had no idea if anything she said was true. And she did not seem to want anything. She had no ambition, she had nothing she would find intolerable to lose, Prowse included, I suspected, telling myself that this was not just wishful thinking. It was not just her criticism of me that rankled, it was the mere unaccountable fact of her relentlessly being there, dogging me without apparent motive and with what ultimate purpose I doubted even she could say.

  I pretended to be unable to “get” her columns, knowing that most people did not “get” them. I could not understand, I said, the popularity of a writer so given to “romancing,” which in Newfoundland simply meant not talking or writing about things as they really were.

  “It’s all very clever, I suppose,” I said. “At least, I’m told that some people think so, but the fact is that none of it is true. And if it’s not true, then what’s it worth?”

  I phoned her once and dismissed her work as “booze-inspired cant,” her as “booze-befogged,” “booze-hazy,” “Scotch-besotted.”

  “There’s no analysis here, Fielding,” I said. “There’s no constructive criticism. I suppose you have to be sober to analyse and criticize.”

  She let me have my say, saving hers for her column, I supposed. She said little more to me than hello and goodbye, but, ridiculous as it made me feel to admit it, it was good to hear her voice.

  We are on a different footing now, her silence seemed to say, not just because of the station you have risen to in life, but for other reasons, too. But it seemed to me her relentless attacks were out of all proportion to what I had ever done to her, or even what she thought I had done, namely, put Prowse at risk by threatening Hines.

  Field Day, September 19, 1950

  “Got a phone call from himself yesterday. I made a suggestion. He made, and offered to help me carry out, a suggestion of his own. Said on the record I was off my rocker. Off the record a good deal more. The words Scotch and bitch came up a lot.”

  (Editor’s explanation: Miss Fielding and Mr. Smallwood, though they have never met, chat frequently by phone, often sharing a chuckle over the unaccountable rumours that there exists between them some sort of animosity. The words Scotch and bitch came up frequently in their most recent conversation because Mr. Smallwood had phoned Miss Fielding with the happy news that his terrier had just had a litter of puppies, three of whom were female. Miss Fielding, who had been promised the pick of the litter and who has followed with much interest and concern the course of Pokey’s pregnancy these past few months, could not have been more pleased. As for the exchange of suggestions, it demonstrates perfectly the deep-seated friendship that exists between these two, which no amount of professional rivalry can undermine.)

  She began calling me by a variety of nicknames in her column: himself and, because my initials were J. R. and I was still so small, so scrawny (130 pounds at the age of fifty), Junior. She even resurrected the nickname she had coined for me at Bishop Feild and referred to me as “Splits.”

  I worked too long, too hard, too frenetically to gain weight, never putting in less than eighteen hours a day, weekends and holidays included. I was like a one-man company whose business was running Newfoundland.

  This was partly because I trusted no one, believing that the quality, the first chance they got, would try to edge me out and put one of their own in my place, if not Prowse then someone like him. I could not delegate responsibility without also dispensing power, and I was therefore unwilling to trust any task of any importance to someone else. I was unofficially a minister of all portfolios.

  How could I not have made mistakes? Fielding devoted a column to the four men who, at the height of a blizzard, knocked on my door and explained that they were “Icelandic herring fishermen” who had come, they cryptically said, because “Iceland is going down and Newfoundland is coming up.” Newfoundland could go “high up,” they said, if I were to buy herring boats for them. I think I did it because I could, because of the sheer novelty of being able to fulfil such a ridiculous request. I had only to say yes and the boats were bought.

  The Icelanders left Newfoundland weeks later with a contract, came back the following spring with four dilapidated boats that were not worth a fraction of the $400,000 I had doled out, spent nine months fishing (during which time they caught six barrels of herring), then disappeared and were never seen again. When I worked this out, I found that each single fish cost the province seven hundred dollars, or about fourteen hundred times what it was worth.

  Someone convinced me there was no better place in the world to manufacture gloves made entirely from the skins of gazelles than Newfoundland. Into this scheme went half a million dollars; out of it came not so much as a single pair of gloves.

  There was the International Basic Economy Corporation, which charged my government $240,000 to assess the prospects for a third pulp-and-paper mill in Newfoundland, almostly instantly on payment declared that there were no such prospects, then disappeared.

  Fielding wrote about all these blunders, for which I otherwise escaped chastisement, in her column.

  I replied with a press release.

  “How are we to attract the great businessmen and industrialists of the world to Newfoundland when people like Miss Fielding are casting doubts in their minds about everything we say and do? Perhaps Miss Fielding does not understand the effect these columns of hers have on potential investors who come here. How much money, I would like to know, has Miss Fielding scared away from Newfoundland? Perhaps her readers should ask themselves that question.”

  Fielding replied that far from scaring “investors” away, her columns, which showed what an easy mark I was, were in all likelihood what attracted them to Newfoundland in the first place.

  I decided that what I needed, what Newfoundland needed, was a specialist in economic development, a one-man brain-trust, someone who would not be a mere consultant, but a civil servant, a member of my staff.

  I phoned Ottawa for advice on the matter and, after speaking to several dozen persons, had recommended to me a man who sounded like the very thing I was looking for, a professor and a consultant for the federal government on immigration and economic development.

  His name was Dr. Alfred Valdmanis. At a press conference, I introduced him as someone to whom we would one day build a monument.

  Fielding’s Condensed

  History of Newfoundland

  Chapter Thirty-One:

  THE PEOPLE’S PARTY

  In 1907, Bond’s lieutenant, Sir Edward Morris, crosses the House to sit as a Conservative. In 1908, invited to lead the Conservatives against Bond in the election, Morris, to whom the Reids lend their moral support (having by this time been so Wintered by Bond they have no other kind to lend), declines.

  Instead, he converts the Conservative Party to the People’s Party. Bond absurdly suggests that it is clear from what he calls the Pee Pee’s manifesto that the People’s Party differs from the Liberal Party only in having Morris as its leader instead of him. In other words, says Bond, the election is a contest between the Liberals and the Liberals and he claims to be unsurp
rised when it ends in a deadlock, with both parties winning eighteen seats.

  Governor William MacGregor calls on Morris to form an administration. Morris accepts. MacGregor dissolves the House. Another election is called. Morris campaigns this time as the leader of the ruling party rather than the leader of the opposition; it is only his confidence that is enhanced by this distinction, not, as Bond asserts, his ability to dispense patronage at will.

  Confidence and Morris win the day. Shortly thereafter, the Railway Extension Act is passed. The Reids, by way of token reparation, are asked to build six new branch lines, thereafter known as “the olive branch lines.”

  Defeated again in 1913, Bond resigns, spends the rest of his life in sulking seclusion and, in 1918, when there is a bid to bring him back to lead the Liberals, declares: “I have had a surfeit of Newfoundland politics, and I turn from the dirty business with contempt and loathing.”

  Despite the, alas, too-numerous-to-mention ways that Morris improves the lives of Newfoundlanders, it is not until the ascension to the prime ministership in 1919 of Sir Richard Squires that Newfoundland turns the corner to prosperity and self-respect.

  As we intend to end our history with a postscript selection from Quodlibets, we would like here to thank Sir Richard Squires for the commendation that begins our book. We can think of no one more appropriate, or by whose kindness we could be more flattered, than Sir Richard to commend to the public a book that his record in office has inspired us to write and whose virtues, if any there be, are animated by his own.

  We have said “end our history.” But this is in fact but its beginning, the start of its maiden voyage. That it will still be afloat when its rivals are with barnacles encrusted at the bottom of the sea we have no doubt. Nor do we doubt that she will have put in to every port before her day is done.

  There, the bottle of champagne smashed against her hull, the blocks removed, she goes sliding down the slip — and Lo, is Launched!

  Junket

  ITOLD THE NEWFOUNDLAND people that Valdmanis was so highly qualified that I was going to pay him more than three times what I paid myself. I was making about seven thousand dollars a year; Valdmanis I would pay twenty-five thousand.

  Valdmanis was a Latvian economist with an obscure past who gave everyone he met a different version of his life story. He told me that as a schoolboy, he was recruited into some sort of elite education corps whose purpose was to turn out the future leaders of Latvia; that during the war he had been a leader of his country’s resistance movement; that sometime between leaving Latvia and coming to Canada, he had been given the highest award the Swedish government could give, the Stella Polaris.

  Though rumours flew about that his doctorate was self-conferred; that he had not received the Stella Polaris but some citation that could be had from the Swedish government for the equivalent of box-tops; that far from leading his country’s resistance movement, he had been a Nazi collaborator or quisling during the war, I said I had not the slightest doubt that Valdmanis was the real thing, “a man of honour.”

  Valdmanis gave himself the title of director general of economic development, telling me that it would “impress the Europeans.”

  I picked him up at the airport myself in the Chrysler Imperial my cabinet insisted I own and drive, as it was more befitting a premier than my battered Dodge, which I had hated to part with.

  He was about five foot seven, slightly, compactly built, with a full head of tightly curled black hair, a very high forehead and intense green eyes. His most distinctive physical characteristic was one he brought to my attention, floating irises, he called it, explaining, only hours after we had first met, what he meant by this.

  “In most people,” he said, bringing his face to within about six inches of mine so I could get a better look, “the iris” — he pointed, all but touched his eye with his forefinger — “the coloured part of the eye, extends from the upper eyelid to the lower eyelid. In a person with floating irises, people who generally have larger than usual eyes, the iris does not extend all the way to the lids, a portion of the eyeball is visible above and below the iris, so the iris appears to be, and is said to be, ‘floating.’ Only about 2 per cent of the population have floating irises.”

  The effect of his floating irises, as I had no doubt he knew, was to focus his stare, to give you the impression that you were being looked at from behind his eyes, as though through a pair of peepholes.

  “Where are your wife and children?” I said.

  “They’re staying in Montreal for the time being,” he said. “The children have travelled a lot. My wife doesn’t think I’ll last more than a few months in Newfoundland because of what she’s heard about the weather. Once she sees that I’m here to stay, she and the children will join me.” It seemed odd to me that a wife and mother would base such an important decision on weather rumours, but I said nothing.

  He quickly took my measure, I suppose, and the measure of Newfoundland — its historical measure, that is. I saw this and did not mind. Perhaps he had some charm or charisma he could turn on or off at will, for though I was greatly taken with him, it soon became clear that my ministers were not. He affected with them a humility and courtesy whose insincerity was meant to be transparent, to offend. He referred to each of them as “your excellency” and whenever he met them bowed in what to me seemed a playfully unctuous manner, like a send-up of some Old World court tradition.

  Perhaps, to others, his flattery of me, his devotion to me, was just as transparently insincere. To me, it was as if he believed it was merely a happy coincidence that the one man of real ability in Newfoundland happened to be the man in charge, the elected leader. I convinced myself that it was because of my ability, not because of my office and power, that he took to me.

  His belittlement of others I took as an indirect compliment. I thought his contempt of so many demonstrated, not arrogance, but high standards and discriminating judgment, and I was flattered that he should be so impressed with me.

  I saw Valdmanis as a kindred spirit together with whom I could accomplish more than I could with all the members of my Cabinet. I also saw him as harmless. He was an outsider and so would never be a political rival.

  Five minutes after we met, he said he believed that in Newfoundland, he had found his “spiritual home.” I did not think this was insincere, because I could not imagine that anyone would try in so guileless a manner to curry favour.

  Perhaps what appealed to me most about him was that he seemed not only so lonely, but also isolated, enisled, as if the world within which he had been designed to excel had ceased to exist or had never come about in the first place. Enisled.

  We were no less enisled for having joined Canada, not yet, at least. Perhaps that is why it seemed to me that Newfoundland, this world apart, was just the place for Valdmanis, and he for it. Enisled, a Newfoundlander by predilection if not by birth.

  In his first few months in Newfoundland, he revealed his social and cultural talents one by one until it seemed he would never run out of ways of surprising us. At a Christmas party, he sang Christmas carols in what was obviously a trained voice. A month later, at a Government House ball, he waltzed about the floor, as if their feet were melded to his, women who had no more idea than I did how to waltz. He was a multi-linguist who charmed visitors from other countries by conversing with them in their language while the rest of us stood by in open-mouthed, astonished silence. He played half a dozen musical instruments — the piano, the violin, the flute — flawlessly. But the question was always, faintly comically, what for? For he seemed to take no pleasure in his talents, seemed more to be saddled with them than anything else.

  It was at the suggestion of Valdmanis that I switched tactics where Fielding was concerned. Unlike my Cabinet ministers, he did not try to convince me of her insignificance or recommend that I ignore her. He assured me that I was right in thinking that her criticisms of me must somehow be “neutralized.”

  He urged me to invi
te her to travel with us, at government expense. She would, if she agreed, join Valdmanis and me and our retinue of civil servants as we travelled throughout the countries of Europe on what I called, when I announced it to the press, a trade mission, the purpose of which would be to entice “world-class investors” to Newfoundland.

  “What would be the point?” I said. “If you think Fielding is going to tone down her attacks on us in exchange for a trip abroad —”

  “I want to get to know Miss Fielding,” Valdmanis said. “I cannot think of any other way of contriving to spend time with her than to invite her on such a trip.”

  “She’ll write about everything we do,” I said.

  Valdmanis shrugged. “She’ll write about us if she comes along or not.”

  In the end I agreed, though I foresaw a fiasco. Valdmanis told me how I should extend the invitation. I rang Fielding up on the telephone.

  “We want you to come along with us, Fielding,” I said. “We want you to see just how hard we work. Once you get to know Dr. Valdmanis and see close up what he is trying to do on behalf of Newfoundland, once you see the sort of obstacles that we are up against, once you have a feel for what it is really like to be a leader, a premier, a politician, I believe you will see us both in a different light.”

  “Smallwood, tell me something,” she said, “aren’t you at all worried by how eager all these people of his seem to be to ‘invest’ in Newfoundland?” (There had been a piece in the Daily News about the scores of potential investors Valdmanis had arranged for us to meet.)

  “Not a bit,” I said. “After all, you don’t say no to Santa Claus.”

  “And you want me to come along so that once I see how hard it is to run a province, I’ll become a more — what? — a more responsible reporter? Come on, Smallwood, what’s this really all about? I’m not going to mysteriously disappear on this trip or something, am I?”