I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel

by William Deverell

  Though these words smacked of artificiality – Saturday last sounded of cop talk – they came as a blow. So much for the prospect of bail. I blinked away a vision of Gabriel walking morosely to the gallows, betrayed by his lover – for surely she had bent to others’ wills. I couldn’t see an intelligent man like Gabriel lying to the police, creating an alibi that could be so easily exposed.

  This day had already set a record for being the worst of my dismal life. It was near its end, ten-thirty, and I finally managed to eat and keep down my tin of sardines and six saltines, all the while desperately hoping Ophelia hadn’t seen me cringing my way out of the Beanery.

  There was one last document.

  23/4/62, at 1500 hours, transcription of recorded interview with Gabriel Swift, in cells at Squamish Detachment. Present were S/Sgt. Knepp and U/S Cst. Jettles. Suspect not restrained. Suspect looked like he’d been in a brawl, with what we observed as facial bruising.

  K: You been cautioned you don’t have to say anything. You remember that warning, Gabriel?

  S: (nods)

  K: You prefer Gabe? I heard on the reserve it’s Gabby, which is good, because we’d like to hear you do some talking.

  S: This is totally crazy.

  K: Okay, we just want to straighten out a few things here, then if everything checks out maybe we can all go home.

  S: Home to what? Who’s going to pay for garbaging my cabin? I want a list of everything you took. I want it back, every damn book and magazine, my radio and my records.

  K: Settle down, son. We just want to ask a few questions about what you were doing Saturday afternoon.

  S: I told you. I was with my girl.

  K: Uh-huh. Where, exactly?

  S: In my cabin.

  K: Doing what?

  S: I was teaching her chess. We were listening to music.

  J: Teaching her chess? That’s all you did?

  (no response)

  J: We just talked to Monique, pal. She never saw you once on Saturday.

  K: So it looks like you got some explaining, right, Gabriel?

  S: Why am I in this cell, Sergeant? Am I charged with something?

  K: Right now, we’re just holding you for investigation. You want to rethink what you were doing on Saturday? You were with Professor Mulligan, right? A part of the time anyway.

  J: We don’t say you did anything, Gabriel, but we heard he invited you to go fishing with him.

  S: You heard that from whom?

  J: From whom? Whom? Who learned you such refined English, Gabriel? Your fishing buddy, maybe? Professor Mulligan?

  S: Fuck off, you fat creep.

  K: Whoa, whoa, let’s all cool down here, and watch your language. Let’s talk about the deceased. What were your relations with him?

  (no response)

  K: Sounds like you’ve got something to hide. I’m not saying you and him had a fight; maybe something else was going on between you.

  S: Let me ask you a question, Sergeant. Are you making up this case out of pure bullshit because I dropped you for calling me a lippy fucking Indian shit?

  At this point interview was concluded, as suspect wasn’t willing to cooperate further at this time.

  I returned to the prologue of this interview. Suspect looked like he’d been in a brawl. Remarkably, during the Q and A session these so-called peace officers hadn’t asked how he’d got those bruises.

  I was prepared to gamble my soul that Gabriel’s version was the gospel truth. Impatient with his attitude, Knepp had delivered a few shots to his head. The sidekick, Jettles, had taken that role literally, aiming a kick below the ribs. Quite a feat, unless Gabriel was down on the floor.

  There wasn’t much else in the file: a note that the abandoned clothes had gone to Vancouver for analysis, along with various scrapings, tweezered unknowns, and fingerprint lifts.

  Framed by a fascist fucking cabal of racist brownshirts, as quoted, more or less, by a Sun reporter.

  I would head up there on the weekend to undo what damage I could. I would have to skirt around Knepp and his crew and be careful in my approach to Chief Joseph. I would have to reach out to his cowed daughter before her lying words gelled as false memory.

  I told myself that Ophelia Moore would only get in the way were she asked to accompany me.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1962

  I was committed all day to be legal aid duty counsel at 312 Main Street, which in those days incestuously housed both the police station and the magistrates’ courts. Such coziness would be regarded as appalling today, but in the sixties the line between justice and enforcement was fuzzy. The Public Safety Building was (and remains) Vancouver’s ugliest structure, an institutional intrusion into skid road, with its strip clubs and beer parlours and general sense of carefree lawlessness.

  The fifth-floor cells at 312 were mostly populated by alcoholics and vagrants, who were dealt with in bunches in court – hapless hungover men and women who would troop up to get their week or month or more in custody. It was an offence to be homeless back then (Vagrancy A) or to be in a state of intoxication in a public place (SIPP), and Vag A’s and SIPPS comprised the bulk of those who were run through the daily mill in Courtroom Two. The human zoo, we called it.

  Occasionally real criminals would be called up, and while their lawyers spoke to bail I’d use the break for whispered conferences with derelicts in the dock. I spent the lunch hour doing quickie interviews in the cells. The work was as exhausting as it was unfulfilling, and Magistrate Scott was grumpy, erupting at poorly prepared counsel.

  At day’s end I had a couple of drafts next door at the West Coast Central Club, whose “membership only” designation was largely ignored, particularly by the many police who enjoyed off-hours there. Its roof occasionally served as a landing site for escapees roping down from prison windows at night.

  When I returned to the Crypt at five-thirty, I was still in a sour mood. Gertrude had kindly waited up for me, but I was peremptory when I asked her to phone Oakalla. “Do it quickly – they go bananas when they don’t get notice.”

  Then I saw, sitting on my desk blotter, copies of Woodcock’s Anarchism, the Camus, the I.F. Stone, and the Monthly Review for April, along with a sales slip. She had hiked down to the People’s Co-op Bookstore, a task that I’d promised to do and forgotten, and paid twelve dollars from her own purse.

  The top item on my blotter was a note from Ophelia: This just in. It was clipped to another RCMP witness report, one long handwritten sentence: Last Saturday, I would say around 2 o’clock, as I was driving my 1958 Nash Metro hardtop near the Mulligan farm on Squamish Valley Road, I saw an Indian male who I identify as Gabriel Swift, crossing the road with a rifle and going into the bush. Signed two days ago by Doug Wall, with an address on Squamish Valley Road.

  This smacked of devious afterthought by overeager beavers at the Squamish detachment. Some scumbag who owed them a favour. I could see the car buff, the often undersigned Brad Jettles, dictating 1958 Nash Metro hardtop.

  Ophelia whisked into my office. “I guess we have to track down Mr. Doug Wall.”

  I held my voice steady. “Yes, I was thinking of going up there tomorrow for the weekend. Take my camping gear. Rough it a bit.”

  “How fun.”

  “Legal aid – they’re pinchy, they won’t pay for hotels.” Abrupt, decisive, businesslike: “I’ve arranged to see Gabriel this evening to ask a few questions and keep him informed. I was going to ask if you have some time this weekend to get a more detailed statement from him.”

  “I can cancel everything but Victor Borge tomorrow night at the Queen E.” Letting me know she hadn’t left the weekend open for camping trips. She obviously had a date with her new beau. “Do you not want me to go to Oakalla with you tonight?”

  “Of course I don’t not want you to. I mean, I do, I’d like you to come.” The stammering buffoon. “I didn’t want to assume you had the time.”

  “Arthur, is this about what happened the other night?
”

  “I wasn’t being chummy with Harvey Frinkell. He is a revolting skunk.”

  “Thank you, but I’m talking about the previous night.”

  A throat-constricting silence. “I’m … mixed up about that. Sorry, I’m exhausted. Hard day in court.”

  “We really should talk. Not now, but after seeing Gabriel. I’ll be in my office.” She walked off briskly and was soon replaced by Gertrude, holding coat and purse.

  “I called Oakalla. They’ll expect you at seven. I guess I’m off.”

  I leaped to my feet. She took a fearful step back before I was upon her, pressing folded bills into her palm, apologizing, currying favour. She’d earned one hundred per cent on the firm’s next performance review. National Secretaries Week was coming up – might she be free then for dinner?

  She answered with a shy smile. Pretty Gertrude with her crooked stockings. My previous secretary was half as efficient and had the temperament of a mule.

  I’d put off too long one more pressing duty: calling Irene Mulligan with words of consolation. I reached her at her Point Grey home, where she was being attended to by a few members of her bridge club. She remembered me as her husband’s former student and was pleased I was acting for Gabriel. “He didn’t do it,” she said in a husky, trembling voice. “I’m just praying Dermot is still alive.”

  She thanked me for my words of sympathy but wasn’t able to continue. The phone was taken by a woman who apologized. “She needs her rest, Mr. Beauchamp. Perhaps in a week or so?”

  I’m praying Dermot is still alive. One could hardly blame her for maintaining that hope. The likelier premise of suicide would invite gossip, that he saw it as the only way to escape an empty and unhappy marriage. I settled the phone into its cradle and heard thrumming in my head. Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in town. Leadbelly’s song had started to haunt me.

  Affecting a desire to catch up with the world, I paid the local newsboy ten cents and a nickel tip for the evening Sun, then buried myself in it, silently handing Ophelia the keys to the Bug. This is how I hid my shame at my abysmal handling of our previous chat. Other than to ask if the gas tank was full she didn’t try to engage me, but her temper was on display as she directed oaths at rush-hour drivers.

  A U.S. nuclear test somewhere over the Pacific. Doctors in Saskatchewan threatening to strike. The federal election campaign in high gear. Howard Hughes still missing.

  Running out of news, I toughed my way through the sports (“Koufax Fans 18”) and the strips (Pogo, Major Hoople). I tried to keep my eyes off Ophelia, though I could not escape glimpses of hitched-up skirt, bared knees, nyloned legs working the pedals.

  We pulled into Oakalla’s driveway half an hour later, just as I was reading the want ads (“West Point Grey bungalow, $14,500” – at that rate, could I ever afford my own house?). Walking over to the prison building, I was looking stiffly ahead and almost tripped.

  “Careful of the curb,” she said, taking my arm.

  “Sorry.”

  She squeezed my hand. I felt much better for that.

  In the admissions lobby I immediately sensed tension among the staff. Jethro wanted the deputy warden’s say-so before signing us in but wouldn’t tell us why. Astonishingly, it was not I but Ophelia who was summoned to the deputy’s office. As I twiddled my thumbs I heard a distant, confusing female chorus. “We shall not, we shall not be moved.”

  I looked through the visitors’ book. Gabriel had had another visit yesterday from Jim Brady, the organizer for Mine, Mill. It was a Communist union, and I hoped they weren’t trying to use Gabriel for some political end. I had tried to return Brady’s call but got no answer.

  Ophelia returned, looking purposeful, and took me aside. “There’s a sit-in in the women’s wing; they’re locked arm-in-arm in the mess hall. Something about cockroaches in the soup. The deputy has asked me to mediate. The Sons of Freedom are at the centre of it. Why can’t they call themselves the Daughters of Freedom?” She was back to her buoyant self.

  “Give it your best.” I didn’t entertain much hope for her. The Freedomite women were obsessively militant, with arson and public nudity their weapons of choice.

  I made my way to a cramped interview room with two chairs and a small table, on which I spread my papers. Gabriel was brought in unrestrained, in his green prison garb. His braids were gone; the prison barber had left just stubble, and quite a few nicks.

  “They claimed to be looking for lice,” he said. “They were disappointed they couldn’t find any. Most guys around here tend to roll with that shit. I can’t seem to learn how to do that.”

  Thus the nicks, I suspected. I tried not to imagine the scene. Again I sensed him working at keeping the lid on. As I went through my briefcase, he studied me with a dark intensity. For what? Weakness? Maybe he thinks he can get around you.

  “I hope these will satisfy your reading habit for a few days.” I handed him the books and periodical. A sudden mood shift, a smile and a thank-you-very-much – I had passed a small test. “Ophelia may not be able to join us. She has been seconded to referee a rebellion in the women’s section.”

  “They’ve got more balls than some of my brothers on this side. Their pride was beat out of them when they were kids.”

  “Not you, though, Gabriel.”

  “I was forged differently.”

  “How?”

  “My dad taught me never to be a good Indian. That’s what they want – good Indians. Lobotomized in their religio-fascist schools.” He stiffened, then made an effort to relax again; I wondered if he’d had anger therapy. Maybe Mulligan, with his pastoral training, had taught him some tools.

  “You used a phrase last time: residential school syndrome. Enlighten me.”

  “Destruction of pride. That’s the concept – break the rebellion before it gets started. Force-feed us religion. Smother our language. Cultural genocide. God knows how many have died because they couldn’t cope, couldn’t function.”

  I supposed he meant suicide. I remember Professor Mulligan railing on about the unholy union of these church-run schools and their government sponsors, supported by a supine press reporting only happy news – like last weekend’s Easter edition, with its photo of a cherubic holy man passing out candies to his joyous flock.

  Gabriel’s discourse about these schools gave rise to a suspicion that he’d chosen me over Harry Rankin not because he thought he could get around me, as Ophelia suggested, but because he needed a convert, someone he could bend to his cause. I would resist with all my heart any effort to make this a political trial, but I felt a need to know him better, to crack the hard shell of his anger in hope of finding a soft yolk. “Tell me about your residential school.”

  He mused awhile. “St. Paul’s. I was seven when they grabbed me – my folks had been hiding me. We were about three hundred kids, and I was number 156. That’s what they called me. They could never remember my name.” He called out, mimicking: “ ‘One-fifty-six, lead us in the Lord’s Prayer.’ I survived a lot of shit in there, Arthur, mostly for talking Indian. My anger survived. I don’t know if my ability to love survived.” As he tried to steady his voice he turned away, toward the barren grey wall. I guess he saw me as a typical uninformed white liberal, and maybe I was.

  “My folks suffered worse. They were shanghaied by the priests when they were five and hauled way up north to a school in Alert Bay. Try to imagine: one day you’re out picking berries with your mom, the next day the door clangs shut and you’re in a prison worse than this, wetting your pants and getting whipped for it. It’s an essential part of the white colonizers’ plan to destroy Native families. With straps and slaps, hands down your pants. There’s no nurturing in a res school, no love. I don’t relate to my parents much now, especially my dad. They definitely lost the ability to love.”

  He disappeared in thought after these final trembling syllables, his eyes wet. I was moved too. My other aboriginal clients had always shied from the subj
ect of their school days, as if ashamed. This was a firm validation of Mulligan’s distrust of these institutions.

  “Dermot did a stint as principal of a res school on the Prairies. You knew that?”

  Gabriel swivelled back to me. “He had writer’s block over it – with his memoir.” A head shake. “Still in turmoil twenty years later. Something happened there, I think, in Pius Eleven Res School. He left the Church soon after.” He added thoughtfully, “When Louis Riel lost faith, he said, ‘Rome has fallen.’ Dermot used that line a lot, his expression of despair.”

  I told him of the time Dermot cried out, “Rome has fallen,” on running out of his favourite port. He remembered Dermot wailing that phrase in his high, chirping voice on losing a fat trout from his line. It was the first time I’d seen Gabriel give me the benefit of a real smile, lacking in irony. In fact we laughed, then carried on about Dermot and his idiosyncrasies, his quirky, cynical wit, his excited way of talking when he was on a roll. I felt a connection with Gabriel then, keen and deep.

  “Let’s talk about your relationship with Dermot.”

  Yet another smile, playful. “Maybe I became the chosen one because he gave up on you, Arthur. After you threw the academic life away, after you chose law instead of Latin.”

  I found irony in that. Had I not thrown that life away, I would not be trying to save his. “You were lucky – an enviable student ratio, one to one.”

  Four or five hours a day, he said, for nearly three years, on weekends, holidays, academic breaks. Sometimes a whole day. Before leaving for the city, Mulligan would give him a reading list. He devoured everything, a dictionary at his side, the Britannica or an atlas open. I supposed he must have an outstanding IQ. So quick of mind, so hungry to fill it, so coherent in expression.

  He explained it was not by happenstance that he’d wound up working for Mulligan. In seeking out an employee, Dermot had burrowed through the records of St. Paul’s Residential School – records still extant though the school was closed by then – seeking graduates with superior grades. The brightest and most troublesome was the former Number 156, who was doing probation for assaulting a cop. Mulligan would have admired that rebel spirit. He’d have seen the sharp intelligence in his eyes. Gabriel became his project.