The Roar of the Crowd

by Janice Macdonald

  I was almost finished putting together a crossword puzzle made entirely out of words either coined by Shakespeare or first appearing in print in his plays when the phone rang for me. I pressed my little flashing button, miming shock to Micheline, and answered.

  “Randy Craig!”

  “Hey Randy,” chirped Denise. “I am so glad I caught you there. I tried your cellphone, but wasn’t sure you’d see my texts before leaving.”

  I reached into the side drawer of the desk to retrieve my phone from my bag. Sure enough, there was a little envelope lit up with the number 5 in it. The phone itself was on silent.

  Denise went on. “I was wondering if you wanted to catch a bite to eat? I can swing by and pick you up in front of the library in, say, ten minutes?”

  “Sounds great,” I said, checking my wristwatch and noticing that it was already past five. That is the trouble with summer in Edmonton. You really have to keep an eye on the time or you will clock in way more hours than anyone is ever going to pay you for. The sun doesn’t even think about setting till around ten o’clock, so all your workaday signals are shot. I looked over my shoulder and noted Micheline was packing up as well. “See you then.”

  I slid my work into a folder marked Puzzles and pulled out the left drawer of the desk. I was chalking up the files already. I had colour-coded them, too. Games were green, puzzles were purple, research was red, scenes were blue, and soliloquies were yellow. I was hoping to develop enough material so that every day had different elements to it. These kids wouldn’t leave the camp as Shakespeare scholars or Stratford-ready actors, but they should be able to wow their English teachers come September and have some fun along the way.

  There was no need to lock the desk, since the entire office was bolted. The sixth floor of the library was full of offices devoted to arts and other non-profit organizations. Litfest, Opera in the Schools, the Richard Eaton Singers, all sorts of diverse groups housed their managers and business files here. There were also meeting rooms you could book for board meetings and such, but this had to be okayed with security, because at a certain point the elevator doors were locked so that the general public couldn’t wander the upper halls.

  That was the glory and the trouble with public buildings like libraries. Open to all, they collected a strange assortment of lonely singletons, homeless folks, crazy people, old-fashioned researchers, youngsters on cheap dates, families with more children than literary budgets, and civic-minded folks who cling to the concept of the public library as the panacea of all things civilized.

  I said goodbye to Micheline and headed for the elevator. While it had been quiet on the sixth floor (the Narcotics Anonymous crowd usually arrived for their meetings at six-thirty), the main floor of the library was still buzzing with activity. Two security guards stood near the entrance, which otherwise was deceptively open plan. There were gates that set off alarms if you went through them with unchecked materials, but there was a distinct lack of librarians here. They were seated further back, at the reference desk or in the video area. It felt to me as if all the technology that made self-checkouts possible might be making the position of librarian, to my mind an essential role in society, a trifle redundant. I sure hoped not. Feeling budgetary pinches, a lot of schools had cut back on having teacher-librarians, and the system was poorer for it. There was no way a harried teacher, responsible for more than thirty children day to day, was going to be up-to-date on all the new literature coming down the pike, let alone the lovely augmenting materials like films, biographies, histories. Instead, lesson plans focused on the same thing as last year, because it was known to work and at hand. From experience, though, I knew that the spark of joy in the teacher’s mind could be so easily extinguished in the retelling of the same old stories, anecdotes, and lectures. And when it came right down to it, in this world where information was only a few keyboard strokes from anywhere on the planet, it was that spark of joy that made classroom education worthwhile.

  The front of the Stanley Milner Library faced Sir Winston Churchill Square and was a gathering point for buses heading into the northeast quadrant of the city. It also seemed to be a gathering place for teenaged boys bristling for something to erupt. This was the demographic that had sent Steve to Scandinavia. These were the riders who looked menacing, spoke in loud and profane bursts, and revelled in intimidating the older women who waited tiredly, standing as far from the sidewalk-spitting strutters as they could get and still catch the bus before it pulled away from the curb.

  Lucky for me, it was a sunny spring afternoon and Denise was crazy punctual, one of the many things I loved about her. A bus to Beverly pulled away from the curb and Denise and her little car slid in. I dropped my bag into the footwell behind the passenger seat and opened the side door. She pulled away as I was buckling up, yielding space to another impatient bus. Her hand went up in the cheery wave that mitigated against road rage everywhere, and we were soon turned toward Jasper Avenue and rolling past the Citadel.

  “Do you feel like Indian food?” Denise asked and as she said it, my stomach grumbled. I had nibbled cheese and cucumber slices at my desk for lunch and breakfast had been a long time before that. The thought of butter chicken and curry made me salivate, like Pavlov’s bell.

  “Oh gosh, yes.”

  “Great, because I have to go grocery shopping after, anyhow, so I thought I would aim us in that direction. Have you been to the Masala Wok?”

  We were on the tail end of the evening rush hour, but everything is lighter in the springtime, it seems, and Denise was a firm, just this side of aggressive, driver. We were soon whipping down 99 Street toward 34 Avenue, the region of sari and spice shops and some of the best Indian restaurants, all tucked into little strip malls between car dealerships.

  The restaurant was just starting to fill up, so we got a table for two near the wall and were soon in line at the steaming buffet table. I tried to moderate my choices, the way Denise did, but couldn’t help myself, and soon my plate was heaped high with various meats and vegetables in colourful sauces. By the time we got back to our table, a basket of naan bread was waiting for us. Denise must have been just as hungry as me, because neither of us spoke for at least ten minutes, we just ate steadily from one rim of the plate to the other side.

  Eventually, Denise sat back, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, and began to converse between bites.

  “Oh glory, this is good. Shall I go back for more curries, or is it better to save room for that carrot halwa dessert? Dilemmas, decisions!”

  I smiled. Denise began to shift her syntax to mirror the plays she was teaching when she was right into things. This had the tone of As You Like It, and I was betting she was concentrating on the comedies for her second half spring session intensive.

  “How is your class going?” I asked. Denise finished chewing a piece of naan before replying.

  “Not bad at all. There are only twenty-three of them, which is a dream when you think of the marking. Several of them seem to be teachers on sabbatical, so the class discussion is a bit more satisfying intellectually than I am used to. We’ll see how they unbend to do scene readings, though, which is the group component of the course.”

  “Oh, god save me from group projects,” I growled, and stabbed a piece of butter chicken. “I hate being in them and I especially hated having to teach them.”

  “I know.” Denise nodded. “There are always one or two people who do nothing and coast on the drive of others, usually one other member of the group. And that person, who is usually a young woman with aspirations and glasses, ends up coming to see me in office hours, incensed and exhausted, and desperately wanting me to punish the lollygaggers.”

  “Or you get stuck in a group that all want to do different things, and nothing gets done properly as a result. Or they all want to be the speaker. Or they all want to create a video, dreaming it will win a short film festival award but ends up looking like the Blair Witch Redux.”

  Denise laughed. “God
knows why they make us incorporate group work. If you wanted to really acclimate students to the eventual real world, you would teach them about chain of command and hierarchies. Nothing actually gets done by a committee until the committee assigns roles and breaks away to do things.”

  “Exactly. There is a baseline concept that common respect will only come out of group work and team dynamics, but I think that is actually some conspiracy on the part of gym teachers and varsity coaches to keep team sports funded.”

  “Absolutely! Up the racketball court. Down with arenas!” Denise raised her water glass in mock toast. I saluted her with mine, and then took a long slug, having just bit into a pepper.

  “What about you? How is the prep for the high school group going?”

  Denise was being careful with her words, I knew. While it was nothing to sneeze at and I was certainly grateful to her for helping me land the job, this gig was really nothing compared to teaching a course or two at the university or college. Of course, that ship had sailed.

  There were too many grad students, both MAs and PhDs, who needed the income a teaching assistantship could bring, for me to break back into teaching at the university, and they had cut back on the number of courses sessionals could teach at Grant MacEwan, so everyone there was jealously guarding their numbers. A few weeks back, I had run into a friend of mine who taught there. Valerie had seemed apologetic and almost ashamed to look me in the eye when I asked what the work possibilities might be. It’s never an easy life for a gypsy academic, and the further we got into the twenty-first century, the tighter it was getting.

  I wasn’t totally sure why, either. Well, I realized that costs were going up and there were incentives being offered to students to move toward more practical training in the trades, but it seemed as if everywhere you turned anymore, they were requiring a degree. You now needed a BA for things that had previously required college diplomas and an MA for jobs completely within the purview of a Bachelor’s level of education. It was an employer’s market, so they could ask what they wanted.

  But that trickled down to include lecturers and professors, too. Colleges no longer hired MAs to teach freshman English, not with all the surplus PhDs hanging about.

  Not that Denise was surplus. She was one of those gifted and driven people who had been born for the ivory tower. I didn’t begrudge her the successes she had achieved, because not only was she always one of the brightest people in any room, she was also the most accessible. I had seen Denise teach, and her mix of logic, grace, and utter belief in her topic opened up even the most recalcitrant students, previously unwilling to see the need for compulsory English courses in their timetable.

  I, on the other hand, had wooed my various classes with enthusiasm for the works we were studying, and while it worked for most of the students, there were always a few skeptics lurking in the back rows, folks who watched me with the same detached amusement they would bring to seeing a golden retriever walking on its hind legs balancing a ball on its nose.

  Maybe I was lucky to be out of it.

  “I think I’m on target. I just have a recollection of my own sense of high school, and my detachment, that worries me. What if they all just loll in their seats snapping their gum and ridiculing me?”

  “I think you’re mixing up your real high school experience with old episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter. Besides, this isn’t high school, it’s camp! It’s summertime and they’ll be outdoors frolicking and having a good time and learning about theatre. What’s not to love?”

  “You’re right; after all, it’s not like they didn’t want to come, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t be signing up for it. It’s not like these will be kids that parents had to find a place for, as a babysitting service. They could be left at home alone if they wanted, to watch DVDs and eat Kraft Dinner.” I scooped some chickpeas on to my fork. “What is wrong with these kids? Why don’t they want to stay home and watch DVDs and eat Kraft Dinner?”

  Denise laughed. “They’re drama nerds, and they’ll be wonderful. They will imprint on you and adore you and work their tails off.” She mopped up her plate with another bit of torn-off naan. “I’ve heard it said you could power New York City for a year if you could harness the energy of a high school drama class.”

  “Yes, but will they use that energy for good or evil? Who comes to Shakespeare Camp? Spiderman or the Green Goblin?”

  “Probably they’ll both be there. Relax, Randy. They’re going to love you, and you them.”

  I smiled. Denise was right. It was going to be a great gig. To show my appreciation for her support in getting the job, I cheerfully picked up the tab. We spent the next couple of hours grocery shopping at the H & W for fresh produce and Costco for toilet paper.

  Denise dropped me and my provisions at the back door of my apartment, and drove off waving down the back alley. I wrestled with my keys, finding the new locks on the outer doors a useful nuisance, since I didn’t ever want a repeat of a break-in to my apartment.

  Once inside, I dropped my bags in the doorway to the kitchen and made a point of filling the kettle and setting it to boil on the stove. A cup of tea once the groceries were unpacked would be a just reward for the effort.

  I was just pouring the hot water into the teapot as my phone rang. I popped the lid on the pot quickly to let it steep before racing back to the dining area to answer the phone.

  It was Micheline from the Shakespeare festival.

  “Randy? Can you come in tomorrow morning to the university rehearsal hall? Kieran has called an emergency meeting for the whole cast and company.”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to say, but—” I could sense Micheline leaning into the handset as she whispered to me what she had probably told every single person on her list to phone— “Eleanor’s been killed!”

  5.

  Eleanor Durant was western Canada’s answer to Sarah Polley. She had grown up before our eyes, starring as a young Emily Carr in the long-running series about the reclusive painter who embraced the land of Haida Gwaii and became one of the greatest Canadian artists. Eleanor had then appeared on a comedy series conceived and written by Paul Mather, as the youngest mayor in Alberta, presiding over the fortunes of a small town trying to keep its town status. Gopher Broke had won countless Geminis, the Canadian television awards, and Eleanor was a well-recognized face all across Canada, but especially in Alberta.

  She had been living in Toronto, but rumour had it she was back in Edmonton taking care of a failing grandmother, and that was the reason Kieran had been able to nab her for this year’s festival. She was playing Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, the comedy, and Desdemona in Othello for the season. I guessed that offering Eleanor the lesser role in the comedy was a sop to Louise, one of the resident actresses normally cast as the main female, but Louise was getting a little long in the tooth to pull off a seventeen-year-old Venetian maiden.

  Eleanor, of course, was quite a way past seventeen as well, but she skewed young and would likely be playing teenagers well into her forties.

  From what I had seen of the ensemble which, granted, was just at the opening party that took place after the first reading of the comedy and once or twice when I had dropped by to get Kieran’s signature on something or other, the group had welcomed Eleanor into their circle and things were fine. She and Louise had apparently hit it off right away, which may have been something Kieran engineered for the sake of harmony in the rehearsal hall.

  Micheline had said killed, too, not died. Unless she was overly dramatic, which obviously couldn’t be discounted, this was not a case of a sudden allergy or aneurysm. Of course, Eleanor could have been hit by a bus, for all I knew. People were described as being killed in car accidents.

  The trouble was, when I heard the word killed, it usually meant murder.

  You would think that, given the low rate of gun deaths in Canada and the relatively low rate of crime in Edmonton, an average (okay, slightly above-average) citi
zen wouldn’t have been exposed to much murder and mayhem in the course of her life. But in my case, you would lose that bet. For some reason, crimes of passion seemed to be attracted to me like iron filings to a magnet.

  I couldn’t deny that part of it was likely due to my own makeup and personality. Academics are curious by nature and very loath to leave questions unanswered (unless, of course, they are in philosophy, in which case academics just stockpile and toss them about underfoot to trip everyone else up). Circumstances had unfolded to connect me to several criminal investigations, but I couldn’t quibble about that, since it was how I’d met Steve, the love of my life.

  And now it seemed here we were again.

  I had awoken at the usual time, and for a minute or two had forgotten about Eleanor, but it was as if there was a cloud above my bed. As I stood up, it engulfed me, and I made my morning ablutions with a sadness I couldn’t shake.

  I had really enjoyed Gopher Broke and had bought all four seasons on DVD. It had been filmed in southern Alberta, and there were even tours of the town and brown tourism signs on the main highways pointing to it now. I was looking forward to getting to know Eleanor over the course of the run and rubbing shoulders with one of those rare creatures, a Canadian star.

  We are funny in Canada about our celebrities. We don’t seem to afford them the same glamour that our cousins to the south do theirs. Instead of wondering about the relative torridness of their love lives, we are given photoplays of their Toronto townhouses or seaside places near Peggy’s Cove. We tune in to hear them discuss their recipes for Thanksgiving cranberry butter, rather than whether their father beat them as a child. We nudge each other and smile shyly when we see Graham Greene or Paul Gross stroll by, and we buy tickets to hear Mary Walsh talk when she’s in town, but on the whole, we tend to treat our well-known personalities as we would “Harold’s girl who went to the city and made good.”