The Barclay Family Theatre

by Jack Hodgins

  “I can see,” she said, standing up, “that if we are to talk at all, James, it will have to be some other time, when you’re alone.”

  With cheeks still wet from laughing, he hugged her and promised they would get together tomorrow for a decent talk. “I’ll pick you up in the early afternoon,” he said. They would go for a drive up into the park, across the river, where there’d be plenty of opportunity to talk while they admired what was left of the leaves.

  “Idiot!” Iris said, as soon as the door had clicked shut and the two of them were alone in the narrow hallway. “About ten years in a Siberian work camp ought to fix him good!” She sounded as if it were something she prayed for fervently.

  Bella Robson knew, even as she headed for the elevator, that James would already be entertaining his guests with imitations of his mother. “I want you to know that I do not approve of any of this.” He had always been able to mimic her in a way that made her look like a fool. Well, she hoped they all laughed themselves sick at her expense in there; she would give him plenty more to mimic when she got him alone tomorrow in that park.

  “When you get him alone,” Iris said, “ask him what he will do if that woman shows up at his door and demands asylum. Ask him what will he do then, with bullets flying and the whole world watching on TV.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bella Robson said. “It’s only ballerinas do that kind of thing. For all we know she may even be a very nice girl.”

  She did not believe for a minute that it was possible for any Russian poet to be a very nice girl but she knew that Iris had to be dampened a bit. If she were encouraged too much to express her opinions she would simply work herself up into an unhealthy fury. Bella Robson was confident that once she had James to herself for a while she would be able to talk some sense into his stubborn head. Iris, unfortunately, tended to make him worse.

  Iris, in fact, tried to stop her from going with James on the promised drive next day, when she saw through the living-room window that they would not be alone after all, that there were two other people already in the car. “He’s trying to suck you right into the middle of his mess,” she hissed, “and I just won’t let you go.”

  Bella Robson was so frightened that she thought she might faint. After lying awake the whole night, imagining terrible things, she didn’t have the strength for any of this. But she was also a mother and knew there were things you endured for the sake of your own son’s safety. She would skin him alive, eventually, for pulling this stunt, but she would hold off on the fainting spell until later.

  “Look at that creep,” Iris said. “You can tell even from here that he’s loaded the car with his Russians.”

  The young woman, it turned out, was not a Russian at all. She was an Armenian. Bella Robson had only a vague idea where Armenia was on the map but this was hardly the time to ask for geography lessons. Besides, she was too taken aback by the girl’s beauty to think of anything else. She had not been prepared for those large, shiny dark eyes, or that soft black hair, or those perfect teeth in an enchanting smile — oh, Iris was going to have a hard time with this. No greasy bun at the back of her head, no offensive smell. Instead, an absolute stunner. Hardly more than a girl — and so pretty, with just enough make-up to give an appearance of summery health to those perfect features. A woman of taste as well — that stylish black fur coat with its matching hat was exactly the kind of thing Bella Robson would want to buy if she lived in a climate like this. They made the Armenian girl look like a magazine model. If those people had sent her here with instructions to turn her son’s head, they’d certainly picked the right woman for the job. Bella Robson found herself wanting to stare.

  The man slouched into the far corner of the black seat, looking at her from inside a long-haired fur like a lion’s mane, only grunted and twitched his long bony face when he was introduced. Vladimir Something-or-other. He was perhaps his country’s most prestigious poet, James explained, just back with Marta from a two-week tour of the universities, reading his poetry. “He doesn’t speak a word of English so she’s been acting as his translator.” Since the two of them had been visiting all the universities of the country and still not been across the river into Quebec, he said, it seemed selfish not to invite them along for the ride.

  Naturally, Bella Robson thought. Why do something nice for your mother when you could be doing something nice for a couple of Soviet spies instead?

  She would not say a word in the car, no matter how excitedly James rattled on about the buildings that lined the streets, or the spectacular river-view from the bridge, or the paved road that wound uphill into parkland past tiny lakes and steep humps of rock and banks of trees with only the last of their leaves still clinging to the branches. Let him go on. The girl in the back seat seemed to think it was all worth translating for the benefit of the grouch, whose only contribution was the occasional grunt. She herself was dying to turn around for a look out the back window, certain that she would see a car following them, at a safe distance of course, with two men in black hats pretending to be out for a scenic drive.

  James, if he knew what she was thinking, would accuse her of too many movies. Still, when they got out of the car to admire the view from the top of a hill, she did venture a glance downhill in the direction from which they’d come. Nothing there. The two men were probably parked just around the corner. A rusty station wagon laboured up the hill and whooshed on past, but it was full of small children. Even Bella Robson doubted that these two were important enough to warrant that much camouflage. James, meanwhile, was excitedly showing off what could be seen below: up the Ottawa Valley to their right, tiny farms and straight roads on the flat green land; the city itself to the left, with its bridges and Parliament Buildings and glass towers glittering like crystal miniatures in the sunlight. Oh, it was pretty — she was willing to admit she was looking at one of the beautiful cities of the world — but she was still too jittery to enjoy any of this.

  “There it is,” James said. He looked at Bella Robson and giggled. “Everything I gave up Boston for.”

  The girl took a camera out of her purse and clicked a picture. “To send my mother at home.”

  A likely story. “Mother” was the most obvious code of them all. You couldn’t imagine a spy having a real mother at all.

  In the parking lot below Mackenzie King’s summer estate, James said he had better give the backseat passengers a short history lesson if this was going to make any sense. Why bother? Bella Robson suspected these people knew more about our politicians than she did. What they were making of all his talk about spiritualists and seances and the ruins imported from England, however, she didn’t want to guess. And she had to close her eyes when she heard him admitting to these foreigners that the prime minister who’d left all these acres to the people for a park had been in the habit of consulting his dead mother on how to run the country. She imagined the big-shots in Moscow looking at one another and smirking.

  Her son was an innocent, she knew, but just how innocent she couldn’t tell. Was she a witness at this moment to his treachery? Ridiculous. This didn’t happen to ordinary people. Yet, if he was prepared to make his country look foolish in front of outsiders, wouldn’t he be prepared to do other things as well? She saw him being investigated by the RCMP. Already a spy? She saw him taking out Soviet citizenship. She would never see him again.

  While they hauled themselves up the slope to the ruins, James hurried on ahead and greeted them from inside a semicircle of marble pillars that seemed to be attached to nothing else but the ground. Nothing, here, seemed connected to anything else. Pieces of broken walls planted here and there like sculptures on the grass. “Some of it from England,” he said, “some of it from Ottawa, none of it related to this site or the man who brought them here.” Chuckling, he jumped down and posed for the girl’s camera in front of a piece of stone wall covered with red-leafed ivy.

  The famous poet walked up to a piece of wall and took his glasses out of his pocke
t in order to peer at something. Was it a message carved by some earlier spy passing through? Or was he about to pass judgment on the workmanship? He pushed the top half of his body right through the window opening and examined something on the other side.

  When James’s eyes met Bella Robson’s he was already beginning to giggle. “When I think of Boston!” The notion was apparently so funny that he threw up his hands and closed his eyes, shaking with laughter. “Oh, who needs Concord and Salem at your doorstep when you’ve got all this!” He doubled over and shook his head between his knees. Bella Robson knew what he was trying to say, but coming as she did from North Vancouver, where everything old was considered obscene and replaced by something new, she found ruins of any kind — even imported ones that made no sense — a little awe-inspiring. She placed her open hand on the rough surface of chilly stone, and shivered. When the famous poet straightened up again, red leaves from the vines had attached themselves to the lion’s mane that floated around his shoulders and a small forked twig had caught in his thinning hair. Whatever it was he said to the girl sounded like growls and snorts to Bella Robson but she supposed it was proper language. At any rate, the girl understood, because the colour of her face had definitely deepened. Had he said something embarrassing to her, or crude?

  “What was that all about?” James said, trying to put a sober expression back on his face.

  “Nothing,” the girl said, quickly. “Nothing important.”

  Again an avalanche of horrible sound rolled off that tongue. This time the girl answered back, sharply, and he barked at her, even swung out one arm like a weapon.

  “If that’s nothing,” James said, “I’d hate to see him get excited.”

  The girl studied the toes of her own shoes. “He says, ah, he does not think this is, ah, the most impressive tourist attraction he has, ah, ever seen.”

  Again laughter exploded from James. His face crumpled. “You mean it stinks.” He dug into his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped the tears off his face. “Tell Vladimir that it isn’t exactly the Winter Palace but what did he expect? This is Ottawa after all, you know what I mean?”

  Bella Robson shivered again. The air up here was chilly. Tired from her sleepless night, alarmed by her son’s reckless horseplay, she was in no condition to cope with the breath of an early winter. What she longed for most was to get home fast.

  The famous poet hunched up close to the girl and spat words in her face. The girl smiled, and shook her head. “He says now he is, ah, prepared to, ah, move on to other sights. He is not the most patient man in the world.”

  She would pay for that comment. Probably with years of hard labour. Bella Robson had no doubt the poet understood English just as well as she did. He only wanted to be pampered. He looked like the kind of man who would pretend to be ignorant to have the pleasure of seeing others go out of their way on his behalf.

  In the car, while they drove downhill through the park, Bella Robson decided to risk a few words to the girl. It would not do to have her report that West Coast people were impolite. And to tell the truth, she was beginning to feel sorry for her, having to put up with that grouch. “My son tells me,” she said, turning in her seat, “that you write poetry yourself.”

  The girl seemed amazed that Bella Robson could speak. Colour again rushed to her cheeks, but she slipped a glance in the direction of the celebrity in the corner. “Oh yes,” she said. “A few simple verses now and then. Nothing important.” Hardly a trace of an accent.

  “She’s being modest,” James said. “Her poems have been published in the best periodicals. Some have even won awards.”

  “My son used to write poetry,” Bella Robson said.

  Again the girl looked surprised, and glanced at the grouch. But James was quick to protest. “I was never a poet, Mother. I’m an academic, not an artist.”

  “I still have them,” Bella Robson said. “Tucked away in a bottom drawer with his first shoes.”

  The girl smiled. “My mother too. She has my first innocent scribblings.”

  Bella Robson looked at the famous poet. These people heard what they wanted to hear. “James’s poems were surprisingly patriotic for a small boy,” she said. “He liked to write about his love of freedom and independence.”

  Her heart beat so hard from the shock of what she’d said — all perfectly true — that she was afraid to say another word in case her voice betrayed her by trembling. She turned around and faced the front of the car. Luckily, the grouch interrupted with another one of his long harangues full of spit and rumbling consonants. The girl leaned forward to speak to James. “He is saying that, ah, he does not want any more driving. I am sorry but he says, ah, that he wants to go back to the Embassy now.”

  I’m sure he does, Bella Robson thought. He may think he’s got these other two fooled but he knows he hasn’t convinced me for a minute. She gave him a quick steely look to show she was on to his game, the slob.

  Once the two foreigners had been dropped off at the Embassy (would they have to file reports on her before they were allowed to eat?) James drove her to a restaurant decorated to look like the inside of a barn. “You can load up all you want at the salad bar,” he said. Bella Robson was not much interested in food. The back of her neck ached, from the tension. She was letting herself get too worked up over this business. The best thing to do — despite the fact that she would normally drive ten miles out of her way to avoid any kind of conflict — was to have it out with him tonight, get it over with. There was no sense suffering like this any longer.

  “Mother,” he said, when he got back to the table with his own heaping plate. “You have the look of an evangelist about you. Have you come here to save my soul?”

  “I’ve come here to save your hide,” she said, and swallowed a slice of tomato. If she put it off now she would be putting it off forever. “Since you seem bent on risking it with your stubborn — your deliberate innocence.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, and raised a forkful of coleslaw to his lips. She knew that teasing look, but it didn’t mean he was to be taken any less seriously. “I can see the fire of righteousness in your eyes. You’ve come here to straighten me out, I can tell, to save my soul from its wicked ways!”

  She put down her fork. She would never be able to eat. She was on the verge of tears. Would he take nothing seriously at all? “You know very well that in all your life you’ve never heard me talk like that to you. You’re being silly.”

  “Then I’m not interested in talking with you.” He put his fork down and pushed his chair back and showed her his profile. “If you’re not interested in anything more than saving my hide, then we have nothing to say to one another. What I need is someone with more courage than that.”

  She couldn’t believe this. None of this kind of talk was familiar to her. He was leading her into territory more strange and frightening than any she’d been in before. It was cruel of him, to make her feel so helpless. What language did she have for saving souls?

  Behind him a parade of waiters in black uniforms followed a birthday cake across the room to a table where a young woman in a white shawl put both hands up to her face to show her surprise. Feeling absolutely miserable, she watched the waiters form a circle around the table, hum a note, then roar into a chorus of the Happy Birthday song. First in English, then in French. Did they know how silly they looked?

  When they’d bitten off the final note of their song and scattered to the different parts of the room, James turned and leaned his elbows on the table without looking up at her. With one hand he stirred his fork around in his lettuce. She thought she saw a few grey hairs on the top of his uncombed mop but she was reluctant to lean forward for a closer look. “Mother, I dreamed last night I was back in Harvard.”

  “Then go back,” she said. Was the solution so simple? “At least there you weren’t tempted by embassies.”

  “I dreamed I was back in Harvard. I dream this regularly. People were nice to me. I actual
ly got invited to parties. I went to brand-new plays and talked to people about books that weren’t even in paperback yet and met people who cared what went on in the rest of the world. I met young single women who found me attractive.”

  “You’re too perverse to go back,” she said. “You were happy there and so you couldn’t allow yourself to go back. You could be just as happy here but you’d rather be a martyr. Are you in love with this girl?”

  He raised his eyes to look at her, as if the question needed to be weighed. “What?”

  “The Russian . . . the Armenian . . . whatsername.” Her heart beat dangerously. Did she really want to hear his answer to this?

  “Mother,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I want to like this place but I’m lonely here. A person does what he can to entertain himself. She’s a beautiful woman.”

  “And that’s all?”