Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “From now until our victory, I will confine myself only to scotch. And a very fine scotch it is. Who’s Dunbar again?”

  “Our neighbour across the bay.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “He makes it himself,” said Wallace.

  “They let you do that in Canada?”

  “Not if you use a still, but he just ferments the barley mash, leaves it out in the cold to freeze the water in it, then pours off what doesn’t freeze.”

  “And that’s legal?”

  “Well, it isn’t illegal. Yet. But probably only because they haven’t heard about the process.”

  “Hunh! Why’d he give it to you? “

  “Dunbar’s got a problem with drink, so he can’t touch the stuff himself. He just likes trying to make a perfect batch.”

  “If he can’t touch it, how can he tell if it’s any good?”

  “Sip and spit.”

  “I guess that means he can’t be a real alcoholic.”

  “Worse. He’s an artist.”

  “Well, it’s certainly fine scotch.”

  I agreed. I was starting to feel the drink’s particular charm, its warmth and the magical way it instilled a sense of possibility. Claire wouldn’t mind my face. She would see through my outward appearance to my flaming spirit. Had I not just developed and gathered evidence toward a sanderling hypothesis that would, at the very least, be a valuable contribution to modern marine science? I sipped some more and listened to the conversation.

  “So, Wallace,” said Bailey. “How are we going to win this election?”

  “Would you like to hear my strategy?”

  “I would.”

  “OK. Do you know how much a Canadian MP gets paid?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Twenty-four grand, and an additional ten grand expense account. And do you know the number of votes cast last election in Barrisway Riding?”

  “No.”

  “Twelve thousand eight hundred and eighty seven. Which means you only need six thousand four hundred and forty four votes to win.”

  “Are you just making up all these numbers?” said Robbie.

  “I swear I’m not. I phoned El’ner at the library and she looked them up for me.”

  “Continue,” said Bailey. “You were saying you needed six thousand votes to win?”

  “Right. Now, if you divide thirty-four thousand six hundred (my future MP’s salary) by six thousand four hundred and forty-four (the number of voters we need to win) it comes to five dollars.”

  “Five dollars and thirty-six cents, actually,” said Bailey.

  “OK, smartass,” said Wallace. “Five dollars and thirty-six cents, then. Around five dollars per vote, anyway.”

  “Fine.”

  “So. How’s about this for a campaign slogan…?” said Wallace.

  But Bailey anticipated him. “‘Vote for me, get five bucks’?” he asked.

  “You got it.”

  Melissa stopped snipping. Bailey looked right at Wallace, nodding slowly with respect. “I like it,” he said. “It does mean, of course, that you will forfeit any salary if you do win.”

  “I’m not in it for the money. I’m in it for the power.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” said Bailey. “I can work with that.” Melissa started snipping again.

  “I go door to door and offer five bucks to anybody who will vote for me,” said Wallace, “and, voilà, I’m in!”

  “And, don’t forget, that salary is per annum,” said Bailey. “You can give them five dollars next year, too.”

  “Jesus! Fuck! That’s right! And the next!…”

  “And you can legitimately claim that by financing yourself in this way, you are more impervious to outside political influence.”

  “Right! I can’t be corrupted. Unlike my respected opponent, the right honourable Shit-For-Brains-What’s-His-Name?”

  “Robert Logan Head,” said Robbie. “And maybe you should learn his name if you’re gonna be running against him.”

  “Minor detail,” said Wallace.

  “Well, here’s another minor detail you may have overlooked,” said Robbie. “Where are you gonna get the money for all this?”

  “What money? That’s the beauty part. I don’t need anybody to bankroll me.”

  “Think it through, Wallace,” said Robbie. “You go to your first constituent, and you say what?”

  “I say vote for me.”

  “And he says ‘Why?’”

  “And I say, ‘Because there’s five bucks in it for you’ and he says ‘OK’…”

  “And then?”

  “And then I say, ‘See you at the polling station!’”

  “And he says, ‘Where’s my five bucks?’”

  “And I say…” Wallace stopped. A difficulty loomed. “I say that… as soon as I’m in power I…One second, I got it! I give him a promissary note…”

  “And he says, ‘Yeah. Right! Like I’m gonna trust you!’ And he slams the door in your face and sics the dogs on you.”

  “I could print up a sort of…coupon… ‘Pay the bearer on demand…’ only if I win of course, you know…” But you could see his excitement starting to trickle away. I think he’d had this mental image of going around to every door in his riding and delivering one crisp five dollar bill for the promise of the vote. “I could put a picture of my face on the coupon…”

  “Jesus, now you really want to lose,” said Robbie. “Forget it, Wallace. You’re going to need some money up front.”

  The Old Problem. Silence fell around the table where seconds before there had been so much possibility. ‘The rich they just get richer and the poor are left to rot, The bastards inherit everything and the meek inherit squat’ went the lyrics of the song. The Barley Boys had hit the nail on the head.

  “Oh well…” said Aiden.

  I looked around at everybody. Bailey was the only one who seemed unaffected by the gloom.

  “You can still do this,” he said.

  Everybody looked up at him.

  “How?” said Wallace.

  “I’ll bankroll you,” said Bailey.

  “Really?” said Wallace, perking up.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t know what to say…”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well…Thank you.”

  “You’re most welcome,” said Bailey, speaking now entirely in the accents of Old Money Boston.

  Melissa snipped the last two dreadlocks off the back of his neck. “There. You’ll want to shave the rest off with a razor.”

  “Yes,” said Bailey, holding up the mirror. “That is better. My suit is in the van, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” said Melissa.

  “Very well, then,” said the new Bailey.

  The girls prepared a meal and we ate. I drank two glasses of water with aspirin before I left and Melissa went upstairs and came down with a makeup kit, a small pouch crammed full, which she handed to me.

  “Here,” she said. “It’ll cover the worst parts. Don’t overdo it.”

  ***

  I awoke next morning three hours before I had to get to work, and at low tide made a note of the time. I lit a fire, boiled a potato for breakfast and thought that perhaps I should leave another note at the vegetable stand suggesting the occasional carrot or turnip as an addition to their stock. I picked and ate some raspberries but they were coming to the end of their season and I couldn’t get as many as I wanted. I needn’t worry, though: I came upon a Saskatoon berry bush and filled up on those.

  One way or another, things worked out. There was nothing to worry about. Claire would see past my bruises.

  To help her do that, however, I went to the tent, opened the case Melissa had lent me and fou
nd face powder in a flat pearloid container shaped like a scallop shell, a tube of foundation cream, a stick of flesh-coloured lipstick and red blush. Everything was packaged and accessorized with brushes and applicators and, for the powder, a soft pad of the downiest feather. I laid everything out on a flat piece of driftwood, and went and wet my hair in salt water and combed it with my fingers into what I considered a romantic front curl with smoothed sides.

  I didn’t have a mirror, but the tin-foil I used for cooking had a somewhat reflective surface. When I flattened it out and looked into it, though, what looked back was a smear of colours like an impressionist painting by an artist with cataracts, so I just painted over my face wherever I could see any sign of bruising. By this time my hair had hardened into a matted felt helmet, which I considered lucky, as the bike ride to the park office wouldn’t disturb it.

  Finally, considering that my pyjama top wasn’t stylish enough, I first removed the mangled collar and then put on my “Dad’s shirt”. On the way to the road, I picked and stuck into my top buttonhole a sprig of thyme.

  When I parked my bike at the park office I could hear Fergie and Rattray talking while loading something around the back door. I started to join them but just before I came around the corner of the building I heard a sudden outburst from Rattray, and I stopped.

  “Look,” he was saying. “Everybody knows you’re a friend of MacAkern’s, but you’re also an employee of the federal government, and that means there’s a conflict of interest.” It sounded rehearsed.

  “So it’s for my own good?” said Fergie.

  “Yes.”

  “That sounds like a threat, Barry.”

  “Take it however you want.”

  “Very dramatic. And now you can go back to your uncle, who’s obviously set you up to tell me all this, and tell him that if it’s conflict of interest he’s talking about, everybody knows he and his cronies have been buying up land around Barrisway, hoping to cash in when the park goes through.”

  “So what? That’s just business.”

  “Yeah, but Barry, he’s supposed to be a Member of Parliament, not a land speculator. And if he thinks he can….” Then Fergie suddenly sighed and stopped. “…Ah fuck it. Now. Let’s get about our business, shall we?”

  I can’t imagine how they hadn’t heard my feet on the gravel before, but now, around the corner out of their sight, I stood perfectly still. The longer I stayed there, the worse was my transgression, but they would definitely hear me if I tried to sneak away.

  “I thought we were in this together,” said Rattray.

  “If we were in this together, would you be trying to get me fired?”

  Rattray’s voice dropped. “Who told you that?”

  “You’re not the only one with friends in high places, Barry.”

  “Well, I don’t know what anybody told you, but I never…”

  “Oh, spare me.” And then Fergie walked away, around the other side of the building. I thought Rattray might be coming my side, but then I heard him snort and follow.

  I let out my breath and retraced my steps to the front of the building, then waited with my bike so if they saw me, I could pretend I had just arrived. I wondered how I had let myself become such a sneaky bastard. I peeked around the corner to see if they had come around the other side yet, but they didn’t show up, so I left my bike and walked to the front door of the building.

  I put my hand on the door handle but when I pushed it open and stepped inside, somebody behind the door gave out a yelp.

  I knew that yelp. Claire was standing in the corner where the diorama was to be, holding one hand out to stop the door hitting her and turning to look at me. I felt an electric thrill and immediately forgot the guilt from having listened to something I was not supposed to. She saw my face and yelped again.

  “Hey there,” I said casually, just like a cool guy on TV.

  She sighed angrily, frowned, then squinted and peered more closely. I basked in her attention and smiled goofily, ready to explain my makeup. But shaking her head and showing me the palm of her hand as if she didn’t have time for any of this, she turned away and focused her attention back on her work.

  I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t seem as happy to see me as I was to see her. I had read somewhere that every love affair has one person who loves and one who allows themselves to be loved, and either way was fine by me. No point in her being downright miserable at my sight, though.

  Perhaps her behaviour was evidence of a professional side which I hadn’t seen before. She was certainly dressed more professionally today, in severe shoes and a woven skirt made of a tweed so thick it was almost burlap, with a jacket of the same material strapped across her like armour, and at her throat only the top button left undone. The key today, I thought, was to stress my professionalism.

  “Oh! Claire. There’s something in regards to my report I would like to talk over with you and get your opinion on.”

  “I have to do this,” she said.

  “Of course. At your leisure.” I almost clicked my heels.

  Her only response was that without looking away from her work, she reached up and fastened that last button at her throat.

  I felt the hint of a distant tremor on the far side of the earth.

  The best thing to do now was bustle through to the washroom, a busy man in a hurry to start his workday, but just as I turned away I heard sounds outside and Fergie and Rattray appeared on the other side of the glass door. Fergie’s muffled voice was saying that he was going to town. Rattray, carrying a box, nodded. I turned to get to the bathroom before he came in, but Claire’s hand shot out, grabbed my arm and stopped me. This was more like it.

  “Tell me something,” she whispered quickly.

  “Anything,” I whispered back.

  She was looking away from me, through the glass door. “Who’s that guy there?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The good-looking one.”

  “Fergie?” I looked at her quizzically.

  “No. The other one,” she said, but there was no other guy around except Rattray, so she must have been mistaken, or hallucinating. Perhaps I should put my hand to her forehead to see if she was running a fever, and if so, administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  Right then, Fergie headed towards his truck, leaving one person only to whom she could be referring. “Him,” she pointed.

  “You mean Rattray?” I felt like spitting, to rid my mouth of the contamination of his name.

  “Rattray?” she repeated, making even the ugliest two syllables in the universe seem almost musical. Then she turned to me eagerly. “What’s his first name?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, hoping to suggest that nobody knew his name, nobody cared enough to find out, and that it was rumoured he hadn’t even been given one, his own parents never having felt he was worth it.

  Apart from everything else that distressed me about this conversation, I did know that Rattray’s first name was Barry, and it occurred to me this was my first real lie to her.

  “I’ll ask him,” she said, seeming not only to be curious, but positively excited.

  And on the far side of the earth, as though that tiny tremor had dislodged something, the tectonic plate slipped a miniscule distance.

  “Do you want something from him?” I said. “Because I could ask him, if you wanted.”

  “He’s coming in,” she said. “Introduce me,” and with a quick motion she undid the top button of her shirt.

  Appalled but obedient I waited till Rattray shouldered his way through the door, his eyes not yet accustomed to the lighting inside, and not particularly interested in seeing anybody anyway.

  “Rattray? This is Claire,” I said, trying not to make it sound like she was the most special thing in the world. I was no longer celebrating, but denigrating her, and dark a
nd twisted feelings squirmed out of my soul where before had been only truth and purity.

  “Oh yeah?” said Rattray barely looking up, and he turned away.

  Rattray seemed not to see her beauty. Yes! Good man Rattray! And in a further twist of perversity, I found myself actually grateful to him. Everything was upside down.

  But now his indifference seemed only to increase her curiosity. She took a quick step after him, following him to the counter. “Putting in boxes, eh?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “There’s only a few more,” said Rattray, thumping the box on the counter and then crossing back towards the bathroom, still ignoring me.

  “I guess those are the boxes of new stationary we were promised,” I said to Claire. “High time, too. Those guys in Ottawa! I’ve been asking for them for a week now. Phoned in a requisition just yesterday. I needed some for that report I’m doing. Which is something I wanted to ask you about, like I was saying. I was wondering if you’d be up to making some illustrations for it.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “What?”

  “Illustrations, like the ones you made in The Flora and Fauna of Barrisway Park.”

  “I guess so,” she said, but she wasn’t thinking about what I was saying at all.

  “There’s no real rush, of course, but I liked your drawings so much that I thought, well, why not? I mean you’re right here anyway, not that even if you weren’t right here I wouldn’t still try to get in touch with you, ‘cause those drawings really are great, like I was telling you yesterday, remember?” The main thing was to keep her involved, or get her involved, or somehow have her still a part of my life.

  “What? Oh, sure. See ya.” And she went into her office and closed the door.

  The way my strategy was supposed to unfold was, having built on, as I saw it, her initial attraction of yesterday, fueled as it was by my effusive praise of her drawings, she would continue a growing and deepening interest in me, then, during the course of the morning, or by lunch hour at the very latest, I would invite her to the beach. I could make the invitation sound like a semi-official walkabout, an introduction to the flora and fauna of the park which I had been instructed to take her on, a completely sanctioned and professional outing. Identifying and explaining to her whatever it was that we came across would cause her first to be impressed, then awed by my incredible knowledge. I could suggest a swim, she would say she didn’t have a bathing suit, and I would say completely naturally that I always swam in the nude as it promoted more vital skin tone. She would have to accept this, coming from who, by now, she would see was an authority figure in all the sciences, and she would strip.