Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  The Mounties pried into her life. It wasn’t something she’d been raised to expect. She imagined men wearing hats in their offices, their glossy black shoes up on their desks, idly leafing through the transcripts of Emmett’s testimony and laughing at what a patsy she’d made of him. He had protected her, she didn’t know how but she knew why, and his loyalty scared her, made her feel ashamed, and she tried to match his loyalty now. She didn’t know why they had investigated him. Except to get at her. She was the guilty one. She was the one who’d been so obsessed with John. The memory of John’s cool beauty disturbed her. His so-called communism had seemed to her an aspect of his style — rebellious, wounded. Now the government, the Mounties, the Americans, and their un-American committees had gone after poor Emmett because of her, because she’d fallen in love with John. Because everyone is insane, filled with hatred and fear of the Russians, setting off atom bombs in the desert, for what? Because they love power, they love the fear they can instil in people.

  She’d hidden at the cottage all those terrible weeks; it wasn’t for Lennie, it was for herself. She caught herself dressing more modestly even when they were alone. She walked differently now because someone was judging her, somebody was watching her who considered her immoral. Emmett had been too worn out to want to make love these past weeks, and she was glad because she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watched, overheard, that someone was always listening. The young woman she’d once been with John Norfield, that vain young woman who’d laughed at the phone tap on John’s phone years ago, that silly delinquent still haunted her just as John haunted her. But this was her marriage, this was her motherhood, the only life she’d ever have, she wanted to be a good woman, she had to be, there was Lennie, she had to be a good wife and mother, so she cleaned the cottage, she talked to Lennie.

  She told herself that they are, she and Emmett, first-class people. Her father had threatened to kill somebody, he’d been so indignant and furious, but he’d never, not for an instant, taken the charges seriously. “A witch hunt,” her father called it. “The Americans are a bunch of Puritans. Ottawa should have better sense.”

  Her mother had surprised Suzanne by responding philosophically. Mama had quite a soft spot for Emmett, whom she described as “a dreamer.” “It’s about the books, isn’t it,” she asserted. In a way, it was about the books; it was guilt by association. Mama had leaned toward her son-in-law, putting her hand on his arm, and in her whisky contralto murmured reassuringly, “You were simply an idealistic student mixed up with the wrong crowd.”

  Suzanne understood that her mother liked Emmett so much because he was a healthy contrast to John Norfield. Mama thought that Emmett had “saved” Suzanne. The two of them, Emmett and Suzanne, were “birds of a feather,” tempted by all that radical claptrap in their university days. But they’d grown up. And Emmett had proved himself with External Affairs. She liked to tell her friends, “My son-in-law is with Ottawa. We’re originally Ottawa people.”

  “It’s simply absurd,” Mama said. “Who on earth would believe a good-looking man like you would be tied up with those awful communists?”

  Who would? Suzanne didn’t have any close friends, there was no one she could confide in. She told herself, Emmett is my best friend, she imagined herself telling people, My husband is my best friend. She was a good wife, wasn’t she? She overlooked how much he was drinking, she deeply sympathized with the pressure he was under.

  It was over, and surely no one would find out that Emmett — that she and Emmett — had been compromised, the word came to her. Emmett had been under suspicion of disloyalty because she, Suzanne, had been involved with a communist. That was how it worked. Guilt by association. But their government would protect them. No one would come after Emmett ever again. External Affairs told the Americans, the RCMP told the FBI — there was no evidence of disloyalty. No evidence. The FBI would leave them alone now.

  They’re Canadian citizens, and the Canadian government protects people like Emmett and Emmett’s good wife. “Doesn’t it?” Suzanne said to Lennie. “Of course it does. Why am I crying?”

  At a quarter to seven, she went to meet Emmett and his new friend at the landing in her boat, an impeccable twenty-two-foot Shepherd runabout. Lennie in her sleepers looked baffled, doubtful, with her mother putting her in the boat in the dusk.

  Suzanne had been navigating back and forth to the landing since she was a young girl. But Emmett’s friend appeared to find it exotic; he kept exclaiming over the white wake shining “like silver coins” illuminated by the boat’s stern light. It was dark now. “How do you know where you’re going?” he wanted to know. It was appealing, a lark, to experience the familiar through unfamiliar eyes. Dr. Kimura looked at her, and she knew he found her beautiful. She felt rakish. It was, she realized, perfect to have someone with them. She was glad she didn’t have to play the cheerleader, with Emmett in such a black mood.

  All weekend, Dr. Kimura carried Lennie around with him. The moment he saw the baby in the boat, he picked her up as if she’d long been his, and Lennie seemed immediately to love him. Suzanne felt a bit jealous, Lennie didn’t like her to dandle her like that, but it was nice to have her hands free. On Saturday she took some photographs. Kimura asked many questions about her camera, her methods of developing film. He asked to see her prints.

  “Most of them are in the city,” she told him.

  Emmett was all keyed up. Without a word now, he went and dragged a shoebox out from under their bed. “Suzanne’s the photographer in this family.” He tossed the shoebox on the bed and opened it. “I can barely use a Polaroid.”

  Some of the photographs in the box were old, pictures of Suzanne as a child, probably taken by her father, who’d once been in love with the camera too. Then there was a package tied in yarn. Suzanne bit her lip, seeing it in Emmett’s hands as he untied it. Dr. Kimura sensed her anxiety and said, “We don’t have to look at these now.” But Emmett had already loosened the bundle and spread the photographs on the bed.

  “It was my avenues and doors period,” she said ruefully and began to collect them.

  But Emmett moved her hands aside. He laid out the photographs like a game of solitaire. Among the avenues and doors, there was one strange sequence, exhibiting Suzanne’s skill with focus and light. The banality of the composition jarred with an attention to detail, knives and forks in a kitchen drawer becoming strange by virtue of her fastidious work in the darkroom; men’s shirts in a chest of drawers, leather belts coiled like snakes, a pillow on a tidy bed, the shape of someone’s head still visible in the creases on the pillowcase.

  Emmett stood aside in bitter silence. Kimura mildly observed, “You have a fondness for still life, I see. But you have also taken some handsome portraits.”

  “How do you know that?” Suzanne asked, looking nervously at Emmett.

  “I saw them at your house. We stopped by on our way out of town so your husband could change his clothes,” Kimura said. “The portrait of your father. You could compete with Karsh.”

  She blushed. “That’s an awful picture.”

  Kimura smiled, acknowledging that yes, it’s quite bad. “But the print in the veranda. Here, at your cottage,” he added, “of a man’s spine? It’s very good.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “A thin man,” he continued. “And several portraits of him at your lovely home in the city. He’s the same man, no?”

  But Suzanne had left the room. Emmett wordlessly stacked the photographs and retied the string.

  She put her hand on Kimura’s arm. “We have been lonely,” she told him. “We’ve had almost no — wait — we haven’t had any visitors this summer. Not since Bill and Ethel Masters. And that was in June.”

  “Did you invite some and they wouldn’t come?” Kimura asked her this with neutral curiosity; it appeared that it wouldn’t have affected his own pleasure at being here if they had indeed been shunned by everyone in Ottawa.

  “I guess not.�
�� She laughed sadly. “But nobody called, once the, the thing got underway.”

  “The investigation. But, of course, no one knew. This was a coincidence.”

  She shrugged to indicate, It’s a mystery. Kimura had rocked Lenore till she’d blessedly fallen asleep. He’d cheered up Emmett too; Emmett had emerged from his bad mood to carry Lennie to bed. It was after midnight, moonlit and still not very cold, so Suzanne was sitting down on the dock with Dr. Kimura. “I haven’t even seen any bear since mid-July,” she said. “No deer since the beginning of August. There used to be a strange little fox that would show up if I roasted a chicken, but he’s gone. No turkey vultures.”

  “Where’d everybody go?”

  “I don’t know, Kim. Nobody likes a communist, I guess.” She could sense Kimura perk up, pleased. She wanted him to like her. Emmett had never brought to her someone, a man, whom he obviously liked. Emmett wasn’t a man’s man. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. And I know it’s good for my husband.”

  Emmett joined them. Suzanne said that it was amazing that Kimura had been able to get Lennie to sleep. “She never sleeps.”

  “I am soporific with females young and old,” Kimura said.

  “You’re magic, that’s what you are. I’ll go to bed while I can.” Suzanne said goodnight and went up, leaving the men on the dock.

  She could hear them talking, an hour or more later when she got up, thinking she’d heard Lenore awaken. The baby slept, and the men were out in the canoe. She could see their silhouettes against the mica scales of the lake. They weren’t paddling but drifting, Emmett idly guiding the canoe. Kimura had turned from the bow to face him. The water carried their voices, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  She searched for, and found, her tenderness for Emmett — it occurred often when he didn’t know that he was being observed; the shape of his head, the way he held his shoulders. She hadn’t fallen in love with him “at first sight.” Now their lives were braided. To what degree this was because they loved a child together, she couldn’t tell. She thought, by its very nature, marriage is decent; a family is defined by a certain quality of goodness; she wanted it to make her good, she hoped one day to feel it.

  Emmett was happy to be with Kimura, though he certainly wouldn’t have been happy to be with her tonight. The investigation was over, and she sensed that he was blaming her, though he said he wasn’t, blaming her for getting them tied up with John. She knew that Emmett was in love with her and always had been, but that didn’t mean he didn’t also resent her, blame her, hate her, in a way.

  She thought that Emmett and Kimura were “falling in love.” What funny words. She could never say that to them; in fact, it would probably wreck it. In the morning, she didn’t mention that she’d seen them talking so late. It must have been the most beautiful night of the year.

  Chapter Five

  Emmett heard nothing from the FBI, a silence he likened to the whisper of a bow being drawn back, taking aim.

  He saw the strain on Suzanne. Her loyalty surprised and moved him. Even her parents had been steadfast through this. The McCallum clan were the worst possible target of scandal: hypersensitive about the family reputation, proud of their public faces, and defensive of their privacy. Yet they’d proved loyal to him. He wouldn’t risk letting Suzanne or her parents know that the FBI now possessed transcripts of the interviews, the notes from surveillance.

  For now, the FBI was quiet about whatever they owned on him. He had no way of knowing the full contents of the Jones file. He’d kept his responses repetitive in the interviews with the RCMP and External Affairs, answering their questions with reiterations of the same information over and over. But he could never know what other information they had on him — the stuff that Morton had abruptly revealed, for example, the stuff about Emmett’s time in Tokyo, his relationship with Aoi. This preyed on him: the bleeding of the investigation into his time in Japan and the proximity to the incident in the port district. Morton must have been bluffing when he claimed that he’d seen a report from the Japanese police; there is no such report, Emmett had to believe this, the dead policeman would not come back to haunt him. But what else did the RCMP know about him? Was there a stray photograph or observation, an unconnected dot in the composite of Mr. Jones?

  Winter resumed, a cold blossom, cellular, isolating. He made his way to work early every morning through snowdrifts two, three, four feet high, though there wasn’t enough for him to do there. It was agreed among his superiors at External that it would be prudent to remove him indefinitely from contact with American officials “till things blow over.” The Americans didn’t appear to trust anyone who knew anything about Far Eastern affairs. Gembey’s summary report exonerated Emmett Jones of suspicion of disloyalty. But Gembey privately to the minister and to Bill Masters questioned whether Jones could ever again be an “effective” foreign service officer.

  Bill said, “You’re damn right he can be.”

  Snow descended at a leisurely pace without wind for thirty-six hours, then let up for a few days and descended again. The city slowed, nearly stopped. Emmett asked Bill Masters what he might expect in the way of meaningful work; he told him he needed to dig his teeth into something challenging. He tried to persuade Bill to let him play a role in South Korea, and maybe in the French War, in Indochina.

  “I could be an observer for Korea and Vietnam,” he told Bill. “I’ve got some Mandarin. I could pick up French pretty quickly. You could use me in Southeast Asia. I’m wasted here.”

  Bill stalled. “I’ll talk to the minister.”

  “When?”

  Bill told him to slow down, reminding him that the investigation hadn’t been over for more than a few weeks. “Let it cool, will you?” said Bill. “I’m working on something for you.”

  After the New Year, Bill finally came up with something for Jones to do. “It’s nothing to do with Indochina,” he told him. “It’s not exactly a posting.” Emmett groaned, and Bill persisted, “It’s too soon for another foreign posting. In your heart of hearts, you know that.”

  Emmett pushed. “Who said it’s too soon? Who’s in charge of the Department? J. Edgar Hoover?”

  “Relax. You tick like a time bomb sometimes, do you know that?”

  “I can’t waste my life, Bill.”

  Affection softened Bill’s features. He was looking more like a frog every day. “You’re a hothead, Jones. But I like your ambition.” He patted Emmett’s shoulder. “Tell me something. What do you know about strip mining bauxite?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “It’s something to grow into,” said Bill.

  Chapter Six

  Emmett’s next assignment did have a lot to do with the wars in Asia, where new American military technology had given rise to a huge demand for alumina bauxite. One of the major sources of bauxite was in the West Indies, in Jamaica. There was a rush on this deal, Bill Masters said, because the Russians didn’t have any bauxite and they were going to make a move on Jamaica and Cuba like they were already moving in on India. “We’ve got to go quick on this, Jones. It’s up to you to keep the Russkies outta the Caribbean.”

  “It’s up to me, is it?” Emmett said. But he agreed: Mr. Jones would join a trade mission to Jamaica, with a visit to Cuba tagged on for no specific reason.

  There was no Canadian consul in Jamaica as there was in Cuba, where the Canadian Embassy’s only real job was, and had been for a couple of hundred years, to smooth the trade of Atlantic salt cod for Cuban sugar. The Americans had a monopoly over Cuban oil, but otherwise Cuba was one place on the planet where Canadian trade relations had some reputed independence from the US and Britain.

  Canadian banks and mining companies intended to make a lot of money by getting bauxite out of Jamaica — while saving the world from communism. Emmett would have several days with the fellows from the Royal Bank, meeting them in Manchester, Jamaica, and then he’d go to Cuba as a guest of the Canadian Embassy. “You’re gonna li
ke Havana,” Bill said. “Maybe you’ll meet Hemingway.”

  He asked Bill if the failed revolution in Cuba last summer was affecting international business there. “Are you kidding?” said Bill. “It’s better than ever. Batista’s open for business.”

  “Did you run this by Harold Gembey?”

  Bill nervously scratched at the back of his balding head, squirming, and then admitted, “Actually, it was his idea.”

  Emmett was intrigued, and troubled. He knew that Gembey would normally be wary of sending him anywhere that the Americans might consider him a security risk. Cuba was politically hot. The revolt against Batista had failed, but Cuba wasn’t the backwater posting that Emmett had dreaded — he’d pushed for Asia but had expected something even less consequential than New Zealand, which had been Herbert Norman’s fate. He suspected that a jaunt to Cuba was a set-up, and wondered if Gembey — or whomever Gembey was trying to please — wanted to put him into a hot situation just to see what he’d do. He said, “I don’t know, Bill. I’m a language guy. But Spanish is Greek to me.”

  “I know that. You think I don’t know what you know? Listen. In Jamaica, you’ll be with some smart jokers from the Royal Bank doing business with bright young guys from Toronto, got themselves a mining company, built some kind of strip mine up in the mountains. Young buggers are building their own roads and their own dockyards. We’re talking big dough here. Jee-sus, what? You can’t enjoy smoothing a huge deal in resources, hot and exotic? Then you go to Cuba for pretty well a holiday. Do a little gambling. Bring me home some rum. ”