Reparations

by Stephen Kimber

  This room was like that room. The walls were plain white, with the exception of a single, black-on-white vision chart tacked up, with black pushpins, on the wall to the right of where Ward was sitting. In one corner, there was a white-enamelled scale with a black weight-balance mechanism and a folding swing arm the doctor used to determine her patients’ heights. To his left stood a white laminate cupboard with melamine countertop, on which sat a white cardboard box filled with packages of disposable plastic gloves. Ward’s eyes skipped past those. Along the opposite wall, just behind the doctor, he could see the metallic white examining table with its black leather mattress cover, partially covered by a white disposable paper sheet. In a few minutes he would be bent across that table, his pants and underpants at his ankles . . .

  Dr. Thomas herself was also a study in black and white. And bronze. And red. She was wearing a white lab coat over black slacks and a plain black sweater. Her hair was black and sleek and pulled back in a bun. Even her ankle boots were black. All of which only served to accentuate the soft, brown-sugar hue of her hands and face. And the incongruously bold red of her lipstick.

  She wasn’t beautiful so much as striking. Ward was struck by what he saw as her beauty. There was a time when he might have noticed only her faults—the wisps of black facial hair that made her appear to have sideburns, the slick oiliness of the skin around her nose, the slight plumpness around her middle—but those days were long past. He regretted now that, when he was still a young man and somewhat attractive himself, he had been so selective about what constituted beauty. These days, he could see splendour in almost any female form—old, young, plump, skinny, black, white, bronze—but this admiration was no longer reciprocated. He could understand why. He had become fat and grey and wrinkled, an old man at fifty-three. Women also seemed more discerning now. Was that the ultimate fruit of women’s liberation? For women to be able to judge men as men had always judged women?

  Ward had begun to think about such questions in the two months since Victoria had told him she wanted a divorce. He couldn’t imagine how he would ever meet another woman. Kathleen, his secretary—did he even know her last name?—was happily married (was that possible?) with two young children. She kept a framed Sears Family Portrait Studio photo of her smiling husband—Tim was his name; she mentioned that often enough—and the boys on top of her desk so they would face her while she worked. She would not have been a good candidate to replace Victoria even if Ward were interested. Which he wasn’t. He had enough trouble thinking of things to say to her at work; he couldn’t imagine a conversation over dinner or, especially, in bed. Not that she would be interested.

  After Kathleen, there was . . . well, there was no one.

  Dr. Thomas? He’d only met her once before today, during a perfunctory visit a year ago to renew his prescriptions for asthma medications. He remembered being surprised at the time to discover she was Indian. When he’d initially received Doc Wilson’s letter announcing his retirement and welcoming his successor, “Dr. Elizabeth Thomas, a native of Uganda,” Ward had assumed she would have the blue-black skin of an Idi Amin. And was strangely disappointed to discover she did not.

  All the new doctors seemed to be immigrants from Asia or India; a black doctor from Africa might at least have spiced up that mix, even become a role model for local black children. Ward had begun to fret about the lack of positive black figures. Perhaps his perspective was just skewed by his job; the only black faces he saw were the ones parading before him charged with this or that crime, usually selling drugs or peddling girls for the purposes of prostitution. None seemed remorseful, or even concerned they’d been caught. They’d swagger into court in their oversized painter pants, their chests festooned with gold chains, smirking to friends in the gallery while the Crown and defence presented their let’s-get-this-over-with plea agreements and joint sentencing recommendations that, most often, didn’t involve more than few months’ real jail time, if any at all. No wonder the drug dealers and pimps returned to their neighbourhoods as heroes, role models for the next generation.

  Ward could have done his part to change that, of course, could have wiped the smiles off their faces and shaken the lawyers out of their going-through-the-motions stupor. But he didn’t. It was simpler—and safer—to go along with whatever the defence and Crown had worked out in advance, so long as it didn’t stray too far from the established sentencing guidelines. But was his reluctance as simple as that? The guilt again? Or was that giving himself too much credit for conscience? Maybe Ward was just content to go along to get along.

  Is that also what had happened to Ray Carter? Ray could have been that role model. He was not only a black lawyer, he was from the local community. From Africville, for God’s sake. And smart, smarter than Ward. Of course he’d been a shit-disturber back in the day. Back in the day when Ward was a politician. But then Ray had abandoned that role, as suddenly and completely as Ward had given up politics. He’d gone to law school, and the next thing Ward knew, Ray was going through the motions like all the rest. Ward wanted to ask him what had happened, but he was afraid of what he might hear. In court, Ray never gave the slightest hint they’d been friends. Neither, of course, did Ward.

  He wondered what Ray—Ward’s mind still tripped awkwardly over Uhuru Melesse—thought about what had happened in court the day of the arraignment. He’d been half expecting a defence motion to ask him to recuse himself from presiding at the trial. But it hadn’t come. At least not yet. He wasn’t sure why. Neither was Ward certain why he’d insisted to the Chief Justice that he wanted to hear the case.

  Perhaps J. J. Howe would become the new role model for local black children. They could do worse, Ward thought. He had tried not to read the stories about the case in the newspapers, or listen to the gossip in the courthouse. His job was to interpret the law, not be swayed by the circumstances of a particular human situation. But this particular human situation was particularly compelling. Ward knew that from the few brief snatches of the TV reports he’d caught before quickly switching channels. And then there was last weekend’s Globe and Mail front page: a large photo of the young man, staring hard at the camera as he was being led away by sheriff’s deputies. “Is this the face of the new Robin Hood?” the caption read, promoting a feature in the paper’s Focus section on “the issue of reparations and the criminal case that has become the talk of Canada’s legal community.” Would Ray really try to argue that the kid was justified in taking the money? It was risky. If Ward ruled against that defence—which he couldn’t imagine not doing—Ray’s client would have as much as admitted his guilt. Better to plead guilty and then use his client’s circumstances to argue for a reduced sentence. Maybe, in the end, that’s what Ray had in mind. Stir things up, and then . . . Perhaps that’s why Ray hadn’t tried to get him removed from the case. Perhaps he figured Ward owed him one. Perhaps—

  “So.” Dr. Thomas closed the file folder and looked up at Ward. “What brings you here today, Mr. Justice?”

  “Well . . .” He coughed. He did that more often now, whenever he was nervous. “Nothing serious. It’s just that, I guess, I’m getting a little older and, well, you know, you read the stories, see the ads, and you start to worry, think maybe you should get yourself checked out.”

  “Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about?”

  “No—well, yes, I suppose there is. I’ve been noticing that I sometimes have to go to the bathroom more often these days.”

  “To pee?”

  “Yes. “

  She made a note on the file. “Just at night?”

  “Yes . . . Well, no. Sometimes in the day, too.”

  “How often at night?”

  “Three, maybe four times.”

  “After you finish, does it feel like you’ve completely voided your bladder?”

  And so it went. Matter-of-fact. Question, answer, question, answer. It became easier no
t to think of her as a stranger, or even a woman.

  “Any erectile difficulties?”

  “No.” Too quick. Would he even know if he had erectile difficulties? He didn’t want to get into that. She knew enough already.

  “Any other problems? Tiredness? Trouble sleeping?”

  “No . . . Well, you know, sometimes when I get up to go to the bathroom, I’ll have trouble falling back to sleep and I’ll be tired the next day, but that’s about it.” It wasn’t really about it. In the past few months, he’d begun feeling exhausted and was falling asleep with alarming regularity while reading case files in his office; he’d even, occasionally, drifted off in the courtroom in the middle of important testimony. He put it down to overwork; the court dockets were overcrowded and backlogged and he, like the rest of the judges, was struggling to keep up. But he was certain that had nothing to do with the state of his health . . . or his prostate.

  “I noticed you have quite a persistent cough.” Did he? He hadn’t noticed. “Do you smoke?”

  “Gave it up ten years ago, longer probably.”

  “Good for you. How long have you had that cough?”

  “Uh, I didn’t really even notice until you mentioned it. Just nervous, I guess. Sometimes I cough when I’m nervous.”

  She smiled at him. “There’s no need to be nervous of me, Mr. Justice. I won’t bite, I promise. Is it a productive cough?”

  Productive? “Sometimes.” Should he tell her about the green gobs he’d been coughing up in the morning. “A little sputum now and then.”

  “What colour?”

  “Greenish, I guess. I try not to examine it too carefully.” He tried to smile, but she was already looking back down at her notes.

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve had any sort of thorough checkup, Mr. Justice, so I think I’m going to send you for some tests. An EKG, blood tests, routine stuff, you know, check your thyroid and cholesterol, things like that, mostly just to give us a baseline for the future. One of the tests will be to determine your PSA levels. It’s one of the two tests we use to check on the state of your prostate. The other test is the one I’m guessing you’re probably nervous about.”

  She smiled. He smiled.

  “It’s not nearly as bad as you imagine, Mr. Justice. A little discomfort, that’s all. And then it’ll be done. Perhaps we should do that now and get it over with so you’ll be nice and relaxed when we check your heart rate and blood pressure. That sound reasonable?”

  “Yes.” No.

  Chapter 6

  1970

  “Mr. Former Premier, meet Mr. Future Premier.” Jack Eagleson laughed.

  After three years, Ward had not only got used to Jack’s Jack-laugh but also to hearing Jack introduce him as Nova Scotia’s future premier. Ward had finally come to understand this was just Jack’s way of making conversation, and that Ward was far from the first—and certainly would not be the last—bright young man Jack would single out in this way. It was almost as if Jack Eagleson was hedging his bets; if one of his protegés ever became premier, he could proclaim his prescience.

  “Gerry Cullingham,” the man said, extending his hand. He was tall, slim, grey-haired, with an unnaturally ruddy complexion that could have been the result of too many hours at the golf course or too much wine at that afternoon’s garden party, maybe both. As he stood by the iron gate leading into the huge backyard, shaking Ward’s hand, he stage-whispered in his ear: “You’d best watch yourself with this bugger. He’s the reason I’m now Mr. Former Premier.”

  “Touché,” Jack answered. “But you should tell our young man here that I’m also the reason you were ever the premier in the first place.”

  “Touché to you, too.”

  Ward tried to piece together what he remembered of The Recent Political History of Nova Scotia, as told by Jack Eagleson.

  Gerry Cullingham was the wayward son of James Cullingham, founding partner of McArtney, Eagleson, Cullingham & O’Sullivan. After graduating from law school with a well-earned reputation as a ladies’ man and an equally well-earned C average, Gerry was brought into the firm by the old man, who asked Jack to be Gerry’s mentor. “If anyone can save him, you’d be the man,” the senior Cullingham had told Eagleson, or at least that’s what Jack had told Ward.

  Jack quickly understood that, while Gerry had no understanding or appreciation of the finer points of law, he was a first-rate public speaker who could be taught to follow Jack’s script. In 1952, Gerry, with Jack pulling the strings, won the Liberal nomination in Halifax South. Jack then ran his first—and only—successful election campaign. Cullingham was never “the shiniest apple in the barrel,” as Jack put it, but he was, with Jack and his father twisting arms and calling in favours, named a junior Cabinet minister anyway.

  In 1955, after legendary Liberal premier Andrew Hamilton died suddenly of a heart attack, Cullingham became everyone’s surprise second choice to succeed him. Jack Eagleson had stage-managed that, too, fomenting a nasty feud between the two front-runners: William Davies, the veteran provincial Highways minister, a Haligonian and a Roman Catholic (not necessarily in that order), and Donald Farrell, a former federal MP who happened to be a Protestant from Cape Breton. “It was easy,” Jack bragged to Ward. “I told Davies’s people that if Farrell became premier, he was going to sic the Mounties on the church bingos and put the priests behind bars. And I convinced Farrell’s people Davies was going to renege on Hamilton’s promise to build the causeway to Cape Breton from the mainland, By the convention, they hated each other so much Gerry was the only one both sides could stomach.”

  Cullingham’s own brief moment in the sun lasted less than a year, “When the fat lady sings, you just gotta dance,” was how Jack cryptically explained the party’s defeat in the next general election. In Jack’s version of events, he bore no personal responsibility for the Conservative landslide that ended nearly two unbroken decades of Liberal rule and cost Gerry Cullingham his seat in the Legislature.

  Ward didn’t contradict his mentor, but he knew now that there were other, less flattering interpretations of Cullingham’s defeat. In “The Politics of Nova Scotia: 1867 to Now,” a senior history seminar he’d taken last year, the professor, once a Liberal Cabinet minister himself, had blamed Jack. “As campaign manager, Mr. Eagleson tried to control the whole campaign from provincial headquarters in Halifax,” he told the class. “That upset the good folks in the local constituencies, who figured they knew a thing or two about running election campaigns. Most of them decided to sit out the election. With predictable results.”

  Not that Gerry Cullingham ever complained about his fate. He’d managed to be premier long enough to make it the centrepiece of his resume for the rest of his life, and for his father to die a happy man. The day after his son was sworn in as premier, James Cullingham had a massive heart attack. Since his wife had died a few years earlier, Gerry, his only child, inherited everything: the mansion on Young Avenue where Jack and Ward had come for this afternoon’s garden party, the country estate near Chester, a thirty-six-foot, handcrafted wooden schooner, memberships in the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron, the Chester Yacht Club, the Ashburn Golf and Country Club, the Chester Golf Club and, of course, the Halifax Club. He also inherited his father’s carefully managed portfolio of stocks and bonds, which his father had insisted—wisely—continue to be controlled by his executor, Jack Eagleson.

  Perhaps because of that, Gerry Cullingham seemed to take his electoral defeat as a kind of liberation and had happily spent the years since drinking, sailing, travelling and, of course, hosting occasional fundraising functions like this one, basking in his role as Mr. Former Premier.

  Ward had never been to an event like this before. He couldn’t help but marvel at the Cullinghams’ huge, treed backyard, now crawling with dozens of loud, laughing downtown lawyers and business types, many of whom he recognized from having seen their phot
os in the Tribune. Tanned ladies in colourful summer frocks and all manner of straw hats accompanied the men. Ward accompanied Jack. Uniformed black waiters circulated among the guests, bearing trays of wine and canapés. In one corner of the yard near the garden, there was a portable bar where the men lined up for cocktails.

  Gerry and his wife, Irena, had organized the first annual Cullingham Gala in 1957, after his electoral defeat. Ever since, it had served as a kind of consolation prize for Liberal socialites who’d been unceremoniously dropped from the guest list of the annual Lieutenant-Governor’s Garden Party after the new Tory administration got control of the invites.

  The Liberals had now frittered away fourteen years trying to regain control of the garden party guest list and, coincidentally—at least for some in the party establishment—the government.

  Many Liberals, like Ward’s political science professor, blamed Jack Eagleson not only for the party’s initial defeat in 1956 but also for its continued inability to oust the now entrenched Tories. But while they might grumble about him over their Scotch and sodas at the Halifax Club, none was brave, or foolish, enough to challenge Jack for the party presidency or, more important, his self-appointed role as its Provincial Campaign Co-ordinator.

  That’s because Jack Eagleson had sole control of the Winners’ Club, the secret trust fund his father had created. Jeffrey Eagleson, a lawyer, chartered accountant and secretary-treasurer of the provincial Liberal Association, had quietly set up the fund after Andrew Hamilton’s Liberals first came to power in the early thirties. During the next twenty years, Jeffrey Eagleson had funnelled all manner of political bribes, payoffs and kickbacks into the ever-expanding fund.