Reparations

by Stephen Kimber

  No one knew how much he collected but everyone knew it was a lot. Liquor companies that wanted to do business in the province, for example, had to pay five cents per bottle to the Winners’ Club for the privilege of having their brands listed by the provincial liquor commission, which was the only way they could legally peddle their booze. That alone must have added up to millions of dollars’ worth of kickbacks. But there were other sources, too. Anyone who wanted to win a highway paving contract, or rent office space to a government department, or sell staples to some secretary in some rural government outpost knew that their bid would not even be considered if they hadn’t first paid a courtesy call on Jeffrey Eagleson, cheque book in hand.

  Cash was acceptable if the donors—usually Upper Canadian business executives unaccustomed to the local ways—were nervous about paper trails. Not that there wasn’t one. Jeffrey Eagleson kept meticulous records of every donation, partly to protect himself from potential allegations he’d siphoned off any of the money for his own use and partly because it gave him power. Though he never threatened anyone explicitly, Jeffrey Eagleson liked to talk about his obsession with keeping records of everything he did. Everyone got the message.

  Eagleson was just as careful to detail every expenditure he ever made from the fund, including not only those for running election campaigns but also the occasional, instantly-forgiven-but-not-quite-forgotten loan to a Cabinet minister to cover a gambling debt, or a mistress’s abortion, or an annual Caribbean vacation with the missus, or the mistress. Jeffrey Eagleson was just as careful to document the weekly cash payments he made to each Liberal MLA when the House was in session, and even itemized the expenses for the semi-annual Members’ Appreciation Nights, when Eagleson would book the entire top floor of the Nova Scotian Hotel and hire a dozen of Monique’s best girls to provide the politicians with all manner of sexual services all night long.

  Because the trust fund had been created and then filled with what some uncharitable authorities might regard as illegal political kick-backs, the Winners’ Club was never officially on the books as a Liberal Party asset. Which gave Jeffrey Eagleson, its sole trustee, even more power and influence. Which may explain why his son Jack, who’d run only one previous local campaign—Gerry Cullingham’s—was chosen to quarterback the party’s disastrous provincial election campaign in 1956. And which would also certainly explain why Jack, who succeeded his father as Winners’ sole trustee after Jeffrey Eagleson died in 1964, was still masterminding strategy for the party’s campaigns today, despite having never emerged victorious from a single one.

  But now, with another election in the wind, Jack Eagleson’s unbroken string of four straight electoral defeats seemed set to be broken. It wasn’t that the party’s current leader, Seamus O’Sullivan, was that much better or brighter than his predecessors, or that Jack himself had improved as a political tactician. It was that the Tories, as all governments eventually do, were imploding.

  The sainted Stanfield had left—after promising he wouldn’t. His successor, by unfair comparison, was a mere mortal. In the election three years ago, the Liberals had picked up five more seats, but not enough to take power.

  But then the scandals, the kind that plague every government too long in office, came home to roost in newspaper headlines. Nova Scotia voters, Jack explained optimistically to Ward, were tired enough of the Tory gang to give the Liberal gang—whose own sins they’d by now finally forgotten if not forgiven—another turn at the trough.

  “You just have to be there when the love affair ends,” as Jack had put it one night a few months ago. He and Ward were examining the results of the latest secret public opinion poll Jack had commissioned. It showed the Liberals ahead of the Tories in support among decided voters for the first time.

  Officially, Ward worked as an office assistant at McArtney, Eagleson—part time during university terms and full time in the summers. Unofficially, he did whatever Jack Eagleson told him to do, which mostly involved picking up Winners’ Club donations from local companies that wanted to position themselves for contracts after the next election (in case the Liberals really did win) and delivering Winners’ Club cash to worthy recipients. And listening to Jack talk, of course. That was part of Ward’s job, too.

  Though he was theoretically employed by the law firm and had a desk near the entrance to Jack’s office, Ward’s weekly paycheque came out of the Winners’ Club account, which is how he came to discover it existed. It took him longer to understand its real purpose. “More grease for the political machinery,” Jack would say with his room-filling laugh whenever Ward brought him an envelope from a local business favour-seeker. “More mother’s milk for the democratic process,” he would say when he handed Ward an envelope to deliver to some local constituency president.

  Truth be told, the job bored Ward. But it came with a boat of a Chevy Caprice that Ward could use as his own whenever he wasn’t acting as Jack’s messenger boy or chauffeur. And there was the promise of more interesting assignments to come. Jack told him he would run O’Sullivan’s constituency office during the upcoming election campaign.

  The problem was that everyone was expecting the Premier to call the election in the fall, which was when Ward was supposed to start law school. “Don’t worry, the Dean and I are old friends,” Jack reassured him. “He’ll understand.” Ward wasn’t so sure. He’d heard first-year law was demanding. “You’ll do just fine,” Jack insisted. “Trust me. If Gerry Cullingham can get through law school, anyone can.”

  Before today, Gerry Cullingham had been nothing more than the name on the door of a never-used corner office next to Jack’s and the butt of countless Jack Eagleson jokes, asides, disparaging references and snide remarks, most of which revolved around Cullingham’s stupidity. Gerry Cullingham, Ward had been surprised to discover this afternoon, didn’t seem stupid. Merely congenial. And perhaps a little drunk.

  “Jack tells me you’re off to law school,” Cullingham said. “Good on you, son. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up actually practising law. We could use a lawyer in the firm!” He laughed at his own joke. Ward laughed, too.

  “Oh, our Ward’s way too smart to end up practising law,” Jack said, adding as he looked meaningfully at Cullingham: “He’s just like you.” They both laughed. Ward did too, but mostly out of politeness. Given Jack’s often expressed views on Cullingham’s intelligence, he wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t read more into the remark. With Jack, you never knew.

  “Well,” Cullingham said, looking beyond them, preparing his exit strategy, “let’s see if we can’t get you boys a drink.” He raised his right arm into the air, caught the attention of the light-skinned coloured man who appeared to be in charge of the other waiters, brought his arm back down to his mouth, mimicked drinking out of an air glass and then pointed in the direction of Jack and Ward. The head waiter acknowledged his request with his own response-nod and, with a subtle turn of his head and a lifted eyebrow, signalled to a waiter bearing a silver tray filled with glasses of white wine above his shoulder, who then navigated his way through the crowd across the lawn toward them.

  Satisfied his guests had been taken care of, Cullingham began to edge away from them. “Now gentlemen, if you’ll exc—ah, if it isn’t the Princess herself come to join us.” There was affection, Ward thought, but perhaps a hint of rebuke, too, in his tone. Ward turned to follow Cullingham’s eyes.

  “Jack, you know my daughter Victoria.”

  “My goodness, she’s grown since the last time I last saw her,” Jack said, looking at the young woman but still talking to her father. “But that was a long time ago. She’s blossomed into quite a beautiful young woman.”

  She was beautiful, Ward agreed, trying not to stare. During his travels with Jack, he rarely ever encountered women, and almost never young women, at least not young women who had not been paid for from Winners’ Club funds.

  Ward reconsidered. This girl was not be
autiful in the look-at-me way some of those bought-and-paid-for women were. In fact, quite the opposite. She was beautiful because she seemed so casually indifferent to her good looks. Even if that casual indifference was, as he suspected, deliberate. Like her dirty-blond, pigtailed hair, at once unfussy and calculated. She wore no makeup, but she didn’t need any. When she smiled, as she did now, dimples traced parentheses around full, rosy, kissable lips. Those lips framed orthodontia-straightened white teeth that seemed somehow even whiter against her freckled summer skin. Ward guessed she spent her summer days on the tennis courts or by the pool. Today, she was wearing a short, strapless, floral-patterned dress, and Ward couldn’t help but notice the pale outline her bathing suit top had left on her shoulders and the tops of her breasts just above the elasticized top of her sundress. He felt a prick-stirring in his pants, and quickly looked down from her chest, which only made matters worse. Her legs were tanned and shapely and her feet were bare. He gulped down his drink.

  “Beautiful, yes,” Gerry Cullingham replied with a shake of his head, “but headstrong, too.” He appraised his daughter. “I’m surprised you decided to grace us with your presence this afternoon, dear.” Then he smiled. “But delighted, of course, delighted.”

  She looked at Ward, rolled her eyes confidentially as if to say: Parents, what can you do?

  “Victoria, this is, ah . . .” her father began, forgetting his name already. Perhaps that was why he was Mr. Former Premier.

  “Ward,” Jack rescued him. “Ward Justice. Miss Vicky Cullingham, the beautiful daughter of the Former Premier of Nova Scotia, meet Mr. Ward Justice, the Future Premier of Nova Scotia.”

  Vicky looked less than impressed. As Ward and Victoria nodded at each other in acknowledgement, Jack turned back to her father. “I see Seamus has arrived. Why don’t the three of us get together and figure out some dates when you two can campaign together?” He turned to Ward, winked. “I’m sure you two can amuse yourselves for a while.”

  Ward blushed. Vicky didn’t seem to notice. Or at least pretended not to.

  “So you’re Jack’s latest ‘Future Premier,’” she said when they’d left. “Don’t take it too seriously.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Had the tour?”

  VVhat? “No, I guess not . . .”

  “Well, we’d better fix that then. Follow me, Future Premier . . . what was your name again?”

  He said it, but he wasn’t sure she heard. She was already walking toward the house. He followed, trying not to stare at her ass. He failed. She walked with the kind of loose-limbed grace that invited staring. Stopping a passing waiter, she took Ward’s now-empty glass, put it on the tray and selected two more. She handed them both to Ward. “Two for you . . . and two for me,” she said, taking another two from the tray and continuing on toward the house.

  “This is an early Andrew Cobb,” she called over her shoulder.

  “A what?”

  “Ah, I can see you’re not from here.”

  Ward bristled. She reminded him of those south-end girls from high school who had a way of employing their sophistication to make him feel dumb. “I am from here. Just not here here,” he said, more defensively than he’d intended.

  She affected not to notice. “Andrew Cobb was the famous architect who designed this place for my grandfather. My father is very proud of that, so he always makes it a point of dropping his name whenever he can. Guess I picked that up from him. Anyway, it was built in the early twenties just after Cobb got back from Paris. Ever been to Paris, Mr. Future Premier?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t bother. It’s smelly and disgusting.”

  Meaning, Ward thought to himself, I’ve been there and you haven’t. He wished she weren’t so attractive. He wished he weren’t so attracted.

  “Granddad liked to entertain, so the rooms downstairs are all oversized—it’s a very open concept,” she called over her shoulder as she led him past the deck and into a kitchen that looked as though it could have served a good-sized restaurant. Waiters bustled in and out refilling their trays with wine or with the canapés that a uniformed chef was busy preparing at one corner counter.

  She pushed through the swinging kitchen door and into a huge ballroom that took up one entire side of the house. Ward tried to picture his parents’ bungalow; the whole of it could have fit into that one room, with space to spare.

  “The Queen’s Ballroom,” Vicky announced with a mock flourish. “Granddad named it that after the Queen and the Prince came here for a reception during their Royal Tour in ’53. I don’t remember. I was only two.” She was younger than Ward by two years. He liked that. “That’s why we have that godawful portrait of her on the wall.” Ward looked at it. It reminded him of the picture of the Queen in her robes and tiara that decorated the front of every school classroom he’d ever been in, except this one was bigger and was clearly an oil painting instead of just a photograph. The room matched the painting: austere, forbidding. Dark mahogany wainscotting and trim surrounded the echoey hall, which was empty except for a piano in one corner. The walls above the wainscotting were a dingy cream colour. The high white ceiling was bordered with delicate gold mouldings and festooned with ornate chandeliers. Even the large bay windows at either end couldn’t lighten the mood; they were mostly covered by thick, red velvet curtains that kept the sun at bay.

  “I hate this room,” she said suddenly. “Let’s go.”

  She led him into a large centre hall with a wide curving staircase. She opened a door opposite the ballroom. A musty smell escaped. “Granddad’s library,” she said, not entering. “Daddy never uses it.” Ward caught a glimpse of a far wall covered floor to ceiling with books. Vicky pulled the door shut. “I get bored quickly,” she said. “Down the hall is the dining room and off that, the den. TV, stereo, the usual. Bunch of bedrooms on the second and third floors. We’ll skip those.” Ward was vaguely disappointed. He wanted to see her bedroom. “But I will show you my favourite place in the whole house. Come on, Mr. Future Premier.” She ran up two flights of stairs. Ward followed, trying not to spill his wine on the thick carpet. They went down a long hallway to a bright, airy sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the milling crowds below. “Over here.” She led him to a corner of the room, where he noticed a wrought-iron circular staircase that had been painted white to blend in with the walls. “Follow me,” she instructed as she began her ascent. And he did. But far enough behind her so he was able to drink in the picture of those long brown legs that disappeared into a tantalizing glimpse of white panties. He froze the sight in his mind for future reference as she pushed open a trap door in the ceiling. Light streamed in, temporarily blinding him for the sins of his mind.

  “So,” she said when he emerged onto the rooftop balcony, “the pièce de résistance. Like it?”

  “Wow!” he said. And meant it. The wooden balcony, which measured about twelve-by-twelve with benches built into the railing on all sides, offered a magnificent, above-the-treetops view in every direction: the harbour to the east, Point Pleasant Park to the south and the broad, tree-lined residential streets of the south end to the north and west.

  “What a great widow’s walk,” he said.

  “What?” Now it was her turn not to know something. Ward liked that.

  “A widow’s walk. That’s what they’d call it back where I come from. They built them on the roofs of sea captains’ houses, supposedly so the captain’s wife could go up there and watch for her husband’s ship to return from sea.” Ward tried to sound nonchalant in his wisdom, but the truth was that the only widow’s walk in Eisners Head was on top of J. F. B. Eisner’s mansion. Needless to say, Ward had never seen the view from there.

  “So why do they call it a widow’s walk?”

  “Because so many of the ships sank.” Ward wasn’t certain this was the correct etymology but he said it with an ea
sy confidence designed to impress. He hoped she might imagine him as the son of a swashbuckling sea captain who’d been swept overboard in a gale, rather than the son of a lowly deckhand who’d been blacklisted from the fishing industry for leading an illegal strike.

  “So if you’re from here, but not from here here, where are you from then?”

  “Eisners Head.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Little fishing village. In the middle of the middle of nowhere. Grew up there.” The wine was beginning to work its magic on him.

  “Were you a fisherman?” Suddenly, she looked interested.

  “Fisherman’s son.” It had been a long time since he’d volunteered that fact. The pride he’d once felt in his father, the fisherman who’d stood up to a bullying fish company owner, had soured into embarrassment for an embittered old man who cleaned washrooms for a living, and lived to see his son make something of himself.

  Desmond Justice had become impossible to satisfy. Though he’d never been to university, or even high school, his father expected Ward to bring home nothing but top marks. A “B” wasn’t good enough. “You want to end up like me?” he’d shout. “You gotta work, you gotta be somebody, somebody better than your old man.” But Desmond seemed equally dismissive of his son’s successes. In his freshman year, Ward had been invited to pledge at Phi Delt, a top fraternity, where Jack Eagleson had been a brother. “Rich boy shit,” his father had said. Ward had twice been elected an Arts representative on the Student Council and was planning, with Jack’s encouragement, to run for president after his first year at law school. “Sandbox stuff,” his father had said, with a wave of his hand. When Ward told his father he’d been accepted into law school, he’d expected him to at least be proud. “Lawyers,” his father had replied, spitting out the word like a swallow of battery acid. “What do you want to be one of those bastards for anyway?” There was no pleasing his father.