We had the most beautiful flight from Vancouver to Calgary today you could possibly imagine – sitting in the super comfortable seats looking out large pressurized windows at the sun pouring down on the Rockies while eating roast lamb with all the trimmings – it was absolutely breathtaking (even the roast lamb – it was the best meal I’ve had since I left home).
I don’t seem to have much really exciting news to pass on as yet. The main thing is again how much I miss you and the loving care you always take of me. I wish you were here now.
During the same trip, he wrote again, starting on a plaintive note.
The Macdonald [Hotel]
Edmonton, Alberta
[undated]
Darling;
The longer I am away from you and the closer the time for arriving home gets, the more I think about how badly I have been missing you. Have you been getting all my notes and postcards? I have not heard from you for about ten days. I hope there is a letter on the way now. I look for them every day.
He sounded perplexed, even worried, that she hadn’t replied. We know she’d received his letters and cards, since he kept them in his papers until his death. She must have heard his plea for attention too.
As a young child, I didn’t see any outward signs of this apparently passionate side of Dad’s nature—no hand-holding with Mom, no embraces or kisses—though when I was older, I certainly witnessed his displays of physical affection in another marriage. One conclusion seems clear, however: having Mom’s attention was very important to Dad, and it bothered him deeply when he didn’t receive it. I’m not sure my mother always felt the same way toward him. Their relationship was evolving, as all relationships do. Like any parent, I know how difficult it can be to maintain the romantic side of marriage with young children, household responsibilities, and a busy career in the mix.
* * *
—
ONE MORNING IN MAY, as I was getting ready for school, I could hear Dad talking to Mom while he was shaving.
“Is today a special day?” he asked.
“It’s Wednesday,” she replied.
“Yes, but is it a special day in our family?”
Mom thought for a minute.
“Oh my God! It’s your birthday! Boys, we need to go shop for your father’s birthday present. Oh my God!”
Mom and Dad were now able to return to Toronto from time to time. Mom’s parents helped them out with gifts of kitchen and household items, little cheques in the regular exchange of letters with their daughter, lots of baby things, and babysitting when we went to visit.
I was always excited about going to Toronto. My eyes widened as soon as the city’s bright lights started appearing and the old two-lane highway expanded to become a freeway. There were lots of toys waiting for us in Grandma and Grandpa’s apartment, and kid-friendly stores in their neighbourhood. The only bad thing was that every time we went to Toronto, Mom and Dad fought over where to stay.
George’s distaste for Carol’s parents was deep-seated and visceral. Their middle-class origins and manners were an affront to his patrician sensibilities. He didn’t like the cooking smells that so enchanted us kids in their walk-up apartment, nor their aging 1946 Ford parked in the back. Living at close quarters in their three-bedroom flat was a constant source of irritation to him, leading to squabbles with Carol.
George’s mother had moved from York Mills into a huge six-bedroom house on Clarendon Avenue, just south of the tony enclave of Forest Hill; clearly, she had more space to accommodate a family with three kids. But Granny always found it difficult to cope with all the noise and disruption we brought along. Her house was cold and rather shabby, since little had been done to update it. Of course, Granny had her housekeeper, Mrs. Pike, who had been with her since anyone could remember and did all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. In the end, Carol and George compromised by staying at one parental home and then the other.
Despite Granny’s fastidiousness, we kids loved her dearly, and so did Mom, who had worked hard to win over her mother-in-law. She wrote to her regularly with news about us and about Dad, who wasn’t a frequent letter-writer. Mom played the piano for Granny while my brother and sister and I wandered about the faded, rambling Edwardian property, exploring its mysterious attic and basement spaces and creeping about the wildly overgrown greenery in the grounds. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding between the two women—perhaps because they recognized that both had endured difficulties in their lives.
Ironically, Mom’s parents in their own way lent a certain respectability to our young family with their unconditional acceptance of Mom and Dad’s situation. After all, if these salt-of-the-earth grandparents were okay with it, then others could darn well accept it too—and bit by bit, they did.
George’s sister, Katherine, embraced her role as Aunt Kay, even though Doug once peed on her new boyfriend’s lap. And sometimes we saw Carol’s old girlfriends, who became godmothers or special aunts to us. They’d stuck with Carol through the last few difficult years, and she was determined to spend time with them, with or without George.
As an indication of a (probably grudging) acceptance by the Blackstocks, my parents now received occasional invitations to join the extended clan at Sunday midday dinners. Family members ranged from crusty establishment types to bona fide eccentrics to smart young professionals. Carol and George also went out to nightclubs with George’s well-heeled, squash-playing UCC buddies and their girlfriends, who were won over, I was told, by Carol’s warmth and liveliness. George was “one of them,” and popular, but somewhat cold and wooden compared to Carol.
* * *
—
AROUND THIS TIME, George wrote the Canadian foreign service exam. After the interview process, he was offered a place in the foreign service along with eight other candidates out of thousands of applicants. Joining the Department of Trade and Commerce in August 1957, he was on his way to a career in the diplomatic service and an overseas posting.
On August 1, 1957, Carol wrote to her parents:
Well at midnight last night George ceased to be a personnel selection officer and became a foreign service officer. He started his first day today and so far I have heard nothing from him. He seemed quite calm, cool and collected this morning as he strode out of the house without his pants.
Though Carol had a sense of humour about it, George’s new responsibilities only made her busy life busier. In another letter home, two months later, she told her parents about enlisting babysitting from a neighbourhood friend, while she did all the extra running around: getting passport photos, chauffeuring George to appointments, joining him for lunch with new colleagues, and, before collapsing, “pooped out,” at home, doing some family shopping.
I got Julia a nylon pale blue dress with lace and seed pearls and a belt…. I got Doug a dark green and navy plaid blazer and my, he does look sharp in it.
How typical of Mom, dressing us up to look well groomed in blazers and bow ties, primping our hair and wiping our faces with her hankie before taking us to church on Sundays. She bought something for herself too, despite her awareness of Dad’s penny-pinching.
I went on my own merry spree and bought myself a red viyella flannel dressing gown. [George] says it costs too much and besides he doesn’t like red in the morning. We’ll see.
George wanted to have a party for his new colleagues. Carol liked the idea, but wasn’t sure they could manage it in our tiny house. Meanwhile, she told her parents, she waited with anticipation for news about our first posting.
On Oct 7 the Deputy Minister comes back and we should find out then where we are going and when. Rumours are that it is Copenhagen, Denmark. We did find out the nine places that we [the nine new foreign service officers and families] are going to. There will be someone going to each of these, Copenhagen, Beirut, Lebanon, Tokyo, Japan, Singapore, Manila
, Guatemala City, Bogota, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. One chap has just left for Tokyo and any of those places would be fine with me.
George and the other inductees went on a cross-Canada tour to learn more about the economy of the country they’d be representing abroad. There were special training courses, orientation sessions, and a thousand things to prepare for the upcoming posting.
Shortly afterwards, Carol and George learned our destination would be Buenos Aires. Carol was thrilled at the prospect, but at the same time she worried about the disruption to the family, being away from her parents and friends, and completing all the preparations for which she was responsible. George assured her that her family and friends would come down to visit us; the kids would adapt, and he, of course, would give her all the help she needed. I became quite familiar with that speech over the years. The reality was that, while he was off travelling and staying in hotels, Mom was completing inventory lists for the move, taking us to get our shots, and making all the necessary arrangements with schools.
Soon, she must have felt, the years of struggle and drudgery would be behind them.
4
ARGENTINA: A WHOLE NEW WORLD
MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS of Buenos Aires—the Paris of South America, gateway to the pampas, home of the tango, military juntas, raging inflation, and the Nazi émigré—were those of a seven-year-old on the upper deck of the SS Argentina. It was now early April 1958. Hours earlier, the seawater below our bows had turned from dark blue to the muddy brown of the enormous Rio de la Plata estuary. We could make out the Argentine shore to the south but couldn’t see Uruguay, which Dad told us was on the opposite shore. Screeching seagulls winged overhead, signalling our arrival.
As we approached the harbour of Buenos Aires, I grasped the middle bar of the railing, eyes fixed on the crew hurling thick tow lines to tugboats below. The tugs manoeuvred us carefully around the rock seawall and into port. When we neared the dock, the tugs cast off. The day was warm, almost hot. When we’d left Ottawa, it had been well below freezing.
Amid the mob of disembarking passengers, Dwight Fulford and his wife, Barbara, met us coming off the gangplank. Mr. Fulford was one of Dad’s new colleagues at the Canadian embassy. He was tall like Dad, but looked older. Mrs. Fulford had the big belly of a woman about to have a baby. Carol wrote to her parents that, with her hair in disarray, Barbara “looked like she just crawled out of bed.”
Mr. Fulford took our passports and whisked us through Argentine customs and immigration. As a diplomatic family on government service, we could bypass the other passengers queuing up in rows. An embassy translator said something in Spanish to a uniformed official, who quickly stamped our passports.
While an embassy driver delivered our suitcases and steamer trunks to our hotel, along with Lassie in her cage, we all climbed into the Fulfords’ car for a tour of downtown Buenos Aires. Mrs. Fulford looked uncomfortable squeezed between her husband at the wheel and Dad in the passenger seat. Mom sat with us in the back.
We drove down a broad tree-lined avenue. Most of the other cars looked old-fashioned. We passed a park with palms and other exotic-looking trees and a big statue of a man on a rearing horse.
“That’s the Plaza General San Martín,” Mr. Fulford said.
“Look, Jeffrey, that’s José de San Martín,” Mom said excitedly, pointing to the bronze figure in Napoleonic military dress. “He’s Argentina’s national hero!” Mom had been reading up on local history.
Dad had more practical matters in mind. “How long do you think it will take for our car to get here?” he asked Mr. Fulford.
“A while, I’m afraid. The duties on foreign cars are sky-high, and the paperwork is staggering.”
We turned onto a huge boulevard lined with trees and apartment buildings, divided by medians and a succession of grand monuments. I’d never seen an avenue that wide, not even in New York. “This is the Avenida 9 de Julio,” Mr. Fulford said. “And up ahead is the Teatro Colón. It’s the second-largest opera house after La Scala, in Milan.”
“Have you been there?” Mom asked. She sounded impressed. I didn’t understand the fuss over an opera house.
“Many times. It’s a magnificent place. It has some of the best opera in the world.”
Mr. Fulford gestured toward a white domed building with a row of columns in front and winged chariots on the roof. “This is El Congreso, the national parliament.”
“How’s the political situation with Frondizi?” Dad asked. President Arturo Frondizi had been elected just before our arrival.
“Okay so far. There’s still corruption everywhere, of course, and you can never tell when there might be another coup. But at least they got rid of that crook Perón. The violence seems to have settled down.”
“What’s a coup, Mom?”
“It’s when the government gets overthrown, Jeffrey.” She leaned forward. “It all seems very European,” she said to the other adults.
“It is very European,” Mrs. Fulford replied. “That’s part of the charm of living here.”
Most of the foreign community shared the view of the Argentine upper class: former President Juan Perón, who had been thrown out by a military coup three years earlier, was basically a thief who’d left the country in the middle of the night with suitcases full of money. Later, I’d learn that most working-class Argentines saw him very differently, as a sort of Robin Hood figure.
“It’s so nice to see some new Canadian faces,” Mrs. Fulford said. Canadians were a rarity in Argentina, she explained. So were Americans, although a small community of American business people represented corporations such as Coca-Cola, Ford, and some New York banks. “There are big Italian and English and German communities here too,” she added.
Germans, we’d discover, were the country’s third-largest ethnic group. Most of them had come as a result of persecution in Europe, but after the Second World War, Perón had actively encouraged the immigration of Nazis seeking to escape prosecution by the Allies.
Doug and Julie were starting to squirm, Julie seated on Mom’s lap.
“George, we need to get to the hotel,” Mom said urgently.
“And I should get home to rest up,” Mrs. Fulford added.
“How is the pregnancy going, Barbara?” Mom asked.
“Just fine, thank you, Carol. But I do get a little tired.”
* * *
—
AFTER SCOUTING THE downtown area around our apartment hotel, walking Lassie in nearby parks with Mom, eating in the hotel restaurant, and playing in our suite without any friends, life in Buenos Aires got pretty boring. We couldn’t go out on our own, because of the traffic screaming along the avenues. It’s always the same with kids on a diplomatic posting; the initial stage of hotel living grows tedious very quickly.
Dad was away at the embassy every day. Mom was busy trying to deal with the hotel staff, her Spanish dictionary in hand. Hardly anyone spoke English. She had difficulties working the strange kitchen appliances with their weird plugs, while keeping a constant eye on Julie, who got into everything, and answering a thousand questions from Doug and me.
“What’s that bowl in the bathroom, Mom? Is it for washing feet?”
“No, Jeffrey. It’s called a bidet. I’ll tell you what it’s for another time.”
Mom found the kitchen practically useless, so we took our main meals in the hotel restaurant, which served a steady diet of Argentine beef. “Believe me,” she wrote to her parents, “you do get tired of steak, steak, and more steak.”
Mom persuaded the chefs to make some new dishes for us. The hotel kitchen wouldn’t pass a health inspection, she told her parents, but you had to adjust your expectations. She was popular with the hotel staff. They were “very, very nice” to us, she wrote.
The waiters are very sweet and just love the kids. We have a red-headed Italian, who speaks o
nly Spanish and is Argentine by birth, who brings us lunch and tea. He always spends a few minutes playing with the kids and Julie always has a big kiss for him.
Mom got some relief from constant child care when Doug started attending an American nursery school and I entered St. John’s, an Anglo-Argentine boarding school in the affluent suburb of Acassuso. I stayed there all during the school week and returned to the hotel on weekends. Babysitters helped out with Julie so that Mom had some time for herself, and she made some new friends. She enjoyed the company of a young woman who played the piano at a local restaurant she and George frequented, where she had already taught the bartender to make pink lady cocktails. The two women liked to sit and chat over tea. Local business hours kept Dad at the office until nine or ten at night, after which he and Carol had dinner together in the restaurant until ten or eleven—a big change from life in Canada.
Carol began making the social rounds expected of a diplomatic wife. She started with a call on Madame Picard, wife of the Canadian ambassador, who had the biggest apartment in the biggest hotel in Buenos Aires, as well as the biggest diamond Carol had ever seen: eight carats. Wearing her black suit for the occasion, she spent an hour with Madame Picard and found her a very charming and very busy woman.
Next, she called on Mrs. Bissett, the wife of George’s immediate boss, the senior commercial attaché at the embassy. Carol found that she and Mrs. Bissett had several things in common, she told her parents: They were both wives of foreign service officers in Buenos Aires. They both had dogs. And they both had two arms and two legs. Their entire conversation revolved around the Bissetts’ dog, Biff. Carol still hadn’t met Mr. B., but George said he’d been generally boorish, always sneering at departmental HQ back in Ottawa.
Carol arranged for some household help from maids who came to the hotel and were paid by the hour. “I have become quite lazy,” she told her parents. “I never wash a dish or make a bed or prepare a meal. It can become quite depressing, believe it or not.” Yet the demands on her time and energy resulting from George’s social obligations were relentless. A dinner party at the home of his opposite number at the British embassy lasted until 3 A.M. Carol wrote that she’d changed her hairstyle, wearing it “down on one side and pulled back on the other…. Lots of compliments.”
Murder in the Family Page 4
