Sussex Drive: A Novel (22 page)
Through a window as wide as her hand, she could see the lake. For some reason, the sacred shade of blue, the
sheen of the surface, took her back to the farewell for her first husband.
His body had never been found, of course.
But they’d restocked his canoe. His Nokum had packed smoked rabbit, beaver and bear, and fresh-baked bannock stacked on combustible paper plates, so he would never go hungry. Lise had folded and packed his winter clothing, so he would never be cold. Their marriage blanket stained with menstrual blood and blessed afterbirth. His toiletries kit with nail clippers and Q-tips and condoms and Mennen. Then she’d poured gasoline so generously from bow to stern. She would never forget the heat from the fire on the water.
There was to be no relief for Lise in her birthplace.
A few minutes, later, outdoors again, free, she turned and almost fell into the pit: three statues, an African family, mother, father and adolescent son, planted four feet deep. They were collared. They were chained to each other with the original iron shackles. The parents—without power. The boy was looking toward his mother, and it was then Lise saw that they were legless, sculpted from the waist down in feces and seaweed. Their long arms coalesced and grew into their torsos. They weren’t going anywhere.
The Western-puppet president nattered on. Lise didn’t hear him.
Lise had stood upon sacrosanct ground in her role as Governor General and as an African-Canadian: Auschwitz; Pol Pot’s killing fields; the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, in Paris, on her honeymoon with Brett; and
the rather plain stump of a rare Sitka spruce on Haida Gwaii. She knew how to take on humanity’s real hit parade, as René called it. It was her job: forbearance, forgiveness, these F-words. But all of her training in protocol, her self-regulation, reserve, the quantum control of her demeanour, was out the window.
She thought of Niko.
She whimpered as she stood on the iron-red earth of her birthplace, with the scent of frangipani frying her brain. And then she crumpled on the ground; she wouldn’t get up. The President beseeched her. Lise heard Margaret Lee curtly advise the press to delete any video of the Governor General keening in the dust.
That night, Lise proceeded through the VIP area at the Jolie Ville airport and passed a serious-looking posse of men, African and U.S. operatives, hurrying a skinny, newly middle-aged African man in a flapping suit and hornrimmed glasses. Margaret Lee was distracted and on a high-priority distress call from the PMO and didn’t see him at first. He was being muscled toward departure and Lise and Co. were heading in the opposite direction. He turned around and said, “Lise Lavoie.”
Margaret Lee was suddenly coaching, “Keep moving, keep moving,” but Lise stopped because she recognized him. It was Jean-Louis Raymond, former president of St. Bertrand and her sister’s smuggled fugitive, who shouldn’t have been in public or in the country.
She had always, truly, admired him.
“President Raymond,” she said.
“Look at what they are doing to your country.” He meant St. Bertrand, she thought. “We need your voice.”
She was shocked that he knew who she was.
A hand was clamped over the President’s mouth, then Raymond did something that made the guard remove it—did he lick it? They hustled him away down the pest-stripped corridor.
Then Lise was levitated, lifted and carried by her own security. The sensation of being captive and legless while realizing she’d probably never see her sister alive again.
Margaret Lee was in her face, telling her they had to fly back to Ottawa immediately, there was a crisis, no it wasn’t Niko, Niko was fine, but they must leave, it wasn’t negotiable. She foisted her cellphone on Lise. “It’s Clark,” she said. “The Privy clerk.” As if Lise might have forgotten.
Lise hit disconnect as her own cell rang.
“Put me down,” she said to her security. “I’m answering my fucking phone.”
They complied.
She punched the button.
“Allo.”
There was a long pause because cellphones worked that way in Africa.
“Traitor,” Solange said.
B
IEN SÛR
, she returned
. By the time the Challenger had looped the Central Experimental Farm, swanning over Promenade Paul Anka near the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, following the dirty white zipper of the Rideau Canal, banking at Beechwood, the country’s largest military cemetery in the backyard of Her very own Hall, it was high noon in Ottawa, minus-four Celsius, overcast. The fairy-tale Château appeared to be, like the city itself, frozen in time. Except for the mob that ranted and chanted, morphing on the Hill.
Lise had not even dozed on the flight from Africa. After a long meditation above the Sahara, she’d finally flung herself into action over the Canaries, creating a war room with herself as Commander-in-Chief, which, as she reminded herself, she was.
When Margaret Lee told her they were receiving copious amounts of e-mail about the parliamentary crisis, Lise drafted a message to comfort citizens, essentially saying: she had this.
Margaret Lee wasn’t happy with the reference to “reserve powers” and she had some queries re the tone, and threatened to vet it with the PMO. Before the PMO even received it, Lise granted an interview to the CBC reporter on board, shared the draft, and the draft went viral. She watched Monsieur Triste’s coalition address to the nation, which looked as if it had been taped in a jungle bunker in 1970s Nicaragua and beamed into the future, and listened to excerpts from Greg’s constitutionally unsound responses to the opposition in the Commons.
Margaret Lee, on the satphone to the PMO, kept glancing at Lise as if she were committing treason.
After exiting at a private gate, Lise was met by protesters with white war paint and human proboscises exploding into fat red maple leaves. Her security made certain nobody came into contact with her, but did she sense a dose of laissez-faire about their mob handling? The press too cleared customs in record seconds, allowing them to join their peers covering Lise’s highly anticipated return. They also seemed to know many of the placard carriers; she witnessed
hey-bro
and high-fives and
salut
s below the bobbing signage:
Non au coup!
WE VOTED ALREADY!
Gouvernement par élection SEULEMENT!
Do the RIGHT Thing!
Lise scuffed over the standard-issue red carpet in her stylish sealskin mukluks. Although she smiled graciously, that thick lick of fear kicked in, and she was relieved to see her limo move into position and idle outside the glass doors. As she stepped into the frigid air, which body-slammed her with an impact like a bomb, she heard a shot, at close range,
and was suddenly seized by Corporal Robard and pitched into the rear seat of her vehicle, headfirst into a Tory blue goose down coat and the violent grip of leather gloves.
“Go, go, go, go, go,” shouted Becky. “I’ve got her.”
“Get off me,” said Lise.
“C’était des feux d’artifice! C’est tout!”
“Shut up,” said Becky, “stay down,” and she executed a backstabbing fold-down on Lise that was so excruciating that Lise’s rib chopsticked her own lung—or that was the sensation.
“The security code is cancelled,” the driver said.
“I told you,” said Lise, though she hadn’t quite articulated that, sitting up and pushing Becky off.
“Take the Airport Parkway,” Becky ordered. “To Riverside.”
The driver grimaced. The limo was already at sci-fi warp speed, with RCMP squad cars front and rear.
“I’d still prefer you switch to Riverside,” Becky said to the driver. “And then the Vanier.”
“Becky,” said Lise. “You can’t commandeer my car.”
“I’m sorry,” said Becky.
“What’s going on?”
“We need to talk.”
“About—”
“Your boy. I didn’t want to wait.”
Lise’s BlackBerry buzzed; she ignored it. “What about him?”
The driver butted in. “Your Excellency? Security is copying that Mademoiselle Yeung requests you answer your BlackBerry.”
Lise answered her phone. “What?”
“Your Excellency, I’m in the limo directly behind you,” Margaret Lee said. Lise did not turn. “The coalition leaders demand a sit-down with you.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Lise said, aware that Becky was listening. “This afternoon.”
“I’ve already refused them,” Margaret Lee said.
“What?”
“As your secretary, I must advise that a parley such as that would tarnish the office of the Governor General of Canada.”
“That’s my decision, not yours.”
“It’s not seen that way, Your Excellency.”
“By whom?”
Becky crossed her legs and pulled out her own phone. She was tapping.
“I have read the history.” Lise couldn’t stop herself. “In French and in English. I have studied every single one of those dusty books. Governor Generals everywhere talk to whomever they want, whether they’re serving in Australia or New Zealand or Jamaica or Belize or wherever tiny island. Even Tuvalu. I want to consult with the opposition leaders today. In camera. Do it.”
“The Privy Clerk says that he will meet with you. He’s on his way from Langevin.”
Lise’s voice rose. “Lord bloody Byng met with Arthur Meighen.”
“Look what happened when he did,” said Margaret Lee.
Lise sensed Becky looking out the window. If she was
tapping a message on her phone, she couldn’t possibly be taping too, could she?
“What happened with Lord Byng had everything to do with the actions of the Prime Minister.”
“That is debatable,” said Margaret Lee.
“Look at Australia’s ‘Dismissal.’ Governor General John Kerr. He obviously met with the Leader of the Opposition, and arranged a double dissolution behind the PM’s back. Before lunch at Yarralumla!”
“Yes. I know. Very 1975. But that GG went behind the back of a corrupt and incompetent Labour government.”
Lise bit her tongue.
Becky nudged her.
Lise said to Margaret Lee,
“Attends une minute, s’il te plaît.”
“Just FYI”—Becky leaned in closer to Lise; she couldn’t be any closer—”my take-away from Australia was that the PM came second.”
“How so?”
“If the PM had phoned the Queen first, Kerr would have been the one packing.” Becky winked. “Just saying.”
Lise filed this factlet as she clicked Margaret Lee back on. “I’ll talk to you later.” She clicked off and turned to Becky. “Niko.”
“I am so sorry to spring this on you,” Becky said. “And I apologize for overreacting like that at the airport. Please first let me say—welcome back from beautiful A-Freaka.” She air-pecked Lise on both cheeks. “Did you have fun?”
“No.”
“We heard that it was quite emotional.”
“Yes.”
“Look,” Becky said. “Our country’s in crisis. There has been nothing as dire as this since the Liberals almost internally nuked us with the 1995 referendum. And I appreciate your job is to make sure there’s a functioning government. Period.” She paused. “But we’re both moms.
Premièrement
.” She said
prem-yay-meant
.
“So tell me,” said Lise. “Please.”
“He was okay at first,” Becky said. “But lately he’s been behaving quite oddly.”
“How so?”
“Reclusive. Remote. And not just with me and Greg. Even Martha’s noticed and been upset by it. She thinks he’s depressed.”
“Has he mentioned Corporal Shymanski?” Lise watched Becky closely.
“No. Not to me.” She looked surprised. “Nobody’s mentioned him since you and I talked.”
“Niko’s been upset since Corporal Shymanski, uh, disappeared …” Lise left this deliberately vague.
Becky didn’t blink.
Lise didn’t either.
Becky tucked her phone back in her purse in a case-closed gesture. “The other thing about Niko?”
“What?” coached Lise.
“He keeps making these faces. I’m not sure he’s even aware of it. But Greg will be talking, or Peter, and Niko’s
lower lip is stretched right down to Brazil, you know. Like he’s not quite on the planet. And whatever’s in his mouth—spaghetti, sushi …”
“Did you say anything?”