The Best Laid Plans (20 page)

“Aren’t you being just a tad pessimistic?” she persisted. “Perhaps if victory is handed to him on a silver platter, he may just say ‘what the hell.’ How often does an opportunity like this come along?”

“Lindsay, I’ve played chess and talked politics with him for hours on end. His views may be valid and just, but they are also naïve and innocent. Ottawa is a giant meat grinder that takes in idealism at one end and spits out cynical sausage at the other. I love him, but he’s a relic. They’d have a field day with him on the Hill and in the House. Besides, he has a life here and doesn’t want a new one there.”

“I just think that in your zeal to find an escape hatch, you may be overlooking the perfect solution. If Angus does win, persuade him to serve. Marin Lee wrote in her last book that she always regretted not running for public office and trying to change Canadian society from within our democratic institutions. She spent her life on the outside. She made a real difference, but I can’t help wondering what she might have achieved if she’d sat around the Cabinet table. Maybe Angus doth protest too much. It’s worth a try, particularly if it’s all we have,” she concluded.

I knew she was right, but I was still stuck on trying to make sure that Eric Cameron somehow retained his seat.

“But what will you do if Angus wins and agrees to serve? He’ll need a lot of help,” she remarked.

“I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around that one right now. I’m really focused on the here and now and making sure Angus doesn’t arrive back here on Tuesday as the MP for Cumberland-Prescott.” I shivered involuntarily. “Gives me the willies just to say it.”

“Well, don’t wait too long. The way this is all playing out, you may not have much time to make a decision,” she said.

“I’m feeling a little claustrophobic, and I really don’t think we’re helping Cameron’s cause stewing about things in here. Are you
up for a late lunch?” I asked, hoping it didn’t sound too much like I was asking her out on a date.

“Great,” was all she said as she rose from the couch.

We went to Mabel’s right in the downtown core of Cumberland. Lindsay ordered a Greek salad while I opted for a bowl of minestrone soup and the club sandwich. Just like our earlier get-together at Starbucks, time again stood still and flew by at the same time. We appeared to click on a whole range of different levels. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.

To her credit, Lindsay knew I was carrying a lot of election baggage around with me, so she studiously steered our conversation away from anything related to Monday’s vote. We talked about university, how her master’s was going, and what she thought about tenure, capital punishment, and ketchup on macaroni and cheese. While we talked, a great weight lifted from my shoulders, albeit temporarily. At one point in our conversation, she rose to head to the washroom, and I stood up on instinct. When she returned, I again got to my feet and held her chair as I had when we’d arrived.

“Do you always do that?” she asked through a bemused look.

“My dear departed mother is always watching. She was a stickler for manners,” I replied.

“You don’t consider holding a woman’s chair an anachronistic manifestation of a patriarchal society?” She was still smiling sweetly. I’d certainly heard this line of thinking before.

“I really hope and believe that feminism has moved beyond that,” I started. “I remember attending a meeting of the National Union of Students in Saskatoon years ago when I was involved in student politics. On instinct, I held the door for a fellow delegate as we both headed into a lecture hall for an organizing workshop. She called me a misogynist at the top of her considerable lungs. That has stayed with me as a symbol of the misallocation of precious resources in the fight for women’s rights. I was on her side.” Lindsay nodded, and I continued. “Anyway, I’ve never considered
good manners and equality mutually exclusive. Good manners may regrettably be an anachronism, but its roots are in common courtesy, not patriarchy. Here endeth the sermon,” I concluded, praying we were on the same page. When I was nervous, I sometimes sounded like a Victorian novel.

“You’re a very complex person, Dr. Addison,” she said, still smirking. She rested her chin in her right palm and held me in a rather intense gaze. Hazel eyes. “Do you always talk that way?”

“Sorry, it’s the curse of loving the language. I’m a charter adherent of the ‘why use five words when 35 will do’ school of English. As such, I’m often wrongly accused of high pedantry. I’m working on my ability to speak in monosyllabic grunts, but it’s tough going.”

More smiling. “We think very much alike,” she said. “In fact, it’s a little eerie. It’s as if you’ve done some kind of a Vulcan mind meld on me. You haven’t, have you?”

“Scout’s honour,” I replied.

She burst out laughing because I’d raised my hand in the traditional Vulcan split-fingered greeting when invoking Baden-Powell’s promise. What a guy. What a wit. I figured I should strike when my stock was high.

“When all of this insanity is over, could we actually go out for dinner without my future hanging in the balance?”

“I’d like that.” She beamed. I beamed. We were one big beam.

When I got home around six-thirty, the phone was ringing. I’d made the mistake of plugging it back in.

“Daniel? It’s Michael Zaleski.”

“Hi, Michael, what’s up?”

“I thought you might be interested in some data I just pulled out of Cumberland-Prescott. Quite interesting.”

“What do you have?” I inquired with a flicker of interest.

“We were in the field over the last eight hours, and the results are not yet conclusive. In fact, they’re quite fluid. If the vote weren’t until next Wednesday, I’d have held off until Monday to go into the field, but we just don’t have the time. Anyway, the Cameron sex
thing is still developing, and so is its impact on the voting patterns.” He paused.

“I’m still here, Michael. What do you have?”

“Well, Leathergate has already left a mark,” Michael began. “Support for Cameron has plummeted with almost all of it now parked in Undecided. Because of the unique nature of Cumberland-Prescott and this particular situation, we added a new category to our standard voter intention question. Along with PC, Liberal, NDP, and Undecided, we’ve added Spoil Ballot to give respondents another option. In view of time constraints, we were forced to start calling early this morning before many voters had fully considered what Cameron had done. His support was moving fast to Undecided, but there was virtually no activity in the Spoil Ballot column. But by late this afternoon, when the media coverage had just about reached the saturation point and the actual footage of Cameron and Borschart had been airing for several hours, we started to see heavy action under Spoil Ballot. If the election were held right now, Cameron would still win, but there’re a lot of votes still camped in Undecided, and it’s unclear how they’ll break.”

“Why would voters bother to spoil their ballots when they could just stay home and achieve the same thing?” I inquired.

“I’m guessing two reasons,” he answered. “Number one: Opposition to the Liberal Party is so strong and so deep in C-P that voters want to register that they still refused to vote red. They want to rub our noses in the fact that even when voting Tory is not an option, they’d rather spoil their ballot than support a Liberal. Number two: Next to Prince Edward Island’s Cardigan riding, C-P always has the highest voter turnout in the country. It’s a tradition that’s become a point of pride with the people of this constituency. We threw a question about this on an earlier poll. By spoiling their ballots, the good citizens of C-P are still considered by Elections Canada to have voted, thus keeping the high-turnout tradition alive.” Michael fell silent.

“Right now, what’s your best guess, Michael?”

“I wish I knew. It’s going to be very, very close. It all comes down to where the Undecideds go and how the Spoil Ballots fall.” He paused and then went on. “Angus must be excited.”

“Oh yeah, he’s flying high right about now,” I said, before thanking him and hanging up.

If the numbers broke the wrong way, Angus would land, see the front page of the
Globe and Mail
, and start planning his first homicide. If something didn’t turn our way soon, I might even save him the trouble.

E-day, early dawn. I’d been awake for hours, listening to the river and the rain, trying to distinguish between them. As I lay, eyes open, chest tight, what I initially mistook as the soothing sound of the prevailing west wind turned out to be my own hyperventilation. There was barely a breath of breeze. Waking up with someone you love, or even being coaxed out of your nightly coma by a loyal and affectionate schnauzer, are comforting ways to greet a new day, provided the dog exercises restraint. Lurching into consciousness by the blaring alarm of your own anxiety, with dread as your only bedfellow, is somewhat less appealing. Welcome to my world.

It was a week before Thanksgiving, and I was having considerable difficulty counting my blessings. October 14 was to have marked the end of my foray into party politics and the start of my tenure-track tour of academe. Farewell party line and job insecurity, hello academic freedom and indexed sinecure. It was to have been my liberation day, so to speak. Instead, in knee-slapping irony, Eric Cameron’s weakness for handcuffs and riding crops threatened to deliver me – bound, gagged, and struggling – back to Parliament Hill to resume my partisan bondage and servitude. Politics was the cruelest mistress of all.

I’d spent Sunday, the traditional day of rest, rocking and moaning, watching Newsworld, then rocking and moaning some more. I’d unplugged the phone again as its persistent ringing was quite a distraction from my rocking and moaning. The only
tolerable part of the day had been the two hours Lindsay had spent holding me as I was rocking and … well, you get the idea. Still no word from Eric Cameron or Petra Borschart – not even a sighting. I pictured them in an
RV
, her with hair dyed black, him with head shaved, driving maniacally towards the South Dakota Badlands or some other suitably isolated location, trying to outrun their humiliation. I, on the other hand, had considered, but rejected, plastic surgery (I have a low pain threshold) and had decided to face the music with neither blindfold nor cigarette. I’d gone to bed early Sunday night – around 6:30 – which may have been a factor in my early awakening Monday morning. That and the pulse-pounding, bowel-bending stress that came with knowing I may have ruined the life of a certain cantankerous and potentially violent old Scot.

I had not yet totally exhausted my dwindling stores of hope as I watched the sky lighten. Until the rain stopped and the sun finally asserted itself, I rode the pendulum back and forth, oscillating between “Eric Cameron can still win this thing” and “Angus, please put down the filleting knife.” To ensure the former and forestall the latter, I sprang into action at the crack of 10:45 with all the vitality of a pregnant sloth in a heat wave. I phoned in a shower and shave and forced down a bowl of muesli that pushed back the frontiers of tasteless. With nine hours until the polls closed, I still had stones to turn.

I started by calling Pete1 and Pete2. I told them to phone all known Liberals in Cumberland-Prescott and direct them to fictitious polling stations, a list of which I’d provided. The two Petes were a tad confused by my request, particularly when I suggested they not use their own names. But to preserve their sanity, they’d stopped questioning campaign decisions weeks earlier. They were nothing if not obedient, though their blind acquiescence stood in stark contrast to their anarchic appearance. Cradling Molotov cocktails in their hands rather than telephones would have looked more natural. But beneath it all, they were solid, dependable, and
dedicated volunteers. Eventually, they’d outgrow the Mohawks and piercings on their own terms.