A Three Day Event (15 page)

When Sue had returned from Palm Beach in March, she had hinted to them that a big story, a really dirty story, was about to blow up, a story that was presently confined to events in the United States, but that might have ramifications in Canada. The Bank had millions of dollars sunk into equestrian sport. They were nervous, and it had been clear to them that Sue was not bluffing.

And now there was this new information. Sue’s only problem was to know which story to run after first. There were at least four at the moment, all of them very promising.

Her eyes fell on Thea’s salad plate. Goody, she’d left the olives. With a little sigh of pleasure, Sue reached for the unexpected treats.

CHAPTER NINE

P
olo’s condo, a semi–detached one–bedroom unit, was
the mirror image of Thea Ankstrom’s. His living room adjoined her bedroom and vice versa. Long after he’d finished working on his own computer, he often fell asleep to the pleasant, rhythmic click of her typing and the less pleasant rasp of the printer or the growl of the photocopier.

Other times he heard her pacing the floor, very late at night, after the computer work was finished. She must be lonely and troubled, he assumed. She was divorced. Her daughter had died tragically. He could not even imagine how terrible that must be.

Sometimes he thought it would be the neighbourly thing to invite her in for a drink or a coffee, but her manner with him was so diffident, even when they met for sharing information on the show: lists, course designs, exchanging disks, stabling logistics and the like, that he felt even the most casual of social overtures might be considered an intrusion. So he had let the instinct pass.

Looking out the kitchenette window he noticed Sue Parker moving about the condo unit across the driveway. What an odd–looking girl she was. She was dying to get her teeth into the mysterious events at the Centre. What journalist wouldn’t? He liked her. She was bright and amusing, full of mission and energy. And, he reflected ironically, she was the only person at the Centre who could safely be said not to be involved in either the vandalism or the mutilation, assuming she had an alibi in Toronto for last night.

Thinking back over the day’s events as he showered and dressed for dinner at the Jacobsons, Polo found himself tense and restless in a way he hadn’t been for years. It was how he used to feel at horse shows when he was ‘on deck’ after the warm–up, before going into the ring for the big classes, when the distilled essence of solitary, personal responsibility flooded his being and made his heart pound with excitement and dread. For those few minutes, every time, he never knew if he would come out of the ring ecstatic or humiliated. He felt himself somehow responsible now for finding out who had done these things, and he was nervous about what such an investigation might yield.

Quietly pacing the living room, Polo reviewed the things he had seen, and what he had gleaned from Roch’s and Bridget’s opinions and behaviour. There were so many unanswerable questions it was hard to know how to approach the affair.

Chief amongst these questions to Polo was the seeming lack of connection between the bold and ruthless attack on the horse, which had all the earmarks of a highly personal revenge–whether it was the Laurins or Bridget as the target–and the restrained messing–about of the office.

Aside from the difference in style of the two events, there was the question of motive. The motive for the office vandalism was crystal–clear:
le Centre
wasn’t
chez nous
enough for some people. Possibly Michel’s rumoured departure for the States had been the trigger. The obvious suspects were the Desrochers clan or somebody sympathetic to their bitterness.

It might have been Benoit. Roch was insistent about the boy’s evasiveness–or he might have helped to set it up. Benoit didn’t have a key to the front door, but there were at least five floating around. And most people around barns were pretty trusting. You had to be. There were too many people in and out of the place to be on your guard all the time. And whoever had access to Roch’s home would have opportunities, too. A friend, a trusted relative…. someone who was, say, invited to dinner occasionally…a piece of wax, a moment’s swift work…

And that could mean Gilles. His abrupt flight home was incriminating. But here Polo shook his head intuitively. Gilles was clumsy and inept at times, but he wasn’t a political animal. He seemed to think of his work as permanent and it was clear that he was trying hard to impress his uncle.

And the way he looked at Michel–well, you could see the pride in the family connection struggling with his wish to be ‘cool’ and hide his hero worship. He had been eager to learn the things Polo was willing to teach him. Why would he jeopardize his future here over politics that had no personal meaning for him? As to the horse, it was out of the question. Gilles was still a little timid working with horses, and stallions scared him, as well they should any inexperienced handler.

Polo thought back to the time he had spent with Jocelyne in March. He remembered very clearly her anxieties and fears for Michel and her deep suspicion of Liam. What had she said about Liam and Gilles and Benoit? That they were like
some weird club or something, as if they were spies.
It may have been that Liam’s influence over them had somehow coerced their cooperation. But then again, why would Liam be involved in this particular political scenario? If he were, he’d be more likely to be on the opposite side. So that didn’t make sense.

But the horse? And Liam? Both target and motive were otherwise unclear. If someone were going to take the chance of being discovered in what was obviously a criminal action, wouldn’t he or she want the impact to be felt, and felt instantly, by the object of the attacker’s hatred? There was simply no way that it was a random act by a stranger or even a boarder. If something were going on in the barn generating that kind of friction, one of Bridget, Joc or Roch would have noted it.

Okay then, how
about
Liam and the horse? Roch said no, in spite of his dislike of the boy. Also in his favour was the vet’s, Guy’s, admiration for his nursing skills. Liam’s respect and affection for the horses themselves seemed to be the one decent thing everyone agreed on. And even Bridget agreed it was unlikely to have been Liam. But was Roch any judge of character? As long as the boy behaved in his presence, Roch wouldn’t have taken too much notice of him. As for his nursing skills, it also meant he knew more than the average groom about physical problems, and wasn’t afraid of animal distress. And why should he take Bridget’s assessment at face value? Polo didn’t know her, but she seemed pretty tough, and there was obviously very bad blood between her and Liam.

Okay, what about Liam and Bridget? What if the tongue were a kind of code between them, a warning of some kind as well, just as the office mess looked more like a warning than a final act of destruction? Today the tongue, tomorrow something else, something more permanent. Far–fetched, though, he had to admit. On the other hand, who was it that had sent the kid packing? Was it Bridget? Anyway, what was to stop him coming back in the middle of the night?

He sat down on the living room sofa and propped his feet on the coffee table. Tongue was another word for language. In French the two words were one,
langue.
Language–or at least accents–was apparently a sore point between Liam and Bridget. The Irish and the English were worse than the anglos and the francos, even though English was their common language.

Or was that the connection with the office? Was this whole business some sick, but sophisticated attack on the anglophone influence there? Not done by Liam, but in fact with him as a target or one of several targets of hatred? This proposition was one that at least joined the two acts symbolically. The cutting off of an ‘anglo’ tongue–the horse a substitute for the owner–a kind of Mafia godfather warning, only less terrible than the horse head in the bed…
allez chier, les anglais…

Words, symbols. Unconsciously Polo’s hand, draped over the sofa arm, grazed the cover of a thick book he always brought with him for solitary stays away from home:
Dictionnaire des/
Dictionary of
FAUX AMIS.
Anglophones studying the French language seriously–and vice versa–eventually had recourse to it.
Faux Amis
meant ‘false friends’ and was, Polo felt, an apt description for the words the fat text covered.

The dictionary had been a gift from Ruthie at some point in his study of English. It had been a fantastic help to Polo when he was struggling to break through into fluency. There were thousands of words in English that came from French, but their meanings in English had altered with time.
Avertissement
meant ‘warning’ in French, nothing like ‘advertisement’ in English, but the root was the same.
Prétendre
in French looked like ‘pretend’ in English, but it meant to ‘claim’ or ‘intend’. It was easy to make mistakes, and sometimes the mistakes could be significant, could materially alter your communication with people. Every time he dipped into the dictionary he found something new.

So far, so bad. The more he thought about who was, or might be involved, the more baffled he became. And sooner or later he was going to have to consider if Michel had some role in all this. Had it been Michel who told Liam to clear out? Or Bridget? Or even Fran? They all, according to Jocelyne, had reason to hate him. And they all had credibility and authority in their various areas. If Liam had felt their reason was strong enough to make an appeal to a higher authority–Roch–useless, he might have conceded defeat and slipped away. Or if any of them had threatened him with some kind of exposure or punishment and he had estimated it to be serious enough, Liam might have decided to bolt while the going was good.

What if–he really hated to moot this proposition, but it had to be considered–what if Jocelyne had got it all wrong about Michel and Liam? Could there conceivably have been some relationship between them that went sour? It was a repulsive thought for Polo, but it had to be faced, if Michel in fact was gay.

Was
Michel gay? Polo had told Jocelyne it didn’t matter, but that was just to make her feel better. It mattered to Polo. He knew about the new school of thought on gays–his wife hewed to the cutting theoretical edge in these matters–how it was supposed to be as normal as being straight, and sometimes just another lifestyle choice, but where Polo came from, theories like that were so much bullshit, and he had never struggled very hard to overcome this particular bias. He felt sorry for gays, because they weren’t normal. Maybe they couldn’t help it, and he didn’t think they should be ashamed of what they were. But he didn’t think it was something to be proud of either.

Polo had always been disturbed by that aspect of the circuit, that so many of the male riders were gay, and he had no explanation for it. He himself had been verbally baited often, but only actually physically touched, once, in a tack room when he was sixteen, by an older American rider/trainer, one of the stars in the sport. The approach had been sophisticated and subtle, but unmistakable.

Without reflecting on the crudeness and disproportion of such a gesture, Polo had turned and punched the man hard, squarely in the side of the head. He might have damaged his ear, because he saw it bleed. The man had staggered away, stunned, humiliated, and frightened. Polo had been a little frightened, too, at his own kneejerk reversion to methods of confrontation he believed he’d left behind in St. Henri.

If Michel were gay, it would matter a lot to Roch as well, and Polo knew it for a certainty. Polo and Roch had chummed together when Roch was still competing. There weren’t many francophone riders taking the sport seriously in those days, and Polo was grateful for Roch’s sunny, upbeat nature and his unfailing ability to find a good time in whatever small town they were billeted in.

Polo had been shy and something of a loner. Without Roch he was unlikely to have had any social life to speak of. Wherever Roch was, a party was sure to emerge. The girls adored Roch and flocked to him, an added bonus for Polo, since casual romance was the only sort he wanted, and he couldn’t be bothered looking very far for it.

There had never been any tension over which of them was successful more often in the ring. Roch liked to show and compete, but he wasn’t hung up on the necessity of getting a ribbon in every class. Polo was preoccupied with putting in ‘personal best’ performances. It was a little different from, say, Michel’s fixation on winning, because Polo knew he himself took the horse’s limitations more into consideration, but not much. So he and Roch were able to be comfortable and easy with each other and they had their common cultural background to unite them.

When Roch had told him he was quitting the circuit to get married, Polo was shocked. They were almost the same age–Polo was nineteen, Roch twenty–and Polo still thought of himself as a boy. It was almost inconceivable to him that a peer of his could be settling down so cheerfully to the enormous responsibilities of marriage and a family. For of course the only reason Roch was marrying was that Michel was on the way, and because Ghislaine’s family–and Roch’s too–held rigidly traditional views in these matters.

Nothing had ever fazed Roch for long or dimmed his optimistic view of the world. He had jokingly told Polo that he didn’t expect to stay married for long, but when Michel was born, the fact of fatherhood transformed him instantly into the picture of bourgeois contentment. He adored Michel, he was delighted to have a pretty wife fussing over him, and he was proud of their first tiny
ménage
, a mobile home behind
Le Centre
, where he began as a trainer before assuming control of its management a few years later. He gave up competing without a backward glance, and turned his energies to the development of
Le Centre
with an enthusiasm that had never abated.

Michel was the centre of his universe. Polo had often envied Roch the settled life and fixed certainties, the well–lit emotional runways that the boy’s existence had given him. Michel’s talent was the icing on the cake. Roch had poured himself into his training. The father and son had been inseparable throughout Michel’s youth. Roch was a man’s man. Having a son meant certain obvious things to him. As flexible as he was in other ways, Polo could not imagine Roch tolerating any deviation from his dreams for Michel with understanding or acceptance.

Why, Polo asked himself, was he taking these disasters so personally? It wasn’t his barn, it wasn’t his horse. Part of the answer, he knew, lay in his lack of confidence that Roch would deal with them effectively. True, Roch had been furious at such arrogant invasions of his realm, but his follow–up reactions were, more typically, to equivocate and downplay the significance of events.