Man in the Shadows (14 page)

Conor knew the next words from the speech. McGee had practised, or tested, them on him. “Canada,” he declared, “has already played an important part in the history of civil and religious liberty, in the emancipation of the Catholics, in the enfranchisement of the Jews, in the interests of the Negroes.”

A voice called out from the back, “Sit down, traitor, before you fall down.”

Why “traitor”? Conor thought. His enemies called him a turncoat because he worked so well with Protestants, but he fought for Catholic schools, worked for Irish causes. He was hardly a traitor. But the word had power, and his opponents knew it hurt.

Another voice yelled, “You look like you’re drunk.”

Conor wanted to shout back, “He hasn’t touched a drink in months.” But McGee
was
wavering like a drunken man.

“If we are a generation worthy to organize a nation, assuredly the materials are abundant and are at hand.” McGee was ad-libbing and losing the moment.

The voice that first yelled “traitor” now started a chant: “Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …”

Barney Devlin’s boys quickly picked it up: “Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …”

The heckling seemed to give McGee strength. He tried to speak above the chanting. “I am a man of peace,” he yelled. “And peace has her victories, no less than war.”

The same voice that started the chanting yelled, “Sit down, you’re finished!”

McGee wondered who it was, but he could hardly take a second to reflect. He responded with an old retort: “It’s a comfort to be attacked by you, my bucko.” He was trying to lighten the air, but there was no lightness to be found. Still, McGee desperately tried to gain some control of the meeting. He searched for Conor in the crowd. And Mary—poor Mary, why did she have to watch this? She deserved better. But then, so did he. He felt a sharp shot of pain in his leg, and the blood rushed from his face. He clutched his walking stick and somehow gained his composure, smiling at a friend in the crowd to hide his distress. He explored the darkness at the back of the room, searching for the voice of the man who had started this ruckus.

“What about the Fenians?” That voice again; the same Irish accent. “Why do you attack your own people?”

“I’ll answer you, sir,” McGee responded, “whoever you are.” The crowd hushed for a moment. “You’re right. I’m against the Fenians. Old World prejudice has no place here. I strangled the notion of Fenianism when I came to Montreal, and I’m not going to be annoyed by its carcass.”

The crowd started to still. McGee’s bravery was winning people over.

“I will not allow firebrands to take over this election campaign, or foreign schemers to wreck this great country.” He was speaking directly to the hidden shape at the back of the room, the man who had started the trouble. “You and your type will not destroy this government. You … you …” He looked over at Conor, summoning strength, and smiled. “You reprobate.”

Conor actually laughed. But Barney Devlin’s boys weren’t laughing. “Start throwing, boys,” the voice yelled, and an egg came flying toward the stage. It just missed McGee. A second egg came from the left. A tomato hit him on his shoulder. That same voice renewed the chant. “Trai-tor, trai-tor …” It was gaining momentum. “Trai-tor, trai-tor …”

McGee held his ground. “Some say I should leave the Fenians alone,” he yelled over the noise. “Well, I won’t leave extremists of any sort alone.” He saw a man at the bar take aim and throw a tomato directly at him. He ducked. The tomato splattered behind him. “Some say my cause isn’t worth it,” he continued. “At moments like this, I know more than ever that it is.”

McGee’s voice was now drowned out by chants. “Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …” He stood defiant and unafraid, but he looked dazed. The Irish faction had destroyed the meeting. But worse, this display made them all look like fools in the eyes of others at the meeting. It would just add to prejudices.

“Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …”

It was stupid and shameful. Montreal was polarized between Irish and English. French and British. Catholic and Protestant. And he stood in the middle, battling the radical extremes. The target for everybody’s scorn.

“Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …”

He felt that sharp pain again, but this time it continued rising up his leg. The blisteringly hot room started spinning. He was becoming light-headed.

“Trai-tor, trai-tor, trai-tor …”

His reached for his walking stick, but it fell cruelly to the ground. He was helpless and rapidly losing control.

“Trai-tor, trai …”

A cool wave engulfed him. It was blissful. Refreshing. Peaceful. The noise was fading out. Disappearing. Slowly. Gently. Like a cool northern wind blowing … blowing … blowing him off his feet …

Conor and Mary ran to the stage. Conor caught McGee just as he fell. At first, it looked as if one of the objects thrown at him had knocked him down, but McGee had simply collapsed from exhaustion. Mary whispered in her husband’s unhearing ear, “Now you’ll go to bed, love. Now you’ll rest.”

A policeman rushed to the stage. A doctor quickly followed. All eyes were on the podium, watching McGee, amazed at the spectacle. Nobody noticed a man leaving the hall with a grey coat slung over his shoulder and a look of pure satisfaction on his face.

Yes, he thought, the pot has been pleasantly stirred.

D
r. O’Brien was firm. “D’Arcy, the ulcer in your leg is worsening. Under no circumstance are you to leave your house for at least a week.” Mary McGee stood by the doctor like a co-conspirator. She would make sure his instructions were followed. If D’Arcy lost the election, so be it.

“But I have to go to Ontario. I’m needed,” McGee protested.

“Just a week, dear,” Mary insisted. His adventure in Ontario was nothing but foolishness as far as she was concerned. Imagine, while running for his life in the federal election in Montreal, he was also running for the provincial legislature in Ontario, a province he’d never lived in. Didn’t he have enough on his plate?

“There’s work to be done. You’ll not put me in prison.”

“In a week, you can go back to your meetings and be insulted,” Mary said. “For now, fight your battles in bed. I’m your enemy.”

Conor snickered. He thought of offering up some lumber camp remedies. Perhaps a pinch of gunpowder with that potion, sir, or beaver kidney extract. No one seemed in the mood for a joke, so he kept it to himself. It would be his job to keep his employer off his feet for seven long days. McGee the wild animal corralled, and he the hired hand trying to keep him penned. But Conor had his own designs on this week. The instant Mary McGee and the doctor left, he pulled a
chair over to the side of the bed. “Are you tired, sir?” he asked. “May we talk a bit?”

“Of course I’m not tired,” McGee lied. “It was a simple fall.”

“I want to speak to you about my father.”

D’Arcy McGee’s face grew serious. “Yes, Thomas O’Dea. He’s a good man, but very bitter, far too bitter.”

“He thinks you’re a …” He tried not to use the word in the chant from Jolicoeur’s, but he could think of no other. “He thinks that you’re a traitor.”

“I daresay he’s not alone.”

“And I guess he thinks I’m something far worse.”

McGee ran his hand through his messy hair and sighed.

“He told me about Ireland and the famine,” Conor said. “He described the ship over here.”

McGee sadly nodded. “Fever ships. Coffin ships. I know them well.”

“He told me about my mother,” Conor continued. “Her name was Margaret. She died in the crossing.”

McGee bit his tongue as the pain rushed through his leg. “Conor, it’s hard for you to understand what your father has been through.”

“He says you don’t understand.”

McGee considered the accusation. “An immigrant—no, a
refugee
—will always be an outsider, and that’s what your father is. No one can live inside your father’s skin and really know what he feels, but I think I have some sense of his anger. I was a refugee, too. In fact, I think I understand the people who shouted me down last night, even that man at the back of the room.”

“What?” Conor exclaimed. “How?”

“Listen, tomorrow a reporter from Cincinnati is coming here to interview me.” Conor knew about the interview, but he had assumed it would be cancelled now that McGee was in a sickbed. McGee
anticipated his reaction and continued. “Mary can’t object. We can do it from my room here. I want you to listen in. He wants to hear about the old days—the days of Young Ireland. Rebellion. Insurrection.” His tired voice seemed to fill the room. “You see, I once stood with them. We didn’t use the word then, but it’s fair to say that I was …” He paused, as if daring himself to use the word “Fenian,” and chose instead to say, “I was just like them.”

MARY
McGee marched into the room without knocking and dismissed Conor. He was not—“I repeat,
not
”—to return until the next day at noon. “D’Arcy needs his sleep.”

McGee smiled. “You’re right, Mary. Tomorrow at noon. Because at two o’clock I have an interview with some American reporter. It can’t be moved.” He held up his arm as if deflecting an attack. “Conor will be here to keep it short. No problem.”

She cast an angry look at Conor, as if he was part of some plot with her husband.

“It’s not his fault. The interview was set up last week and we don’t know where the reporter is staying. I can rest in the morning, and surely I’ll have the strength to talk a bit in the afternoon.”

“I don’t have the strength to stop you,” she said softly. And he knew he had won.

“Now, Conor, go and find out more about that mysterious troublemaker last night. Then, Mary, we’ll burn him in a pot of boiling Guinness and be done with him.”

She didn’t smile.

CONOR
went to Irish bars throughout the parish and simply hung around, drinking a few pints and asking a lot of questions. He heard
great stories of conspiracies hatching throughout Griffintown, of Fenians on the border, of a free Ireland on the horizon, but nothing specific—nothing clear about whoever had started the trouble at Jolicoeur’s. Nobody, it seemed, had seen his face. Those who had, or thought they might have, could not remember any distinguishing features.

“Was he tall?”

“No, medium height.”

“Did he have a beard?”

“No. I don’t think so.

“What was the colour of his hair?”

“Hard to say. He wore a hat, and I never got a good look at his face.”

“Would you recognize him again?”

“No, I doubt it.”

Conor felt like the world’s worst detective. But then, there was probably nothing to worry about. He was just another of Barney Devlin’s boys.

CONOR
wrote to Meg daily. He struggled timidly over each word. He could write complicated political treatises and solidly argue a point of privilege, but he’d never written a love letter. So he hid behind reportage: reports on his day, reports on the election, reports on the latest book he was reading.

He had been slowly composing a real love letter for days, and stumbling over every sentence. He discovered he had to write about someone else first. Another woman. Even if she was from his own imagination. Encouraged by his talk earlier in the day with D’Arcy McGee, and fuelled by a few pints, he took out his pen and began writing.

SOMETIMES
he told people to call him Patrick, but usually he avoided trading names. He had stored a box of clothes at the St. Lawrence Hotel when he first came up from New York State. Picking it up was easy. A few dollars and a Southern accent, and the boy behind the counter paid him little attention. His bag of tricks stored a make-up kit, hair dye, wigs and false facial hair.

He had taken a room above Barney’s Tavern in the guise of a workman: overalls, open-necked shirt and tweed jacket. From his dirty window, he watched McGee’s assistant arrive and then leave an hour later. Meddling son of a bitch. He’d be dead if he weren’t potentially useful. He would have to go down to the bar later to find out what he had been up to.

He considered his options for tomorrow. He should wear a suit, but not too expensive. He’d sport a rather garish tie. He was American, after all, not a boring British subject. A touch of grey on the temples, a thick moustache, maybe a distinguishing scar on his right cheek. He looked in the mirror. Not bad. Maybe add to the moustache and make it a salt-and-pepper beard. That was better. He was a new man: Jasper Green from Cincinnati.

I
t was a typically dreary evening at Lapierre’s when Polly Ryan walked in.

“This is no place for you,” Thomas O’Dea told her from behind the bar.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” she said casually.

Thomas liked Polly. He felt a kinship. She washed clothes and cleaned other people’s houses; he washed mugs and filled other people’s glasses. They were about the same age. Both had lost spouses; both were alone and terribly lonely.

“How’s your son?” she asked. “And I will have a beer.”

“You’ve heard, I suppose, that he’s in Montreal with McGee.” He made no move to get her a drink. Her accent was County Clare, his was Galway.

“I’ve also heard that there is no ladies’ section in this bar, and I still want that beer.”

Thomas almost smiled.

“I saw your son about town after your fight. He was looking sad.”

“Aren’t we all?”

There was something mysterious about this washerwoman, but also a sense of strength and resolve. “Don’t lose him, Thomas,” she said. “You’ve already lost so much else.”

“Is that why you came in here? To meddle in my business? I don’t intrude in yours.”

She looked around the bar and then at Thomas. “Forget the beer, but remember what I said. You’re a good man. Be nice.”

MEG
was thrilled each time she received one of Conor’s letters. She carried the latest one wherever she went. It was about his mother. She had lost her own father and understood Conor’s longing to know more about this unknown, gentle person named Margaret. The stories of Ireland particularly moved her, especially the unimaginable trip across the ocean. Her family had come to Canada from New York State during the American War of Independence. They were United Empire Loyalists: conservatives who didn’t support the Yankee rebels.