The Island Walkers (18 page)

The following Monday, the phone shrilled through the kitchen, where Alf and his family were eating supper. A few minutes earlier, he had quarrelled with Margaret. She had asked him, innocently enough, if he’d heard the rumours about a union organizer living at the Vimy House: “I wonder if it’s the same one who came here?” He tried to avoid a direct answer, and when she pressed him, he snapped back at her that, hell, he couldn’t go around checking every bloody rumour that came through town. In truth, he suspected her of suspecting him, though of what exactly he wasn’t sure. He felt he had done nothing wrong, not yet, and yet a vague pressure of impending guilt, a foreknowledge of what he was going to do, or might do, had made him see criticism everywhere.

His outburst had spread a bruised, isolating silence in the room, which the phone now interrupted. Penny answered.

“Daddy, it’s for you.”

As he crossed the room, she kept her eyes fixed on his.

“Alf. Bob Prince here.”

The “Bob” took him unawares, postponing for a moment his understanding of “Prince.” Whom was he talking to? Then he lurched forward, obscurely thrilled, into the intimacy offered by that rich, confiding voice, as if, already, he were being offered membership in those places where the powerful met in affable familiarity: on the greens of private golf courses; in elevators flashing up towers of light and steel.

“Have you got any news for me on that matter we discussed?”

“Ah yes, yes, I think so.”

The silence over the line demanded more.

“It’s difficult for me to talk now. Could I see you at G.O. tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Alf. Too many curious eyes. Could you come over tonight? I’m at the Executive. Room 226.”

When Alf hung up, his family was staring at him: four faces backlit in the receding light, watching him with the stillness of
grazing animals interrupted in a field, as if mystified by the very fact of his existence.

“Is there something wrong?” Margaret asked.

“No, no,” he said, touched by her note of concern. “Mr. Prince wants to see me — company business.” As soon as he’d spoken the phrase “company business,” he felt reassured. It was as if he’d cited “state secrets” at a time of national emergency. Company business was not always nice business, though it was necessary. The awards, the beaming honours, would come later.

It was a twenty-minute drive to the outskirts of Johnsonville. In fields sprinkled with garbage, the hulks of closed and decaying factories drifted under the elongated pink islands of the sunset. Smaller businesses still clung to the edge of the highway. The Biscayne passed an auto-glass outlet, several fast-food restaurants, and a sprawling store that sold wooden lawn furniture, the unpainted Muskoka chairs and lounges crowded right up to the shoulder.

The Executive Motor Lodge formed a square C, two storeys high, around a central courtyard where a swimming pool gave off a clinical glow. He parked near the office and climbed metal stairs to a long exterior balcony that ran past a series of identical doors and picture windows. A pretty young woman in a short dress marched crisply towards him, her high heels ringing on the metal gangway. Her gaze, like a disapproving restaurant hostess’s, swept coldly down his canary-yellow polo shirt (one of Bannerman’s, four years old), his too-short, synthetic, navy-blue slacks, his black church shoes. He had put on the wrong clothes, he saw that now, though he didn’t suppose there was anything better in his closet. Margaret had picked them out for him, discarding nearly everything she unearthed with an impatient brusqueness, kneeling to sponge vigorously at an ancient mustard spot on the trousers, as though she had guessed how much was riding on tonight and was angry with him, with herself, for not being ready.

The drapes in the window of Room 226 had been drawn. From the back of one, the lining hung down like a discarded undergarment.

Beyond the door, a man’s nasal voice climbed in excitement: “He’s going for it! Look out! Oh!” The
TV
, Alf realized, a football game. He had to knock twice before the door opened and Prince’s brown, rectangular face loomed.

“Alf. Good to see you. Come in.”

Prince offered him a chair near the window, then padded away in bare feet to stand by one of the twin beds, arrested by a collision on the screen. “Toronto and Hamilton,” he said, mesmerized. In his large hand, a glass contained ice, a smear of amber. Alf smelled again the atmosphere of his aftershave, at once brisk and suffocating, saw the heavy, slightly protruding jaw open in a smile that tightened into a wince.

“You a football fan?” Prince had not taken his eyes from the screen.

“You bet,” Alf said. In truth, he never watched it. The repetitions of chaos along the line of scrimmage, the frequent stops, bored him. He was a hockey man.

“I got ten bucks riding on this with my son.”

“You’ve got kids?” Alf caught hopefully at the domestic detail, a hint of normalcy, of something he had in common with Prince. He was trying to relax, to adopt the air of someone who’d dropped by a friend’s place: for wasn’t Prince’s casualness with him — the bare feet, the game — a signal they’d moved onto a more intimate plane?

“You don’t mind if we watch for a while?”

“No, no, great.”

Still riveted to the screen, the executive climbed onto the near bed. He was wearing faultless tan slacks and a white sports shirt with buttoned pockets, open at the throat to reveal a fine gold chain that disappeared into the first shadowy hint of chest hair. Alf crossed his legs and surreptitiously eyed the spot on his trousers. It had dried, but the mustard stain had survived Margaret’s attack: a rude little splotch shaped like a pike’s head.

To the screen, Prince said, “You want a drink? I got a Scotch going here.”

Prince poured his drink on the little table between the beds.

“Ice?”

“That’d be great.”

Alf sat with the heavy glass, trying to lose himself in the game. Bodies streamed together, collapsed in a writhing heap. The referee ran up in his prisoner’s stripes, waving furiously.

“Ho-ho,” Alf said with enthusiasm, “he really ran into it that time.”

“Patterson didn’t give Clarkson his block,” Prince said with disapproval. “He’d have been away.” Alf realized Prince was pulling for the Argos and adjusted his comments accordingly, for in truth he hardly cared who won. Half an hour went by. Sitting with his knees up, the executive picked absently at a corn. The ball-carrier dodged under the uprights, raising both arms.

“Yes!” Prince cried, with a shocking fierceness. There was a huge fund of energy in the man, of willpower. He wasn’t just watching the game, he was trying to make things turn out the way he wanted.

Alf looked around the room. Prince’s suitcase lay on the far bed, like a giant clam opened to reveal a mass of neatly packed clothes. There was a shiny gold package in it, beside the rolled socks: like a gold brick, with a frilly bow.

On the shag carpet, just past the
TV
and inside the closet door, sat another suitcase: small, square, powder blue. A woman’s, Alf realized, a makeup case. Did Prince have his wife with him, or — what was her name — Sharon? Shirley? Those long legs. He looked at the closed bathroom door and bleakness went through him like a cold wind. He sipped his Scotch and stared at the far wall, where a painting of sailboats hung: vague impressions in yellow and pink, leaning in the curve of a tropical bay. Prince roared his approval at a play. Alf had the feeling he’d been here before, exactly like this: waiting for someone who scarcely knew he was there. He wondered if Shirley, or his wife, whoever she was, was waiting too, behind the closed bathroom door, maybe, or downstairs in the bar with its neon palm in the window.

It was almost an hour before the game finished and Prince got up with a tired groan to turn off the
TV
. “Guess I owe the kid ten bucks,” he said, and he flashed Alf a brilliant smile. There was something so open, so boyishly charming in it — it was the thought, it seemed, of his son — that Alf instantly felt better.

His ankles cracking, Prince padded over to the closet and reached inside a hanging suit jacket. As Alf watched, the executive looked down and discovered the makeup case. His bare foot nudged it discreetly out of sight. Then he sat on the edge of the farther bed, facing Alf. In his hands was a small spiral notebook and a fountain pen, which he pulled apart, fitting the cap over the other end with surgical fastidiousness.

“Okay, tell me what you got.”

Alf had tried to imagine this moment. He was still not sure what he would say.

He chose his words carefully, frowning at the rug that looked like turquoise grass that had lain uncut for weeks. “I don’t think you’ve got a thing to worry about. This union — Doyle’s not going anywhere. There’s only a small band that’s interested — and they tend to be people no one would follow. Malcontents, I’d call them. They’re a pretty sad lot.”

The word “malcontents” pleased him. He had been saving it.

“Who are they?” Prince said flatly.

Alf rubbed his shoe on the turquoise grass.

“I mean,” and he cleared his throat as he prepared his lie. “Their own leader, this Doyle fellow, told me he wasn’t at all pleased at the prospects.”

“They may be malcontents,” Prince said, “but that’s how it usually starts, with
malcontentism
.” He delivered the word with cheerless irony.

“I went to a meeting,” Alf said.

“Where? Whose house?”

Prince made a sharp stroke in his notebook.

“Not a house, not anybody’s house,” Alf said. “It was, ah, out in the country. By the river. They had a fire,” he added, absurdly. He was describing a meeting he’d been to in the fall of ’48, when they were just starting the union. They had roasted wieners, and it had been a happy time, an exuberant time, a time beyond Prince’s reach.

Prince looked at him with bemusement. Alf felt his lie was obvious.

“All right,” Prince said. “A fire. Who was there?”

“Only a few. Doyle. A few others.”

“How many?”

Alf shrugged. “Half a dozen or so.”

“You didn’t count?”

“Six,” Alf said, “not including myself.”

The tip of the pen made a small mark in the notebook.

“So who were they?”

“You have to understand,” Alf said, “some of these people I’ve known for years. They may be misguided, but they’re —”

“This will be confidential.”

“It’s not that. I’ve grown up with these people —”

For a few seconds Prince’s eyes met his: they seemed to contain no emotion at all, just a long, chilling evaluation. Alf might have been a post, or a piece of paper. Then the executive began to speak. He was all concerned seriousness now, confiding and almost gentle. “Alf. You’ve been picked out as one of the people who has a future in this company. But if you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have make up your mind about which side you’re on.”

“I’m with you,” Alf said.

“Once we have confidence in someone — well, the possibilities of moving up in Intertex are excellent. We pride ourselves on being a meritocracy. There are executives in this company who began as office boys, as ordinary workers. We gave them a chance, and well, they knew what to make of it.” Prince paused, letting Alf take
that
in. When he spoke again, it was on a whole new level of intimacy. He
seemed, almost, to be confessing. He seemed weary, and more human. “Look, I sympathize with what concerns you. You’re loyal to these people, and that’s a fine thing. I’m loyal myself. I mean, hell, I came from a poor family. My father worked in a mattress factory all his life. Never made foreman, though he deserved to. And there were seven of us to feed, including my mother, God rest her. I know what it’s like, Alf. I know what it’s like to wear hand-me-downs and sleep under an old overcoat because there aren’t enough blankets. I have every sympathy for the working man. But the only way the working man’s going to be taken care of, the only way things are going to improve for him, is if the company he works for does well. That’s the
only
place the wealth is gonna come from. It doesn’t come from the sky. It doesn’t come from good
intentions
 …”

Prince took a sip of his drink, frowned at the floor before going on. “Textiles isn’t steel. It isn’t General Motors. The margins aren’t big, the competition is ferocious, every penny counts. Every
quarter-penny
counts. We can be good guys, and sign a nice fat contract, and three, five years from now, we wake up and realize we can’t compete any more because we’ve been too generous — I put that word in quotes — in fact we’ve priced ourselves right out of the market. So, the company goes under, and where’s your working man then?”

Prince leaned forward. “I don’t wanna hurt these people, Alf. They’re my people too. I haven’t forgotten that. And I’ll do everything I can to avoid hurting them. But better a little blood now than a lot of red ink down the line …”

The silence lasted for several seconds. Now Alf felt patronized — he knew these arguments, and had even used some of them himself. But at the same time he felt he needed to be reminded of them. He’d slipped back from a point of understanding he’d reached before. He looked at the sailboats on the wall, he looked at the carpet. All right, he thought.

“If I give you their names,” he said, “what will you do with them?”

“Bring them over to G.O., one by one. Give them a good scare, frankly. Tell them we know what they’re up to and imply — this is not something we can come out and say, in any case — that they better get back on the straight and narrow or risk losing their jobs.”

“So you won’t fire them —”

“I find that’s rarely a good tactic. As far as it lies within my power, no.”

“As far as it lies within your power.”

“I’m not here to split hairs with you, Alf.”

Alf got up and turned to the window, parting the curtains a little. Across the highway, the spotlit image of a beautiful blonde gazed from a billboard. She was expelling smoke from her cigarette, her heavily lidded eyes smiling with a carnal suggestiveness over the frail thrust of headlights.