LINDA GRIFFITHS
Writer/actor Linda Griffiths might be described as a Canadian original. She not only writes plays like Maggie & Pierre and The Duchess *a.k.a. Wallis Simpson but often performs them too, in sold-out runs. In 1991 she was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for The Darling Family, which was made into a feature film. She has won numerous awards, including four Dora Mavor Moore awards for both acting and writing, a Chalmers Award, a Gemini Award, and the Los Angeles A.G.A. Award for her title role in John Sayles’ film Lianna.
THEY PHONED and asked me to write about “Trudeau the Lover” for this book. I thought, “Trudeau the Lover?” I never knew Pierre Trudeau the lover, and even if I did, how crass to kiss and tell. But deep inside I knew exactly what they were talking about. I had a flash image of a slight figure in a perfect tux with a little bit of dandruff on the collar. There was music playing and a light touch on my shoulder. I remembered what it was to dance with Trudeau.
So many people have a story of meeting Trudeau. Even today they stop me in the street and tell of their encounters in excited whispers: “I met him when he was campaigning, and he smiled at me … I met him when I was twelve and had my picture taken with him.” Well, I finagled, wrangled, and flirted my way into the Governor General’s Ball and danced with him. Then I wrote a play, in which I acted Pierre, his wife, Margaret, and an Ottawa journalist called Henry. I travelled the country performing the play for two and half years, becoming a kind of unofficial jester in the court of the northern magus. But this is not a story about the play. It’s a personal story I tell in the hope that, by pursuing the microcosm of my encounter, a piece of the macrocosm will emerge. This is the story of how I found one part of Pierre Trudeau, the part that could be called “The Lover.”
It was 1979, and I was beginning to research the play. I knew I was going to play both Pierre and Margaret, but, somehow, I wasn’t overwhelmed. The fact that I was young and female didn’t faze me at all. Then I began to realize that I didn’t know anything about them at all. I could imagine playing Maggie quite easily, but Pierre was going to be difficult. I read every conceivable book about Trudeau, but soon I knew that books were not enough. If I was going to write about and act the prime minister, I would have to meet him. I would have to “breathe him in.” I had been trained in a new Canadian school of improvisation: We found characters, stole their personalities and stories, and put them on the stage. The reason for all this stealing was that there were no Canadian characters on either stages or screens. We had no models, so we studied people. A kind of alchemy was involved in this process—it was more than imitation. We watched bodies and listened for heartbeats; we followed the breath of our subjects; and, eventually, we “breathed them in.” Then we started talking as if from their mouths, and that’s how we made plays.
At the beginning I knew so little that when I wrote to Margaret Trudeau asking to meet her, I addressed the letter to “22 Sussex Drive.” I never got a reply. I decided to go to Ottawa, armed with a list of the authors and journalists who were mentioned in the books I had read. People talked about Ottawa being boring, but to me it was a place of wonders. Inside the walls of those Gothic stone buildings was my goal; and all around, in the restaurants and bars, on the clean streets, were people who might know Trudeau or had heard personal things about him. Ottawa was the place where it all happened, or so it seemed to me that summer.
I called the Press Club number and started interviewing the journalists. Most were so eager to talk to me that our meetings lasted for hours. Out poured all those experiences they’d been having that no one had ever asked them about. I was surprised at the rawness of their emotions, at the intensity of the relationship between these professional watchers and their subject. And, like the two sisters in the fairy tale, one who spits out flowers and jewels and the other, toads and snails, I heard conflicting reports. I heard love, respect, admiration, and bile, hatred, and rumour. I heard that Trudeau was gay and regularly had it off in the bathroom with the conductor on the train to Montreal. One journalist refused to talk to me, saying what I was doing was immoral and disgusting. Trudeau deserved better than that. I began to see that the emotions were those of a love affair.
I became more and more frightened that if I didn’t meet Trudeau, I would end up with a cheap vaudeville impression—and that wasn’t enough. I had to breathe him in. But how? Then one day I read that the fall parliamentary session began with something called the Governor General’s Ball. And I knew I was going to get to that ball to dance with Pierre Trudeau. He would be as I imagined him to be, as millions imagined him to be, even though they were sick to death of him and felt betrayed and tormented by him. Every time the Lover would reveal himself in all his warmth and charm, the cold professorial élitist would appear, seeming to look down on them and say, “Suckers!” But the Trudeau I intended to meet would be the Trudeau of legend. The high cheek-bones would gleam; the blue eyes would shine; his tux would fit perfectly, with some small outrageous touch all his own; there would be patent leather pumps on his small, perfect feet; and he would dance divinely.
I found out the date of the ball and started to scheme. Of course I had nothing to wear, but my boyfriend had been left with a trunk of clothes when his ex-girlfriend moved out and in that trunk there was a dress—a vintage black lace gown. It was very old, probably from the twenties, and the lace was torn in places, held together with a rhinestone pin, but it had a kind of beauty. Shoes were a problem—but then, for the poor, shoes are always a problem.
I travelled to Ottawa by bus with the dress in a plastic bag. The ball was in two days and I had no concrete plans except my desire to get there. I phoned my “deep throat” at the Press Club. He was a friend of an actor I knew and he’d helped me a lot. It turned out the ball wasn’t a cool event at all. None of the high-level journalists went, but he would see what he could do. He phoned back to say he could get me in with the reporters who were going, but they were allowed to stay only for the first dance. I would have to dance the first dance with Trudeau.
The afternoon of the ball, I went to the Parliament Buildings. I walked through the grey stone arches and peered at the carvings of grapes and leaves. I went to the visitors’ gallery and looked down on the Commons chamber, at the bright green of the desk blotters on the dark wood. I looked at the mosdy paunchy men slouched in their seats. I counted the women. Was that one? Or maybe two? I could almost have touched them. In the Canada that was then, there was no glass wall between the visitors and their MPS. There was open space; I could have thrown a spit ball or a bomb.
I sat in the visitors’ gallery and watched Trudeau. He’d just lost what many called the “disco election,” when Maggie ran off with the Rolling Stones and danced in New York at Studio 54 the night the votes came. I was hardly a Liberal. I was rebellious and critical of him, and I had abhorred the War Measures Act. But it was as if these things were not important. I watched him hovering in his chair as if he barely sat, as if he were a visitor himself. I saw, or imagined I saw, the man who could wink at me like Sean Connery in some cheesy movie and and say, “I know it’s all bullshit, I’m just playing the game.” I was so close. I decided to write him a note. I pulled a piece of scrap paper from my purse and scribbled: “Dear Pierre Trudeau. You don’t know me, but I will be at the Governor General’s Ball with the reporters, but I’m not a reporter. I have a very strange request. Would you dance the first dance with me? I have long dark hair and I will be wearing a black dress. I will explain all this later.” I wandered through the corridors of the Parliament Buildings until it seemed I was in an Escher-like maze of stairways and archways. Finally I found a security guard in the hall and handed the note to him. “Would you give this to Pierre Trudeau?” He nodded calmly, as if he did this kind of thing all the time. I had done all I could. Now I had to change.
I was staying with my friend Nicky Guadagni, an actor with a great deal of common sense. As I changed, I noticed more holes in my dress, hidden at a distance by the lining, but close up? Nicky said it didn’t matter as she curled my hair, trying to give it a natural twist. When we got to the makeup she said, “No, you’re young, that’s what you’ve got going for you. He’ll be surrounded by old people. His wife’s just left him, and he lost the election. Just do lipstick and a bit of powder.”
When I got to the governor’s residence, a group of reporters were huddled together, waiting to be let in. I knew none of them, and none of them was dressed up. I learned that there was first a dinner, then the dancing. We were led in as a group and we passed by the empty ballroom, cordoned off by a purple velvet cord. It was a classic Victorian room, with large gilt-framed pictures of former governors general and their wives, and it was lit by lights shaped like candles. With the inevitable chandelier dangling overhead, the ballroom looked both British and colonial, a combination that fit the antiquated nature of the occasion. Governor General, indeed.
Instead of being seated with the rest of the guests, we were put into another room and made to eat separately. I was beside myself. This was it? I would eat with a bunch of reporters, watch the first dance, and go home? I didn’t have much hope that Trudeau had received my note. Hastily I scribbled another one, saying the same thing, but this time sounding more desperate. If he didn’t dance the first dance with me I would be kicked out. Could he help? We were scheduled to eat first, isolating us still further. It was possible we would never even get near the guests, much less Trudeau. When the reporters, once more carefully escorted as a group, went to line up for the buffet, I held back. I went into the bathroom and waited until they had finished filling their plates. Then, with my note crumpled in my purse, I joined the line with the real guests of the night. I looked around, trying to see some cabinet minister I might recognize, but my knowledge was limited, and no one looked familiar. The man ahead of me in line looked nice and French, and I had nothing to lose. I asked him if he knew Pierre Trudeau. He laughed and said he did. Would he give Trudeau a note? He said he would. And so a second note may or may not have been passed on to the leader of the loyal opposition.
Back in the restricted room, I couldn’t eat. Finally, the meal was over and we were herded to the ballroom. We bunched behind the velvet cord while the guests drifted in. All I could think of was that it looked like a high school prom, except everyone was older. Then Trudeau entered. I stared, trying to will him to notice me, but not a glance did I get. Almost immediately the first dance began. He danced with the governor general’s daughter. I stood watching the scene, knowing that in a few minutes I would be gone. The dance ended and I prepared to go. Then Trudeau started walking towards us. He looked at me, smiled, and extended his hand over the velvet cord. I entered the ballroom.
There is a photograph of this moment which the society reporters took, unbeknownst to me. I am talking to Trudeau the Lover. It is the picture of a young girl, breathless, overwrought, excited and unbelieving, with a rather odd Indonesian purse dangling from her arm. The shoes actually don’t look so bad. Am I going too far to think of myself as a metaphor for the country, wooed, desperate to be wooed, by the small, balding man in the perfectly cut tuxedo? Of course I am. But that night was about going too far. It was about trying to seek out this person and find his essence. About crossing the velvet cord in a country that was still protecting its leaders with something as ephemeral as a string of purple cloth.
I babbled, of course. I remember saying, “Thank you, oh, thank you, they were about to kick me out.” I hope I didn’t say “You saved me,” but maybe I did. Yet somewhere I was thinking, “He’s so little. He’s just a fraction taller than me.” He said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t dance the first dance with you.” “Oh, that’s fine,” I burbled, “I understand, I’m just so happy that you got my note.” “Now, what’s all this about? Why are they going to ‘kick you out’?” The quizzical smile was on his lips, and suddenly I saw that part of him that loved to engage, that genuine curiosity about the world. I revelled in the intense focus of his interest. I’d met him through a combination of youth and chutzpah, and now I believed that, in spite of his marriage breakdown and election loss, or perhaps because of these things, he was interested in me. It was as if every word I said was a jewel, as if, by merely listening to me, he was massaging me from inside. I had the feeling I could tell him anything. But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I wondered if Mata Hari had ever felt guilty.
Trudeau took my hand and led me deeper into the room. We started to dance as I was still trying to explain. “I’m writing a play about Ottawa and …” “About Ottawa? That’s a pretty strange subject.” A bit of gentle irony. “Yes it is, and I wanted to come here and get an idea … you know, research …” I could feel his body underneath the suit. He held me lightly. I noticed there was dandruff on his shoulders. “Is there anyone here you would like to meet?” I giggled; I couldn’t help it. “No, that’s fine, it’s just so wonderful that I’m here.” We didn’t have just one dance, we had four or five. I wasn’t used to this kind of pseudo-ballroom dancing. It reminded me of being taught to dance by my father in our rec room, with my mother at the record player. I laughed again. “What are you laughing at?” “I’m just not used to dancing this way.” I wanted to squeeze him and feel his muscles. “You intimidate me when you laugh.” How did he say that? With absolute sincerity, in the style of some old movie. Douglas Fairbanks? It didn’t matter. I intimidated Pierre Trudeau! “You have soft hair,” he said quietly, into my ear, his cheek at my hair, so recently curled by another actor now waiting across town to hear the story. And then a classic: “That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing.” “It’s full of holes.” “But in all the right places.” In all the right places? Who could get away with that?
I wanted to tell him about the play, about my dreams for it, about my thoughts on the personal and the political and how they connected. But I had read enough: This was Pierre the private man, and I was going to tell the story of his marriage. I was going to make fun of him, to play him and his wife, to strut their lives across the stage. The more kind and courtly, the more lightly flirtatious and open he was with me, the more I felt like a shit. How many times during those dances did I try to find a way to tell him? I was dancing with Pierre the Lover, but he could turn on a dime. What would I do if that grim, horrible Pierre showed himself? The persona that emerged sometimes on the evening news, cold and lethal, pockmarks pitted like the surface of the moon, his brilliance sharpened as the proverbial blade, ready to skewer people like me? A nasty kind of intelligence.
We seemed to dance for a very long time. I kept expecting him to leave, for I knew he would have to mingle. Then I remembered that he’d come alone, that he was here within a familiar group of people who had few surprises to offer, and that I, at least, was a surprise. It occurred to me, with a tiny spear-point of pain in the pit of my stomach, that he might be lonely. I did the only thing I could do. I started to breathe again. As we danced, I began to take him in, to try to remember everything, but more than that, to see the world from inside his eyes. I tried to find his heartbeat and my own. I breathed him in. And I knew that, because of this, I was bound, as if to some unspoken pact with him, even though he knew nothing, to rise above any easy instincts I might have about portraying him. Not that I was in the business of getting cheap laughs, but a yuk or two is worth a lot in my business. No, I wouldn’t go for the easy laughs. I would get the hard laughs, won from the inside. I was suddenly afraid. I felt responsible to him, the way no ordinary citizens feel responsible to democratic leaders. They are supposed to be responsible to us. This sense of a pact grew, and I knew I was experiencing another side of Pierre the Lover, the side that bound people to him: that strange vulnerability. And if I showed this vulnerability, I must also embody his pain. If he ever saw the play, that’s what he would hate me for the most.
He asked me again if there was anyone else I would like to meet. I said no, I was fine. He said he had to go. I said I understood. He gave the number of his secretary and said I could call him there. I thanked him, knowing I would not. He called over an aide de camp, Captain St. Laurent, in a white uniform with gold epaulettes, who he said would take care of me. So I danced with Captain St. Laurent for a while. When I finally got back to Nicky’s, she was waiting for me. “Did you meet him? Did you dance?” Later, she told me she didn’t even need to ask. It was all on my face.
The play was successful in an overwhelming way—to me, at least. The trick of it seemed to be this girl, playing both characters. But the real trick was Trudeau. And, in spite of a few slightly cheap laughs, it is Trudeau the Lover who is in that play. The man who was rarely too tired to engage. And because of his ability to engage, I learned to engage those audiences. I tried to be interested in them and, more than that, curious.
For a long time I had a recurring dream. I dreamed I was dancing with Trudeau and trying to find a way to tell him about the play. In the dream I would feel guilty, cruelly aware of how abhorrent the whole idea would be to him. Recently, I had the dream again. I was dancing with Trudeau, I told him about the play, he understood, and it was wonderful. I felt relieved and free. But just as he walked away, I remembered I hadn’t told him about the second act. There, the Trudeau character gets down on his knees and prays. As tears fall down his cheeks, he prays for strength, for the country, and for love. Even in a dream, I knew he wouldn’t like hearing about that.
Perhaps it is this capacity to engage that is the essence of real charm. People who are known as charming have this quality, this outward gaze. The lover looks at every person as if that person is utterly unique and worthy—worthy of their total interest. And what is a lover but someone who is ultimately interested, down to the smallest detail, in everything about you? Perhaps that’s the truth of Trudeau’s ability to engage both men and women: that he loved contact, that he was genuinely interested. More than that, curious. Curiosity led him to love a young woman who seemed his antithesis. He wanted to know about the kind of person who operated entirely on her instincts and passions, whose charm was an openness as different from his own as could be. Trudeau the Lover was at his best when taking a chance on Margaret, for Trudeau the Lover was capable of real risk.
But even while I was experiencing this lover-like charm, even while I had the feeling that every word I said was a jewel he would treasure forever, I was aware he was never able to use this charm on the western farmers, who somehow seemed to feel that those patent leather pumps were dancing on their heads—even after he sold all that wheat to China. Journalists, too, feeling betrayed by the perverse enigma that was Pierre their lover, began to be exempt from the spell—but still he engaged with them. If they goaded him, he responded like a person, not a politician. He asked them questions, he questioned their questions, he got pissed off. He engaged, at times as if he was able to anticipate the inner needs and desires of whatever person he was speaking to; at other times he disengaged, as if that person was beneath his contempt. We can’t forget this side of the Lover, the side that can hurt us as only our deepest relationships can hurt. As I listen to the barely simmering emotions people still have towards Trudeau—of anger, admiration, and betrayal—it is like a love affair that’s never really ended. Real love never goes away, but remains in the mind and the heart forever, full of subconscious yearnings and perversions, forever confused and faithful.