CHAPTER 24
1947–49
AS THOUGH QUEBEC HAD BEEN SEGREGATED FROM THE world to determine its destiny in a vacuum, out from under the influence of foreign wars and tectonic political shifts abroad, Maurice Duplessis had emerged from his oxygen tent and the scullery of alcoholism to resume power as the premier of Quebec, while the oversized bon vivant Camillien Houde, stripped of real power and a figurehead only, was shunted back from an internment camp as the dapper, cane-twirling, jovial mayor of Montreal, his beloved sin city.
Whereas the world at war had merely nicked Quebec society, an issue as mundane as two cents would soon challenge the existing status quo and disrupt the social compact. Over a meagre two pennies, all hell broke loose.
The Church was proving to be a divided house. Talk of Cardinal Villeneuve becoming the next pope dissipated. He had supported the Allies, earning him the approbation of English-Canadians and Europeans alike, but sway over his own people had lessened. Time to recoup. Now that peace had been achieved, he determined that the Liberal Party no longer constituted the lesser evil.
In peacetime, he identified the Liberals as the party of the English, of Protestants, of Jews and immigrants, and contemplated that liberalism was a wave of the future the Church ought to avoid. Duplessis loved to sketch the Libs as communists in three-piece suits—”Look how they adore the colour red! It’s on all their banners.” Villeneuve allowed that the portraiture amounted to bogus electioneering, yet, similarly, he also knew that Duplessis was not the cartoonish goose-stepping fascist stencilled by his enemies. Although he shared a similar appearance and a birthday with Hitler—Duplessis was his junior by exactly a year—the rogue premier was not cut from the same cloth. The cardinal correctly judged that le Chef conducted his government in the same way that he managed Church affairs, and in essence had adopted the administration of the Catholic Church in Quebec as his template. In labelling him a dictator, the premier’s detractors missed the more appropriate barb, one that might have defeated him. Duplessis was no dictator. In Quebec, he sat in the premier’s chair as a pontificate.
The legitimate pope, the one in Rome, decided that the Church in Quebec required a sharp change of direction. After Cardinal Villeneuve enabled Duplessis to win a second successive election in ‘47, he died, and under no circumstances did the papacy wish to elevate one of the cryptic, neo-fascist underlings in black robes vying for the position of archbishop of Montreal. Pope Pius XII had had no difficulty deducing that Mussolini and Hitler were unworthy of the accolades bestowed upon them by the likes of Henri Bourassa, the monk Lionel Groulx and other Quebec leaders. Needing an antidote, he ignored those within the fervent ranks looking to crack the fascist whip, and chose instead an outsider, Father Joseph Charbonneau.
The new arrival promptly turned everything the wrong way up. Villeneuve had espoused a haberdashery of pomp and colour, a multitude of robes for every occasion, fit to compete with any cardinal or pontificate. He wore chains and crosses and rings galore. Charbonneau preferred austere attire. He acquired an elegance to his bearing, although his grey cassock was often patched from wear. Being from Ontario, he championed the cause of the French in all of Canada, not Quebecers in particular, and he avowed to be an archbishop to all Montrealers, not only to Roman Catholics. He was inclined to think that the Church ought to be less materialistic, that it should renew itself by first reducing its own wealth. He argued that the state should be socially inclined. He posited his affirmation of a strong united Canada as more important than the strength of any of its components, including Quebec. And as a final indignant heresy, he flew the Union Jack above the archiepiscopal palace.
For some, the Church had fallen from its appointed heaven. For Duplessis, the Antichrist had shown his grim face upon his doorstep.
Other bishops found reason to plot and scheme, and refreshed their skills with respect to Machiavellian strategy.
If the Church was suffering cracks and schisms, unions fared no better. The internationals—regarded as merely American by most Canadians—saw cultural and linguistic differences as minor irritants to their movement. Quebec workers were torn. Some valued the assertive stance of the militant unions. Others believed that the federations ought to remain Catholic, to strike a balance for the sake of a segregated culture. The internationals, as Duplessis broadcast the message successfully, were run by rapacious Jewish lawyers and the sly devil’s own—namely, communists. That many had fallen to the grip of American racketeers never tweaked his interest.
The right wing, nebulous to some, proved rambunctious. Barely tarnished by defeat in Europe, the hope of the world for these men now resided within Quebec, to be signalled by the ascent of a new Quebec man who had yet to manifest himself, but whose appearance was presumed to be inevitable. As this soon-to-be-revealed eminence arose, business, academia and politics would claim a high plateau, and a great age for the world would ensue. Such rhetoric drove Duplessis to distraction. He believed that he was all the man that Quebec required, and that he was perched as far to the right of the centre aisle as any sane politician needed to nest. Yet Houde, in Montreal, quietly bused the theories around, knowing how they needled le Chef, knowing also that by championing such thinking, the support of the occult right stood squarely behind him. Those striving for the triumph of a zealous faction located a catalyst for their cause in the perceived persecution of a French migrant, one Count Jacques Dugé de Bernonville.
De Bernonville’s supporters argued that he had fought the predatory resistance in France and had faithfully dispatched Jews on trains into the hands of German justice, as any enlightened man might do. That he desired to settle in Canada seemed appropriate, even an honour for Quebecers, who brought him into their Montreal homes and north to their cottages as the most significant celebrity within their midst. Dire Canada, ruled by communist sympathizers, Liberal hoaxers and English drivel, sought to deport him back to France to face war crimes charges. The indignity of it all, that a man of such exemplary achievement and character should be reduced to pleading for a place to hang his hat appalled the French elite, particularly those who composed the Order of Jacques Cartier and the Jean-Baptiste Society.
All these groups, the splintered Church and the fractured unions, the hostile elite and the vested interests of American business, the political leader who would not allow his authority to be questioned and a right-wing orthodoxy that viewed the government as morally impoverished, confronted a situation brewing in the small mining town of Asbestos, about sixty miles east of Montreal. There, twenty-one hundred of five thousand miners had gone out on strike. The workers wanted a fifteen-cent raise. The company proffered a dime. That nickel divided them, so workers manned the picket lines. Further negotiation brought the difference between the two groups down to a glum two cents. Duplessis, though, was not interested in having his authority countermanded—he had established an arbitration process to which the miners had not adhered. So he sent in the cops. The night they arrived, they couldn’t find anyone to arrest—the miners had departed their barricades and gone home—so the Riot Act was read aloud at dawn before surprised supplicants on the steps of the local church. The miners woke up to cops on their streets, just hanging around with submachine guns slung over their shoulders, smoking and acting tough. That night, the miners captured eleven of their visitors, bound them with their own handcuffs and scuffed them up, marched them through the streets and further tormented the officers in a church basement. Priests arriving on the scene, including Father François Legault, advised that the policemen had to be released if the miners desired the continued support of the Church and the archbishop of Montreal, the beloved Father Joe Charbonneau.
So the cops, none seriously harmed, were let go.
The next night, the police sought revenge. Trapped by the imposition of a curfew, a few miners sought refuge in the same church basement. Cops entered the building and hauled the miners out, beat them savagely, pummelled their faces beyond recognition and packed several off to police stations around the countryside for further beatings. When the victims emerged days later, they wobbled, so battered were their legs and bones.
The province of Quebec collapsed into crisis again.
Charbonneau sided with the miners. Duplessis squealed on him to the pope.
The miners warred amongst themselves, particularly the members of the Catholic union against the internationals.
Bishops met in secret, whispering strategies. No one knew what about.
Quebec’s upstart intellectuals—Jean Marchand and René Lévesque among them, as well as Pierre Trudeau and Father François Legault—all lent a hand, and a strike in which management and labour found themselves two cents apart at the negotiating table continued for what seemed a violent eternity, but was actually a four-month standoff.
“It’s not about the two cents,” Marchand said to his younger pal.
“A principle,” Trudeau presumed. His first junket into a major dispute. He’d taken sides on political issues in the past, and supported one candidate over another in certain elections, but in those instances nothing more had been asked of him than an intellectual response, a position. This job required that he step into the homes of striking miners and teach them basic economics and the essentials of political action. He also listened to their perspective on the dispute, learning something of what it meant to be a miner of a material that damaged their health.
“It’s not even about principles,” Marchand instructed him. “This is about the dispersal of power in Quebec. Who has it, who will share it, who will seize it, who will inherit it.”
“A lot is at stake,” Trudeau determined.
“Everything,” Marchand advised, “is at stake.” This was his realm. A tough battle against a brutal corporate opponent, complicated by the harsh anti-labour policies of an autocratic government. He was at home in this struggle, and he took up residence in Asbestos among the miners. “When so much is at stake, count on it to be a dirty fight.”
Trudeau, also, was loving it, for he was learning, although he never overcame the sensation that he was a salamander out of water, neither fish nor fowl. He bombed around on his motorcycle from home to home, teaching and learning.
The workers knew only that they were sacrificing a lot—half-starving most days—to gain or relinquish those two miserable cents an hour.
“It’s not about the two cents,” Trudeau tried to advise them.
“People around, they say you’re a millionaire’s kid,” a miner countered once. “But your papa’s gone, so now it’s you who’s got those millions of dollars in a bank just for yourself to spend.”
The young man could not deny it.
“So I guess it’s not about the two cents for you. For us, maybe it’s different.”
He could neither deny that assertion nor the catalogue of implications.
On a Saturday night at the El—the fashionable El Morocco, where Lily St. Cyr performed her mesmerizing lock-and-key striptease and attracted lovers such as Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra and champion prizefighters—Roger Clément’s greater troubles began.
“He’s looking for you.”
Roger and Lily were pals. She enjoyed having a big, strong man around who was not actively trying to sleep with her, and who would talk about his child.
“Who?” he asked.
“The boss.”
He almost replied, “What boss?” He had several, although he called himself an independent contractor. To advertise that he worked for different people was unwise, so Roger checked his response. “Where is he?”
“Diddling girls backstage.”
As he navigated through the thick stage curtains, Roger was caught off guard to come across a bevy of chorus girls, a few wearing less than on stage, surrounding Maurice Duplessis. Lily’s reference to the “boss” had perhaps been intended as a poor translation of the man’s nickname, le Chef. He waited for the portly, diminutive premier to slide free. In the dark, Roger agreed that the man really did look remarkably like Hitler.
Duplessis crooked a finger, then tilted his head. As if on strings, Roger veered to his right and found a nook. Momentarily, the premier joined him there.
“My man phoned your house, Roger. No reply. We guessed you were out on the town.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a small task. It will mean some travel.”
“I’m free these days.”
Duplessis looked up at him, as though to suggest that his schedule was of no logical interest. As far as he was concerned, Roger would attend to whatever task he directed him to do, regardless of his availability.
Catching the nuance, Roger inquired, “Where am I going?” He realized at that moment that they had both been whispering.
“Asbestos.”
Roger felt himself sobering up quickly. He didn’t know if it would be wise to point out to the premier that his wife and two-year-old daughter were already in that town—on the picket lines. If she’d been quizzed by reporters, Carole had probably already sullied le Chef’s reputation.
“You got a thousand cops out there,” Roger brought up. “What do you need me for?”
“I wish I had a thousand officers in Asbestos, Roger. In lesser numbers, policemen are on hand, but do I tell them how to do their jobs? I only expect them to maintain the peace.” Roger doubted that, but the premier brooked no dispute from underlings. “Should I desire that specific actions be taken, I call on you. We don’t want to create a fuss, Roger.”
“I understand, sir. Ah,” he hesitated, thinking that he might not like the answer, “what actions?”
“The intellectuals,” Duplessis hissed. He waved over Roger’s shoulder at a pretty chorus girl, nude from the waist down, walking past them in high heels. Roger took a glance, then refocused his eyes where they belonged.
“Sir?” he inquired.
“They think they can run my province. As if they know what’s best. Like these girls here, they’re wet behind the ears. What do those truants know? How to lace their own shoes? By the time you’re finished with a few of them, Roger—”
“Yes, sir?”
“—they’ll lace themselves up in corsets. Dance in high heels. One thing’s for sure, they won’t make any more trouble for me.”
The assignment must be vital for the most powerful man in Quebec to give him illicit orders in person. Usually, he sent a man. “Sir? Who do you have in mind?”
“The riffraff,” the premier dictated, whispering still. “Marchand. Trudeau. That journalist twit, Pelletier. Also, the priest, Father François.”
“A priest?” Roger was shocked. This was crossing a line he’d not trespass.
Duplessis scoffed. “Don’t be an altar boy. Father François is a lackey for Monsignor Charbonneau, which makes him no priest worthy of his collar. He deserves an old-fashioned whipping behind the outhouse to preserve the good name of our Church. It’s a tradition. If a priest goes astray, not much else can be done. Whip him in private. The pope will be on our side on this, as will God.”
“Yes, sir,” Roger said. Still, a priest. He recognized the name. He was thinking that Carole might have mentioned him from time to time.
“I don’t know who you’ll bump into. Maybe Chartrand, the union guy, if you’re lucky.”
“Reggie Chartrand? The boxer?”
“That’s the one. You’re not afraid of him, are you?”
“Why would I be?”
Duplessis nodded approvingly. “I don’t care who it is as long as you come across one of them in a dark alley at night.” The premier winked. “When you do, help that man understand that being an intellectual communist is not what it’s cracked up to be in Quebec. The others, they’ll learn from the good example you deliver.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If given a choice, find Trudeau and teach him a lesson in high finance. London School of Economics, my ass. Who does he think he is? Communist riffraff. If you find him walking alone at night, make him wish he lived in Moscow.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“On your way, then. Have a good trip, Roger.”
Duplessis brushed past him and reconnoitred with the three women he’d chosen for a night’s merriment.
They met in the park down the escarpment below City Hall. The mayor was wearing his morning suit and shiny black shoes with spats. Seated on a bench, tossing breadcrumbs to pigeons, Roger’s old campmate leaned forward with one hand on his cane for support, his grotesque, ugly face all smiles.
“I need you in Asbestos. A mission of mercy,” Houde informed him.
The trip was beginning to look as though it might be profitable, at least.
“Who’s giving you trouble there?”
“I said mercy, Roger. What do you take me for, some goon? Oh, who am I kidding? You know me well enough. But this time it’s different. A friend of mine arrived there last night. He’s doing a survey. He’s discerned that people there are hostile to his presence. Go. Protect him. Be his bodyguard. Once people spot you, the rude ones will back off.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Count Jacques Dugé de Bernonville.” Roger had heard his wife mention him. “He’s at the hotel. It’s a small town. You’ll find him.”
Feeling flush with the promise of two paycheques, Roger took a taxi home to pack. While there, the phone rang, and he answered to a high-pitched, secretarial voice inviting him to meet the archbishop of Montreal.
“I was just leaving town,” he stated.
The priest repeated, “The archbishop of Montreal.” Something in the snooty tone suggested that he’d comply or be directly dispatched to a lower tier of hell.
Roger heard himself acquiesce. “Yes, Father.”
For the first time in ages, Roger Clément felt fear. Although he knew the most powerful men around, he had never encountered a prelate of such distinction. A religious man himself, after a fashion, for Roger the encounter was akin to standing two doors down from God. At the archiepiscopal palace, his travel bag—which contained knuckle dusters, a switchblade and a pistol—in hand, he gazed up at the towering ceiling vault and the ornately embossed balustrades and columns, before he was led in to see the city’s most authoritative clergyman.
“Roger Clément.” The man sprang to his feet as though greeting a distinguished monarch from abroad. “Good of you to come on such short notice.”
He didn’t know how to conduct himself. Perhaps he should fall to his knees and kiss the floor, or the man’s shoes. Flummoxed, he sank to his knees. The man gently guided him back up. “I’ve been speaking to Father François, a priest from your district. He’s in Asbestos as we speak. He’s been talking to your wife. Apparently, the two of them have cooked up a plan. They tell me that you’re the man to carry it out.”
“What plan, ah, Father? Bishop? Ah, Archbishop? Father? Your Grace?”
“We need you to secure the peace in Asbestos. See that the miners remain disciplined, yet strong. We do not want them subjected to further brutality instigated by Duplessis and the police.”
“Just me? There’s a thousand cops, I heard. With submachine guns.”
“You can handle it. Discipline is the answer. A calm disposition.”
“Ah, Father, Archbishop, Your Grace, Mon—Mon—”
“Call me Father Joe.”
“I’m going to Asbestos.”
“Good. You must leave at once. My office will see to the fare. What am I saying? Better yet, we’ll send you by car!” Father Joe was smiling at him. He was a tall and distinguished-looking man, reminiscent of a matinee idol if not for his plain grey robe. Roger felt intimidated, although not in any usual way. “Your wife was correct,” the monsignor stated.
“Sir? Mon—Mon—excuse me—I mean, Father Joe?”
“You’re the man for the job.”
“I was going there anyway.”
“To see your wife. Grand! We’ve spared you the expense. We will anticipate your rendering when the work is done, Roger, when the strike has been concluded to everyone’s satisfaction. A nasty experience, don’t you think?”
“Premier Duplessis—” Roger coughed up. He felt himself teetering on the brink of confession. Forgive me, Father Joe, for I’m about to go to Asbestos to sin.
“That runt? Don’t be concerned. The tattletale. He telephoned the pope to berate him over my good intentions. The pope has given me a lecture on Quebec politics. Quite amusing, actually. In the end, Roger, justice and calmer hearts shall prevail. That is my conviction. As it is yours, I’m sure.”
“Yes, Father Joe.”
Archbishop Charbonneau took a gander at the muscled man’s bag. “You’re packed? Have everything you need?”
“Yes, Father Joe.”
“Efficient. Off you go, then. I’ll call for the car. Godspeed. Blessed be the peacemakers, Roger. That’s what you are in this circumstance. A peacemaker.”
Roger bowed deeply, kissing the archiepiscopal ring.
He thought he had pulled that off quite well.
Between guarding a fascist war criminal, beating up intellectuals, protecting striking workers from submachine-gun fire, and hanging out with his family, Roger gathered that he was headed for an interesting excursion. One good thing: this would be the first time he’d been driven to a job in a limousine. He only wished that Anik were older. His little girl might be impressed to see her dad chauffeured into town in a limo to greet her and her mom on the picket lines.
On the streets of Montreal, supporters of the strike rang trinket bells, as they had observed the Salvation Army do. Men and women dropped coins and even bills into their buckets to support the miners of Asbestos.
Everyone took a side and held a strong opinion. People knew about the beatings. Brave newspapermen, such as Pierre Laporte, had defied Duplessis and gotten the stories out. Men had been taken out of town to police stations around the countryside and had their faces and bodies smashed.
Everyone knew it. Asbestos had become a battlefield.
As he drove into the dreary town, Roger became increasingly anxious for his daughter’s safety. Rough-hewn, dusty, the landscape a litter of boulders and cannibalized old trucks and earthmoving machines, the company town resembled a cross between an outpost from the Wild West and a movie version of gangland Chicago. Barricades constructed of lumber, scrap metal and decrepit furniture determined which streets were accessible. Behind them, he saw cops with high-powered weapons or miners with shovels and bricks, anything they could swing or throw. Another group of men milling around the entrance to a corner store proved to be journalists—he recognized a few of them from the El. Driving in a Cadillac that belonged to the archbishop, with a driver who could prove it, allowed him to finagle his way through the roadblocks, no matter whose. The town was on edge, at war, and while confrontation might suit his job description and be familiar to his wife, he was not happy about his daughter’s proximity to the action. Stray bullets, stampeding boots, Molotov cocktails, mysterious fires—amid incendiary emotions, anything could happen, making the town no place for a child.
A set of miners didn’t want to let him through, although the driver displayed a letter from the monsignor. One guy in particular was belligerent, and the chauffeur got out of the car to make his point. Roger was ready, thinking a fight would ensue, and noticed for the first time that his driver was a big man, perhaps a good ally in a battle. The chauffeur was also wise. He surmised that the miner confronting him might be illiterate, which made a letter thrust under his nose both useless and an insult, so he read the gist to him aloud without implying that he could not read it himself. Properly informed, the guard permitted the pair in the magnificent vehicle to travel down that dusty street.
“What’s your name?” Roger asked him. He’d conducted himself well.
“Michel Vimont.”
“Good work back there. I guess you got a good job with the monsignor.”
“It’s a great job. I love the guy. We’ll see how it goes. He’s under a lot of fire.”
“What do you mean, fire?”
They passed poor homes, narrowly segregated by shabby yards, kids by the dozen at play for every few houses, their voices vibrant, shrill and strangely reassuring. A large number stopped their games to stare at the limousine, while a few chased after the elongated black car, the oddest and most impressive vehicle on wheels they’d seen.
“He confides in me as we drive along.”
“What does he say?”
The man chuckled. “That’s the point. He confides. I can’t tell you any of that.”
“I understand, yeah.”
“But I’ll say he’s under some fire. Pressure. If he goes, I go.”
“Goes?”
“The pope might give him the boot. Send him to Timbuktu. Father Joe let me know that’s a possibility. Depends on this strike thing maybe, what happens here.”
“I wouldn’t say that in this car.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know so much—” He nearly added depends on me. “You’re saying you won’t stay with the Church?”
“No different driving a bishop than someone else. The man wants you to be his driver, not the other guy’s. The next bishop won’t want me. He’ll choose his own.”
“Michel … Vimont, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You lose your job here, look me up. I know a few people. Politicians, club owners. We’ll get you established. Maybe it won’t be as good as you got it now with the monsignor. But if he goes down, we’ll take care of you, all right?””
“Sounds good.” The man seemed genuinely reassured, as though he expected to be relieved of his duties any day now. Which was ominous.
Disembarking, Roger quickly discovered another reason not to have Anik nearby. As he entered an expanded union local that had set up shop in a church basement, his daughter was abruptly thrust into his arms by a stranger. All at once, he had to cling to her and catch his balance. Told that the babysitter was on her way, but late, that Carole was at such-and-such a barricade and couldn’t leave, the woman impressed upon him that he could look after Anik from now on because she had children of her own to corral. Apparently, his arrival had been expected. The woman addressing him dashed out the door before he could counter her decree—or receive directions to his wife’s fortifications.
Roger gathered up Anik and her things and played with her, at first on the floor of the strikers’ makeshift headquarters. She seemed glad to see him, relaxed, and not at all perturbed by the surrounding strife. She uttered a nickname for everyone who walked by—Nomo or Deeka or Manna or Moze. Later, still no babysitter, he left a message for his wife and took Anik back to his hotel room while he unpacked and got himself organized, then did what he could with a child in tow to learn the lay of the land.
Carole finally broke in on them, only to reveal that there would be no babysitter that day. “My regular burnt her foot. Don’t ask—it’s too complicated. I had a second babysitter on the way, but I’m afraid that’s you. I didn’t want to tell the other lady, or she might not have stayed, since we didn’t know for sure if you were coming. Roger! You showed up. Kiss me.”
“There’s no sitter?”
“I knew you were coming.”
“You left our child with a complete stranger—”
“Her husband’s in the union. She’s practically family.”
“Carole!”
“Hush-a. Anik was fine, wasn’t she? Besides, would you rather she was on the picket line? Roger! She could’ve been shot. How could you think such a thing?”
How he was getting shit for this confounded him. “That’s my point.”
“Roger. Anik was fine. I believed you’d be here sooner or later. I had faith in you.”
“I don’t have time to babysit.”
“Sure you do. But don’t worry. We have real work for you, too. I’ll find someone for tomorrow besides the lady with the burnt foot. Lots of miners’ wives are pitching in.”
“I was coming anyway.”
“Couldn’t live without me, huh? That’s nice.” She kissed him. She looked sexy to him in her tight jeans, loose plaid shirt and yellow bandana, which kept her bangs out of her eyes but also pushed her hair up at the back. A bundle of energy and taut passion. She seemed so lithe and mercurial to him, both strong and soft. He could just hug her and toss her on the bed if she weren’t doing six other things while talking, if she wasn’t preoccupied with saving the union.
Roger was quick enough not to push his foot down his gullet. “I missed you, too, Toots. Tons. But the reason I was coming anyway, I’m trying to say, is because I got hired to be here. I don’t mean by you or the monsignor—do you know, he wants me to call him Father Joe. How can I do that? I tried to call him ‘monsignor,’ but every time, the word stuck in my throat. I hope I don’t get to meet the pope ever. That’ll chew me up.”
Carole had stopped moving for the first time since coming into the room. She held leaflets and papers she’d been rifling through, and a press release she needed to edit, but she put everything down and placed a hand on her jutting hip. “Who,” she asked quietly, “has hired you?”
“Pretty much everybody,” Roger Clément admitted. “I’m going to make a good buck this month anyway.”
“Roger,” she said, and the mere mention of his name seemed to chastise him. “Whose side are you on now?”
He tried to look everywhere but into her eyes. But that could not be helped in the end. “Everybody’s,” he admitted.
Journalists crowded into a small ballroom in Montreal for a press conference called by the premier to discuss the strike. When any man asked a question he didn’t appreciate, Duplessis had him escorted out. One scribe was taken away because le Chef didn’t approve of how loosely he knotted his tie. Several others were selected for removal because they’d recently offended him in print. Two gentlemen of the press were banished because the newspaper they worked for had failed to pay proper homage. That fate awaited a reporter from Le Devoir, Pierre Laporte. Others were kicked out of the room because the premier had gotten the hang of throwing people out. Two other writers who asked questions about the strike were told that he would have them fired. No one doubted that Duplessis would make good on the vow. After that, the only journalists who spoke were men who only ever praised him, and he never did take a question on the strike.
He intended, he swore, to preserve Quebec from outside contamination.
A compromise was worked out. Roger was willing to make himself available for babysitting chores and afford a bit of time to be an attentive husband, but he would not move into a miners’ billet with Carole. He’d stay at the hotel, graciously paid for by the archdiocese of Montreal. She was not welcome there, as he never knew when a brick might fly through his window or out-of-town cops might kick down the door. Besides, she was happy enough where she was living. Roger took a glance in. A beehive. Anik had other toddlers to play with, for the cottage had become both a communication centre and a nursery. Dozens of miners’ wives made soup for the barricades and coffee for the picket lines. They arranged medical supplies in case the centre suddenly became a hospital. Teenagers painted picket signs.
“I’ll stay at the hotel.”
“You should stay—see how the other side lives.”
“What other side?”
“Mine.”
“I’ve got a job to do.”
“For the monsignor.”
“For him, and for Duplessis, and—”
She tucked her hands under the lapels of his coat and pulled him in closer to her. “I know about those guys, but don’t forget the monsignor. You’re working for him, too. Which means, if you think about it, that you’re working for me.”
“I am?”
“Miners won’t take orders from a woman or from a priest. They need a tough guy to be in charge. The young ones are a wild bunch. We can’t have them taking potshots at cops with their hunting rifles. They need to know that if they screw up, they will answer to you.”
“Tell them they’ll get sent straight to hell,” Roger suggested, “since we’re working for Father Joe.”
“You should know. You’re going there yourself,” Carole teased. “But only for what you do in bed with me.”
That made him grin, and he felt better about many things, even as he returned to his room alone.
Journalists and out-of-town union guys were staying at the hotel. Not many sightseers were visiting Asbestos. Roger enlisted the help of the hotel night manager, who for five bucks put a name to the face of each man standing around the downstairs bar. Pierre Trudeau and Gérard Pelletier, Jean Marchand, René Lévesque, and Father François, who was billeted with the miners but who’d come over to the hotel for cocktail hour, were part of the mix. Roger took the boisterous, pugilistic-looking man in the corner to be Reggie Chartrand, the union guy. Among the barflies, only Chartrand and Marchand had chins that could take a punch. Marchand looked too distinguished to beat up, and anyway Roger liked the guy right off the bat—he didn’t put on airs. Chartrand seemed overly full of himself, and when he and Trudeau began playfully sparring, Roger was surprised that the skinny rich kid did okay against the former prizefighter. The union boss was even embarrassed by the rich kid, who was a little too quick for him, and tried to laugh him off. But Trudeau’s narrow chin—Roger clucked his tongue. He figured if he unloaded a haymaker on him, the fellow might never be called an intellectual again. In his battles, Roger preferred to minimize the damage done, so for this job that would mean a punch-up with Chartrand, the ex-middleweight. He’d meet him alone in an alley to satisfy Duplessis’s desire for carnage.
Assessing his foes, Roger quaffed a beer in a corner by himself. He noticed another gentleman glance into the room. The night manager had left, so couldn’t help him with the identification, but judging by the way the others had stopped talking to glare at him, he presumed that he had found his count.
The spiffily attired gentleman walked out of the hotel bar, and the hotel, onto the street. Roger padded after him. He could not allow a count to wander these treacherous streets alone at night, not when his safety constituted one of his jobs.
They had trundled into the archiepiscopal palace as chatty bishops, but as the meeting progressed, they turned sullen. They asked Monsignor Charbonneau to provide his rationale for supporting Jews and communists. The archbishop of Montreal asked if they knew what happened to men who breathed asbestos into their lungs day after day. Yes, one remarked. They provided for their families.
Unanimously, the bishops informed Charbonneau that, due to his support for the strike, the fabric of the Holy Church was being rent asunder. Perhaps never to be repaired. The people expected guidance, they maintained, not revolution.
“I support the just cause of the miners,” Charbonneau maintained. “Not revolution. But I support their right to a fair wage and to choose their own unions.”
“Your Grace, we have a Catholic Union.”
“The miners are free to associate with it, or not. They will choose, not the bishops.”
“What about Quebec?” he was asked. Charbonneau was distrusted for being a francophone from Ontario.
He answered, “What about Quebec?”
The bishops left unhappy.
Monsignor Charbonneau—Father Joe to some—despaired. He felt himself alone against the world.
Probably, nobody cared. Roger surmised that no one in Asbestos had any reason to hurt the count. Miners had their own troubles—what did it matter to them that the guy was an old Nazi? No Jews were around. The cops were working for Duplessis, and the premier didn’t mind if ex-Nazis drifted through his province looking for a home. So no one cared that the count was checking out the strike, perhaps taking note of police tactics or evaluating the conviction of communist sympathizers. Although Roger wondered why. He deduced after only a few minutes that his own purpose here was different than what Mayor Houde had suggested. He wasn’t the man’s bodyguard—he’d been sent along to keep the count company, to see that he wasn’t lonely, to be his friend.
That first night, he and de Bernonville walked all over that little town.
“Your name’s in the papers,” Roger mentioned.
“Journalists,” the man scoffed. “They have nothing better to do to occupy their pickled brains. A miner is bruised, they make it sound as though the sky has fallen. Miners live tough lives—of course they’re bruised. Besides, they beat each other up, for sport.”
“The government wants to deport you, they say,” Roger persisted.
“Journalists are the problem,” de Bernonville maintained. “I will have to persuade them to think differently. If they can understand my presence here, they will give me some peace. Governments never look for problems. If the problem about me goes away in the press, I won’t be deported.”
They had reached an edge of town and gazed across a rocky terrain. The moon was nearly full above them, which was good to see, or they might have mistaken the land stretching away from them as being a moonscape, stark and uninhabitable.
“That’s why you’re here,” Roger noted.
“I’m here because I’m here,” de Bernonville told him. The man was slightly above average in height, with excellent square shoulders but a plump face that might have foretold future girth. Perhaps he’d not been eating well, and had taken off weight below the neck only. An ascot camouflaged his neck, and a handkerchief was tucked into the breast pocket of his pinstriped suit. The count strolled along with the aid of a stick that had a heavy knob at one end and a pointed brass tip. A weapon, Roger considered. He carried himself as though cinched up, strapped in by a girdle.
“You want to make friends,” Roger supposed.
“I would like journalists to receive me more graciously into my new homeland than they have done to date. Where besides right here can I find so many of them in one place? If I can have a word with them, share a drink, a few laughs, they might be persuaded to gaze more kindly upon my stay. If they stop writing about me, or change what they say, I can resolve this situation.”
Roger didn’t know how he was going to influence men so set against him. “Are you asking me to introduce you? I don’t know them myself.”
“Sooner or later, they’ll stop glowering at me and invite me to debate. When they do, I’ll shift the ground beneath their feet. I’ll charm them. If that doesn’t work, then you can do your job.”
“Smash their faces in.”
“Whoa—journalists? Wait a minute. I didn’t sign on for that.”
De Bernonville patted him on the back. “I’m having fun with you, Roger. It won’t be necessary. The mere sight of you walking with me sends a message. That, together with my famous charm. I know how to handle these people. Before we’re done, we’ll be sharing our meals with them.”
Roger was skeptical of that. The bunch he’d seen at the bar were known to be a feisty breed, and not well disposed towards Nazis. De Bernonville had confidence that he could charm the birds out of the trees, but a journalist out of his convictions might be a more difficult task.
“Now, lead me back to the hotel, Roger. I’m lost in the dark out here. Tomorrow, we’ll work on this.”
Of his three tasks, two would seem to be a snap. Sooner or later, he could segregate an inebriated Reggie Chartrand from the pack and give him a quick going-over. As long as the man bled, he could exaggerate the damage to Duplessis, keeping him content. Guarding de Bernonville would seem to be easy, as well, as the count had not come here to berate miners or forestall a revolution. Given that his mission was to make friends and influence the province’s fifth estate, Roger could keep him safe. He doubted that the man could overcome the animosity among the intellectuals at the hotel bar, but they were unlikely to do more than sneer at him, and perhaps raise their voices in debate. The exception might be Chartrand, who was sufficiently volatile to resort to his fists, but if he did so Roger could kill two birds with a single counterpunch. Overall, his most difficult task would be to do his duty for his wife and the Catholic Church. How could he marshal two thousand striking miners into a disciplined corps when each man, by dint of his labour, probably could match his physical prowess?
As expected, Carole had plenty of suggestions, none of which inspired him.
“I don’t see why I can’t just go out and have a beer with a bunch of the guys and ask them to behave themselves. If not, I’ll say, the monsignor will ship them to hell in a limo.”
“Because they’ll get drunk and forget about the monsignor and forget about hell. Not everyone’s as worried about hell as you are. They’ll only laugh.”
“They’ll get drunk no matter what I say. Why do I have to make a speech? That’ll be an excuse to get drunk, if they’re forced to listen to me.”
“Not a speech. A kitchen chat, we call it. Go into the miners’ homes. Don’t only talk to the men, but to their wives and kids. Get everybody in the community behind the strategy. Then if the men get drunk, they’ll have to answer to their wives and neighbours. They’ll think about that first.”
“Bloody hell,” he said, an English phrase he’d picked up in the internment camp. Once in a while, the English knew how to express themselves.
“You can do it,” she encouraged him.
“This is starting to sound like real work to me,” he said with a sigh.
When she spun around to chastise him, she discovered him smiling brightly in full tease. They kissed, and let it linger.
“Babysitter?” he asked, as they stepped away from their embrace.
“Anik’s coming with us this morning. She’s a great icebreaker. Gets everybody gabbing. She’s a union girl, our child, right from the get-go.”
“Bloody hell,” he repeated. Anik was going to be a union girl because she wouldn’t have a choice. Her mother would see to that. Someday, he might have to face the two of them across a picket line, and wouldn’t that be a picnic.
He awoke thirsty in the night. From the hotel window, Roger Clément spotted fires. He got dressed. Pistol, knife and knuckle dusters were thrust into his jacket pockets and zippered securely. He laced up his boots, for this was no battle for a man in shoes. Leaving his room, he slammed the door behind him.
The thin walls of the shabby hotel shook.
He hollered in the corridor and pounded his fists on doors. “Wake up, you intellectual shitheads! Wake up! You wanna be part of this? Wake up!”
He heard men stirring, but no one dared open a door to investigate. He continued to lumber down the corridor, pounding doors, yelling.
Pelletier was the first to emerge, tall and imposing, holding a towel around his waist, sleepily scowling. “What the hell’s going on?”
The door opposite his opened. Trudeau poked his sleepy head out.
Another door yawned ajar, so Marchand was also awake, and across from him, Chartrand, who’d lit up a smoke first, stood forth in speckled shorts.
“A battle’s starting up. Unless we stop it.”
“What battle? Don’t stop it. Join in!” chirped Chartrand. He jumped back into his room to dress.
“Who’re you?” Pelletier asked.
“Don’t give me that shit. You know who I am by now. A battle’s forming. Whether you’re a journalist or union, you don’t want to miss it. I need your help.”
“What kind of help?” Trudeau asked. To him, the thug in the hall didn’t sound crazy, he just behaved that way.
“If the union fights the cops, it’ll be a slaughter. Is that what you want?”
Chartrand had looked out his window and seen the parade of torches, the miners and cops heading for a confrontation. “He’s right. They’re gonna brawl. We’ll see about who gets slaughtered!” Still pulling on his clothes and carrying his boots, he was off, hobbling down the stairs with his stuff.
“Help me,” Roger demanded. “It might start out as fists, but it’ll end up as guns against bricks. Is that what you want?”
“Whose side are you on?” Marchand asked, still skeptical. Roger was right—they’d checked him out. His long record as a Duplessis and Houde henchman, as a union buster, wasn’t hard to dig up, but he had also done time in an interment camp as a communist sympathizer, and he was hanging out with a known fascist. No one knew what to make of his presence here.
“Monsignor Charbonneau hired me to preserve the peace. That man’s faith is in God, but it’s also in me. How can I do this by myself?”
“We’ll get killed if we’re in the middle,” Trudeau pointed out. He sounded neither afraid nor reluctant, only prudent. Through the varied contours of his intellectual life he had persevered as a man of faith himself. He respected Monsignor Charbonneau, which might have dictated one course of action, but logic countermanded that response. “What do you expect us to do?”
“Get dressed,” Roger suggested, then ran after Chartrand to intersect the brawl.
Fires in empty oil drums delineated a scruffy vacant lot, which yielded to a sloping hillside where the two gangs were intent on hostilities. Miners carried torches to light their way. The cops had lit a couple themselves, which cast long and wavering shadows as they walked down a curving, descending dirt road, but most of them carried flashlights. They were out of uniform. This was a private brawl, supposedly, instigated by the hotheads on both sides jawing at each other all day. No badges, no guns, that was the deal—men against men, twenty to a side. Young men all, looking to settle scores and insults and enjoy a rowdy fight. Roger was no dope, and he guessed that not everyone on both sides was a dope, either. Whatever anyone had agreed to, this would not be a battle in good faith. Both sides made sure that covert reinforcements were ready and nearby. If the fight was fair, they might never be called in, but let one side break the contract, or even lose badly, and the night could succumb to disaster.
He thought he detected a shadow spread out and move along a higher ridge. More cops, snaking down. Towards the gentle valley where the miners lived, he could see nothing, but this was their turf. They knew how to move through this town undetected.
A couple of boys, miners’ sons, were responsible for lighting the barrels, and as the two groups moved onto the field Roger jogged there on his own. Only Chartrand had reached the battleground ahead of him.
“We don’t want this to happen,” Roger told him, hoping the man possessed a modicum of sense.
“I do. Send twenty cops to the hospital and this strike takes a different turn.”
“Or twenty dead miners.”
“A fight’s a fight,” Chartrand warned him. “Anyway, it’s too late to stop it.”
He feared the man was right.
The men from the hotel arrived just as the miners were forming at one end of the square field, their numbers lit by the smoky, flaring barrels. As they lifted their torches, their faces shone as if disembodied, their clothes dark, their forms indistinguishable. A bank of cloud cover eclipsed the moon. At the opposite end, cops spread out into a single line, flashlights held low around their waists, beams daring the darkness. Except for the nervous lamps, they could scarcely be seen.
The so-called intellectuals joined Roger at the edge of the field between the two groups. They stood still as the warring factions moved closer in makeshift battle formation, each of the combatants assuming a stride and, when he stood still, a stance meant to show no fear, to intimidate.
Moving alone to the centre of the field between them, Roger Clément stood as a darkened figure, a stout form, and soon, a voice. Just by standing between them, he secured the brawler’s attention and stalled their advance.
“You cannot do this,” he called out in the dark.
A cop answered. “Out of the way, whoever the fuck you are.”
He turned to face the police. “How come you think so much of these guys, the miners?”
A few scornful laughs. A cop said, “They insulted my mother, the bastards. They insulted my sister, my wife. They insulted my dog, my cat and my nose. Tonight, they pay for that, the cocksuckers.”
“Buddy, I can’t see your nose in the dark, so I can’t say if that was justified, but the rest of it, that’s what men say on a picket line. Cops have to live with that.”
“I remember that nose,” a miner shouted out. “It’s an obscene nose! It needs to be flattened against his ugly face!”
“Who are you, anyways?” a cop demanded. “You’re one of them, only chicken-livered.”
“You think I’m chicken-livered?” Roger shot back.
“And yellow-bellied.”
“You think I’m yellow-bellied?”
“Probably. Why not? Is that a yellow line or chicken feathers running up your spine? It’s hard to tell in the dark.”
Even a few miners laughed at the comment, and a number of cops clucked like chickens.
“You don’t want to fight? You’re a coward.”
“Out of the way, fucker, or both sides will stomp you into the ground!” That was a miner talking. Inwardly, Roger smiled. At least he had gotten both sides to agree on something.
Each line took steps towards the other, then stopped and traded invective.
“Hang on,” Roger called out. “Hang on.”
“Let him speak!” a voice from the sidelines shouted. A journalist.
“Fuck him! We’re here to kick police ass!” This voice also came from the sidelines. Roger recognized it. Reggie Chartrand. You little bugger.
“Listen to what he has to say!” the unknown voice from the side called out. “I’m a journalist. You know how angry the public is. Any more cop violence and heads will start to roll. You cops will be the scapegoats. Listen to him, or we’ll report you in the papers.” Pelletier was pleading for peace, although he had no clue how Roger could finagle his way out of this one.
The presence of journalists gave the cops something to think about, something more than a miner’s fist to fear. Like air from a balloon, a portion of the fight went out of them.
“I was saying,” Roger called out to the cops. “You must think a lot of these miners if you think this is all who showed up. Think they’ll fight fair? Get the upper hand, and the rest will come out of the shadows, ten to a man. And you, miners!” He turned. “Do you really think their buddies with submachine guns aren’t far away? I’ve already seen them on the move. This is not going to work, guys. It’s a nice idea, but you guys don’t trust each other enough. So it’s not going to work.”
“I’ve seen them, too,” Trudeau called out. He’d been in the homes of many of these men and knew their families. “More cops are coming down the hill.”
“There’s just us!” one cop called out, but he didn’t sound convincing.
“You’re a liar!” another insisted, shouting at Trudeau.
“They got their backups, we got ours,” a miner admitted. “Keeps it fair. Us against them.”
“It’ll be a bloodbath. And that won’t be the end of it, either. Think about your wives, your babies. How many of you do they need dead? You think it won’t happen? Think again—think! This is a bad situation. It won’t work.”
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
“I represent the Catholic Church,” Roger called out at the top of his lungs, which took both gangs by surprise. “I’m here talking for Monsignor Charbonneau. You’re all Catholics. Now go home, or I’m telling you, you’ll all be sent to hell!”
His trump card, and he should have known that Carole was right. They only laughed at him for that. Times had certainly changed in the province of Quebec. At least, the saving grace, both sides were chuckling now, totally amused.
Then Chartrand called out, “Let’s get on with it. Beat the crap out of them. Remember what they did to our boys.”
In shouting out again, Roger knew he was taking words right out of the mouth of his wife, who often had exhorted strikers and cops to behave. “You’re all Quebecers! You’re all brothers. All of you, you draw paycheques to feed your kids. You’re not fighting the bosses here. You’re not fighting the system or the English. You’re fighting each other, and that makes no damn sense. Now cut it out!”
“First, we’ll beat the crap out of him!” Chartrand suggested.
“All right! Do that!” Roger agreed. “If you’re man enough!” His voice was powerful in the still night, and the idea sufficiently absurd, that both sides fell silent to await his explanation. “I’ll take you both on,” he challenged. “I’ll take on whatever cop they want to send up against me. Then I’ll take you on, Reggie. You’re small, but you’re a boxer. We’ll see how tough you are. Show me how tough you are. You want to fight each other? Prove it. Prove you deserve it. One guy out of two beats me, you’ll have your brawl. Okay? The journalists here, they’ll keep their mouths shut, they’ll close their eyes, they’ll walk away. You can fight in peace. But if I beat whatever cop the police send up against me, then if I beat Reggie, or whatever miner the miners send up, if I’m the last one standing, then you all go back to wherever the fuck you’re supposed to be right now.”
Every man was pumped with adrenaline, looking for trouble. The offer was a good one, for they couldn’t step away from the challenge, nor could either side expect to lose. A miner, though, voiced an objection.
“You can beat up a cop, I don’t see no problem. They’re lazy, fat fucks. But you want to take on Reggie—he’s smaller than you. That’s one-sided.”
“I can take him,” Chartrand sneered, but his tone sounded more like bravado than confidence.
“Like I said, if you want to send somebody else out, that’s fine with me. I’ll take him on. But he’s the one doing most of the talking. I just wanted to shut his yap for an hour or two.”
“How about if I take on Reggie instead?” a voice from the sidelines inquired.
People turned, trying to see in the dark. The cops aimed their flashlights, and discovered the determined face of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
“I’m about the same size,” the young man pointed out.
Leaner, though, and he did not possess a pugilist’s bulky physique.
“You’ve been working out, sir?” Roger asked him. He’d seen that he was quick enough, he was probably smart enough, but that didn’t make him a likely victor.
“Canoed all summer.”
Miners laughed, but to Roger his response sounded promising.
“I’ll take on the rich kid,” Chartrand declared, suddenly more keen.
Neither the cops nor the miners could turn down the deal. The big guy in the middle might be able to take whomever the police put forward, nobody knew, but the prospects for Chartrand to beat up the upper-class city intellectual who’d been talking to the miners about economics and discipline within the ranks—that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. The cops liked those odds as well. As soon as Chartrand disposed of Trudeau, they could all go at it, kill each other even, while the journalists would be bound to secrecy.
“Do it your way,” a cop agreed, “as long as the newspaper rats take a hike.”
“We got no problem with that,” the miners concurred.
“Me first,” Roger announced. He took off his jacket and brought it over to the sidelines to hand to Trudeau. “Don’t fuck this up for me. We got a lot at stake here.”
“I think I can take him.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I’ve got a lot at stake, too. To do my job properly, I need these people to respect me.”
“Wanting to win, that’s not good enough, either.”
“I can box. My dad taught me. All through school I beat bigger guys.”
“Okay. Good. But Chartrand fights dirty. I been on picket lines with him.”
“Then I’ll fight dirty. Hey, I’m impressed with what you’ve done tonight. But watch your back,” Trudeau advised. “Look who they sent out.”
A giant.
The shadow he cast from the glow of police flashlights made him look like Goliath and put Roger in darkness. Roger couldn’t distinguish his face, which made him seem particularly menacing, but he tried not to overestimate the challenge. He put the man at six-four, maybe an inch more, weighing two-fifty, maybe up to twenty pounds more. Roger was shorter, a fit two hundred and ten, barrel-chested, compact in his muscularity, with iron fists. As they drew closer and the circle of miners with torches and cops closed in around them, he saw that the man did not have a muscled neck, which suggested that the rest of him might be soft as well. The man’s first left jab glanced off Roger’s forehead. He could hit, he had big hands and power—Clément would have to stay beyond the lengthy range of those fists. But did he have a stomach? Roger feinted a left hook, then went in low to the belly to find that out.
Hearing his opponent’s telltale grunt, Roger knew he had him. And in the cop’s eyes, he saw that he knew it, too.
Roger walked into a right hand, though, and the shock of it, as much as the blow, drove him to the ground. Then he had to dart around on all fours, fending the man off as he tried to mount him and wrestle in the dirt. Roger panicked—he didn’t want that. He scooted around and twisted and kicked and got clear. Back on his feet again, the throng roaring for its favourite, both sides wanting to see him clobbered, he circled warily and waited for an opening.
He had to watch out for shadows in the firelight. A fist could swing at him unseen. He circled. Then he attacked before the cop gained too much confidence. He took short punches to the chin and cheek, but the man didn’t have short-punch power, he needed a full swing. Inside on him, Roger worked the body, the tummy, the heart, the gut again, then once more up and down the ladder, and finally that right uppercut across the jaw that drove him back on his heels. The cop almost toppled right there. In on him quickly, Roger again landed half a dozen blows to the head. The guy could take a punch! Then back to the stomach, where he was less able to endure solid blows. When his opponent’s guard dropped—and they looked at one another in the light of flame and both men knew that these were the final moments of their contest—Roger came back to the chin three times and the man was down.
The cop had little interest in rising up again.
If this were an alley, Roger would jump him. Boot-fuck him. Bang his head against the pavement. Smash his balls. Finish him. See that he regretted being alive. You had to rupture a man’s spirit or he might come back at you. Such conduct would not work here. The giant’s fellow officers would enter the fray and his strategy for the evening would fail. So Roger let him paw about on the ground, and when it was obvious to everybody that he was done, that he had no fight left in him, Roger moved back to the sidelines to retrieve his jacket from Trudeau.
“One down,” he said.
“Heavy jacket,” Trudeau mentioned. The gun.
“You never know what you might be up against.”
“Apparently.”
Trudeau took his own jacket off and left it with Roger. They moved to the centre of the field. The cops were still attending to their fallen hero, the miners pitching in to enliven the festivities with snide remarks. But in this environment, the police weren’t taking any backtalk and the moment was precarious. On the picket lines, they’d been prevented by superior officers from retaliating. Not here. Not now.
“Wait’ll this city boy goes down. See what you say then.”
Chartrand was cocky and excited, Roger saw. Not a good sign. He was itching for a piece of the intellectual. For him, strikes were for workers—he didn’t need any rich kids butting in. Roger came up behind Trudeau and gave him a word of advice.
“Be careful when he’s in the dark. You can’t see. But when you’re in the dark, unload on him. He won’t see what’s coming.”
Trudeau didn’t see what was coming, and was down on his knees in seconds. The quality of his chin would now be tested. Chartrand moved in quickly and kicked him in the side of the ribs, and Trudeau, wisely, rolled with the blows and used that momentum to regain his footing. Chartrand moved in on him, but the skinnier man skipped loose, stumbled, then danced away again. He was on the run.
Between the two of them, he was probably the fitter. Back-pedalling was not a bad strategy for a minute or two, to tire his opponent.
The miners and cops were swearing for blood, and they shoved Trudeau back into Chartrand’s path whenever he ventured too near the circle’s rim. Roger was about to warn him that he was going into the crowd again, but the imp had planned it that way. When miners pushed him towards his foe, he put his head down and came up swinging, landing a few and taking the other guy by surprise. Mad now, Chartrand chased him erratically, but the more adept Trudeau skipped free and hit from the side. The pugilist turned even angrier, then stopped briefly, and it was apparent to all that he needed to breathe. He wasn’t accustomed to a ring this large.
Then Trudeau stopped leading him. He moved in tighter. He circled. He worked himself into the shadows, and as Chartrand bobbed, he belted him two good ones and the stout boxer backed off. Observing him, Roger had already decided that Chartrand’s life in the ring had mainly been mythology. If he’d defeated anyone, the other guys had been stooges. You could do that during a war, when the good fighters were overseas. Yet when Trudeau snapped a couple of good left hooks to the eye, he also left himself open to a right cross that knocked the rich kid to the ground.
He got up in a twinkling. Chartrand knocked him down again, and this time kicked him. Trudeau managed to grab a boot and give him a yank, causing him to tumble. With both men on the ground, a cop helped the union guy up.
Roger stepped in and gave Trudeau a hand up.
“I’m all right,” the city boy said.
“You are now,” Roger told him. He slipped a knuckle duster over the fingers of his right hand.
Trudeau turned back to his opponent and moved towards the shadows again.
As Chartrand moved in, Trudeau hit him, and the man’s head jerked back. The expression on his face in the flickering light showed alarm. Trudeau hit him again, a knee buckled, and the young man moved in and landed a flurry of blows. Chartrand was bleeding now above the eyes, and another shot smashed his nose. Blood gushed. Another blow sent Chartrand back on his heels, fighting for balance, and the so-called intellectual from the city showed that he had great instincts, working in tight and setting up the man’s head with a left hook, then coming back with that heavy right hand across the chin. Chartrand snapped like a jack pine.
Trudeau was shaking his fist as though he’d hurt himself against the other man’s jaw, but he was slipping the dusters off, secreting them into a pants pocket. He was the victor, yet only his confederates from the hotel were congratulating him.
“We had a deal,” Roger Clément spoke up loudly. “I expect you men to honour it. No more fights tonight. If there is, it’ll be in the papers tomorrow. You cops know your bosses don’t want more shit to flush down on the police. All that does is raise more money for the strikers.”
The gangs moved off, and, aside from parting invective, they were done for the night, to meet again on the barricades in the morning. Reggie Chartrand made it up to his knees. He fought off a miner trying to help him and pointed a finger at Pelletier and other reporters who’d been witnesses to his demise. “You’re not writing about this. Not ever! We have an agreement.”
“Don’t worry, Reggie,” Pelletier promised. “We have an agreement.”
“Not ever.”
“Your sterling reputation is safe with us.” A reputation that would lie in tatters if the public knew he’d gone down to the womanizing lawyer from Montreal.
Trudeau took back his jacket from Roger. “Thanks,” he said.
“For what?” he asked him. “You beat him.”
“I cheated.”
“In a fight? No such thing.”
“I figured that.” Trudeau slipped his jacket on. “I’ve got something that belongs to you,” he said. “Now might not be the best time.”
“I know what you mean,” Roger said, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Clean it up. Wash the blood off. I don’t want it back dirty.”
“What are you two talking about?” Pelletier asked. Marchand was right beside him, and gave his friend a big hug.
Trudeau looked at Roger. Who turned to Pelletier and told him, “Nothing.” He knew better than to tell a journalist that his good friend had cheated. The man could probably use a little mythology in his life. He had a story to tell now, of the night he dropped Reggie Chartrand to his knees. Nobody would believe it, had so many not seen it with their own eyes.
“Do you think we can get the hotelkeeper to open up the bar again?”
“With all these cops around? With the curfew?”
“I know a man with whiskey in his room,” Roger piped up.
“Who?”
“A guy I know. You don’t like him much. But whiskey’s whiskey.”
“De Bernonville?” Marchand charged. “I won’t drink with him.”
“How come you hang around with that guy?” Pelletier inquired. “Don’t you know who he is?”
Roger shrugged. “I’m paid to. Mayor Houde was worried that one of you guys might beat him up. I thought that was crazy. After tonight, I’m not so sure.”
They laughed. They were so happy. They were young and fighting the war of their lives and glad to be alive, and they were amazed by the evening’s progress. Sure, why not, they’d wake up the count and drink his liquor. Talk to the bastard and tell him to go fuck himself, and if he didn’t like it, they’d beat the crap out of him. But before that happened, they’d drink his whiskey.
One of the reporters who had joined them on the sidelines, the smallest man among them, moved forward in the procession to walk alongside Trudeau. He said, “Sometimes you surprise me, Pierre.”
“I surprise myself sometimes, René.”
They went up to the hotel, woke up de Bernonville and piled into his room. Chartrand was the last in, all bloody and in good spirits. He was tough. Holding out a paper cup for whiskey, he kept his hand outstretched until the glass was filled to the rim, then drank it down and let out a holler.
“Woo boy! Didn’t we have ourselves a time.”
They were laughing, enjoying themselves, only going quiet when Pelletier scratched the back of his head, then turned to de Bernonville and said, “Hey there, Count. I hear you’re looking for a new home. You kill Jews for a living. What makes you think we’ll let you do that here?”
The night ascended from there.
The striking miners packed it in. They signed a new contract of no particular benefit to them, cutting their extensive losses. Lobbied by Maurice Duplessis and fed a full quota of lies, the pope banished Monsignor Charbonneau to the hinterland of British Columbia, never to be heard from again. As the prelate was on his way out of town, the premier sent him a note of fond farewell. The intellectuals returned to their cities, knowing that le Chef had again defeated them and would redouble his dedication to their future demise. The mine bosses praised the premier, and the premier praised himself. Normality returned, and with it a sense of impending gloom, of darkness. Ottawa chose to deport de Bernonville to face war crimes charges in France, but, aided and abetted by associates in Quebec, he fled to the Caribbean. And from there, to Brazil. Carole Clément came away from the Asbestos strike bitter and angry, haunted by defeat. Still in his late twenties, Father François Legault resolved to be more selective in choosing his confrontations in the future—he had to win a few, but he also had to protect himself within a Church no longer orchestrated by Monsignor Charbonneau. He was to be dispatched to serve as a pastor among northern Indians, but a heart attack caused his foes to fear him less, and he was offered the respite of clerical duty while he recuperated. Camillien Houde made peace with Duplessis, vowing to work only for his perpetual re-election. Finally satisfied with his fidelity, Duplessis, having previously denuded the mayor’s office of any real power, returned a modicum of responsibility to the position.
Roger Clément would remember with interest the conversation that night between de Bernonville and the journalists. “Yesterday,” the Nazi from France had pointed out to them, as a way of vying for sanctuary, “the Cartier Dagger was given to Clarence Campbell, who’s a president of hockey, something like that, for being a war hero. He wasn’t even in the war. He went to Germany after the fighting was over to prosecute Germans for being German. I know you have your opinions on that subject. I have mine. But this man, this Campbell, has been anointed as if he’s a knight, permitted to hold an ancient relic of Quebec heritage in his safekeeping for the remainder of his life. I ask you, as Frenchmen, as patriots, what do you think of an Englishman being in possession of this artifact?”
Roger detected the man’s indefatigable confidence in his ability to seduce, to conjoin, to paint what was black a muddy beige.
“Can you not tell, gentlemen,” de Bernonville went on, “that you’ve been fighting the wrong battle? While you’re out on the picket lines, worrying if miners will make an extra two cents an hour for digging in the dirt, while you bother yourself about whether or not Count Jacques Dugé de Bernonville, a free man, ought to be deported—although you can plainly see that I’ve come in peace, and bear no malice towards a soul, including Jews—in the midst of all this, you have allowed your heritage to slip away, to be rudely handed over to an Englishman. Don’t tell me that you are such great defenders of your national interest, of the pride of your people, for I will not believe you. I have seen the truth with my own eyes. You have been preoccupied with lesser interests—the miners have a cause, I grant you, but what of me? I deserve to be no one’s cause. I am insignificant. Yet you write about me. You condemn me. Meanwhile, gentlemen, a great symbol of Quebec has passed into English hands right under your noses, and you didn’t print a word on the subject. Shame on you, is what I say, gentlemen. Shame on your negligence. Shame.”
He had wanted to give them another battle to fight, to remove public attention from himself. He failed. Although the others got drunk with him, and made a good night of it, Pelletier would have the final word.
“Count—” he began.
De Bernonville’s whiskey was gone. He knew that whatever Pelletier said next would be significant. He smiled. “Yes, my dear, dear Gérard.”
“The souls of the dead torment me tonight. In particular, the souls of the resistance fighters you tortured.”
His face turned grim. “Are you convicting me without a trial, Gérard?”
“I’m convicting you in lieu of a trial. I will rescind my statement if you agree to return to France to be properly tried as a war criminal.”
De Bernonville shook his head. Then looked up. He had one last card in his hand. The time had come to play it. He had not wanted matters to depend on this. He said, “And where were you, my dear Gérard, when the battles raged?”
Pelletier looked him straight him in the eye. Among all of them, he was the least physically active, and the least likely to rise to intemperate rage. But he held the Count’s gaze and levelled his words with intent. “I did what I believed to be just. Do not suggest, sir, that the same holds true for you.”
He did not articulate his threat, but de Bernonville spoke no more that night.
What impressed Roger the most, as he awakened bleary-eyed the next morning and shunted off to visit his wife and child, was that he had achieved the impossible. People thought him to be a dumb thug, but he had finessed three sides against the middle and back again. Chartrand and Trudeau had each sustained severe blows, which should keep the premier happy. He’d never tell him that they punched each other. De Bernonville had been physically protected and managed to have his midnight party. The count had had an opportunity to press his charm upon the journalists, and so would send a good report back to the mayor. And Roger had served the monsignor well, and his wife, by maintaining order in a time of imminent peril.
Aware of what he had accomplished, he now considered that he had it in him to manipulate various forces, that he could surprise people with his acumen. For he now held an idea in his head, as did perhaps a few others who had been in that room, although among them he was the one most capable when disparate forces would again converge, this time to steal back for the people of Quebec their revered Cartier Dagger.