Free I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel by William Deverell Page B

to a school in Alert Bay. Try to imagine: one day you’re out picking berries with your mom, the next day the door clangs shut and you’re in a prison worse than this, wetting your pants and getting whipped for it. It’s an essential part of the white colonizers’ plan to destroy Native families. With straps and slaps, hands down your pants. There’s no nurturing in a res school, no love. I don’t relate to my parents much now, especially my dad. They definitely lost the ability to love.”
    He disappeared in thought after these final trembling syllables, his eyes wet. I was moved too. My other aboriginal clients had alwaysshied from the subject of their school days, as if ashamed. This was a firm validation of Mulligan’s distrust of these institutions.
    â€œDermot did a stint as principal of a res school on the Prairies. You knew that?”
    Gabriel swivelled back to me. “He had writer’s block over it – with his memoir.” A head shake. “Still in turmoil twenty years later. Something happened there, I think, in Pius Eleven Res School. He left the Church soon after.” He added thoughtfully, “When Louis Riel lost faith, he said, ‘Rome has fallen.’ Dermot used that line a lot, his expression of despair.”
    I told him of the time Dermot cried out, “Rome has fallen,” on running out of his favourite port. He remembered Dermot wailing that phrase in his high, chirping voice on losing a fat trout from his line. It was the first time I’d seen Gabriel give me the benefit of a real smile, lacking in irony. In fact we laughed, then carried on about Dermot and his idiosyncrasies, his quirky, cynical wit, his excited way of talking when he was on a roll. I felt a connection with Gabriel then, keen and deep.
    â€œLet’s talk about your relationship with Dermot.”
    Yet another smile, playful. “Maybe I became the chosen one because he gave up on you, Arthur. After you threw the academic life away, after you chose law instead of Latin.”
    I found irony in that. Had I not thrown that life away, I would not be trying to save his. “You were lucky – an enviable student ratio, one to one.”
    Four or five hours a day, he said, for nearly three years, on weekends, holidays, academic breaks. Sometimes a whole day. Before leaving for the city, Mulligan would give him a reading list. He devoured everything, a dictionary at his side, the
Britannica
or an atlas open. I supposed he must have an outstanding IQ . So quick of mind, so hungry to fill it, so coherent in expression.
    He explained it was not by happenstance that he’d wound up working for Mulligan. In seeking out an employee, Dermot had burrowed through the records of St. Paul’s Residential School – records still extant though the school was closed by then – seekinggraduates with superior grades. The brightest and most troublesome was the former Number 156, who was doing probation for assaulting a cop. Mulligan would have admired that rebel spirit. He’d have seen the sharp intelligence in his eyes. Gabriel became his project.
    Gabriel saw Irene rarely. “I stayed out of the house the odd time she was there. I was uncomfortable with her, didn’t get a sense of welcoming.” Mulligan had apologized for her: she was inhibited, wasn’t suited to the country, often wasn’t well.
    I assured him she was on his side and would be a good character witness.
    He seemed a little surprised. “Tell her I appreciate that.”
    Mulligan had arrived for his sabbatical in late March, a month before his death, and Irene joined him a week before Easter. The master and student had spent much time outside, hiking or fishing. “We’d talk and argue … I was into Marxist writers, and we fought about that.”
    I said that Ophelia would be visiting him on the weekend to record a more detailed history, but I needed some data to