by Ron Chudley
If nothing else, his intensity produced a pale smile. “If you say so.”
“I do say so!” He grew flustered then—like a ridiculous kid, his mind babbled—and was overtaken by indecision as to whether to shake her hand, or kiss her, or what the hell to do. He was saved by the sight of the hotel coffee shop over her shoulder, and by some perverse miracle recalling her long-ago drink preference. “You do have time for a cup of tea?”
She shrugged, but drifted along with him in the direction of the coffee shop. The place was almost empty. They took a table near the door, Mattie sitting tentatively, as if she might at any moment bolt. A waitress appeared, walking with an end-of-shift slump. “We’re closing in ten minutes,” she said.
“That’s okay, just coffee for me.” Then, to Mattie. “Is it still Earl Grey—with milk?”
She looked surprised, then nodded. After the waitress left, they sat stiffly, avoiding each other’s eyes. Finally Mattie muttered, “I’m afraid this is just silly.”
That did it. Exasperation jolted his tongue loose. “It’s not silly at all. A surprise, okay—but, as I said, absolutely great. After I saw you earlier, I did start thinking of you a lot—and wondering how I could find you.” (That last was a bit of a stretch, but what the hell: sooner or later, he was sure, he would have.) “But you say you followed me back here? Why? I mean, why not just stick around and say hello?”
“I don’t know . . . shy, I guess. All those people fussing about. You seemed like such a grand star. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t quite do that either. Then all the way back here—this will sound really childish—I was trying to sum up courage to accost you. But before I could, you disappeared into the hotel and it was too late.”
“You could have left a message at the desk.”
“I know. But by that time the whole thing had got to seem so absurd I just left. I’d been planning to have dinner in town anyway, so I went off and did that. But all the time it kept bugging me what a chance I’d missed. I mean . . . I don’t think I realized how much it’d mean to—you know, just say hello after all this time—till I saw you again. And I’d blown it. So I came back here and asked at the desk, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. I was just trying to decide what to do next when . . . well, here we are.”
At that point the tea and coffee arrived. Hal scribbled his room number on the check and they were left alone. He’d already come to the conclusion that, before they could really talk, one thing had to be got out of the way. A short while ago, he wouldn’t have thought that he cared—or even remembered—much about this. But, yes, it had been there, skulking in a back alley of his mind, ever since his first glimpse of her. So he drew a deep breath and said, “Mattie—before anything else, I must say one thing: I want you to know I’m very sorry.”
She looked startled. “Why?”
“For how things ended with us.”
She thought about that for a moment. “It couldn’t have been any different. We both know that.”
“I mean—the way they ended: me dumping you on the phone and not making any more contact. It was a shitty thing to do.”
She gave him a long look, and he noticed the attractiveness of maturity had been abetted by something else. What, exactly? It seemed like an undercurrent of sadness. But the impression was fleeting, and it faded as Mattie firmly shook her head. “That’s a sweet apology, Hal. But really, it’s not necessary. What happened was inevitable. We both needed the kind of lives we understood more than . . . well, more than we needed each other. Anyway, that was all a very long time ago.”
“Yes.”
She nodded, closing the subject, then sipped her tea. “You remembered Earl Grey. Impressive.”
“Blind luck, I think.”
“Well, it shows you hadn’t entirely forgotten me . . .” She shook her head in annoyance. “No—I’m sorry, that’s just stupid small talk.”
He laughed, starting to unwind. “Of course it is. Mattie—we haven’t seen each other in twenty-five years: how else can we start catching up? And I’ll say it again: I’m really happy to see you.”
“And me, you.”
“And you’re not going to dash off again?”
“I guess I can stay a little while.”
They looked at each other, neither knowing what to say next, but at least comfortable. Eventually, it was Mattie who spoke. “The years have been good to you, Hal.”
He chuckled. “That sounds like a line from a play.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Thanks—you too, I might say.”
“Mmm . . . Are you married?”
“No, I never did that. Almost, a couple of times—but I managed to escape.” Which was really juvenile, and not the way he wanted to appear to her at all. He continued hurriedly, “How about you?”
Before she could reply, there was a blur of movement and Hal looked up to see Juliet Jeffries approaching. “Oh, there you are, darling,” she said. “You are a dark horse. Who is this amazing looking creature?”
Mattie flushed. Hal introduced the women and saw his old friend draw into herself under Juliet’s frank scrutiny. Then, matter-of-factly, the actress switched her beacon to him. “Listen, darling, I’m sorry to interrupt your tête-à-tête, but I’ve got to get up at one hell of an hour tomorrow. If we’re going to duck out of the party in time for some romps of our own, we’d better hustle.”
Mattie rose. “I must be off too.”
She began to walk away fast. Hal knew that this time only physical intervention would do. She was across the foyer when he caught up and placed a hand on her shoulder. The bones felt disturbingly fragile. He let go, but she stopped anyway. “Goodbye, Hal.”
“Mattie—we’ve hardly had the chance to—”
She cut him off by kissing him on the mouth. It was a dry peck, such as might be delivered by an aunt, but her lips were so tense they quivered. She turned and strode away.
This time he didn’t try to follow.
The wrap party was everything that might have been expected; thankfully short on ceremony and producers’ speeches, and long on gifts, food, booze, and sentiment, so everyone had a noisy good time. True to their plan, Hal and Juliet drifted off early and unnoticed.
On the way up in the elevator, she kissed him. This was nothing like the movie embraces they’d exchanged as Victorian lovers. Juliet’s approach to sex was strictly modern and as dedicated as everything else she did. Any movie that included the scene, richly begun by the time they reached her room, would certainly have been X-rated.
After that, it all went according to a script which—though never performed together—they both knew very well. Hal always took special delight in lovemaking with a new partner. Juliet was not just novel, she was expert, enthusiastic and more uninhibited than most men. Despite the hot and heavy start in the elevator, they didn’t continue that way. In private, they slowed right down, removing each other’s garments gently, doing much caressing and delicious exploration; bringing patience and imagination to an endeavor as old as history but—since both were actors versed in the art of keeping a performance fresh—as new as if it were their very first time.
Altogether the best kind of ending to a day.
Only when Hal returned to his own suite did he remember he’d never checked for messages. There’d been some question about a voice-over job in Vancouver after the end of filming, and he’d been expecting to hear. He phoned down—there were no messages. He was cynically unsurprised; if things followed the usual pattern, he’d be back in Toronto by the time the idiots here made up their minds. He was about to hang up when the desk clerk said, “Oh, Mister Bannatyne—I almost forgot—there is one thing for you. An envelope was handed in just a while ago.”
“Envelope.”
“Yes, sir—shall I have it sent up?”
Who in hell would be leaving an envelope at this time of night? But then he had an intuition—or maybe just a hope. “Hold it there,” he said, “I’ll be right down.”
The desk clerk had the envelope waiting. It looked used, stuff having been crossed out and replaced by his name. Inside was an old department store invoice—scribbled on the back, two words.
SORRY—MATTIE!
Plus a phone number.
three
The night beyond the house was as dark as the wrong side of the grave. Had Fitz not lived on this land all his life, known every square foot like he knew the warts and wrinkles of his own aging carcass, he wouldn’t have had a fool’s chance of doing what was necessary.
There was no sign of them yet, but they’d be coming, he was convinced of that now. When people like that were frustrated, when they’d used every means of persuasion or coercion and still hadn’t got what they desired, they didn’t just give up.
The same rogues, he now knew, had been behind the big development near Nanaimo, the Island’s second largest city. In that case, a large parcel of land which had been extracted from the province’s sacred Agricultural Land Reserve—pretty surely by political chicanery—had been slated for an expensive new subdivision. The land was on a promontory overlooking the water, making it ideal for an exclusive gated community, the problem for the developers being that the owner of a key piece of access land had refused to sell. That individual thus became the darling of conservationists and those against the ever increasing urbanization of Vancouver Island—a lone knight against the forces of the developers and crooked politics. But one night the knight’s castle had mysteriously burned, with himself and his family inside. Although the fire was undoubtedly arson, no one was apprehended, and a while later the crucial land was sold and the development quietly went ahead. That’s the way things were done in this part of the world: everything civilized and quiet—with the big operators winning out in the end.
Fitz was the one in their way now.
Sitting on the porch of the big old house, looking out toward his invisible domain, he absently stroked the stock of the shotgun resting across his knees. It was a side-by-side twelve gauge, as ancient as himself, and probably hadn’t been fired in half a century. Coming upon it in the attic had been blind luck, and right now he could use every bit of that he could get.
He reached over and took a swig of rye. Strange to think that the root cause of this debacle was the stock market boom of the 1920s: that and his dad’s laziness and ill-judgment. Stranger still to remember that once the family had owned half the land around here, much of the south end of Maple Bay. Fitz’s grandfather, William, had bought the property back in the 1880s, cleared it, farmed it, loved it well. But he’d worked too hard and died too young and his son hadn’t loved it at all. Seeking a life of ease, George Trail had sold off most of the farm, retaining only a small parcel overlooking the bay, which included the house over which his son now stood guard.
The irony of this piece of history was threefold. First, the stocks purchased by the sale of the land became valueless within a year, wiped out by crash of ’29; second, George got his sought-after leisure all right, but only because he couldn’t find the work he then desperately needed—he’d been saved from actual starvation by produce from the piece of land he had retained; third, that remnant not only came to be loved by his own son, Fitz, but, because of its strategic location, became the cause of the present problem.
Also, it had be admitted, the fault was as much Fitz’s own. He hadn’t taken the early overtures seriously. Of course, he hadn’t known they were from a development company, and the offers weren’t high enough to alert his suspicion. Only later, when he discovered that a lot of properties nearby had suddenly changed hands, did he realize something was going on. Finally, when he received notice of a public hearing for a big hotel and marina complex slated for Maple Bay, it all came clear. He went to that meeting—discovering that his own property was slap in the middle of the proposed development site. Worse, the meeting itself seemed like a whitewash: most of the people present being merchants who were solidly for the proposed development.
Fitz was appalled. He hated what it would do to the quiet community, and was outraged to find his own precious land included. He voiced his opposition in no uncertain terms. This was politely noted, but was obviously going to be ignored. Only later, when contacted by a protest group offering support, did he learn what had happened to the holdout to the plans of the same company in Nanaimo.
Not long after that the real pressure on him began.
First it was financial; they’d simply offered a lot of money, in fact, a small fortune. He wasn’t even tempted. What they were doing was wrong, they were rogues who’d tried to trick him with those earlier attempts to buy his land. He spurned all offers. Then the legal threats began, to see if the old man could be intimidated. But that was a crock. The land was his, free and clear, all taxes paid; it hardly needed a lawyer to tell him that no one could force him to sell.
So then came actual harassment. Nothing obvious at first, just incidents that could be put down to kids: stuff stolen, trash dumped, tires slashed, graffiti sprayed everywhere. The police were sympathetic, but what could they do? And they certainly weren’t impressed by accusations against developers.
But he knew.
Worst of all, not even his own family believed there was any real threat. They thought he was just a paranoid old fool. He was almost beginning to believe that himself when the phone calls started.
Cunningly, the calls always came when he was alone. At first there would just be silence, then a click. On later occasions, breathing. Finally a deep voice said the words, Get out! Then, Leave! Finally, Save yourself ! This sequence was repeated several times. Significantly, the word sell was never used.
But he knew.
However, after the calls started the vandalism stopped. So, with no witness, he had no proof that the harassment was even still happening. He hadn’t even told anyone about the calls anyway; the way things had been going, who’d have believed him?
Then he received a quite different communication. A cheerful woman, identifying herself openly as from the development company, had made what she called “a final offer,” giving him the deadline of a week to decide. He’d told her what to do with her offer.
The next day he got another anonymous call. “Six days left—or you die! ”
Each day thereafter the same thing—a countdown. But he hadn’t responded. He hadn’t caved. He hadn’t done a thing—except hunt out the shotgun. Then today—the final call.
“Okay, buddy—tonight’s the night.”
Was it really? Or was it just a bluff like everything else? Waiting alone in the dark, nursing his gun, Fitz wondered about that for the hundredth time. Well, if the threat was real, whoever showed was going to get a big surprise. Thinking of that as he took another swig of rye, Fitz chuckled and mis-swallowed, the liquor burning even as it half choked him. He coughed till his eyes streamed. By the time he’d got himself under control, he felt exhausted, too weak to get out of his chair—let alone use his precious gun. Oh, God, he thought, what a mouse-fucking catastrophe it is to be old.
But, damn it! DAMN IT! He was not going to let himself—and the remnant of his clan—get walked over. He might well be a pathetic old fart, (a “geri”—as he’d heard his granddaughter elegantly put it) But this could also be an advantage: no one would be anticipating an armed response from a geri.
The night was very still. From the blackness beyond the drive came a ghostly hoot-hoot, then an answering call. Since he was a boy, there’d always been at least one owl pair nesting in his woods, a detail that the incinerated eco-knight would no doubt have appreciated. From the road beyond, he could hear the murmur of passing traffic. Sooner or later, one of these vehicles would stop. Through the ensuing silence, they would come creeping . . .
Okay, buddy—tonight’s the night.
The hand that steadied the gun had begun to ache badly. How long had he been out here? No idea, but already he was feeling exhausted. He probably shouldn’t have brought along the bottle. But, hell, a man h
ad to have something to keep up his spirits. Still, he’d better not drink too much more. Otherwise, when the time came, he might not be able to get out of his chair, let alone all the rest.
He pushed the rye away, settled the gun more comfortably—and found himself wishing that Will could be there to keep him company. Immediately he regretted the thought. Not only was Will long-dead, if he had been there the poor lad wouldn’t have been much help. He hadn’t had much feeling for the land as it was, and the idea of defending it with firearms would have sent his mild accountant’s brain into shock. Too bad. Fitz took another swig of rye, remembering too late that he’d meant not to. Ah, well . . .
He settled back and began to consider resting the gun on the ground. He thought about it carefully, trying to balance the comfort of not having to nurse the heavy weapon against the difficulty of retrieving it quickly in the dark. This was a simple matter of logistics—benefit derived versus problem created—but somehow it got more complicated. He’d closed his eyes, and in his mind he could visualize the gun—which, as he examined it more closely, he found to be even older than he’d realized. Also, its barrels appeared not properly aligned, a crack had opened between them, and one had an ominous twist to the side. My God, he thought, if I fire this thing, it’s going to explode in my face. He tried to put the gun aside—but found that he couldn’t. It was too heavy—no, his hands were stuck to it—no, he seemed to be paralyzed, incapable of movement of any kind . . . and then he saw something else: at the edge of vision, just beyond the porch, something moved. Out of the dark a figure appeared, creeping on all fours. He couldn’t make out its face but, he could see it was carrying a gas can. He tried to yell, but couldn’t, since he was a frozen statue. The figure poured gasoline over the steps, over the porch, finally over the old man himself. He could feel the evaporating chill, was drowned in the sweet, pungent smell. There was the flash of a lighter, the spurt of a tiny flame, that kissed his gas-drenched world and exploded. He screamed . . .