by Bill Rowe
“Oh, Tom, can you really be saying that you truly, truly loved her when you broke—when you did what you did to her last fall?”
“Yes, Suzy, yes, I really truly am. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve always loved her, more than anyone or anything in the world.”
“Then that is very sad. That is tragic. Because, you poor bastard, she is gone. She is gone from you forever.”
WHEN I CAME HOME in June, Rosie was away, living with a family in Quebec City to top up her fluency in French, and not expected back till just before university was to start here in the fall. Suzy, after a visit with her father in Gander, was joining Rosie in Quebec. I decided to bide my time. Come September, when she returned, I’d make my move. Nothing was as final as Suzy had said. There’d been too much love between us and we’d been through too much together. I couldn’t ascertain from my mother or Suzy if Rosie was involved with someone else, but even if she was, I would win her back. Indeed, I hoped she did have a boyfriend so that we both could feel I’d been deservedly punished and had to earn her love again. I had a couple of speeches well-rehearsed in my head involving the immaturity that had caused my mistake and the proof of my great love being how I had stood by her through all her terrible revelations and subsequent legal ordeal—Good Lord, I was willing to end lives for her!—and would continue to stand by her through the rest of our lives. I’d already made those points obliquely, and more, in letters, of course, but perhaps she’d thrown them away unread. If she had ever loved me as strongly as she had said she did, she would not be able to resist resuming that love when I offered it to her again face to face.
With some difficulty because of the lateness, I enrolled for the next academic year at Memorial University in St. John’s. I’d be here all year with Rosie so that I could fix what I had so badly damaged.
I hadn’t realized what piteous signals I must have been sending out around the house until one afternoon in late August when my mother came home from Nina’s house and walked straight up to my room and stood in my door, gazing down at me. I glanced up from my book. Her face looked extremely sad. “Rosie,” she said, just above a whisper, “was back.”
“Was back?” I stood up with the agony of truth already in me. “What do you mean?”
“She was back for less than a day. Her mother didn’t even know she was coming. Nina thought she was arriving next week.”
“That’s what you said Nina told you, yes, next week, Thursday, on the two o’clock flight.” I kept my voice at a monotone in the hope it wouldn’t break.
“She told Nina not to let anyone know she was back, not even me. She didn’t have time to visit with anyone at the moment, was the way she put it. She was here, she said, just to pick up a few documents and some of her things and say goodbye to Nina.”
“Where is she gone?”
“Montreal. She has transferred to McGill.”
“Does she have an apartment there? You must have her number because of the trustee thing.”
“I do. But I was given it on the condition that I would not give it to anyone else without Rosie’s explicit permission.”
“Jesus, my own mother can’t give me… Okay, I’ll get it from Suzy.”
“Suzy is gone with her.”
I sat down again and looked out my window. Down in the backyard, nodding in the breeze, was the same riot of daisies that had grown in Brent’s parents’ garden in Twillingate that I used to love to look at from their kitchen window when Brent and I were eating breakfast and planning our summer day. In fact, Brent’s mother had dug some up and given them to Mom when my parents were picking me up one time. “Tom adores them,” said Brent’s mother. Mom had transplanted them here. I felt similar now to the time a few seconds after I had looked out the window as an eleven-year-old when I’d thought Rosie was drowned. My throat felt the ghost of the pain. I controlled myself. This was not hopeless yet. I’d get her address from her zonked-out mother if necessary and take a flight to Montreal tomorrow. She had to see reason. She had to accept my love. Now I became aware of my mother’s body right next to me.
“She’s with someone up there, Tom. Seriously involved with someone else.”
“Who is it, do you know?”
“No, I don’t. I only know Rosie told her mother it’s genuine and permanent, and that she’d never allow herself to be let down by anyone ever again. I’m sorry, but I’m only telling you so that you can govern yourself accordingly.”
I did govern myself accordingly. I ended my immediate hopes. But there was nothing I could do to end the terrible yearning and regret.
I GOT A DEGREE in Political Science from Memorial and went on to law school at Dalhousie. Meanwhile, Brent had given up his promising hockey career because of the cracked skull and studied for a Bachelor of Commerce. He never finished his degree because all the reading gave him headaches. Instead, he was forced to do what he’d sworn he’d never do—go to work in his father’s businesses. Working with the old man was not very satisfactory, Brent told me, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. The deal was that he would slog his way up to president of the holding company while his father became chairman of the board, and then when he retired, Brent would take over entirely. Even as we talked about it, I sensed from Brent that he didn’t really believe it would work out that way.
He and I remained close while I was at Memorial. These days our relationship seemed to be based on relationships with women—inevitably unsatisfying for both of us, except, maybe, in the satisfaction of lust. In England I had let my competitive swimming lapse, and back home I gave it up for good. I told Brent that if I never smelled chlorine wafting off a pool again it would be too soon. Brent lamented the unfairness of life: he loved hockey and was good at it and wanted to play it, but was not allowed to; I was allowed to swim and was encouraged to do it and was good at it, but couldn’t be bothered to. And what had happened to Rosie’s tennis? He never heard of her involved in high-ranking tournaments these days. Had I? No, I hadn’t, but I phoned Nina once to find out. She was vague, but she thought that Rosie only played it now recreationally. She recalled asking her about it a few years ago and receiving Rosie’s reply that life was too short to invest all that time in another project that might only bring frustration and dissatisfaction. “We had such athletic promise, the three of us,” said Brent. “And it all came to nothing.” That, among other things, I said. Brent looked at me and nodded.
THE SUMMER I FINISHED law school and moved into my own apartment and started articling with a law firm in St. John’s, my mother told me something about Rosie that revived hope in me. Mom was not close to Nina, and when Rosie had reached the age of majority, Mom couldn’t pass over the trusteeship of Rothesay’s estate to her fast enough. She’d only taken it on for Rosie’s sake and was not eager to spend any time beyond necessity with her old friend, who was a constant reminder of everyone’s negligent, if not wilful, blindness over Rosie and Pagan. But occasionally Nina would call Mom for a chat. This time she told her that Rosie was thinking about applying for a teaching position at Memorial University in St. John’s.
After McGill University, Rosie had moved to the University of Toronto for her master’s and her Ph. D., which she had just received. From what I could gather from Mom, her master’s and her doctorate were in dead languages. Her theses, Mom had learned from Nina, had to do with comparisons and contrasts between the Indo-European languages Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, on the one hand, with the Semitic languages ancient Hebrew and ancient Arabic on the other. Rosie had made it clear to Nina that she was only content immersed in those beautiful old classical tongues and their literature, and the further away she was from modern realities, the better she liked it.
I’d started going through the Memorial University calendar to see what possibilities might exist for Rosie’s esoteric line of work when Suzy Martin telephoned Mom to say that Nina had been rushed to the hospital with a stroke. Rosie was on another line to the hospital trying to find out how s
erious it was. I had the cruel wish that it was serious enough to force Rosie’s hand on coming home to teach.
Mom told me that Nina’s stroke was minor, and had been caused by a blood clot in a small vessel rather than a rupture. Its effects could be mostly reversed, and the recurrence prevented with blood thinners. Suzy flew down from Toronto for a week to find out about the administering of the anticoagulants and to decide what to do. I called Suzy for a chat and asked why Rosie hadn’t come down. Because, Suzy replied, she couldn’t stand the thought of coming back here to this hell of nightmares. Suzy had come with Rosie’s request that, if Nina died, she was to have the body flown to Toronto for burial.
“I thought Rosie was interested in teaching at Memorial,” I said.
“That was just her mother’s wishful thinking. We’re going to move her to an apartment of her own in whatever city Rosie might be living in from time to time.”
“Suzy, is Rosie involved with someone now?”
“She has a close friend.”
“Suzy, I love Rosie. I never stopped loving her after all these years. I’d gladly move to Toronto and join a law firm and start practising there.”
“She has received offers from several universities in Canada and the States. I know—Sanskrit? But her thesis was considered brilliant. She has accepted a position with the University of British Columbia. She’ll be moving to Vancouver in a couple of months.”
“I’d move there in a flash. I need your advice on how I should proceed to get back just her friendship, even. The rest will follow or not, as she sees fit.”
Suzy said, “Rosie only wants to be left alone to teach and do her research, Tom. If I were you, I’d back off. It’s no use. You’d only be wasting your time and hers.”
I DID BACK OFF until I found out that Suzy, who had been teaching in a Toronto school, had now moved to Vancouver at the same time as Rosie. I experienced the epiphany that all this time Suzy had kept a hidden agenda. I’d been moronically slow to appreciate it. Obviously, she and Rosie were involved in an intimate relationship. What had impeded my realization was my memory of how sexually passionate Rosie had been with me during our teens. One time in bed when we had talked about homosexuality—specifically lesbianism—I asked her if she ever wondered about it in herself. She had replied, “Yes, and I have concluded that I am heterosexual.” With a laugh, she grabbed me by the penis with both hands. “Extremely heterosexual.”
I recalled now, though, how sometimes—for variety, she said, or when she was menstruating—she might rub her pelvis against mine for many minutes, bringing herself to orgasm without resort to any of my appendages. Climbing off me, she used to giggle, “You’re on your own.” I grasped in hindsight that she and Suzy had practised that technique together as they learned to control their spontaneous sexual urges resulting from their exploitation, which she had testified about during the Rothesay trial. And equally obviously, I thought now, it had been an artificial, stopgap device back then with Suzy, just as her sexual intimacy with her was today.
There was no way, in light of that realization, that I was going to follow Suzy’s self-serving advice to back off. I wrote Rosie a letter in BC intimating my desire to re-establish contact with her, at least by correspondence. I waited in apprehension, but not for long. Her reply came so swiftly she must have answered as soon as she’d opened the envelope: She addressed me as “Dear sir” in the typewritten letter and said I was kind to get in touch, but that her work obligations precluded additional personal correspondence for the foreseeable future, though she did wish to convey her very best regards. It ended with, “Dictated but not read by Dr. Rosie O’Dell and signed in her absence by her secretary.”
THE LAW FIRM I articled with was headed by senior partner Samuel Squires, Q. C., the doyen of corporate lawyers in the city. He called me into his office to say he was impressed by my credentials, but that it also helped that one of his biggest clients, Anstey Holdings, owned by Brent’s father, had suggested they approach me to join them.
I suspected Brent’s handiwork there, but when I asked him about it, he said it was the first he’d heard of it. He didn’t think, he said, that this early in my career I’d want to receive unilateral favours from friends. Maybe later, when it was a matter of reciprocity, we could have a good lawyer-client relationship, but right now he thought I’d want to make my own way professionally, carve out a legal swath based on my own proven merits. I appreciated Brent’s attitude, I told him, but like him when he’d dubiously gone into business with his old man, I judged this too good an opportunity to pass up.
Samuel Squires, Q. C. mentored me daily. One of the many pieces of wisdom he imparted was this: never allow your client to lie to anyone in authority; in fact, always advise your client in writing, if possible, against such activity. I thanked him and said it was reassuring as a young lawyer to hear such guidance from such an experienced lawyer based on high standards of professional ethics.
“It’s got nothing to do with ethics,” he replied. “It’s got to do with the fact that when your client gets caught in his lie, he will turn on you like a rat, and say his lawyer told him to do it.” It would not be long before Brent’s father would force on me a test of this marriage of morality and practical survival.
First, though, at Mr. Anstey’s request, I was brought in on a meeting of senior members of the law firm with him and Brent. He wanted a discussion on how to thwart an attempt by a union to sign up and unionize some of his employees. The union was essentially a public service body representing employees of various branches of the provincial government. Recently it had expanded into some private service industries and now wanted to sign up the employees of a medium-sized hotel recently acquired by Brent’s father. The executive director of the union was a man from the highlands of Scotland in the United Kingdom, where the labour movement, said Anstey, “has reduced Britain—the formerly Great Britain—to third-world status.” Brent’s father kept ridiculing the man’s accent by saying he was from the “Hee-lunds of Scut-lund” and called him, not by name, but by the term “Shit-dick.” Mr. Anstey had evidence, he said, that our enemy had vamoosed out of Scotland and come over here because he was reliably suspected of screwing sheep on the slopes of the Scuttish Hee-lunds.
“And that will be our defence against this attempted union takeover, gentlemen,” he said. “What? you say, that’s not a legal defence? I agree. Then why have I asked my high-powered legal advisers to assemble here today? Because I want you to make sure that when I spread around this truth about Shit-dick I do it in such a way as protects me from an action for libel and slander. And if any of you have any doubts about my technique, talk to young Tom Sharpe there. He can tell you from his experience with the infamous child-molester Dr. Rothesay that when some of these Brits suddenly appear over here out of the blue, sporting their empire accents to impress the colonies, it’s because they are escaping from something criminal over there and trying to hide it over here among us credulous good-natured colonials. Tell them, Tom: Rothesay’s arrival here was suspicious, his activities here were suspicious, and his death here was the most suspicious of all.” Brent’s father looked hard at me. I was so gobsmacked that all I could do was nod in agreement.
After the meeting, Brent whispered to me, “Are you sure you want to practise with a firm that would have him as a client?’
Not long after I’d been admitted to the bar, Brent’s father specifically asked that I work with him on the sale of a piece of valuable property. During the preparation of the documents, I realized that he wanted me to backdate the deed of sale to the previous year because that would cause a large tax advantage to him. He’d had some losses that year that the capital gain on the property could go against. The purchaser didn’t mind, he said, because it made no difference to him. There would have to be affidavits sworn before me containing the false date. No, I told him, I wouldn’t do it.
Brent’s father couldn’t believe my attitude. The deal had, in effect, for all
intents and purposes, he argued, been concluded back then. What was the big problem? Why was I throwing away a brilliant opportunity? There were thousands of dollars in legal fees for me involved. There were tens of thousands of dollars of tax savings for him involved. He’d be paying hundreds of thousands in municipal, provincial, and federal taxes this year anyway. He deserved to be cut some fucking slack on the taxable profits from this deal. If I wouldn’t do it, he’d find someone who would. He went to the senior partner.
Samuel Squires, Q. C. called me in. The deal had been made last year, he said. There had been a meeting of minds back then, but the parties had simply neglected to reduce it to the proper documentation. He was ordering me to follow the clear instructions of the firm’s top client. No, I said, what about his good advice regarding clients getting caught and turning on their lawyer like a rat? Jesus Christ, said Squires, that didn’t apply to clients of the calibre, i.e., the value to the firm, of this one. No, I said, I was being asked to aid and abet in a criminal falsehood.
The upshot was that, because I, a member of this firm, had raised a legal objection, Brent’s father had no choice but to go to a lawyer in another firm. It was deemed too risky for anyone inside our firm to act, because the lawyer-client privilege and confidentiality could be pierced by the investigating police as not applying to communications concerning a future crime. Normally that would not be a problem among team players in the law firm who could be counted on to stonewall the authorities, but now, God alone knew what this goody two-shoes Tom Sharpe would feel he had to divulge to investigators.
A few weeks later, Samuel Squires, Q. C. called me in and said that it had just come to his attention from an inside source that a shadow of suspicion still hung over my head at the Department of Justice about the Rothesay death. The reputation of the firm could not countenance having an associate on board who might bring the good name of the firm into disrepute. I would be given a substantial severance to allow me to bridge the transition to another firm or solo practice.