The hidden text: He’s helpless. He will be spoonfed lentil soup and tofu. Margaret looks proud and beautiful, Rapunzel in her tower. Removed, remote, unreachable.
Everyone is listening breathlessly to these disclosures of Arthur’s helplessness and dietary needs. He will seem a worrywart to boot if he broadcasts his fears for Margaret’s safety. Not to mention her mental health, after three weeks living with this pair.
Cudworth Brown is a former ironworker, runs the recycling depot. Most call him Cud, which is reflective of the slow, chewing motions of the ruminant creator that he is. He’s been writing poetry for the last dozen of his forty-two years, and has finally been published: Liquor Balls, a thin volume of lusty verse. The local literary celebrity has attracted, in Felicity Jones, his first groupie, an eighteen-year-old naïf repeating her final year at Saltspring High.
“I can’t conceive of how you got up there, Margaret. How will you ever get down?”
Reverend Al Noggins finally brings this neck-wrenching tête-à-tête to a close, moving Arthur away. “Have to keep the banter brief, Arthur.” The reverend, everyone calls him, or Reverend Al, a short, bearded, energetic Welshman, twenty years of preaching the gospel at the local Anglican church. “We have a nesting eagle pair over there.” He points to a Douglas fir thirty feet away. “We had an engineer design the platform, old boy, it’s built to specs. For emergencies they have a rope ladder with a safety line.”
Todd Clearihue comes striding up, but before he can speak, Reverend Al says, “Todd, we’re not moving until you send away the logging crew. In addition to humans, there’s another species up there we propose to protect. Bald eagles. There’s a nest.” A sonorous voice, well suited to the pulpit.
“Aw, come on, Al, don’t try to pull that off on us. How would you know?” The air is thick with friction, but Clearihue maintains his smile.
“Take a hike up the bluffs, old fellow. You can see the nest, it must weigh half a ton.”
Clearihue turns to Arthur, sensing he’s more malleable. “I can’t believe this is happening in my community.” Though his family remains in Vancouver, he has bought waterfront property and joined several community groups, but retains the pasty look of one unused to rambling down wooded paths. “This is going to cost us at least twenty thousand a day.”
Garlinc didn’t have to borrow to buy the land, so Arthur suspects it has the resources to hold out. A private corporation with several partners, though Clearihue is reputed to be the majority shareholder, old money from precious minerals. “I’d sure like to figure a way to avoid going to court,” he says.
Arthur is thinking about court, about the eagle’s nest. He saw the mating eagles yesterday, above the Gap. He’s not sure if they’re on the protected list. He’s not sure if there is a protected list.
Trustee Zoller descends. “What’s the law here, Arthur? Couldn’t they go to jail for squatting?” He operates the water taxi service and in the last election squeaked in by two votes, cashing in on his popularity as an accordion player. An odd fellow with his twitches and flinches and hints of paranoia. “I hope you’re not part of this underground operation.”
“Of course he’s not,” says Clearihue. “This must really be embarrassing for him. Any ideas, Arthur?”
“I suggest we wait for Corporal Ivanchuk.” Who’s absent because it’s Tai Chi Thursday at the hall.
Arthur thinks about the Confederation Club, his old chums carrying on about how he married a 1960s back-to-the-lander, now she’s become an eco-terrorist.
Corporal Al Ivanchuk finally trudges up, Corporal Al, as he is known so as not to be confused with Reverend Al. He’s an easygoing giant who instructs Tai Chi and is the local Cub and Scoutmaster.
“What have we here?” he says.
“A blind man could see what we have,” says Zoller, snappish. “There has been unseen activity going on under your very nose while you’re dancing the Tai Chi.” Arthur tries to work his way through this abstraction. He thinks of three weeks of vegetarian dinners.
“That’s a pretty good piece of work,” says Corporal Al, gazing up at the tree fort.
“How are you going to handle this, corporal?” Clearihue asks. “I’d hate to see them criminally charged, they’re friends, but this is costing us big time.”
“Money is only something printed on paper–seems to me our first concern should be for people’s safety.” He calls, “You folks okay up there? Last thing we want is an accident.”
Cud Brown answers: “Boom-shaka-laka, we’re living large, man, but I can’t get cell reception. Can you call Felicity’s old lady? I don’t think she knows.”
“Not good. She’s going to be very upset.”
“Capiche, there were only supposed to be two of us.”
“Tell her I’m fine,” Felicity yells. “I was just going to visit, but I’m staying. It’s super up here.”
“I’ll break it to her. You guys need anything else?”
“Thanks, Corporal Al, we’re great,” Margaret says. Gleeful. Arthur doesn’t like the way she was hugging Cud, he’s thankful Felicity is there to share his cot or whatever they’ll sleep on. A hairy-armed brute with tattoos. A nose broken in a storied fight at the old Brig Tavern. His satiric nickname: Cuddles.
“What I see going on here,” says Zoller, working his way into one of his convolutions, “is that conspirators are being turned a blind eye to because one of them is the wife of a prominent lawyer.”
“Civil matter, out of my jurisdiction,” Corporal Al says. He is on his radio, trying to get a message through to Felicity’s mother, obviously not relishing the task. Tabatha Jones is displeased that her daughter is seeing a man twenty-two years older who is said to have deflowered many local maidens.
Arthur looks up at his smiling reckless wife, her arms defiantly folded. She is enjoying this far too much. She asked the recluse for legal help, and has cleverly compelled him to give it. He feels manipulated, a sensation seared into memory from his years with Annabelle.
The girl in the Rise Up top is looking knives at Clearihue, who’s making an effort not to see her. “This is ridiculous, Arthur,” he says. “We’re going to have reporters–do we really want that here?”
He’s counting on Arthur being embarrassed by Margaret’s direct action: he is well known from his years in the courtroom. A book has been written about him, his important trials. And yes, he feels embarrassment, but it pales against a fear for his wife, for her safety.
“When the reporters come, Todd, I can only hope we offer our island’s traditional hospitality.”
The media might find novelty here, a reprieve from the catastrophe-laden six o’clock newscast. Next up, we’ll meet some feisty tree-sitting Gulf Islanders. But comedy will spiral into tragedy when the defendants are enjoined to stop trespassing or face damages, costs, and possibly jail.
Noggins beckons him. “Someone I want you to meet, Arthur.”
“I’ll be there presently, Reverend Al.” His given name is Aloysius, but no one can pronounce it. He is ruddy, fifty-five, and was a lifelong bachelor until the island’s most careless carpenter winged his way to heaven after falling off the church roof. Bequeathing to the pastor not just guilt but his widow, Zoë.
The someone-to-meet would be the dark-haired gamin, who is grinning jauntily at Arthur, her T-shirt challenging him to rise up. One of those radicals who infest good causes with their banners and slogans–how is it she is friendly with the Anglican minister? Reverend Al may be a conservationist, but he is a Tory.
Arthur isn’t looking forward to this encounter. For the time being, he’s saved by a squad of reporters–tipped off, it would seem, to catch the morning ferry–who emerge from the woods like guerrillas, armed with cameras and microphones. They zero in on Todd Clearihue, who, Arthur senses, wants to rush off to seek his restraining order.
“Mr. Clearihue, what’s your next move?”
“Cooler heads will prevail, I am sure. One of the parties up there, Marga
ret Blake, she’s a fine lady, I have a lot of respect for her. Oh, you may not know her husband–this is Arthur Beauchamp, the lawyer.”
“Mr. Beauchamp! I covered the Hogarty double murder, remember me?”
“Of course I do.”
“What’s your reaction to this, Mr. Beauchamp?”
Arthur raises his noble nose above the half-circle of microphones, points it at the platform, at Margaret. He wants to ask, What is my reaction, my dear? She puckers her lips and pops him a kiss. He feels a thump, message received, her need to do this. I can’t live with surrender.
“Pride is my reaction. Pride in my wife and in my community. What you are witnessing is the brave and predictable response of the good, honest, caring folk of Garibaldi Island, angered by the prospect of the rape of a virgin forest. It ought to be added to the national park system, a gift of nature for all the people of Canada.”
This brings applause from the Gwendolers. Arthur is a little amazed by what he has just said, but the words came naturally, unforced, unrehearsed. He hopes the press won’t assume he’s a spokesman for the protesters.
Nelson Forbish is at his ear, tugging his arm. “Save some for me, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“In your next headline, Nelson, you might call it the Battle of the Gap.”
Nelson jots that down. A reporter asks, “Mr. Beauchamp, how do you feel about your wife being up there?”
“I love her deeply, naturally I have a concern for her well-being. Of significant, though lesser concern is my stomach. Margaret is a cook of unparalleled artistry.” He gets his laugh. He’s playing to the jury, it’s an ingrained habit.
The microphones swing away, seeking an alternative point of view. Zoller puts a comb to his hair. He has positioned himself well, but is being ignored in favour of Corporal Al.
“Officer, what do you see as your role?”
“Well, I see my job as keeping a low energy level.” Todd Clearihue is on the move, but Corporal Al spots him. “Todd, I understand there’s dynamite in one of those trucks by the road, and I’d like it parked at the quarry until you can drive it off the island.”
“Let’s see what the courts have to say about that.” His ire is starting to show.
“Todd, I’m taking responsibility for lives here, you ought to be too.”
“Sure, you’re right, I’ll look after it.”
And Clearihue strides off, past Reverend Al, past the pixie, who taunts him: “Speaking of lives, Clearihue, get one.” That provokes no response, and she hollers after him, “Thanks for the ride, sorry I couldn’t fulfill your fantasies.”
The media avoid her, sensing, like Arthur, that danger lurks here, a left-wing crank, a loose and libellous tongue. A reporter asks Corporal Al, “Will you be calling for reinforcements?”
“No, that’s just going to raise the energy level. No need to, as long as everyone acts responsibly.”
Reverend Al engages the press, a tutorial on saving green spaces, a list of species harboured in Gwendolyn, the Garry Oak, the Phantom Orchid. He ends with a touch of rhetoric about the eagles: “the national symbol of our friends and neighbours in the United States of America.”
A land not far. Arthur can see the San Juan Islands of Washington from his farm, the white pinnacles of the Olympics. This story could wedge its way into the news there, human interest to stir the patriotic heart. In design, in timing, this has been a well-orchestrated media event that somehow seems beyond the production skills of his fellow Garibaldians. There was outside help.
Felicity Jones calls from above. “I would now like to read a poem I wrote.” She shoves Cud playfully. “Without any help from you. It’s called ‘I Am a Tree.’” The imagery is priapic, the tree as penis, stately, wedded to the earth, sap rising from its roots. Arthur endures–the poem is too simple to be banal.
As the recital ends, Felicity’s mother strides into the clearing, looks about, and whacks Nelson’s camera away when he attempts to catch her grim expression.
“Felicity Jones, I want you down from there right now. You are not repeating another year of school.”
Tabatha is a weaver, a single mother, fiercely protective. Her daughter is in equally fierce rebellion. Arthur has a sense that the Save Gwendolers are about to suffer a minor publicity setback.
Tabatha waves a finger at Cud, yelling, “You are out of her life. Last weekend she came home at two o’clock smelling of, of…I don’t know what.”
“Tequila, my love. Maybe some pot.”
Reverend Al moves to dampen this embarrassing debacle, puts an arm around Tabatha, murmuring, “A quiet moment of reflection.”
A rope ladder flutters from the platform. Felicity clips onto a safety line and morosely begins her descent. Watching her causes Arthur’s stomach to tumble, and he allows Reverend Al to pull him away. “Hard to believe, but I’ve been missing your croaky voice at hymns.”
Arthur apologizes: the weather was too pleasant last Sunday. He casts a look up: Felicity halfway down, Margaret bent over the railing, Cud Brown positioned behind her buttocks. This repellent scene is blocked by foliage as Arthur is led to the priest’s young guest, perched on a windfall cedar, fusshing with a cellphone. “Name is Lotis Rudnicki,” says Reverend Al. “Member of your tribe, old fellow.”
What tribe? A Polish surname, but one makes out brushstrokes of Africa and Asia. The international woman maybe, her genes fed from many streams. Under the spike hair, energetic oval eyes that betray the arrogance of youth. Rose-petal lips, marred by the lip ring. As the current argot has it, she is in your face, with Che Guevara and her revolutionary slogan. She snaps her phone shut, flashes Arthur a practised smile.
“Lotis is our mouthpiece,” Reverend Al says. “She’s with Sierra Legal Defence.”
“You’re a lawyer…?” Arthur can’t hide a hint of incredulity.
“Almost.” A large confident voice from this small package.
“How does one be almost a lawyer?”
“I wilt under cross-examination, I get called to the bar in May.” A mocking drawl, an indifferent shrug.
“I trust I won’t be premature in offering congratulations.” Why has Arthur taken on this formal tone? He is almost icy. It’s not the T-shirt, not the lip ring (but why would she want to mar those plump smiling lips?). It’s the youth. That is what’s in his face, the whole bag of youth and hope and naïveté and boldness and ill-understood idealism wrapped up in this cheeky little woman.
“She’s been staying in our cottage,” says Reverend Al. “Giving us advice.”
“Ah, yes, tutorials in direct action.”
“Eco-guerrilla warfare,” Rudnicki says. “Fought with sound bites and close-ups.” She cranks the handle of an imaginary antique camera. “Angle on Felicity Jones as she blows her hero a kiss, then follows her mother out of the frame.”
“In my day, Ms. Rudnicki, lawyers became involved after the fact, not at the planning stage of a tort.” He says this with an intimidating smile, challenging her. This snip has been devising scenarios to get her environmental law group in the news. Arthur understands now why he’s so displeased with her–she is the agent of a broken home at Blunder Bay.
Her look is more scornful than hurt, and she fires back. “What do you think Garlinc’s lawyers were doing, playing with their dinks? They were at the planning stage of a fucking crime. The rape of a virgin forest, isn’t that how you put it, Mr. Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp?”
She stands, defiant, hands on hips. Rise Up! her bosom cries. An abrasively theatrical young woman, American accent, Californian in manner. Reverend Al shifts nervously, not daring to come between them.
“Have you done some scripting on the next scene as well, Ms. Rudnicki? It plays out in a courtroom.” He wants to know what she’s made of, this mouthpiece for the Save Gwendolyn Society who is young enough to be his granddaughter. But not as young as he first thought. Late twenties.
“We’ve thought about it.”
“Who’s we?”
&
nbsp; “We are me and Selwyn Loo. Lead counsel for Sierra Legal.” Seeing his blank expression, she adds, “He turned down a Rhodes to work with Sierra. He’s a ranked chess player. He can take on half a dozen tables in a blindfold match.”
“This is not a game, Ms. Rudnicki. We are not contending for a trophy.”
She gives him a tired look. “I’m going to light a hump, anyone mind?”
Arthur isn’t sure if he minds. Then he realizes she means a Camel’s cigarette–she brings out a pack. The smoking environmentalist.
She takes a long pull, exhales. “Okay, I’m now ready to say something to you, Arthur Beauchamp. I don’t mind the hostility, I shed it like a duck sheds rain. But maybe you should get with the program. There’s your partner, a tough, beautiful, fantastic lady, putting herself on the line, holding off the barbarians at the Gap, while you, this great icon of the courtroom, are displaying a totally shallow attitude, complaining about losing a good cook. What is she, your employee?”
That comes like a slap. Before Arthur can devise a face-saving response, Reverend Al does crisis counselling, signalling Rudnicki to rein herself in, putting an arm on Arthur’s shoulder. “You’re upset, old boy, and you have every reason to be. As I would be had Zoë’s name been pulled. You’re welcome any night to share our home and our table.”
They have exposed the great icon for what he is, selfish, concerned about his comforts and his stomach. He must stop feeling sorry for himself. Poor Margaret, three weeks of enduring the gross inanities of the local literary lion.
He can barely meet Rudnicki’s eye. “Sierra Legal is rendering its services pro bono, I presume–on a matter of grave importance to our island. I should not have been unwelcoming. I apologize, Ms. Rudnicki. Your first name is Lotus?”
“L-o-t-i-s. Lotis Morningstar Rudnicki.”
Counter-culture parents with a spelling disability? Or named after the nymph Lotis–who, to escape Priapus, god of fertility, turned herself into a flower? When Arthur feels awkward, he will often spout Latin, and does so now, pompously, a line from Terence that he hastily interprets: “Many a time have great friendships sprung from bad beginnings.”
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