Something Fishy

by Hilary MacLeod

  “Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”

  Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh. Kraaawk. Kwaaark. Tic tic tic. Tic tic tic.

  Everyone looked up. There was Newton Fanshaw clinging to a blade of the turbine.

  Tic tic tic.

  The blades stuttered to a halt, then tried to move forward. Stop. Start. Stop. Start.

  The minister didn’t know what to do except clear his throat and repeat the call for the vow.

  “Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”

  Newton let go. His hand rose to plug his nose, as if he’d just jumped off a diving board.

  He propelled through the air. His light body seemed to be carried on the wind. The swallows in their nests at the top of the capes flew into the sky, calling out their distress in a nervous twittering. As Newton sailed downward, he began to swim. The breaststroke. Gulls flew around him, barking their confusion at the large flying creature. Jasmine took up their call and they swooped down on her, too, eyeing her with suspicion.

  No one thought to run for cover. They were paralyzed in their places. Buffeted by the winds and the birds, it wasn’t clear where Newton would land. Except, at the last, when he headed straight for the bridal couple.

  Moira and Frank leapt apart. Moira, not quite far enough. Newton snatched at her in a last-minute attempt to stop his fall. He grabbed her shoulder, and the lace ripped right down the front of her mother’s dress, some of the fabric coming apart as dust.

  Newton landed on the velvet cushions. They flattened and did almost nothing to break his fall.

  A cloud of sand rose up and fell on top of him.

  “Will. Will,” he said, and lost consciousness.

  Those gathered, including the minister, thought he’d said, “I will.” That Newton, not Frank, had married Moira. Shocked looks circled the villagers and planted themselves on Moira, Frank, the minister, and Newton, unconscious and quite likely a newly married man.

  There would be no kissing the bride. No party at the hall. No marital night. Nor rights. Frank sneaked a sly hopeful look at Moira, tightened up as tight as she had ever been, arms wrapped around her exposed body, tears filling her eyes, black streaks of mascara, which she never wore, running down her cheeks and making her look quite ghoulish. A bit like Miss Havisham.

  No. No marital rights.

  Frank thought Moira looked quite fetching with her dress split in two, wearing a lovely camisole Hy had convinced her to buy. But he did what he had to – putting his jacket around her shoulders, as she wept over the destruction of her mother’s dress, the family heirloom.

  “Nathan? Where is Nathan?” Jamieson wasn’t a guest at the wedding, but, as part of her program of community policing, was checking in on the event. She’d arrived in time to see Newton sprawled on the ground, saying, “I will.” She screwed up her face, puzzled. Wasn’t Frank the groom? Had there been a fight over Moira at the last minute? A fight over Moira? She shook her head. She’d have to get to the bottom of this. She jostled through the crowd, fighting down her panic at touching so many strangers.

  “Disperse,” she ordered, and knelt down beside Newton.

  Nobody moved. They didn’t know what she meant.

  “Go. Go.” The second time she said it with more force than the first, impatience shooting out of her and sending the villagers scurrying off – all but Hy and Ian, the minister, Frank and Moira.

  Moira was crying. Big heaving sobs. Moira crying. It came to each one separately, but it was only Frank who wasn’t surprised.

  “What happened here? Where’s Nathan?”

  Which question to answer first? They all looked up.

  On the platform at the top of the turbine stood Anton Paradis, scowling down.

  Newton hadn’t broken every bone in his body, but nearly, and, most importantly, his neck. He was on intravenous, a respirator, and in a full body cast when Jamieson went to question him in hospital.

  There wasn’t much point. Newton’s jaw was wired shut and he couldn’t talk – at least not to be understood.

  Jamieson worked out a system of shutting his eyes once for “yes,” twice for “no.” His random twitching made the blinking confusing.

  “Why did you climb the turbine?”

  Newton responded by opening his eyes wide.

  Stupid question. No, not really. She’d been trained to ask questions that couldn’t be answered by a simple yes or no. Except for crucial ones, like “Did you kill her?”

  That wasn’t the situation now, but there was one yes-no question she could ask.

  “Were you trying to kill yourself?” Stupid question, too, because of course he had been.

  Newton had shut his eyes once. That meant yes.

  Then he shut them again.

  That meant no.

  If he weren’t trying to kill himself, maybe someone had been trying to kill him. Anton – who’d scaled the tower behind him?

  Anton Paradis was quite certain that Newton had been trying to kill himself. That’s what he told Jamieson, the reason he’d been climbing the tower after Newton.

  “He was crazy to go up there in that wind. I was certain he was going to jump.”

  “Certain?” Jamieson’s tone was woven with doubt.

  “Well, he did, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe that was your fault.”

  “My fault? My fault?”

  “Perhaps he thought you were pursuing him. Were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t see where the ‘of course’ comes in. You were climbing the tower behind him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought he might be going to do something foolish.”

  “Like killing himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  There was the slightest hesitation, the tiniest of pauses, the sort of thing that Jamieson was good at observing.

  “Sure,” he said.

  She made a note. Hesitation didn’t mean guilt, but it meant something. That something could turn out to be guilt.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jameson had her search warrant, but went into the dome before it came – you couldn’t wait for that sort of thing. It took too long out here in the sticks.

  There had been no clear crime that she knew of. She took it all in, in one selective gaze. There were the batteries ringing the dome. There was a table and a chair in the central area and a single bed at the back. Sparse furnishings. A pile of dirty laundry by the side of the bed. Almost hidden to one side – a desk.

  She pulled open the top drawer.

  Bankbook. Bill statements.

  Of no interest.

  Second drawer – a pathetic few notes from Fiona:

  Dear Newtie.

  Jamieson thought that alone might be a motive to kill her.

  I’m s’till thinking about las’t night. Our firs’ time agether. It wuz wunnerful. An s’o were u.

  It was signed Fiona with a heart over the “i.”

  Why had he kept them? He seemed to have nothing but contempt for her.

  Possibly of interest.

  Third drawer – the mother lode.

  Plain brown envelopes. She opened the first and slipped out a photographic sheet.

  Porn?

  Definitely of interest. And baffling.

  The sheets appeared to be photographic negatives, until she adjuste
d her mind to what her eyes were seeing. Then they made sense – and, at the same time, no sense at all.

  She was looking at a series of ultrasound photographs of fetuses.

  She opened each envelope, one after the other.

  Different fetuses. At different stages of development. Envelope one. Week one. A series of babies whose lives were just starting – a glimmer, a speck in the womb. Envelope two. Week two. Like tiny tadpoles. Weeks three, four – little fishies swimming in the amniotic fluid. With each envelope, the babies inside grew and matured. For they were clearly more than fetuses by about eight weeks. They were babies. Tiny and forming. By six months, some were picking their noses, sucking their thumbs, clasping their hands, and scratching themselves.

  Living a life inside the womb, thought Jamieson, as she slipped the photographs back inside the envelopes. Yet we don’t remember. Why don’t we remember? Or do we, in some way? She closed her eyes for a moment and reached back, tried to imagine herself floating in the womb. She couldn’t give herself up to the sensation. She shook her head and returned to her pragmatic self.

  The important question was what was Fanshaw doing with these ultrasound images? He wasn’t a doctor, was he? He’d never said what his field was, but she knew from Hy that he’d been a botanist.

  Why did he have these images at home? Why had he kept them? What was their significance? She intended to find out. She shoved the envelopes under her arm and took them straight to the hospital. She was interested to see what his blinking eyes would say about these. It could be more than a simple yes or no. Those eyes might speak volumes.

  She was certain the ultrasounds did.

  Gus was gazing with wonder at the printouts Ian had made her of her daughter, Dot’s six-month ultrasound, taken three months before. The baby was clearly a girl.

  “How she done that, I don’t know.” Gus smiled up at Ian. “Took me eight tries to get a girl and she comes up with one first time out. Not a moment too soon, mind. She’s past the age for it.”

  Gus could read family resemblances in the image.

  “Long fingers like me Ma,” she said to Ian, as they gazed at it together.

  The computer that Ian had given her so that she could Skype with Dot, and that was unused otherwise, beeped. He hit the keyboard. An image filled the screen.

  Dot.

  And Baby Dot, as Gus had begun to refer to her much-anticipated grandchild.

  “My land,” said Gus, standing and shuffling over to the computer. Ian pulled a chair out for her, and turned the video on, so that Dot could see Gus.

  Dot beamed, her usually tousled hair even more so. She hadn’t taken the time to pull a brush through it, thought Gus.

  “Six pounds eight ounces.” Dot nuzzled the baby’s head. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. And the prettiest little face.” She pulled the swaddling down to show a smooth pink face with a button nose, rosebud lips, and glazed eyes staring out of half-closed lids, fighting sleep.

  “Two hours and fifty-six minutes old.”

  Gus reached out to touch the newborn’s button nose. She ached to touch, to hold her first grandchild.

  “You’ll be bringing her home before she’s too much older.”

  Dot smiled. “Yes, Ma, I will.”

  “For good.”

  “Maybe not for good. We’ll see.”

  “Bundle her up there. She’ll be cold.”

  “Ma, it’s seventy-five degrees in this room.”

  “But what with it being that cold and all outside, it’s a different seventy-five than here. A colder seventy-five.”

  Dot sighed and smiled.

  “What will you be calling her? Ernestine after your grandmother? Mabel, maybe – she was your favourite auntie.”

  “No, Ma. Her name is August.”

  “That’s not a name, that’s a month. ’Sides, it’s July. That makes it confusing.”

  “After you, Ma.”

  “So you’ll be calling her Gus, then? Never did like the name myself.”

  “Not Gus. August.”

  “See if that sticks. It’ll be Gussie in no time.” But it wouldn’t. Gus could never get over having called her “Little Dot” all these months, and that’s what she would keep calling her.

  Gus was well pleased – Dot could tell by the way she held herself and the secret smile on her face.

  Little August began to fuss.

  “Gotta go, Ma. Time for a feeding.”

  She did that disappearing act Gus disliked so much. One moment on the screen, the next off, as if she’d vanished from the world.

  Gus looked up at Ian, fiddling with the keyboard.

  “Fancy that. A grandmother, finally. And I’m old enough to be a great grandmother.”

  She didn’t shuffle back across the room. There was lightness in her step, and when she reached her purple chair, she picked up her knitting. Booties done. Mitts complete. Now a set of warm wool leggings and sweater. She’d be needing them where she was, poor little tyke.

  Gus shivered as she bent forward to see the stitches on her needles.

  Ian slipped home to call Hy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Something stirred in Fanshaw’s eyes as Jamieson pulled out the first ultrasound. Each time she pulled out another, his eyes flickered.

  “Are you prepared to talk about these?”

  Two blinks. No.

  Off to a grand start. Jamieson stood her ground, refusing to sit down and make him more comfortable. She was a good reader of body language, but his body, encased in a cast, wasn’t talking.

  “Is this a private collection?”

  One blink. Yes.

  She shuffled through them.

  “Is it important that this one is sucking his thumb?”

  One blink. Yes.

  “And this one scratching?”

  One blink. Yes. They were important to Newton. Life in the womb, of a kind most people didn’t remember. He did. But Jamieson didn’t know that, and he couldn’t express it. Not to her. Not now.

  In spite of the positive responses, Jamieson didn’t feel as if she were getting anywhere. What meaning could these ultrasounds possibly have?

  She would have gotten nowhere at all if Ed, the nurse in ICU, hadn’t walked into the room.

  “Newton. They told me you were here. Boy, you’re in rough shape.”

  Ed paid no attention to the message in Fanshaw’s eyes, which were moving back and forth, trying to get Ed to notice that there was a Mountie in the room.

  “You know him?” Jamieson asked.

  “Yeah, we studied ultrasound technology together a few years back.” Big smile. “Quite a few years back.” He tugged on the small gold loop earring in his left ear.

  She turned to Fanshaw, tapping the brown envelope in the palm of her hand.

  “So these are not personal. Professional?”

  Two blinks. No.

  One blink. Yes.

  “Which is it, yes or no?”

  Ed peeked over her arm.

  “Oh, those. He was always taking those home. He talked about wanting the whole set, didn’t you Newton? Patients were willing to let him have copies.”

  “Why? What for?”

  “Maybe because he was nearly aborted at close to six months, but he wouldn’t come out.” Ed laughed. “At least that’s what he told us. Was it true, Newton?”

  One blink. Yes.

  A series of blinks, indicating what? Panic? Loss of control. How reliable was this way of communicating – and for how long?

  Hy and Ian had begun a wide search for Newton on the Internet and were gazing, speechless, at what they’d found.

  Spread across the screen, an article from Time magazine archives.

  Fanshaw versus Fanshaw, the headline read, with the subhead:

>   Dad wins custody of test tube baby, but he’s not the dad…

  “Look at that.” Ian sat down and read off the screen: “Newton Fanshaw was an early product of artificial insemination, one of the earliest. The test tube conception was successful, but the marriage was not.”

  Hy leaned over his shoulder and, a faster reader than Ian, scrolled down, summarizing.

  “His mother divorced her husband when Newton was one year old. The presiding judge, a Catholic who didn’t approve of artificial insemination, made a custody ruling against the biological mother in favour of the non-biological father.”

  “Wow. That must have caused a big fuss back then. Early fifties. Fathers almost never got custody – and non-biological fathers?”

  “It explains a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know him better than I do. You’ve had an actual conversation with him, but look at the guy. Thin, pale, bloodless, emotionless, not surprising in a person created in a test tube.”

  “It wasn’t quite that…”

  “Squeezed out like mustard from a tube then.”

  “In some cases, it might be preferable and more effective.” He grinned, and then his face took on a serious expression.

  Hy broke in before Ian could launch into a long explanation of the methodology involved in artificial insemination in the late forties and early fifties.

  “I know it’s not scientific. It’s a feeling. It may be psychological on my part. I bet it’s psychological on his, too – to know that you weren’t created by passion –”

  “Don’t forget hate, greed, lust…”

  “I know, but those are all emotions, at least. Human emotions.”

  “There’s emotion in desiring a child, seeking any way to have one. That was a pretty brave and adventurous route to take back then.”

  “Still, the child can’t feel it in his blood and in his bone.”

  “Nature or nurture? I’m inclined to think with Newton it was nurture.”

  “Maybe. Who calls their kid Newton?”

  Ian pushed the chair back and stood up. The late-day sun was streaking into the room and tipping Hy’s red curls with golden sunshine.

  “Glass of Chardonnay?”

  “Not now. Print up that info, would you? I gotta find Jamieson.”