Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “Thank you for the dance, Kimberley.” “Oh, no, Jonathan, thank you.” She doesn’t like to be called Kim, by the way. Kimberley.

  For a reason I cannot fathom, I accepted her invitation to an after-party. No, that’s not fair. There was a reason. I was having a good old-fashioned time. It was Friday night, I had a weekend to recover.

  So a throng of us went in my car. I was still sober enough to ask someone else to drive. Charles Stubb, a young Liberal with an obscene ambition — he wants to be prime minister. We were crammed four in the back seat, and I was thigh on thigh beside the Dragon Lady. I remember us both being sweaty from dancing. She began reciting lines from Saint Joan. Yes, Gowan, Kimberley is the shepherd maid of the battle of Orleans, the heretic saint. But it is I who shall be tied to the stake

  Do you know, despite everything, despite the supposed trauma of being bound and raped, she gave four performances of that play? In the middle ofJanuary at the Frederick Wood Theatre. Shaw would have been proud, he loved his plucky heroines. Gowan, if you’d been tied up, and had your loins girded with Shameless lipstick, and been buggered and raped, could you sit around and memorize all those exhortations about going into battle with God on your side?

  We went to some great shambling house in the West End where several students were jointly renting the ground floor. I think I was mostly talking to Charles, explaining how his beloved Liberal party was a collection of fuzzy ideologues in politically correct multiculturalist drag. Kimberley kept hovering. She had at least one refill. They didn’t have ginger ale, so she mixed her rye with Sprite one time, and if I’m not mistaken with lemonade a second time. We’re up against some dark forces here, Gowan. Satan rules.

  After a while I said, okay, someone drive me to my house. There was a debate about the mechanics of this, and I agreed to pay for a taxi home to whomever volunteered. Several of them offered, and ultimately five of us left in my car, Charles Stubb driving again, and a young girl Charles was with — I forget her name, Asian Canadian, first-year arts — and a notorious sluff-off by the name of Egan Chornicky — I don’t know how these people find their way into law school. He was blowing about a .30. And of course Kimberley Martin came along. The next scene plays out at my house

  Have I wronged Arthur Beauchamp in some way? We used to chum socially. He’s had dinner at my place, the very scene of the crime. He and his wife, Annabelle. Gowan, I beg, arrange for me to see him. Please.

  Annabelle gives me no warning, and I am flustered beyond words when, having driven over on the early Monday ferry, she materializes in front of my woodshed, incredibly beautiful, radiant and cheerful, carrying on as if it were only yesterday we parted. She wears a colourful décolleté sundress while I, of course, am adorned in the authentic garb of a rube, tractor cap, work boots, unshaven, unshorn, sweaty. I have been splitting wood.

  Undeterred by what she sees and smells, she kisses me full on the lips, and I let go the axe and it falls on my foot. (The blunt part, but it pains nonetheless. A pain that can be endured.)

  “Bristly. Are you growing a beard, darling?”

  “What? Oh, no, I hadn’t thought so.”

  “I think you’d look lovely in one.”

  “I’m quite discombobulated.”

  “What an awful word.”

  “I’ll clean up. I was . . . I’ll show you the garden and . . . I have a boat now. My goodness, it’s delightful to see you.”

  I lead her past my vegetable patch towards my leaning tower of Pisa. As the construction of my new veranda advances, the house seems to heave ever more to one side. Fortunately the girls from Mop’n’Chop were recently here and cleaned up the construction mess.

  Annabelle sails inside and looks about with what seems an expression of approval — Janey and Ginger swabbed the inside as well.

  I shower. I change. I make lunch. I am grateful Annabelle is in a talkative mood, for I can find nothing worthwhile to say. She is in excellent spirits, teasing me gently about my hitherto-unappreciated survival skills with axe and hoe, and kitchen stove.

  It is a perfect June day under an effulgent sun, the island wearing a fresh green dress with floral decorations, so after lunch I take Annabelle touring in the Rolls-Royce, visiting many of the charming bays and overlooks.

  My island does not receive the cynical review I had expected.

  “It seems all so calm and clean, and pretty,” she says. “Such a sleepy little island. I get so weary of Vancouver. Everything is so unnecessarily hectic. Arthur, you know, maybe I could come out here for a few weeks this summer. Maybe after Götterdämmerung gets under way.”

  “I’d love that. Come and enjoy the sunset of the gods here on Garibaldi. A spectacular performance every evening.”

  Do I mean this as devoutly as it sounds? Do I still desire the pain? There are narcotics fiercer than alcohol, more tenacious.

  I suggest a cruise over the waters next, but Annabelle is either leery of my seamanship or, as she says, prefers to exercise her legs, so our next journey leads us up an old fire road and through the forest. Annabelle, fitter than I — she has played tennis through the winter — is waiting at the bluffs at the top as I struggle around the last bend. Panting, wheezing, I light a cigarette.

  The rocks on which we stand are thick and soft with moss. Chickadees scamper among the fir and arbutus. From somewhere the perfect silence is broken by the elegiac, distant bleat of sheep. Garibaldi lies beneath us, seemingly lifeless, torpid. There is the general store and there the school and there my house, and my demesne. Sailboats struggle on the wind-calmed ocean. But above, a more skilled sailor floats on outstretched wings, a bald eagle canvassing its vast, wide world.

  Annabelle seems spellbound.

  “That’s Vancouver.” I point to the brown haze to the north. “Behind us are the Olympic Mountains.” To the south, in the State ofWashington, a towering barricade, cloud-capped. ” ‘Many-peaked Olympus, the abode of the gods, ever unchanging.’ That’s from Homer.”

  I wonder why I have such an unwavering compunction to be so patronizing and pedantic. I know she finds it tiresome. But she smiles.

  ” ‘Abode of the gods’ . . . Makes you wonder, Arthur, doesn’t it, if the things that seem important really are. Oh, God, I’m getting contemplative. It must be the clean air.”

  “You ought to come up here with an easel. You’ve always wanted to get back to the palette.”

  “You’re such a dear, Arthur. We should . . . well, I think we are getting along a bit better, aren’t we?”

  “Ah, I remember when we used to go for walks like this.”

  “Stanley Park. Prospect Point. Every Sunday. And you with your poetry. I remember thinking you were trying so hard to be romantic. In your way.”

  “In my own stuffy way, I suppose you mean.”

  “Well, you were always a little . . . not pompous. Donnish.”

  “Pompous.”

  “You don’t mean to be.” “Surely you can stay the night.”

  “No, I have to get back tonight. Dress rehearsal tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I regret that.”

  “I’m going to take along a friend.”

  From a distant copse a woodpecker shrieks and laughs at me.

  “Little Nicky. It’ll mean a day out of school, but I think we should expose him to some of the good things, don’t you?”

  I fear she sees how flustered I am.

  “It’s the last production, then I’m off to Seattle. Salomé.”

  “Oh, he may enjoy that. Suitably bloody.”

  “It’ll keep him away from the idiot box for a few hours.”

  “Have a chocolate chip cookie. I made a batch.” I have brought along a bag of them.

  “Arthur, you astonish me.”

  She munches it daintily, afraid for her figure.

  “So, Arthur, are you going to take Jon O’Donnell’s case?”

  An odd turn in the conversation — this seems to be the major topic of our times. “Of course not. Why
do you ask?”

  “Oh, I talked to Hubbell. He flew over here to try to strong-arm you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Tell him he can have his files back.”

  “Arthur, you know Jon O’Donnell.”

  “As do you.” I had given guest lectures to his classes. We had shared the odd martini. Annabelle knows him from a few dinner parties we attended — once at his house. I have nothing against him, although I remember being mildly put out by Annabelle’s tendency to act the coquette when he was about. And he seemed to be heeding her siren’s song. . . .

  Nonsense. My years with Annabelle have filled me with suspicious imaginings. He is an engaging fellow, not without wit, though gallingly sardonic when in his cups. I suspect he drinks too much: I see something darkly hidden in haunted eyes that tells me he is a prospective member of my tribe.

  “Arthur, you know he couldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Do I, indeed?”

  “Well, I know . . .”

  She hesitates, and now I am suffering a vague unease.

  “I mean — you know him as well as I do: tying a girl up, raping her — those allegations will always be a terrible slander to his reputation. He . . . called the house a couple of times, asking for you. I didn’t give him your number, because I promised you. Well, actually, I bumped into him. Downtown. We had coffee.”

  “I see.” I clear a throat that is suddenly tight. “Did he ask you to speak to me on his behalf?”

  “He … asked about you. Well, Hubbell is very insistent. He really wants you to do this one more case.”

  “Do you, as well?”

  “I . . . think you should do it.”

  Oh, for a tall glass of something cold and powerful. The juniper taste of gin is strong and needy in my nostrils. I watch below as a squadron of Mrs. Blake’s sheep trudge their weary way across the fields. They are on their way, of course, to seek breaches in my garden fence.

  I have developed an unreasoning distaste for the O’Donnell case. Wild horses.

  My friends in the next cabin said they saw a bear yesterday. I mean, Patricia, here we are looking straight down on one of the busiest port cities in the world, and we have friendly neighbourhood bears. They come out of their dens this time of year, grumpy and hungry, and head for the nearest McDonald’s. I had an awful nightmare, a big bear coming into the cabin and jumping on me in bed. Awoke screaming. That will give my shrink something to keep his mind occupied.

  Study in restful surroundings, says Dr. Kropinski, and I’m not to think about The Incident. But every time I pick up Proctor’s Real Transactions, there he is, Professor O’Donnell, my law lecher, staring up at me from the pages.

  Remy is supposed to come up for a day or two, but he’s not sure when he’ll make it. We had a bit of a skirmish after you left us, I’m afraid. Nothing heavy, just a polite exchange of words, but he thought I got a little too — loud, he called it — at dinner. Hints I can’t quite hold my booze.

  But I’ll forgive him anything. Remy’s been right there for me, one hundred per cent, through the whole trauma. He loves me to bits.

  How’s your love life? Did you do what I suggested? Give the hunk a call. Ask him out. It’s the ‘90s. Be bold. And stop calling yourself plain. You’re gorgeous. Think gorgeous. I sound like Ann Landers.

  Patricia, when I get back down the hill, let’s go out for dinner again. I won’t invite Remy and his cellphone this time, it’s like having a whole boardroom of executives join you. I’ll give you these tapes, but let’s just have a good time and not talk about the trial. And you can do another imitation of that sexist judge . . . funny name. Judge Pickles. He’s going to preside over the preliminary? Egad. Sounds like a real modern, aware, illuminated man. The pigs still run the farm.

  Back to business. All right, a bunch of us leave the dance together and I get talked into going to this afterparty. I was going to jump in a taxi, but Jonathan practically pulled me into the back seat of his Jag. I don’t mean like I was in danger or anything, Charles Stubb was driving, and he’s suitably straight and safe, and totally L7, and there was a whole mob of people packed in there with us. But you know, there’s like his arm around my shoulders and all this hot professorial breath on my neck.

  He called me Kim. I hate that.

  We went off to where these students rent a ground floor in the West End, and we sort of joked around and had a good time there. I don’t think I had much to drink, maybe one. I had rehearsals that weekend. Saint Joan. “ Who is for God and his maid? Who is for Orleans with me?” Great stuff, huh? Anyway, I didn’t want to be hung-over, and all I had was a little rye and something. . . .

  Why do I have to justify myself? Why do I have to explain I was all so sober and childlike in my innocence? Like, you know, I was wearing something very chi-chi and short. So I must have led him on. Top two buttons weren’t done up, can you forgive a man yielding to his natural urges?

  And I suppose Mr. Cleaver is going to ask why I agreed to go up to Professor O’Donnell’s for a nightcap. I don’t know. Maybe I was curious, wanted to see his place. Like, you know, why does a bachelor son of a British lord choose to live alone in a big house? Sort of odd. I suppose that’s going to make it sound like I was interested in him. . . .

  God, I’m going to be a mess up there on the witness stand. Cleaver will sense blood, my dear, and tear me to shreds before your very eyes.

  Anyway, I figured what the hell, why not. And he’d promised everyone a free taxi home, and his place was on my way, and I figured Remy was really going to be late getting back from his trip

  Why am I explaining myself? What is it, women have been conditioned since the Pleistocene Era to feel guilty about not wanting to get laid by every grunting mouth-breather who wanders into the cave? I was having a good time. That’s it. Period. Wanted to party. I don’t know, Patricia, it’s . . . life with Remy doesn’t actually swing sometimes, and we were enjoying a little time apart. . . . Apart together, I can remember us laughing. … Never mind, that’s not important.

  So it’s the dead of night as we pull up in front of this Bauhaus fascist-looking structure. Dark. Neighbours have all turned off their old Katharine Hepburn movies.

  And we go in, and . . . let me describe the place, because I wandered around a bit in it. It’s not huge huge. Sort of rectangular and Mondrianish, if you know what I mean. Split-level. Bedroom and some kind of guest room on top. A sprawling living room, and a sort of library-cum-parlour — that’s where he took us — with literally walls of books and a big fireplace and a big chesterfield and some padded chairs, and lots of little lamps. All sort of stuffy, actually — not, you know, somebody’s pad. Musty — you could smell the bachelor dust. No family heirlooms, no big, florid portraits of his father, the aristocrat — that’s what I was expecting.

  Okay, I sit on an armchair, stage left, facing Charles and Paula on the chesterfield. Jonathan draws the drapes and puts on some music — something soft and electronic — and he starts a cosy fire and brings out some five-star cognac, and some Benedictine, which I like to mix it with. I told him just a light one. He gave me this massive brandy glass with a teeny bit of liquid in the bottom.

  Egan Chornicky was wandering around — I don’t know how, he could barely stand. This doesn’t have to get out, I hope, but he was taking lots of trips to the bathroom, and I don’t think to pee, and coming back rubbing his nose. Charles and Paula were being all very twittery in the presence of the Honourable Jonathan O’Donnell. Laughing at his jokes until they could die.

  And O’Donnell was pretty loaded. Not to the extent he could ever deny he knew what he was doing, but he was being very loud and comical, and right wing. He’s really a political dinosaur, Pat. Also thinks he’s quite an intellect with his humungous library. I was sort of poking around in it, being a spy. Always felt you could tell a man through his books. He had all the correct stuff, though, even some feminist writers. De Beauvoir. Friedan. Paglia, of course, right on his wavelength. Lots of pl
ays, all of Shaw, two copies of Saint Joan.

  So somehow that inspired me to get everyone reading lines. Except Chornicky, of course, he was too swacked. I thought they could sort of help me rehearse. We really got into it — I mean, they were good. Charles was the bishop. Perfectly suited to the role. Jonathan was my friend Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, and we did another scene where he also played the inquisitor. I’m afraid I flounced about a lot, waving on the troops against the English goddamns, being all rousing and saintly. And I remember saying, “Everyone has to wear a costume,” and during a pee break I went upstairs and put on one of Jonathan’s suits . . . how embarrassing.

  So, anyway, now we get to where things get weird. I was doing a speech; it goes something like, “My voices have deceived me; only a fool will walk into a fire” — and suddenly it was as if I were hearing voices myself, strange voices, and I remember I was crying. . . .

  I wonder if he put something in my drink.

  I’m not sure if I can tell you about the end part without ralphing. The end part — maybe that’s not the expression I want to use. The private part. As my little sister says, gag me with a spoon.

  Anyway, that’s all I remember, until . . . he was on top of me . . . not on top, behind . . .

  I can’t do this, it makes me sick.

  Let’s just get together over dinner, okay, I’ll give you the whole blah. After you’ve eaten.

  Through the “Bulletin Board” column in the Echo, I am pleased to learn — and not surprised — that Garibaldi boasts its own chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Its bimonthly evening meeting at the local school is already under way when I arrive. The eyes of a dozen of my brothers and sisters turn to me as I squeeze into a seat behind a child’s desk, and I nod and smile.

  “Please carry on,” I tell the speaker, a scraggly bearded man of about fifty, spare and vigorous. His head is heavily bandaged and his arm in a sling. Yellowed fingers hold a burning cigarette.

  “Aha,” he says, “our ranks swell. Shall I begin again? My name is George and I am an alcoholic and, if I may say so, a very fine one indeed.”