“It’s a charter flight?”
“Billed to the client.”
“Well, hell, I’ll join you for the flight” She has had a few wines on a decidedly empty stomach. Her tears have dried. She is happy, in love, overflowing with it — there’s enough to spare for me, and she hugs me after she parks the car, hugs me again as we cinch our seat belts in the back of the four-seat aircraft.
As we take to the air I maintain a conversation of sorts, some meaningless drivel about turning another bend on life’s highway. I wear a mask of tranquillity — it hides the emptiness I feel, the yawning gulf within, the pathetic, self-pitying inner self.
Below us, a dozen container ships sit at anchor in English Bay, low, close to Plimsoll lines, awaiting their turns to disgorge their cargoes. Vancouver bustles. Its streets are clogged with cars — it is half past four, the city’s downtown is emptying. The plane sweeps low around Spanish Banks, Point Grey, Wreck Beach, and now in the distance I see the islands of the Gulf. The exile returns, world-weary, anomic.
I direct the pilot into my cove, and the plane settles into the water, and drifts to the dock while I prattle mindlessly to Annabelle about how calming it has been for me here, how joyful to return.
“Maybe I’ll bring François out here some weekend. Would that be too uncomfortable, darling? Not this summer — later, when things have settled down.”
After the divorce. After the remarriage. He is younger than Annabelle — by how much? Did I not read he is in his thirties? Well, Annabelle is only fifty-three, less the many busy years her surgeon so skilfully whittled away from beside the eyes and beneath the chin.
She joins me on the dock and presses her lips firmly to mine. I have a sense of completion with this kiss, of finality. Last wifely kiss. The kiss-off.
“Scratchy,” she says. “But I do like the beard. It makes you . . . interesting.”
A hug. A smile. A wave. A kiss blown through the cockpit window. She turns to the pilot and starts chatting with him.
I watch until the aircraft becomes a mote on the horizon.
I walk into the house. I telephone George Rimbold, a call for help.
“She’s an extremely strong woman. I think that’s what first attracted me to her. Not her physical beauty, nor her style or flair, or talent. Her strength. I still have no idea why I put up with it for so long, the unfaithfulness, the feeling of being diminished as a man. It’s almost as if I have some need to feel put down.”
George nods, listening to my logorrheic outpourings with the grave mien of the father confessor that once he was. It is midnight, and George has been steadfast through the evening. We have smoked to dangerous excess and have sampled three kinds of tea and various fruit juices, but I have beaten back the need, the compulsion; I haven’t had to summon Scotty Phillips, the island bootlegger, who lives but a telephone call away.
“My daughter, who has some training in psychology, says I’m masochistic. I’m beginning to think she’s right. To satisfy my unconscious wish to be mistreated, I attach myself to a domineering woman.”
“Blather,” says George. “Cheap pop psychology.”
“Where does this come from? I suppose some clever therapist would point to my mother. She was domineering, too. Generous, outgoing, sharp-witted, but caustic. Very hard on my father, a quiet man. I identified with him a great deal, I suppose.”
“Loved your father, did you? No wonder you’re so screwed up.” He says this dryly, with a smile.
“The beard, she said, makes me interesting. Am I so dull otherwise? I suppose I am. A rather boring person, really. I lack passion”
“You’re certainly being boring right now,” George says.
“Thank you, George.”
“I mean it. Stop putting yourself down, old son. How do you dare call yourself boring? You’re a celebrated lawyer, a winner of famous trials, a man of refinement, not some gaudy fop like this obviously mediocre conductor she’s taken up with.”
George has taken to referring to the conqueror of Annabelle’s heart in acidic tones. George is my friend. My enemy is his enemy.
“It’s different in court. I change. It is theatre. I play a role. I become the role. So powerful a role that I sometimes feel within me the strength of Hercules. I don’t know why that’s so. Then I doff my cape and resume life as the tedious, humdrum Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Who gardens, who reads poetry, who plays fine music. These are the avocations of a great and noble mind, Arthur.”
The therapy is unsubtle, ego-inflating, but it works. I am feeling much better. I am free of her, and with our final disunion may soon be free of my need for her. But why do I feel so empty?
“I think I must have fed on her strength, George, in some unhealthy, parasitic way. Weakness loves strength, I suppose. It’s a shameful thought, but I think I’m attracted to dominant women.”
“Like who else, for instance?”
Dare I admit it? But why have my thoughts so often drifted over the fence to the neighbour’s yard? There is so little I hold in common with Mrs. Blake, yet her aggressiveness, her spunk, seems to . . . excite me. How absurd.
George looks at me with a knowing smile. “How are you getting along with Margaret Blake?” He is too astute, too insightful.
I blush. “I have neither impure thoughts nor the wherewithal to do anything about them.”
“Blarney,” he snorts. “The reason you couldn’t get it up has just vanished from your life. Performance anxiety, I think it’s called. Fear of failure — compounded in your case by excessive drink. As to Margaret Blake, the best thing you could do right now to start filling the void would be to call on her. Start off by negotiating terms of peace.”
“Believe me, I’ve tried.”
As the night winds down and as I continue my recovery, our conversation moves to more neutral, less personal subjects: future fishing ventures, island gossip, my day in court.
George knows something of O’Donnell’s father, the viscount from Ulster. “Mad Dog O’Donnell, they used to call him in the old days. Commander of the Ulster Rifles. Vowed to end the Troubles and only created more.”
Viscount Caraway is a notorious right-wing curmudgeon, as orange as a tropical sunset. He makes the news from time to time, even in the far-flung colony of British Columbia, with his jeremiads against such disparate enemies as the Pope, the prime minister, and those who feed at the public trough. Perhaps it is no wonder his son seems such a troubled man.
As I walk George from the house, he says, “If it gets tough again, smoke some of this.”
He presses a small plastic bag containing some marijuana cigarettes into my hand, and he climbs into his car and disappears.
I wend my way to bed, seeking the solace of Somnus, god of sleep. Who among his nocturnal spirits will visit me tonight — the gentle Dreams or the barbarous Nightmares that lurk in the dark corners of my soul? As I descend into the silent cave of the Goddess of Darkness, she raises her whip. I am naked, hot, keen to feel the lash. Hurt me, I plead, hurt me.
Tape number seventeen. Subject, Kimberley Martin. Wednesday, the eighth ofJuly, eleven-fifteen in the morning . . . Ursula?
Yes, Dr. Kropinski.
Will you cancel my lunch? Dr. Duguid from the Forensic Foundation — would you ask her please to delay until next week? Is Kimberley Martin there? Send her in . . . Good morning, Kimberley.
Morning, doctor. And thanks.
And for what do you thank me?
Fitting me in like this.
Oh, there is no problem. How did everything go in court yesterday?
If given a choice I’d have done a month in hell. I’m exhausted. Can I take my favourite padded chair? Oh, God. Kimberley Ma
rtin, the neurotic couch potato. Give me my teething ring and my teddy bear.
It was stressful?
Yeah, but it was funny, because the defence lawyer — oh, O’Donnell has Arthur Beauchamp now.
I read this in the paper.
He has this mondo reputation, I was shaking in my socks. But he didn’t ask me one question. Except for some breezy little comment about my acting ability. At which moment I entirely disintegrated. They had to pass out umbrellas.
Why do you think that happened?
I don’t know. Pent-up anxiety. I’m sure it looked awful to everyone, as if I were guilty of something. But the worst part was just being there. On the witless stand. Raving hysterically in front of all those drooling ghouls in the gallery. About It — what a nice little neutral word for being stripped and physically trashed. I felt naked in court, like some slave being prodded onto the platform to be auctioned off.
But you got through it, yes?
Not exactly in one piece. Patricia Blueman had to collect me with a dustpan. She’s such a . . . well, she’s a mensch. Anyway, Jonathan O’Donnell just sat there looking at me through the whole thing — he has these coal-black Rasputin eyes — staring at me as if I were some kind of creature from the lost lagoon. A few times, I just
looked right back at him — he doesn’t scare me I’m babbling.
That’s fine.
I know what you’re writing. “The patient was in a somewhat manic condition, her thoughts free-flowing, though disconnected.”
How is everything else for you, Kimberley? How are your exams coming?
Constitutional law is a bitch. I’ll pass it, I think. I’ll somehow ooze my way into third year. And what else? Oh, I have a part in a new play at the Granville Island Workshop. It’s a sort of bush-league deal, experimental theatre, but it’ll be fun. Switch, it’s called. Comedy of morals. I play the dumb blonde who goes along with anything. You can tell it was written by a guy. But it’s a lead part. . . . You know, Dr. Kropinski, I almost feel guilty about winning the audition. I’m a famous rapee. I guess the theory is my name is going to sell tickets. God, do you think I’m capitalizing? Yuk. It’s so American.
I will make a point of going.
Bring your wife, I’ll put you on my freebie list.
That is very kind. How is Remy?
Oh, he’s fine. You know, I adore him, but he’s so . . . what word am I looking for? Detached? Sometimes it feels like being engaged to a fax machine. He sat with me in court through the whole morning — that was sweet of him — but I could tell he was suffering heavy work withdrawal. He’d rather have been somewhere buying up mining properties.
Has anything else been bothering you?
I had another nightmare about being attacked. A man came creeping into my bedroom, into my bed. Tell me about it.
It’s so ugly. A smelly old man with a beard. He … Oh, God. Why is this happening? It was just a dream.
Here, take a Kleenex.
Now we are in the very heart of summer, long, languid days of fattening gardens, of wild berries and dragonflies, of sunflowers following with rapturous upturned faces Apollo’s daily westward toil. Quiet days: the little frogs have croaked and croak no more, and the bedlam of songbirds has abated, though the air is rent occasionally by the loud gronks of ravens or the piercing shriek of a pileated woodpecker swooping through a clearing in the forest, a flash of punk-red hair.
In the mornings before the dew turns into mist I take my constitutional, up the hill on Potter’s Road, down a woodland path I have discovered, up behind the community church and around the bend to the general store, arriving usually as Mr. Makepeace unlocks the door. Often I tarry there over the coffee urn with friends, jesting, complaining about the government, sharing worries about the lack of rain. Wells are running dry in the hills and in Evergreen Estates.
I ask for a newspaper and occasionally receive one that is two days old. I buy groceries and stuff them in my backpack. I pick up my mail. (“Postcard here from your daughter in Paris, having a good time, says she’s heading off to Italy.”)
I take another route home. After breakfast, I toil: in my garden, in the woodshed, in the yard. I feel the fat melt away like butter in the sun. On a sweltering day in late July, I brave the ocean. Naked, I swim in the salt sea foam above Neptune’s coral caves, and emerge to dry like a seal on the rocks. I am smoking less, no cigarettes, just an occasional pipe.
I have joined a local tai chi group that meets weekly in the community hall. I have also joined a drama group, the Garibaldi Players. I continue to go to the AA meetings. I have visited our septuagenarian physician, crusty old Doc Dooley, who pronounces my heart and arteries fit and dares me to outlive him. I fish on weekends with George Rimbold. I make other new friends, fellow elopers from the city. Among them are the arty and the crafty: painters, potters, poets.
A writer of science fiction. A mad inventor. A burned-out rock guitarist. A burned-out broker. A burned-out traveller in cyberspace.
At home, I cook, I read, I darn my socks.
But is there pretence in all of this? How am I able to block out Beauchamp versus Beauchamp, soon to wend its way into the divorce courts, and the even more hideous case of Regina versus Honourable Jonathan Shaun O’Donnell?
As to the latter, quite easy. Mr. O’Donnell and Miss Martin live in another country, another planet. I stubbornly refuse to accept their existence. I intend to have my summer. As to Annabelle: yes, I still suffer bouts of self-pity and jealousy when I think of François Roehlig, my replacement, the younger, leaner model for the current year. More horsepower, faster acceleration. Something that Annabelle can drive with pride. Do I sound bitter? Arthur Beauchamp? Never. What are thirty years of a man’s life worth? A trifle in the eternal warp of time. How many of those years were happy? The first two, perhaps.
Yes, pain persists, but the wound seems clean and does not fester. I try not to pick at the scab; I have rendered myself into the care of time, misery’s healer. I suffer depressions, but occasionally feel lightheaded, as if a great weight is lifting from me, the baggage of the past.
Deborah and the two Nicks will be in Europe all summer — her husband is seeking new investments in the Old World. When my daughter phoned on the eve of their flight, I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her that the final nail has been pounded into the coffin of her parents’ marriage. Quietly, I have left the matter of its dissolution in the hands of Hubbell Meyerson. Annabelle has a lawyer, too. It is all unbearably amicable.
In the meantime, I have not got around to mending fences with Margaret Blake, though on one of my walks to the store, I encountered her in her driveway apprehending an escaping goat — and received the coldest of shoulders. Her expression read:You are a typical two-faced lawyer — I couldn’t fathom why.
But then I observe that the latest edition of the Island Echo has me misquoted: “Prominent island resident A. R. Beauchamp, Q.C., when asked about where he stands on Evergreen Estates, said he’s sympathetic.” As I recall, the word was antipathetic, but Not Now Nelson Forbish has not the keenest ear for the nuances of the English language.
But good news. On a bright afternoon near the end of the month, Stoney appears in my driveway, grinning like a chipmunk at the controls of my Phantom v. Somehow he has managed to fit all the pieces together.
“Rewired, greased, washed, and waxed, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Put it in the garage, Stoney.”
“You don’t wanna use it?”
“I would like to buy the truck.”
I feel at home in my old Dodge. I will save my Rolls for trips to town — it is part of my former life.
Ah-hah,
the absent-minded professor.
Please, Jane, that’s one of those judgmental phrases that cause people to feel oppressed. I am a temporally inconvenienced professor.
You’re in a sarcastic mood.
I’m sorry. You’re displeased with me, I don’t blame you. The reason I didn’t come last Tuesday was that I lost a day somewhere. I thought Wednesday was Tuesday. When I came by, your receptionist said you were out.
You are suffering time confusion. I ought to bill you for it. You know, Jonathan, one of the primary causes of short-term memory loss is overconsumption of alcohol.
Haven’t had a drop in two weeks. I’ve enlisted in the self-improvement army. I’m running every day.
You’re awfully sweaty.
I just did six miles. Almost killed me. But just when it hurts the worst, it . . . well, you get a kind of high.
Hmm. Be comfortable, Jonathan.
Should I assume the usual position?
I prefer my patients to stand at attention. Yes, Jonathan, sit down, lie down, relax.
Okay, I’m comfortable.
Something tells me you’re not.
How so?
You showed up on the wrong day last week. You cancelled the week before. A little avoidance problem, Jonathan? You said on the phone there’s something you wanted to tell me.
Yes. I guess I’d better do that. Get it over with.
I’m listening.
I lied to you. I did go to bed with Kimberley Martin.
You . . . How do you mean?
We performed acts of sex.
I’m sorry, I’m . . . She consented?
She? I was the seducee.
This is . . . Why am I hearing this now, after months of on-again, off-again supposed therapy based on what I took to be a truthful history of this incident, why am I . . . Why was I lied to? For God’s sake, Jonathan, my time is valuable!
Um, what can I say? I wrestled with it, Jane. Partly it was . . . I guess I didn’t want to believe it did really happen. I was sort of blocking, in denial —
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