Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “What have you got there?”

  I grin lamely, move towards her and lay them in her arms. “For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.”

  For a moment she looks critically at my haphazard bouquet, then reaches up and kisses me lightly on the cheek. “How lovely. “The soft bells of her voice.

  I sit next to her. A few tendrils of delicious smoke drift from the side yard, where Rimbold’s coho salmon is resting on a grill in Margaret’s brick charcoal stove.

  She stares at my flowers, suddenly thoughtful. Please, please, do not tell me that Chris used to give you flowers.

  But she says nothing. I am urged to make mindless chatter, to break this log-jam of silence. “That opening line came from Lucretius. I must admit to having practised it in front of a mirror before coming over.”

  She smiles again. “Well, it got the effect it deserves.”

  This seems ambiguous. Stuffy, Donnish Beauchamp has created a classically pompous beginning to the evening. But he cannot control his maundering tongue. “Lucretius was a great philosopher as well as a poet. He is said to have taken a love potion that made him go mad. He took his own advice: ‘Embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care.’ Committed suicide.” I am dying like Lucretius, dying standing up; the audience is restless. Old Uncle Arthur, spouting on and on.

  “Latin poetry seems awfully appropriate. Have a bloodless Caesar.”

  She stirs the contents of a pitcher with a celery stalk and pours a glass for me. I am dry of mouth, and take a big sip. “Tastes like the real thing.”

  “We’ll pretend.” She sniffs the flowers, then rises. “I’ll find these some water, and check on the fish.”

  At seven o’clock, the sun, all day confined behind a gloomy shroud, descends to the Pacific Ocean. Ducks waddle among grazing sheep. A rooster crows, confused by the twilight. This Elysian scene should relax me, but I’m too keyed up: as much by an impending major trial as by the fearsome chore of wooing Margaret. Dare I make a formal announcement tonight? Margaret, my dear, I wonder if I may be allowed to speak of certain matters of the heart. Oh, pompous Beauchamp, fan your aging embers, find some fire.

  I would give my right arm for a very dry martini. . . .

  “I guess I’ve been saving up for this,” I say apologetically, spearing the last fresh baby potato. Rimbold’s gift is nearly skeletonized. I have been utterly tedious with my vapid encomia of Margaret’s exquisite table. My recent loss of appetite, I realize, had as much to do with my own inept cooking as with being lovesick.

  Our only light comes from two bulky candles on the dining-room table. This is the way it was, Margaret tells me, in the old days, before the island had power.

  “I think of it as a more romantic time,” she says, “living without light bulbs.”

  I feel a twinge of pain. She is thinking about Chris. Over salad, Margaret tells me she has decided to announce her candidacy for island trustee this fall.

  “You’ll win in a walk. Kurt Zoller seems vulnerable.”

  “I don’t know. When Chris was trustee, there seemed so much work.”

  He is at the table, the Banquo of Garibaldi Island. “You should get all his vote. He’s well remembered.”

  “Mostly by me — I think that’s what you mean.”

  “I wish I had such happy memories.”

  Out of the blue, aghast to find myself doing so, I begin talking about my own marriage. It is a topic I’d shied away from during our innocent trysts at the fence, uncomfortable with those pathetic twin images of cuckoldom and impotence.

  But here I am spouting a self-indulgent history of innocence betrayed, of tearful confession, of breakup, of reconciliation. Of alcoholism. And Annabelle’s continuing parade of squalid affairs to which I was so willfully blind — denying the scent of other men’s salt and sex upon her.

  Margaret’s eyes are riveted to mine. Perhaps she has been waiting for me to reveal my inner turmoil, to return in kind what she has so generously given me: her own past, her own marriage.

  “For all those years I refused to accept the truth. But her affairs had been going on not so much behind my back as almost in front of my nose — they must have been notorious, the subject of locker-room ribaldry.”

  “I guess you didn’t want to know.”

  “I think I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was the cause of her philandering.”

  Margaret waits, silently demanding clarification.

  “I suppose I was no great shakes as a lover.”

  Margaret now stands up, quietly gathering the spent plates. I have a feeling she is about to announce the evening is at an end; she is repulsed by my whining confessions.

  “Let’s take coffee and dessert in the living room,” she says. “You can smoke inside if you make a fire.” She is blunt, businesslike, and I worry that I am on my way to a ruined evening. Her cat gets up from the rug, sniffs dismissively at my socks, and follows Margaret to the kitchen.

  As I walk into the living room I am confronted for an agonizing moment by the poster that reads L-o-v-E. I lower myself onto my knees as if in prayer before the old stone fireplace: no newspaper starter here except a few old Island Echoes, and it seems a desecration to burn collectors’ items. These cedar shavings and kindling will do.

  But the fire is slow to catch, and when Margaret joins me I am still bent to my task. She kneels beside me, placing a tray on the hearth with mugs of coffee and dishes of apple crumble.

  “Doesn’t want to burn,” I say. What kind of man is this? He can’t light a fire in either hearth or heart.

  “Wood’s a little damp.” She refrains from taking charge, though I suspect it is her instinct to do so. Has she set me this task as a test of manhood? She is frowning, as if in inner debate. She seems stiff with me, uncomfortable.

  “Why do you say you were no great shakes as a lover?” Bluntness reigns. I pause in my labours. I must tell her I am impotent and be done with it.

  I hedge: “Frankly, I couldn’t keep up with her in bed”

  A flame flickers, a splint of cedar catches, then dies.

  “Did you think you were at fault?”

  “I must have been.”

  “Must be godawful to be a man. All that social conditioning. Did you ever think Annabelle might have had an unhealthy appetite for sex?”

  “I don’t know what the standard of comparison is.” I add more sticks to my recalcitrant fire: Its impotence seems too apt a metaphor for my own. I laugh softly, though at myself.

  “I’d say her standards were pretty low. I’m sorry if that sounds nasty, but that’s how I feel.”

  She is giving me licence to let go, to unlock, to open the gates of anger. And a few months ago I might have done so, but I realize there is no steam left to blow; all that repressed fury with which I arrived on Garibaldi Island has somehow dissipated and, like this fire, flickers only feebly.

  “She gave me my freedom. I hope she is happy with her new lover.”

  Margaret sips her coffee, but keeps her penetrating grey eyes fixed to mine, digging in, excavating for hidden information. “It sounds as if you were too much in love with her, Arthur.”

  “Well, actually . . . no.”

  “No?”

  “I thought I was in love. It was something else. My daughter calls it masochism.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Masochism.”

  “Oh, come, Arthur. You’re so hard on yourself.” She frowns. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been in love.”

  “Not until now.”

  There is dead silence. She is looking at me with what I perceive to be utter astonishment. Good old Uncle Arthur, the wise adviser from next door, has made a social blunder of astronomic magnitude.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am in love now. With you.”

  She slowly puts down her coffee. I frantically return to my fire, busy myself by constructing a funeral pyre of cedar sticks and twigs. I apply a match. I p
ray to Vesta, life-giver, goddess of fire and the family hearth. I have just confessed my innermost feelings: Do I not have the right to a reaction?

  “I think it’s catching.”

  What is? Yes, the fire. Flames leap up.

  I find the strength to turn to her. She is sitting, hugging her knees. Why is she smiling? Does she find this so excruciatingly funny?

  She takes one of my hands. Her expression is kindly: She will let me down as gently as she can. “You’re so damn shy. That was such a lovely bouquet. A little scrambled up, though. You’ll never be a flower arranger. I wanted to laugh.”

  And she does laugh now, those tolling bells. I don’t know what to make of this laughter. I listen to the fire spit and crackle. I am confused.

  “They were lovely, really. I’m an old-fashioned romantic. Give me flowers every time.”

  She seems to be taking the situation very well, and this has taken the edge off my embarrassment.

  She continues to hold my hand. “Arthur, I don’t know what to say. I’m just not experienced at this sort of thing. I have to work it through. I mean, I like you a lot. Okay?”

  A lot. Yes, that will do.

  “Remember our stupid little trial? When you burst into laughter at the end of it, I realized there was a great, warm-hearted man hiding behind . . . well, a stuffed shirt, that’s what I thought. I’ve liked you ever since. You’ve grown on me. Not maybe to the point that, um, you’d like.” A long pause, then she utters one simple thrilling word: “Yet.”

  I am borne away on a magic carpet of hope. More wondrous yet, she kisses me lightly on the lips. “I need some time,” she says. “Boy, I’m feeling really flustered.”

  Still afloat, I am only distantly aware of a sound of a car engine, Margaret’s dog barking.

  “Oh, perfect,” Margaret says, rising, straightening her skirt.

  I sit up, blinking. Amor interruptus. I am in a fog. Maybe this is not real: I am in a scene from Switch, where people keep coming inopportunely to the door. In this case, however, the visitor is at the window. From the flickering light of the fire, I make out a pair of greedy, beady eyes behind the pane. They quickly disappear as the house lights go on, and I hear a high male voice, the cordial nasal whine of Nelson Forbish. The press has arrived to cover this evening’s events. Or he’s snooping for news not fit to print.

  I scramble to my feet too quickly, and suddenly feel quite woozy and out of breath, and I think: Oh, no, not now, not another stroke, and I reach out an arm and clutch the fireplace mantle.

  Then it passes. It wasn’t my heart, just the sudden lack of oxygen one suffers when standing too quickly.

  I’m fine. I’m fine.

  Forbish has somehow managed to invite himself in, and as I am settling into a chair by the fire, lighting my pipe, he balloons into view in the dining room, where he pauses to sniff at the leavings of our dinner as might a foraging dog.

  “We’ve just finished eating,” says Margaret, who emerges from behind him, making a face at me, miming horror. “But there’s some extra dessert. I made a panful of apple crumble.”

  “Thanks, but I just ate myself,” Forbish says. “Maybe one. To be sociable.”

  “One was what I planned to offer you, Nelson.” Forbish has doffed his porkpie, and fiddles with the rim. “Sorry to interrupt your nice evening and all, Mr. Beauchamp, but I was looking all over for you. Your phone was busy all day, so I checked your place, figured you were over here even though the lights were all off —”

  “To the point, Nelson.” I am struggling to try to remain solemn.

  “I was wondering if you could give me a lift into Vancouver tomorrow. I have to do a run for supplies.”

  “I don’t see why not. I’m taking my truck. I have recently had it made street legal. I have plenty of room.”

  “You’ll need it,” says Margaret, who is also working hard to keep a straight face. She hands Forbish his dessert on a paper plate, a hint her gift of apple crumble is intended as take-out food. But he stands his ground.

  “So what’s up with you folks?” he asks. “I see you’re having an intimate evening. Together.”

  “We’ve been having a strategy session,” I say. “Margaret will be running for trustee this fall. I am managing the campaign.”

  “Maybe I should do an interview.”

  “Some time later, Nelson, not now.”

  “Mmm, that’s good, even without ice cream. Should be an interesting trial, hey, Mr. Beauchamp?”

  “Feel free to attend, if you have the stomach for it.”

  “And he has,” Margaret says. She starts laughing, then claps a hand over her mouth.

  Poor Forbish looks hurt. “I can’t, I got too many things on my plate.” But that plate has long been empty. “That was mighty delicious apple crumble, even though you make fat jokes at my expense. Fair enough, but I’m a big eater and that makes me an expert. I’ve sat at a lot of tables on this island, and I can honestly say yours is the best.”

  “Just the best on Garibaldi, Nelson?”

  “My newspaper may want to endorse your candidacy.”

  “God, Nelson, take another piece and get out of here.”

  Forbish, giggling, plucks another handsome helping from the pan.

  Margaret remains helpless with laughter awhile after he leaves. “Yes,” she says, “one of those treasured moments.”

  We return to our fire, to our coffees and our own abandoned desserts. I natter on about my past: life before Garibaldi. I think of it now as a little life, narrow, reclusive, focused on my dreary work as defender of the base, the corrupt, the craven. I bring Margaret up to date on the O’Donnell case, a subject guaranteed to entertain her, hooked as she is on this opera levant. She peppers me with questions — she would love to take some of it in, but she has her animals, and the fall fair is next weekend; blue ribbons are to be won.

  We talk into the night. Candles gutter out. Nighthawks bleat and owls coo. I remind her I must borrow her alarm clock — I must be up by seven or so. She makes more coffee. She orders up some poetry. I recite a Shakespeare sonnet. She says she loves my voice; it must work wonders in the courtroom. Courtroom? What courtroom? The courts seem as remote as the Kalahari Desert.

  In sweet sorrow we finally part — at the unheard-of hour of three o’clock in the morning. She bestows another kiss, more lingering than the first.

  I return to my house still savouring the warm softness of those lips. Yet, she said. She’s not ready. Yet.

  In bed, I toss for another hour: Caffeine and love’s adrenalin combine to keep sleep at bay. When it comes, my dreams again lack the customary motif of shame and chains, and nakedness. Instead, an absurd panto featuring our hero struggling through a desert of insecurity and doubt towards an ever-receding Margaret Blake. But as she beckons, an obelisk rises from the sands, an artifact from a civilization long thought dead.

  Nicholas Braid’s upwardly mobile family has recently moved to a high-mortgage zone in West Point Grey: stately houses, sedate, tree-lined streets, tranquil but for the unrelenting growl of mowers, weed trimmers, and hedge clippers. Why do men pause at these tasks to stare as I drive by? Why do mothers call their children into the house? One would think they had never before seen come rattling down their street a purple, rusting 1969 Dodge pickup with the passenger door held on by a rope and bearing a bearded hayseed and his elephantine sidekick, the voyeur Nelson Forbish in a food-stained porkpie hat. Somehow — the mechanics of this remain confusing to me — he has not only persuaded me to lend him the truck for his return to the island but has also cadged an invitation for lunch at my daughter’s. Her response when informed by telephone: “Oh, we can handle one of your island characters for an afternoon.”

  As we pull into the driveway, Nicholas strides out to greet me, but stalls as he takes the measure of Forbish wiggling from the truck. Yes, here to break bread among the Braids is one of those very Garibaldi yokels Nicholas counselled me to beware.

  He brings
his son forward, but slightly shelters him. “Another Nick. Say hello to Mr. Forbish. Arthur, I have some of that non-alcohol beer you like. The back terrace, gentlemen? Deborah made some appetizers.”

  One would expect the word “appetizers” to send Forbish rocketing to the back terrace, but he stays behind with Nicky.

  “And how are the markets, Nicholas?”

  “Bullish. Made the right guesses, I think. Pulled back from the Brown Group just in time. Heard about their little crisis, Arthur? Down in Guyana. Whole mining operation shut down. Cyanide spill. Got into a river. All the piranhas have gone belly up. Looking at a fifty-million-dollar clean-up bill. A certain witness for the prosecution isn’t going to be in a good mood.”

  Deborah, presiding over her canapés, squeals when she sees me. “My God! You look like Robinson Crusoe on a bad hair day.”

  “Wait’ll you see Man Friday,” says Nick.

  “Jeans, work shirt, those ugly yellow suspenders. You’d better get a haircut.”

  “Ah, well, all my regalia is at the office. I have an appointment with Roberto tomorrow at nine. One is not to worry.”

  “Your trial starts at ten.”

  “Oh, nothing will happen without me. The judge is a patient man and a friend.”

  But is there not some fear that Wally Sprogue, with his newly trained sensitivity to women, will bend over backwards to the female complainant? (The trial has switched on in my mind. It has been doing this all day, flickering like a badly connected light.)

  While Nicholas goes off to tend to his other guest, my daughter draws me onto a sunny patch of lawn to make closer physical inspection. “Actually, you look great, Dad. Trimmed right down.”

  I beam. “Observe.” I demonstrate Snake Creeps Down, the latest tai chi movement I have mastered. “The mind and body are one, and I am at peace. I’m not the man I used to be.”

  Deborah looks at me uncertainly.

  As I pull my pipe and tobacco from a jacket pocket, the little plastic bag with marijuana cigarettes slips out, too, and I barely catch it. I had forgotten it was there — Margaret had returned it last night.