Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  A brilliant aperçu from someone who knows nothing of my relationship with Annabelle. I cannot look at her squarely, and play with my coffee spoon. Clearly, she notices my agitation, and doubtless adds a mental paragraph to her file on me.

  “Actually, bondage can be a way of dealing with male impotency.”

  I take too large a gulp of coffee and feel it sear my throat. Her bright blue eyes are fixed on mine, which are veiled and guilty.

  “Our culture is hard on men: all the demands — assertion, aggression, control. Can’t blame a guy if he just wants out. Easier on him if his partner takes full responsibility. Tie me up. Have your will with me. Excite me. I’ve had a hard day at the office. Okay, so, Jonathan grew up in an old, old culture — he was trained from early on in the chauvinistic arts. He tries, but he’s trapped within his father. Which brings me to a more clinical perspective. We’re getting to the nitty-gritty here: the eroticizing of childhood pain. A traumatic event in childhood can trigger B and D behaviour patterns. Or general day-to-day abuse by a parent can accumulate and bring about an adaptive response. Kids escape from physical pain by romantic daydreaming. Sexual imagery. Masturbation. When you eroticize your suffering it sort of imprints”

  We are running out of time: Court sits in fifteen minutes. She sees me check my watch, and speaks more rapidly, urgently.

  “Jonathan’s father regularly beat him until he was nearly ten — that’s when his mother brought him to Canada. Jonathan denies this was abuse — just strict British discipline. Anyway, there were other processes going on. A father who couldn’t express love. Just tons of ambivalence towards the great Lord Caraway. An older, favoured brother. A great deal of rebellion on the younger sibling’s part, which manifested itself in attention-seeking behaviour: mostly truancy. If Daddy continues to ignore me, I’ll be bad and he’ll whip me — and they’d finally interact and little Jonnie would get the attention he sought, his substitute for love. He received one particularly harsh whaling after he walked into his parents’ bedroom and found them making love. So you have a pretty fair picture.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of someone who understands his problem better now, and wants to deal with it and can deal with it.”

  “We must go.”

  “Here, take this file.” I slip it into my briefcase. “He wants to take the witness stand, Arthur. He needs to. He wants to unload. Everything.”

  “Let’s talk about it on the way.”

  I rise. She takes my hand, stilling me.

  “He has to, Arthur. He needs to live with himself.”

  “But does he need to live in a ten-by-ten cell? There are a dozen reasons to keep him off the stand, not the least of which is an annoying flaw in him that your acute mind must have observed: He handles truth poorly.”

  “He didn’t rape her.”

  “But I assume he told you he tied Kimberley up.”

  “It was play.”

  “And do you believe that?”

  “I do. We had a powerful session on Sunday. He’s gone through a deep personal epiphany, Arthur.”

  As I usher Jane into court, I realize we have far from finished our conversation, and I am even further from formulating new strategies. I must buy time. The defence must regroup, reorganize, rethink its handling of Kimberley Martin. “You look like doom, “Augustina says as I join her at counsel table.

  “Jonathan is consumed by a compulsion to bare all in an orgy of truth-telling.” I hear Margaret taunting me: But isn’t that what the jury should hear — the truth?

  I have no time to elucidate, for Hedy Jackson-Blyth is leading in the jury — she has the intrepid look of a firm believer, one whose mind will not be altered.

  His lordship takes his seat at the bench, well recovered now, but looking remarkably like a recalcitrant child expecting to be sent to his room, still smarting with embarrassment over the fool’s role he played two nights ago. Hopefully, he will be eager to return to the great one’s good books and not try to cross my path today.

  “Ms. Foreperson, members of the jury, good morning.” He nods at them in greeting, then turns to counsel and says with what seems forced cheer, “Well, what do we have on the menu? I don’t think Mr. Beauchamp is finished with the complainant.”

  “Yes, but Dr. Sanchez is still here,” says Patricia. “I think she’s in a hurry to get back to the hospital.”

  Augustina will cross-examine her; I am anxious to use the time to read Jane’s interview transcripts. “No problem,” I say. “Let us hear from the good doctor.”

  Wally smiles sunnily upon me: he has forgiven the past. “That’s white of you, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  A long moment occurs while I await the redness, the sputter, the realization he has spoken with great linguistic imprudence. But he seems blissfully unaware of his clanger and fails to observe Mrs. Nevers, the one black person on the jury, looking at him in shock. Nor can he conceive why Patricia is staring dumbly at him.

  “Well? Let’s get the show on the road, Ms. Blueman.”

  I have no time to further relish this malapropos moment, and listen with only half an ear to the evidence of the pathologist, a plump, grey-haired Salvadoran refugee, as I pore through Jane Dix’s portfolio of pain.

  While I read the underlined selections from Jonathan’s interviews, Dr. Sanchez’s words and phrases float by, just within my aural range: abrasion, haematoma, reddened areas, chafed epidermal tissue.

  The condensed transcripts give a graphic history of the conquest of Jonathan’s inner self, his gradual loss of defences, the bludgeoning of his walls, the capture of the helpless survivor within. I break away from this as Augustina begins her cross of Dr. Sanchez: it is a skilful bandaging act, minimizing the bruising, hinting at a possible source in drunken sexual horseplay.

  But some jurors are frowning. Too much is being asked of them. Wally remains outside the arena, though making a great show of his attentiveness.

  “Dr. Sanchez, you took a swab from deep within her vagina?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you searched microscopically for sperm?” “For a long time, yes.”

  “And what did the absence of sperm tell you?”

  “That she had not had intercourse with ejaculation for at least the last twenty-four hours — unless an impervious prophylactic device had been employed.”

  “By that you mean a condom.”

  “Yes.”

  “Had the complainant taken a douche a few hours earlier, would that in any way alter your opinion?”

  “No, Miss Sage. I would still have expected to find motile sperm.”

  I return to the transcripts, to the disassembling of O’Donnell, rebel son of the tyrant Viscount Caraway. Jane has excerpted dozens of pages from her final interview with Jonathan — only last Sunday. The final uncut version of the truth. I am struck by a phrase: A stolen kiss, the slightest touch of lip on lip, that was my crime.

  I read for several minutes until Dr. Sanchez leaves the stand. “That’s the final witness, m’lord,” says Patricia. “But I expect my learned friend has more questions of Kimberley Martin.”

  “We’ll break now,” says Wally. “Ten minutes.”

  The room clears. “Very nice work with the pathologist, Augustina. Excuse me for a few minutes.”

  She watches me, puzzled, as I reach into her briefcase and draw out the paperback reprint of Saint Joan. I open it to the lipstick smudge. I stare at it, a blood-red blot upon the scene in which Joan revokes her recantation and is sentenced to burn. The author instructs: The glow and flicker of fire can now be seen reddening the May daylight.

  I turn quickly back to Jane’s final interview.

  There’s just a whole load of stuff she just doesn’t remember.

  What do you mean?

  Or for some reason remembers it differently from me.

  Why do you want to give her that out?

  But why doesn’t she remember?

  Yes, Kimberley, why? I watch her bend to Dr.
Benjamin Kropinski in whispered consultation. Jonathan is also looking upon her, with an expression of deep melancholy.

  I return to my reading, calling upon the counsel of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, for the solution to Jonathan, to Kimberley, for a means to storm the gates of Ilium and bring home victory’s booty.

  Upon the jury’s return, I rise with a false show of enthusiasm, shamming an eagerness to continue my cross of the complainant. Kimberley wins an encouraging nod from Dr. Kropinski, then takes several long-legged strides to the witness box. I am somewhat taken aback at her choice of attire this morning: a vermilion dress too tightly revealing, too daring for this solemn occasion; a belted waist, a callipygian show of rump. Perhaps she intends to continue her seduction of Walter Sprogue. He nods at her; they exchange smiles. The maid of Orleans has him in the sight of her crossbow.

  “I’m sorry we’ve delayed you again, Miss Martin,” I say.

  “That’s fine.” She shakes her curls, leans not back but forward: the confident witness.

  “We’re all trying to figure out what went on during the small hours of November twenty-eighth, so I’m just going to bandy a few ideas about.”

  “Whatever. Sure.”

  ” ‘He’s going to kill me.’ There’s no doubt you spoke those words, Miss Martin, but I’m going to ask you to think about this and be fair. In truth, you don’t feel your life was threatened?”

  She ponders her answer. “No, I guess not. When he was filling the bathtub, I had this flash I might be drowned or something. But it was just a panic thing.”

  “It’s a big Jacuzzi bathtub, isn’t it? You looked at it?”

  “Earlier, yes.”

  “Big enough for two.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “You don’t recall Professor O’Donnell inviting you to join him in it?”

  “I do not.” Said firmly.

  “Though he did say something at the time.”

  The witness pauses. “I didn’t really catch it.”

  “You’ve told us your wrists were bound together — with a bathrobe cord?”

  “I remember it felt silky.”

  “And your ankles were tied to bedposts?”

  “Yes. I don’t know with what. I think he used a couple of his ties.”

  “You have no memory of that.”

  “No.”

  “Nor of undressing a second time.”

  “No.”

  “Nor of hanging up your undergarments.”

  “No.”

  “Nor of making love.”

  “Not in the usual sense, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  “You have no memory of a condom.”

  “None.”

  “No memory of being tied up.”

  “No.”

  “If that happened, it didn’t awake you.”

  “No. But it must have happened.”

  “No memory of being slapped or spanked?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Surely that would have awakened you had it occurred?”

  “I think so.”

  Fine. A good answer. We are getting along like a Sunday drive. Do I dare chance a tricky detour down the dark, twisted valley of kink? Do I have a choice?

  “You say you awoke as the accused was behind you, raising your hips, and entering you.”

  “Then trying to sodomize me.”

  “You screamed, you say.”

  “I screamed and twisted away.”

  “Do you remember seeing an empty bottle of wine near the bed?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t recall drinking wine between acts of love?”

  “Mr. Beauchamp, I don’t think it’s possible either to drink wine or make love when you’re unconscious.”

  “The bindings that you can’t describe — they don’t appear to have been tied very tightly.”

  “I had to struggle quite a bit. I mean, I was really frantic, twisting, and pulling at these things with my teeth. And something was really chafing my ankle. It was like going through a living nightmare.”

  “A nightmare?”

  “A nightmare.”

  I know something about nightmares. What incubi haunted this fair young woman’s sleep? Suddenly I feel light-headed, a brief trance of revelation, an afflatus of truth, my own epiphany. I know I will take that dangerous detour.

  She is looking apprehensively at me, waiting.

  “You’ve had nightmares before.”

  “Bad ones, yes.”

  “For which you’ve received therapy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “From your psychiatrist — who is here in court.”

  “Dr. Kropinski. He helped me remember . . . an episode.”

  Have you ever been sexually assaulted before? To that question on the polygraph she had answered, “Never,” though the graph seemed to contradict her. A stress anomaly, said the examiner.

  “He helped you remember this only recently?”

  “Yes. Last weekend.”

  My voice softens. “Forgive me, Miss Martin, I don’t want to aggravate old wounds, but by any chance did that episode have to do with your being attacked by a man when you were younger?”

  She nods. The answer doesn’t record, but that is enough. The defence can endure the sympathy this must earn her. “How did Dr. Kropinski help you bring this back?”

  “Hypnosis. He made me relive it.”

  “You were amnesic?”

  “Yes.”

  Wally’s eyes are laden with concern. Do I want to go further with this? Amnesia . . . I pause a long while, thinking. “Bear with me, Miss Martin. I’m sure this is difficult. But how old were you when you faced this ordeal?”

  “Eight. And I didn’t quite face it, Mr. Beauchamp.” She is unblinking, head thrust high, brave and tough beyond measure. But I feel all her masked pain.

  “He came at you from behind, I take it.”

  “I was sodomized.”

  I pause. I reflect. I look at Dr. Kropinski in the gallery. Our eyes meet. Together, we understand. Now I must take that irreversible path. I walk over to the exhibit table. In a plastic envelope, the tube of Shameless lipstick. In another, her heavy gold pendant. “You wore this that whole night?”

  “The cross? Yes.”

  “Might not its blunt points have bruised your breasts?”

  “I’m not sure how.”

  “In the throes of lovemaking perhaps? With his body pressed against yours?”

  “Really, Mr. Beauchamp —” Patricia says.

  “You’re assuming a scenario the witness doesn’t admit to,” Wally says. He has deserted his Commander again, his eyes still hot on the witness.

  “Quite so,” I say amiably. “Quite so. Miss Martin, if indeed you were struggling with bonds of some kind, frantically twisting and pulling as you say, bruising to wrists and ankles would likely then occur?” Audentes fortuna iuvat, Virgil wrote. Fortune favours the daring.

  After a long moment, she says, “Possibly.”

  “Let’s assume your ankles were fastened to bedposts with neckties. Might that chafing you suffered to your ankle be a result of something metallic? A tie clip or stud?”

  She pauses, thinking. “Maybe . . .”

  “Miss Martin, before you blanked out, what scene of Saint Joan were you and your friends performing?”

  “The last scene. The inquisition. Up to the point Joan confessed.”

  “During this scene her ankles were chained?”

  “Um, yes. We used shackles in the play.”

  “And were her hands bound, too?”

  “I . . . yes. A loose chain.”

  “Yes. And after she confesses, she recants. An angry clamour ensues among her accusers. She is accused of being of the devil, a member of Satan.”

  “Yes.”

  “She is called a wicked girl.”

  “I believe so.”

  “Not a naughty girl — a wicked girl.”

  “Well, I see you have the play.”
/>
  It is before me, open to the smudge. I carry it to the witness stand and lay it in front of her.

  “This is what you were reading from that night?”

  “Probably. If you got it from his library. I didn’t read from it, though. I knew the lines.”

  “Ah, but there’s a red smudge here on page eighty-nine — do you see that?”

  I lift it high so the jury can see.

  “A blot of Shameless lipstick, Miss Martin?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “Should we have it tested?”

  “It looks like the same shade.”

  Patricia intercedes. “M’lord, there’s no proof about where this book came from, who handled it —”

  Wally, deeply engrossed now, cuts her off summarily. “Overruled.”

  “And how do you think it got on the page?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You hadn’t quite got to this part in the play when your unconscious mind took over, had you?” “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you remember this book being on the bed?”

  A long pause. “I’m not sure. Was it there? I … gosh, I …”

  “Yes?”

  “No, it’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “I . . . I just thought I had a brief glimmer.” She frowns, struggling with some faint image, buried deep in memory. “No, I don’t remember.”

  “Miss Martin, did not the play continue after the other students had left?”

  “I’m sorry. What are you saying?”

  I take a deep breath. I am beyond cross-examination: this is Jonathan’s truth, the reckless defence I am bound to now. “Miss Martin, I’m saying the play continued. I’m saying it continued in bed, as you drank wine and made love. I’m saying the cross you wore around your neck was the cross you clutched as the flames leaped up: the flames that he and you replicated upon your nether regions with lipstick. I’m saying the bed to which you were bound was your pyre, and the fire that consumed you was the fire of passion”

  My speech echoes, fades into an eerie stillness. Augustina’s eyes bug in astonishment at my sudden tactical veer.

  “Prove it,” Kimberley says, a flat, blunt challenge.

  I look over at Dr. Kropinski, who seems intensely engaged in our dialogue. I look for help at Augustina, Jonathan, Jane Dix. But the only advice I hear is from the dulcet coaxing voice of Margaret Blake. But isn’t that what the jury should hear — the truth?