Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  Dr. Kropinski says, “Excuse me for a second, my dear,” then approaches me in whispered conference.

  “This is, I fear, unusual. She becomes her former self with a vivid personal reliving one rarely sees. But her discourse is scattered. I think it is the setting, too many people — she senses their energy; it confuses her. Do I carry on, yes?”

  “Your patient is not in harm?”

  “I think she is strong enough for this.”

  “Please proceed.”

  But a gremlin of worry is teasing me. What if she is affecting this garrulous hypnotic state? Is this talented female lead, with all her vivid reliving, seeking to salvage honour and marriage, seizing on this chance to make final credible proof of her complaint? Has she mentally armed herself against falling under the hypnotizer’s spell in a ruse to seduce Ms. Foreperson and her crew with a siren’s song?

  And in her gusto to take up my challenge to restore her memory is she also beguiling me? The Commander, unlike Ulysses, is not tied to the mast as he seeks passage between the rocks of doom. Is it gullible Beauchamp who has been mesmerized today? But surely my fears are telling me false. I have never encountered a witness so open and gregarious, so generous with her feelings. . . .

  But now a change comes over her, a sadness. Her eyes close; her voice begins to falter.

  “You said they wouldn’t torture me . . . you lied. . . .” A long silence follows. A strangled cough from a juror, then the court is silent as death.

  “Where are you now, dear?”

  “At his house . . . I think.”

  “Who said they wouldn’t torture you?”

  “The holy church . . .” She opens her eyes wide, and suddenly her contralto becomes a child soprano, stubborn, frightened. “I won’t go to Sunday school. Please don’t make me. I’m a good girl, Mother, I’m a good girl.”

  Dr. Kropinski tries to get her attention. “Kimberley —”

  But she is jumping around, lost in a childhood time warp. “I just wanna see the bunnies. Please, don’t. “The pleading of a terrified girl. “Don’t, oh, please, please. That hurts! Help me! Oh, help me!”

  “Kimberley, you are with me. You are a woman of twenty-three. You are fine now.” I sense her immediate relief at hearing her therapist’s voice. She relaxes, offers a weak smile.

  “You are fine?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  I can’t bear to look at the jury, to assess their reaction. My eyes are glued to the witness. Is this an act? It cannot be. I dare not believe she could effect such brilliant disguise. If so, I will prostrate myself at her feet in admiration.

  “Come back with me to Jonathan’s house. Did you fall asleep?”

  “I think I did.”

  “What is happening when you wake up?”

  Now her eyes close again, and her deeper woman’s voice interrupts. “I’m on his bed ” Suddenly she is wailing, “I’m tied up! He’s hurting me! Blood! Blood! I’m bleeding!” She is struggling in her chair, shaking, now working feverishly with invisible bonds. “He’s going to drown me!” She begins to heave herself from the chair and then abruptly stops, suspends herself, seems to float, then slowly subsides back, breathing heavily, staring into space. Dr. Kropinski looks quickly at me, with concern, as a deep silence falls heavy upon the room, time slowly flowing, Kimberley breathing more gently now.

  “Where are you?” asks the doctor.

  “I am in the courtroom,” she says dully. “I want to end this now. Please.”

  Dr. Kropinski looks at Wally, who nods, giving assent. I am fearful of objecting, of making some hazardous intrusion into her trance, but I want to cry out: No, no, we must not end this. What have we accomplished? An entire room of memories remains unfurnished.

  “I will count to three, yes —”

  I hear my voice, low, urgent: “Not yet. Take her back. Back to Jonathan’s parlour.”

  Though her eyes are open now, they are looking only at Dr. Kropinski. “I don’t want to go back . . . I don’t want to know.”

  Wally appears about to intervene, and I am half on my feet, palms flat on the table. “She needs to know,” I say.

  The doctor raises a hand to still me. “Do you not want to remember, Kimberley?” he asks her.

  She shakes her head in sadness.

  Dr. Kropinski sighs. Clearly, he now intends to bring her out of her fugue state.

  I speak to her directly now. “Be brave, Kimberley. Remember, you are Saint Joan.”

  Unexpectedly, she responds with a chipper voice. “I am, you know. I feel like Joan sometimes. Leader of men.” She laughs. “Poor things, bewildered by a woman. Jonathan, too, he keeps looking funny at me, like he doesn’t understand. . . . God, when are those characters going to leave? “

  Dr. Kropinski seems encouraged to proceed. “Why do you want them to leave?”

  “I just want to be alone with him, just for a minute….we wouldn’t actually, I wouldn’t stay long. . . .” Her voice grows weary.

  “Kimberley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t sleep. You are on a sofa. Tell me what is happening before you fall asleep.”

  Kimberley closes her eyes and frowns in concentration. “Do I sleep?” she says softly. “I don’t think so . . . I hear voices. They are whispering to me: Stay, fly away, stay, fly away. Two minutes alone with him . . . we’ll just talk. That’s time enough, that’s an eternity. A never-to-be-repeated kiss at the door, telling him that I . . . so he will know what might have been. They are going, goodbye, goodbye, the taxi is here. Go with them. Fly away, fly away. I . . . Jonathan . . .” And abruptly her memories short-circuit again, and she wails, “He’s gonna kill Mummy and Daddy, Dr. Kropinski!”

  In despair, I fully expect he will now free her from her transfixed state — she is in much difficulty again, crying. But I am startled by a curt change in this sage healer’s bedside manner. He seems determined now to break through the barriers that block her memory, speaks as to a fussing child. “Stop crying. Be strong. You are a healthy, vigorous woman. What happens now as the others leave Jonathan’s house?”

  A silence. Then in a husky voice, Kimberley says, “I know you are there, Jonathan. You think I am asleep, but I can smell you, I can hear you breathing.” Now she whimpers, “Don’t . . . oh, don’t . . . Please.”

  Are her sparks about to jump the gap again? Dr. Kropinski has clearly decided he cannot leave her in trauma’s limbo and orders, “Stay with Jonathan! What is he doing?”

  “Please, I can’t . . .”

  Dr. Kropinski’s tone is flat and insistent. “What does Jonathan do to you, Kimberley?”

  “Fly away, fly away,” she whispers.

  “Kimberley, please —”

  Plaintively, “I can’t remember!”

  A shocked stillness. Then a voice from behind me, Jonathan’s, rasping and choked. “I kiss you, Kimberley. I kiss your lips.”

  The courtroom, silent until this moment, shuffles with whisper and movement.

  Kimberley’s eyes grow wide in astonishment. “Yes. Yes. Jonathan . . .” Her eyes close again, tight. “You kiss me . . . yes, a kiss, and a kiss again, and now our night can never end, we have it forever. Jonathan, kiss me, kiss me.” She hugs her arms to her chest. “God, I want you, I want you. Oh, damn, I want you.”

  Augustina whispers, “Timber.” Finally I dare a glance at the jury. They are riveted, their mouths gaping. Wally, too, is welded to his chair.

  “Touch me, touch me . . . Stop. No, don’t stop. Oh, God. Stop. Don’t. Not yet.” Now a playful tone: “Bad timing, Jonathan. The end of November is the middle of the month.” She giggles — then a sudden hot peal of laughter as she mimes undressing. “This stupid suit. Where did you get this tie anyway? I’m not going to make it up those stairs, I can hardly walk. Oh, kiss me first.” Huskier: “Oh, that feels

  If Dr. Kropinski can’t stem the flow of this erotic haemorrhag-ing, he will vault beyond it. “Kimberley, you are upstairs in the bedroom
now. You have had sex, yes? Next, what is happening?”

  She jumps ahead and pours forth a gallimaufry of naked revelry and Shavian theatre: “You said you wouldn’t torture me! You said . . . Oh, God, Jonathan, I think this is almost too weird. No, do it. Tie me to the stake. ‘Light your fire: do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole?’ Light my fire. Your line, and pass the wine. ‘Perpetual imprisonment! Am I not to be set free?’ Ouch, Jonathan, there’s something scraping . . . Softer, softer, that’s better. Oh, God, Jonathan, what are you . . . Oh, God, don’t. Not with the mouth. That’s not fair, I can’t move, I can’t I can’t

  The psychiatrist attempts to interrupt, but Kimberley’s torrid stream of consciousness will not be dammed. “Jonathan, I can’t hold on. Come inside me. Yes, you can. Oh, please, don’t. Oh, my God! Stop! Oh, Jonathan!”

  “You must return to the courtroom, Kimberley.”

  Perhaps she doesn’t hear him, so lost in bliss is she, writhing, her hips moving with sensuous rhythm, her legs splayed apart. Dr. Kropinski rises hurriedly from his chair and moves to her.

  “Kimberley . . .”

  “Oh, please help me, God! Yes, yes, there, there! Oh, yes. Right there! Oh, God, yes!” An exuberant scream of fulfilment.

  “Kimberley, please.” He is gently shaking her by the shoulder.

  She sighs deeply. “Wow.”

  “You’re back in the courtroom with me. Do you understand?”

  “Sure.” She giggles. “He looked so funny, Dr. Kropinski. He had lipstick all over his face. I laughed and laughed. And you know what? He turned me around on my tummy and spanked me.” She emits another gay peal; then, as if disappointed that her merriment has been met with silence, frowns and shrugs. “I guess you had to be there.”

  “You will awake. At the count of three you will awake.”

  She sighs. “Will I remember?”

  “You will remember.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “One, two, three.”

  When she comes to, she is clearly puzzled for a moment. Then her face expands in surprise, eyes enlarging, mouth opened in a silent gasp, and she brings both hands to her mouth, covering it, then her entire face. Fingers part, and she peeks between them, at Patricia.

  “Gag me,” she says.

  She flashes a quick look at Jonathan as a muted shade of Shameless red continues to rise up her throat and cheeks.

  The lights go on. Wally Sprogue, flushed, too, a sheen of sweat upon his forehead, adjourns court breathlessly. Most of the jurors seem shell-shocked as they retreat from their bunker, but the doughty Hedy Jackson-Blyth casts an accusing look at me, as if I have pulled off some unworthy stunt, destroying a young woman for the sake of a mere acquittal.

  Kimberley is now being led out by Dr. Kropinski, a protective arm around her shoulders. One of her hands is still clasped over her eyes, but with the other she pulls from an open handbag a large blue handkerchief — her gift from Jonathan — and veils her face with it. Jonathan is looking at her with immense solemnity and awe.

  The audience files out, stupefied, silent. Beside me, Augustina is trying to hide a secret smile as she studies Jonathan, who is still dazedly staring at the emptying court.

  Patricia shakes my hand. “Win some, lose some. You were brilliant, of course, you son of a bitch.”

  “Nonsense. You were much the sharper of us. Managed to fumble my way through it, that’s all.”

  “I’ll enter a stay.”

  “If you’d be so kind, may we have a formal verdict from the jury?”

  “You’re entitled to that. Help me drown my sorrows in the El Beau Room?”

  “I’m sorry, I may have to run for the ferry.”

  All but a few of the audience have left — a young man remains, eyes closed, head lolling, an accidental victim of Dr. Kropinski. We watch as SheriffWillit shakes him awake.

  Jonathan hugs Jane Dix, then offers his hand to me.

  “Arthur, I can’t tell you. . . .” He is lost for words. “I’ll talk to you later, I’m numb. “What is this curious, distant glitter in his eyes? Not relief, not joy . . . something more potent. He blinks damply, parts hurriedly from me, and races from court, deserting Jane, who looks bewildered at this sudden retreat. Too much manly pride to permit a show of tears?

  “Judge would like to see counsel,” says the clerk.

  The courtroom door opens again, and here comes a beaming Gowan Cleaver, hand outstretched.

  “I’ll meet you in chambers,” says Augustina, and she beats a hasty retreat, leaving me to deal with the miscreant. Gowan heartily grasps my hand.

  “So I hear O’Donnell gives great head. Everyone in the building is talking about it. Fantastic coup, Arthur.”

  “Finished your argument, Gowan?”

  “Just.”

  “Then do me a favour.”

  “Yours is but to ask.”

  “I’d like you to run down to the nearest florist and buy five dozen roses for Augustina Sage.”

  “Arthur, that’s asking a bit much. Christ, we can get one of the students . . .”

  I scribble a note on the back of a business card, and hand it to him. “We’ll be in Wally’s chambers. You may leave them with his clerk.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about that screw-up “

  I walk off. This minor chore seems an insufficient purgatory, but Gowan has found me in a generous mood.

  A boisterous Wally brings a bottle of single malt from his bar, offers rounds to the non-teetotallers, a more-than-generous dollop for himself.

  “Your chap likes to spice it up with a little kink, I gather. A spanking good time, eh? Yes, I figured it out almost from the beginning. Obvious as a billboard that she never really blacked out on that couch. No, she fell asleep later, on the bed, during a pause in their games. Freaked out when she was jumped from behind, brought the whole childhood trauma back. Of course Beauchamp had to make a big production of it. Overdid things a bit, I thought; I might have handled it another way, but what the hell.”

  Comfortable, slouched in a chair, I refuse to be baited by Wally in his effort to sand the gloss from my victory. “I’ve underestimated you, Wally. You saw through our little scheme.”

  Augustina shrugs helplessly in agreement.

  “I know you only too well, Beauchamp. So what’s the right way to end this?”

  “May I suggest you direct the jury to acquit.”

  “Fair enough.”

  A directed acquittal — the remedy de rigueur when the case blows up in Her Majesty’s face — will be bloodless and quick. No speeches, no laborious lectures on the law, no deliberation, no choice, no delay. I have a five o’clock ferry.

  After we work out the mechanics of this, Patricia gulps down her whisky. “I’m going to tend to Kimberley.”

  Gundar joins in the escape, but Wally seems in no hurry to dismiss Augustina and me and tops up her glass. “Must be distracting, Beauchamp, having such an attractive young woman at your side all week. I’d find it damn hard to keep my mind on business. Not that appearance makes a difference, of course. Inappropriate to judge people by their looks. Kimberley Martin, for instance, a bit of a fluff-head, don’t you think? Her boyfriend’s a handsome chap, but essentially a prick. I’d tell your client to take a long holiday, Beau-champ. Remy doesn’t seem the forgiving type.”

  I rise. “Time presses, Wally. I must get ready to go. “The Queen of Prince George leaves in an hour and a half. I doubt that I will find a charter on a long weekend.

  “Returning to your alternative lifestyle, eh, Beauchamp? My guess is we’ll see you back here when the novelty wanes.”

  When Augustina also seeks to take her leave, Wally waves her over to her seat. “Stay, stay. Don’t fly away. I was going to take you out for a drink, Beauchamp, but I guess I’ll just have to make do with your junior.”

  Augustina tries to wiggle out of this. “Gee, Wally, I’d like to, but …” A furtive glance at me; she’s trying to devise a credible e
xcuse.

  But just then the clerk walks in, almost buried in roses of a myriad hues. “For you, Miss Sage. They were just delivered.”

  Augustina gapes at them, enfolds them in her arms. “Who the hell?” She finds my business card, reads the flipside aloud: “‘Friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.’ Oh, Arthur, you dear lovely man.”

  “Oliver Wendell Holmes. It seemed appropriate: His son was one of the great judges of our century.” I leave unspoken the inference we are not in the presence of similar greatness. We bid sweet adieu to his forlornly smiling lordship and walk out arm in arm.

  In the corridor, reporters throng me like squawking chickens, hungry for their sound bites. I bid them have patience until proceedings formally close.

  The two psychiatrists are in the mezzanine, in earnest colloquy. Jonathan is pacing, head down, absorbed in other worlds until I arrest his attention.

  “We’re moving for a directed verdict,” I tell him.

  “Great,” he says absently. “Is she still here?”

  “Who?”

  “Kimberley.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I need to talk to her.”

  “That would be most unwise. Clarence de Remy Brown may not approve of your having further intercourse — social though it may be — with his fiancée. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “I just want to tell her I have no ill feelings. And to apologize for putting her in such an awkward position . . . rephrase that, embarrassing situation.” He himself seems much embarrassed.

  “I advise against it.”

  But there she appears, with Patricia, emerging downcast from the witness room: She no longer has eyes for Jonathan. Patricia leads her to court, and as Jonathan steps forward I grasp his elbow, restraining my restive steed from galloping off to her. I wait for Augustina, who has rushed off somewhere to put her flowers in water; then we lead in our client.

  The jurors fumble into their seats, still shaken — all but the forewoman, Jackson-Blyth, and the broker, Goodman. The former is frowning, the latter, smiling.

  Wally Sprogue, so recently outduelled by me on the fields of chivalry, looks as if he’s been pouting. “Ms. Blueman?”