April Fool Read online

  Hattie Weekes is still on the phone, presumably describing the sordid scene of lust between the deserted husband and the brassy young snip. Let Margaret speculate. Let Nelson publish his photo: an aging Don Juan whose magnetic appeal lures the young and desirable.

  At Stump Town there are more tents, more volunteers–about a dozen young pilgrims arrived this morning. Kurt Zoller is passing out business cards, and presses one into Arthur’s palm. His water taxi service–“it’s literally been running me into the ground”–now has prospects, but his compulsive wearing of life jackets inspires little consumer trust.

  “Garibaldi isn’t just a blob on the map now,” he tells Arthur. “More crowds are trickling in every day.” He has taken the measure of new political winds: “I’ve gone three hundred and sixty degrees on this one.”

  “But that means you’re back where you started, Kurt.” He leaves Zoller to redo his calculations.

  Lotis has already gone up the Gap trail. He’s relieved to be away from her high energy–she exhausts him. He joins Reverend Al, who is on a walkie-talkie with his spouse, Zoë, one of the watchers on the uplands.

  “Still just the one bird, honey,” she says.

  “Cheese and rice.” Jesus Christ. Reverend Al has an unhappy penchant for euphemism.

  Arthur hands him the donations. “It’s starting to roll in.”

  “The judge wants eggs. We’re running out of time.”

  The deadline is tomorrow. Santorini’s clerk has notified all parties that the hearing must move to Vancouver, where the judge is stuck with a multicount corporate fraud. The ferry involves a three-hour ordeal, so Arthur and Lotis will risk Syd-Air, “Serving Our Islands” with an aging Beaver. Arthur will carry on to Bamfield. Lotis will gather clothes and essentials from her last city hideout before returning to Garibaldi.

  When Arthur arrives at the Holy Tree he sees Margaret filling a bird feeder and Cud grunting as he ties a “Save Gwendolyn” banner to a branch. Lotis is below them, bending to Slappy, who licks her face. “And who is this cute little Woofer?” she says, then looks up, rewards the cameras of Flim Flam Films with a wink and a smile.

  Margaret isn’t smiling. He calls up, jocular: “Has Lotis told you she’s taken a position at Bungle Bay?”

  “I hope she’ll work out.” A definite chill in her voice.

  “She had a splendid start.”

  “Yeah, I nearly ripped my crotch open on barbed wire.” Lotis gives Slappy a neck rub.

  “Oh, dear.” Coated with ice.

  “Darling, I’m sorry, but duty calls. I’ll be off-island for the next few days.”

  “I see. Well, you know where I’ll be.”

  “The Faloon matter will take a fair bite of my time.”

  “And what about Garlinc versus Gwendolyn? Will you be spending any time on that?”

  “I’ll be in court for you, of course.”

  “Not just for me, I hope. For all of us, for Gwendolyn.”

  It strikes him that it’s not Lotis that she resents, it’s his rinky-dink role in the injunction. This has the makings of a marital row.

  Cud returns from his bough, scuttles out of view, fearing to be entangled in this. Lotis drifts away. Husband and wife are one on one. He wants to shout, Damn it, I love you, can’t you see that? Instead, he sulks. Reverend Al is on the scene now, making a slicing motion across a finger: cut this short.

  Chickadees flit about the bird feeder. One lands on Margaret’s outstretched hand. She waits until it flies off, then calls, “I heard the judge was pissed off at me.”

  “The judge wants–well, you know what he wants.” He isn’t about to make a public plea for Margaret to relent–what kind of message would it send? Santorini has made the situation worse with his brusque demand.

  “I don’t know how he can properly decide anything without coming here to see for himself.”

  “The courts don’t work that way, my dear.”

  “Well, they bloody should.”

  She’s right. Damn it, he must stop apologizing for the system of laws and rules that he blindly cherishes.

  Down comes a bag of laundry, which he dodges as it plops at his feet. “You might send up some fresh sheets and towels.”

  She’s steaming behind a stoic mask–the last time Arthur saw this face was when the decaying victim of a forgotten mouse trap stank up the pantry. This is not the time to admit he has no idea how to operate the washer and dryer.

  As she returns to her bird feeder, he entertains the shuddering thought that he could lose this woman. He knows what she wants as proof of love: stop being a feckless noncombatant. Be a proud defender of Lady Gwendolyn. Fight for her as he would for any innocent client facing life.

  “Tell Mr. Santorini to come here, Arthur. Tell him to smell the air of the forest and listen to the birds. We had a purple finch here yesterday.”

  Arthur doesn’t expect Justice Santorini will be interested in a purple finch.

  “And if he still wants me to come down,” she says with a shrug, “tell him he can climb up here and get me.”

  That evening Arthur is still flustered and bewildered by Margaret’s chilly reception. (Guiltily, he found himself examining Margaret’s sheets, on the growing mountain in the laundry room, for suspicious stains.) He calls Australia for help. Three years ago, his daughter Deborah fled a boring marriage. Three years before that, her mother ended hers with Arthur. It’s said that infelicitous events occur in cycles of three–is it Margaret’s turn to break free?

  He rails on to Deborah about the louche poet, about the cruel teasing he’s been getting, the misfiring of Operation Morningstar, the negative vibrations from the high pulpit of the Holy Tree. “You told me to get active, impress her, make a famous return to the courts. Now she’s miffed at me for ignoring her.”

  “Okay, Dad, but her irritation has a lot to do with that hot little number you were squiring about. Margaret’s human. You probably do have ideas, you rogue.”

  “Nonsense. Margaret was affronted at my cavalier assumption I could make her jealous. Oddly, she seems even more put out that I’m running off to do a murder trial–though earlier she gave approval. The older I get, the less I am able to comprehend the female mind.”

  He can hear her take a deep breath. “Okay, Dad, there’s a romantic side to Margaret you seem oblivious to. She wants you to be her knight, her chevalier. A situation has arisen where she has become the classic maiden in distress. Galahad is being called upon to save her from the clutches of the inquisition, swoop her in his arms, and carry her off. But who does he gallop off to rescue? A thief. A habitual criminal.”

  After a long pause: “I see.” Margaret feels jilted not for Lotis Morningstar Rudnicki but for Nick Faloon. “Then why would she make my task harder by daring the judge to climb the tree?”

  “She’s putting you on the spot. You’re going to perform like Galahad or else.”

  12

  The floats of Syd’s Beaver wobble unsteadily, throwing up curls of spray as it lifts from Blunder Bay. Rain, visibility poor. Arthur’s farm retreats below, a hazy splotch of beach and pasture. He hopes he won’t return to find a potted landscraper crushed under his own backhoe. Yesterday, having struck clay, Stoney celebrated by smoking a joint, then left, claiming unspecified emergencies.

  The dark waters of Georgia Strait give way to the Fraser’s muddy outflow. Canada’s Pacific metropolis arrives quickly, absurdly, like a giant foot thrusting from the mainland, the city bottled in by sea and river. Grey towers looming from the mist. Cars backed up for a mile across Lion’s Gate Bridge.

  “Epic pileup on the bridge,” says Lotis, looking down as the aircraft banks. She is in her long fawn dress, her courtroom guise. In counterbalance, neon-bright vermilion lipstick.

  They throttle down past the cranes and container ships to the seaplane docks at Coal Harbour. Arthur alights from the plane feeling ill equipped for urban survival. This city of his birth feels oppressive with its clamour and fury: a wa
il of siren, a squeal of brakes, unmusical complaints from a passing car–hip hop, he thinks they call it.

  A taxi brings them to the glass-panelled faux arboretum that is the Vancouver Law Courts Building, and they enter the Great Hall, sheltered by fifty thousand square feet of angled skylight, tinted blue, resting on a network of aluminum trusses. Vines trail from the concrete abutments that sheath the tiers of terraces and courtrooms.

  Arthur has a sense of foreboding. He is beyond praying that Santorini, by some Jovian miracle, will decide to smell the air of the forest. This judge seems to have lost his robust sense of humour.

  Tell him he can climb up here and get me. It’s Cyrano to the rescue. Saving Roxanne from the evil Compte de Guiche so she may love her false poet. Arthur played the role as a teen, his student drama club. He knows the plot, cringes at the thought it’s being re-enacted.

  On the third level, lawyers and litigants are milling about, impatient, clocks ticking at hundreds of dollars per minute. In Room 32, reporters shuffle and grumble. Paul Prudhomme is pacing. Selwyn Loo has undone his ponytail, and his black hair cascades over his shoulders, a look that makes him seem in grieving. Anxiety disorder. Arthur takes a chair beside him.

  “I am on message,” Arthur says. “I’ll be proud to share counsel table with you.”

  “Welcome aboard. Next stop is probably the Appeal Court.”

  “In which case, I defer to you. I’m the new boy on the team.” This is the young lawyer’s case to argue–he has earned it

  The clerk finishes a call to Santorini. “His Lordship finally made it off the bridge and is on his way.” He lives across the inlet in the aeries of West Vancouver, was a victim of the epic pileup.

  Arthur tries the meditation exercises Corporal Al taught him–they ease the strain of waiting–while Lotis chats with Selwyn about the delights of Garibaldi, insisting he pay a weekend visit.

  When court is finally called, Santorini enters rigidly, white-faced in black and crimson robes, recalling to mind Virgil’s Tisiphone: a robe this Fury wore, with all the pomp of horror, dyed in gore.

  “I’m not even going to apologize, because…Madam clerk, I want the Highways minister on the line. Later, call that damn injunction, let me get this can of worms out of the way. I take it there’s been no movement, except that this ring-dang-do has become some kind of media circus. The courts are not going to be mocked, we live under the rule of law.” He bangs his fist on his daybook, sending a pen aloft and papers fluttering.

  The pricey lawyers for the corporate wrongdoers look nervous: they’re next.

  Selwyn rises. “Surely, milord…”

  “I want to hear from Mr. Beauchamp!”

  Arthur rises wearily. “Ego homo nullius coloris.”

  Santorini says nothing for a few moments, but surrenders. “Okay, what’s that mean?”

  “‘I am a man without words.’ Strictly translated, a man without colour, in that he is incapable of the art of argument.” Arthur can see the way this is going, his best hope is to provoke him into reversible error.

  “You put this into Latin, Mr. Beauchamp. Or Greek, if you want, or ancient Hebrew, it’s all going to come out the same. I am giving that eagle two more days. In the meantime, the defendants are in contempt of court. I am sentencing each of them to a five-thousand-dollar fine and seven days in jail.”

  Prudhomme starts to rise, presumably to advise the judge he missed a few procedural steps.

  “I’m not through! That’s for today! Tomorrow, I double it, ten thousand and fourteen days. And the day after, double again. And it’s going to keep doubling until the defendants obey this court! Call the next case!”

  As Arthur ushers Selwyn and Lotis to a taxi, he still hears the echoes of the judge’s wrath. It’s not healthy to let oneself go that way–he remembers how old, irascible Judge Kincaid succumbed to a coronary in heated debate, a death that still pricks Arthur’s conscience.

  The Appeal Court is uncharted ground for these young Sierra lawyers, no precedents, no experience, so Arthur escorts them to the Bank of Montreal complex where Tragger Inglis Bullingham’s oiled machinery, he assures them, will spit out the notice of appeal in the time it takes to change a flat tire.

  He may also find counsel here to help him prepare for the Faloon case. He’ll welcome Brian Pomeroy back if he ever resolves his marital crisis, but in the meantime he needs a good detail person. Surely a 130-lawyer firm can provide someone competent, a woman preferably, attuned to nuances Arthur might miss.

  On the thirty-ninth floor, Arthur leads Selwyn and Lotis past a bank of four receptionists, and they pass through a vast oak portal to the inner sanctum. Secretaries and law clerks make way for the procession, the senior staff greeting Arthur: “Good to see you, sir.” “You’re looking well, indeed, Mr. Beauchamp.” Lawyers wave from their glassed cubicles on this, the sweatshop floor.

  Escalators take them three storeys higher, the domain of the upper castes, estate specialists, corporate advisers, senior counsel, posh offices with views. Above, on the forty-third floor, reside the partners, a score of them. From his own office there, Arthur often looked out upon distant islands in the gulf, wondering what life might be like on those mysterious green humps.

  “I shall park you in the library, where you may review the law of contempt.” They enter the vaulted, tiered room–gothic in design, a spiral staircase leading to the upper floor, glowering dead partners staring from the heights. “Those portraits can cause a deep depression if one gets absorbed in them too long.”

  “I’ll try to ignore them,” Selwyn says.

  Lotis leads Selwyn on a tour of the stacks. Arthur wonders how he researches, few texts are in Braille. He looks up to the sound of a throat being cleared, sees Roy Bullingham on the upper balcony, a spindly wraith leaning on his cane, eighty-nine years old. He is known as Bully, though only an anointed few address him so.

  “Then the reports are true.” A wheezing voice, like the Fargo’s replacement muffler. “You have returned from the hinterland. I knew you wouldn’t last.”

  “Ah, Bully, just the man I want to see.”

  Bullingham seems about to descend the stairs on those gimpy knees, so Arthur goes up, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Bully extends a bony hand. “You’re too damn healthy, Arthur. I don’t like to see that, it’s a sign of a man not putting in his hours at his desk. I understand your wife has been treed, as it were, I suppose that’s what all this is about. This nonsense reflects poorly on the firm–people still think you’re associated with our institution.”

  “As indeed I am. My name remains on the letterhead, so I assume it still brings business.”

  They proceed into a suite of gleaming offices, Arthur hunting down Doris Isbister, the secretary who bravely put up with him for thirty years, and who knows more law and procedure than many with degrees. “Good grief, it’s Mr. B.” She rises from her desk, enfolds him in her bosom.

  “And what are you up to currently, Doris?” Her desk is piled high with court documents.

  “Something for yesterday that can wait for tomorrow. I heard Justice Santorini blew his top. You’re appealing?”

  “Not half as appealing as you, my dear.” It’s an old joke, how easily the routines come back. “I’ve scribbled out the affidavit material.” Scrawls on the back of an envelope, indecipherable to all but Doris. “And as a precedent you might dig out…what’s that file called? Where that old fool Watson tried to cite me.”

  “Yates and Ellery, the Gastown riot.”

  “Who, might I ask, shall we be billing for this?” says Bully, a devotee of strict accounting practices–he and his two departed pioneers began the firm on a shoestring at the end of the Great Depression.

  “Think of it as a donation to a worthy cause, Bully. A drop in the bucket compared to the several hundred thousand I shall be asking the firm to pledge.”

  Bully freezes.

  “Charitable gift to the Save Gwendolyn Society, a very ni
ce tax break. Pays for itself in good publicity.”

  Bully leads him to his office, making soft sounds, profanity or whining, and settles into his throne. Wainscoting and furnishings are from various endangered tropical trees. The room has a view north and east, the snow-topped North Shore peaks, the fertile plains of the Fraser. The mists have dispersed, the sun has made a brave appearance.

  “I’m contributing at least three hundred thousand myself, Bully, a fee. I’ve been arm-twisted into taking a murder.”

  “I am aware of it. You’ve been prominent in the news. As it happens, we have a dead file on the victim.”

  “Dr. Eve Winters?”

  “Talk to Cleaver, he remembers advising her a couple of years ago. Thin file, didn’t go to court. Therapeutic malpractice, or some such animal.”

  “I presume the firm can fit me out with junior counsel. Perhaps some rising star, a woman…” Arthur trails off as he sees Bully looking at him blankly. An unwritten policy to discourage the ambitions of female barristers has apparently not changed. Bully believes their place is at a desk.

  Arthur drops the matter but continues to pry open the purse for the Save Gwendolyn Society, a ten-minute sermon, and is startled by the result. Bully will recommend a sizable grant if Arthur’s donation can be run through the office as an additional tax deduction. “That way we claw back fifty-five per cent of the total.” Bully’s brain is a calculating machine.

  After the appeal is sent off to be filed, served, and put on tomorrow’s list, Arthur returns to the library to find that Doris has disinterred the Gastown Riot file. She has also fetched old Riley, a bespectacled gnome from the fortieth floor, to help with the research. Lotis has been reading from a case to Selwyn.

  “Give me that case again,” Selwyn says.

  “Queen and Polk, House of Lords.”

  “Page number.”

  “Two-hundred nineteen.”