Trial of Passion Read online

  I dared not tell my partners I was going to the country to seek communion with our bountiful mother, Earth. Who could bear to gaze upon their uncomprehending faces? So spiritless, so dead in look, these timid men and women prefer to be locked within the walls of their sterile, sullen city.

  I might have told them this, had I the courage: that I plan to watch the flowers of spring unfurl, petal by petal. To listen to the songs of uncaged birds. To press upon a spade and feel it gently sigh into the loam. In short, I am going to ground.

  And perhaps I will also recover from the pain of loving Annabelle. So beautiful, so flamboyant. So perfectly preserved. Ah, but if truth be known, the pain comes from the knife of my own impotence. I have long been unable to perform manfully for her, and as punishment for my crime have been sentenced to the lash of her infidelity.

  Her last lover was a hairy-chested heldentenor, Tristan to her Isolde. But who is the latest random paramour? What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odours, courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave?(I lack a lyric tongue, and steal these words, of course, from Milton’s translation of the Epodes.)

  But I accept cuckoldom as my lot. Unlike Iago’s victim, I am not in thrall to the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on. I am the other kind of cuckold the Bard spoke of, who lives in bliss, certain of his fate.

  (Oh, noble Beauchamp, how naked and hollow are such self-pitying denials.)

  Now approach the bosky valleys and rocky hummocks of the island of Garibaldi, population 539. We purr into a long bay towards a distant ferry slip. Along the shore are clearings with scattered houses and barns, giving way to tangles of willows and cedars at the tide lines. Near the ferry dock is a marina in sad repair: crumbling outbuildings and cabins.

  But my attention is diverted to an energetic woman doing the rounds with what appears to be a petition. Circling me warily like a hawk, she catches my eye and finally descends. “You’re the new owner of the Ashcroft place.” A brisk, matter-of-fact voice, though not wanting in music. “I’m Margaret Blake. I live up the road from you”

  Though she looks older than the current version of Annabelle, she is probably much younger; she does not appear to have had a facelift. Obviously she spends much time outdoors, as her skin is biscuit brown from the sun. Although stern of aspect she is rather comely, lithe, and lean with close-cropped nut-brown hair and wide-set, piercing eyes, the colour of smooth-rubbed silver. She is attired in country clothes, denim jacket, jeans, sturdy boots.

  She gestures below to a half-ton truck laden with bales of hay. “I have a working farm.” Do I hear a note of defiance in her voice, a challenge of some kind?

  “Arthur Beauchamp.” I extend my hand. Hers is dry and strong and sinewy, crescents of grime beneath the fingernails.

  She extends the petition. “I don’t suppose you’d care to sign this.”

  “A pessimist makes a poor salesman. And why would I not sign it?” I observe it calls for a moratorium on a housing development known as Evergreen Estates.

  “We don’t want to be like the city,” Mrs. Blake says. “We’re getting so many weekenders now. Look at those boxes.” She points to a patchy area of A-frames and trailers on a rise above the bay, which, I take it, is Evergreen Estates. “I’m sorry, I suppose you’re one of them. All for what they call progress.”

  I mildly resent the assumption that I am of that lowly class referred to, the city weekender. “I am now a permanent resident, madam.”

  “I see. Well, you don’t . . . look permanent.”

  Mrs. Blake studies me intently with her fierce grey eyes: she sees an outlander, a slicker, overgroomed, overdressed. She withdraws her petition from my soft, unsullied city hands — though I might have signed it had I received a courteous explication of the issues.

  “Mr. Beauchamp, I do hope you’re not planning to tear down that old house. That’s what a lot of them do. Put up all that ugly plastic siding.”

  Ah, yes, the taste police. They are everywhere.

  She waves at the smoke wafting from my cigarette, wrinkling her noise in silent disapprobation. To boot, she is a clean-air fanatic. I fear she will be a forbidding neighbour.

  As the ferry’s horn bleats, the blunt Mrs. Blake says a brisk adieu and continues her campaign elsewhere.

  Before reaching the stairs to the car deck I am again accosted — this time by a small, twitching gentleman with a miniature, well-tended moustache. For some reason he is wearing a life jacket.

  “I know who you are.” This is said in a tone of conspiracy, as if he has come upon my photograph on a police bulletin board. “Mr. Beauchamp. You defended that doctor who killed two people.”

  “Allegedly. “A trial of some notoriety in which the media eagerly wallowed this winter.

  “Be careful of that Margaret Blake, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  “Careful?”

  “Troublemaker.” He whispers, “Drawbridge mentality.” It sounds like some rare disease of the mind.

  “Ah, yes, she’s against progress.”

  “I seen you didn’t sign her petition. She don’t want change. We can’t stand still, right? We can’t stand still.”

  The man indeed seems to have difficulty doing so, feet, arms, and eyes shifting constantly in the manner of a witness on the stand who has been overly bold with the truth.

  “I’m Kurt Zoller. I guess I’m sort of like the elected mayor here, only on these islands they call it a trustee. You got any problems, I’m the last name in the phone book. I live in that converted trailer up in Evergreen Estates — you can see it from here. We don’t get many famous lawyers here, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  He continues to mispronounce my name: Bo-champ. “Beecham, really, that’s how it’s said.”

  “That busybody Margaret Blake . . . “Again his voice takes on a conspiratorial tone. “She’s an eco-freak.”

  “She sounds dangerous indeed, Mr. Zoller.”

  I see her standing some distance away, alone, cleaning her fingernails. She glances at us, and as our eyes meet she abruptly pockets the nail file.

  I escape to the car deck, where one of the tractor-capped young men who’d been puffing cannabis is standing by my faithful steed, the Phantom V, contemplating it as if it were some newly landed spaceship. The clothes he is wearing, torn and grease-stained, can best be described as third-hand.

  “You goin’ up Potter’s Road, eh?”

  “Yes, I believe I am.”

  “Think I can hitch a ride?”

  “My pleasure. Move some of those books to the back.”

  “You want, I could sit back there.”

  He is looking at my club chair, roped to the trunk.

  I smile. “I’m afraid it has no seat belt.”

  “Nobody never uses a seat belt around here except when the cop comes every second Tuesday. This is a ‘60, ain’t it, before they changed the grille. Love to look inside the hood one of these days, man.” He clambers in beside me. “Yeah, thanks. I’m in the spare-parts business. Mechanic, do some body work. I’m like an entrepreneur. Bob Stonewell, but they call me Stoney. That’s ‘cause one of my other businesses is stonework, chimneys and fireplaces, stuff like that. I do everything. You’re the guy bought the Ashcroft place, eh? Heard you was a lawyer, a pretty good one, defended that Dr. What’s-his-face, it was all over the TV, shot his wife and her boyfriend in cold blood. Wouldn’t mind talking to you — just, you know, if you get a minute — about a weed case I got comin’ up. How much do you charge?”

  Dr. What’s-his-face, a cuckold, too, but perhaps more impetuous than I, paid a fee of a size I am embarrassed to mention. Stoney does not await a response, and is still talking as I pull out onto the ramp, my wheels finally making contact with the good earth of Garibaldi Island.

  Immediately I am rerouted into the driveway of the marina — Stoney, phoneless, must pick up his messages, which are kept for him in a weathered grey building that is the local bar, known officially as The Brig. He runs inside and emerges a few minu
tes later with another young man, who, after introductions, climbs into my vehicle, crawling over the boxes of books.

  “We’ll help you unpack your stuff,” Stoney says.

  This beneficium shall be gratefully accepted. We bear off towards Potter’s Road, Stoney assuming the role of tour guide. “Now, the general store is down that road past the community hall, and it’s also the post office. That’s the gas station, don’t never get any work done there. You’re talking to the best mechanic on the island. Coming up, that’s my place on the right. House ain’t finished, but I’m working on it.”

  The house is a seemingly uninhabitable shell of plywood and studs, the yard a battlefield after the invading force has left — abandoned relics everywhere. I think of the taste enforcer Mrs. Blake, who must endure this stressful sight daily.

  The passenger in the back, a hairy creature who apparently is known by the sobriquet of “Dog,” has brought along a six-pack, and I can hear the pop and hiss of the cans, can smell the rich, addicting perfume of fermented hops.

  “Like a brew?” he says, extending me a can.

  My hands remain clenched upon the steering wheel. “Very kind of you, but no.”

  We turn onto Potter’s Road, on the sunny south end of the island, where my new home — eighteen waterfront acres and an ancient house — no doubt is eagerly awaiting the arrival of its new squire.

  “That’s your neighbour Mrs. Blake’s place,” says Stoney. “It’s sort of like the local zoo, chickens, pigs, ducks, sheep, and they crap all over. You need any fence work done, don’t hesitate.”

  A rambling frame structure with upper-floor dormers and a huge balcony. Nearby, cedar sheds, pens, corral, greenhouse, a small barn. The front yard is (so difficult not to paraphrase Wordsworth) a yellow sea of daffodils. A huge garden, well fenced, with spring flowers scattered among the rows of seedlings. Spring lambs rollick in her meadow. Several goats. Pigs. Mrs. Blake, doubtless a stern Orwellian, keeps a bustling animal farm.

  “She lives alone?”

  “Since her old man died. Had a heart attack a few years ago. Couldn’t stand the pressure.”

  “Of what?”

  “Living on this island.”

  But I note his disarming grin. “It ain’t so bad,” he says.

  Parallel ruts lead us past my gate through a grove of thick-waisted Douglas firs into a clearing where stands my own house, a two-storey frame structure, much gingerbread and leaded glass, but aging, tired, the wooden veranda like its new owner sagging at hips and stomach. The garage is in even sadder state.

  “I do building, too, all phases of it,” Stoney says. “Renovations. Place could also do with a paint job.”

  My companions help me unload my boxes and my chair. The house has not been lived in for several months, and smells musty, but the lowering April sun streams in through the west-facing windows, lending it an aureate richness. The house came as is, with some old but serviceable furnishings, a substantial fireplace, and all utilities including a freezer that makes an irregular grunting sound.

  Outside, a terraced stone patio leads to a yard where a giant arbutus tree swirls her skirts, thence to a rock-strewn beach and a private dock that juts into a cosy bay where waterfowl forage amidst the kelp. At one side of the house is a garden plot protected by a sturdy deer fence. On the other side are a lily pond and a small orchard with apple and plum trees in redolent bloom, a sight not detracted from by the busy pecking beaks of chickens, escapees from the zoo, presumably, of Mrs. Blake.

  Impotent I may be, but I am still capable of love, and this emotion rendered me quite helpless on my one previous visit to this site. I had seen a small advertisement under Country Homes and Acreages. I popped over on a weekend. The real estate lady, a creature of utterly unbearable sweetness, had me at her mercy as I fumbled for my pen.

  “Fruit trees need pruning.” Stoney checks the woodshed and finds it only a third full. “You wanna cord or two, I also sell wood.”

  Somehow, in my bemused and innocent state, I find myself contracting with this eager benefactor for some fencing as well as structural work to shore up the veranda. Nothing to it, I am advised: “You toss in a couple of big crossbeams there, and jack that old rotting timber out.” Stoney promises to start work early tomorrow.

  They cannot be persuaded to be chauffeured home — Stoney knows a shortcut — and the two men wander across the sheep-cropped field, pausing to examine a broken fence railing before pushing on through the trees.

  So I have met several of the island characters, the so-called yokels about whom my son-in-law sternly warned. Now begins the process of my own yokelization, the bumpkinizing of Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, Q.C. I take off my jacket. I gather some sticks for the fire. I situate my club chair in front of the hearth. I put water on for tea. I rummage through my tapes for the Boccherini cello concerto. I locate the collected libellus of Catullus. O quid solutis est beatius curis. Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away.

  Gowan Cleaver, Esq.,

  Barrister and Solicitor

  Dear Gowan,

  It is about nine o’clock on New Year’s Eve as I begin this dissertation. My subject is the concept of innocence. I shall be exploring the variables of this complex conceit from a unique, personal point of view — that of one imprisoned within a nightmare from hell.

  From time to time, I ask myself: Is this reality? Or do I suffer a mental disorder, a schizophrenia? Has a hereditary gene caused me suddenly to snap? (A second cousin believes he speaks regularly to God on a cellular phone.) Am I frozen forever into a state of paranoid delusion? Maybe I’m in an asylum — it’s called Western civilization and the inmates have taken over. That would explain why I keep hearing voices. They’re all saying, “How could this be happening to me?”

  Gowan, I ask that question fifty times a day. God has yet to come up with a rational explanation. Does She have something against me? Was I too ambitious, too arrogant, too cruel to Professor Mallard in a recent book review?

  These are the last lucid memories I hold: It is a brisk late-November day. I have just gone for an energetic hike through the university parkland. I’m happy. I’m tenured. I’m thirty-eight and I’m acting dean. I am back at work, in the library, content as a purring cat, reading the musty nineteenth-century cases I love. Enter Kimberley Martin. She says, “Promise to dance with me tonight?”

  Cut. Twenty-four hours later. Close-up of Jonathan Shaun O’Donnell’s fingers being pressed into an ink pad by a ham-fisted cop. Script by Franz Kafka. A Hitchcock production.

  Where did this damnable woman come from? The twilight zone? Straight from Satan’s stable?

  I sense you may be finding me a little disconnected. I am alone, but not alone in spirit, for I am celebrating the end of the worst year of my life with a half-empty friend by the name of Jameson. My father, to whom Bushmills was mother’s milk, would disown me — if he had anything left to disown me with.

  I am sorry to have been so long getting this off to you. I needed the whole month of December to clear my poor twirling brain. Then I had exams to mark. Life allegedly goes on.

  You wanted some personal background. I think I shared my past with you many years and beers ago back in our student days. Do you remember when we argued that moot and I developed the hiccups? You were the only one who didn’t laugh. I’ve always liked you for that.

  A quick c.v. ofJonathan Shaun O’Donnell. Born in County Fermanagh, in Ulster, and raised in the family estate until I was nine. You are aware that I am not proud to be the son of Viscount Caraway. Not just because of his extremism, though His Lordship’s occasional column in the Times expresses a politics that makes mine seem flaming bloody red in comparison.

  Which it used to be, of course. You may recall that in our student days I was heavily into left-existential politics. A confused stew of Marx, Marcuse, and Sartre. When one is young, one hungers for utopias. As you get older, the shell around you hardens; you want its protection, you care less about the h
ungering masses. I presume that happened to me. Or do I bear the curse of my father’s DNA?

  The latter, I suspect, is my therapist’s pet theory. Dr. Jane Dix — the Faculty Association referred her to me. She’s a hot-tempered Adlerian. Lots of encounter, although she prefers to call it reality therapy. Yes, I’m off to the couch doctor once a week. Kimberley Martin has driven your punchy client halfway to the cackle factory. I’m on a diet of Valium and whisky. I can’t sleep. I found myself watching a rerun of “The Beverley Hillbillies” last night. At three a.m.

  Forgive me my digressions. Back to my family. My mother is only a year departed — but of course you were at the funeral. A sweet, frail woman who rescued herself — and me — from the tyrant of Lough Neagh Close. I hear the estate has been shut down now, all but the west wing — His Lordship is nearly on the rims. Skint, as they say over there. The grounds were cruelty, the settlement handsome. Mother took custody of me, but my older brother, Bob, stayed with him. Bob doesn’t inherit the title, by the way; Father is only a life peer — Maggie Thatcher decorated him for doing absolutely nothing to stop the Troubles as commander of the Royal Ulster Rifles. Mother never remarried, but she moved to Canada and sent me to the correct schools. St. Andrews in Toronto, UBC, Oxford, though she had some help from the late good-hearted Cecil Rhodes.

  You’ve seen my resume. It reads a little overinflated, doesn’t it? Top percentile, etc., etc., double masters in law and economics, a few years of appellate advocacy — I dreaded it, as I’m utterly traumatized by courtrooms — two years with the Securities Commission, and since then faculty at UBC. Acting dean since last year. Two politico-legal books under my belt, of which one bombed, the other caused a bit of commotion. I teach property, contracts, and commercial transactions.

  They say poor Jim Mendel won’t recover from his prostate surgery. I could have been dean at thirty-eight, Gowan. Instead, I am about to become — in the lexicon of podspeak — outplaced. That’s likely to occur even if I’m acquitted — given the tenor of the times in the politically correct institutions that our modern universities have become.