Judgement by Fire

by Lydia Grace

  In addition, the 300 acres or so of woodlands and gardens had been left largely untouched. Over the years this land had become a retreat for some increasingly rare animals, birds and plants. Unofficially, the land also provided a recreational facility for local residents who fished for their suppers (and occasionally hunted a rabbit or two) in the wild, unspoiled beauty. In her mind’s eye Lauren could already see her beloved forest being torn apart by heavy equipment, could hear the thudding of the bulldozers and falling trees, and could feel the beating fear of the wild animals and birds as their once safe haven was destroyed.

  Only to be replaced with swimming pools and hot tubs, massage rooms and saunas, luxury cottages and genteel club meeting rooms. With no heed to the established breeding sites and migration routes of birds, nor to the delicate woodland plants and fauna which had enjoyed the undisturbed security of Haverford Castle’s increasingly wilderness environment.

  Lauren’s eyes were drawn across the big, high-beamed ceiling of her open-plan home to the easel she had so recently left. She had struggled all night to perfect the color, the stance, the gleam in the eye of a bobcat she had spotted in the forest just a few weeks ago. All this would be destroyed - and for what? So that people who wore themselves out with high living could have a “special ambience” (at least, that’s what the newspaper article called it) to rest and recuperate? For corporate greed!

  “They’ll damned well have to go through me first!” Lauren declared aloud, adding a few choicer expletives to describe the ancestry and intelligence of the anonymous company executives responsible for this plan.

  “I see you got the message,” Paul said with a wry grin, returning from the kitchen and handing her a mug of coffee before settling himself back against the settee cushions.

  “How can anyone contemplate wrecking something like we have at Haverford Castle?” Lauren spluttered her disgust. “To say nothing of destroying the local economy and jeopardizing some very important future artists’ work.”

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Paul replied, that faraway gaze in his eyes, which Lauren knew meant he was focusing inwards. “You and I, Lucy, Mike and his wife, the Polechucks, the Stewards, the Colemans, Armand—we all came here to escape the city and to find something we valued more. We’ve all made West River our home, even though our reasons for coming here may have been vastly different. And right when we thought we’d found a place that fulfilled whatever needs were driving us, when we’d settled down and invested part of ourselves in the community, the Gods of Industry come marauding with their bulldozers and their progress and wreck the whole damned thing.”

  Paul stood up, placing his coffee cup on an antique farm weigh-scale that Lauren had refinished and pressed into service as a side table. “I have to go, Lauren. Lucy may wake up anytime and I don’t want her to be alone.” He hesitated, seeming to come to a decision. “Look, I thought I was done with my law practice when we came here, but I think we have to fight this thing. We can’t just let them come in and take what we’ve built. I’m going to call a meeting at the hall, see what we can do. Can I count on you?”

  Lauren stood, too, her auburn head reaching barely to Paul’s shoulder, and silently nodded her assent. A lump came to her throat as she realized how tangled up they had all become in each others’ lives, and how the prospect of uprooting and moving would devastate these very special friends.

  Impulsively, she hugged Paul, taking strength from his wiry, solid frame. For a long time after her friend left, Lauren stood staring out of the window of her loft bedroom at the tall, stately trees that surrounded her home. But even the snow-softened beauty of the view could not shake her depression. The telephone began to ring, stopped when the machine kicked in, rang again, and stopped without a message being left, but Lauren remained lost in her reverie as she watched, misty-eyed, the glow of morning slowly changing the landscape. She thought of her friends among the artists who lived here, and those she’d gotten to know in the surrounding community, and realized that they formed a sort of an extended family. She didn’t think she could bear to see it all destroyed.

  Chapter 2

  The West River Community Center was packed to capacity two evenings later when Paul, Lauren and the small group of friends now known as the “Art Before Commerce”, or ABC committee, held a public meeting to discuss the proposed closure of Haverford Castle Center for the Arts and its conversion into a health center for the very rich.

  Once a pioneer church, the clapboard hall had been rescued from ignominious dereliction by the West River Heritage Committee, and after hundreds of man and woman hours of diligent volunteer labor, had been turned into a focal point for community events, dances, wedding receptions and village meetings. But it still lacked some of the more sophisticated accoutrements of more modern, urban facilities.

  “A sound system would be nice,” Lauren thought ruefully as she noted how the cathedral ceiling seemed to rob voices of their power while magnifying the shrill and restless scrapings of the rickety tubular-steel-legged chairs which had been dredged up from the newer neighboring church basement for the evening. An efficient heating system too, would have been a big help, she added to herself as she pulled her silken, soft mohair cardigan more tightly around her.

  Lauren was surprised to see Lucy Howard come into the big room, leaning a little on Paul’s arm, but she should have known the small, determined woman would be there. Tiny and birdlike even before her illness had taken its toll, Lucy now looked frail enough to be blown away by the winter wind that rattled the bare branches of the trees surrounding the hall.

  But in reality, Lucy was as tough as she was courageous and, as she told Lauren with a smile when she was settled at the speakers’ table, she wouldn’t miss a good fight for anything. “Let’s face it, life has been dull around here. Last good fight I witnessed was when you threw that no-good husband of yours out,” Lucy said with a disarming grin.

  “It was hardly that dramatic—Terry couldn’t wait to get away, and you know it,” Lauren replied, pleased to feel no pain at the mention of her less-than-ideal ex-husband.

  “Well, I always thought you could do a bit better than that. Can’t understand why it’s taking you so long, though,” Lucy replied mischievously.

  “Gee, Lucy, look around—aside from your devoted spouse, just where would I find this paragon you’re describing?” Lauren parried, and Lucy rolled her eyes and shrugged dramatically.

  “So, how was the date with the handsome blond with impeccable taste, the other night?” Lucy asked mischievously.

  “That husband of yours just can’t keep his mouth shut, can he?” Lauren pretended to be severe, and then grinned herself. “You wouldn’t believe how often that man has called since our dinner date. Looks like the old Stephens’ charm is still working.”

  “Keen, is he then?” Lucy grinned back, unable to conceal her delight that her friend might at last find an appreciative male companion.

  “Very. But you know, actually, Steve’s nice enough, but there’s something about him…I don’t know.”

  “No spark, eh?” Lucy said, grimacing with disappointment.

  “No, no spark.”

  Lauren squeezed her friend’s too thin arm and swallowed the lump that always came into her throat when faced with Lucy’s mental strength and physical frailty. She half-thought of telling Lucy about the other phone calls she’d been receiving, frequent rings with no message left on the answering machine, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to worry her friend. If the calls didn’t stop soon, she’d have the telephone company put a trace on them. Probably just some fault on the line, anyway, especially after the severe storms they’d had that winter.

  Paul came over from the other side of the hall, where he’d been handing out copies of the Globe and Mail article to new arrivals, and sat down next to Lucy. On Lauren’s left were Roger and Alycia Wellman, who had been enlisted into the seemingly endless round of phone calls that had brought this mixed bag of friend
s and neighbors together this evening.

  Lauren managed to stifle a yawn and flashed a guilty look at the others. In truth, she was exhausted from the long rounds of phone calls and brainstorming sessions that had been the prologue to the meeting, and with work for her upcoming show squeezed in between calls. But the others, including Lucy, seemed to radiate a crackling energy despite the late, late hours they’d kept in the last two days. With a shiver, Lauren also realized that the precious little sleep she had been able to grab had been disturbed too frequently by the ringing of the telephone at odd hours of the night.

  Just before Paul called the meeting to order, Lauren scanned the faces of the people seated before her. Most of them she knew well. A few were just acquaintances, and one or two she couldn’t remember seeing before. Her eyes were drawn to a tall, blond man dressed in casual jeans and thick Aran sweater who’d just slipped in through the main door—if someone of his height and strikingly authoritative good looks could ever ‘just slip’ into a room, she thought. A pleasant tremor ran through her as she responded to the powerful masculine aura around this stranger. It wasn’t just his height—he must be at least six-three—or the thick blond hair, touched with silver at the temples, which made him striking. There was something more, some air of authority and experience, which made him a focus of attention as he settled his broad frame on a seat in the back row.

  Maybe Lucy’s right—it has been too long since there was an interesting guy in my life, Lauren thought wryly, and flushed to realize that Lucy was looking at her with a knowing grin.

  “Scenery’s definitely improving around here, eh?” Lucy leaned over to whisper in Lauren’s ear.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Lauren replied innocently, and Lucy stifled her croak of laughter in a throat-clearing cough as Paul stood to open the meeting.

  “Friends and neighbors, we’ve come here tonight because we all enjoy and love this area, and value its unique resources,” Paul began. “Some of you, like Roger here, can trace your families back five generations. You’ve homes and farms and businesses handed down from your fathers that you’ll pass on to your children.

  “Others, like Lucy and myself, moved here in the last few years, many of us drawn by the opportunities afforded us by the facilities for artists at Haverford Castle. But we do have one important thing in common—an appreciation that the place we call home is very special indeed.” Paul paused as several people clapped and called muted agreement, and Lauren had a glimpse of the courtroom presence that had made her friend a top civil lawyer before his retirement.

  “Sadly, Mrs. Lloyd, the Castle’s chatelaine, passed away in November, and while we will all miss her, we’ve all been wondering, not without a touch of anxiety, about what would happen to the Castle. But I think we all believed, with that wonderful lady’s lifelong devotion to developing Canadian art that some provision would be made to maintain her life’s work. So it came as something of a shock to read the Globe and Mail this week,” Paul held up the now somewhat battered copy of the newspaper he’d shown Lauren. “I don’t know if you’ve read the photocopied article we handed around when you came in. If not, I’d urge you to read it now. I can tell you that the Avalon Hospitality Inc. proposal involves either renovating or demolishing the existing Castle and surrounding cottages and outbuildings, which are currently all in use as artists’ residences, studios, exhibition and display areas, and visitor centers, and turning the whole caboodle into a very exclusive health farm for the very, very rich.”

  Paul paused. A tense silence had settled over the room. “As you all know, the arts center founded by Mrs. Lloyd has allowed some very important Canadian artists to develop their work and become internationally known. In addition, the existence of the artists’ colony, along with the exhibition centers, has brought a very lucrative tourist market into this area. The two arts festivals alone brought in more than half a million into the local economy last year.”

  “Now, some of you may ask, is art important? Does it matter? Well, maybe some of it can be a bit off the wall. However, I think everyone in this community will admit that West River would be a much poorer place, both economically and socially, without the Haverford Castle Center for Canadian Arts.”

  Paul paused once again, and the room was silent.

  “You see, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not just a matter of taking over a local facility. It’s also part of the way of life for this community, part of the way we identify ourselves. Admit it, even those of you who have serious doubts about some of the art—and about some of the artists—that have passed this way over the years, still take a bit of pride in the way Haverford Castle’s put West River on the map. And even the most cynical of you can’t argue with the cold, hard cash that’s landed in your pockets from Mrs. Lloyd’s dream project!

  “Now, what about Avalon Hospitality Inc.? Well, it is a very exclusive hotel chain, obviously now planning to branch out into the health club market. But that’s all we know. No, they don’t give a damn about this local community—as proven by the fact that the details appear in the Toronto paper, yet they didn’t even have the courtesy to let us know here about their plans for Haverford Castle. It is, after all, home to quite a few of us—nor did they contact the local council who will have to deal with the impact at local level. No one at Avalon Hospitality has been available to answer queries on the phone. Now, this company is a subsidiary of the giant conglomerate, Rush Co. International, so I suppose it would be too much to expect that they would care about us little people.”

  Lauren, who’d spent many frustrating hours with Paul trying to get information from Rush Co. about their plans, listened to this recital of their attempts to get some facts with only half an ear. She scanned the faces of the crowd before her in the hall, seeing a few strangers but mostly familiar faces. You can’t live in a small rural community without being on at least nodding terms with most of the other residents, she thought to herself. Then her eyes were drawn back to the tall blond stranger who’d been the last to enter the hall as the meeting began. Under more careful scrutiny, he was even more attractive than her first impression had suggested, and the air of experience and authority that surrounded him intrigued her. But it was a lived-in face, too, the face of a man in his thirties who’d experienced enough to know what he wanted—and with the determination to go after it!

  What color are his eyes under that untamed sweep of blond hair? Surely blue would be the only color Mother Nature would have allowed to complement that silky looking thatch? As if sensing her thoughts, the stranger suddenly looked directly at Lauren and ran his fingers restlessly through his hair. Their eyes met and held for a moment—yes, deepest blue!—before Lauren broke the blue-green grip in confusion. Embarrassed at being caught staring, with an uneasy sense that he’d read her thoughts from her expression, Lauren deliberately turned away and continued her intense study of the other people present.

  Looking around, she saw in the faces of her friends and neighbors the concern, the anxiety, the anger and all the other confused emotions that had filled her own mind since Paul’s early morning visit just two days before. Lauren sighed as she wondered what affect all this would have on the people here. Already there had been heated debates in the streets, the stores, the bars and the coffee houses between those in favor of the development and the possible economic advantages it might bring, and those against the project for any number of reasons. There had, too, been a rumor that two brothers who farmed locally were no longer on speaking terms because one of them had agreed to sell the options to his land adjoining Haverford Castle to Rush Co. and the other had refused. If five generations of farming co-operatively had come to an end because of this proposal, what effect would the issue have on everyone else in the community, Lauren wondered sadly.

  Rapidly she pulled her thoughts back to the proceedings in hand, tuning in to the end of Paul’s opening speech as he told the crowd, “Possibly we’re jumping the gun here—after all, no one from Rush Co.
or Avalon Hospitality has had to courtesy to contact us directly—despite the obvious impact their reported plans would have on this community.” Jeers rose from the crowd. “But to my mind, this sheer neglect and ignoring of our right to know about something which could have such an affect on our future is a pretty strong indicator of how we can expect Rush Co. to trample over us—if they get a chance!”

  “Surely, having a subsidiary of a company as big as Rush Co. move in here would have some beneficial effects—maybe even bring in other industry?” someone from the back asked.

  “What’s the biggest economic asset of a place like West River? I don’t think we want heavy industry—certainly I doubt anyone here wants to become another Sudbury or Timmins. We’re too far off the beaten track for the service industries, and transportation costs put off most other industries. So that leaves us with tourism, which has treated us very nicely for the last few years. And the heart of West River’s tourism industry is Haverford Castle’s artist’s colony!” Paul declared. “Where do you think the tourists will go if all they get to see is the razor wire on the top of fences with signs saying, ‘Keep Out Unless You’re Super Rich’?”

  “They’ll go well away from here!” someone in the crowd shouted, and was treated to a smattering of applause.

  Roger Wellman stood up as Paul returned to his seat, waiting for the chatter and scraping of chairs to die down before he began speaking. A big, unruly looking man who gave the impression—correctly—that he could handle his big, meaty fists well in a fight, Roger was used to people listening when he spoke, and he never needed to raise his voice.