Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “George, it would hardly have gone that far.”

  “Nonsense, her kiss was a formal invitation to acts of passion. You have rejected the woman who has your heart in her clutches. You are possessed of the devil, my son. Repent at once.”

  “I was in fear, George. I am obsessed with failure.”

  “Oh, by all the saints . . . How do you know you’ll fail if you don’t try it? Arthur, you poor miserable creature, I really think you have simply persuaded yourself you’re impotent. All those years of married depression, who can blame you for not getting it up? Maybe you learned to expect failure: fear of criticism, fear of desertion — and doesn’t it all keep getting reinforced?”

  “I have felt some urges, I must admit.”

  “At all events, do you think Margaret would not understand? We all take pleasure in the weakness in others, and women particularly enjoy weakness in men. They see it as a challenge. They cherish their role as healers.”

  “Three’s a crowd, George. Chris Blake stands between us like some kind of … duenna.”

  “Oh, but can’t you tell what she’s doing? She’s letting him go. She speaks of him only to purge pain pent up too long, to get rid of it finally, so she can make room for you.”

  I am heartened by this. But I tell him about my dreams, the recurring theme of bondage.

  “Your dreams are what you fear; they are not what you are.” I think I am also in love with George, in that other, brotherly way. Suddenly I am disgusted with myself. I am snivelling about my self-centred heart to a friend who has deeper troubles, who yearns to fill the emptiness of his soul. I suddenly hunger to make communion with this priest.

  “Maybe I should have a smoke of that.”

  “I’ll roll you a fresh one.”

  But the pot affects me adversely. I become groggy, and we end our fishing trip early.

  Later, however, resting on a hammock, I am enveloped in a fuzzy but not unpleasant fog. I read from Paradise Lost and find new and lovely meanings. I listen to the Mozart clarinet concerto as if for the first time. I make up speeches to the jury, none of which make sense. I do tai chi: Dance Like a Rainbow. Then I fall asleep in the late afternoon and dream of Margaret Blake climbing naked from a hot tub, running to the door to greet me, and Chris Blake is sitting in the tub, smiling.

  Again, later, I have a faded memory of my phallus engorged while I slept, in full, tumescent pride.

  Dear Arthur,

  I’ve just got back from the Slocan and am scratching this out by hand so I can get it Priority Post to you ASAP. I’ve given the original tape to my secretary to transcribe, but meanwhile I’m enclosing a copy fresh off my portable stereo. Make of Dominique Lander what you will.

  Her studio is actually an old Bluebird bus beside her funky handbuilt-type-house on the Slocan River. She has a male partner who is a bit of an old-fashioned hippie, a lute-maker. It’s very 1960s out there in the Slocan. Or something. Spooky, in a way.

  Dominique is definitely into her own dark trip: a tendency to slinky black clothing, like she stepped right out of a Charles Addams cartoon, and predictably she paints with great gobs of depressing colours. She’s very beautiful, in her witchy way. Pale. Doesn’t go out in the sun a lot. She was really almost over-cooperative. At first.

  But I have to finish setting the scene, Arthur. Over in the corner there was a stool, and some leather straps and kneepads on it, and a thin cane leaning against it. A little distracting, right? It put me off my form. I forgot to turn the tape on right away, but you won’t miss much.

  More, later, on Professor O’Donnell’s reaction. Okay, play the tape and get back to this letter.

  No, I don’t mind at all. You can even plug it in if you like.

  It has fresh batteries.

  I want to help Jonathan. But I will not compromise the truth.

  I won’t ask you to. Okay, to go back — this detective’s name was Mr. Sierra.

  A nice little man with an accent. I think he comes from one of those Central American countries that are always at war.

  And did he say whom he represented?

  Well, as I told you, I assumed he was working for you. For the defence.

  Did he say that?

  He told me he was sworn to silence. But he . . . well, he was being very friendly. I’m sorry. I just thought he was there on Jonathan’s behalf. I’m truly sorry about this.

  And what did you tell him?

  Well, he told me the case against Jonathan looked pretty bad, especially the business about tying up his student. He said it would be useful if the B and D could be explained somehow. He used that expression — “B and D,” bondage and discipline — and I assumed he’d got it from Jonathan. And I thought about it. And I realized, yes, I should explain that Jonathan actually had a relationship where we did that regularly as part of our fucking. I thought it would be a good defence for him, proving what he did was a form of ritual play, that he wasn’t actually attacking her. But now that you tell me it’s only her word against his, I feel terrible. I wouldn’t have lied — I could never lie — but I guess I could have said nothing.

  Help me with this:You and Professor O’Donnell were into this . . . bondage and discipline?

  Yes, I introduced him to it. We played around with different formulas until we found what he liked, which was the basic spanking of the buttocks. Sometimes he wanted to be the bottom and me the top. We often took turns. Have you ever tried it?

  Doesn’t somehow grab me.

  Either you create or you’re straight. Ever bite your lover? Everyone does that. Love slaps and bites and scratches. Even tickling — that can be excruciating.

  Uh-huh.

  No one gets damaged, God gave us ample padding. You only do it out of love, though. You punish what you love not what you hate.

  You only hurt the one you love.

  Love and pain are twin emotions.

  This is getting a little strange, Dominique.

  Try it the next time you fuck.

  I’ll take a rain check. Have you been served with a subpoena for the trial?

  I’ve been told to expect one.

  And do you intend to wait around for it?

  You mean, what — go to the States for a few weeks? No, I couldn’t do that. I will not hide. Anyway, don’t you think I should discuss B and D with your jury? To help them understand?

  I don’t think it can help Jonathan. You said in your written statement you used to paint each other’s bodies. What was that about?

  He liked to colour my nipples. I covered him once in coral snakes and painted a serpent’s head on his cock. We worshipped each other’s bodies, why should we not make them more beautiful? Some people wear costumes, some like leather, some like rubber. I like skin. We didn’t wear anything.

  You introduced him to B and D?

  Yes.

  And you initiated these sessions? Usually.

  Did he seem to enjoy them?

  Of course. And it made for better fucking. He had a problem with shooting off too fast; the playing kept his prick stiff. It spun things out. You know how it is.

  I hear you. What else went on?

  We played different games, guard and prisoner, master and slave, things like that; sometimes I’d scream a little. But he began to tire of these games, didn’t he? I wouldn’t agree.

  You and he had talked of marriage, hadn’t you?

  Yes, we had a talk.

  You actually proposed to him.

  I’m a very direct person.

  And he declined the offer.

  I assume that’s what he’s told you.

  And that’s when he began to draw away from you. He began dating other women. . . . Are you able to respond to that? You and he broke up with all sorts of recriminations, isn’t that so?

  Is that his version?

  Is it true?

  He was seeing them behind my back. It’s one thing I won’t stand for. Disloyalty. Do you feel vengeful? That’s insulting.

 
I’m sorry. By the way, did Mr. Sierra make you any offers of money? My expenses. How much?

  This interview is at an end.

  Sorry, Arthur, I kind of blew it there. My questions got too loaded.

  I think she knew all along Sierra was working for the other side. Even if she’s capable of love, I don’t think she loves Jon O’Donnell — she wants to get him. I forgot to mention, earlier she was going on about how she was just scraping by, the whole starving-artist thing. Jon O’Donnell told me she was always talking about money and marriage, that she considered him a kind of lifetime arts grant. Obviously she’s interested in getting some moolah out of this. I wonder how much her “expenses” are.

  Okay, the bad news is she did involve him in what he prefers to call sexual “experimenting,” but it was nothing as extensive as Dominique describes. More to please her than anything, he says. The novelty faded — it all got too outlandish for him. He says he’s sick to death at having kept Dominique a secret from us — he was hoping she had somehow disappeared from the face of the earth. Of course, he’s terrified to tell you.

  I wish I knew what to do about her.

  Augustina

  It is the last Friday of August, the beginning of a last, lost, hazy weekend before a trial begins for which I feel ill prepared. Oh, I have read the briefs of law prepared by my junior, a woman of inestimable value. And today I am rereading the transcripts, scrawling marginalia upon them, reminders of points to be made. But I lack even an inchoate sense of how I am to defend this case. I cannot put Jonathan on the witness stand — for fear he will hang himself with his own tongue. I must somehow unmake the Crown’s case, pick away at it until it crumbles.

  But is my heart in it? Why does this chronic prevaricator even deserve a defence? Is he also lying about one final, fundamental matter? My belief in his cause has eroded with the housekeeper’s report of screams from next door and with Dominique Lander’s sinful revelations, an account of which has just been mailed to me by Augustina. (Also at the general store was a cheery postcard from Annabelle in Bayreuth, where, Mr. Makepeace informed me, her friend Mr. Roehlig “is working as a conductor on The Flying Dutchman”)

  I may make some hay with this devotee of the learned discipline of pain, but the jury will still be left pondering the Honourable Jonathan’s predilection for unnatural forms of Hogarthian lust. They will ask:What in the world was he doing with such a woman if he’s not perverted himself? I wonder that myself. We must strive to keep this dangerous abstract artist off the stand.

  But in what shape am I to take on this cyclopean monster of a trial? I have occasionally won verdicts when drunk in court — but never on the dreamy lotus leaves of love. Sleepless are my nights, for as soon as I lay down my work, I am buzzing with Margaret. To help me through this time, I have been smoking marijuana from the small supply that George Rimbold gave me. There’s something to it after all — it relaxes me, but also helps me focus on my work.

  In the evenings, stoned in my club chair, I write corny poems to her. I go for long, lonely walks, mumbling lines from Virgil and Catullus. “What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.” I am love’s victim. Amor proximi.

  Outside, the hammers of Stoney and Dog go tap-tap-???. Tap-tap-TAP. Stoney has the radio on in his dilapidated flatbed truck, from which issue commercials, weather reports, jangling rock and roll. I am unable to absorb any more of the testimony of the fumbling Constable Gavin Peake, the blunt Dr. Sanchez. I lay pen and transcript down. Another walk on the beach is in order. Or shall I go tripping through the woods this time on fairy feet?

  Good news, said the weatherman. Rain is on the way. The air is musty, prickly, still; cumulus clouds are moving up from the south, scouts for the troops of thunderheads massing at the horizon. I wander into the fir grove and bear not right to the fence of Margaret Blake — my mind seeks peace not turmoil — but left onto the trail Stoney has tramped through my upper meadow, the shortcut to his home and car lot.

  Here a smaller trail veers off, a deer path down a recess into an alder bottom, a little hidden dingle I must one day explore — a prospective site for that second orchard I’ve been planning. As I emerge onto Potter’s Road I notice tire tracks leading into the bushes: behind them, a bulky shape, metallic. Closer inspection reveals an ROMP four-wheel van. Potter’s Road hardly seems a prime location for a speed trap, and there is no sign of the driver. Nor are homes nearby where he might be visiting. Curious.

  I walk a mile or so up the road, then turn back. The police vehicle is still there. I go down the trail again and stop to inspect the deer path more closely: here is not a hoof print but a boot print, and a discarded butt. I work my way down into the little valley. Why is this soil disturbed — and over there, why have those alder saplings been cut down to form a clearing. . . .

  Comprehension bathes me in its harsh, incandescent light. Bob Stonewell, alias Stoney, is practising unlicensed horticulture on my land, doubtless assisted by his henchman, Dog. I recall Stoney’s arrogant vaunt after being acquitted last month for a similar crime: This year my grow ain’t on the property. They’ll never find it.

  Closer inspection reveals about a dozen three-foot-tall cannabis plants, their branches adorned with illegal clumps of tiny, hairy, sticky leaves. Why am I always taken in by Stoney? Am I so gullible? Well, he is in trouble now, because this small garden of delights has obviously been discovered by the local mountie. No sign of him, however.

  I lean down to one of the plants. So this is the magical source of those blurry, pleasant moments I have recently enjoyed. A robust, merry little tree. So sorry to see you go. I fondle one of the hairy clumps and put it to my nose to seek its intoxicating perfume, but I am suddenly aware of a stirring in the salal bushes nearby.

  Constable Horace Pound rises from his leafy spying post and walks heavy-footed towards me, clutching a small camera.

  “Why, it’s Constable Pound. But this isn’t the second Tuesday of the month.”

  “I’m doing this on my own time. You know what’s growing here, Mr. Beauchamp? Oh, just a minute, you have the right to remain silent and anything you say may be used as evidence, and you have the right to a lawyer. And the first thing I should ask is do you admit you own this property?”

  I smile, enjoying his dry sense of humour: he is having a joke on me. But do I not recall that this fellow is somewhat lacking in wit? He brings out his pad and makes some notes. I then proceeded to approach the male individual who I found crouching behind a small green plant which I identify as cannabis sativa.

  “Constable, how long have you been sitting out here?”

  “Long enough to see what I saw.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You tending these plants, Mr. Beauchamp. I note for the record there is a bag of WonderGrow fertilizer right over there.” He takes a photograph of it, and another of the path to my house. “And how many weeks have you been doing this?”

  “I’ve been coming here on my days off. Waiting until I can catch the perp in the act.”

  Stung by Stoney’s acquittal, this proud officer has been assiduously seeking revenge, checking for hidden garden sites near Stoney’s land.

  “You are a patient man, but not patient enough. You have caught the wrong perp. You know perfectly well that I just stumbled onto these plants.”

  “You were in personal contact with one of the plants, sir. You held it up to your nose in an act of smelling.”

  Constable Pound obviously knows he has collared the wrong party. But I fear his long vigils have frustrated him: Any perp will do. I hunger to play the common fink, to squeal on the malefactor whose hammer I distantly hear. Tap-tap-TAP. Is that what Pound wants me to do — to cooperate, to roll over for him? This is laughable.

  “And do you have a warrant to be on this property?”

  I am not particularly elated to find that he does. He shows it to me, and it seems in proper form.

  “Do you mind if I che
ck through your house?”

  For several seconds I am as silent as guilt. I think of the stash Rimbold left with me. Hidden with the cookies in a twist-top tin container in the fridge. But surely the officer is merely hoping to turn the screws, to encourage me to turn Crown’s evidence. I will devise my own unique form ofjustice for that sorcerer’s apprentice Stoney — though I would love to rat on him, to tattle the tale of his many strolls up the path just photographed.

  “Of course not,” I finally say, finding inner wells of heartiness. He will see Stoney working on the garage. His attention will be diverted and I will have a chance to stash my stash. “Get your vehicle, come by, and we will have tea.”

  His look is heavy with suspicion. “We’ll walk there together if you don’t mind, sir.” Perhaps he thinks I intend to uproot the evidence and scurry off with it.

  When we emerge into my yard, he turns and takes a picture of the trail we have just exited. I look for Stoney, but he is hidden behind a tree. Dog, however, is sitting on the apex of the roof and peering in our direction. All hammering suddenly stops: just the tinny sound of music from the truck’s radio.

  Pound turns and takes pictures of the house and garage, but too late to capture Dog, who has already descended from the roof.

  As we recommence our journey, I hear an engine ignite and rumble into life. Stoney’s creaky flatbed two-ton truck comes into view, Dog at the wheel and beside him, cap slid down almost to his nose, a slouching Stoney. The truck chugs quickly up my driveway and with a roar of acceleration escapes down Potter’s Road.

  Pound stops in his tracks, uncertain now of his next move. “Who were the individuals in that vehicle?”

  “Ah, yes, that would be my work crew.”

  Constable Pound will get the hint and chase after the perps while the trail is fresh. But he just stands there. The skin on his face seems to tighten, and he takes on the frantic look of a man helpless in the grip of a dilemma. Now he looks at me with a raw hostility, sizing me up, seeking potential for revenge. I can see he wants to blame someone other than himself for the bungling of Operation Stonewell.