Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “Ms. Martin can be excused from the stand?”

  “No one has any more questions? Very well, the witness is excused from court.” Kimberley, sitting behind Patricia, makes no motion to leave. Tight of lip and stiff of neck, she seems determined to brazen it out for the trial’s denouement.

  Patricia formally closes her case. “That is all the evidence for the Crown, m’lord.”

  Wally turns to the jury. “Ms. Foreperson, jury members: The charges before you require proof the complainant did not consent. When the evidence points entirely in the opposite direction — and I think you will agree there was consent here beyond a reasonable doubt — it becomes the judge’s duty to direct the jury to find the defendant not guilty on all counts. I so direct you. I take it you do not need to retire and consider that verdict.” He smiles unctuously. But Hedy Jackson-Blyth has raised a hand. “Ms. Foreperson, you have a question?”

  She rises with a look that intimates she feels male mischief is occurring here. “The defendant kissed her while he thought she was unconscious. He admitted that. Are you saying that is not a sexual assault?” She has a firm, emphatic way of making a point, doubtless perfected in union halls. The other jurors shuffle awkwardly — they do not seem in support of their leader. Goodman is grimacing, expressing disgust.

  “Madam, we are not debating societal mores here,” Wally retorts — perhaps too quickly, but he is cranky: His word has been challenged.

  “No, I just want it clear. Can a woman consent to being kissed unawares, when she has her eyes closed? Or are there different kinds of consent?”

  Wally is about to say something, then pauses, reflects. This feminist spear-thrower may have aimed her political dart too correctly: right down Wally’s affirmatively acting throat. “Well . . .” he says. “Strictly speaking, no, it’s not true consent, but . . .” He struggles, a hint of panic in his eyes.

  “I’m not saying it’s a serious type of assault, but wouldn’t it be a very bad precedent? I don’t know if I could play a part in it, your honour. Unless you’re sure that’s what the law says.” She can barely keep the scorn from her voice.

  He turns to me for rescue. “There’s a principle that applies to this, isn’t there, Mr. Beauchamp?”

  “De minimis non curat lex. The law does not concern itself with trifles.”

  Jackson-Blyth will not let up. “Well, if unwanted touching is a trifle —”

  But Kimberley sharply breaks into this disputation, her voice fierce. “Oh, for God’s sake, I wanted him to kiss me. And it wasn’t any trifle.”

  Someone gasps. Jackson-Blyth reddens. “I’m sorry,” she says. She looks around at her frowning comrades. “Well, I guess the verdict is not guilty.” They nod. She sits awkwardly, ruffled.

  “Very good,” says Wally. “Now, before we adjourn — can I have the jury’s attention?”

  They are distracted by Kimberley, who is slowly gaining her feet. She takes a deep breath, regards Jonathan for a moment, then begins to glide out, head high, curls dancing.

  “A final word of thanks to you, members of the jury. You have made sacrifices to serve your country, giving up home, family, and workplace….”

  No one is listening to this saccharine dirge. They are watching Kimberley make an about-face at the doorway. She smiles gamely, blows a campy kiss to the audience, raises her arms in theatrical surrender, and departs.

  “. . . I could tell by your faces you had an obvious grip on the issues. . . .”

  Wally stalls as Jonathan rises and walks quickly up the aisle.

  “And, ah, I observed you paid attention throughout. . . .”

  Heads are turned as Jonathan accelerates towards the door and disappears, sending it shut with a thud.

  His audience lost, Wally sighs. “That’s all. We’ll adjourn.”

  “What the hell’s with Jon?” Augustina asks.

  “He has madly rushed off on an ill-advised mission to seek Kimberley’s understanding and mercy. Go in pursuit, quickly. Put the collar on him and don’t let him talk to reporters.”

  They are all in the mezzanine, demanding, threatening, circling us like jackals. I toss them a few bones, homilies about our noble system ofjustice and its pursuit of truth; I express pleasure in the exoneration of innocence and I pray that both parties involved in this minor fuss will heal their wounds and enjoy tranquil lives and splendid careers.

  But as we work our way to the edge of the crowd, I see Kimberley, unattended, slip from a witness room, glance in our direction, then step quickly down a deserted corridor. Between bobbing heads I glimpse Jonathan hurrying after her. I lean to Augustina’s ear: “There he goes.”

  She takes off in pursuit while I make my way down the stairs, bloviating to the press about all manner of nonsense, finally escaping into the sanctum of the gentlemen’s robing room. There, the Commander hurriedly stuffs his costume into a locker and throws on some casual clothes. Four-thirty. I shall never make it to the ferry for its milk run to the islands. Woe: I shall have to delay my return to both island and woman of my heart until the morning.

  But relax, Beauchamp. Haste takes a heavy toll of the heart. The morning boat will haul me home well before noon, even running late. I shall call Margaret and explain. And why not spend a few good moments in the El Beau Room with friends, basking in victory’s glow?

  Waiting outside my room, in amiable conversation, are Augustina Sage and Dr. Jane Dix.

  “Jonathan gave me the slip, Arthur.” Augustina shrugs helplessly. “A very deliberate one. I yelled to him from across the street. He ignored me.”

  I lead them into my suite. Augustina bends to my mini-bar, finds a fruit punch for me, then pulls out a half-bottle of champagne. The cork pops, and she ducks from a spray of fizz.

  “They went off in a taxi. Jonathan and Kimberley.”

  “In a taxi!”

  My stunned expression prompts Jane to smile. “I only see good coming from it. They have a great deal to say to each other. Lots of bandaging to do.”

  This clever doctor of the mind has prescribed too well and often for me to take issue with her. My sexually challenged client has high degrees from Oxford; I must assume he knows what he’s doing.

  “I must apologize to you, Jane. I was too cynical. I preferred silence to truth. But has the truth made Jonathan free?”

  “He no longer has to hide. Can’t be free in a closet.”

  “Extraordinary, this seeming urgency to run off and make amends with a woman who put him through nine months of hell. I suppose a permanent cease-fire will not hurt his chances before the UBC ethics panel.”

  “You are cynical,” Jane says. “I don’t believe he’s thinking about his career right now. There’s something else about Jonathan you should know. I only came to fully realize it while I was watching him in court.”

  Our glasses clink. I hesitate before sipping.

  “What should I know?”

  “He went to her play four times. I thought at first it was a persecution obsession. But it’s a rather healthier emotion than that. Though he managed for the longest while to blind himself to it.”

  My face must seem to her a blur of incomprehension.

  Augustina explains, “He’s totally gone on her, Arthur, that’s what Jane’s telling you.”

  Jane nods. “Took him a while to figure it out. Heavy denial. At some point today — as she was testifying, I think — the light just came flooding in.”

  Augustina says, “You saw the way he kept staring at her all week . . . totally bewitched. Mad about her.” She tweaks my beard and winks. “You should know what it’s like, lover.” She tosses back her champagne. “Guess he was just flirting with me. We’ll see you in a few minutes, Arthur. Everyone’s waiting in the El Beau Room.”

  After they depart, I undress, assailed by my own odours, the dense acid smell of a hard day’s toil for justice. Outside: a grey mattress of cloud. But from a thin break in the west, a peep of sun; a yellow slash illumines the high mounta
in forests across the inlet.

  The latest aperçu from Jane Dix has me confounded — yet the clues were all present: Jonathan’s confusion, depression, obsession. But never hatred, that evil antonym of love. To his credit he had never cried out for vengeance, for injury, for hurt. Why can’t I hate her? I can’t find my anger; maybe I’ve buried it too deep. He’d buried not his anger but his heart.

  Ah, love. Who can comprehend the madness inflicted by Venus’s poisoned arrows? Who can survive and not be blinded? “It is vain to look for a defense against lightning,” Publilius Syrus said. Poor Jonathan, who must now suffer the curse of unrequited love.

  But I must pursue my own heart. . . .

  Margaret’s phone rings too often, but I am finally rewarded by her liquid, gay hello.

  “How exciting. It was on the five o’clock news. I want to hear it all, every second of it. When do you get here?”

  “The morning ferry, should I survive that long.”

  “I’ll wait.” She says this with entirely too much cheer. “We’re short on manpower, can you supervise some of the children’s games? The three-legged race and stuff?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, and we have a guest artist coming, a wonderful classical guitarist. Excuse me. Have to lay the phone down. I’m running a tub. I just can’t undo a bra with one hand.”

  A tiny, tickling electrical surge passes through me. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by an erotic image: I picture her unclasping that brassiere, arms twisted behind her back, the straps gliding from her shoulders. . . .

  I look down in awe. I have an erection as stiff as a salute.

  My cronies and I celebrate around a long table at the El Beau Room: Patricia and Gundar bravely nursing their wounds, Augustina — suffering a slightly bruised heart — on her way to tying one on. Sheriff, court clerk, and stenographer are here, as well as two of the jurors: Mr. Lang, the fishing person, and the broker Goodman. We are missing Wally, who for some reason has elected for home and family.

  “It looked for a while like we had a fight on our hands,” Goodman is telling me. “Isn’t there some defence where a guy’s so drunk he can’t help himself?”

  I am barely listening to him. Tomorrow, the eight o’clock ferry. By noon, Dei gratia, I will be paired off with Margaret at the egg-toss contest. Later, after the barbecue, after the dance, another chance to woo her by her blazing hearth?

  My chat with Margaret — she in her tub, I wandering about consumed with erotic fantasy — is still setting off tingles, erogenous pops in my loins. How exuberant I feel; I cannot remember such libidinous yearnings since my youth. But I am saving it, hoarding it in the audacious hope that Margaret may ultimately fall prey to my dogged pursuit.

  Finally, all but the lawyers leave. We tarry, order food, relive our trial. Patricia comically apes a fogbound appeal court judge.

  As I am about to rise, an agitated man in a business suit approaches. I remember him: the footman who’d been attending Clarence de Remy Brown the day he left for Guyana. He clears his throat and interrupts Patricia’s parody.

  “Excuse me, but, ah, can anyone tell me where Miss Martin is?”

  Silence. None dares look at him. But Patricia sighs, rises, follows him to the front door, where Remy himself appears, looking cranky and confused after a long flight, a gift-wrapped package in his arms. I decide to go out by another door.

  Outside, the air has turned keen and sweet. The sky has cleared. Suspended above is a fattening harvest moon.

  PART FOUR

  No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

  QUINTUS ENNIUS

  The sun’s first rays brush the mountain peaks across the inlet, their wreathes of clouds made rosy by the slanting September light. Arcing over the North Shore mists, a faint rainbow: Iris gliding through the purple air, When loosely girt her dazzling mantle flows.

  There will be time enough to sing the songs of Flaccus. I am already packed, my suitcase heavier by several pounds. A gift arrived in my room last night: a compact disc player, CD’S of Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre for the stage, a note in Jonathan’s scrawl: “For this relief, much thanks.”

  My phone rings. The office limousine awaits below to fetch me to the ferry. (My rolling stock is now sorely depleted, so I shall be truckless and footloose on Garibaldi.)

  And now I am aboard the Queen of Prince George as she furrows through tossing waves towards those green hills rising from the inner sea. Ah, the beautiful Isles of the Blest, the heaven of the ancients, where the gods transport the virtuous to live in blissful eternity: thither go I, the finally and forever retired lawyer, reborn as a tiller of soil. On some distant future day, let my obituary read: Though skilled in court, A. R. Beauchamp was ultimately better known for his stirring feats as a farmer.

  Obituary . . . George comes back to me. How I would have loved to regale that darling man with my tales of near calamity and triumph. My return home will not be without some grief.

  A few of my fellow islanders are out here on the upper starboard side (permanents, like me), and I am of course besieged with all manner of questions and comments about my trial, the outcome of which is the subject of blaring headlines in the morning dailies.

  But Kurt Zoller has more important matters on his mind. As he sidles up to me, he asks, “Know why we always run out of water? The trees drink most of it up.” He leans to my ear. “They compete with us for the necessaries of life.”

  His water delivery service having been rained out, he has traded his tank truck for a heavy-duty van, newly stencilled with the logo of a toppling fir tree and the words: “Zoller’s Tree Service. Ecologically Sensitive Landscaping.”

  “I’m tired of helping people, Mr. Bo-champ, so I’m going to let Margaret Blake be trustee for a while. We’ll see how people like it when she puts the clock back. You still friendly with her? Beware. She’ll turn on you. That’s all I can say.” It is as if he holds some dire secret, though his words sound more of a curse than a warning.

  The wind has whipped up, and the Queen of Prince George is rocking slightly, the tides of Active Pass churning beneath us. Clouds scud along the eastern sky, massing against the mountains above Vancouver, fleeing the hot September sun under which our islands bask.

  A lanky fellow of middle years — a long blond-grey ponytail, a sad, sensitive look to him — squats on the deck, expertly fingering the strings and struts of a guitar. A sprightly Vivaldi sonata.

  When he concludes, I clap my hands.

  “You’re most kind.” His smile is natural, unlaboured.

  We introduce ourselves. Malcolm Lorenz, a name I recall from somewhere, perhaps on the radio, a CBC music program. This must be the classical guitarist Margaret mentioned, our fall fair guest artist.

  He joins me at the railing. “I saw your picture all over the front pages this morning. Oddest damn trial, must have been fun. Congratulations. You have a place on Garibaldi, Arthur?”

  “I do, indeed.”

  “Spent five years off and on there. Fifteen-year-old runaway who thought he could change the world on acid and mushrooms. Do you know Margaret Blake?”

  “She’s my neighbour.”

  “Heard of the Earthseed Commune? That was us. We hadn’t the faintest idea what we were doing, except for Chris and Margaret — they had the green thumbs. They lasted it out.”

  He’s an engaging man, with an interesting history — but why does he make me nervous? “Did Margaret invite you?”

  “Sort of. I just came back from a tour of East Africa. Canada Council funding, raise money for Rwandan refugees, that sort of thing. The idea is to keep me from starvation, too. I called Margaret, thought I’d pay her a visit, and she asked me over to do a free gig. Sounds like fun.”

  “It does, indeed.”

  “Haven’t seen her since Chris’s funeral. I admired Chris. Still very fond of Margaret.”

  “Malcolm, I know Margaret would be absolutely delighted if you would join us at
the lamb barbecue.”

  He flicks the quickest little look at me, then his eyes settle on the horizon, the small green islands dappling it. I fixate on a quartet of gulls hanging rigidly in the vessel’s slipstream. The gulls lose formation and wheel away as the ferry heaves to port, rounding the beacon off East Point, heading into the ferry slip, where gathers the usual crowd of weekend greeters. On the car deck, cyclists strap on helmets, mount their bikes, and the boat’s metal gates begin to yawn open.

  Observing my suitcase, Malcolm rightly infers I am without a vehicle. I accept his offer of a lift. He seems a gentle person, and in normal circumstances I would like him. He has qualities I both admire and lack: charm and panache. Therefore, he worries me.

  On the car deck, Zoller is tying on his life jacket for the risky drive onto the ferry dock. “Guess the island hasn’t changed much,” Malcolm says. “Different characters, that’s all.”

  I sling my suitcase into the back of his old Volkswagen van. He also has a bag. Clearly he is proposing to stay the night. Where? Has Margaret offered him her couch (or worse)? Should I let him know Garibaldi boasts a few charming bed and breakfast inns — or might he prefer one of the funky cabins at The Brig? No wedding band decorates a finger. But I am being absurd. He and Margaret are friends of long standing; only an unhealthy jealousy would read anything base in a friendly reunion.

  Stranded near the dock is my old rattletrap truck, which I foolishly lent to Nelson Forbish. I suppose it was too much to expect that Stoney might have had it serviced and running for my arrival. Perhaps he can offer another loaner.

  As we pass the entrance to her bar, Emily Lemay waves. She is dressed grandly for the fair, sun glinting off her shiny satin dress.

  “My God, is that Emily? She stole my sixteen-year-old virginity, that woman.” Malcolm laughs, begins talking in a relaxed drawl about the old days. There was no bar then; he and his fellow hippies used to smuggle their beer and whisky from the American islands. “No electricity, no car ferry, no cops, no paved roads, nada. We lied to ourselves: This is paradise, we said, and we’re not insanely bored.”