I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (48 page)

After more squabbling and my written declaration that I am married to said recipient and not separated, Makepeace relents on a one-time-only basis. I slip out the envelope he'd been holding to the light. Handwritten. Underlined:
Personal
.
From someone at Greenpeace, Ottawa – Les Falk.

“Given it's personal, I can't tell you what's in it.” Makepeace pulls my own mail from the Blunder Bay box, mostly bills and magazines. The latest
Island Bleat
. “And one love letter for you too.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Makepeace appears taken aback by the curt tone. “A joke. Bite my head off, why don't you.”

The love letter, postmarked three days ago, turns out to be a formal invitation to Annabelle's welcome-back party next Friday. Penned on it:
In case you can't make it, write something terrible about me for the
MC
to read out
.

I stroll over to the bar, signal Emily for a tall-mug coffee, and take it out to the smoke-illegal patio. I wave off an invitation to join the beer-quaffing regulars at the next table and settle in with the latest
Bleat
. Forbish's lead article advertises Stan Caliginis and tomorrow's “ceremonial replanting of the grapes with a Wild West motive.” I assume the editor means
motif
. The “respected millionaire” wants to “bring the community together to restore the historic old Bulbaconi Vineyard and Winery.”

The latter is an imposing architectural disaster, castle-like, built
of granite from the old quarry, and despite its sweeping views, proof that if you build it, no one will come. At least not many, Garibaldi being off the winery tour trail. A local dark theory has the vineyard under a curse.

“He ain't gonna suck me in.” Ernie Priposki has seen me shaking my head over the article. “I'll go for the food and booze but I ain't lining up for no free labour.”

“Well, I'm gonna show him what I can do,” says Baldy. “He's hiring, and paying top dollar.”

“You ain't held down a frigging job for fifteen years.”

I interrupt this testy colloquy. “Any of you gentlemen seen my Fargo on the road recently?”

“You ain't heard, Arthur?” Cudworth Brown, bad poet and local literary lion. His face is strained. “Stoney didn't make the turnoff at Bald Rock. He rode that sucker two hundred metres down to the gully.”

I jolt upright, coffee slopping from my mug.

“He's been coptered off the island, man. All we can do is pray.” Cud wearily stubs out a cigarette.

Honk Gilmore sighs. “The Fargo didn't survive.”

I have gone pale, speechless. I don't pick up that I'm being ribbed until Gomer Goulet snorts, unable to hold back laughter. The others join in: my history of victimization by Stoney, especially over the truck, has inspired much mean humour.

Seeking forgiveness, they send Honk to my table as an emissary; he's a mentor for the local growers. “Stoney's on the run, man. There was a scene here at lunch. Ernst Pound blew up at him over some beef involving that rent-a he loaned you. Stoney took off like a rabbit.”

“In my truck?”

“In your truck.”

“If you see him before I do, Honk, as I expect you will, tell him his car is in the B.C. Ferries pound. I want my truck back.”

“Lights out,” a sentry calls. A flurried butting of cigarettes and emptying of ashtrays. I tell Emily to set the boys up on my tab,
and hurry down to intercept Constable Pound, who is just pulling in. He is clearly under worsening strain over his marriage breakdown, making wild tirades as he flails about trying to fulfil his arrest quota.

“What's going on?” I ask, climbing into his van.

“I know and you know that Stonewell is just a stoner with a scrubby little grow somewhere, but they want me to make a case and grab him. Someone at Integrated Drugs decided Loco Motion Luxury Rentals sounds like a trafficking operation.”

I actually play with the thought of turning Stoney in. He proudly showed me his grow in June, in the broom patch behind the road maintenance depot. With some effort I retrieve my honour. “I want my Fargo, Ernst. I'm not going to get it if he's hiding from the law. Please put out word he's no longer on the wanted list.”

I take Ernst's who-cares shrug as assent and return to the bar and my cold coffee.

Honk Gilmore shuffles back to my table with a hopeful smile. “You work something out for my man?”

“This is the deal: tell Stoney to return my truck or he'll never see his grow again.”

I spend most of the evening, as usual, brooding – during dinner, and later over Darjeeling tea and the
Goldberg Variations –
fretting about the Swift appeal, my marriage, my truck, practically anything that comes to mind.

Maybe I'll find peace if I slay the dragon of Gabriel's guilty plea. It feels like the python of legend around my neck, the serpent the Romans believed was born from slime and stagnant waters. A plea bargain – such a bargain for Gabriel Swift, so eagerly snapped up by his raw young lawyer. If only I had known what I know today.

Before retiring I remember to set Margaret's mail on her desk, but I succumb to a temptation to examine that thin envelope from
Les Falk, Greenpeace, Ottawa. Dated two weeks ago – slow to get here. I hold it to the light, but I lack Makepeace's magic eyes. An environmental function they want her to attend. A speaking invitation. Could be anything.

A
lmost ten-thirty in Ottawa, so Margaret ought to be up, though there's no guarantee; politics has turned this rise-and-shine farm girl into a nighthawk. My hand shakes as I dial. I don't know why I'm so nervous about this proposed visit. Maybe out of concern that I'll be seen as intruding on her hectic schedule, an unwanted relative whose presence must be borne politely.

A clatter as she knocks the phone from its cradle. “Arthur?” A clearing of the airway. “Coffee, I smell coffee.” Her maker has an automatic timer.

“I'm sorry, were you sleeping, darling?”

“Good God, ten-thirty! I have a meeting.” I see her in pyjamas and slippers, padding off to the kitchenette of her paper-cluttered apartment. A thump of the fridge door. A sip of milk. A sigh. “Clean Oceans Conference; I was co-chair. The press conference ran late, reception ran later. Never mind, how are you faring? Is Blunder Bay still above the rising seas?”

I fill her in, rather too gaily, telling her of my preposterous misadventures with Stoney's rent-a.

She seems unsure whether to laugh or sympathize, and ends up gently chiding. “Oh, and he assured you the car was clean, did he? Poor Arthur, I imagine you were at your most bellicose with that young officer.” Censorious, like Reverend Al.
I've been under great strain
, I want to say.

I bring her up to date on Blunder Bay, reassure her that the farm and I are mucking along just fine, mostly thanks to the enterprise and energy of Niko and Yoki, and that there's a bit of mail for her, nothing that looks important. Something from Greenpeace. Les Falk.

No response. She goes offline for a moment. “Sorry – call waiting. It's Pierette.”

I hurry on. “I'll bring everything when I come to Ottawa this coming week. Along with the alarm clock you forgot.”

She laughs, hesitantly. “Next week?”

I explain my plans to snoop through the Mulligan fonds at the National Archives. As I rattle on about the case I hear the shower start up, imagine her stripping, testing the water with her foot.

Finally she finds a chance to speak. “It'll be so wonderful to see you. I try not to miss you. Love you.”

Buoyed by that sign-off, I am emboldened this morning to stall no longer and to grub out the chicken pen. So while the girls do the morning milk, I shovel manure into a wheelbarrow, and as I work up a good farmer's sweat I jettison my worries for the while. One gets gratification from honourable work.

With a barrow full of a sticky mat of straw and excreta, I exit the coop just as a monster pickup purrs down the driveway, pursued by Homer, and pulls up by the house. In the back are kegs of beer, cases of wine, coolers, several garden spades. I am not particularly surprised to see Stan Caliginis step out (I sense in him a propensity for stalking). Cowboy boots, white Stetson, ornate belt buckle. Presumably he's been in the city, laying in supplies for this afternoon's planting party, but why is he stopping here?

Homer, acting the butler, greets him with a sniff, then announces him, a barked message.
He means no harm, Arthur, though you ought not to be too effusive in your welcome
. I call out a greeting as I manoeuvre the wheelbarrow toward him.

Caliginis takes my hand in a hearty salesman's grip. “Phoned, no answer. Decided to come by. Heard you had no transpo.” He pats the big truck's fender. “Just off the lot – 2011 Ford Super Duty, V-8 turbo diesel. Bought it for the farm. Have to spin back to the Big Smoke tomorrow. She's yours for the week.”

“That's very neighbourly, Stan, but I've vowed to cut my carbon emissions.”

Niko and Yoki have got all the goat milk refrigerated by now and have joined us to hustle a ride to the vineyard. “You like, we go early,” Niko tells me.

“I like you go early. I not go.”

Caliginis looks disappointed in me. I have spurned his generosity, failed in a duty of friendship that I can't recall undertaking. The
WOOF
ers race off to their dwelling to change. I want to go in and change too, and shower, but am forced to be polite and stay put with my smelly pants and boots and wheelbarrow.

I can't imagine why the effluvium doesn't damage his refined olfactory senses, but he seems determined not to notice, even comes closer. “I have an apology. Didn't know you were
AA
until I got halfway through the book.”

I ask him why that would be a problem. Because, he says, as a teetotaller I could hardly be expected to “enthuse” over his vineyard project. He doesn't want it to come between us. He is terribly sorry to have gone on the way he did about his favourite wines. (
AA
ers often have to deal with this sort of thing. It's presumed that if we can't enjoy a drink we don't want anyone else to.)

“Fascinating woman,” he says.

The quick change of subject startles. “Who?”

“Sorry, still caught up with
Thirst for Justice
. Annabelle. Your first wife. Gorgeous. Flamboyant. Reminds me a bit of my own first wife. Took me to the cleaners but I never got over her. Eudora. Remarried in haste, and that ended badly too.”

I am dismayed to have become a repository of this personal oral history. I feel I'm being pressured to share.

Caliginis now retrieves a copy of
A Thirst
from the cab – shall I assume he carries it everywhere, or is it being used as a prop? He flips the pages, finds what he wants. “This photo from the early eighties, you and Annabelle in tux and gown … Owns that camera, doesn't she? Stunning.”

“She looks exactly the same today.”

Niko and Yoki are taking their time, so I see no recourse but to invite him to relax on the veranda while I wash up. In the course of
changing into yesterday's fairly clean pants, I draw from a pocket the invitation from Annabelle.
In case you can't make it, write something terrible about me …

Returning outside, I see the girls finally approaching, Yoki in a polka skirt and red bandana, and an old straw hat she must have found in the attic. Niko looks exotic in Daisy Mae cut-offs and a vest with a plastic sheriff's star. Caliginis insists on taking my picture with them.

I can offer no explanation why, as I see him to his truck, I present him with Annabelle's invitation. “Here's your chance to meet her.”

An impetuous, mischievous act that haunts me the rest of the day. Was it motiveless or was I seeking to redirect Annabelle to him? Why wouldn't she thank me for hooking her up with a discerning tycoon with a nose for essence of hazelnuts and tropical fruit?
It was the least I could do, Annabelle – you reminded Stan of his only true love
.