The Custodian of Paradise (52 page)

“Never mind about all that,” I said. “It is over and done with. Forgotten.”

“Out there on the Bonavista. What a strange place for him to be.”

“There
is
no
him
, Father. No one but you suspects my mother. She may have had reasons of her own for leaving that you and I could never understand.”

“What reasons?”

“I am not saying that I
know
of any reasons. Only that there
might
be some. That we will never know.”

“You know something, don’t you?”

“No
, Father, I know NOTHING. No matter what I say—you are so determined—to find an excuse. Anything that excuses you—”

“What are you saying, girl?”

“Never mind. Every word I say just makes things worse.”

“People whispering and snickering behind my back. I have heard you referred to as Exhibit A. Living proof, they say, that your mother is guilty.”

Exhibit A. It did not sound like something he was capable of inventing.

“Who refers to me as Exhibit A?”

“My best friend told me about it. My only friend, I sometimes think. A young man named Prowse. The grandson of our great historian.”

“Prowse? Prowse is your best friend?”

“More than that. The son I never had. I have told him so. Perhaps the child I never had.”

“And he told you that I am referred to as Exhibit A?”

“Yes. He said I was better off not knowing why.”

“Prowse is not to be trusted, Father.”

“This is why I have been dreading your return, girl, this, this torment. I hate to say so, but I must be frank.”

“If you must, you must.”

“In the time—what has it been, almost ten years—in the time that you were—away, I have, I have re-entered society. Acquired a circle of friends. At last.
True
friends.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“Men who were so intimidated by
you
they kept their distance from
me
.”

“What men? Besides Prowse, I mean.”

“You see. I hear it in your voice. How could such a man as I make friends?”

“I merely wondered—”

“I fear that you will jeopardize these friendships. For so long, until you went away, I had no one but my patients. Spoke to almost no one else. Nothing but my work. But things have changed. I could not bear to live like that again. You must promise me you will not interfere.”

“You sound as if you wish I had not—returned.” I almost said “survived.”

“It is just as they warned me it would be.
You
have not changed.”

“Who are
they?”

He put his hands over his ears and shook his head as if to block out not
my
voice but some inner one.

“Please, please, girl, you must not start. My torments are barely endurable. Without my friends—”

“I have no intention of depriving you of friends—”

“That’s enough. No more. No more.” He sat down, red-faced, sweating as if recovering from some great exertion.

“Are you ill, Father?”

“Lately—I don’t know. Nothing seems—fixed. It seems that things are always moving. At times, at night, there is so much noise. Musical instruments. Of some kind. And people shouting. In the house. I hear them as I lie in bed. But when I get up—”

“You
are
ill—”

“‘You mustn’t fret so much,’ he said. He’s right, you know. I do fret. But he says there is an answer and that we will find it. It’s as simple as that, he says. I cannot express my gratitude.”

“Who do you mean?” I said. “A doctor?”

“No, no. Young Mr. Prowse. He has welcomed me. His friends are my friends. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to the meetings.”

“Prowse takes you to meetings.”

“Do not say his name like that. Because of him, I am a member of the Old Comrades Club. You have badly misjudged the man. And others like him. For years. Warned me away from them, for no reason. They are men of high standing. Influential, well-connected, powerful men. You assume that all such men are corrupt. Suspect them of having hidden, sinister motives. But they sincerely wish the best for me. They wish to put my mind at rest. And they have helped me to see
you
for what you are.”

“Which is?”

“They do not speak ill of you. If anything, they scold
me
for doing so. They have helped me see that, given everything that has happened to you, you cannot help yourself. Your mother. Your school days. Your —”

“Have you told Prowse about my children?”

He shook his head.

“ARE YOU CERTAIN, FATHER?” I shouted.

He nodded. “I never speak of it. I try not to think of it. That awful business in New York.”

“And you are
never
to speak of it. Do you understand, Father?”

“I do not wish you to bring more shame upon me than you have already. The two of you. If word got out that you had children—that like you they have no idea who their father is—what a laughingstock I would become.”

“You are right. They also have no idea who their mother is,” I said. “And I want it to remain that way.”

“As to you. It seems that—that others have shared my suspicions that, in order to spare my feelings, they withheld from me.”

“Yes. I have often witnessed the sparing of your feelings.”

“Prowse has been making investigations. He says he will submit a report to me when his investigations are complete.”

“Father—”

“Of course, I can’t have him out of pocket on my account—”

“You haven’t given him any money?”

“Just enough to cover his expenses. I can’t have him out of pocket, not after all his financial reversals. For which he was not to blame.”

“How much have you given him?”

“I don’t know—” He waved his hands as if the figure was irrelevant or trivial.

“Has he given you receipts?”

“No, no. I do not want receipts. I do not
want
him to account for how he spends the money. This is what I mean. When you are around, there is so much distrust—”

“All right. Don’t upset yourself. We’ll speak no more about it.”

I waited at the rear of the courthouse late one afternoon. I knew that Prowse always left by the rear entrance, which was close to his house.

I did not wish others to witness me confronting him, so I followed him after he came out, struggling to keep pace with him as he strode up the hill with a satchel beneath his arm.

Near the top, a few feet behind him, I prodded him quite forcefully in the back with my cane. He whirled around, slapping at the cane with his hand. I took a few more steps until we were standing side by side.

“Fielding,” he said, staring at my cane, seeming fearful I would strike him a second time. He looked up at me. “I heard that you were back. I was hoping the rumours were untrue.”

“I’m sure you were.”

“I meant the rumours that you had passed away. It seemed there was a new one every day for the past ten years. People saying, ‘Have you heard about Fielding? Poor thing, she was murdered in New York. Poor thing, she perished in the San. Poor thing, she went astray on the Bonavista. Presumed dead.’ You have ‘died’ so many times I can’t keep count.”

“Mr. Prowse,” I said. “Have you entered into some sort of arrangement with my father?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“He says he’s been giving you money. In payment for some investigation you’re supposedly conducting.”

“Your father is a good man who at times becomes confused.”

“He says that, sponsored by you, he was made a member of the Old Comrades Club.”

“Now that
is
true. He has flourished in your absence. Not professionally, but socially. No doubt it is your return that has him so confused. During your absence, the mere mention of you so upset him that we agreed never to speak of you.”

“If I hear that you have accepted another cent from him, I will collect it back from you myself.” “Is that a threat?”

“It is a statement of fact. Find some other way to pay your debts.”

“I do not know what he told you, or why, or if indeed he told you anything. But if you make public accusations against me, I shall sue you. And if you try to, as you say, collect money from me, I shall have you arrested.”

“Prowse. My father has nearly lost his mind because of you.”

“Come now, Fielding. Should your father lose his mind, we both know which one of us would be to blame.”

I knew that I was in part responsible for my father’s state of mind, but I was wounded by that Exhibit A. And the memory of the way Prowse smiled when he saw his words hit home.

In the street, I heard people snickering about how the Old Comrades Club had recently made a fool of old Dr. Fielding. I heard references to some sort of “trial” at which he had been found guilty.

I went to Herder, who, though not a member of the Old Comrades Club, was friendly with a few who were.

“You don’t want to hear it,” he said.

“It was that bad?”

“Yes.”

“Then I want to hear everything.”

He told me about a meeting that took place not long after I confronted Prowse.

The Old Comrades Club.

The men of the “quality.” Doctors, lawyers, politicians, businessmen.

They conducted their meetings, their mock trials, late at night in the courthouse on Duckworth Street. At the most recent meeting, there had been someone dressed like me. Lopsided stilts. One stilt longer than the other. An effigy. Several signs hung from my neck, some down the front, some down the back. They were like chapter headings: Baby Sheilagh, Silver Spoon, Motherless Waif, Unhappy (Dear Old Golden) School Days, Expelled!, Precocious Lush, Spencer Spinster, Fielding the Forger, Socialism, The Missing Years, The San, Crippled Tippler, Hermitage, The Prodigal Daughter.

Dangling from various parts of the costume were a boot with a huge black heel, a wooden cask, a package of Yellow Rag cigarettes.

I walked hunched over, my cane clumping on the floor. My hair, as grey as an old woman’s, hung down past my shoulders. My face was a mass of warts and wrinkles, my clothing ragged and sprinkled all over with wig-powder that fell from me like the dust of ages when I walked or raised my arms. I clanked and rattled like Jacob Marley’s ghost when I moved. My father stared at me.

Prowse “prosecuted” my father, who sat there with a sign around his neck that read
CUCKOLD
. Sharpe, Smallwood’s main tormentor when we covered court, was there. He “defended” my father. He moved that the sign be removed. And Prowse objected.

“I put it to you that she would not let you put it to her,” Prowse said to my father.

“Erection, Your Honour,” Sharpe said.

“Unsustained.”

“Precisely, Your Honour.”

It went on like that. When other Comrades were on “trial,” the “charges” were always trivial. Another doctor was once tried for being vain about his appearance. A lawyer for the way he walked about in court. Another for putting too much powder on his wig. Mis-demeanours of personality. But my father was tried for cuckoldry. Not for the way he held a cigarette or smoked a pipe.

If guilty, by whom was he cuckolded?

Was Mrs. Fielding “yielding or unyielding”?

“I put it to you,” Prowse said to each of the witnesses in turn, “that you are the real father of Sheilagh the She Man.”

All of them denied it. The Silent Stranger by shaking his head. The Silent Stranger wore a black mask and a long cloak that covered his stilts. He did not reply when asked a question except to nod or shake his head.

“The Silent Stranger,” Prowse said, “refuses to account for his whereabouts on any of the days when the deed might have been done. Or on any other days. He refuses to account for his very existence, this mute brute. I take his silence as an admission of guilt, My Lord. I suggest that this faceless, voiceless phantom is her father.”

“Have you heard enough?” Herder said.

I shook my head. I wanted to hear it all, enraged though I was.

“We must have proof, Mr. Prowse,” the judge said. “This court commands the Silent Stranger to remove his mask.”

He complied, only to reveal another mask. And under that, yet another.

“A man of many masks,” said the judge.

“Which of you,” Prowse asked, “is responsible for this prodigy of prodigality? There she stands, Fielding the unwieldy one, Fielding the Hobbler, Fielding the Wobbler. Her height and her leg make it hard enough for her to keep her balance. But you may wonder what makes her list to one side like that. You wouldn’t say it by the size of her, but she’s a nipper. She was nipping from a silver cask—I mean, flask when she was still in school. Which of you fathered this lop-sided Colossus? Who is the Mog to her Magog, the Galoot to her Goliath? Step forward.”

None of them stepped forward.

“Any one of you might be the man. Do you recognize any of these men, Mrs. Fielding?”

Mrs. Fielding. My mother, dressed as a nun, played by Dr. Wheeler, whom I had made a fool of years ago when he came to visit my father.

Mrs. Fielding said she had never seen any of them before in her life.

“Well,” Mr. Prowse said, “all of the suspects had the motive, namely Mrs. Fielding. All had the opportunity, given that Dr. Fielding was at his surgery six days a week. But did all have the means? I take it Your Lordship knows what ‘means’ means?”

“I do, Mr. Prowse.”

“I suggest that each reveal his means to His Lordship and Mrs. Fielding.”

So the Milkman, the Stevedore, the Best Man and the Silent Stranger, with their backs to all but Mrs. Fielding and the judge, took turns unveiling their “means.”

Somehow my father sat through it all. Herder said he even laughed when the others did.

First, the Milkman. The sound of a zipper. The judge, eyebrows raised, asked if “Milkman” was his profession or his nickname.

“Both, Your Lordship.”

My mother, fanning herself, smiled coyly.

Next the Stevedore: “I taught myself how to tie knots with it, Your Lordship. I never could untie this knot.”

“The court is satisfied that the Stevedore is not Miss Fielding’s father.”

The Best Man. My mother covered her face with her hands but peeked through her fingers.