The Custodian of Paradise (54 page)

T
HE BROADSHEET WAS DENOUNCED FROM THE PULPITS OF EVERY
denomination as “filth,” “obscenity,” “licentious innuendo,” “a travesty of decency.

Every newspaper in the city but Herder’s printed sermons, editorials and letters to the editor denouncing me as a libellist, a slanderer, a pornographer, an embittered spinster, an atheist communist.

The Newfoundland Law Society and the Newfoundland Medical Association, in a joint release to the papers, dismissed the forgery as “a degenerate fabrication.”

Scores of doctors and lawyers attested to the high character of Prowse, as well as the unnamed bribe-accepting prosecutors and the doctors and lawyers who supposedly comprised the B.I.S., an acronym that actually stood for the Benevolent Irish Society, whose legion of members were unamused. Many urged Prowse to bring a suit against me for libel and slander.

For a few weeks, when I went out walking, I was accosted by women who shook their fists and shouted their opinions of me from across the street.

Men spat on the ground and declined to tip their hats as I passed by. A few dared me to explain myself. I told them the broadsheet was all the explanation they would get. I was refused service at even the cheapest bars for a while.

One day, as I was walking past the courthouse, Prowse, accompanied by a large number of other lawyers, came briskly down the
steps, stopping in front of me, his feet spread wide, hands behind his back—his favourite pose when he was the captain of Bishop Feild.

“I should slap your face,” he said.

“On whose shoulders would you sit while doing so?” I said. “Mr. Sharpe’s or Mr. Moore’s?” Moore and Sharpe flanked him.

A crowd gathered around us. It looked as if everyone had left the courthouse to witness our confrontation. I recognized some of my father’s “associates” in the crowd, doctors to whom word of what was happening had somehow spread in minutes and who, just as swiftly and unaccountably, had made their way here from their surgeries.

“I could, with no man’s help, teach you the lesson of your life,” Prowse said.

“I am an apt pupil. And more than willing to share my knowledge with others.”

“How easy it is to make threats when you’re a woman. When you know the man you threaten is a gentleman.”

“As a man whose dealings with other women are not guided by gentility, you need not make a special case of me.”

“Your poor father deserves better. Ill used by both his wife and his daughter. What must
he
think of your recent publication and the manner in which you portray him. What does your father think of what you wrote?”

“My father’s knowledge of current events has always been limited, but never more so than now. But those who have read what you call my recent publication know all there is to know about my father. And they know more than there is to know about his wife.”

“I want you to retract what you said about
my
wife.”

“I will do so when her lip-overlapping tooth retracts.”

“Shut up, you harridan,” said Moore.

“Who printed that broadsheet?” said Prowse.

“All who have something that needs printing have been asking me that question. They say they have never seen such workmanship. So it must be someone new.”

“Do you admit, here, in front of all these witnesses,” said Prowse, “that you are the author of the broadsheet that bears your name and that you are responsible for its publication?”

“I most certainly do not. You have been framed by some anonymous person or persons. As far-fetched as your having enemies might seem, you do have them.”

“My only enemy is standing right in front of me,” said Prowse.

“If only that were so, Mr. Prowse. This might not be the last time your good name is maligned.”

“Is that a threat? Have you written, or do you intend to write, more of those Forgeries of yours about me?”

“It is merely a statement of fact, Mr. Prowse.”

He removed from the inner pocket of his jacket a scrolled copy of the broadside, which he thrust in my face.

“Who else but you could have written this? Do you believe our courts to be so gullible as to believe
you?”

“Why, almost anyone could have written it. As to the gullibility of the courts, Mr. Prowse, your recent record as a prosecutor demonstrates the difficulty of gulling even the most credulous of judges and juries.”

“You should not confuse acquittal with innocence.”

“I try not to confuse anything with innocence. I am told that, in court, you acquit yourself every bit as well as you do the accused.”

“You accuse me, here, in this piece of slander, of being drunk in court.”

“And so we stand here, me abused and you accused.”

“You who spend your life either drunk or sleeping off a drunk have the effrontery to accuse me of drinking. What if I were to sue you? Or better yet, since you own nothing and have no prospects of ever owning anything, what if you were to be tried in criminal court? This is not merely a civil matter.”

“Indeed it is not. All civility aside, I would welcome any opportunity to clear my name. To have my day, and my say, in open court. I find I have so many things to say these days.

“And what an ideal opportunity it would be for you, Mr. Prowse, a chance to refute in detail every accusation you think was falsely made against you in that Forgery.”

Prowse made as if to turn away, but I prevented him from doing so by extending my cane and pressing it against his arm.

“The Old Comrades Players should perform for the public, Mr. Prowse. It’s a shame that their audience is so small, given the level of their talent.”

“You’ve been listening to rumours again, Fielding. Or are you hearing voices now? A good nip of Scotch should shut them up.”

“Mock trials in the courthouse after hours. Parties in the courtrooms. Amateur theatricals. So much for secret societies and their secret rituals.”

“So much for rumours.”

“As one of your comrades described it to me, it was like some Restoration comedy. But then, what do you call a comedy that isn’t funny?”

“What do you call a woman who’s never sober?”

“One might call her Mrs. Prowse. Or Win, if one were a friend. But the play’s the thing. I wish to speak about the play in which you played the part of Crown Attorney recently. The one about my father and me. And others.”

“Methinks, gentlemen, she doth protest too much.”

“Very good. Hamlet. Whose uncle kills and cuckolds Hamlet’s father. What was it you called
your
play? Oh yes,
Cuckolding Dr. Fielding.”

“I have a real case to try, Fielding.”

“Another imitation of a prosecution?”

Prowse threw the broadsheet at my feet, spat on it, then turned and, followed by a host of others, strode briskly up the courthouse steps, adjusting his jacket as if, in a tussle of the sort in which, as a gentleman, he would rather not have taken part, he had made short work of some guttersnipe with whom an exchange of words, or anything short of fisticuffs, would have been a waste of time.

I resumed my walk down Water Street, every part of me quivering.

I was enraged, relieved, surprised. I had half-expected to be set upon by the crowd that had hemmed us in, or arrested, on Prowse’s orders, by the ’Stab, not one member of which had made an appearance. Relieved, yet wishing I had given him a better thrashing, I thought of things I should have said to the father of my children.

Exhibit A
. I told myself that I had acted in defence of my father. I remembered Prowse standing with his back to me that afternoon at his grandfather’s house.

Their names are David and Sarah
.

“Is this how it’s going to be from now on, Fielding?” Smallwood said when next we met. “Broadsheets with a phony byline. Forgeries? Or will you sign your own name to them? Can I expect to see one with my name on it sometime soon? I couldn’t afford to be sued or blacklisted by a man like Prowse.”

“Believe me, Smallwood, I don’t plan to pass something of mine off as something of yours. But I can’t control what other people do.”

“I mean it, Fielding. Any kind of scandal would destroy my mother. I’m surprised you didn’t think of how publishing that thing might hurt your father.”

“There is no cure for what is hurting my father. I like to think that whoever wrote that broadsheet did him a favour.”

“You’ve made yourself a lot of important enemies.”

“You can tell a lot about people by their enemies. I would never trust a man who had no enemies. Or a woman.”

“Well, if enemies are the measure of a person, you should think very highly of yourself. What about friends?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t you think you can tell a lot about people by who their friends are?”

“A person without enemies is almost certain to have no friends.”

“I have my wife.”

“Yes. Congratulations.”

I had seen, in some papers, notices of his marriage to a Miss Clara Oates from Harbour Grace. It had been some time ago but I still felt the shock of seeing their names paired like that in a marriage notice. I realized that he meant to surprise me, to hurt me, or else he would have told me about his engagement before the notice appeared.

“You should get married, Fielding.”

“Why?”

“There are plenty of men—”

“Who would
have
me? Settle for me? They are looking for caretakers, Smallwood, not wives. Because of my illness, I cannot have children nor take care of men.”

“They are looking for companionship.”

“Then they should get a dog.”

He had not blinked when I said that I could not have children.

“Such a cynic you are, Fielding. I wonder what kind of woman you would be if your mother had never left.”

“I am a sceptic, not a cynic. A sceptic is an idealist who has lost his naïveté, but nothing else. As for my mother. If she had not left—I would be the daughter of a different mother and therefore be a different person.”

“Watch out for Prowse, Fielding.”

A few weeks later, a letter from my Provider.

It stung more than
Exhibit A
. I was surprised that it stung at all, surprised that it mattered to me that he was ashamed of me.

The pot calling the kettle black.
I fear that your daemon is revenge. As mine once was
. He believed his to be memory now. Not just a reformed drinker. A man who has, or thinks he has, put his desire for revenge behind him.

I wondered if, before his reformation, he threatened her. Threatened to harm me. Because you left me for another man, I will harm your child unless you leave her.

But surely such a threat could be dealt with, answered in some way other than complete and seemingly uncomplaining compliance. Police. Bodyguards, paid or otherwise. Simple precautions. Defiance. Most women I knew would, if they had the chance and had no other choice, kill a man who meant to harm their children. Desperate precautions. Sleepless vigilance. Relocation. Anything but renunciation, relinquishment. A threat from a vengeful ex-lover no matter how deranged or dangerous would not make a mother otherwise undisposed to abandonment leave her family.

I went to see my father.

He was sitting in his sleeping chair, his hands on the arms of it, eyes wide open, the chair turned away from the fire.

“Are you all right, Father?” I said.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you about what happened at the Old Comrades Club.”

“I know what happened.”

“No harm done. I suppose everyone has heard by now. There’s often some sort of performance, you know. Everyone takes their turn as the butt of the joke. It’s more like being the guest of honour, really. All in good fun, of course. You never know in advance who’ll be the butt of the joke. It’s always a great surprise. Quite funny. Harmless fun. The Old Comrades Players, they’re called. I believe I took it as well as most—better, I was told. And once the performance is over, everyone comes round. Claps you on the back and shakes your hand. A man who takes himself too seriously—there’s no point in that. Spoilsport. No one wants to be the spoilsport. If you don’t laugh along, they hang a sign around your neck. Spoilsport, it says, and they leave it there until you laugh. If you’re still wearing it when the performance ends, you have to wear it all night. I laughed of course. Almost everyone wears the sign for a while. But I laughed. I didn’t have to wear the sign all night. Not like some—I was just dozing off when you arrived.”