Trial of Passion (14 page)

So she came clumping down the stairs in my size-ten oxfords, white shirt, suit, tie. I didn't know what to think. Some kind of fetish? I remember wondering if she was also wearing my Stanfield briefs. Then she was waving her arms and shouting, “I am a soldier! I will not be thought of as a woman! I will not dress as a woman!” I got the joke: Saint Joan as medieval cross-dresser.

We laughed. Frankly, I just split my sides. Then she started performing this hideous imitation of me. God, do I sound that churlish in the lecture theatre? But I guess she had me down pat, my inflections, my patronizing insolence. It went something like: “My name is O'Donnell and I'm here to ram some property law into the yawning vacuum between your ears. Who wants to tell me what the Magna Carta was all about? Anyone who says human rights, you're out of here. You there, Miss Martin, when you've finished tidying your hair, tell me about the early English land laws. . . .”

I felt — it was odd —
naked.
She'd taken on my clothes, my persona. And to be incredibly honest there
was a kind of sexual tension in the air. You would have to be a decaying tree stump not to feel it.

But I was damned if I was going to give in to it. Academia is strewn with minefields these days; you tiptoe around for fear of having your legs blown off. They shut down the whole damn political science department because a few instructors used politically indiscreet
lan-guage. Words.
Bedding with a student (however sexually voracious she or he may be) is on a level these days with mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

I'm sorry, I'm wandering. The subsequent events become a little foggy in my memory. People seemed to come and go. I put on some music, the Baroque Ensemble, I think. I know we carried on with the play. I was the inquisitor, demanding she repent. “Take off that impudent attire!” And then suddenly we all noticed Kimberley wasn't responding. She'd passed out.

When the taxi came I honestly assumed the others were going to arouse Kimberley and take her with them, but they didn't. She looked such a
rara avis
lying there in my suit, but (I have to say) incredibly lovely, and she had this impish sleeping smile. Mischievous. I recall standing there, looking down upon her, wondering — what? Who she was, what fires had shaped her, what intriguing secrets did she hold.

And then the last act is shrouded in an alcoholic haze. I know I found a sheet, and I carried her into the living room and I laid her — you will notice I have scratched that word out — placed her gently on the couch. Christ, Gowan, I know I'll blurt out something asinine like that on the stand. I may as well just cop a plea.

Anyway, I must have gone to bed. I don't remember doing so.

I hear horns hooting. I hear shouts of joy. A new year is born, squalling and wriggling, and gasping for air. Time to put on my paper hat. And take another cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.

Yours despondently,
Jonathan

A chilly southeasterly wind is coming off the water, bringing clouds across the choppy bay, so after the obligatory tour of beach, orchard, and garden we assemble in my living room, where I ask my guests to be comfortable. Jonathan, who has been lugubrious and silent, plunges into my favourite chair, doing little to improve his desperate chances to win my favour.

Exhausted from too much fresh air, Bullingham nestles into my old chesterfield as Hubbell and Gowan join me in the kitchen ostensibly to help boil water for tea.

“Look, Arthur,” Gowan begins, “there's been a bit of a rupture between O'Donnell and me. I don't know what his problem is, I'm on top of it, had the provincial judge virtually licking my dick all through the prelim. Anyway, the professor and I have been having a little nose-to-nose combat, and, ah, he's thinking of taking his trade elsewhere.”

“He wants you, Arthur,” adds Hubbell, “that's what he really wants. Hell, a week of your bloody valuable time is all we ask.”

“It might not take more than a day,” Gowan says. “Case might not even have to go to trial. I mean it, the judge is in our back pocket. Impressed by Honourable Jonathan O'Donnell. Aristocrat. Son of a life peer.”

I remain mute. From my refrigerator I bring out a bowl of my special peanut butter cookies.

Hubbell takes over. “You see, Arthur, the preliminary continues next week. Set for two days. That … ah, what's-her-name, Kimberley Martin, she's the only witness left. There's a feeling we could avoid a trial altogether if the girl is handled right. The provincial judge just might discharge him then and there.”

I say wearily, “At preliminary, the judge must give benefit of the doubt to the Crown. Since he won't hear any defence witnesses, how can he not send Jonathan to trial once she's given her evidence?”

“He
could
dismiss, Arthur, if the girl is … you know, damaged enough,” Hub says.

“She's seeing a shrink,” says Gowan. “I don't think she's very tightly wrapped, Arthur. You hear her tapes?”

“I played them, yes.”

“Yeah, and don't you think she's a few bricks short of a full load? If you could get her to collapse under the weight of her own lies, she might recant, and that's an end of it. I could do it — I'd
love
to do it — but O'Donnell says he doesn't want me to touch her. He's
also
seeing a shrink. Guy needs a brain surgeon. A lobotomy.”

“Arthur, it's not as if it's a consent defence,” says Hubbell. “I know you don't like to take those. I'm with you on that. You know, prying into a woman's sexual history, having to show she came across. But it's not like that. O'Donnell didn't
do
it.”

“He never laid a finger on her, Arthur. She lied to keep her goddamn fiancé, it's as obvious as a knock on the head”

“I see. And why does our innocent paragon seem in such an abysmal funk?”

“Wouldn't you be depressed?” says Hubbell. “His whole career is on the line — whatever happens, win or lose, his name is scarred for life. He could have been dean. A Supreme Court judge. He's smeared all over the press. He's got feminist coalitions forming up against him.”

“He's become a symbol,” says Gowan. “Male power figure versus cowering, helpless female student.”

“Ah, the kettle is boiling. Take up the tray, Hubbell. Those pickles are from the Koroluks, they live down by West Shore Road. This is goat cheese, from the Willinghams in Oyster Bay. The cookies come from my own oven.”

On our return to the living room, we find Bully upright but snoozing on the worn chesterfield and Jonathan pacing morosely beside my wall of bookcases. His trousers pocket shows a pint-sized bulge — I have a trained eye for hidden bottles.

I offer him a teacup. “It won't bother me if you touch it up. Or I can get a glass.”

He doesn't blush, pulls his bottle out: Dewar's, I remember it well. “Normally I only drink on weekdays,” he says. “Anyone care to celebrate with me?”

Gowan declines, but Hubbell, after a glance at the sleeping Bullingham, says, “Sure you don't mind, Arthur?”

“Not at all,” I say heartily.

“Just to be sociable.” Hubbell goes back to get a glass, but Jonathan merely pours a dollop into his tea.

“You are well on your way, Jon.”

“Oh, God, no, it's only my third this morning.”

“You're becoming a problem drinker.”

“I'm only an alcoholic when I drink, Arthur.”

“He was pissed as a newt, for instance, on the very night in question,” says Gowan, his tone censorious. “Tippling away when he composed his statement to me.”

Jonathan studies my dog-eared collection of poetry. “Show me anyone with a better reason.” He turns to me. “I never understood yours, Arthur. You had everything, fame, friends, future. I don't have a future. I only have fame.”

“You seem not to lack for friends. The entire populated universe has been over here to speak on your behalf.” For a moment, I ponder adding, “Annabelle, among them,” but restrain myself.

Hubbell returns and pours a dram from the Dewar's bottle into
a glass — just as Bully opens his eyes. “A little early for that,” he says.

I intercede. “Come now, Bully, it's a weekend. Here, I poured you some tea.”

“Arthur,” says Jonathan, “I just want to hear it from your own voice — why won't you take my case?” “Because it's too preposterous,” I say. “What do you mean?”

“Sit down, Jonathan. No, please, take the club chair. Be comfortable.”

I stare solemnly out the bay windows of my living room, where a calliope hummingbird samples the snapdragons in my window box, hovers briefly, then disappears in a wink. In the bay, a frothy surf, a family of little sandpipers pursuing the retreating waves, seeking the ocean's leavings. My guests clink their cups and wait in silence for me to begin.

“Bizarre,” I say, “the woman running off like that to the neighbour's.”

“Into the bosom of the Church of England,” says Jonathan. “Poor old Dr. Hawthorne. A lifetime of service to God doesn't prepare you for streakers in the night.”

“Otherwise a straightforward case. Your word against hers. No reason yours ought not be believed, is there?”

“God knows.”

“No proof of intercourse. No sperm, no semen stains. Yet . . . well, Jonathan, you act like a man already convicted.”

He looks directly at me, then quickly away.

“The accusation has driven you not just to drink but to shrink. This strikes me as an unlikely reaction. Anger, yes. A righteous anger might be appropriate. The anger of enraged innocence.”

“I tried anger. Punched a hole in the closet door. It cost three hundred dollars to replace. Depression is cheaper. Arthur, my bloody career hangs in the balance.”

“Ah, yes, and I sympathize. You enjoy teaching, and you are good at it. Popular with the students, that's ninety per cent of the battle, I suspect.”

“Helps.”

I tear myself away from the window, and observe my associates shift noiselessly in their seats, their faces shining up at me, expectantly.

“According to your account, you were particularly popular with Miss Martin.”

“She seemed to have a shine for me.”

“But at the same time were you not attracted to her?”

“I'd prefer to put it more passively. I found her attractive.”

“A traffic-stopper was the expression used, I believe. A traffic-stopper with a sense of humour. You enjoyed her company.”

“Sure. Okay, I'm guilty of being human. Where are we going with this, Arthur? Is this some kind of cross-examination?”

“Yes, perhaps it is. Before a jury of friends. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

Bully, our foreman, nods. They are on the witness's side, eager to acquit.

“It wouldn't be going too far to suggest you and she flirted a great deal that night?”

“No, I wouldn't say that. She flirted, yes.”

“You did not seem to be making any strenuous efforts to avoid her that evening.”

“I am often accused of having an ego. I was probably flattered.”

There is no point in skating about. I go directly to the nub, to the wobbly part of his story. “At your house, she disappeared for a while, then came downstairs wearing your suit.”

“That's right. She'd been in my bedroom closet.”

“So she apparently undressed in your bedroom. And where did she put her clothes?”

“I don't remember seeing them until the next day. They were hanging in the closet.”

“She had disrobed near your bed; she had hung her dress in your closet. Surely, you took that as a clear invitation?”

“It's pretty hard for me to remember what I was thinking.”

“I'm sure you remember what you were thinking.”

O'Donnell shrugs, shifts about, crosses his knees.

“There was, as you put it, an air of sexual electricity.”

“She was generating it, yes. I wasn't about to take any chances, Arthur.”

“You were aroused, Jonathan. Very
firmly
aroused”

I say that with an ignoble snideness that is tinged with envy. The

witness, it is known, has a hard-earned reputation with the ladies.

But impotent Beauchamp will win the day: The verdict will be in

his favour; he will not have to don his robes and belt on his gun, and

ride into town.

Jonathan is a long time rising to my bait. The only sounds are the irregular grunting of the freezer and the scritching of a mouse somewhere. I fear he will prove a poor witness in a courtroom.

“I couldn't have done anything about it anyway, Arthur. I was drunk.”

“Ah, the defence of drunkenness. I know it well. That night you were reading from a play.”

“Yes.”

“No difficulty with that, I take it.”

“No.”

“You were animated, expressive.” “I suppose so.”

“Earlier, you were hectoring Mr. Charles Stubb about his political ambitions.”

“I was doing a lot of babbling.”

“I suspect you had your wits very much about you.”

“What are you leading up to?”

I sigh. The day is wasting. There are thistles in the carrot patch. “Where is the suit, Jonathan? The brown suit she was wearing?”

“Back in my closet.”

“Has it since been dry cleaned?”

He looks at me sharply. No answer.

“Jonathan, did you take it out later to be dry cleaned?”

“Yes.” “When?”

“That day . . . the day after.”

“After you found it lying crumpled on your bedroom floor.” “That's right. She'd badly creased it.” “That's the reason? There were no seminal stains on it?” “Of course not”

“Presumably, if the suit were lying by your bed, at some point that night she again disrobed beside it?” A long, painful pause. “I don't know.”