Trial of Passion (19 page)

“No, I don't think it would be fair to either party to make them wait too long. I'm thinking about the beginning of September, two months from now. There's a hole in the fall calendar, some kind of skid-road murder has fallen through.”

“No, that's pushing it,” says Gowan. “We have a hell of a lot of prep, and anyway I'm booked all through September. She'll just have to muck through and do it during her classes.”

“And who would the judge be this September?” I ask. “Mr. Justice C. Walter Sprogue. He's handling the first two weeks of the fall assize.”

“Mr. Justice
Sprogue?”

“You're not keeping up, Arthur. He was appointed two weeks ago.”

The elevation ofWally Sprogue to the trial court bench had not made the notices in the
Island Echo. When
he was in practice I shared many courtrooms with him. Though surpassingly vain, he is a fellow of liberal temperament, a firm believer in the concept of a reasonable doubt. I cannot let this chance slip away.

“The first of September will be fine,” I say.

“Wally Sprogue,” says Gowan. “You're not going to throw a ringer at us — we show up and it's suddenly Attila the Hun.”

“I can live with Justice Sprogue,” says Patricia. “It'll be the jury who'll decide. He's away until August. Can we do a pre-trial with him then?”

“Most happy to oblige,” I say. “Gowan, a minute of your time?” This awkward moment cannot be avoided. As we walk together to the parking lot, I struggle to think of a way to let him down gently.

“September trial,” Gowan grumbles. “Means I'm going to have to adjourn a couple of things.”

“I don't think you should, Gowan. In fact, I'm wondering if I might ask you to step aside for this one. For, ah, political reasons, I feel I ought to be assisted by a female barrister. Any problems with that?”

The disappointment works through his face, but he comes through bravely. “Excellent idea, Arthur. In fact, I was thinking of suggesting that very thing. Solves a lot of problems, and you won't have O'Donnell and me going at each other's throats.”

“I'll consult with you, of course. I'll need the benefit of your keen mind.”

He makes the effort of a smile. I feel for him. It is an important trial for an ambitious lawyer.

As I enter Chez Forget, its owner, Pierre, a small, vigorous man, swarms around me before I have a chance to wave to Annabelle, who sits in the back, playing with one of the roses in the vase that decorates her table.

“How do you not visit me any more? You do not like the food? You do not like the service? Try the McDonald's, they have slides and ladders for the children. Madame is here. She is starving, you can see, she is so thin. You will have the lamb pâté, and the baby asparagus salad followed by
saumon fumé,
and then I give you the choice, either the tenderloin Avignon or the duck. Both are perfect.”

He propels me to my chair opposite Annabelle. She is dressed with her usual flair, bare-shouldered in something silky. Her smile is soft and distant, and I have the sense that she is distant, too. In another place.

“Something wet, Monsieur Beauchamp?” Pierre extends a bottle of mineral water and I nod my agreement. Then he tops up Annabelle's half-empty glass of red wine and flies off to the kitchen.

She is still toying with the rose. She casts me a look and a shy, un-Annabellic smile.

“I love the beard. You look sort of Hemingwayish in it.”

“Hides the jowls.”

“Oh, but you've lost some weight.”

I beam. “Yes, the belt tightens at a speed of one notch per month. Well, as I told you on the phone, my workday has concluded somewhat earlier than expected. We can relax”

“Yes. I've taken the afternoon off.”

“I am flattered.”

“But you're going back this evening?”

“I think that best.” Don't you, Annabelle? But I hear no protests. Why does she seem so far away? She keeps running a finger along the surface of those rose petals, studying them, not looking much at me.

“Are you happy with the way it went?”

“I'd rather have been weeding my garden, frankly. But it went well enough, I suppose. Jonathan seemed oddly relieved that I didn't cross-examine Kimberley.”

“You're getting along with him?”

“Of course.”

“You seemed a little miffed that I was pushing his cause so hard.”

“Not at all.” I have the sense she is about to confess to something, and I become busy, lighting a cigarette, perusing the menu. What secret is she about to share: is she about to tell me of her love for Jonathan? Impossible. The absurdity of it would render me stuporous.

She reads my mind. “There was never anything between Jon and me — I hope you didn't get that impression.” She muses, “There could have been. He's quite attractive in his dark, surly way. But there wasn't.”

Should I presume she offered? I drag hard on the cigarette. I can't think of anything to say. I feel relief, of course, though I have wronged Jonathan in my thoughts, and must seek his forgiveness. I shall try to do this by proving his innocence.

Pierre bustles in with his plates of appetizers, refilling glasses.

“The tenderloin,” I say.

“I can't, Pierre,” says Annabelle. “No entrées.”

“Madame will shrivel to nothing.”

“The salad is beautiful.”

“You are beautiful. The salad is only pretty.”

“You're awful, Pierre.”

After he leaves, Annabelle pokes at her salad a bit, then says, “Well, it's now or never. I have something to tell you.”

Her fingers touch the back of my hand. They feel cool and soft, fingers that have been caressing rose petals.

“I've met someone else.”

The phrase seems banal, a cliché of Gothic scope. I am having trouble breathing. I have a flash of memory of mowing the lawn in the front of my house. I was gasping. My lungs felt as if they were caught in a vice.

“We're in love.”

Love. That word seems too abstract. I cannot fathom its meaning. But I decide, no, I am not having another stroke. I am probably surviving this.

“Arthur, you knew something like this would happen. I think we stopped pretending long ago. I can tell you're in shock, but there's some relief there, too, there has to be.”

“I'm . . . I'm sorry, I'm caught a little aback.”

“I sort of felt . . . well, that you were giving me permission, Arthur. Moving off to your island as you did. I think you needed freedom from me. I was hurting you.”

“I cannot find apt words, Annabelle.” I fumble for a cigarette, though smoke curls from another in the ashtray.

“Then don't say anything. It's been going on I guess for a couple of months, Arthur. He's a very good man, awfully dashing and, well, gaudy. I suppose you'd find him pretentious, but he has a gooey centre.”

I grind this information through the mills of my mind. Gaudy? Gooey centre? I picture someone gilded, ornate, superficially sentimental.

“It's François Roehlig, Arthur. The new permanent conductor? You've heard of him. I think you have some of his recordings from when he was with the Düsseldorf Symphony.”

I hardly hear this. I am listening to my heart. But I am doing fine. Just fine. No reason to worry.

“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Yes, I think I saw his photo in the newspaper.” Gaunt and fiery-eyed, wearing not a tropical palm-tree tie but an ascot. A rising star, a wunderkind.

“He's divorced, two children. He's . . . a little younger than I am. It doesn't seem to matter. I think he worships me. I don't know why. We share a lot. Obviously. He was conducting
La Bohème
for us, of course. And, um, he'd like me to go to Bayreuth with him this September, and he insists that I straighten it all out with you. Naturally he wants to meet you — I've spoken so admiringly — and I've been pretty frank with him about our difficulties, about how it hasn't really been a marriage for many years. . . .”

Annabelle is on an expressway and cannot find the brakes. How noble and gallant is the gaudy, gooey François Roehlig — he wants to meet the vanquished foe, the impotent Arthur Beauchamp, for a friendly after-duel drink. I am feeling some jealous ire — it is a healthy sign. I have emotions. I am well.

“Deborah will be furious, I suppose. I don't know what to do about that, she's so unforgiving. Maybe she'll find it in her heart if … if we finally make the break, Arthur, if I stop causing you pain. I know I do that.”

She looks down, picks at a baby asparagus.

“I've been a sorry excuse as a wife. But I care for you. I want you to be happy.”

She can say nothing more. She is waiting for me to accept her gift of happiness. My mind is clouded by a picture of this effete conductor, Roehlig, swiving my wife.

“Happy. Yes. Well, I am happy, Annabelle. For you.”

“I'm so sorry, Arthur.”

Numbly, I hear myself chattering, matter-of-fact and falsely brisk. “I would like you to have the house, of course. I have my island farm. It is home now. I think we both have enough to keep ourselves comfortable — those funds Nicholas recommended are doing very well, really.”

As Pierre descends upon us with the tenderloin Avignon, Annabelle begins to weep. He beats a quick retreat.

“I do love you, Arthur. In my way.”

Annabelle suddenly rises and rushes off to the ladies' room.

I fight my own tears and stare for many agonizing moments at the half-filled glass of Bordeaux that sits beside her plate. My hand itches, moves forward, withdraws. Oh, God, what I would give for that cup of wine that clears today of past regrets and future fears.

We stop at the house — the silent, rambling structure in Point Grey I inhabited for twenty years — and I fill a large suitcase with items I'd earlier failed to bring: my favourite slippers, my collection of pipes and soapstone carvings, some gardening books. I do all this in a stupefied state, as if anesthetized.

My memories of the house seem more sour than poignant. I cannot remember too many happy days. It shall be hers now, and François Roehlig's. A picture of them seated together over breakfast composes poorly in my benumbed mind.

Lugging the suitcase out, I stop at the doorstep and say a silent, final goodbye to my former house, my runt-sized city garden, my former life. I heave the bag into Annabelle's Alfa Romeo — she has taken the top down; the day has turned sunny. Annabelle's clouds have parted, too, and she is smiling behind the huge panes of her Italian sunglasses. Smiling. I suppose she feels an immense relief that it is over.

“Starting new lives — it feels good in a way, doesn't it? Like a fresh chance. Like finally getting the mortgage paid off, and knowing that the rest of your life is interest-free. God, I'm talking like
Nicholas. Listen, François wants to meet Nick and Deborah, so we'll have you all over. You'll do the mending, won't you, Arthur? Try to convince Deb I'm not the wicked witch of the west”

My smile is fixed, glued on.

We descend the ramp to the harbour road, past Canada Place and the steamship dock, past one of those massive tourist tubs that ply the inside waters to Alaska. Annabelle races over the speed bumps that lead to the float-plane docks of Coal Harbour.

“It's a charter flight?”

“Billed to the client.”

“Well, hell, I'll join you for the flight” She has had a few wines on a decidedly empty stomach. Her tears have dried. She is happy, in love, overflowing with it — there's enough to spare for me, and she hugs me after she parks the car, hugs me again as we cinch our seat belts in the back of the four-seat aircraft.

As we take to the air I maintain a conversation of sorts, some meaningless drivel about turning another bend on life's highway. I wear a mask of tranquillity — it hides the emptiness I feel, the yawning gulf within, the pathetic, self-pitying inner self.

Below us, a dozen container ships sit at anchor in English Bay, low, close to Plimsoll lines, awaiting their turns to disgorge their cargoes. Vancouver bustles. Its streets are clogged with cars — it is half past four, the city's downtown is emptying. The plane sweeps low around Spanish Banks, Point Grey, Wreck Beach, and now in the distance I see the islands of the Gulf. The exile returns, world-weary, anomic.

I direct the pilot into my cove, and the plane settles into the water, and drifts to the dock while I prattle mindlessly to Annabelle about how calming it has been for me here, how joyful to return.

“Maybe I'll bring François out here some weekend. Would that be too uncomfortable, darling? Not this summer — later, when things have settled down.”

After the divorce. After the remarriage. He is younger than Annabelle — by how much? Did I not read he is in his thirties? Well,
Annabelle is only fifty-three, less the many busy years her surgeon so skilfully whittled away from beside the eyes and beneath the chin.

She joins me on the dock and presses her lips firmly to mine. I have a sense of completion with this kiss, of finality. Last wifely kiss. The kiss-off.

“Scratchy,” she says. “But I do like the beard. It makes you . . . interesting.”

A hug. A smile. A wave. A kiss blown through the cockpit window. She turns to the pilot and starts chatting with him.

I watch until the aircraft becomes a mote on the horizon.

I walk into the house. I telephone George Rimbold, a call for help.

“She's an extremely strong woman. I think that's what first attracted me to her. Not her physical beauty, nor her style or flair, or talent. Her strength. I still have no idea why I put up with it for so long, the unfaithfulness, the feeling of being diminished as a man. It's almost as if I have some
need
to feel put down.”

George nods, listening to my logorrheic outpourings with the grave mien of the father confessor that once he was. It is midnight, and George has been steadfast through the evening. We have smoked to dangerous excess and have sampled three kinds of tea and various fruit juices, but I have beaten back the need, the compulsion; I haven't had to summon Scotty Phillips, the island bootlegger, who lives but a telephone call away.