Trial of Passion (25 page)

I lead her into the house and bring out teacups, and set the water to boil. She joins me to help, selecting her tea, then opening refrigerator and cupboard doors, examining the contents somewhat as a health inspector might.

While the kettle heats, I usher her into the living room with its groaning shelves of books, its padded chairs, its smoky ambience, its total aura of bachelorhood.

“Very little sign of a woman's presence here, I'm afraid.”

With the back of her hand she whisks some loose strands of tobacco from the arm of a chair. “Those girls don't do a very thorough job, do they? More chop than mop.”

At my desk, I tear out a cheque and make it out to her. “An extra fifty dollars ought to cover the costs.”

She holds it proudly before her eyes. “Sorry, but I feel I have earned this.”

“I was the unwitting victim of my own stupidity, though of course you had the judge in your pocket.” I feel exceedingly shy, and I suffer an absurd urge to assure her I did not savour the fleshly pleasures of Emily Lemay. “Well. It's a splendid evening . . . beautiful colours. Shall we sit outside?”

“That would be nice. Let me help you get the tea.”

“I wouldn't think of it. You are my guest.”

She returns to the front porch, and when I finally join her there
with tea and blackcurrant tarts, I see she has the three-year-old
Echo
open before her, and she is looking at herself in that long flowered dress. Now I am doubly embarrassed.

“I was curious.” It's all I can find to say.

As I join her upon the divan, she stares at me solemnly, then lowers her eyes, and stirs her tea.

“I've been very bitter about Chris's death. He was forty-nine. He was healthy. He ate granola until it came out of his ears. Half his life was stolen from him.”

“You loved him deeply.”

Her look is almost fierce. “Yes.”

“Would you rather not talk about it?”

She doesn't respond, but sips her mint tea in silence. I feel I have committed a gaffe, and know not how to make amends, and so I just stare dumbly into the fading light of the western sky where Hesperus, god of the evening star, has lit his lamp.

“No, I don't mind talking about it,” she says finally. “I get all workaholic and try not to think about it. I guess that's the wrong way I
should
talk about it. I suppose I'm still in mourning. I know I have to break free Oh, go on and light your pipe. I can tell you've been itching to have a smoke.”

“Ah, yes, I have been fidgeting. If I may.” When I light up, I feel more relaxed. She sits beside me, only a touch away, staring at the sea, her profile pensive in the golden twilight.

“Chris came up here from Montana during the Vietnam War. Anti-war activist, though of course he got called a draft dodger. I was seventeen when I married him — can you believe that? We had a quickie ceremony with a marriage commissioner, then our friends came over for the formal reception. Not so formal — we did acid all night. Our friends — I hardly see them now, most of them are stockbrokers, or run fast-food franchises, though one of them's a pretty good musician. Anyway, we were all determined to go back to the land, so we started a commune here on Garibaldi. I know this all
sounds silly to you. . . . Are you laughing at me?”

“It is so hard to picture you as a flower child, Margaret.”

She laughs in turn; again I think of bells. “Chris and I were the only ones to
stay
on the land. Chris was a natural farmer. He really did love the land. Everything about it, rural and wild. So do I. Real tree hugger. Do you ever actually
hug
a tree? I do that sometimes. We're petitioning the government to reject that Evergreen Estates by-law, by the way. Do I dare ask you to add your name? Or did I read that you were in sympathy —”

“I distinctly told that woolly-eared reporter I was opposed. Many things on this island get lost in translation.”

“Yes, you're the subject of some vicious gossip these days, aren't you?”

Finally, a chance to make earnest defence. “I was literally kidnapped by that woman and nearly raped. I escaped with my virginity bruised but intact.”

“But how could you resist her?” She is smiling, teasing me.

“I still have nightmares.”

“No, I never believed any of that stuff. I saw you on the boat out there with her. You looked really scared.”

“Should I put a light on?” The shell of night has closed upon us.

“I like the dark. Gosh, I can't remember in years when I've sat down for more than ten minutes like this. What did you say about that agreeable condition of doing nothing? You're right. It feels good.”

From high above, the steady bleat of a searching nighthawk. Our galaxy glows bright and thick in the moonless night, and the evening star seems blinding. I feel oddly light-headed.
A drowsy numbnesspains my sense

Distantly comes a sound of civilization, and it takes me a moment to realize it's my telephone. In the dark of my house, I stumble against a chair before finding the phone.

“What time is it there?” It's Deborah on a bad line, my daughter far abroad.

“Deborah, how good to hear from you. It's close to ten o'clock. What time is it wherever you are?”

“We're in Rome and it's six in the morning. I wanted to reach you before you went to bed.”

“How wonderful. Rome. My spiritual home.”

“You sound awfully happy.”

“And why shouldn't I be? It is a marvellous summer night and stars fill the sky. How is the European jaunt, my dear? You are faring well? And Nicholas is busy and young Nick well?”

“We've been having a wonderful . . . Dad, are you okay? Why are you so happy? Look, I hate to be the bearer of … But you've heard, haven't you? Well, I
just
heard. About . .. about … Is there a divorce happening, or what?”

“Ah, yes, it seems dear Annabelle is in love with some effete Nazi from Düsseldorf —”

“François bloody Roehlig. He's fifteen years
younger
than her.”

“She always wanted a son, and he probably needs a mother. I've wished her a future of unadulterated bliss. Give me a number where I can reach you — I am entertaining someone.”

“You haven't been drinking?”

“I have been sipping only upon the sweet dew of poetry and fine conversation.”

“With whom? Who are you entertaining?”

“The neighbour lady.”

A pause from Rome. “Ah, the widow Blake . . . Whoa, just a minute here, what is going on, Dad? Now, don't tell me you are suddenly getting a
life.
Margaret Blake? You said she was some kind of militant busybody, you told me . . . I'll hang up. I love you. I'll call you when you're not, you know,
engaged.”

I find my way through the darkness to the porch and to Margaret.

“That was my daughter.”

Margaret nods, but seems so lost in her silence that I fear intruding further upon it. I sit beside her, and the divan creaks. In dim
outline against the sky, I make out her work-lined, handsome face. Again I try to picture this solemn woman in her youth, long-haired and barefoot, and wild. I have a sense from her of immense strength. The confession I'd made to Rimbold returns to me:
It's a shameful thought, but I think I'm attracted to dominant women.

“Your voice carries awfully well. I couldn't help hear . . . you're getting a divorce?”

“The marriage died many years ago. I only recently became aware of that.”

My guest has a right to more than this: She has shared
her
former life. But I cannot bring myself to speak of Annabelle; it will only depress me. It would take more courage than I possess to tell Margaret of my physical failings as a husband, my impotence.

“Deborah is your one child?”

“The light of my life.”

“And are you happy? Like you told her?”

“Growing happier by the minute in your company.” A bold compliment, daringly offered.

“You're awfully charming, you know, when you're not playing the big shot.”

“Do I come across that way?”

“A little bit. You probably don't notice.”

But of course I do. Overblown. Donnish and pedantic, Annabelle said. But it's too late in life to undo the curse of who I am.

Another silence. I cannot think what to do with my hands, and I relight my pipe. The fields and the forest have fallen asleep, and the sea is windless and still. A blazing meteor: It traces a scar of fire across the sky, and dies.

“A shooting star, how beautiful,” she says. And she jumps up. “Let's go for a walk on the beach.”

But again, from the house, the instrument of the devil is ringing. My first thought is to ignore it, but its call is insistent. I will be pleasant but short.

“It's George, Arthur. I think I need a little help.”

The forest blots out the starlit sky, and darkness enshrouds me as I switch off my headlights. No lights are on in George's house, but I detect the flickering glow of a fireplace.

His house — a rental — is a log cottage in the trees: finely grooved cedar timbers enclosed by plank decking and, above, a shake roof and a bedroom loft with its own balcony. Immense cedars and Douglas firs rise magisterially around it — this small acreage had not been logged since the turn of the century.

The front door is partly open, and its oiled hinges are silent as I step inside. The stale odour of alcohol seems to come at me in gusts. George is sitting by the hearth, feeding sticks into the fire, staring blearily at the flames. Beside him is an ashtray filled with butts. An empty bottle of rye whisky stands on the kitchen table, two other empty bottles on the floor.

I kneel beside him. “You've been having a bit of a time, George.”

“I wanna chuck it all.” He slurs this.

“Chuck what?”

“The whole damn thing.”

“What a ridiculous notion. I wouldn't have a friend to come to. I won't hear of it.”

That fetches a grim smile. The case is not totally hopeless. I assume it is only when the last of his drink ran out that he began entertaining such dour thoughts. This is fairly common.

“Is there anything else to drink in the house?”

“Drank it all up.” He hiccups. “Scotty, the bastard, won't give me more.” Scotty Phillips, the island bootlegger.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Two, three days, I don't know.”

I rise and go the refrigerator, where he keeps his fine-grind coffee. “Where are the filters?”

“First cupboard shelf.”

As I get the coffee under way, I blather on about this and that to keep George's mind off whatever woes belabour him. I suspect a former priest's loss of faith must stick daggers into him from time to time, but something else might be afflicting him, too.

Eureka, I have him chuckling — with an elaborate and unem-bellished account of the savaging I took in Small Claims Court. Everything has worked out for the best, I assure him. Margaret Blake and I — like children newly met in the school playground — had to have a wrestling match before becoming friends. Though I tell him we made amends, I do not mention how I parted from her tonight, in an anxious fluster of apology and regret. It would not do to let George feel blamed.

Coffee slops from the brim of his mug as he raises it shakily to his lips, his eyes on me. Even through those dilated pupils he seems to be able to read something new and interesting about me.

“Arthur, you have this . . . thousand-mile stare. Kind of a Jehovah's Witness look. You jus'join some kind of sect?”

“I'm fine. Feel vitalized, really, by all this mending of fences. Margaret asked us both over to dinner this Friday night, by the way.”

“So I can be a chaperone?”

“What do you mean, George?”

He grins crookedly, a malevolent leer. “Are you planning to make some advances then, old son?”

“Oh, come now, George. I'm too over the hill for that sort of thing. Though I must say we've been getting on quite famously.”

George continues his recovery as I prattle about how I was reciting “Ode to a Nightingale” and opened my eyes to see her standing before me with her eggs and tarts. A picture forms in my mind: how stunning she was against the sunset. I kissed her hand before we parted. That took great courage.

But why am I carrying on about Margaret Blake when a comrade sits here in need beside me?

“George, what ails you? Why have you been on a bender? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Crisis of faith. Nothing to hold onto any more.” Despite his thickness of tongue, these words sound with a depressing clarity. “Do you have any smokes?”

“Oh, yes, I brought a pack for you.” I fish it from my jacket pocket and pass it to him, then fill my pipe and tamp it down. George scrapes a wooden match against the hearth. We work at these simple tasks in silence.

“What is it, George?”

“Guess you haven't heard what some of the wits around here call me. Queen of Prince George, the island fairy.”

“I don't quite follow.”

“As gay as a butterfly.”

I'm stunned, but I remember now his words of stoned confession on my boat.
I coveted my neighbour's ass — that was my sin.

Hours pass unnoticed as he pours it out — the life of a gay priest: guilt, repentance, broken vows, never absolution enough to heal the wounds of mortal sin. Defrocked after the exposure of a long, illicit relationship, he underwent a fundamental loss of faith.

“Found solace in the bottle. God's plan. Hell with Him. You believe, Arthur? You believe in any of it?”

“I tend to hedge my bets.”

“Lily-livered agnostic. Doubt is for cowards. You believe or you don't believe, there's no goddamn in-between. There's no afterlife, only darkness, sweet, empty darkness.”