Trial of Passion (27 page)

I remain faithfully,

Francisco (Frank) Sierra

To whom it may concern,

I am Dominique Lander. I live at Rural Route 1, Bellflower Road, Slocan. I write this in support of my friend and former lover, Hon. Jonathan Shaun O'Donnell.

I met Jonathan two years ago at a reception for new faculty at
UBC,
where I was commencing a term as visiting lecturer in fine arts. I told him I wanted to fuck him, and we went to my rented studio in Kitsilano, where we did so. We fell in love and continued to meet there for the purpose of sex two or three days a week for seven months, after which I returned here to the Slocan Valley.

As a form of play before we fucked we would often paint each other's bodies. On frequent occasions we
engaged in bondage and discipline. (This is often called sado-masochism, but that is a misleading term for what are properly seen as acts of affection. Pain is after all just another aspect of love. Death itself is erotic.)

Although the routines varied, a common element involved Jonathan tying me up to the bed and spanking me with his hand. I therefore do not believe that if he tied Kimberley Martin to the bed it was for any other reason than to engage in a ritual he enjoyed prior to fucking. He has never harmed a person in his life. I hope this information will assist him in his case, for I know that he is innocent.

Signed: Dominique Lander

Witness: Francisco Sierra

On this second Sunday of August, clouds decorate the horizon, but above Garibaldi the sky remains blue, the sun unrelentingly hot. The “spell” is what everyone is talking about at the ferry dock today. “Longest spell I can remember since ‘85.”

“Don't think this spell is gonna end till October.”

Kurt Zoller is fluttering like a butterfly about the fringes of this crowd — local elections are set for this fall, and our trustee has been seeking the opinion of the grassroots, testing the waters before deciding whether he has any hope of re-election.

He strolls towards me, fidgeting with the straps of his life jacket. “Mr. Bo-champ, good morning. We got another hot one, eh?”

“Ah, our esteemed trustee. This drought must be keeping your little waterworks company hopping.”

Zoller recently began a business tanking water up to his neighbours
in Evergreen Estates, and he is reputed to gouge. This may have lost him a few votes, especially because he is seen as profiting from the spell.

“It's a service to my fellow islanders.” He drops his voice and bends to me. “But I hear rumbles. Some people can't handle the idea of a businessman with initiative. Ford didn't build an auto empire without taking his opportunities. If it hadn't been me, somebody else would of done it, an off-islander.”

I wonder if he is not sweltering in that heavy life jacket. Margaret and I have decided it is a kind of mother's blanket.

“You are merely adhering to the time-honoured ethics of capitalism, Mr. Zoller.”

“Thank you.”

I like the way he insists on misinterpreting my sarcasm. He is still convinced I am his unswerving ally.

“I'm meeting some bureaucrats from the city.” Zoller continues to speak in the hushed tone of an international spy. “Government hydrologists. Coming over here to check water-table levels. This is how they spend our taxes.”

“Ah, yes. The government is always interfering in matters that don't concern it.”

“Can you think of some legal move to head them off, like a sort of injunction?”

“Not offhand, Mr. Zoller.”

From behind me comes the nasal mewl of Nelson Forbish. “Hey, Kurt, I heard the government might put a freeze on the new subdi-vision. You got any word on that?”

Forbish wears his usual headgear, the porkpie hat. He is sucking the contents of a can of grape soda through a straw.

“Arthur here said it better than I could. They're always sticking their nose into other people's private places.”

Forbish produces his notepad. “They say there's gonna be an investigation into, um — they call it . . . a possible malfeasance.”

“No comment.”

“Well, hey, I ain't accusing you of anything, I just asked what you know.”

“I know nothing.” Zoller's eyes are narrowed to defensive slits. He tightens the straps of his life jacket.

Not Now Nelson slurps up the last of his grape soda with a long, rasping gurgle. “So, are you going to sue Margaret Blake?”

“For what?”

“Saying you were in bed with the developers, that they paid you off. I thought you were going to sue her for slander.”

“Well, I'm still thinking hard about it.”

“Think he's got any kind of case there, Mr. Beauchamp?”

“If people ran to the courts over every word said in the heat of debate, the system would self-destruct.” I am hoping Zoller will take this as a word of advice from his confidant to abandon thoughts of suing: Margaret may have seriously misspoke. She has confided she had no ammunition for her charge.

“Yeah, but do you think he's got a case? On what you know?” Forbish surprises me, showing hitherto unrevealed reportorial skills, a doggedness. Perhaps I have misread this clumsy stout. Does within hide a skinny streak of cleverness? “I, too, know nothing.”

“So would you be acting for Mrs. Blake if Kurt here sued her?”

“Nelson, the ferry is arriving.”

“Like I hear you been, um, talking to her.”

“Not now, Nelson.”

“A lot. Over the fence and like that.” Kin to grotesque Silenus, half-man, half-goat, he is the peeping satyr of Garibaldi Island. “Maybe you're doing more than talking, eh?” A bawdy wink.

Zoller's expression is one of confusion: The full impact of betrayal hasn't hit home.

“I am afraid I must flee your riveting company, Nelson — I have a friend to meet.”

“I hear she's thinking of running for trustee this fall.”

This is true, though told to me in secret. But secrets never seem to survive on this island.

As Forbish ambles off, Zoller stares at me with the expression of a soulmate betrayed. I slink away ashamed, the Quisling of Garibaldi.

The ferry groans wearily into its slip and spews the cyclists out. Augustina then disembarks by foot, greeting me with a hug.

“You seem pretty pleased with yourself, Arthur.”

“Why do you say that, my dear?”

“The funny smile. Look like you swallowed a canary.”

“But I'm merely happy to see you.”

We bump off in my truck towards Potter's Road. Stoney and Dog are whaling away with hammers as we pull in. They are still showing up on weekends, demonstrating a tenaciousness to the cause of my garage that I'd not believed I'd see — though they take long cannabis breaks, wandering about the yard and into the woods. Most of the framing is up now. The Rolls is back in Stoney's shop, and I don't often think about it.

Augustina and I assemble briefs, notes, and transcripts on the dining-room table.

“I have reams of stuff from the client — I spent a whole day with him. I don't know . . . sometimes I wonder if he isn't a little kinky. It's as if he's hiding something. Anyway, let's see, I talked to a cocaine expert, pharmacologist from the university. Too many variables, so he can't conclude Kimberley was feigning sleep, but says coke's a powerful stimulant, and it does cause a strange reaction in some people. But we've lost the element of surprise: Paula Yi met with the prosecutor.”

“Please ensure the Crown subpoenas Miss Yi. She seems reluctant, and we can't have her wandering off. Those bruises on Kimberley's wrists and ankles worry me. I can't bring myself to believe they were self-inflicted.”

“Well . . . injuries. She was drunk, falling down. . . .”

“It doesn't quite wash. Can we get a peek at Kimberley's polygraph
test? One often finds unexpected blips on the graphs that the examiner has disregarded.”

“It won't be easy.”

“Then we'll seek a disclosure order from my old friend Justice Sprogue, who knows all about the perils of polygraphy. He once wrote a brief on it”

“Okay, I'll bring some cases. The pre-trial is this Wednesday. He wants to do it in his chambers, informal, no gowns.”

“That's fine by me.”

“And I got a call from Dr. Werner Mundt at the forensic clinic — you know him, don't you?”

“Ah, yes, we were friends once.” Annabelle had had a rather public affair with him, and I sense Augustina now remembers this, for she seems embarrassed. “What did he want?”

“Well, he's offering to be an expert witness.”

“Slavering at the thought, no doubt. He likes the limelight.”

“Well, he just published a paper about a so-called rape fantasy, and he expostulated on it for an hour. You see, certain women have these ‘male aggression masturbation reveries.' They enjoy the thought of being forced so they can abandon responsibility for their own sexual pleasure. As Kimberley would put it: Gag me.”

“I think we'll take a pass on Dr. Mundt.”

A few years ago I might have held my nose and plunged ahead, but I suppose I have become soft. Surely one of the reasons I deserted the courthouse for Garibaldi Island was to escape the foul excesses of the law. Again I ask myself: Why did I give in to a moment of weakness and undertake this trial?

The windows are open on this hot day, and we continue to talk strategies to the clatter of hammers and saws. At times I find my mind wandering.

“Arthur, you have this moony stare.”

“Oh, sorry, I guess I lost the train. . . .”

“You feeling okay?”

“Splendid. Finding it a little hard to get back in uniform, that's all.”

I soon tire of reading the voluminous treatises on law and evidence Augustina has compiled, and lead her outside, where I compel her to admire my garden; then we do a quick inspection of the building site. Stoney waves from a ladder, a cigarette and several nails clenched between his lips. The newly framed garage looks sturdy enough. I have decided once again to forgive Stoney. His eerily occult ability to cause calamities wherever he goes is surely counterbalanced by his good intentions. In token of this, I have agreed on a fair contract price with the boys and give them weekly draws: I cannot see them starve.

A tour of my acreage — up and over the yellow-grass bluffs, down through the shade of my conifer forest — leads Augustina and me to a path I cannot recall having seen before, but it must be the shortcut Stoney takes on the many days when the master mechanic can't get his car started. Farther along is my own well-tromped path — to the pasture where I have been clearing brush and helping with the fencing.

“My, you've been doing a lot of work.”

I absently pluck a pale blue blossom from a cornflower and twirl the stem between my fingers. I feel a vague . . . not unease, a sense of absence. Something missing here, cut out of the frame.

“Arthur? Hello.”

My mind is adrift; I realize Augustina has been talking to me. “I'm sorry, you were saying?”

“It's getting near ferry time, I should go. Are you all right?”

“Tip-top.”

“Why are you staring at that house?”

“Oh, no reason.”

“You're acting awfully strange.”

She is looking at me anxiously. What in the world is she going on about? Movement behind the kitchen window: Is that Margaret? Her dog runs out, evicting a flapping, clucking hen.

“I'm fine, Augustina. I'm just . . . happy.” I begin walking her
back to my truck. “I'll see you Wednesday for the pre-trial.”

“Did you want me to pick you up at the seaplane dock?”

“Oh, we'll just take a taxi.”

Augustina continues to stare at me as if I am an alien newly landed from a spaceship.”
We'll
take a taxi?”

I hear my words coming in short, breathless sentences. “Margaret Blake is joining me. We're taking a little break from the routines. My neighbour. She's usually out here. She has animals to look after, so we'll fly back that evening, of course.”

Augustina seems to be fighting a smile now. “Of course. Otherwise you'd have to spend the night together.”

“Oh, dear, nothing like that is happening. She's just a good friend. All very platonic.”

As we drive to the ferry, Augustina sits silently smiling, as if she holds a secret. Finally she says, “Do you know what, Arthur?”

“What?”

“I think you're in love. I think you're head over heels.”

The use of the L-word startles me. I sputter, “Nonsense. What a preposterous notion.”

“I'm the world's foremost expert, Arthur. I've been there and back too many times.”

I smile at her jest. I shake my head. “Completely out of the question.”

“Why are you red in the face?”

“I'm not. I'm just ruddy from the exertion of our little hike.”

“I think it's sweet.”

After I drop her off at the dock, I enjoy a good laugh over this.

In love. What an idea.

A fondness exists, yes, even a strong fancy. But love? Complete with stardust in the eyes? With the legendary pounding of the heart and the lightly skipping feet?

Absurd.

That evening, alone in darkening night, I practise tai chi movements on the lawn. I make tea. I walk on the beach. I study a purple starfish clinging to the rocks. I listen to the soft sounds of night. And all the while I debate within the curious verdict Augustina rendered.

No, it is inconceivable, I am not some fuzzy-cheeked adolescent but a mature sixty-two-year-old. I am beyond such banality.

But why do I have this sense of having been rendered into some glutinous form of paste?

Have I been denying a truth evident to others? Surely I have not plunged into that monstrous abyss of which the poets sing. No, it is beyond the pale.

But again my inner senses are assaulted by a picture burned into memory: Margaret on her porch, silhouetted against the sunset, the chiming carillon of her laughter. How . . . different I felt at that moment. I assumed it was Rimbold's secondary smoke that overcame me, but was it the tuneful twang of Cupid's mighty bow?