Prudhomme leaves the huddle. “The plaintiff wishes to inform the court it shares a concern about these majestic birds, and will consider the more costly option of bringing in equipment by barge.”
“It is not an option.” Selwyn passes up a thick affidavit. “A sea otter habitat would be under threat.”
“That may be so, Mr. Loo, and we’ll get to it when we get to it. Meantime, I’m granting a temporary restraining order against cutting within two kilometres of that tree. We’ll put this over for one week. Counsel, will you join me in chambers?”
Santorini is shrugging his robe off as they enter, snapping his collar button loose. “Just going to make the last nine at Langara. It’s a fundraiser, kids’hockey, I have to show up. Damn it, I almost split a gut in there. That Lotis Rudnicki-I finally figured out where I’d seen her, a TV commercial. ‘Did you use enough soap, dear?’ I always laugh at that, the way she’s so deadpan.”
Selwyn is smiling broadly, a sight rarely seen. Prudhomme smiles too, but with the weariness of defeat.
“Looks like your lady got the better of both of us, Beauchamp.” Santorini takes off his striped pants. “You poor bugger, I could tell you were expecting her to come down. I saw how your expression changed, your jowls sagged. And when you fell…” He can’t complete, his belly is shaking with laughter.
Loser of five straight murder trials, his manhood under test, Santorini has finally forced Arthur to the ground. Arthur is piqued at this razing. He didn’t realize he had jowls. At least he has hair on his head.
But he accepts the ribbing. “The injury is confined to the area lyrically described by Shakespeare as the afternoon of the body. Otherwise, only my ego smarts.”
“Hey, I’m not laughing at you, I had that happen to me, some blind idiot caught me in his backswing with a five iron.”
Selwyn is expressionless. Santorini zips up a light jacket. “I’m off, but stay, relax, I’ll have my clerk bring in coffee. Doughnuts in the fridge. You want to discuss reaching some kind of accommodation, gentlemen. Talk. Make love, not war.”
After the judge leaves, Prudhomme fetches Clearihue, who says, “We may have to appeal this and harvest some timber off the shore to pay the legal costs.”
“Harvest?” Selwyn says. “We’re not talking about potatoes.”
“We can tough it out until the fall,” Clearihue says. “I’m not going lower than thirteen, twelve and a half bottom, plus our outlays have to be covered. Christ, we paid eight for it, where’s our profit? And you know what? With the international attention this property is getting, the price may be going up.”
Arthur takes that as a bluff. Time is on Gwendolyn’s side. The legal costs must be bleeding Garlinc.
Clearihue glances at Prudhomme, then adds, “We can give you maybe a month, then it’s half down, the rest secured. I think the folks of Garibaldi-I’m including myself, I’ll chip in my share-can probably raise a few million on their land, and we’ll absorb all legal fees, how’s that?”
Arthur packs his briefcase, rises. “I don’t want to be late for the ferry.” He doesn’t think he’ll bother with tonight’s AA meeting. The school, those hard wooden benches.
18
Arthur puts on a suit for the Save Gwendolyn meeting-he would prefer clean country clothes but he can’t decode the dials on the washer. He’s still unable, a week after his fall, to sit comfortably in a vehicle, so he’ll walk to the hall. There’s no urgent cause to drive anywhere, though a visit to Nick Faloon is long overdue-he might worry that Arthur is defending him with faint heart.
It’s April 25. Day Nineteen! (“THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!” cries this week’s Bleat. “OUR LOVEBIRDS REUNITE!”) Not, however, the lovebirds of Bungle Bay, though Margaret, if she holds to her vow, has only two tree-sitting days left. The punkhaired sprite must return too. Or else. They’ve won, take a bow. There is peace in the forest. The threatened appeal hasn’t materialized, but Garlinc won’t come to the table, so they must return to court.
Edna Sproule waves from behind the barn-she is a saviour, attending births of eleven kids. A relief column of Japanese Woofers is on its way. Meanwhile, his waterlogged Fargo has been missing for a week and a half. So has Stoney, whose backhoe is still sitting by the lip of the non-pond. Margaret will not be pleased.
But she’ll find the girls from Mop’n’Chop have cleaned the house from roof to basement. He has paid the bills, has stocked up. There will be daffodils in the parlour, hyacinths in the dining room, a sprig of lilac on her pillow.
He’ll try to impress her with his key role in the struggle. Had he not landed so hard on his ass, Santorini might not have been so generous with his restraining order. And did he not lead a team of botanists to that tiny patch of Phantom Orchids? Was he not treated to a chorus of their hurrahs? He will regale her about the murder case, show her another Beauchamp, the hard-driving lawyer. She’s a mystery addict, she’ll love this whodunit. She’ll love Arthur.
And what to do about hooky-playing Rudnicki? Three, four days, she said, now it’s a week. Arthur was forgiving to a point. She had good intentions: quit smoking, reunite him with Margaret. She read Santorini accurately-no arrest warrants went out for the leading lady of his favourite commercial.
However, if she doesn’t come down by tomorrow she’ll be seeking new employment. He said as much in his last post to this act-on-a-whim wannabe lawyer.
Duties are piling up for her. Witnesses’ memories could go stale if their words are not recorded soon, so Arthur has arranged a weekend trip for her, a cruise to Bamfield on the Lady Rose, an overnight stay at the Nitinat Lodge. She is to take signed statements from Claudette, from the Cotters, from Meredith Broadfeather, and the two Huu-ay-aht braves, and from Holly Hoover if she can cajole her.
Arthur has received assurances from high officials of the Save Gwendolyn Society that Lotis’s bubble is about to burst. Several complaints have been made about her jumping the line. Reverend Al will argue the case for Arthur at the meeting this afternoon.
“You’ve sacrificed enough,” he told him. “First your wife, then your Woofer, or whatever she is.”
“‘Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; but love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.’” Sung aloud to a forest glen, Swinburne’s “Hymn to Proserpine.” Yes, she has laboured well this spring, the goddess of vegetation. Grass thick in the fields, apple trees pinking, skunk cabbage bursting from the swales with yellow spikes in yellow cups.
He must stop to catch his breath on Breadloaf Hill, at a plateau overlooking Garibaldi’s first land-use mistake: a fifty-lot subdivision, Evergreen Estates. Septic problems in a rain catchment area. A smell comes from the taps of the community hall.
Inside the creaky wooden building, sixty locals and a dozen off-islanders are in noisy debate. Cud Brown is on his feet. Tabatha Jones is glowering at him, the debaucher of her only child.
Presiding is Leif Thorson, a repentant former logger, lost in a forest of points of order. Arthur has walked into a procedural quagmire, and follows Reverend Al outside before being called upon to untangle it.
“We have some excellent candidates,” Al says, “high-riggers, canopy experience, to replace those two recalcitrant women, so we’re bringing them in from the cold.”
“What is Cud carrying on about?”
“He’s off on a wild tangent.”
They look in again. Leif Thorson is saying, “The way I figure it, Cud, if you’re gonna nominate someone to go up that tree, they got to consent. Who do you want to nominate, anyway?”
“Tabatha Jones.”
Leif turns to her. “Tabatha, you consent?”
“I certainly do not.” Furious, she stands, marches over to Cud, wags a finger at his nose. “You’re not getting close to her, she’s with her dad in the city.”