So somehow that inspired me to get everyone reading lines. Except Chornicky, of course, he was too swacked. I thought they could sort of help me rehearse. We really got into it — I mean, they were good. Charles was the bishop. Perfectly suited to the role. Jonathan was my friend Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, and we did another scene where he also played the inquisitor. I’m afraid I flounced about a lot, waving on the troops against the English goddamns, being all rousing and saintly. And I remember saying, “Everyone has to wear a costume,” and during a pee break I went upstairs and put on one of Jonathan’s suits. . how embarrassing.
So, anyway, now we get to where things get weird. I was doing a speech; it goes something like, “My voices have deceived me; only a fool will walk into a fire” — and suddenly it was as if I were hearing voices myself, strange voices, and I remember I was crying. .
I wonder if he put something in my drink.
I’m not sure if I can tell you about the end part without ralphing. The end part — maybe that’s not the expression I want to use. The private part. As my little sister says, gag me with a spoon.
Anyway, that’s all I remember, until. . he was on top of me. . not on top, behind. .
I can’t do this, it makes me sick.
Let’s just get together over dinner, okay, I’ll give you the whole blah. After you’ve eaten.
Through the “Bulletin Board” column in the Echo, I am pleased to learn — and not surprised — that Garibaldi boasts its own chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Its bimonthly evening meeting at the local school is already under way when I arrive. The eyes of a dozen of my brothers and sisters turn to me as I squeeze into a seat behind a child’s desk, and I nod and smile.
“Please carry on,” I tell the speaker, a scraggly bearded man of about fifty, spare and vigorous. His head is heavily bandaged and his arm in a sling. Yellowed fingers hold a burning cigarette.
“Aha,” he says, “our ranks swell. Shall I begin again? My name is George and I am an alcoholic and, if I may say so, a very fine one indeed.”
Is this that infamous tank, George Rimbold? Not the image I expected. There is an air of theatre about him, his free arm dramatically gesturing as he speaks. He has a sonorous voice accented with an Irish lilt, and possesses the confidence of a man used to an audience.
“As many of you have heard, I suffered a bit of an accident driving home from the Rosekeeper tea party. But don’t believe the rumours. I was completely sober.”
Hoots of disbelief.
“Suddenly a deer ran in front of me, but I had the presence of mind to swerve.” He acts it out, turning an imaginary steering wheel, braking.
“Tell it to the cops,” someone says.
“To be sure, and I did that very thing. The next morning.”
He sees that I am chuckling. “Are you the gentleman who bought my boat?” “I am that person.”
“I must drop by and show you the holes where the ling cod lie in wait.”
“Then we’ll be in the same boat. But we already are, aren’t we?”
This merry dialogue breaks the ice. I introduce myself. (My name is Arthur. I am an alcoholic.) Hands are extended. I am accepted.
“I fall off my boat — or wagon — too easily,” Rimbold says. “And you, Arthur?”
“Haven’t had a drink for nine years.”
“Good grief,” he says. There is applause.
I am, of course, called upon to make confession and do so with high energy, raucous tales of my Baudelairian performances in that infamous parlour of debauchery, the El Beau Room on Hornby Street, a coin’s toss from the Vancouver courts and the haunt of many of my fellow litigators. The time I stood on a table and recited from Juvenal’s Satires. The time I dumped a pitcher of Guinness upon the head of a prosecutor who’d had the audacity to call me a poor loser. The time, in court, when I’d attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of the judge.
I have done a bit of amateur performing in my time (I really must join the local theatre group), and I release the inner actor, playing a merry, fustian Falstaff, punching the air with my fist, slurring and titubating in sardonic imitation of my former self.
Well, I am a fine orator when I let loose, though I will never know where the skill comes from. (My father was chief university librarian and went about his days in whispers and silence. Books we had, however, hundreds of system discards, bruised, rancid with age.) The audience is an eager jury, anxious to acquit me. Though we come from differing backgrounds, we are all peers in the great democratic addiction to alcohol. As Homer wrote, “There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men.”
By the end of the meeting I am enveloped in the warmth of comradeship, and George Rimbold and I stroll out together, lighting cigarettes.
“What brings you to our little haven?” he asks.
“I came searching.”
“For what?”
“Peace. Health. For the remnants of my tattered soul. And you?”
“I came to escape the trade in souls. The Reverend George Rimbold, that was my title. I am a fallen priest, sir, and shall rot in hell.” He shrugs. “But in the meantime there is the delightful purgatory of Garibaldi Island.”
“Ah. And how long have you been here, George?”
“To tell the truth, I’m not sure.” He pulls at his beard. “In fact, I can’t even remember how I got here.”
On driving home that night I observe that one of my headlights has died. No matter: Garibaldi is a lawless state, the policeman comes but once a month. But impaired with the euphoria of new friendship, I am a distracted driver. As I take a turn past Mrs. Blake’s house, a plump white shape moseys into the unlit foreground of my Rolls. Unable to brake in time, I feel a sickening bump.
When I exit the car, my heart racing in panic, I observe that a small pig lies in smiling, lifeless peace at the side of the road.
Oh woe, this promises another great collision, that with the fearsome Margaret Blake. Behind the gap-toothed fence of her yard, the house sits in utter blackness, with not even a porch light glowing. Her truck is in the yard, so she is doubtless abed, dreaming her Fabian dreams of the future perfect state.
In fear of her, for a moment I contemplate fleeing the scene of the accident, but I still my terrors and advance on the silent, ghostly house. After I rap several times on the door, Slappy barks, a light comes on, and Mrs. Blake greets me on her front deck with a heavy-lidded look of suspicion.
“I hope it isn’t something that was bound to happen, Mrs. Blake, but I struck and killed one of your pigs.”
Wordlessly, she marches in slippered feet to the road, followed by her spaniel, who sniffs at the dead animal, then looks up at me reproachfully.
“It’s Betsy.”
“Yes, I’m afraid neither Betsy nor I saw the pig-crossing sign.” I attempt to say this in jest, but my smile dies, impaled by her fierce look. Lamely, I add, “She wandered into my path.”
“Well, Betsy just cost you a hundred dollars, Mr. Beauchamp.”
I have been planning to make good, but her gruffness not only gets my back up but stiffens my spine.
“I would suggest we each take our responsibility. Fifty-fifty.”
“Why? We weren’t sharing the steering wheel fifty-fifty.”
Her dressing gown is loose around her chest and she tightens it, then steps towards me and lifts herself up on her tiptoes, hiking her face close to mine. For a flutter of a moment I think she is going to bite me, but realize she is only taking a sample of my breath.
“Madam, I have just returned from an AA meeting.”
“Stale smoke. Okay, you have until tomorrow to pay me.”
“Or what?”
“Or I take you to court. I’m not accepting half. I put a lot of work into that animal.”