Jonathan’s hands are trembling. I sigh again and pick up his bottle, and shake it. Just about empty.
“Welcome to the fold. You are an alcoholic, Jonathan.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Can you abstain?”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise I will not act for you.” Jonathan raises his glass, but doesn’t drink. He scrutinizes the remaining liquid in it, then stands and pours it out the window.
“Deal.”
“Ah, yes. Well, gentlemen, the case is more difficult and complex than first we supposed. There is a question now whether we dare put Jonathan on the stand. The preliminary hearing recommences. . a week Tuesday?”
“Yes, July seventh,” says Gowan.
I retrieve Jonathan’s written statement. “Perhaps we should destroy this. And begin with a tabula rasa”
I realize I have not been a good host. “Cookies, anyone? I’ll be in utter despair if you don’t try them — I baked them myself.”
Each in turn takes a peanut butter cookie.
PART TWO
A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
Thoughts of returning to the city — even for a short while — cause me a discomfort in my lower recesses, and for several days after General Bullingham’s forces storm and capture me, I remain in a dour funk. After three months on tranquil Garibaldi the hurly-burly of city and courtroom seems as distant as the moon. My melancholy stems from my weak resolve — I allowed them to break my will.
But impelled by an alcoholic’s code of duty to his brother — and perhaps by some misplaced sense of solidarity with a fellow Latin scholar — I could find no escape. Perhaps I see Jonathan as an ally in weakness. I so admire the self-destructive. At all events I suspect he is innocent, and despite his sins deserves public proof of that.
Sadly, the weather refuses to cooperate in my determination to be gloom-ridden. The month of July enters hot, lazy, dreamy, and altogether unnecessarily pleasant. I spend these halcyon days sitting on the back stoop while a fan of water plays over my garden, and I reread the transcripts, and listen again to the spunky, chirruping voice of Kimberley Martin. And I wish again and again I had never agreed to do this. The case reeks of disaster, of damaged lives.
But my decision has brought great comfort to Annabelle, who has returned from Seattle. She telephones to say I am doing the right thing for “poor Jonathan.” Though she will be delighted to have meback in the house for a few days during the preliminary, she does not propose a more extended stay. In three months she has visited but once, and she has not again mentioned joining me for that promised few weeks this summer.
Ah, well, we are enjoying this time apart together. Perhaps she is loosening the bonds. Possibly in giving me what she calls my “space,” she is also tendering freedom. Or is Deborah right? Will her mother continue to reel in the puppet strings every time I try to dance off the stage? Am I tied to her in some unhealthy — dare I say — masochistic way? In bondage for my sins of weakness. Ah, yes, the ties that bind.
George Rimbold drags me off fishing one morning, and I find myself talking to him about my marriage, giving solemn confession. He listens Buddha-like, stoned on his marijuana, then tells me my impotence is a blessing from the God he refuses to acknowledge. “Oh, to be freed from the chains of lust. Look how it has brought me down. I envy you.” What luckless event caused his downfall? Coveting his neighbour’s ass, he’d said.
On a miserably bright and cheerful Saturday, as I am entering the fifth straight day of my malaise — the preliminary hearing looms but a few days away — George again interrupts my busy schedule, this time to fetch me to a public meeting at the community hall, the hearing into Evergreen Estates’ plans to expand its subdivision.
“Drama, intrigue, high emotion, unbridled anger. You don’t want to miss it, Arthur, these meetings are the island’s only form of live theatre. Could see Zoller get punched out.”
Kurt Zoller, our paranoiac trustee, has been urging me to attend and offer my voice to the Cause of Progress: Mr. Bo-champs, we can’t stand still.But I have decided I am one with the eco-freaks. I will take a stand. Margaret Blake will realize I am not a lost cause after all, and will extend her hand in contrite apology for her many rudenesses.
And I will offer to settle — let’s say sixty-forty in her favour on the pig. A moral victory for her.
Because George and I tarry too long over tea and talk, the meeting is well under way when we arrive. The community hall, a barnlike edifice built with donations of local money and labour, is high on an arid ridge called Breadloaf Hill. A notice on the front door advises: “Please use the facilities outside, as the toilets don’t flush as there is no water.”
At least half of the adult population of Garibaldi is in attendance, most of them looking rather surly as the developer, a sleek Cassius with a manufactured smile, tries to pitch his goods. Mrs. Blake is at the back, listening intently, coiled as if about to spring into action.
Several empty chairs are at the front, and, as we sit, Chairman Zoller nods and smiles, and winks at me. Mrs. Blake, thinking I am allied with him, is no doubt looking knives in my direction.
But I am suddenly elsewhere, in a court of law, facing young Kimberley Martin. Listening to her tapes I felt like an aural Peeping Tom, an invader of private space. Ah, yes, how shrewd of Gowan to have forced their production; how noble it made me feel to listen to her incautious ramblings.As my little sister says, gag me with a spoon.
The provincial judge presiding over this preliminary is one William Pickles, a charm-free preening martinet. Gowan proclaims he is in our pocket, but I am not sure that matters. A judge’s role at preliminary is a limited one: he may commit the accused to trial by higher court or — rarely, when the prosecution falls short of aprima faciecase — may discharge him.
But unless the complainant recants, that will not happen next week.
The bar manager, Emily Lemay, speaks in support of the rezon-ing — “I need the business,” she says frankly. But she is booed. Other members of this cranky audience rise in opposition: several stands of fir and arbutus must go if the subdivision passes. Septic seepage will foul adjoining farms. A rare flower, the chocolate lily, is endangered.
Kurt Zoller moves from his table and plumps down into an empty chair beside me.
“The natives are restless,” he says. “Now’s a good time for you to speak.”
“The majority seems in opposition,” I say.
“Yeah, butImake the decision. Got to listen to them, that’s my democratic duty. But I was elected to make the hard choices.”
He seems unusually edgy. Perhaps that is because he is without a life jacket today. Rising, he pats me on the shoulder, a public gesture of the camaraderie he believes we share. I have obviously been too subtle in my dealings with him.
But again I am in my courtroom. Patricia Blueman is at the other counsel table. A tense, striving woman whom I had always considered quite humourless. I am rather pleasantly shocked to know she has a repertoire of judicial impersonations. She’s adroit enough. She certainly bested Cleaver at the preliminary, though that vulgar pouf would never dare admit it.
She must be handled with some delicacy, and more dignity than Gowan displayed.
Margaret Blake is on her feet now. “Kurt Zoller, do you deny you have an interest in this development?”
“You’re out of order!”
“You’re in bed with them, aren’t you, Kurt? You have a house up there in the Estates. If you can call that ugly trailer. . I just bet they paid you off.”
“This is a libel! I warn you, Margaret Blake, we have a lawyer here of high upstanding. Mr. Bo-champ will explain you are guilty