“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.Yes, I think I saw his photo in the newspaper.” Gaunt and fiery-eyed, wearing not a tropical palm-tree tie but an ascot. A rising star, a wunderkind.
“He’s divorced, two children. He’s. . a little younger than I am. It doesn’t seem to matter. I think he worships me. I don’t know why. We share a lot. Obviously. He was conductingLa Bohemefor us, of course. And, um, he’d like me to go to Bayreuth with him this September, and he insists that I straighten it all out with you. Naturally he wants to meet you — I’ve spoken so admiringly — and I’ve been pretty frank with him about our difficulties, about how it hasn’t really been a marriage for many years. . ”
Annabelle is on an expressway and cannot find the brakes. How noble and gallant is the gaudy, gooey Francois Roehlig — he wants to meet the vanquished foe, the impotent Arthur Beauchamp, for a friendly after-duel drink. I am feeling some jealous ire — it is a healthy sign. I have emotions. I am well.
“Deborah will be furious, I suppose. I don’t know what to do about that, she’s so unforgiving. Maybe she’ll find it in her heart if … if we finally make the break, Arthur, if I stop causing you pain. I know I do that.”
She looks down, picks at a baby asparagus.
“I’ve been a sorry excuse as a wife. But I care for you. I want you to be happy.”
She can say nothing more. She is waiting for me to accept her gift of happiness. My mind is clouded by a picture of this effete conductor, Roehlig, swiving my wife.
“Happy. Yes. Well, I am happy, Annabelle. For you.”
“I’m so sorry, Arthur.”
Numbly, I hear myself chattering, matter-of-fact and falsely brisk. “I would like you to have the house, of course. I have my island farm. It is home now. I think we both have enough to keep ourselves comfortable — those funds Nicholas recommended are doing very well, really.”
As Pierre descends upon us with the tenderloin Avignon, Annabelle begins to weep. He beats a quick retreat.
“I do love you, Arthur. In my way.”
Annabelle suddenly rises and rushes off to the ladies’ room.
I fight my own tears and stare for many agonizing moments at the half-filled glass of Bordeaux that sits beside her plate. My hand itches, moves forward, withdraws. Oh, God, what I would give for that cup of wine that clears today of past regrets and future fears.
We stop at the house — the silent, rambling structure in Point Grey I inhabited for twenty years — and I fill a large suitcase with items I’d earlier failed to bring: my favourite slippers, my collection of pipes and soapstone carvings, some gardening books. I do all this in a stupefied state, as if anesthetized.
My memories of the house seem more sour than poignant. I cannot remember too many happy days. It shall be hers now, and Francois Roehlig’s. A picture of them seated together over breakfast composes poorly in my benumbed mind.
Lugging the suitcase out, I stop at the doorstep and say a silent, final goodbye to my former house, my runt-sized city garden, my former life. I heave the bag into Annabelle’s Alfa Romeo — she has taken the top down; the day has turned sunny. Annabelle’s clouds have parted, too, and she is smiling behind the huge panes of her Italian sunglasses. Smiling. I suppose she feels an immense relief that it is over.
“Starting new lives — it feels good in a way, doesn’t it? Like a fresh chance. Like finally getting the mortgage paid off, and knowing that the rest of your life is interest-free. God, I’m talking likeNicholas. Listen, Francois wants to meet Nick and Deborah, so we’ll have you all over. You’ll do the mending, won’t you, Arthur? Try to convince Deb I’m not the wicked witch of the west”
My smile is fixed, glued on.
We descend the ramp to the harbour road, past Canada Place and the steamship dock, past one of those massive tourist tubs that ply the inside waters to Alaska. Annabelle races over the speed bumps that lead to the float-plane docks of Coal Harbour.
“It’s a charter flight?”
“Billed to the client.”
“Well, hell, I’ll join you for the flight” She has had a few wines on a decidedly empty stomach. Her tears have dried. She is happy, in love, overflowing with it — there’s enough to spare for me, and she hugs me after she parks the car, hugs me again as we cinch our seat belts in the back of the four-seat aircraft.
As we take to the air I maintain a conversation of sorts, some meaningless drivel about turning another bend on life’s highway. I wear a mask of tranquillity — it hides the emptiness I feel, the yawning gulf within, the pathetic, self-pitying inner self.
Below us, a dozen container ships sit at anchor in English Bay, low, close to Plimsoll lines, awaiting their turns to disgorge their cargoes. Vancouver bustles. Its streets are clogged with cars — it is half past four, the city’s downtown is emptying. The plane sweeps low around Spanish Banks, Point Grey, Wreck Beach, and now in the distance I see the islands of the Gulf. The exile returns, world-weary, anomic.
I direct the pilot into my cove, and the plane settles into the water, and drifts to the dock while I prattle mindlessly to Annabelle about how calming it has been for me here, how joyful to return.
“Maybe I’ll bring Francois out here some weekend. Would that be too uncomfortable, darling? Not this summer — later, when things have settled down.”
After the divorce. After the remarriage. He is younger than Annabelle — by how much? Did I not read he is in his thirties? Well,Annabelle is only fifty-three, less the many busy years her surgeon so skilfully whittled away from beside the eyes and beneath the chin.
She joins me on the dock and presses her lips firmly to mine. I have a sense of completion with this kiss, of finality. Last wifely kiss. The kiss-off.
“Scratchy,” she says. “But I do like the beard. It makes you. . interesting.”
A hug. A smile. A wave. A kiss blown through the cockpit window. She turns to the pilot and starts chatting with him.
I watch until the aircraft becomes a mote on the horizon.
I walk into the house. I telephone George Rimbold, a call for help.
“She’s an extremely strong woman. I think that’s what first attracted me to her. Not her physical beauty, nor her style or flair, or talent. Her strength. I still have no idea why I put up with it for so long, the unfaithfulness, the feeling of being diminished as a man. It’s almost as if I have someneedto feel put down.”
George nods, listening to my logorrheic outpourings with the grave mien of the father confessor that once he was. It is midnight, and George has been steadfast through the evening. We have smoked to dangerous excess and have sampled three kinds of tea and various fruit juices, but I have beaten back the need, the compulsion; I haven’t had to summon Scotty Phillips, the island bootlegger, who lives but a telephone call away.
“My daughter, who has some training in psychology, says I’m masochistic. I’m beginning to think she’s right. To satisfy my unconscious wish to be mistreated, I attach myself to a domineering woman.”
“Blather,” says George. “Cheap pop psychology.”
“Where does this come from? I suppose some clever therapist would point to my mother. She was domineering, too. Generous, outgoing, sharp-witted, but caustic. Very hard on my father, a quiet man. I identified with him a great deal, I suppose.”
“Loved your father, did you? No wonder you’re so screwed up.” He says this dryly, with a smile.
“The beard, she said, makes me interesting. Am I so dull otherwise? I suppose I am. A rather boring person, really. I lack passion”
“You’re certainly being boring right now,” George says.
“Thank you, George.”
“I mean it. Stop putting yourself down, old son. How do you dare call yourself boring? You’re a celebrated lawyer, a winner of famous trials, a man of refinement, not some gaudy fop like this obviously mediocre conductor she’s taken up with.”