George has taken to referring to the conqueror of Annabelle’s heart in acidic tones. George is my friend. My enemy is his enemy.
“It’s different in court. I change. It is theatre. I play a role. I become the role. So powerful a role that I sometimes feel within me the strength of Hercules. I don’t know why that’s so. Then I doff my cape and resume life as the tedious, humdrum Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Who gardens, who reads poetry, who plays fine music. These are the avocations of a great and noble mind, Arthur.”
The therapy is unsubtle, ego-inflating, but it works. I am feeling much better. I am free of her, and with our final disunion may soon be free of my need for her. But why do I feel so empty?
“I think I must have fed on her strength, George, in some unhealthy, parasitic way. Weakness loves strength, I suppose. It’s a shameful thought, but I think I’m attracted to dominant women.”
“Like who else, for instance?”
Dare I admit it? But why have my thoughts so often drifted over the fence to the neighbour’s yard? There is so little I hold in common with Mrs. Blake, yet her aggressiveness, her spunk, seems to. . excite me. How absurd.
George looks at me with a knowing smile. “How are you getting along with Margaret Blake?” He is too astute, too insightful.
I blush. “I have neither impure thoughts nor the wherewithal to do anything about them.”
“Blarney,” he snorts. “The reason you couldn’t get it up has just vanished from your life. Performance anxiety, I think it’s called. Fear of failure — compounded in your case by excessive drink. As to Margaret Blake, the best thing you could do right now to start filling the void would be to call on her. Start off by negotiating terms of peace.”
“Believe me, I’ve tried.”
As the night winds down and as I continue my recovery, our conversation moves to more neutral, less personal subjects: future fishing ventures, island gossip, my day in court.
George knows something of O’Donnell’s father, the viscount from Ulster. “Mad Dog O’Donnell, they used to call him in the old days. Commander of the Ulster Rifles. Vowed to end the Troubles and only created more.”
Viscount Caraway is a notorious right-wing curmudgeon, as orange as a tropical sunset. He makes the news from time to time, even in the far-flung colony of British Columbia, with his jeremiads against such disparate enemies as the Pope, the prime minister, and those who feed at the public trough. Perhaps it is no wonder his son seems such a troubled man.
As I walk George from the house, he says, “If it gets tough again, smoke some of this.”
He presses a small plastic bag containing some marijuana cigarettes into my hand, and he climbs into his car and disappears.
I wend my way to bed, seeking the solace of Somnus, god of sleep. Who among his nocturnal spirits will visit me tonight — the gentle Dreams or the barbarous Nightmares that lurk in the dark corners of my soul? As I descend into the silent cave of the Goddess of Darkness, she raises her whip. I am naked, hot, keen to feel the lash. Hurt me, I plead, hurt me.
Tape number seventeen. Subject, Kimberley Martin. Wednesday, the eighth ofJuly, eleven-fifteen in the morning. . Ursula?
Yes, Dr. Kropinski.
Will you cancel my lunch? Dr. Duguid from the Forensic Foundation — would you ask her please to delay until next week? Is Kimberley Martin there? Send her in. . Good morning, Kimberley.
Morning, doctor. And thanks.
And for what do you thank me?
Fitting me in like this.
Oh, there is no problem. How did everything go in court yesterday?
If given a choice I’d have done a month in hell. I’m exhausted. Can I take my favourite padded chair? Oh, God. Kimberley Martin, the neurotic couch potato. Give me my teething ring and my teddy bear.
It was stressful?
Yeah, but it was funny, because the defence lawyer — oh, O’Donnell has Arthur Beauchamp now.
I read this in the paper.
He has this mondo reputation, I was shaking in my socks. But he didn’t ask me one question. Except for some breezy little comment about my acting ability. At which moment I entirely disintegrated. They had to pass out umbrellas.
Why do you think that happened?
I don’t know. Pent-up anxiety. I’m sure it looked awful to everyone, as if I were guilty of something. But the worst part was justbeingthere. On thewitlessstand. Raving hysterically in front of all those drooling ghouls in the gallery. AboutIt- what a nice little neutral word for being stripped and physically trashed. I felt naked in court, like some slave being prodded onto the platform to be auctioned off.
But you got through it, yes?
Not exactly in one piece. Patricia Blueman had to collect me with a dustpan. She’s such a. . well, she’s a mensch. Anyway, Jonathan O’Donnell just sat there looking at me through the wholething — he has these coal-black Rasputin eyes — staring at me as if I were some kind of creature from the lost lagoon. A few times, I just
looked right back at him — he doesn’t scare me I’m babbling.
That’s fine.
I know what you’re writing. “The patient was in a somewhat manic condition, her thoughts free-flowing, though disconnected.”
How is everything else for you, Kimberley? How are your exams coming?
Constitutional law is a bitch. I’ll pass it, I think. I’ll somehow ooze my way into third year. And what else? Oh, I have a part in a new play at the Granville Island Workshop. It’s a sort of bush-league deal, experimental theatre, but it’ll be fun.Switch,it’s called. Comedy of morals. I play the dumb blonde who goes along with anything. You can tell it was written by a guy. But it’s a lead part. . You know, Dr. Kropinski, I almost feel guilty about winning the audition. I’m a famous rapee. I guess the theory is my name is going to sell tickets. God, do you think I’m capitalizing? Yuk. It’s soAmerican.
I will make a point of going.
Bring your wife, I’ll put you on my freebie list.
That is very kind. How is Remy?
Oh, he’s fine. You know, I adore him, but he’s so. . what word am I looking for? Detached? Sometimes it feels like being engaged to a fax machine. He sat with me in court through the whole morning — that was sweet of him — but I could tell he was suffering heavy work withdrawal. He’d rather have been somewhere buying up mining properties.
Has anything else been bothering you?
I had another nightmare about being attacked. A man came creeping into my bedroom, into my bed. Tell me about it.
It’s so ugly. A smelly old man with a beard. He … Oh, God. Why is this happening? It was just a dream.
Here, take a Kleenex.
Now we are in the very heart of summer, long, languid days of fattening gardens, of wild berries and dragonflies, of sunflowers following with rapturous upturned faces Apollo’s daily westward toil. Quiet days: the little frogs have croaked and croak no more, and the bedlam of songbirds has abated, though the air is rent occasionally by the loud gronks of ravens or the piercing shriek of a pileated woodpecker swooping through a clearing in the forest, a flash of punk-red hair.
In the mornings before the dew turns into mist I take my constitutional, up the hill on Potter’s Road, down a woodland path I have discovered, up behind the community church and around the bend to the general store, arriving usually as Mr. Makepeace unlocks the door. Often I tarry there over the coffee urn with friends, jesting, complaining about the government, sharing worries about the lack of rain. Wells are running dry in the hills and in Evergreen Estates.
I ask for a newspaper and occasionally receive one that is two days old. I buy groceries and stuff them in my backpack. I pick up my mail. (“Postcard here from your daughter in Paris, having a good time, says she’s heading off to Italy.”)