We bump off in my truck towards Potter’s Road. Stoney and Dog are whaling away with hammers as we pull in. They are still showing up on weekends, demonstrating a tenaciousness to the cause of my garage that I’d not believed I’d see — though they take long cannabis breaks, wandering about the yard and into the woods. Most of the framing is up now. The Rolls is back in Stoney’s shop, and I don’t often think about it.
Augustina and I assemble briefs, notes, and transcripts on the dining-room table.
“I have reams of stuff from the client — I spent a whole day with him. I don’t know. . sometimes I wonder if he isn’t a little kinky. It’s as if he’s hiding something. Anyway, let’s see, I talked to a cocaine expert, pharmacologist from the university. Too many variables, so he can’t conclude Kimberley was feigning sleep, but says coke’s a powerful stimulant, and it does cause a strange reaction in some people. But we’ve lost the element of surprise: Paula Yi met with the prosecutor.”
“Please ensure the Crown subpoenas Miss Yi. She seems reluctant, and we can’t have her wandering off. Those bruises on Kimberley’s wrists and ankles worry me. I can’t bring myself to believe they were self-inflicted.”
“Well. . injuries. She was drunk, falling down. . ”
“It doesn’t quite wash. Can we get a peek at Kimberley’s polygraph test? One often finds unexpected blips on the graphs that the examiner has disregarded.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Then we’ll seek a disclosure order from my old friend Justice Sprogue, who knows all about the perils of polygraphy. He once wrote a brief on it”
“Okay, I’ll bring some cases. The pre-trial is this Wednesday. He wants to do it in his chambers, informal, no gowns.”
“That’s fine by me.”
“And I got a call from Dr. Werner Mundt at the forensic clinic — you know him, don’t you?”
“Ah, yes, we were friends once.” Annabelle had had a rather public affair with him, and I sense Augustina now remembers this, for she seems embarrassed. “What did he want?”
“Well, he’s offering to be an expert witness.”
“Slavering at the thought, no doubt. He likes the limelight.”
“Well, he just published a paper about a so-called rape fantasy, and he expostulated on it for an hour. You see, certain women have these ‘male aggression masturbation reveries.’ They enjoy the thought of being forced so they can abandon responsibility for their own sexual pleasure. As Kimberley would put it: Gag me.”
“I think we’ll take a pass on Dr. Mundt.”
A few years ago I might have held my nose and plunged ahead, but I suppose I have become soft. Surely one of the reasons I deserted the courthouse for Garibaldi Island was to escape the foul excesses of the law. Again I ask myself: Why did I give in to a moment of weakness and undertake this trial?
The windows are open on this hot day, and we continue to talk strategies to the clatter of hammers and saws. At times I find my mind wandering.
“Arthur, you have this moony stare.”
“Oh, sorry, I guess I lost the train. . ”
“You feeling okay?”
“Splendid. Finding it a little hard to get back in uniform, that’s all.”
I soon tire of reading the voluminous treatises on law and evidence Augustina has compiled, and lead her outside, where I compel her to admire my garden; then we do a quick inspection of the building site. Stoney waves from a ladder, a cigarette and several nails clenched between his lips. The newly framed garage looks sturdy enough. I have decided once again to forgive Stoney. His eerily occult ability to cause calamities wherever he goes is surely counterbalanced by his good intentions. In token of this, I have agreed on a fair contract price with the boys and give them weekly draws: I cannot see them starve.
A tour of my acreage — up and over the yellow-grass bluffs, down through the shade of my conifer forest — leads Augustina and me to a path I cannot recall having seen before, but it must be the shortcut Stoney takes on the many days when the master mechanic can’t get his car started. Farther along is my own well-tromped path — to the pasture where I have been clearing brush and helping with the fencing.
“My, you’ve been doing a lot of work.”
I absently pluck a pale blue blossom from a cornflower and twirl the stem between my fingers. I feel a vague. . not unease, a sense of absence. Something missing here, cut out of the frame.
“Arthur? Hello.”
My mind is adrift; I realize Augustina has been talking to me. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”
“It’s getting near ferry time, I should go. Are you all right?”
“Tip-top.”
“Why are you staring at that house?”
“Oh, no reason.”
“You’re acting awfully strange.”
She is looking at me anxiously. What in the world is she going on about? Movement behind the kitchen window: Is that Margaret? Her dog runs out, evicting a flapping, clucking hen.
“I’m fine, Augustina. I’m just. . happy.” I begin walking her back to my truck. “I’ll see you Wednesday for the pre-trial.”
“Did you want me to pick you up at the seaplane dock?”
“Oh, we’ll just take a taxi.”
Augustina continues to stare at me as if I am an alien newly landed from a spaceship.” We’ll take a taxi?”
I hear my words coming in short, breathless sentences. “Margaret Blake is joining me. We’re taking a little break from the routines. My neighbour. She’s usually out here. She has animals to look after, so we’ll fly back that evening, of course.”
Augustina seems to be fighting a smile now. “Of course. Otherwise you’d have to spend the night together.”
“Oh, dear, nothing like that is happening. She’s just a good friend. All very platonic.”
As we drive to the ferry, Augustina sits silently smiling, as if she holds a secret. Finally she says, “Do you know what, Arthur?”
“What?”
“I think you’re in love. I think you’re head over heels.”
The use of the L-word startles me. I sputter, “Nonsense. What a preposterous notion.”
“I’m the world’s foremost expert, Arthur. I’ve been there and back too many times.”
I smile at her jest. I shake my head. “Completely out of the question.”
“Why are you red in the face?”
“I’m not. I’m just ruddy from the exertion of our little hike.”
“I think it’s sweet.”
After I drop her off at the dock, I enjoy a good laugh over this.
In love. What an idea.
A fondness exists, yes, even a strong fancy. But love? Complete with stardust in the eyes? With the legendary pounding of the heart and the lightly skipping feet?
Absurd.
That evening, alone in darkening night, I practise tai chi movements on the lawn. I make tea. I walk on the beach. I study a purple starfish clinging to the rocks. I listen to the soft sounds of night. And all the while I debate within the curious verdict Augustina rendered.
No, it is inconceivable, I am not some fuzzy-cheeked adolescent but a mature sixty-two-year-old. I am beyond such banality.
But why do I have this sense of having been rendered into some glutinous form of paste?
Have I been denying a truth evident to others? Surely I have not plunged into that monstrous abyss of which the poets sing. No, it is beyond the pale.
But again my inner senses are assaulted by a picture burned into memory: Margaret on her porch, silhouetted against the sunset, the chiming carillon of her laughter. How. . different I felt at that moment. I assumed it was Rimbold’s secondary smoke that overcame me, but was it the tuneful twang of Cupid’s mighty bow?
No, this cannot, dare not be love. Love becomes physically complicated. Love must be consummated, but this could never be. I am a man disarmed, enfeebled, ineffectual, incapable. Gag me
Ah, yes, if it be any manner of love it is the passion of weakness for strength, the puerile ardour of a masochist seeking a dominatrix who castrates her own pigs and mops the courtroom floor with Arthur Beauchamp; yes, indeed, that is the kind of woman Beauchamp seeks in order to satisfy his aberrant desires.