One would expect the word “appetizers” to send Forbish rocketing to the back terrace, but he stays behind with Nicky.
“And how are the markets, Nicholas?”
“Bullish. Made the right guesses, I think. Pulled back from the Brown Group just in time. Heard about their little crisis, Arthur? Down in Guyana. Whole mining operation shut down. Cyanide spill. Got into a river. All the piranhas have gone belly up. Looking at a fifty-million-dollar clean-up bill. A certain witness for the prosecution isn’t going to be in a good mood.”
Deborah, presiding over her canapes, squeals when she sees me. “My God! You look like Robinson Crusoe on a bad hair day.”
“Wait’ll you see Man Friday,” says Nick.
“Jeans, work shirt, those ugly yellow suspenders. You’d better get a haircut.”
“Ah, well, all my regalia is at the office. I have an appointment with Roberto tomorrow at nine. One is not to worry.”
“Your trial starts at ten.”
“Oh, nothing will happen without me. The judge is a patient man and a friend.”
But is there not some fear that Wally Sprogue, with his newly trained sensitivity to women, will bend over backwards to the female complainant? (The trial has switched on in my mind. It has been doing this all day, flickering like a badly connected light.)
While Nicholas goes off to tend to his other guest, my daughter draws me onto a sunny patch of lawn to make closer physical inspection. “Actually, you look great, Dad. Trimmed right down.”
I beam. “Observe.” I demonstrate Snake Creeps Down, the latest tai chi movement I have mastered. “The mind and body are one, and I am at peace. I’m not the man I used to be.”
Deborah looks at me uncertainly.
As I pull my pipe and tobacco from a jacket pocket, the little plastic bag with marijuana cigarettes slips out, too, and I barely catch it. I had forgotten it was there — Margaret had returned it last night.
“I’ll say you’re not the man you used to be. Grass. I gave that up at eighteen. Jesus, Dad, what do you think you’re doing, discovering the 1960s or something?”
“How embarrassing.”
“Well? Explain yourself.” But she finds it hard to be stern; she is laughing.
“Caught in the act.”
“I’ll say. Second childhood. Are you stoned right now?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, there’s something about you. You’re all so bright-eyed.”
“I am happy for the first time in my life.” I light my pipe and blow a little smoke ring.
“Since Mother left you. I always knew you’d be happier when you were free. Never thought you’d turn out like this. A post-generational, long-haired hippie freak.” But she is still grinning, happy for me. “I was shocked when I heard about it, her and that Roehlig, and then I thought, how wonderful, you are finally out from under her.”
Abruptly she changes the subject, cross-examining me about Margaret, and though I respond evasively (I fear my daughter is not ready to hear her flower-child father has fallen in love), Deborah cuts to the quick.
“Are you courting her?”
Forbish rounds the bend, scratching his belly, heading for the appetizers.
“Caught your dad there in a dark house with her last night.”
“Dad!”
I redden. “It was all quite proper, my dear. Candlelight dinner.”
“Must’ve lasted a long time,” Forbish says. “Hear he didn’t get home till three in the morning.”
“You rogue, Dad.” Deborah claps her hands in delight.
Nicholas comes from the house with a portable phone: It’s Augustina.
“Jonathan called in. He’s at his therapist’s office. Last-minute crisis counselling, I guess. He sounded pretty whacked out.”
“Sober?”
“I think so.”
The tortured wretch has kept his bargain with me and earned his defence. Well, I will try to do him justice. (I am moving into trial mode, I can sense it.)
Thanks for this. I’ll pay double overtime.
It’s all right. I had nothing to do. I was thinking about you, actually. The trial tomorrow. . Did you manage to get your sabbatical moved up?
No. The headmaster gave me three weeks’ leave after a cheery speech of support. However, a careful reading between the lines tells me the leave will become permanent if I’m convicted. Jane, I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t think. It’s consuming me like some flesh-eating virus. Would you like me to prescribe more Valium?
No, I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of going over the edge.
Well, is it just the trial?
Oh, God, it’s that, and it’s. . Arthur Beauchamp won’t be putting me on the stand. It will be her evidence against my silence. The judge will tell the jury they must not read anything into my failure to testify. They will therefore read something into it. My guilt.
Maybe Kimberley won’t be believed.
She’ll turn the jury into a screaming lynch mob. She’s a brilliant actress, Jane. I’ve never once seen her flub a line. I saw her ghastly play four times. Two evenings, two matinees. I became an addict, the phantom of the opera, waiting and writhing until the next curtain opening. But as soon as the lights went down I went into a blank-eyed staring trance, missing every punchline, haunted, mesmerized by my tormentor. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It’s as if she’s cast a spell on me.
The word obsession comes to mind.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to piece her together, seeking a clue why she’d do this to me.
Another word is masochistic.
Which brings us to. . Look, Jane, there’s something I want to tell you, it’s really bothering me. It’s about. . some of the sick stuff you’ve been trying to drag kicking and screaming from my psyche. I think I mentioned Dominique Lander to you, the woman I was seeing a few years ago.
Yes, your Bohemian love affair.
Bohemian? Hell, she’s from Transylvania. She’s a bloodsucking vampire — Steady.
God, why is this happening to me? I don’t mind doing time nearly as much as being a laughingstock for the rest of my life.
Tell me about Dominique Lander.
A pagan princess. A hundred and eighty degrees removed from other women I’d known, beautiful, dark, haunted. Like her art. But intelligent. Devious, I didn’t know about until later. We carried on for half a year. Longer. But eventually I became, I don’t know, a little nervous about her. She was a clinger, she was like sticky gum, always there, demanding, talking about lifetime commitments.
Which frightened you no end.
I started avoiding her. I began seeing other women.
Is that typically how you run away?
Well, you have to understand, um, the sex was getting a little weird, too. That’s really the reason I started backing off. Lovers experiment, I suppose, and it can be fun for a while, it’s okay. You said so yourself. You prescribe it: creative role-playing. But this got really strange.
Go on.
She was into, ah. .
Yes?
She’s going to be a witness, Jane. She’s going to say she and I were into, um, a sort of S and M thing. I see.
And, uh, we were. Uh-huh.
I guess it’s something I’ve been having a lot of trouble unloading on you.
You’re telling me.
It’s embarrassing.
Talk about it.
Okay. . okay, here it all comes. We had this game, she liked me to tie her up. She was the slave and I was the master. A lot of bare-bottom spanking, and, ah, she liked me to force sex on her, that way, from behind. She would beg, plead, sometimes scream. She liked being whipped with a riding crop. This is hideous. I can’t. .
You didn’t enjoy it?
I, ah. .
Well, can you answer me?
I think I did. It. . well, it extended things for me. Creative role-playing — that’s basically what we were doing, playing out our fantasies. I guess you’d call them sick.
I don’t call them sick, Jonathan. Maybe not the role-playing I’d recommend.