I note elsewhere the confusing news of another signal event: “Badly missed by all islanders will be the Ashcroft family. Having recently moved off the island, their farm has been bought by a prominent and well-known lawyer from Vancouver, Mr. A. Beauchamp.”
Ah, yes, not merely prominent but well-known, this impotent pillar of the community: the right clubs, the right people, the right wing. How exhilarating was the social and political whirl. It will be unbearably taxing to adjust to life outside a crowded elevator I spend my first week on Garibaldi learning such skills as were failed to be taught in the abysmal private schools of my youth — the hewing of wood, the drawing of water, the turning of soil for my garden, the setting of traps for the mice that have generously allowed me to share their abode.
As I settle in to my angulus terrarum, my quiet, gentle corner of the world, I still feel a sense of displacement, of being a stranger in a strange land. It will take a time to adapt from the comforting sounds of night I am used to: the haunting, lonely wail of sirens, jet engines in the sky, the distant screech of brakes, the city’s ceaseless, hungry hum. Instead I must endure an annoying swish of waves upon my beach, the incessant gossiping of the little green frogs that inhabit my pond, the cold-hearted inquiries of the distant hunter owl. I awake not to the alarums of a garbage truck in an alley but to the impolite nagging of song sparrows trilling their tunes of the unfolding spring. Ah, but I will overcome these frowns of fortune. Nil desperandum. I will prevail.
The weather remains inconstant. Though close to Vancouver — a thirty-minute flight by float plane — I am in a drier climate zone: the clouds shun us, preferring to huddle against the mountain ranges that guard Vancouver to the north. Often I see clouds forming the rim of a great hat above the Gulf Islands, but the hat is topless, the scalp bare to the radiance of that busy old fool Donne complained of: unruly Sun. Why dost thou thus, through windows and through curtains call on us?
But of late he cometh not. Today I have deserted my muddy garden and I remain indoors while murky clouds from the Pacific Ocean send wet warnings about the state of disrepair of my house, tiny puddles that collect upon my floor. I may wish to recruit Stoney to do some roof repairs as well, but, alas, Stoney continues not to show up, as regular as clockwork, on each succeeding morning. I am beginning to despair not only for him but for the two hundred dollars I advanced for materials.
More businesslike are the two young women from a firm known as Mop’n’Chop, which advertises in the Island Echo. Janey Rose-keeper and her partner, Ginger Jones, announce on arrival that they clean houses, cut wood, do yardwork, and, “like, you name it.”
“Ah, yes,” I tell Janey, “you must be of the Rosekeepers of East Shore Road. I heard you had a splendid tea.”
“My parents did, yeah. Turned into a major drunkathon, actually.”
Doubtless this is the cause of hapless Mr. Rimbold driving off the road.
The two lasses, buxom both and glowing with country health, spend two days spring cleaning my house whilst gossiping about who is “doing it” with whom on the island. To hear them, this community would seem a snakepit of sin. Not only does everyone know each other, everyone apparently copulates with each other. Each spring, I am told, after a hard winter of increasingly cheerless fidelity, there occurs a mass migration to new beds. Most active in that regard is the manager of the marina, a woman of apparently insatiable sexual thirst. I am warned to stay away from her.
As the days pass I develop routines. I walk each morning to the general store where I pick up my mail and pretend to buy a newspaper, then return to sip my coffee over a back issue of the Echo.(Mop ‘n’Chop has found a box of these in the basement crawl space.) I develop a curious fondness for the prose of one Nelson Forbish, publisher, editor, and, it would seem from the bylines, sole reporter for this worthy gazette. “Recuperating at home is George Rimbold, who tried to jump through a plate window at The Brig dressed as a frog.” Sadly, that tantalizing item is not developed to its potential. Who is this frogman Rimbold?
Militant Margaret Blake seems to be in every issue, a news item here, a letter to the editor there, mostly about that intrusion of the corrupting city, the Evergreen Estates subdivision. Aloof, distrusting, she has yet to pay a visit, though her house is only a hundred yards away. Often I glimpse her near it, busy as a whirlwind with her many chores.
I have given up on that fellow Stoney, who has been most visibly absent of late. One would expect to bump into him at one of the various centres of commerce on this island, but no.
My daughter telephones me on alternate evenings, surprised to find me still alive, chatting with the strained merriment of someone seeking to uplift the weary and the downtrodden. Why must she assume I am so unhappy?
Annabelle phones, too, full of spirited gossip about the city, her work, her current production of that weepy potboiler La Boheme. She is much in demand, it appears, and has contracted to be artistic director of a summer production of Gotterdammerung in Seattle. She has not visited yet because, she explains, she wants me to develop my “space,” a concept I find confusing. I enjoy these calls, but afterwards feel unsettled, my mind too full of her.
She says she will try to get over soon, but I worry that her visit will be awkward — she is of a certain refined taste, and I will be embarrassed for my island, lacking as it does in art galleries, concert halls, and Shakespeare festivals.
Dear Annabelle, how I miss you, love you, fear you. Be strong, Beauchamp. Be of metal.
Boy, I feel a little worn today. How much wine did we have to drink? Hello there, Patricia Blueman, it’s me, the victim — oops, alleged victim of the alleged sexual assault. I hope this is what you want: a full, unblemished account of the perils of Kimberley, dictated onto cassette during a few quiet moments of reflection.
So where I’m at right now is my parents’ cabin on Grouse Mountain. They’ve owned it for years, from back when there was only one mostly broken-down old chairlift up here. Now Grouse is a full-blown destination resort, all skyrides, bright lights, and Japanese tourists. Still lots of white stuff, even though it’s the middle of March, and I have my skis and my season’s pass. Some advice for the lovelorn: You should take up skiing, Patricia, as there are lots of single men here. Brainless jocks, but what the hell.
Am I ever glad you’re on the case. Until we met, I’d been wondering, like, what’s going on, is anybody out there in charge? I mean, God, I had a couple of interviews with some grinning jackals in plain-clothes who drove away in tears. They were laughing so hard. They never even took a written statement. Couple of morons who couldn’t investigate their own flat feet. And then nothing, until out of the blue you called me last week. Now I have a prosecutor. Things are looking up.
Frankly, Patricia, when I first came to your office, I thought you were sort of, um, you know, formal. I thought, okay, Patricia Blueman, barrister, here’s a real stiff lady, no sense of humour. But you really loosened up over lunch, and then last night. . gee, you were funny. I still laugh when I think of your imitations of all those old-fart lawyers.
Anyway, I think we sort of bonded — are women still allowed to do that, or is it reserved only for men? — and I feel I can finally purge myself of the whole mess.
Though it will be hard to talk about. .
This joint is heated by a funky old pot-bellied stove, which I have roaring pretty good — it’s a clear, brittle night, and icicles hang from my eaves like Christmas ornaments. Vancouver looks so majestic, spread like a magic carpet below me, its lights like stars, a galaxy.