Blue Moon

BLUE MOON

Also by James King

Fiction

Faking

Non-Fiction

Jack, A Life with Writers: The Story of Jack McClelland

The Life of Margaret Laurence

Telling Lives or Telling Lies?: Biography and Fiction

Virginia Woolf

William Blake: His Life

The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read

Interior Landscapes: A Life of Paul Nash

William Cowper: A Biography

Co-editor

The Letter and Prose Writing of William Cowper

William Cowper: Selected Letters

A NOVEL

James King

Copyright © James King, 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

Editor: Marc Côté
Proofreader: Julian Walker
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

King, James, 1942-
   Blue Moon

ISBN 0-88924-293-3

1. Dick, Evelyn, 1920- — Fiction. 2. Murder — Ontario — Hamilton — Fiction. 3. Trials (Murder) — Ontario — Hamilton — Fiction. I. Title.

PS8571.I99.3I52837B58 2000  C813'.54  C00-93190S-0  PR9199.3K44215B58 2000

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Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
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Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program, The Association for the Export of Canadian Books,
and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit
program.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

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For Wayne Allan and Sheila Russell

Some things, I notice, never change. The simple pearl necklace. No earrings. No makeup except for the shiny magenta creamily applied to her bow-shaped lips. But her colours are completely transformed. A silvery, sparkling blouse made of the finest
mousseline de soie.
The black skirt classically cut to end three inches below the knees. The burgundy shoes sedately burnished. The multi-coloured shawl draped over her shoulders bearing the signature of Paloma Picasso. One discordant note: the nails bitten to the quick, the cerise polish bestowed on them calling attention to their shabby state. A splendid composition, so different from the young woman who arrived on my doorstep thirty long years ago. That person was also
clad in black, as if in mourning. Widow's weeds?, I had asked myself that first day. The button-through wool dress had a fitted bodice, a dolman top with a stand-up collar, and a flared skirt with panels of knife pleats. Expensive clothing, out-of-date by almost a decade. She had little money in those days.

Like Elizabeth, I came to British Columbia fairly late: 1958. German born, I was a thirty-seven-year-old psychoanalyst whose wife and son had been extinguished in the great maw of history.

Friends are always amazed at how much I observe—and remember—about the appearance of my patients; what Mrs. X wore the other day, the loud necktie impulsively acquired by mousy Mr. Z (is there a transformation in progress?—something I have not yet heard in what he has been telling me?). I simply shrug my shoulders and confess I sometimes have very little else to occupy my mind hour after sometimes dreary hour. “A by-product of my profession. A psychoanalyst has to occupy his mind somehow when he hears the same stories endlessly repeated, often with no significant variation. So I study the exteriors of my patients, especially their costumes. If I know how they prepare themselves to greet the world, I get to know them better. “Then I shrug my shoulders and make a little joke: “What I don't know about the history of clothing in the past forty years is not worth knowing!”

Elizabeth has never been to any of my flats. For ten years I met with her four days a week at my office in the Medical-Dental Building on Georgia Street, crowned at the corners by the glorious art deco stone effigies of doctors and nurses. One of the first questions she ever asked me concerned them: “Are they guardian angels or malignant spirits?” I was unprepared for that: “If you thought they were evil, would you have entered the building to see me?” She never appreciated my answering a question with a question. Sadly, that building was torn down years ago.

We are in her suite at the Hotel Vancouver. She hands me a glass of whisky and then mixes her own drink. Elizabeth is not one for small talk, but she observes how much the city has changed. “I loved my flat in The Manhattan Apartments on Thurlow. A wonderful place, Italianate, salmon pink brick highlights. In those days, I was in the city but not
of
the city. When I walked through the courtyard in the
evening, I knew I could relax. I'd imagine myself in Florence, about to encounter Robert Browning on the stair. Now my beloved old flat faces
two
Starbucks—and Virgin Records and Planet Hollywood are just down the street on Robson.”

“The Manhattan has survived many attempts to tear it down.”

“I'm not surprised. Does it really belong anymore? It was built in 1908. Even in the sixties, it looked out of place. Now it's completely incongruous. A dinosaur caged by columns of steel and plates of glass.”

It is time to change the subject. “You have become quite celebrated,” I point out once she has begun to sip her gin and tonic. I am nervous and have not made a good beginning. Although I talk with Elizabeth on the phone three or four times a year, I have not seen her since she left Vancouver for Toronto in 1981.

“Celebrated? Yes, Ernst. But have I been your 'best' patient?” She asks the question tenderly, but the underlying hurt is easy to see. Still so vulnerable.

“We are friends. By definition, equals. I am no longer your confessor,
liebchen
.” That is absolutely the wrong word. I have very dear feelings for her, but she is not “my dear one.” I avoid flirting with patients, but I can tell by the soft glow on her face that she has been touched.

Elizabeth has become very famous, one of the most venerated novelists of her generation. She has agreed to return to her old stomping grounds to promote the release of all her novels in a uniform edition. Fifteen volumes. A tremendous achievement, one that necessitates a coast-to-coast tour encompassing both the United States and Canada. Vancouver is the final stop on the last leg—the Western portion—of a three week tour that has taken her to Calgary, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle. “I shall be very happy to be home at the end of the week. If I can only survive the next four days.”

“I am sure you will be fine, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, Ernst, I endure. But recently I have asked myself about the cost. My life appears to have reached a natural conclusion, yet I am in a terrible muddle.”

“You felt lost many years ago—and then you found yourself.”

“Was there a real change? Or did I merely refashion myself?”

“As an analyst, I cannot answer those questions. As a friend, I can assure you that there was genuine change.”

“You are a man of supreme tact.”

The time has come for her to reveal the purpose of our meeting. She has never requested a meeting in all these years, although I am aware she has been in Vancouver at least half a dozen times since she “retired” to Toronto. “I have a very special favour to ask. An enormous one. I wish you to be the guardian of my papers. All manuscripts of the novels are at the Fisher Book Room at the University of Toronto. Most of my correspondence—letters to other writers. Financial records. That sort of thing. Nothing has been given away that reveals my true identity.”

“You wish me to help erase your childhood and young adulthood from the annals of biography?”

“No. That is exactly what I don't want you to do. I want the truth to be told, but I want it done correctly. I can trust you to do exactly that.”

“As always, you have too high an opinion of me.”

She ignores that observation. “I can no longer write fiction. My new novel has become autobiography. Obviously unpublishable during my lifetime. I can't even give that book its finishing touches. I try to work on it but all I'm left with are orts, scraps and fragments.” She collects herself. “Would you be willing to oversee its publication? Make certain everything is handled—tastefully? That is all I ask.”

“A psychiatrist who tells on his patients is a pariah; a psychiatrist who prepares a patient's autobiography for publication is merely a servant of history. Yes, I think I'm up to that. But you will survive me; that unhappy task will never fall on my shoulders.”

“Ernst—you have no idea how much comfort you have given me.”

A clean break. That was my rationale for choosing my new home. Like many of my patients, I wanted to escape from myself but—instead—decided to escape the place where I was living. I always warn my patients about such follies, but, like everyone else, I have my own blind spots, my own defence mechanisms—ways of lying to myself about myself.