Blue Moon (28 page)

Time reserved for Sean meant less time for Pat. After she had been seeing Sean for about a month, Eve was summoned to another lunch at Avenue Road. This time, Pat was much more agitated than usual. She was deeply depressed, could not get her princely father out of her mind. “He would have been the perfect lover for any woman,” Pat observed. “So few would be worthy of him.” After making this observation, Pat asked about Sean. In her habitual way, Eve was not very forthcoming. She enjoyed his company tremendously; they had many interests in common, especially the music of Chopin. Obviously displeased by the paucity of information coming her way, Pat became very direct. “He has very large coarse hands. He must have a huge penis.” Eve blushed but did not respond to the implied question or the direction in which it was taking the conversation.

Shortly after this encounter, Sean stopped telephoning Eve. He was never in his flat when she phoned him; his secretary at his
practice took messages, but no responses were forthcoming. For ten days, Eve did not see him. She was relieved when Pat called inviting her to supper in two days' time: “Sean will be here.” Not having had even the slightest hint of discord in her relationship with him, Eve was not certain what she would encounter on the fateful evening she went to Avenue Road. Geoff answered the door and ushered her in; Pat was still getting herself ready and would be with them in a minute or two. While Eve and Geoff were sipping their cocktails, the doorbell rang. Although she was apprehensive, Eve was not quite prepared to encounter the woman accompanying Sean that evening. Elaine, a close friend of Pat's, was tall, elegantly dressed, and had masses of beautiful red hair. She was not quite as tall as Pat, and her tresses had achieved their colouring through chemistry. Nevertheless, Pat and Elaine bore a striking resemblance to each other, as if cut from the same cloth by the same tailor.

When Pat made her entrance, she bore down upon Elaine whom she kissed with a mighty flourish. She embraced Eve distractedly. For ever after, Eve was never certain how she survived the ensuing meal. To her, Sean was courteous but aloof. Elaine constantly made references to the excursions she had recently undertaken with him; the looks she gave him clearly indicated they had become lovers. Pat obviously approved of this new arrangement; as usual, Geoff had very little to say in the presence of his wife. Soon after coffee was served, Elaine said she must be going; she did not wish to be up too late. This remark was made in a sneering way as she looked at Sean. They left soon afterwards and, about twenty minutes later, Eve excused herself. She also had an early morning. As she said her goodbyes to her host and hostess, Eve was certain she could see the hint of a triumphant smirk on Pat's face.

Afterwards, Eve was never quite certain how much she consciously knew at the time—using a small hand pistol she removed from her father's study—she went to Avenue Road the following morning and shot Pat dead. Did she fire the pistol because her lover had been removed from her by a cruel, manipulative woman? Had Pat been toying with her all along? Did she kill Pat because she had been tricked into a kinky relationship in which she was to sleep with Sean and provide Pat with a full report so that some sort of taboo sexual affair between the two cousins could be consummated at a safe remove? Or
did Eve kill her friend out of sheer frustration of having her lover removed from her? Did she shoot Pat because she wished she had murdered Sam's mother? Did she commit murder because she was simply fed up with being pushed around?

Karl and Maria provided the best legal counsel money could buy: they hired Mr. Robinette. Even a magician of his incredible dexterity could not pull rabbits out of this particular hat. Eve was found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to P4W for the remainder of her natural life. For a year, her parents would hire a car and driver to take them from Toronto to Kingston to visit their wayward daughter. Then, Karl died suddenly of a heart attack, and Maria was too depressed to make the trip by herself. Although she lived on for three years after the death of her husband, she never saw her daughter again.

Eve had no regrets about removing Pat from life. “She was a destructive person whose own sense of deprivation made her act cruelly to others.” This was Eve's thumbnail description of what had happened. Of more concern to her was how she had lived her life with the elusive hope that others would like—or even love—her if she conformed to their expectations. A person without a sense of irony, Eve had no sense that Pat lacked the capability of looking at her, even noticing her.

Eve and I never became close friends, although we shared many intellectual interests. In her I saw a shadow of myself I intensely disliked. Perhaps she saw the same in me and was, likewise, repulsed? Unlike my reception when I first arrived at P4W, Eve was a female St. George to the other prisoners, someone who had slain a marauding tiger preying upon innocent villagers.

The only encounter I had with Eva in which any real intimacies were exchanged was in the library on the afternoon I recommended
Clarissa
to her. She had read it years before, she informed me, and was not certain she thought it deserved the status of “masterpiece” assigned to it. For one thing, she thought Richardson a crude manipulator of his heroine, who was, she observed, reduced to the status of a marionette in his hands. She also found Clarissa's lack of interest in sex disturbing. In addition, she saw Clarissa's life as a surrender to the death instinct. I told her my thoughts about him and his book were diametrically opposite to hers. But who was I to tell her she was wrong?

“I guess it all depends on which side of the fence you put yourself,” she crisply told me. “I killed someone. I have no regrets for what I did. I did the world a favour.” Then, she looked up at me. “I remember reading all the newspaper accounts of your various trials in the
Globe.
I was certain you didn't kill anyone. I still am. That's an important difference between us. I was a soldier who intercepted and shot the enemy. You were simply a decoy.”

This remark may not have been meant as a put-down, but she was telling me that although many are called to become murderers, few are chosen. She and I existed in different leagues. The clear implication was that hers was the superior one.

Over the years, I established a friendly but sometimes uneasy relationship with Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. White. Although I obviously could never be assigned the status of an equal by this pair, they came to use me as a sort of fulcrum through whom they could negotiate with the other prisoners, who trusted me to act in their best interests. So I became a sort of halfway house between the very separate worlds of guards and prisoners. Since I never set myself up in business as the Empress had done, I could mediate with both sides without being seen to sully my hands. Moral stature—I possessed that elusive commodity in abundance.

Even when things are proceeding at an even keel, prison life is best described as enervating. There is simply nothing to do, and that can be very draining as well as depressing. That is the reason, I suspect, so much great literature has emerged from the experience of confinement. Cervantes created Quixote because he had to find a profitable way to spend his time. Breakfast, sewing room duty for two hours (I became an accomplished seamstress), a walk in the prison yard, lunch, library chores, another walk, early supper (five o'clock), reading in my room, lights out at ten. When I was fed up with reading, I made entries in my diary.

I was at P4W for eight years when Laura arrived there in 1955. She was a small, lithe creature, panther-like in her sleek, curving movements. Her face was arresting in a strange way, overpowering in its simple, unsophisticated, childlike beauty. In her, personality and appearance were in complete agreement. Except for the sensuousness of her walk, she seemed completely unaware of her mesmerizing physicality.

A full ten years younger than myself, her trial for murder in Toronto had aroused surprisingly little interest. Such a strange reason to murder anyone, the papers claimed. For a few days, the
Toronto Daily Star
was filled with the eerie story of her slaying of John Partridge, a high-school classmate, a man with whom she had never exchanged a single word before she murdered him.

At Jarvis Collegiate, Laura had been one of the
crème de la crème,
a member of the most elite band of girls. She gained entry into that circle because of her ravishing appearance. If she had been denied membership, the group's dominance might have been threatened—or extinguished. Some girls were known for intelligence, others for sexual inventiveness. Laura was the group's icon, a ripe physical symbol of all the values of her clique. In contrast, short, stocky Partridge was a misfit, a loner.

At school and at home, Laura had little to say. Her parents adored her, her elder brother was in awe of her. She was an average student, although her teachers complained—some bitterly—that she never participated in class discussions. When forced to conjugate a French verb or recite a theorem in geometry, she did so with great
assurance. But she had very few words of her own in any instance. The proverbial silent woman.

“Ordinary”: this was Laura's word to describe her early life. She did what was expected of her, even to the extent of marrying her brother's closest friend, handsome Bernie Daniels. Everyone agreed: they were the most attractive couple one could ever hope to meet. The only sorrow in Laura's life was her inability to conceive a child. Her family and friends were convinced she and Bernie would have had stunningly beautiful children. Perhaps such offspring would have been so devastatingly attractive that they would have been beyond the limits assigned to mere mortals. Such was the observation of more than one acquaintance.

There was another—but hidden—blight. From the time she turned 18, Laura was convinced some force was observing or following her. She never thought a person was actually trailing or stalking her, but she felt a presence of some sort. Never having heard anyone else voice such thoughts, she, as usual, kept her feelings to herself.

Laura's quiet life was disrupted the day she received a telephone call from Cynthia, one of the members of her high school set. Her old friend, now an arts journalist, had been startled when she visited the Hastings Gallery on Bloor Street to see an exhibit of nude drawings by John Partridge, the outcast who had been at school with them. “I didn't know you even knew him, much less posed for him.” Laura told Cynthia there was some mistake. She had not seen Partridge in the six years that had intervened since high school. She had never posed for anyone. Cynthia, sure she had at last discovered hidden depths in Laura, was certain she was lying, especially as the police were on the verge of shutting the show down because of the supposed obscenity of the pictures.

Alarmed by what Cynthia told her, Laura decided to visit the gallery. As she walked in, the young woman sitting at the desk beamed a warm smile in her direction. “How nice to meet the model! I think John has done a splendid job, although I must say you look exactly like the drawings. Almost as if he had photographed you. He is a splendid draughtsman.” Laura nodded weakly in her direction and began to tour the pictures. Without doubt, she was the model. The large mole at the top of her right shoulder was perfectly rendered; the way her left breast was markedly smaller than its companion was accurately done.

Quite soon, Laura lost interest in the question of verisimilitude. The woman in the pictures was touching herself in ways that had never occurred to Laura or her husband. Most disturbing were the renditions of Laura on her back, her legs arching up, her right hand plunging into a very wet-looking pudenda, her tongue archly pointing at the spectator, and her eyes bristling with lust. Those pictures frightened Laura. The face and body may have been hers, but she had never experienced such thoughts or performed such lewd actions.

After her inspection of the drawings, Laura accosted the young woman at the desk, telling her she had never posed for Partridge. What is more, she informed her that the drawings were obscene and should be removed from the walls and destroyed. “It's a bit late for regrets,” the startled curator responded. “You're very beautiful. You've nothing to be ashamed of. I guess you didn't realize what a commotion these pictures would make.” The young woman—obviously certain she was dealing with a model with a bad case of stage fright—could not be convinced of any of Laura's assertions. Finally, Laura asked for Partridge's address and phone number. Impossible, she was told: the artist was in Europe and wouldn't be back for at least six months.

Things went quickly from bad to worse. Having heard from one of his friends about the exhibition, Laura's husband visited the Hastings and then drove directly home, where he accused his wife of being the mistress of the degenerate artist. When she burst into tears and vehemently denied the charge, he struck her in the face and accused her of being no better than a prostitute. Although her parents and brother did not attend the exhibition, they heard enough about it to persuade them of Laura's dishonest, underhanded behaviour. Without any support from husband, family, or friends, Laura was completely cast asunder. Within a month, her previously tranquil, uneventful existence was in ruins. She left Toronto, took the train to Winnipeg, rented a small furnished room in the North End and took a job as a waitress at Main and Portage.

For three exceedingly long years, Laura kept to herself. She was friendly with several of her co-workers, but she avoided contact with everyone else. Routinely, she refused the many invitations she received to step out. Hers was a life of quiet desperation. That existence was suddenly disrupted one day when two or three customers sniggered at her in an embarrassed, furtive way. Later that
day, Mr. Tompkins, the owner of the restaurant, called her into his office. “You could have told me you were posing for this garbage. Would have prepared me and everyone else.” He handed her a copy of the x-rated girlie magazine,
America on Display.
As she looked at yet another series of nude renditions of herself—this time, photographs—Laura became utterly confused, burst into tears and told the boss that she had done no such thing. His tiny eyes squinted at her in disbelief. “Not posed for them? How's that possible? You're making things bloody difficult for me. You act like the Blessed Virgin Mary here at work and then look a right whore in these pix! Look at you, you're pawing yourself in these pictures. I've never seen that look in your eyes before.”