I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (42 page)

Half-listening to this mumbo-jumbo, I experience an itching sensation, under my skin, where I can't scratch it. The epicentre is in the region of my ass, my back pocket.
It would be lovely if we bumped into each other
. That feels like a threat. The card was mailed two weeks ago; she could already be in Vancouver.

From “Falling in Love, Failing in Love,”
A Thirst for Justice
, © W. Chance

BY THE AGE OF THIRTY-THREE Beauchamp had amassed a sterling record; he was coming off eight straight wins in headline cases such as Smutts and the Father's Day Massacre. The senior partners had taken a liking to him, had removed him from under Pappas's thumb, and let him do his legal aid work while awarding him with the firm's meatiest, and most lucrative, criminal cases.

The richest of these – the retainer was nearly a million dollars – was the complex defence of several businessmen accused of running a pyramid scheme. The trial is significant because it introduced Beauchamp to Annabelle Maglione, then a young fine arts graduate, a set designer. Relying on promises of ten per cent per month returns, Ms. Maglione had put a hard-won arts award at the disposal of these gentlemen, and was called upon by the prosecutor to relate her heart-rending story. She looked stunning as she took the stand: jet-black hair and magenta lips, miniskirt and high-heeled boots.

No transcripts are extant of Beauchamp's cross-examination of Ms. Maglione, but several law students were present – they later enjoyed successful practices – and each remarked on the ease with which Beauchamp brought the witness to stammering confusion. One brief exchange was quoted in the evening paper. Witness: “Excuse me, but am I making sense or am I sounding totally incoherent?” Counsel: “The latter, Miss Maglione.”

Her ordeal over, she sat spellbound through the rest of the trial. During breaks she would boldly engage him in the corridor. While the jury deliberated, the pair slipped out to the Schnitzel House, where he entertained her
over dinner with stirring tales from the courtroom.

“I was wowed by him,” Annabelle told me during our sessions in her Lucerne chalet. I reminded her that Beauchamp claims to have regarded her at first “with the fascination one might hold upon seeing an alien disembark from a spaceship.”

She laughed. “That's so Arthur. But, yes, I was playing at being a hot, hip chick, Ms. Counterculture of 1969. My shtick worked – he was just as gone as I was, whatever he says. Two nights later, after the jury finally acquitted everyone, we got drunk and ended up in his high-rise apartment. The rest is … I'll leave you to finish the sentence.”

Given Beauchamp's long lack of womanly companionship, one isn't surprised that he fell in love so suddenly and thunderously. This relationship remains – not to insult Margaret Blake – the most dramatic and life-altering experience of his adult years.

I
lie stiffly awake, listening to the haunting whoops of a barred owl as I struggle to understand how I could have acted so badly. Old age has cursed me with yet another disability: an irascible temper. I am in danger of becoming the grumpy old fart of Blunder Bay. I accept the greater blame for last night, but surely the woman with whom I share this bed should share culpability. Maybe she does feel guilt, because hers seems a fussy, fitful sleep.

In brief, dinner with Reverend Al and Zoë was a disaster. I arrived late after refusing to let Caliginis take me down Potters Road – I didn't want Margaret to see him drop me off. Then, while trying to shortcut through the upper pasture, I managed to rip my pants on barbed wire.

“You're late and you look like shit,” Margaret announced, herding me to the shower as our guests looked on with strained smiles. She was doubly irritated because she'd overdone the lamb while waiting for me. Meanwhile our hero was also in mean spirits, and during dinner went on a rant about the island changing, old ways dying, money pouring in, mini-mansions going up, new fences, private roads, you can't find a decent walking trail any more.

“It's all about Stan Caliginis,” Margaret said. “Arthur thinks he's after my body. Or vice versa, I'm not sure.” Right in front of company. It hardly matters they're our closest friends; it was impolite, embarrassing.

I turned to the Nogginses, seeking support. “He slavered all over her, invited her to drop by.” I mimicked, imitated his leer:
“Dying to consult with you, Ms. Blake.”

“I'd be delighted to have you chaperon me, darling.” Ice in her tone.

I seethed. When Margaret began talking Green strategies – Reverend Al is her Garibaldi ward boss – she took personally a comment that her party had lost all nobility with its constant
money-grubbing. She threw her napkin at me, and on the way out slammed the door.

Al bustled Zoë out of there, pausing only to share a homily about storms soon blowing over. In the dim nine p.m. light I made out Margaret by the beach, receiving comfort from her staunch allies Homer, the border collie, and the cats, Shiftless and Underfoot.

As I was cleaning up and putting the dishes away, she came back and went straight to her little home office, not looking at me. Her apple pie was still in the oven, untouched. I cut her a piece, then approached her to seek amnesty. Without saying a word, she stopped typing an email and closed her laptop lid. I set down the pie, apologized for having spoiled the evening. She dismissed me with a weary wave.

The barred owl voices a long series of ghostly scornful rebukes.
Arthur, Arthur, you are a foo-ool
. Yes, it's the damn Orfmeister – that still galls – and it's Annabelle anxiety and Margaret anxiety. (What was that email all about?
Darling, you will not believe the hell that life with him has become.)

But add up all those stressors and they're not the half of it. Most of it is Gabriel Swift. I'm seeing people who don't exist. The other day it was Thelma McLean, neighbour from hell, but when I stuck my glasses on, it was Martha Pebbleton coming from the henhouse with an apron full of eggs. These images are trying to tell me something, to remind me of feelings long suppressed. Feelings that go back to a moment in 1962, when Gabriel and I were preparing the guilty plea, when I wanted to embrace him and felt he wanted that too.

Maybe, just maybe, a breakthrough looms.
Something very interesting
, said April Wu. Maybe to do with Dr. Mulligan's musings about suicide that so mysteriously came to light. Maybe she'd found proof that he did indeed drown himself.

The owl's spooky lament gives way to a growl of engine. When I raise myself up, I see headlights advancing along the driveway. Instinctively I know it's Robert Stonewell – who else comes calling at the midnight hour? In my pyjamas I race downstairs and out, by
which time the entire barnyard has awakened: chickens squawking, geese honking, goats complaining, and lights going on in the woofer house.

Homer barks greetings to Stoney as he cuts the engine, clambers out, and extends the ignition key. “Your limousine, sire.” My discourtesy car, the three-decade-old ragtop muscle car.

Stoney's flatbed pulls up behind it. His henchman, Dog, a squat little fellow built like a beer keg, erupts from it and lurches into the bushes to relieve himself, simultaneously refilling his bladder from a can of Coors.

Stoney doesn't seem as intoxicated but is on a jabbering high; he smells of pot. “A few tips regarding this here vintage beauty. If you gotta brake suddenly, yank her hard right, because she has a tendency to drift left; the rubber don't have much grip there. Emergency brake usually works but the fuel gauge exaggerates, so tank up early and often. And if you take her to town, you also might wanna have them tires looked at. Maybe stop at Quickie Tire and Muffler; they got the best deals.”

In the glow of the yard light I balefully eye this death machine with its insignia of lightning and flaming horses' manes. Stoney jumps into the truck, shouts to his companion to get a leg on. I glance up to the bedroom window, where Margaret, silhouetted by a light, stares wearily back at me.

R
everend Al is on a Sunday-morning rampage, sermonizing against “fast-food approaches to faith” and “charlatans and mountebanks selling salvation on the boob tube.” He's going after the fundies, as he calls them – the fundraising fundamentalists – a sermon heard often by this congregation; he hauls it out when in a bad mood.

Margaret begged off from attending, complaining of, though not listing, the “thousand things” she must do before returning tomorrow to Ottawa. At least she was speaking to me, though obviously still simmering after last night's spat. I haven't found the right moment to mention Annabelle and her pending arrival. I have even destroyed evidence of that, furtively tucking her postcard between burning fireplace logs.
It would be lovely if we bumped into each other
. This unsubtle invitation threatens to feed the flames licking at the edges of my marriage.

Reverend Al concludes by asking everyone to join in a prayer for Kestrel Dubois, the young teen who disappeared six days ago.

After the service ends, I eavesdrop as Al shepherds his flock to their cars. “Nonsense, Mrs. Bixbieler, you look stunningly swan-like in that neck brace. And here's the indefatigable Winnie Gillicuddy.” The island centenarian.

“Good sermon,” pipes blunt Winnie. “Even better than the first ten times I heard it.”

Once in the parking lot, the congregants can't seem to get out of there fast enough. Soon only the Jenkins sisters remain, who demand to know what Al is going to do about all the drugs on the island. He can't appease them, and they walk off sourly, grimacing as they pause to examine the rear end of the garish Mustang that got me to the church on time.

In my hurry I hadn't seen the lurid messages posted there, slogans that may have provoked several of the flock to flee in dread.
A bumper sticker:
Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole
. Other stick-ons cover the rust spots:
O Canada, we stand on guard for weed; Bad cop – no doughnut
.

“Where'd you get that piece of shit?” Al demands.

The reverend normally enjoys a good joke but seems incapable of finding humour in my explanation. He leads me into the little brick annex that is his office. His door secured, he whips off his collar, pulls out a bottle of rum, and pours a liberal helping.
“This
is what I'm going to do about drugs, goddamnit.”

I break away from the depressingly lovely sunset, stare sourly at my desk, the thick files and transcripts for the Swift appeal, then finally summon the strength to pull out a photocopy of the document that spurred me to reopen the case. It came to light only last March, in Ottawa's National Archives. I would not have known about it but for an anonymous tip, and I've been puzzled ever since why the caller didn't identify himself or herself; it was one of those in-between voices, sounding eerily like Dermot Mulligan himself.

He or she had also phoned the National Archives with the tip on the same day, Thursday, March 17. The two pages, on aged six-by-eight white paper, were found folded and tucked into a book. I could see how it might happen: a scholar who shares a popular feeling – at least among leftists – that Gabriel was framed, stumbles upon this helpful evidence, alerts Gabriel's old lawyer. But why hide his or her identity?

I click on a table lamp, stick on my glasses, and read once more Dr. Dermot Mulligan's brooding reflections on self-destruction – typewritten, unsigned, undated, discovered by happenstance …

Albert Camus, who was unhappily taken from the world two years ago, wrote “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” This is no flashy new notion. Sophocles argued that not to be born is the appropriate anticipatory solution to the burdens
of life, and that the second best solution is for life, once it has appeared, to go swiftly whence it came. Yet he lived to ninety, a great age in that Great Age, “fortunate in death, as he had been fortunate in life,” said his contemporary Phrynichus
.

As I ponder the quality of existence, upon attaining slightly more than half of Sophocles' years, I find myself emboldened by other sages of millennia past, those Greek philosophers and Roman heroes who accepted suicide as the noble route to oblivion. I am emboldened too by more modern thinkers. Nietzsche: “Conversely, the compulsion to prolong life from day to day, and accepting the most painful, humiliating conditions, without the strength to come nearer the actual goal of one's life: that is far less worthy of respect.”

And here is Dermot Mulligan, professor emeritus, author of no little repute, at the supposed peak of life and career, almost relishing being accused at graveside of committing suicide by leaping from the pinnacle of success
.