I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (56 page)

With no flights available, I've had to resign myself to the mercies of a ferry busy with weekend cottagers and other undesirables. These include, below me on the car deck, Stan Caliginis, sulking in his monster pickup, and Stoney and Dog, quaffing beer in the bumper-stickered Mustang, which somehow they have rescued or stolen from the B.C. Ferries compound. Both give me headaches; I will try to negotiate a ride home with someone else.

I'm not ready yet to re-immerse myself in the picaresque pleasures of Garibaldi society. I am stressed because of the lateness of her cross-dressing highness the
Queen George
. We'll not be pulling in until well past ten-thirty, and I have guests – important guests.

I dig out my cellphone and ring April – for the third time – to confirm that the boat hasn't sunk and I'm still on my way. Everything is fine, she says. Niko and Yoki have come by to help them settle in and have stayed for tea. A bed has been prepared for Marie, who is exhausted from travelling and worrying.

Marie and her husband, Samson, spent several days on the coast hoping to regain contact with their fourteen-year-old, but Kestrel hasn't phoned since she called them from Squamish. They returned home a few days ago to their jobs, needing to be occupied. Now Marie has made a second journey, with April, who told me Marie is eager to speak to the lawyer she's read and heard about, the lawyer trying to solve the puzzle of her grandfather's death.

I was surprised to learn that Marie, though adopted at seven, knows about her antecedents. “How can that be?” I demanded of April.

“Patience,” said April, “is the companion of wisdom.”

“Lao-tzu?”

“Saint Augustine.”

I'm back at my carrel, perusing the old
RCMP
exhibit list: items seized from Mulligan's desk, the outstanding one being Frinkell's letter, its accusation of adultery, its claim for damages. Casually tossed into his in-basket, unconcealed from his full-time attendant/researcher/secretary. Irene must have used that desk regularly for typing his manuscripts, handling his correspondence. Yet she claimed not to have known about it. There was no other working area she could have used, as I recall from my long-ago visit to the hobby farm. While Thelma McLean fixed us coffee, I'd snooped, found two decks of playing cards in a drawer of that desk, bridge decks in a clear plastic box. Irene's game, not Dermot's.

It is already ten p.m. as the
Queen George
putts into the Ponsonby Island dock, the last stop before Garibaldi. I pack up and descend to the car deck. The several island residents I encounter either have full vehicles or live far away from Potters Road, so I must choose between Caliginis and Stoney. A ride from the latter promises danger, but the grape connoisseur might prove even more distracted, now that his affair with Mrs. Beauchamp has imploded. I do not want to be driven off Breadloaf Bluff and land among the elves on the Shewfelts' lawn.

“Dog and me, we're sort of going that way anyway, so keep your wallet in your pocket. The mere pleasure of your company, sire, is reward enough, plus maybe out of the generosity of your heart a little pro bono advice.” As we drive off the ramp, the top still down, Stoney pulls a massive joint from behind the visor and lights up in full view of everyone at the ferry landing. He passes it behind him to Dog, who exchanges a fresh can of Lucky for it.

Though I have insisted on sitting in the front, where there is a working seatbelt, I don't feel in any extreme peril. To give Stoney credit, he knows Garibaldi's roads so well that his responses to the dips, curves, and potholes are almost instinctive, automated, even as he smokes, drinks, and incessantly talks.

“This here's the situation. I had to pay off the ferry corp the flagrant amount of $357 and change for towing and storage. This was done according to my standard corporate practice, with a cheque on my business account.”

“And how much is in that account?”

“Four dollars.”

I earn my fare by telling him that a bounced cheque rarely gives rise to criminal proceedings.

“There ain't currently no law on this here island anyway, right, Dog?”

A grunt of assent. I ask, “What happened to the law on this here … on Garibaldi?” The second-hand smoke is getting to me.

“From various accounts we have pieced together, Ernst Pound got his ass suspended for punching the lights out of that pole-climber who's been poking his old lady. Zoller got the boot for standing by useless while this was going on outside the bar, and we ain't got no replacements.”

Talking incessantly, he bemoans the loss of his cash crop – I dare not tell him the livestock ate it – but accepts the blame. “My problem is, though I ain't totally always aware of it, sometimes I rap too much when I do reefer, so some wrong ears musta overheard me mentioning in passing where I stashed my stash. No matter, I got friends with surplus, and anyway it's party hardy time on copless Garibaldi. The bar's gonna be rockin' wild all night, man. Metal Zombie is playing – they just got kicked out of Seattle for getting naked with some groupies on stage, right, Dog?”

“It was on
TV.”
A rare entire sentence. Dog passes the joint back. Stoney fills his lungs, breathes out like a dragon, and orders Dog, through song, to “Roll another one, just like the other one.”

Homer bounds up the driveway, announcing,
He's back!
April's car is outside my farmhouse, a nondescript Honda Civic suitable to the tasks of a discreet
PI
. She is out here too, but not quite so inconspicuous: she has found a pool of light, is leaning languorously against a veranda post, her jacket slung over her shoulder. One wonders if she once aspired to be a photographer's model.

“Man, who's the dream machine?”

“A friend.” Stoney's on a need-to-know basis.

He grins. “I gotcha. Guess you ain't coming down to hear Metal Zombie.”

I can already hear them, faintly, beyond the more salubrious music of tree frogs. I wish Stoney and Dog a happy time and remember to grab my bags and briefcase before they race away in a swirl of dust and smoke. I check to see that my Fargo is still moored to the utility pole.

“We'll let Marie sleep,” April says, startling me by approaching suddenly and bussing me lightly, sweetly, before helping me with my bags to the veranda. “She has the room downstairs. I've made up the cot in your upstairs study. You don't mind?”

“Absolutely … I mean, of course not, my dear.” I'm definitely feeling a bit high.

She takes my hand. “It's a magic night. Let's sit out here and count the stars.” She leads me to a rise above the pebble beach, and we settle on my wonky handmade wooden bench. “Remember,” she says, “no matter where you go, there you are.”

I ask Ms. Enigmatic what that Confucianism means. She just smiles. I tell her I have given up parsing the one about why a bird sings. She shrugs, as if to say that explaining just takes the fun out of it.

The windless sea is like wobbling glass. Lethargic waves lick the shoreline with a gentle swish, the only other sounds distant wails and bass thumps, like heartbeats. An all-nighter – Abraham Makepeace is probably taking advantage of this lawless time to get out from under his punitive mortgage.

I have many questions to ask but must abide by April's fancy for dramatic waits. Finally: “Marie was adopted into a respected family at the Lac La Ronge Reserve – employees of the provincial park service – and she lived there until going to Saskatoon for a nursing degree. She returned to La Ronge to practise. At twenty-three, in 1996, she married Samson Dubois – I met him: quite shy, quite handsome. They have one child. Kestrel was born in 1997.
I gather she was a handful. They stopped there – they had careers.” She shrugs. “I stopped before I started.”

A wistful pause. I want to hug her but worry that the desire is cannabis-induced, and that she will read it as going beyond avuncular. On the other hand, she hasn't let go of my hand. I have never known quite what to make of this woman. I am well over twice her age, so she can't possibly have romantic feelings.

“Let's go back to when Marie was seven. That's when Sebastien Snow arranged for her adoption, after his wife died and while he was in prison. With all his troubles, he was a caring man. Marie says he met with her adopting parents several times, wanting to make sure they were right for his daughter. He told them his history as his mother had told him: that he was Dermot Mulligan's son, by rape – statutory rape, they called it.”

And that was to have remained a secret, but like most great family secrets it wasn't kept. When Marie attained maturity, she was told about the famous professor whose genes were transferred unwillingly to Caroline Snow, then Sebastien, then Marie. Thence to Kestrel.

In her turn, Marie also swore never to tell her daughter. But that became too challenging a task in this era of Native truth-telling and redemption. Kestrel, who had been brought up to be independent, tough, and loving, and to respect her heritage, demanded the truth.

“Marie has a cellphone. Kestrel promised to call her this weekend. Is that enough for now? I'm almost too tired to sleep. Are you tired, Arthur? Do you want to go to bed?”

I feel incapable of answering any of these questions. They're either banally straightforward or too complex and cryptic.

She puts an arm around me as we meander back to the house. I cannot fathom her apparent feelings for me – they seem beyond teasing – and am made nervous by them, but also thrilled. I try to suppress silly imaginings prompted by her choice of my studio to bunk in, just off my bedroom. Ridiculous imaginings. April knows Margaret, and that I'm devoted to her.

In the kitchen we dally over tea, and talk turns to the personal. She asks if my ex-wife is still pursuing me. I'm not sure, I say, but I may have been given a breather. More awkwardly than delicately, I remind her I'm concerned about keeping my current marriage on solid ground, and recall her favourite aphorism: “If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it.”

She looks at me oddly, as if missing my allusion. I'm embarrassed now with the turn our conversation has taken, and prompt her to talk about herself. She tells of her upbringing in mainland China, then Hong Kong, where she lived with her beloved grandmother, her inspiration, a student of Eastern philosophies.

I dare ask why she hasn't mentioned her parents. She says, “Tiananmen Square, 1989. I was nine when they were taken away. They died in jail.” A long, melancholy pause. “My father was a great man, an intellectual, like you. I am in such pain when I remember him.” Tears fill her eyes.

I hug her then, unutterably sheepish about the ludicrous thoughts I'd harboured.

I
wake in the early hours from a dream I can't recall well. Just a snippet of speech: “He's here, darling,” as flashbulbs pop outside and I scurry for my clothes but find only frilly underthings. I stare outside at the starlight for a long while, listening to the annoying
thump-thump
coming three miles from the bar at Hopeless Bay, wondering if that bit of dream is asking me to look once more at the photos by Jimmy Fingers.

Metal Zombie is still distantly pulsing at four a.m., a tribute to the staying power of the musicians, their fans, and their drugs. Also conspiring to keep me from sleep are Caroline and Sebastien and Marie and Kestrel. How does their familial history connect with the puzzle that has haunted me for almost fifty years? Is there salvation to be found for Gabriel Swift in this journey of generations? Yet another presence, quite near by, keeps me from subsiding back into the arms of Morpheus: April Wu on the cot next door, parentless April, veiling long-held sadness behind her saucy, cryptic persona.

When I awake a second time, the sun is streaming in, advertising another balmy day. The Zombies still haven't pooped out, but I can hear only a sole guitar. The more comforting sounds are of honking geese and prowling chickadees, and several women's voices downstairs. I recognize Yoki's and Niko's, their laughter.

I sense a presence in my doorway and blink away the sleep fog. April, with a portable phone and a mug of coffee, which she places at my bedside. “Good morning. Margaret called. She said not to wake you.” She whisks off before I find my voice.

Margaret answers immediately, in a chirpy mood. “How enterprising of you to surround yourself with a harem of young women while I'm away.”

April has filled her in as much as she can, and I embellish: a synopsis of my two tough days in court, which produces sympathy, and
a rendering of Bully's party and the stripping away of Caliginis's sham show of expertise that produces delight.

“That did it for his prospects with Annabelle, I'm afraid. She walked off with Hubbell. Who knows what to expect from that?”