Trial of Passion (32 page)

So this is your little office-in-home? Comfortable. You've nice taste.

About taste, I do not know. Penny has the taste.

I'm not sure if this hypnotism stuff is going to work. Trial starting Monday — I'm pretty tense. I'll try.

Fine. And now I want you to unburden yourself. Tell me some of the things that are worrying you.

Oh, Remy has a big catastrophe happening in Guyana, some kind of reagent with cyanide spilled at a gold mine, and it's completely poisoned a river. Remy is going nuts. And, oh, God, Mother is threatening to fly out from Labrador for the trial — I told her no, definitely not. It would be so embarrassing. I've always been her good little girl. . . . And what else? I've been getting these
lusts.

Lusts?

Yeah, I don't know why, maybe Remy isn't . . . Well, he's a little distracted, I guess. I mean, I
like
sex — I think it's healthy. Of course as soon as I say that, here comes the guilt again. Punish me, Father, give me ten Hail Marys. God,
I'm
a masochist. Growing up Catholic you learn to love pain. I was never weaned from Sunday school. . . .

You are frowning. Some thought has struck you?

Yeah, but, I don't know — it just went.

Sunday school . . .

Oh, hey, I found out O'Donnell's seeing a psychiatrist, too.

How did you learn that?

Remy said one of the detectives told him. Do you know a Dr. Jane Dix?

Quite well. For him, a very odd choice.

Why?

She is very active on women's issues.

Hmm. I guess you get the therapist you deserve. Well, maybe she's what he
needs.
She must be having a lot of fun with
his
screwed-up head. His latest addiction is jogging, according to Remy's informed sources. What's the psychological explanation for
that?
Fear, right? He's a scared rabbit. Oh, I'm back with Remy, now, living at his place. He came
crawling.
Ooh, that felt good. Apologized for being upset over the play, promised to be more supportive. He
should,
after all, he's the one who pushed me into this.

How do you mean?

I'm not sure if I would have laid charges. . . . I'm not sure. Remy was all gung-ho.

Are you feeling more relaxed now?

Yeah, I think I'm exhausted from talking.

I am going to move over here. I will just plug this in behind you —

Comfortable?

Yes.

Please let all your muscles go limp, yes? Your whole body. All the tension is gone. Your mind is relaxed. Do not concentrate on anything; just listen to my voice.

Whoo, I feel funny already. Okay, I put myself completely in your hands.

We are doing this together. Cooperation, yes? Not control.

Okay.

I want you to think of sleep now. Think only that one thought. Breathe deeply. Yes, you are becoming tired, and your eyes are heavy . . . your whole head is heavy, your eyelids are heavy . . . you are perfectly comfortable and you are so drowsy, and you are going to close your eye-lids. Your eyes, they are closing, they are closing now, and you are going into a deep sleep, and you will stay fast asleep until I tell you to wake up, yes? I am going to count to ten, and when I reach ten you will take a deep breath and fall completely asleep. But also you will hear my voice. When I speak to you, you will be able to hear. Your eyes feel so-o-o heavy. You are completely relaxed. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Take a deep breath. Do you hear me?

Yes.

You may open your eyes if you like.

Okay.

How old are you, Kimberley?

Twenty-three.

Do you remember when you were a little girl?

Yes.

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?

An actress. I liked to play dress-up.

Now I want you to go back to your childhood, yes? To a time when you are a little girl playing dress-up.

Yes.

How old are you now?

Nine years old. Soon I'll be ten.

Does it make you happy to play dress-up?

Yes, and my mummy lets me play with all her old clothes.

What else do you like to do?

I play with my friends. And I have a little sister, Kelly, and I look after her. And I have a dog named Morgan. And I like school very much. I have puppets, too, Mummy and Daddy gave them to me at Christmas.

Do you remember a time when you were not so happy?

No, I'm a happy girl. Mummy and Daddy say I'm a good girl, too.

Now go back in time, yes? Go back to when you are a little younger and you are not so happy. You are at a time when you are sad.

Yes.

Why are you sad? Mummy's mad at me.

Why?

Because I don't want to go to Sunday school.

And why don't you want to go?

I don't know. I'm afraid.

Tell me what you are afraid of, Kimberley.

I don't know. I don't know.

How old are you?

I'm eight.

Let us go together to your Sunday school. I will be with you. Let us go back to the week before. What is happening at Sunday school?

I don't want to go there.

Why?

It hurts.

What hurts? . . . Kimberley, what hurts? Do not be afraid.

He hurt me.

I am sorry, I did not hear you so well. He hurt me so bad.

Who hurt you?

The man that lives near the Sunday school. Did the man do something? Dr. Kropinski . . .

It is okay, my dear, I am close by you.

Mummy and Daddy told me not to speak to strangers, and I did, and it's a mortal sin.

Do not be afraid, Kimberley. Tell me what he did.

He said he wanted to show me his bunny rabbits, he has some baby rabbits, and I can see them in a cage, and . . . I'm afraid.

Here. I am holding your hand.

And he pushed me into his shed, and pushed me against the wall, and he has his hand over my mouth and he's dirty and smelly, and . . . and . . . he pulled my pants down and put his thing in me, in my bum, and it hurt so bad. And, and my dress is all dirty, and he called me a little tramp, and he is going to kill me and kill my mummy and daddy if I tell anyone, and I ran, and I fell into a ditch, and got all muddy, and I ran home, and I didn't tell Mummy, I said I fell into a ditch.

Why do you not tell your mother what happened?

‘Cause . . . ‘cause I don't know.

You do not know?

I stopped ‘membering.

You stopped remembering.

Only that I fell.

That is all that you recalled afterwards, yes? But you remember now.

Yes.

You remember that man.

I don't want to, but I ‘member.

But it is all over, yes? It is a long time ago and it is all
over. You are not afraid any more, are you, Kimberley? Yes, I am. I'm so scared.

I am going to bring you back now, yes? When I count to three you will wake up. When you wake up, you will remember about the man who hurt you. Do you understand?

Yes.

One, two, three.

Oh, God.

Oh, goodness.

Oh, oh.

Penny, Penny, quick . . . Bring a towel and a basin. . . . B

Margaret is sitting on her front veranda, bare-armed and willowy in a light Indian-print dress. One of her pet geese hisses and sticks its tongue out at me as I approach, then stalks off, haughty and disgusted. Margaret smiles, encouraging me to come forward, but my body has stalled five feet from her stoop, my knees locked in sudden dread — she will think I'm a silly oaf when I present my posies from behind my back. Worse, these were living things; I have damaged the environment, clear-cut my flower beds.

“What have you got there?”

I grin lamely, move towards her and lay them in her arms. “For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.”

For a moment she looks critically at my haphazard bouquet, then reaches up and kisses me lightly on the cheek. “How lovely. “The soft bells of her voice.

I sit next to her. A few tendrils of delicious smoke drift from the side yard, where Rimbold's coho salmon is resting on a grill in Margaret's brick charcoal stove.

She stares at my flowers, suddenly thoughtful. Please, please, do
not tell me that Chris used to give you flowers.

But she says nothing. I am urged to make mindless chatter, to break this log-jam of silence. “That opening line came from Lucretius. I must admit to having practised it in front of a mirror before coming over.”

She smiles again. “Well, it got the effect it deserves.”

This seems ambiguous. Stuffy, Donnish Beauchamp has created a classically pompous beginning to the evening. But he cannot control his maundering tongue. “Lucretius was a great philosopher as well as a poet. He is said to have taken a love potion that made him go mad. He took his own advice: ‘Embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care.' Committed suicide.” I am dying like Lucretius, dying standing up; the audience is restless. Old Uncle Arthur, spouting on and on.

“Latin poetry seems awfully appropriate. Have a bloodless Caesar.”

She stirs the contents of a pitcher with a celery stalk and pours a glass for me. I am dry of mouth, and take a big sip. “Tastes like the real thing.”

“We'll pretend.” She sniffs the flowers, then rises. “I'll find these some water, and check on the fish.”

At seven o'clock, the sun, all day confined behind a gloomy shroud, descends to the Pacific Ocean. Ducks waddle among grazing sheep. A rooster crows, confused by the twilight. This Elysian scene should relax me, but I'm too keyed up: as much by an impending major trial as by the fearsome chore of wooing Margaret. Dare I make a formal announcement tonight?
Margaret, my dear, I wonder if I may be allowed to speak of certain matters of the heart.
Oh, pompous Beauchamp, fan your aging embers, find some fire.

I would give my right arm for a very dry martini. . . .

“I guess I've been saving up for this,” I say apologetically, spearing the last fresh baby potato. Rimbold's gift is nearly skeletonized. I have been utterly tedious with my vapid encomia of Margaret's
exquisite table. My recent loss of appetite, I realize, had as much to do with my own inept cooking as with being lovesick.

Our only light comes from two bulky candles on the dining-room table. This is the way it was, Margaret tells me, in the old days, before the island had power.

“I think of it as a more romantic time,” she says, “living without light bulbs.”

I feel a twinge of pain. She is thinking about Chris. Over salad, Margaret tells me she has decided to announce her candidacy for island trustee this fall.

“You'll win in a walk. Kurt Zoller seems vulnerable.”

“I don't know. When Chris was trustee, there seemed so much work.”

He is at the table, the Banquo of Garibaldi Island. “You should get all his vote. He's well remembered.”

“Mostly by me — I think that's what you mean.”

“I wish I had such happy memories.”

Out of the blue, aghast to find myself doing so, I begin talking about my own marriage. It is a topic I'd shied away from during our innocent trysts at the fence, uncomfortable with those pathetic twin images of cuckoldom and impotence.

But here I am spouting a self-indulgent history of innocence betrayed, of tearful confession, of breakup, of reconciliation. Of alcoholism. And Annabelle's continuing parade of squalid affairs to which I was so willfully blind — denying the scent of other men's salt and sex upon her.

Margaret's eyes are riveted to mine. Perhaps she has been waiting for me to reveal my inner turmoil, to return in kind what she has so generously given me: her own past, her own marriage.

“For all those years I refused to accept the truth. But her affairs had been going on not so much behind my back as almost in front of my nose — they must have been notorious, the subject of locker-room ribaldry.”

“I guess you didn't want to know.”

“I think I didn't want to admit to myself that I was the cause of her philandering.”

Margaret waits, silently demanding clarification.

“I suppose I was no great shakes as a lover.”

Margaret now stands up, quietly gathering the spent plates. I have a feeling she is about to announce the evening is at an end; she is repulsed by my whining confessions.

“Let's take coffee and dessert in the living room,” she says. “You can smoke inside if you make a fire.” She is blunt, businesslike, and I worry that I am on my way to a ruined evening. Her cat gets up from the rug, sniffs dismissively at my socks, and follows Margaret to the kitchen.

As I walk into the living room I am confronted for an agonizing moment by the poster that reads L-o-v-E. I lower myself onto my knees as if in prayer before the old stone fireplace: no newspaper starter here except a few old
Island Echoes,
and it seems a desecration to burn collectors' items. These cedar shavings and kindling will do.

But the fire is slow to catch, and when Margaret joins me I am still bent to my task. She kneels beside me, placing a tray on the hearth with mugs of coffee and dishes of apple crumble.

“Doesn't want to burn,” I say. What kind of man is this? He can't light a fire in either hearth or heart.

“Wood's a little damp.” She refrains from taking charge, though I suspect it is her instinct to do so. Has she set me this task as a test of manhood? She is frowning, as if in inner debate. She seems stiff with me, uncomfortable.

“Why do you say you were no great shakes as a lover?” Bluntness reigns. I pause in my labours. I must tell her I am impotent and be done with it.

I hedge: “Frankly, I couldn't keep up with her in bed”

A flame flickers, a splint of cedar catches, then dies.

“Did you think you were at fault?”

“I must have been.”

“Must be godawful to be a man. All that social conditioning. Did you ever think Annabelle might have had an
unhealthy
appetite for sex?”