Trial of Passion (7 page)

“I presume that's the animal I chased away this morning upon finding it defecating on the back porch.”

“Oh, dear, I don't know how they get through the fence.”

“Perhaps they use the holes.”

Again I have been brusque, and this comment riles her. “Mr. Beauchamp, I have built and rebuilt that fence with my own two hands, and I think you should be prepared to take some responsibility for your share of it. I mean . . . you obviously have money to burn.”

The resentful tone, together with her apparent fondness for rules and regulations, suggests this feisty woman is some manner of socialist. She seems determined to distrust me, and I find no reason to apologize for or explain myself.

But as she and Slappy take their leave, I reproach myself for my unkind thoughts about her. She lost her husband not many years ago, and grief shows its colours in ways often harsh. Eventually, perhaps, she will learn I am merely a harmless pouf who prefers to be alone with his dead Latin poets.

Her visit, however, causes some inner rumblings of disquiet that remain with me through the day. In former times, the antidote was usually a bracing tumbler of Beefeater gin, a cure that sad experience taught me was worse than the disease. But as the days pass, I feel a slow ebbing of strength, of will. In every cell of my body, I can still taste that dulcet syrup, can sense its seductive offering of warmth and courage.

Oh, what a worshipper of Bacchus was I. Until one night, nine years ago, locked out of my house, and vigorously seeking audience with a wife temporarily estranged, I fell through the skylight and onto her exercise bicycle. Promises were made at my hospital bedside. (I kept mine; she broke hers. She tried. I believe she tried.)

After a few days of doubtless pensive rumination, Stoney and Dog return to their tasks: sweaty, resolute work, pouring concrete pads, and nailing up supports for the new veranda. They patch the roof, too, though in a fashion they assure me is temporary, much plywood, and plastic sheeting. The house begins to look like something a hillbilly might inhabit, Ozarkian, ungainly. I suffer a temptation to have the place torn down and a new house built by a reputable city contractor.
But I cannot bear the thought of having to confront my current crew with layoff notices . . . and Mrs. Blake lurks down the lane.

On an afternoon as I watch my veranda rise Sistine-like from the rubble, I am visited by the local media, one Nelson Forbish representing the
Island Echo.
A man of impressive girth, he emerges awkwardly from his compact car, armed with notebook and camera. He is about thirty-five, his cherubic face sheltered by a felt porkpie hat, the brim turned down in front.

“Mr. Bochamp, I've been waiting till you settled in to call. Like to do an interview.” He has a high, whining voice, a nasal dentist's drill.

“Beecham is how it's pronounced. The name became corrupted after my ancestors raped and pillaged Anglo-Saxon England.”

Nelson Forbish seems to have some difficulty absorbing this concept. “Would a good time be now?”

“As you see, the house is in disarray, so shall we just sit outside here? It's a splendid day. Would you care for a refreshment?”

“Something to eat, if you got.”

I bring out a bowl of fruit and some slightly burnt homemade biscuits, and lead Forbish to my dock, where I have set a table and a plastic chair. I have been fishing, offering fat worms from my newly spaded garden.

“Caught two very tasty perch the other day. Possibly that could be your headline, Mr. Forbish.”

The reporter peels a banana and lowers it down his throat as if into a food blender.

“I've been reading your newspaper, Mr. Forbish, and I was wondering — if it's not subject to journalistic privilege — about Mr. George Rimbold, who tried to jump through a window at the local bar dressed as a frog.”

“That was at Halloween. He's a bit of a tank.”

“Ah, I see.”

As he wolfs down a biscuit, he takes a photo of me, then
produces some clippings from various Vancouver journals.

“Says here you've won fourteen straight murders in a row.”

I hear echoes of his idiosyncrasies of composition in the
Island Echo.
Fourteen straight in a row.

“I have had my losses.”

“This here magazine article says you left your office for a couple of years to work with bums on skid row.”

Two years dimly remembered, two years of bibulous fog when Annabelle had separated from me.

“It was an interesting time.”

“And the article goes on to say you're really colourful in court.” He is on his second banana now, and eyeing an apple. “Much exaggerated.”

“You used to keep a pitcher of vodka on your table when you were on a trial. The judges all thought it was water.”

I ponder his odd interview technique — he has yet to ask a question. “An utter lie. It was a pitcher of Beefeater gin. Nor did the judges suspect it was anything else.”

“So there was also this time when apparently you were drunk in the middle of a trial, and you began reciting the Ruby . . .” Nelson is studying an obscure word in the magazine article.

Was I also drunk when being interviewed for that piece of literary embarrassment?
In vino veritas.
No, it was later — newly admitted to the Trial Lawyers' Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, I tended in those days to indulge in frenzies of truth and openness.

”
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. ‘
Fill the cup that clears today of past regrets and future fears.' I once sought escape in such a cup. I am an alcoholic, Nelson.”

“So what are you doing here on this island?”

“Making peace with God and nature. I am retired.”

“So, for our readers, why did you choose Garibaldi?”

“I'm not sure. I think my brain may have snapped.”

Nelson finally sees this as a joke and stops writing it down. He
removes his hat, wipes his sweating brow. I note that my various comestibles have by now entirely disappeared down the man's ravenous maw.

“So, that's it? For your career? No more cases?”

“In fact, I just turned one down.”

“What sort of case?”

“Oh, a sexual assault —”

“It isn't that law professor's case?”

I am sorry I have stumbled into this, but Nelson seems hugely titillated, his eyes bugging slightly. “I heard he kidnapped one of his students, took all her clothes off and chained her up, and took a bull-whip to her until she was bleeding.”

“I ought not to discuss it.”

“Then made love to her over and over until she couldn't take it any more. Do you think he did it?” There seems something almost obsessive about his interest.

“Nelson, I judge not my fellow man. And one shouldn't really discuss a matter that is before the courts.”

His only response is a burp. Oh, pompous Beauchamp. Making peace with God and nature. Judging not my fellow man. But how innocent in God's eyes is our dashing acting dean of law? Does that matter? Do I care?

I am retired. That's all the news that's fit to print.