I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (23 page)

It was heart-warming to see him so ebullient. My cash loan had paid for his ticket, and as a reward I had inherited the Kitsilano suite – decor by Lawonda, music by Lavitch.

My escape from Craznik, just an hour earlier, had been less challenging than Ira's. Some books were left behind, but everything else fitted into two bulging suitcases and a suit bag that were roped down from a side window. My faithful Beetle loaded, Ira and I loudly sang a chorus of the “Internationale” as we drove off, but I don't think Craznik heard; he was doubtless plugged into his shortwave.

As I emptied my suitcases, Ira, the perpetual borrower, filled them while reciting household tips. “The bathtub hot runs cold, and vice versa. You'll never see the landlord and lady except for fussing about the garden. I never got around to switching the phone into my name, so you may get some heavy breathers.”

I carefully hung up my nobility robe, then splashed some gin into two glasses filled with ice. The fridge worked, its freezer worked – this was paradise. Roses were in full bloom in the garden, the glass doors open to their perfume. A small Magnavox TV and a counter-top radio for the
CBC
news, weather, and to feed my addiction to Max Ferguson's Marvin Mellowbell and J. Philip Buster.

Ira squatted on the zebra rug with his drink and a packet of Drum, rolling a cigarette. I looked out the sunroom windows at roses in bloom in the fading sunset, thinking of Ophelia, that last soft, hope-restoring kiss on the mouth. She would approve of these digs.
She will tease me, will coyly suggest moving in with me
 …

Ira snapped me out of it. “I better make that flight, Arturo.”

We took Fourth Avenue, past the former Beanery, now neon-lit and called Café à Go-Go. At eleven it was busy, a happy throng hanging around outside. Ira insisted he didn't care – his sights were set higher.

I
sn't this super?” Gertrude said, enjoying the view: our bustling downtown, Stanley Park beyond. I was out of the Crypt. Either as an apology or a reward for being chummy with the Chief, the partners had promoted me to posher quarters.

“Too bad the Marine Building is in the way.”

“Well, that's a lovely building too.” The perpetually sunny Gertrude Isbister.

“You can leave early if you want.” It was four-thirty.

“Oh, no, I've got oodles to do.”

Pappas wandered in unannounced, as he was wont to do – the one drawback to the new digs was they were next to his. “I want you to free up a month in the fall. You're doing the Palmer prelim. They liked what they saw at the bail hearing. You continue to perform, maybe I'll give you the trial. They're quality clients, and they expect quality service.”

“Deservedly so.”

Gertrude gave me a helpless, almost pleading look as Mister Hands led her from the office to fetch the file. The Palmer brothers, accused of breaking the arms of four would-be competitors, controlled the East End heroin market. I'd persuaded Magistrate Scott to free them on a twenty-thousand-dollar property bond.

I suspected I was getting these meatier cases because Pappas, who was human after all, felt guilty about saddling me with a losing capital murder. He'd read over Ophelia's brief of evidence and put a consoling hand on my shoulder. “Well, pal, you can't win them all.”

I didn't want to win them all. But I fiercely wanted to win this one.

Jim Brady had finally, at my urging, counselled his young disciple not to fashion political theatre from the trial, but I worried that the advice might not have sunk in deeply. Now Gabriel was constantly on about Riel, Dumont, the Red River Rebellion, the
Battle of Batoche. The Métis leader had replaced Fanon as his hero. I worried that he was developing a fixation, was seeing parallels. Maybe he wanted his hanging as well to be remembered as a monstrous disgrace on the white man's record. It smacked of a hubristic death wish.

Gabriel would morbidly remind me how Riel had renounced the insanity defence his lawyer advanced, how he'd bravely faced the hangman.
Je suis content de quitter ce monde
, Riel had said.
Every day on which I neglect to prepare myself to die is a day of mental alienation
.

I had brought Gabriel writing tools – he'd moved beyond reading to composition. He was just putting down random thoughts, he said. “Something may come out of it.”

I could hardly bear the depression that came after these visits, the frustration. I'd had a reprieve from despair after my meeting with Borachuk, but it hadn't lasted. Who was I kidding? Knepp and Jettles had done a masterful job of setting Gabriel up. I didn't believe that even Irene's new “memory” of her husband's distraction would really help.

Other than quaffing a few after work, my evenings for the past week had been taken up mainly by reading in my exotic rooms. I hadn't seen much of Ophelia, whose practice was still burgeoning, but I expected her presently, after a family court case. It was just after five when she showed up. “I beat the shit out of
that
asshole.” Another errant husband bites the dust.

She leaned back on my office settee, kicking off her shoes, and related the high points of her trial. I dutifully applauded but was distracted by her liberal show of thigh as she stretched her legs. I wondered at this body language. A seductive message or just a tease? Or did she no longer even register me as a possible lover?

I turned quickly to business, asked her the latest on Monique Joseph. Her parents were now with her in Seattle, where they were entertaining their distraught daughter at the World's Fair. Then it would be on to an extended summer holiday in Navaho country, Arizona, the Grand Canyon. Lukey claimed to be doing his best.

I asked if Ophelia had got anything on Mulligan's wartime stint as principal at Pie Eleven. We assumed the Church would deny any abusive behaviour there and help us deflate the Crown's case.

“I must have made a dozen calls, went all the way up to the top holy father in Prince Albert – Pie Eleven is run by his diocese. They were defensive to a man, perplexed that anyone would suggest all was not sweetness and light. Oh, no, their priests, nuns, and teachers had proudly served God by raising their sweet angels from ignorance and poverty. The Church gave them the love that had failed them at home.”

Flagrant denial. Dermot Mulligan had written widely about that tendency on Rome's part.

“But they won't cooperate, won't give me teachers' names or student lists. They're afraid we'll harass them. I'll keep working on it.” A pause. “How's your new joint working out?”

“Lush African decor, yet cozy, smells of roses, and it's three blocks from Kits Beach. You have to come and visit.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“A bit of a stroll to the office, but worth it.” I was having trouble looking at her, my eyes fixed outside, on the phallus-shaped Marine Building.

She seemed about to rise. “Well … is there something else?”

“I was wondering …” – I cleared my throat – “if maybe you had some free time this weekend. I was thinking of toodling down to the Seattle Fair.”
Toodling –
did I really say that? “I just thought you might like to join me.”

She looked contemplatively at me.

“The tower, the monorail. They say some of the exhibits are amazing. Futuristic.”

“The weekend … You mean, overnight?” She sat straighter, adjusted her dress.

“Well, to see everything. I haven't looked into the hotel situation.”

“I think accommodation might be pretty tight.”

I flushed. “Christ. Let me be blunt. We got an awkward start. I thought we should make amends. You'd be insensate, Ophelia, not
to know I am extremely attracted to you.” God, how stilted that sounded.

She rose, joined me at the window. “It's nice out now, but I heard the forecast. I think it may be raining all weekend.”

It was at least a subtle rejection. “Good point. Some other time, maybe.”

She took my arm, turned me toward her. My eyes felt fuzzy but I met her gaze.

“Arthur, this is a conversation we need to have, and I'm sorry it's come so late. I'm too old for you and I've been damaged in marriage – it left scars. And I can be lousy company, mean sometimes, caustic … whatever. There's a whole lot of shit you shouldn't have to deal with. I wouldn't be good for you.”

Then silence, still looking at each other. I was expected to recite a few lines of sorrowful acceptance of our disengagement, but I couldn't get my tongue in gear.

She straightened my tie. “You need someone to look after you. I'm not it. Sometimes I feel like your mother. I have to fight the need to pick up after you.”

I found a smile. “It's not the sort of thing my mother often did.”

“Arthur, we're sharing a very important case. I know it's eating at you. I know you admire Gabriel; you like him and believe in him, as I do. I just think we'll work more efficiently if we put aside any feelings we may have for each other.”

“You're absolutely right.”

I found myself soon thereafter on a barstool at the Devonshire. I don't remember the later hours but have been reliably told I recited the entire first book of
The Aeneid. O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem. Have you not known hard hours before this? You sailed by Scylla's rage, her booming crags. You saw the Cyclops' boulders. Now remember your courage, and have done with fear and sorrow
.

THE TRIAL

A
fter a slow and grunting ascent, my ancient Fargo attains the sloping mesa at the crown of Breadloaf Hill and wheezes to a stop near the Garibaldi Island Community Hall. The engine won't die; it rattles and coughs for thirty seconds, like an old man gasping his last. Though I suspect my revered truck needs a valve job – the mechanical equivalent of heart surgery – I dread rendering it unto the slothful mercies of Bob Stonewell Motors. The last operation, a transmission transplant, took Stoney five months.

Alighting by the Fall Fair registration table, I check my cargo: fifteen varieties of fruit and vegetables, from the humble (carrots, cukes, corn) to the locally esoteric (okra and rutabaga), with nuts and berries lined up like gleaming marbles on their trays. Prime produce of the globally warmed summer of 2011, a historic year, a comeback year. Gone are the days when my multi-talented agronomist spouse, before she retired from competition, would walk off with enough blue ribbons to tailor an evening gown – veggies, breads, eggs, preserves, livestock – walking off with Most Points in Fair half a dozen times.

I haven't dared set my sights so high, focusing instead on my strengths: the yield from my cluttered deer-fenced garden, where I have toiled daily from spring through fruiting season. I have vowed that the Mabel Orfmeister Trophy for Most Points in Fruits and Vegetables will once again grace the fireplace mantle at Blunder Bay Farm – if “grace” is the right word. It's a lingam-like bronze corncob.

I pay my fee: seventy-five cents per entry. A volunteer passes me a fistful of exhibit slips as she peeks into the bed of my truck. “Looks like you're going for the Mabel Orfmeister this year. Again.”

A cruel adverb, a cutting reference to my history of failure. Three years ago I came in a dismal fourth; with redoubled effort, I won silver in the past two. But each time it was Doc Dooley's name that was engraved on the base of the muscular metal phallus. Five
straight years, five straight Orfmeisters. A further source of envy: Doc Dooley's roadside stand flourishes while mine, near a dead end on Potters Road, is rarely visited.

There he is, the spindly semi-retired M.D., lining up his entries at one of the prep tables, popping a rejected loganberry into his mouth. His carrot tops seem trimmed too short, his pickling onions of uneven size.
Amat victoria curam
. Victory favours those who take pains.

I take my turn at a table, double-checking the Standards of Perfection guide, realigning nuts and berries and baby potatoes. With calculating eye I watch as the Sproules lug a misshapen monster to a table bowed with entries for best pumpkin. Sixty pounds at least, heftier than my own pampered beauty but lacking its richness of colour, its plump symmetry. Best pumpkin, not biggest – that's the qualification for this special category.

Volunteers start removing my trays into the hall, where the judges wait. A long career as a barrister has inured me to the imperfections of judges. I'm still peeved that they gave me only a third-place ribbon last year for my faultless leeks.

I wince with every step as I return to my Fargo and park it out of the way. The pain is in my left heel. I have recently turned seventy-four, and the debilities of age are mounting: rheumatism in the lower joints, a creaky back. I'm not sure about my brain, but I have noted alarming signs. I struggle to remember people's names, people I know. I am forgetful about dates, tasks, obligations. (“But you always were,” says Margaret.)