William Deverell - Trial of Passion

His audience lost, Wally sighs. “That’s all. We’ll adjourn.”

“What the hell’s with Jon?” Augustina asks.

“He has madly rushed off on an ill-advised mission to seek Kimberley’s understanding and mercy. Go in pursuit, quickly. Put the collar on him and don’t let him talk to reporters.”

They are all in the mezzanine, demanding, threatening, circling us like jackals. I toss them a few bones, homilies about our noble system ofjustice and its pursuit of truth; I express pleasure in the exoneration of innocence and I pray that both parties involved in this minor fuss will heal their wounds and enjoy tranquil lives and splendid careers.

But as we work our way to the edge of the crowd, I see Kimberley, unattended, slip from a witness room, glance in our direction, then step quickly down a deserted corridor. Between bobbing heads I glimpse Jonathan hurrying after her. I lean to Augustina’s ear: “There he goes.”

She takes off in pursuit while I make my way down the stairs, bloviating to the press about all manner of nonsense, finally escaping into the sanctum of the gentlemen’s robing room. There, the Commander hurriedly stuffs his costume into a locker and throws on some casual clothes. Four-thirty. I shall never make it to the ferry for its milk run to the islands. Woe: I shall have to delay my return to both island and woman of my heart until the morning.

But relax, Beauchamp. Haste takes a heavy toll of the heart. The morning boat will haul me home well before noon, even running late. I shall call Margaret and explain. And why not spend a few good moments in the El Beau Room with friends, basking in victory’s glow?

Waiting outside my room, in amiable conversation, are Augustina Sage and Dr. Jane Dix.

“Jonathan gave me the slip, Arthur.” Augustina shrugs helplessly. “A very deliberate one. I yelled to him from across the street. He ignored me.”

I lead them into my suite. Augustina bends to my mini-bar, finds a fruit punch for me, then pulls out a half-bottle of champagne. The cork pops, and she ducks from a spray of fizz.

“They went off in a taxi. Jonathan and Kimberley.”

“In a taxi!”

My stunned expression prompts Jane to smile. “I only see good coming from it. They have a great deal to say to each other. Lots of bandaging to do.”

This clever doctor of the mind has prescribed too well and often for me to take issue with her. My sexually challenged client has high degrees from Oxford; I must assume he knows what he’s doing.

“I must apologize to you, Jane. I was too cynical. I preferred silence to truth. But has the truth made Jonathan free?”

“He no longer has to hide. Can’t be free in a closet.”

“Extraordinary, this seeming urgency to run off and make amends with a woman who put him through nine months of hell. I suppose a permanent cease-fire will not hurt his chances before the UBC ethics panel.”

“You are cynical,” Jane says. “I don’t believe he’s thinking about his career right now. There’s something else about Jonathan you should know. I only came to fully realize it while I was watching him in court.”

Our glasses clink. I hesitate before sipping.

“What should I know?”

“He went to her play four times. I thought at first it was a persecution obsession. But it’s a rather healthier emotion than that. Though he managed for the longest while to blind himself to it.”

My face must seem to her a blur of incomprehension.

Augustina explains, “He’s totally gone on her, Arthur, that’s what Jane’s telling you.”

Jane nods. “Took him a while to figure it out. Heavy denial. At some point today — as she was testifying, I think — the light just came flooding in.”

Augustina says, “You saw the way he kept staring at her all week. . totally bewitched. Mad about her.” She tweaks my beard and winks. “You should know what it’s like, lover.” She tosses back her champagne. “Guess he was just flirting with me. We’ll see you in a few minutes, Arthur. Everyone’s waiting in the El Beau Room.”

After they depart, I undress, assailed by my own odours, the dense acid smell of a hard day’s toil for justice. Outside: a grey mattress of cloud. But from a thin break in the west, a peep of sun; a yellow slash illumines the high mountain forests across the inlet.

The latest apercu from Jane Dix has me confounded — yet the clues were all present: Jonathan’s confusion, depression, obsession. But never hatred, that evil antonym of love. To his credit he had never cried out for vengeance, for injury, for hurt. Why can’t I hate her? I can’t find my anger; maybe I’ve buried it too deep. He’d buried not his anger but his heart.

Ah, love. Who can comprehend the madness inflicted by Venus’s poisoned arrows? Who can survive and not be blinded? “It is vain to look for a defense against lightning,” Publilius Syrus said. Poor Jonathan, who must now suffer the curse of unrequited love.

But I must pursue my own heart. .

Margaret’s phone rings too often, but I am finally rewarded by her liquid, gay hello.

“How exciting. It was on the five o’clock news. I want to hear it all, every second of it. When do you get here?”

“The morning ferry, should I survive that long.”

“I’ll wait.” She says this with entirely too much cheer. “We’re short on manpower, can you supervise some of the children’s games? The three-legged race and stuff?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and we have a guest artist coming, a wonderful classical guitarist. Excuse me. Have to lay the phone down. I’m running a tub. I just can’t undo a bra with one hand.”

A tiny, tickling electrical surge passes through me. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by an erotic image: I picture her unclasping that brassiere, arms twisted behind her back, the straps gliding from her shoulders. .

I look down in awe. I have an erection as stiff as a salute.

My cronies and I celebrate around a long table at the El Beau Room: Patricia and Gundar bravely nursing their wounds, Augustina — suffering a slightly bruised heart — on her way to tying one on. Sheriff, court clerk, and stenographer are here, as well as two of the jurors: Mr. Lang, the fishing person, and the broker Goodman. We are missing Wally, who for some reason has elected for home and family.

“It looked for a while like we had a fight on our hands,” Goodman is telling me. “Isn’t there some defence where a guy’s so drunk he can’t help himself?”

I am barely listening to him. Tomorrow, the eight o’clock ferry. By noon, Dei gratia, I will be paired off with Margaret at the egg-toss contest. Later, after the barbecue, after the dance, another chance to woo her by her blazing hearth?

My chat with Margaret — she in her tub, I wandering about consumed with erotic fantasy — is still setting off tingles, erogenous pops in my loins. How exuberant I feel; I cannot remember such libidinous yearnings since my youth. But I am saving it, hoarding it in the audacious hope that Margaret may ultimately fall prey to my dogged pursuit.

Finally, all but the lawyers leave. We tarry, order food, relive our trial. Patricia comically apes a fogbound appeal court judge.

As I am about to rise, an agitated man in a business suit approaches. I remember him: the footman who’d been attending Clarence de Remy Brown the day he left for Guyana. He clears his throat and interrupts Patricia’s parody.

“Excuse me, but, ah, can anyone tell me where Miss Martin is?”

Silence. None dares look at him. But Patricia sighs, rises, follows him to the front door, where Remy himself appears, looking cranky and confused after a long flight, a gift-wrapped package in his arms. I decide to go out by another door.