William Deverell - Trial of Passion

“Hangover from the trial, I suspect.” I wonder if I remember how to dance. Doubtless Malcolm is lithe of foot, with antelopelike grace.

We park ourselves at a picnic table near the stage. Malcolm’s eyes are closed as he plays a melodic largo, to which Margaret listens raptly. Suddenly, I am shivering. I wonder if I should tramp back to the house and get a sweater. I wonder if I need even bother coming back. Why spoil Margaret’s good time? Thanks to the ministering of Uncle Arthur, she is freed of her fixation upon her husband, and now her heart can pursue other goals.

But I am being made irrational by that baneful by-product of love we call jealousy. I am confused by my emotions, made ill by them: a paranoid neurosis. She missed me — she told me that on the telephone. I think of you a lot, too - that’s what she said.

They’re just good friends.

Now I must fill our plates before the food disappears. As Malcolm begins a final encore, I slip away to join a line-up that is still crawling sluglike towards the food table. And I am suddenly feeling an old need. I am suffering the same kind of niggling urge for strong drink that visited me during Annabelle’s frequent bouts of perfidy.

But now Emily Lemay joins me, planting an impertinent wet kiss on my lips that tastes of peach brandy. I ask if her current swain is present, the tugboat operator.

“Ancient history. Found out he had one in every port. By the time he got back here he was too beat to do anything. Not that he ever did much anyway. Some day, I’d like to meet a man. Someone who can keep up.”

Though Emily continues to flirt with blatant gusto, my own recent rumblings of potency have stilled; the loins do not stir, I do not rise to her challenge. Pressing against me with thigh and bosom, she leans to my ear with a secret: “That Malcolm Lorenz — he sure knew how to keep it up.”

As the server slaps chunks of meat on my three plates, I feel a queasy loss of appetite.

I make my escape from Emily. I see the Garibaldi Blues Band tuning up on stage. Malcolm has disappeared from it. . and Margaret has vanished from her place at our picnic table.

I lay food and cutlery down, and search for them in the community hall, where Margaret must be showing Malcolm her prize veggies. Inside, I wander among tables arrayed with produce and handicrafts. No sign of them here. The door that exits to the parking lot is open, and after taking no more than two steps outside it I am brought to a sudden stall. In a sheltered alcove near the parking lot Margaret and Malcolm are in close embrace, passionately kissing.

I slowly retreat into the hall. I feel my heart racing, breaking, shattering. I fly away, I fly away.

I am sitting in the darkness, all lights off but that of the moon, which sneaks through my window like a cold-hearted thief. I am rigid in my club chair, paralysed with grief, too emotionally withered for tears to come.

I hear a distant pounding of bass, a whine of amplified guitar, rising and falling, carried on the harsh wind from Breadloaf Hill. Outside my open window, trees sway in the breeze under the ghostly light of the moon. (What further evil has been visited upon me? Stoney knows. You’ll find out.)

How could I have ever conceived I was a masochist? I dread the kind of hurt for which I have found but one effective antidote. Isn’t that so, Annabelle? Was that not your experience? I tend to drown pain. I cannot handle it. Not this particular kind, a bastinado I feel up into my very guts.

And now I am suffering a thirst I have not felt for years. But it has been years. I wonder if I am now able to handle alcohol. Finally, after nine years of abstinence, can I control my old addiction?

The moon sends a long, shivering slice of light across the choppy waters of the bay, Diana’s arrow. They were entwined like vines. Had their mouths been open as they kissed? Ah, love and pain are twin sisters indeed, and delight in torturing their bound and helpless victims.

At the sound of a vehicle entering the yard next door I snap to attention like a man on the rack. A barking dog. A male voice. Her tinkling laughter. I close my eyes and clasp my hands over my ears, yet I see and hear them gaily entering her house, Slappy the spaniel dancing around their ankles, showing them the way to the bedroom.

I rise and stroll in a not-quite aimless fashion around the house, through the living room to the kitchen, where, behind a cupboard door, stands a bottle of Seagram’s, recently purchased and set aside for entertaining.

I pluck this precious, dangerous cargo from its hiding place. A dram or two, that’s all. I seek not oblivion in these amber waters; a minor deadening of the nerves will suffice, a slight surcease of care. Clearly, I have beaten my addiction. If I can just get through this night. . why, tomorrow I will be back on top of things. In my garden, harvesting my brussels sprouts.

I open the bottle. I sniff, sucking in its pungent ethers. Spirits, light my fire. Burn me, burn the pain away.

You are possessed of the devil, my son. Repent at once.

George, leave me alone.

You are an alcoholic.

No longer.

Bullshit!

The bottle tilts. But my hand is restrained by a power that seems almost physical: the grip of the ministering angel Rimbold, descended from the AA chapter above.

Say it!

I am an alcoholic.

The sweet, addicting syrup flows into the sink and down the drain.

Ah, you impious bastard, George, I am a stronger man than this. I will survive. I will.

And then I feel the weakness subside. A strength, a peace, comes over me. I have survived loss before. I have plunged into the fire of love and I have lived. I am truly not the whimpering invertebrate I used to be. Perhaps all those years of sweaty labour to conserve a bad marriage have given me muscle. Or perhaps like my rutabagas I have grown healthy and hardy in the gardens of Garibaldi. Have I not just won a notorious trial? Have I not attracted the lurid attentions of Emily Lemay? Yes, I am feeling quite possessed. Unruffled. Calm.

I slip on a wool sweater and walk outside among the rays and shadows of the moon. I shall not think of Margaret.

(But now I see her in its solemn face, hear her in the whispering wind in the trees, in the scolding slap of waves upon the beach.)

I stroll down the path to the water, and to prove my courage I glance at Margaret’s house. It is in utter blackness. I am strong. I will survive. But unbidden comes a vision of heated naked bodies, and I am nauseated by it and speed to the ocean’s edge. I stand there for a few moments panting, but nothing comes up.

I stare at the sea for a long and wretched time: the moonlit dancing waves, the foam-whipped channel, flickering lights on distant islands, the star-fat sky. I become aware of a distinct feeling of dampness around my toes and realize the tide has been flowing, saturating my shoes.

Now something is tugging at my pant cuffs. Am I about to be eaten alive by crabs? It seems a sufficiently ignominious way to end it all. I turn, and Slappy licks my hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” Margaret is at the top of the path, under the arbutus tree, looking down at me.

Slowly, I turn to face her. She starts to come down the trail, wobbling, lightly impaired by her several beers. “Talking to yourself, wandering into the ocean. Why did you run off anyway?”

My feet are wet and I am paralysed.

“I looked all around for you.” She stops about a yard in front of me, studies me for signs of injury or mental illness.

“I, uh, I’m sorry, I just thought you and Malcolm wanted to be alone for a while.”

Slappy keeps tugging at me, and I follow him to dry land.