Trial of Passion (5 page)

Am I ever glad you're on the case. Until we met, I'd been wondering, like, what's going on, is anybody out there in
charge?
I mean, God, I had a couple of interviews with some grinning jackals in plain-clothes who drove away in tears. They were laughing so hard. They never even took a written statement. Couple of morons who couldn't investigate their own flat feet. And then nothing, until out of the blue you called me last week. Now I have a prosecutor. Things are looking up.

Frankly, Patricia, when I first came to your office, I thought you were sort of, um, you know,
formal.
I thought, okay, Patricia Blueman, barrister, here's a real stiff lady, no sense of humour. But you really loosened up over lunch, and then last night . . . gee, you were funny. I still laugh when I think of your imitations of all those old-fart lawyers.

Anyway, I think we sort of bonded — are women still allowed to do that, or is it reserved only for men? — and I feel I can finally
purge
myself of the whole mess.

Though it will be hard to talk about. . . .

This joint is heated by a funky old pot-bellied stove, which I have roaring pretty good — it's a clear, brittle night, and icicles hang from my eaves like Christmas ornaments. Vancouver looks so majestic, spread like a magic carpet below me, its lights like stars, a galaxy.

Puts me in a sort of mood . . . I hope I can study here. Six days of hell coming up: final exams. Why, oh, why did they set the preliminary hearing so close to exam time? I'm going to be frazzled when I take the stand.

Sorry, I'm all over the lot here. You wanted some background. Okay, I'm in my second year studying to be a lawyer, and otherwise I'm normal — a happy, healthy, wholesome twenty-three-year-old
Canadian woman who loves her father and mother and kid sister, and happens to be seeing a shrink. I told you about
that
. Dr. Kropinski — he's helping me work through the awful nightmares I've been having. Our secret, okay? That smarmy defence lawyer — what's his name, Hatchet, Cleaver — he'll use it in court. Claim I dreamed it all. Religion: Catholic, though I'm sort of lapsed. I wear that cross-on-a-pendant to keep the folks happy. My dad's a mining engineer with the Goose Bay Copper Corp. — that's a division of the Brown Group — and they live away out in Labrador now.

It's through Dad I met my fiancé, who is actually his boss, full name Clarence de Remy Brown, and I call him Remy — he's a brawny, brusque businessman, a sort of constantly on-the-go kind of guy. I like him because he's not spoiled, he's his own man. No, I am
not
marrying him for his money, though I
know
somehow that's going to come up in the trial. I'm sort of living with him, but not full time — you saw my hovel in Kitsilano. This is partly because his parents are strictly from the seventeenth century, but also because I need my own space. Remy isn't exactly on the cutting edge of contemporary thought, either. But he's, you know,
secure.
And he loves me. And I love him.

So what else? I like skiing, sailing, Chinese food, and going to the movies. Yikes, this is starting to sound like a high-school yearbook. Or maybe an ad in the personals column. Wishes to meet movie star with sense of humour. My extracurricular thing: amateur stage. Played
Saint Joan
this year. Yes, deah, it's Sarah Bernhardt here. Otherwise, I go to classes five mornings a week. I'm not one of the wonks — I don't spend all my afternoons in the library. I get my passing grades. Most of the time.

All right, which brings us to the subject of a certain, um, fringe-oid representative of the opposite gender, Professor Jonathan O'Donnell. He was — past tense — teaching me advanced property this year. Because of what everyone calls The Incident, he had to turn the class over to a loutish woman who picks her nose when she
thinks we're not looking. I'd rather have O'Donnell. Stare at him. Make him uncomfortable.

Did you know his father is some kind of British noble? Baron or duke, or some big deal like that. Pal of Margaret Thatcher, so you can see where Jonathan gets his right-winginess. He's an incredible teacher, I give him that. He could get you interested in the most awfully boring things. Brilliant, I guess. You see him on the tube on the
après
-news shows, reaming the Supreme Court for being too liberal. And I'm not going to pretend he's some ugly-looking troll. He's not, you know, what you'd call
pretty
— sort of ravaged-looking. He has this dark, moody thing — sort of like Remy, actually. Something vaguely dissolute about him — those deep lines on his face? Anyway, he started giving me the eye in the lecture room. I was a little flattered, I guess. I'm human.

The downside of all this was he always seemed to be picking on me, you know, like, Ms. Martin, please give me the ratio of Engelbert versus Humperdinck. I felt like some kind of special-needs kid. Give that poor girl extra attention.

And then he got so he would ask me to stay a few minutes after class on the pretext of talking about my work. I'd be all prim and proper, giving him the message as bluntly as I could, but I don't know — was he getting it?

Then once he asked me into his office to advise me on quote career paths unquote. Which he hardly talked about at all. Personal stuff, instead, what I liked to do in my spare time and that sort of thing. Oh, gee, let's see, I like skiing, sailing, and going to the movies. Kimberley Martin is this year's Miss Conviviality and she wants to be a lawyer when she grows up. I have something awful to admit. I was a cheerleader in high school. Hope
that
doesn't come out.

I'd see him on the campus a lot and I had this . . . it was a notion — but it didn't turn out to be so wrong — that he was stalking me. You know? Not like everywhere I go he's on my heels, but sort of Hi, there, mind if I bring my coffee over?

At some point we finally got onto the subject of the diamond ring that I kept waving in front of his face. So I told him about Remy. Told him what a special person he is. Invited him to the wedding — by the way, it's this fall, Patricia, and you must come, you can do your impersonations. Anyway, he never lost a beat. Kept coming on with those bedroom eyes.

So, getting to November twenty-seventh, the Law Students' Association, the
LSA
— I'm chair of the social committee — planned to have a dance. Okay, strike against me: I did personally ask Jonathan if he'd like to come. But you know, it was a money-raiser; we were asking all the faculty, selling them tickets.

Remy had gone away for a few days to South America with his father — the family has some investments there — and wasn't coming back until late that night. So I went alone — I can just see his lawyer making hay with
that.
O'Donnell's defence has got to be that I was a willing party, right? Is he going to deny tying me up? The lying bastard, I want you to tear him apart on the stand, Patricia. So I danced a bit — we had a live band — and when Professor O'Donnell came in, he made his usual beeline, and he bought me a drink and I … well, I asked him to dance. It wasn't like a waltz where he'd be climbing all over me.

I assume there's going to be a great hue and cry about what I had to drink that night, so let me get my two bits in right now. I had exactly two rye and 7Ups at the dance. Don't you love that drink? It's so
common.
Now, the one he got me may have been a double, but I did
not
get loaded. Didn't touch any of the pot that was going around, either. I don't do drugs. Marijuana especially, I get too scrambled.

So, back to the dance. Well, Jonathan and I chatted a little. I was sort of interested in his background, how his father became a knight, or whatever he is. A viscount. Don't think he cares much for him. As his son, he's entitled to be called Honourable Jonathan O'Donnell, did you know that? Right.
Honourable.
I mean, he wasn't
putting on the dog or anything — but it's sort of impressive, isn't it? To us commoners.

Anyway, I was about to leave before the last number and I was on my way to get my coat when he magically materialized right in front of me. So we do the last set of dances, slow rock, uh-oh, I'm thinking, here's the old high-school rub dance. But, you know, he was okay, kept a gentlemanly distance. He told me that the lecture theatre — these were almost his exact words — seemed to fill with a brilliant light every time I walked into it. That's what he said. I remember thinking, maybe he's not such a bad guy. Maybe a little crush on me, that's all.

Then he asked me if I was going to the after-party.…

After a period of rain, a reluctant Apollo has finally spurred his fiery horses beyond the fleeing clouds, and today I have donned my coveralls. Steeling myself for the tasks ahead — a row of beans, a plot of potatoes (the carrots are in, the radishes are up!) — I light a cigarette and lean on my spade and contemplate my coming bounty, picturing it as the sylvan fields Virgil sang of.
Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis. Happy is he who knows the rural gods.
But my green reveries are interrupted by the noisy, belated arrival of Stoney and Dog, who show up — one month late — in a grunting rusted flatbed. My visitors look no healthier than their vehicle — both are bleary of eye.

“Got a timber here to shore her up,” Stoney says. “Couldn't get nobody to mill it.”

The timber, roped to the flatbed, is a sticky, freshly skinned trunk of a fir tree, still bleeding its sap.

“It'll add a kind of funky look.”

He is unusually muted, perhaps because I am scowling. He offers no explanation for his long absence, and I refrain from asking if he was serving a jail sentence for house-renovation fraud. But my grumping
subsides. The true Garibaldian, I have learned, is not beholden to the cruel dictates of time. After a few courtesies, he and Dog gather their tools and advance with determination upon the veranda.

But before I can return to my georgic chores, the sound of a small aircraft rents the placid air, and it settles in my little bay and taxis to the dock. I sense immediately that the firm has sent bounty hunters to return me to justice — as it were — and indeed the passenger who alights is Hubbell Meyerson, old friend and senior partner at Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham. (Tragger and Inglis now haunt from their graves, though Bully, over eighty, wanders in occasionally in the flesh. He is the spiritual leader of a firm with 110 lawyers.)

Hubbell seems ill at ease, but wears a mask of bonhomie as I show him about the grounds. “Fabulous outfit you're wearing, Arthur. The hick look. Where's the straw between your teeth? I'm kidding, you have a very nice spread here. The word bucolic springs to mind. Arthur, you got out before they could destroy your soul.”

“The Lord maketh me to lie down in green pastures. As you see, I can offer something spiritual but, I'm afraid, nothing spirituous.”

“Good, you're sticking to it. You're to be admired, Arthur.”

We take tea on the patio lawn chairs while, presumably, the meter runs in the chartered plane at the dock, its pilot squatting on the port float, staring down at the minnows. There are larger fish than those in that bay. A boat must be purchased somewhere.

Hubbell stares at my two workers, who are both scratching their heads as they contemplate their task.

“Seems to me I heard somewhere there's a lot of inbreeding on these islands.”

“Nonsense, those are skilled factotums of the many varied country crafts. What brings you here, Hubbell?” I cast a wary eye upon the plump briefcase that sits by his feet. “I fear you. You come not empty-handed, as a friend.”

He pretends not to have heard me. “Quitting at the peak, it took guts, Arthur. Here's the best trial lawyer in the country sitting in
front of me in goddamn coveralls. All those people who say you had a nervous breakdown, I tell them, hell, you just had a minor stroke, you want to slow down for a while. And in the meantime you're giving a chance to some of the others. Cleaver, he'll be doing most of the major trial work.”

Gowan Cleaver, whose surname suits his art. Why is this name dropped so casually in conversation? From a corner of my eye I can see Stoney working with a pry bar, wrenching out a rotting board. A robin carols from the pear tree. A turkey vulture patrols the sky above the bay. I wait for Hubbell's second shoe to drop.

“By the way, I'd like you to glance at something, Arthur.”

“Wild horses will not drag me, Hubbell.”

“The preliminary hearing's complete except for the complainant's evidence. Kimberley Martin. She had a bad time with her exams, has to rewrite a couple, so the judge adjourned her evidence to this summer so she can get her school year out of the way. Gowan will finish the prelim, then hand it over to you to do the trial. Probably this fall. Three, four days, maximum a week. You whiz over, demolish a couple of witnesses, and you're quickly back digging your farm-fresh potatoes.”

A heavy banging. The house shudders a little.

Hubbell opens his briefcase: accordion files, volumes of transcript.

“He wants you, Arthur. Honourable Jonathan Shaun O'Donnell, the acting dean of law at
UBC
. He wrote that savage attack on the Supreme Court —
A Law Unto Itself.
His father is Lord Caraway, a British viscount. Juicy trial. Big headlines.”

“I know Jonathan O'Donnell. I have already declined his retainer.”

“Yeah, but there's some real money here. The Faculty Association has agreed to pay the whole shot. It's become a cause to them, out-and-out harassment of a prof by a young lady who, for some unknown reason, cried rape. It's not a consent defence, Arthur. He didn't
do
it. You've never had a more innocent client. Just, you know, glance through the file. Christ, what else do you
have to do out here in the godforsaken middle of nowhere?”