A few days ago, Nelson Forbish was seen quaffing beers with McCoy in the Legion, and he must still have been drunk when this edition went to bed. Nowhere in the chaotic six-page special Christmas edition could Arthur find this exclusive interview. Even the image beside the Merry Christmas streamer was out of tune with the season-a turkey fanning its tail.
Here was Margaret, as he might have expected. Another letter to the editor. No strident calls to action today. Calmly urging a ban against deforesting steep slopes, a popular issue, nothing that would mire her in controversy just before the nomination.
Arthur was not looking forward to spending Christmas Day with a crew of eco-holics and their glum scenarios. He was depressed already. I’m not asking you to support me in this. He felt cornered. He’d never been so impolitic as to suggest Margaret’s quest was quixotic or to openly oppose, though he had supportively urged her to think it over. Everyone hates politicians, why would a sane person want the job? Sitting in a raucous chamber with 308 preening narcissists. Giving up the great civil liberty called privacy. What Arthur most feared was that politics would corrupt Margaret, but of course he hadn’t the courage to say that.
He lit his pipe, subsided onto a bench at the foot of Summit Trail, dug out the no-return-address envelope from his pack, and tore it open. Folded within was a note: “For your eyes only,” and initials, “E.S.” Who might that be? Stapled to it, a one-page report, obviously a photocopy, from the discipline committee of the B.C. Law Society. The date was September 8, 2006, it was stamped “classified,” and had to do with unguarded remarks made by Provincial Judge J. Dalgleish Ebbe. It seemed unconnected with anything Arthur might be interested in, but he read on.
The matter was referred by a barrister who need not be named, who was among several counsel having cocktails with Judge Ebbe in a lounge after court. The judge was overheard to excoriate Mr. Justice Rafael Whynet-Moir, using foul language. He claimed His Lordship and his spouse were major contributors to the Conservative Party and accused him of bribing the justice minister, the late Hon. Jack Boynton, Q.C., to get the appointment.
As Arthur recalled, Boynton had named Whynet-Moir to the Supreme Court in late summer of 2006. Judge Ebbe often liked to entertain after court and was notorious for his acerbic tongue. The humourless tattler was doubtless a priggish and unseasoned counsel.
Judge Ebbe is alleged to have accused Mr. Justice Whynet-Moir of having been corrupt when in practice, and close to Boynton. He is reported to have said, “Someone would be doing a blow for justice if he’d drop him down a well.” The committee is of the unanimous view that this matter need not be referred to the judicial council and that, because a fair amount of alcohol was likely consumed, no action need be taken.
Arthur gazed up at Chickadee Ridge, Mount Norbert’s western wall looming through the mist. “Why me?” he asked the air. Why was this anonymously sent, and why to Arthur? That teased at him. He must fax it to Pomeroy.
He stared up at the switchback trail, seven hundred more feet to climb. The air was less hazy here, and Norbert faintly beckoned, double-humped like a Bactrian camel. Let’s see what you’re made of, Beauchamp.
It was mid-afternoon as he surmounted Chickadee Ridge, jutting out from Norbert’s fir-crowned crest. Normally this mesa afforded a sweeping overlook of farm, field, and forest, but today all he could see, through fog gaps, were hilltops on the horizon and a stretch of shoreline, the Queen of Prince George nudging into the dock on Ferryboat Road, bearing a throng of Christmas visitors.
There was Hamish McCoy’s community service project, and the energetic little fellow himself. Distantly came sounds of hammering and welding from his scaffold. Would it house a fifteen-foot-tall goddess of love and beauty? Would he put his own abstract stamp on the Venus de Milo? If one discounts the alleged exclusive to the Bleat, he has stayed tight-lipped about his vision.
McCoy had promised to haul the Fall of Icarus to Blunder Bay soon. Arthur regretted having spoken so glowingly of it. What was he to do with a bronze sculpture the height of two tall men? Put it up by the gate. The sight of doomed, horrified Icarus might deter unwanted visitors.
A couple of passing drivers honked, and McCoy waved back. The old scamp was in better emotional trim these days, with the tension of his trial over. He’d laid to rest his grievance against the suspect squealer, Zoller. “Oi’ve been given a rare break. There’s a toime for anger, a toime for forgiveness.” This was said in passing as Arthur was buying fencing wire and McCoy loading his truck with two-by-fours donated by the local lumberyard.
His watch said three o’clock, the shank of a rare December day, made warm as May by the sun reflecting off the whiteness below. The cheeky, cheery birds for which this ridge was named were calling “Dee-dee,” flirting and flitting sideways and upside down on the cones of the tree he was leaning against, several feet from the lip of the void. Below: a sixty-foot wall, a few firs and spindly oaks rooted in the crevasses.
He backed away, looked about, and found a fine resting place in the crook of an arbutus tree. The base of its smooth, barkless trunk made an ideal chair-back, and the low-slung winter sun was directly on him. To the east, he could make out the Gwendolyn Cliffs, fractured by the Gap Trail. A mist hovered above Gwendolyn Pond, from which a pair of grebes took wing into the mist, raising wakes. He was thankful he couldn’t see the carnage on the flatland by the beach, the twenty acres of spilled giants, firs, cedars, maples.
Parks Canada had decided to let those giants rest in peace, a graveyard with its sorrowful epitaphs about the depredations of man. Matters could have been immeasurably worse-the developer had proposed hundreds of lots and condos for these 580 acres. Arthur’s case for an injunction had wound its way to Ottawa, to the Supreme Court. At the eleventh hour, as the court was about to throw him out on his ear, Parks Canada announced it had bought Gwendolyn Valley. This was Margaret Blake’s triumph-after eighty days in a tree fort she’d won the Battle of the Gap, holding off the loggers, inspiring a campaign, winning over the public, the TV-watching masses, and, finally, the politicians.
He’d been proud of Margaret when she got that award from the International Wilderness Society. Now he felt hollow and cheap. I’ve heard your speech about politics a dozen times. With a steely stare at the stubborn old mule. I’m not asking you to support me in this. “Damn you, Beauchamp,” he shouted, “nor should she have to ask.” What a wretch you are, what an ingrate, you have devalued her before her comrades with your feigned, lukewarm show of support.
Yes, he will charm her dinner guests, he will be the prospective candidate’s perfect husband, he will proclaim his support, extol her-a fresh voice, Reverend Al called her. She’s just what we need in Parliament. (Of course, she has the merest hypothetical chance-a recent poll had the Greens at 11 per cent-so he’ll not find himself spending his winters in a rented flat in the frozen hell of Ottawa.)
And with that resolved, pleased with his solution to a needless nuptial irritant, he sensed a burden lift, sensed it soaring off to join the three bald eagles drifting on updrafts from the Gwendolyn cliffs. He smiled and zipped up his jacket. He drifted off.
He awoke shivering, thinking he’d been blinded, then saw by the glow of his watch it was a quarter to six, already night, the early blackness of winter, hours after he was expected home. An owl whistling above him in the arbutus branches, that is what woke him, and the chill. Only starlight above, no lights below. As he scrambled to his feet, he sensed a whisper of wings, the owl abandoning him. Which way was down? How close was the precipice? He checked his pocket. Half a packet of penny matches.