William Deverell
Trial of Passion
PART ONE
May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me.
Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. PATRICIA BLUEMAN
Q
You are a retired minister?
A
I was an Anglican bishop.
Q
And how old are you?
A
Seventy-nine.
Q
Where do you live?
THE COURT:
Please sit down if you’d be more comfortable, Dr. Hawthorne. This is only a preliminary hearing, quite informal. (Witness sits.)
A
At 137 Palmer Avenue in West Vancouver.
Q
Do you live there alone?
A
I am a widower. I have a housekeeper — Mrs. Mary Mcintosh.
Q
Okay, and your neighbour on your left, as you face the street, that would be 141 Palmer?
A
Yes.
Q
And do you know who lives there?
A
Professor Jonathan O’Donnell.
Q
He’s acting dean of law at the University of British Columbia?
A
Yes, I have known him for many years.
Q
And do you see him in court?
A
Sitting right there.
Q
Identifying the accused, for the record. Now I want to take you back to the late-night hours of last Friday, November twenty-seventh. Were you at home on that evening?
A
I retired at about nine p.m. I had fallen asleep in an armchair while reading and Mrs. McIntosh aroused me and sent me off to bed.
Q
And did something later awake you?
A
There was a great hullabaloo at the front door. I’m not sure what time it was, in the small hours at least. Mrs. Mcintosh has her room upstairs at the back, so I was first to the door.
Q
And what transpired?
A
It was a female voice, but the words were unintelligible. I opened the door and a young woman was standing there.
Q
And did this woman subsequently identify herself?
A
Ah, yes, her name is, ah … Miss Kimberley Martin.
Q
Now tell us what you observed.
A
Well. .
THE COURT:
Just what you saw, Dr. Hawthorne. In your own words.
A
Well, she was, ah, somewhat in a state of nudity.
Q
Somewhat. What do you mean?
A
She was naked, except. . she was wearing a tie.
Q
Please describe it.
A
It was very garish, brightly coloured.
Q
But it was a man’s tie?
A
Oh, yes. I really wasn’t focusing very well, but I thought it depicted a scene on a beach, with a tropical palm.
Q
All right, where was she wearing this tie?
A
Where? In the, ah, normal place. I mean, I know this wasn’t a normal situation. Around her neck. Properly knotted.
Q
Do you recognize this?
A
It could be the one.
Q
Exhibit One, your honour. Was she wearing anything else?
A
Well, a gold necklace. Quite expensive, I thought. A large cross suspended from it.
Q
Do you recognize this item?
A
Yes, that looks like it.
Q
Exhibit Two. How was she wearing this item?
A
Right, um, between her breasts. It had somehow got wrapped around the tie.
Q
What else did you notice about her appearance?
A
She was covered with red, ah, streaks and daubs. Her lower body, and also her breasts.
Q
Explain what you mean.
A
Mrs. McIntosh later recognized it as lipstick.
MR. CLEAVER:
Can we avoid the hearsay?
Q
Describe these daubs.
A
Well, red smears, mostly, right around her body, up her legs and thighs and pelvis to the middle of her abdomen. Where her skin wasn’t smeared, there was a pattern, a jagged series of peaks and valleys — drawn as one might portray waves on a stormy ocean. And her breasts, ah, seemed to be coloured, too. With that same bright red, and her entire, ah, nipples. Excuse me.
THE COURT:
Can you get the witness a glass of water? (Witness sips water.)
Q
Okay, and what was this woman, Miss Martin, doing?
A
Well, just standing there, shaking. It was cold. And she was yelling, “He’s going to kill me. Help me.” I must say, I was quite frightened.
Q
And what did you do?
A
Well, Mrs. McIntosh had come down by then, and of course we brought her into the house, and we found a blanket to cover her, and we made some tea.
My daughter stands sternly before me like a teacher confronting an errant child. Deborah is, in fact, a teacher — of those children we formerly called slow learners — and addresses me as such, patient and resolute.
“Father, please listen to me. You can’t cook. You can’t make a bed. And that old house — I don’t think you’ve ever hammered a nail in your life. What is this, some kind of male menopause?”
“My dear, I am simply retiring from the wicked practices of the law.”
Seeking safety, I burrow between the sheltering arms of my favourite club chair, a padded refuge that over the years has moulded to my sylphlike shape until the chair and I are one, whole, indivisible. To part with this chair would be to part with an old and valued friend. The chair will go with me to Garibaldi Island. My wife, suddenly in the springtime of her life, will not.
From the enfolding warm prison of my chair, I can hear young Nick, Jr., restless, prowling about the house, an eight-year-old addict of the multichannel universe. Annabelle and I have forbidden television here, the pabulum upon which he feeds at home. Nicholas Braid, Deborah’s husband, who is “into” (his preposition) mutual funds, is playing golf on the carpet, practising his putting. He finally speaks:
“Arthur, do you have the foggiest idea what it’s like to live on one of those Gulf Islands? Been to Garibaldi. Full of yokels. Potheads.” Nicholas tends to burp his sentences.
“Is there even a telephone in that godforsaken place?” Deborah asks. “A doctor? What if you have a major stroke this time?”
“I am retiring to the country so I may avoid another stroke. It was just a gentle warning, my dear.”
“A gentle warning you’re about twenty pounds overweight.”
“I intend to shape up and chill out, if that’s the au courant expression. I am on the cusp of sixty-three. A richness of poetry has been written that I have not had the time and comfort to enjoy. I intend to hone my skills with rake and hoe.” Gardening has been my one great delectation, my solace, my escape. Yes, the trials of Arthur Beauchamp are at an end. He is retiring in corpore sano.
“I don’t suppose your wife is objecting.” Deborah says this in the manner of someone who knows such person only casually. The wife, my darling Annabelle, gave her suck.
“She’s in accord with my wishes.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Deborah,” warns her husband.
Out of habit, I leap to Annabelle’s defence. “She has her career. I can’t ask her to abandon it.” Annabelle has only recently become artistic director of the Vancouver Opera Society.
“Oh, yes, mother is busy, busy, busy. That ridiculous facelift.”
“Let’s change the subject,” says Nicholas, as he aims a three-foot putt at a plastic cup.
The subject, Annabelle Beauchamp, my dear wife, is in the kitchen making canapes. These two warring foes, daughter and mother, have begun to resemble each other ever more closely as one grows older, the other younger. How complimented I feel that Annabelle has shed her carapace of older skin to be a wife who looks not fifty-three but half my age. Ah, but Annabelle has ever been a seeker of that legendary fountain that washes clean the waning years, the waters of eternal wrinklessness.