I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (39 page)

He lived almost monastically after that trial, working eighty hours a week, winning cases, building his reputation, and restricting his bacchanals to weekends – these were invariably celebrations of hard-fought victories. (The most impressive, the controversial 1965 defence of fraud artist Tony d'Anglio, entangled the mayor and several veteran city councillors.)
^*

Many are deceased who were witnesses or otherwise involved in the Swift case, and some who survived were unwilling or unable to share their memories with me. Shortly after her husband's death, Irene Mulligan sold the Squamish Valley hobby farm to the University of British Columbia, and its residence has remained as a grant-funded writers' retreat. At the time of this writing she was close to a hundred years old, living in the small coastal town of Fanny Bay under the care of a full-time nurse, who rebuffed my attempts to talk with her elderly charge.

The neighbours across the way have gone to their reward, and Doug Wall to his, when an over-liquored hunting companion mistook him for a bear. Swift's former girlfriend, Monique Joseph, remains alive, though her parents do not; she refused to meet with me.

Among the police, Sergeant (later Inspector) Roscoe Knepp, in his late eighties at the time of this writing, lives in a retirement community in Arizona. Brad Jettles, in his mid-seventies, is a victim of advanced Alzheimer's. Gene Borachuk remains hale and hearty at seventy-three, owner of a successful trekking and outback equipment business in Whistler. A notorious event (and controversial, because theories abound) brought a sudden end to the life of Walt Lorenzo: he died in an unsolved drive-by shooting shortly after retiring in 1983.

As to Swift, no one could have predicted what would befall him in the penitentiary in 1967, or the unexpected events that followed.
^*
These would reignite in profound ways Beauchamp's sense that he'd failed his client's trust.

THE PUNISHMENT

C
ompetitors are barred from the community hall while the Fall Fair judges sniff, snip, finger, and taste, so I limp about the booths, sharing with friends the blessings of a sunny summer day, hiding my tension with strained exuberance. I stop awhile to enjoy the Fensom Family Singers on the open-air stage. I watch demonstrations by spinners, weavers, and quilters.

A quilt designed as a map of Garibaldi Island is being raffled for the Build-a-Library campaign. Among its points of interest, in stitched black lettering, is the farm I have shared with Margaret Blake for the past dozen years: Blunder Bay, named after homesteader Jeremiah Blunder, who met his end in 1895 when, overcome with drink, he fell headfirst into his well. His ghost still haunts the island, it is said.

A supporter of folk arts, I invest heavily in tickets for the quilt. Margaret has a taste for the exotic; should I win, I'll gift it to her, another gesture of amends for my flaccid failures of the marital bed. My partner, younger by nearly two decades, sublimates, finding release in the frenzied heat of politics. For the past four years she has been the Green Party's lone voice in the House of Commons. Though Parliament is in summer recess, the member for Cowichan and the Islands is forever bustling off to do her political work: green events, weddings, civic celebrations. Shared moments of intimacy have become sporadic and rare.

I have had nightmares in which Margaret fades from me into the distance, into the arms of another. Different settings, different supporting casts, same plot. She will be returning to Ottawa in eight days for the fall session, to which she's been looking forward with unsettling eagerness. Politics, that delusive art, has become her world. I have given up trying to keep pace. I tested a couple of Ottawa winters, found the weather unforgiving, apartment life unbearable, and retreated to the full-time lonely comforts of my West Coast home.

I linger awhile at the sheep-shearing, then join Margaret at the animal pens, where she has been all morning, giving pointers to two young Japanese women who will be showing five of Blunder Bay's less rambunctious goats, three snarling geese, and a rooster and hen, our entries for the livestock prize. Yoki and Niko are enrolled in Willing Workers on Organic Farms – known familiarly as
WOOF
ers – youthful rovers who trade half a day's labour for room and board. They come, they go, but these two have been around for two months, living in the refurbished house of Ms. Blake – former neighbour, present spouse.

As I slip an arm around her waist, she says, “Did you see that quilt with the misshapen island map? Beyond ugly.”

My arm tightens and I stop breathing for a moment. I must now pray that my twenty tickets will be buried deep in the raffle box.

“Arthur, you're squeezing too hard.”

“Sorry.” I remove the offending hand, stick it in my pocket.

Our attention is diverted by Rosencrantz the rooster, who has somehow escaped his pen and is desperately trying to take wing. Yoki, one of the
WOOF
ers, calls out, “Sorry!” – one of the few English words she's mastered – and charges off in pursuit.

A few judges emerge from the hall, two of them slightly wobbly: arbiters of the homemade wine and beer. The children's art judge joins them, fumbling for her cigarettes. Only minutes remain before the doors are opened and the winners announced. My tension isn't allayed when I spy Doc Dooley sprawled on a grassy knoll, smiling, too composed. I wonder if he's stoned.

There will be no avoiding Stan Caliginis, now done with his wine-judging duties, who is inexorably approaching. Chair of the Newcomers Club, one of the well-fixed parvenus who've begun to infest the Gulf Islands. Retired investor, instant farmer, self-proclaimed
cognoscente
of fine wines, he's been resuscitating the Bulbaconi vineyard on the Centre Road bypass, which went broke a decade ago. His other less than admirable qualities include being trimly handsome (though half a foot shorter than me) and recently divorced.

He plants himself in front of me with extended hand. “Been reading your biography, Mr. Beauchamp. Totally absorbed in it.”
Bo-chom
. Caliginis could not have been totally absorbed in its preface, which instructs readers in the anglicized pronunciation. “Amazing stuff.” With that apparent compliment, Caliginis turns on his bright smile for Margaret. “Dying for a chance to consult with you, Ms. Blake. Professionally, of course. Not in the market for free advice.” A man of incomplete sentences.

I'm shocked she would give ear to this poseur. Intends to go organic with his grapes. Delighted to pay for a day's consultation. Margaret regretfully declines; she no longer practises as a professional agronomist. But, he implores, she must come anyway, and bring her equally illustrious husband, enjoy an afternoon at the heated pool. Share a glass of a delightful Mendocino Pinot Gris he's discovered – silky texture, very pleasant finish. Debate the pressing issues of the day.

Such issues as the woeful state of the planet, climate change, species loss – yes, Caliginis has an interest in all things green. He even manages to turn the topic to the sad state of Canadian politics, the urgent need for electoral reform. I find myself irritated that he unerringly hits so many of Margaret's buttons.

I wait until he wanders off. “Were you actually buying the guff from that sheep's-clothing environmentalist? I heard he was gaming the market. Derivatives. Sub-prime mortgages.”

“Well, he's out of it now, isn't he? Some people change.”

I'm not sure if she's taking a poke, so I don't say – though I want to bellow it – that no one has changed more than the emotionally bulldozed son of Mavis and Thomas Beauchamp
(requiescant in pace
, side by side, in the same cemetery as the recently disinterred foot).

Margaret has to judge the scarecrow contest, so I'm left alone with Gretchen, the blue-ribbon nanny, feeding her alfalfa over the enclosure. Down by the stage, a throng has gathered about the Fensom Family Singers, who are going full tilt, building on their success at the Fulford Harbour Folk Festival.

At the rim of the crowd, I am astounded to see Professor Dermot Mulligan – slightly shorter than I remember, and balder, but with his trademark black horn-rims – and he's tapping his feet to “Oh! Susanna.” Reason quickly rebels. Mulligan would be almost a hundred years old were he alive today. In the time it takes me to find my glasses, the doppelganger has vanished into the crowd.

A mirage brought on by my brooding over the Gabriel Swift appeal, which is less than a month away. I'd learned Gabriel was in La Paz, Bolivia, on a project to conserve the language of a remote aboriginal community. Several calls went unanswered before I finally received an email from him, terse, almost curt, granting me permission to file the appeal. It concluded, “Good luck,” which I read (wrongly, I hope) as grudging and sardonic.

It's a rare appeal – of a conviction founded on a guilty plea – and will involve two days of contention with three appeal justices crankily poring through evidence half a century old. I have new proofs, but even to my biased eye they seem inconclusive. My chances of reversing an ancient guilty plea are scant, the effort a cause for cynical snickering among lawyers; it will be a dismal way to make my final exit from the bar. But I will do all I'm capable of for my Squamish brother. My counterpart,
my white, polite, bourgeois brother, you worshipped him too
.

This is a debt that has eaten away at me for five decades. I will not be released from it even if I win.

The fellow in horn-rims appears again. Doesn't look at all like Mulligan. But the
trompe l'oeil
has me tangled once again in the mystery of his disappearance. Though my mind struggles with recent memory, long-ago events regularly intrude in high definition. Constable Jettles, with his excellent eye for pecker tracks on pink panties. Thelma McLean, whose own underwear was thieved from the clothesline. Was it you, Dermot; were you the panty pincher?

The Fensoms have finally run out of repertoire, and now the public address system squawks. “Arthur Beauchamp, you're wanted on the main stage. Arthur Beauchamp.”

I fear I have won the raffle, the beyond-ugly quilt.

“Arthur Beauchamp. Come on up here, old fella.” The booming imperatives of Scotty Phillips, master of ceremonies, fetch me to the stage, where I see a blue ribbon clutched in Scotty's hand. Hope soars.

“Here's Arthur now.” A full-throated roar into a microphone, speakers at full volume. “One of our best-loved seniors, Arthur Beauchamp.” Scotty drags me before the mike. “Okay, we're starting off here with a novelty category – best pumpkin. And it goes to old Arthur Beauchamp!”

I manage to spout some words of thanks and tribute to the losers, then shuffle offstage, still smarting from Phillips's impertinent introduction. Ageism. Taking my place is the women's softball team – Nine Easy Pieces, they call themselves – unbeaten champs of the inter-island league. Up there with them, on behalf of their sponsors, the Newcomers Club, is Stan Caliginis. He and Scotty lead a round of hip-hip-hoorays.

Reverend Al Noggins, the handicrafts convenor, exits the hall and shares a few pleasantries with Doc Dooley, then strolls over and puts an arm around me as if in consolation.

“Out with it,” I say. “Who got the Orfmeister?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then what were you talking to Dooley about?”

“The weather, old boy, the fine weather. Relax, for Christ's sake.” He tugs at my sleeve. “Let's wander over to the dunk tank. Could be worth a chuckle. Nelson Forbish has volunteered to go first.”

I find myself squeezed among the jostling mob in front of the dunk tank, a re-engineered cedar hot tub. Above it is a banner that shouts “Fun Raiser for the Library!” Forbish, the three-hundred-pound editor of the island weekly,
The Bleat
, ventures up the creaking steps to the catbird seat. He is shirtless and shoeless, a pair of cut-offs belted somewhere among the multiple folds of his belly. Gasps from onlookers as he settles into place, turning to cheers when the seat holds.

A young lad picks up an old, much-abused softball and rears back to lob it at a target that, if tripped, will release the ejection
seat. The throw goes awry, as do two further tries, and Forbish raises an arm in triumph. Baldy Johansson is next, but he's had a few in the beer garden and his throws are wildly off the mark. Tension mounts as two more contenders fail.

Into this picaresque scene comes Stan Caliginis, this time with Tildy Seares, star chucker of the Pieces. The crowd chants, “Tildy, Tildy.” She hefts the lumpy ball, tosses it in the air, getting its weight. Her arm whirls like a propeller and she fires a strike down the middle of the plate. A squeak of terror from Forbish as he begins his fall. As he hits the water a tsunami rises, swamping me and several unlucky others.