Free Trial of Passion by William Deverell Page A

of us left in my car, Charles Stubb driving again, and a young girl Charles was with — I forget her name, Asian Canadian, first-year arts — and a notorious sluff-off by the name of Egan Chornicky — I don’t know how these people find their way into law school. He was blowing about a .30. And of course Kimberley Martin came along. The next scene plays out at my house
    Have I wronged Arthur Beauchamp in some way? We used to chum socially. He’s had dinner at my place, the very scene of the crime. He and his wife, Annabelle. Gowan, I beg, arrange for me to see him. Please.
    Annabelle gives me no warning, and I am flustered beyond words when, having driven over on the early Monday ferry, she materializes in front of my woodshed, incredibly beautiful, radiant and cheerful, carrying on as if it were only yesterday we parted. She wears a colourful
décolleté
sundress while I, of course, am adorned in the authentic garb of a rube, tractor cap, work boots, unshaven, unshorn, sweaty. I have been splitting wood.
    Undeterred by what she sees and smells, she kisses me full on the lips, and I let go the axe and it falls on my foot. (The blunt part, but it pains nonetheless. A pain that can be endured.)
    â€œBristly. Are you growing a beard, darling?”
    â€œWhat? Oh, no, I hadn’t thought so.”
    â€œI think you’d look lovely in one.”
    â€œI’m quite discombobulated.”
    â€œWhat an awful word.”
    â€œI’ll clean up. I was . . . I’ll show you the garden and . . . I have a boat now. My goodness, it’s delightful to see you.”
    I lead her past my vegetable patch towards my leaning tower of Pisa. As the construction of my new veranda advances, the house seems to heave ever more to one side. Fortunately the girls from Mop’n’Chop were recently here and cleaned up the construction mess.
    Annabelle sails inside and looks about with what seems an expression of approval — Janey and Ginger swabbed the inside as well.
    I shower. I change. I make lunch. I am grateful Annabelle is in a talkative mood, for I can find nothing worthwhile to say. She is in excellent spirits, teasing me gently about my hitherto-unappreciated survival skills with axe and hoe, and kitchen stove.
    It is a perfect June day under an effulgent sun, the island wearing a fresh green dress with floral decorations, so after lunch I take Annabelle touring in the Rolls-Royce, visiting many of the charming bays and overlooks.
    My island does not receive the cynical review I had expected.
    â€œIt seems all so calm and clean, and pretty,” she says. “Such a sleepy little island. I get so weary of Vancouver. Everything is so unnecessarily hectic. Arthur, you know, maybe I could come out here for a few weeks this summer. Maybe after
Götterdämmerung
gets under way.”
    â€œI’d love that. Come and enjoy the sunset of the gods here on Garibaldi. A spectacular performance every evening.”
    Do I mean this as devoutly as it sounds? Do I still desire the pain? There are narcotics fiercer than alcohol, more tenacious.
    I suggest a cruise over the waters next, but Annabelle is either leery of my seamanship or, as she says, prefers to exercise her legs, so our next journey leads us up an old fire road and through the forest. Annabelle, fitter than I — she has played tennis through the winter — is waiting at the bluffs at the top as I struggle around the last bend. Panting, wheezing, I light a cigarette.
    The rocks on which we stand are thick and soft with moss. Chickadees scamper among the fir and arbutus. From somewhere the perfect silence is broken by the elegiac, distant bleat of sheep. Garibaldi lies beneath us, seemingly lifeless, torpid. There is the general store and there the school and there my house, and my demesne. Sailboats struggle on the wind-calmed ocean. But above, a more skilled sailor floats on outstretched wings, a bald eagle canvassing its