Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(47)

Margaret needed Arthur’s counsel, desperately. She would brave the scolding. Again came that little insistent voice. Time to get out of politics, girl. Pass the baton to the photogenic Cree warrior. Return to husband and hearth. She picked up her BlackBerry, fiddled with it, unsure how to break the news to him.

“What’s Margaret’s schedule?” Jennie asked Pierette.

“The midnight sun tour. Yellowknife tomorrow, noon flight. Then Whitehorse, Fort Smith, then down to her riding by the long weekend.”

“Maybe that gives us time to get a handle on this,” said Jennie. “God knows how, though.” Normally so cool, so efficient, Jennie seemed off balance. She went out for a smoke while Pierette made tea in the kitchen, allowing Margaret privacy. Arthur came on just as the message recorder was about to click in.

“Sorry, dear, I was watering the carrots. We’re suffering through another lovely summer day.” Trying to be jocular, sounding strained.

“Wish I could share your suffering. We have a typhoon. How are Yoki and Niko?”

“Safely back at the farm. False alarm, really, following an epic search.”

“I can imagine.”

“I doubt that you can.”

“Okay, hold the details until I see you on Saturday. And I really need to see you, darling. I don’t suppose you know how to tweet?”

“I hold to the view that tweeting is for the birds.”

There was no point giving him lessons now. Margaret took a deep breath and gave him the whole rundown, tweet by tweet. Pierette’s speculation regarding Montieth’s delay. Her planned trip to the far north. Arthur, sombre now, asked for the odd clarification but was mostly silent.

“Hold on a sec,” Margaret said, as Pierette hurried in from the kitchen, gaping at her iPhone. She stumbled blindly into and onto a stuffed chair, listening to her voice coming from that iPhone: “S and M. I got it. It’s a metaphor. As in Sour and Malicious, right?”

Followed by an even more familiar voice: “Wrong. Spank me, Mother, I’ve been a bad boy. Weekends with a Russian dominatrix. Svetlana something. Farquist likes giving her pony rides while she swats his ass with a riding whip.”

Then Pierette’s exclamation: “Freak out!”

Jennie bustled inside, tamping out her cigarette, in time to hear her own voice: “Hey, you guys, be careful.”

Then silence. Then Arthur’s faint inquiries, from the BlackBerry that Margaret had dropped on her foot. “Darling? Are you there? Hello?”

Margaret picked up the phone and put it on speaker. “Wow. Shit’s hit the fan, Arthur. Big time.”

Scrolling through her laptop, Jennie located this latest, climactic, spectacularly alarming tweet from BDsmother. Here’s how Loose Lips lose elections. And maybe the family farm. #SourAndMalicious #GreenPartyCanada. A link to a transcript of Margaret’s live chat with Pierette and another to the recording just played. All of fifteen seconds, but for Margaret time stood still. She trembled at the thought of the havoc to come, reporters breathing hot in her face, demanding answers, a possible lawsuit.

She could hardly bear having it played again, but Arthur insisted on it. Then she said, “So, I think I’m going to need a lawyer.”

“I shall find you the best specialist.”

“I don’t want any goddamn best specialist, Arthur. I want you.”

A long silence. Margaret sensed he was agonizing over this, over his vow never to walk again into a courtroom, that he was seeking words to explain how unprofessional it would be to represent a spouse in such circumstances. Lawyers were expected to maintain distance from their clients, to shield themselves from emotions and the clouding of reason.

But suddenly he blurted: “Yes! Of course! No problem!” He sounded enthusiastic, even triumphant. How bizarre. “Are Pierette and Jennie both with you?”

They waited until Pierette brought a tea tray, which she put down beside Margaret’s phone.

Arthur said, “I assume I have consent to represent all three of you.” No one demurred. “Very well, I am instructing you, on pain of excommunication from this planet, not to discuss this matter with the press or anyone. You needn’t be unpleasant with them, but your hands are tied.” A moment of reflection, then he laughed. “Well, that’s a rather unseemly metaphor, isn’t it?”

“Our tongues are tied and our lips sealed,” Pierette said, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Refer all inquiries to me as your lawyer. I’m including both of you, Pierette and Jennie, though you two may not be personally at risk.”

“Got it,” said Jennie. “We know too much.”

“I can’t comfortably make an afternoon flight, so I’ll be on the overnight. That will give us a few hours in the morning before Margaret has to leave for Yellowknife. Margaret, please pack your bags right away, and then all three of you are to head out to an airport hotel before the mob descends and stay there until I arrive.”

Margaret pointed out that an overnight would leave him exhausted, but her objection was overruled. He urged them to relax over a bottle of wine in their airport hotel room and leave their concerns with him. Everything would work out. At some future time, they would regale each other with tales about these hilarious events. Highly unlikely, Margaret thought, however reassuring.