Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(78)
“More common than you’d think,” said Tim. “But rarely admitted to, and hardly the subject of parlour-room chit-chat.” Timothy Jason Dare, MD, Ph.D., was a forensic psychiatrist, tall and bushy-haired, a friend of long standing, much called upon as an expert witness. His office was the upper floor of a houseboat moored off the busy market and expensive boutique shops of Granville Island.
Arthur had spent some time sketching the secret life of Emil Farquist, from birth to paternal defection to inferred incest to bondage and on to bribery. Tim had listened raptly. Though a confessed neurotic himself, with multiple phobias, he was an acute observer of the human condition.
He asked several questions, then sprawled on his patients’ divan, and delivered his verdict.
Though Tim was no Freudian, he believed there was much to be learned from the father of modern psychiatry. The theory of the Oedipus complex was not dead, it remained the basis of psychoanalytic theory: every male infant has an overwhelming desire for his mother, every female for her father. Drives so powerful that society demands they be suppressed.
“Normally by the post-Oedipal stage, the incest taboo has become imprinted. In this case, maybe not sufficiently. An innocent adolescent, his father lost to him at the age of eight, he may have succumbed to his lonely mother’s needs. She transferred the deep, unanswered love she felt for his father to Emil, thus the genetic attraction. It often begets a sense of repulsion, of shame. One could see how that would translate into a need for punishment. Bondage, pain, humiliation, self-hatred — seeking forgiveness for a sin he could not expunge from memory.”
A clean, concise summation. Tim went to a shelf filled haphazardly with books and journals. Several cascaded down as he poked among them. “There’s a published paper on GSA. Somewhere.”
While Tim rooted through the disarray on his shelves, Arthur took advantage of the break to mention, as casually as he could, his own odd experiences, his occasional ascents into a near-spiritual space of unwarranted peace and bliss.
Tim offered a smile of sympathy. “Have you been under pressure lately?”
“You have no idea.”
“Margaret’s trial. What could possibly have driven you to represent her?”
It was impossible to keep a secret from this discerning shrink. Tim had an instinct for reading people, their body language. “I did it out of guilt. There was a . . . an episode, a woman.”
“You old dog. We’re talking intercourse here?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Driven by guilt into a state of emotional frenzy. It’s good-old-fashioned stress, Arthur. It’s high stress, and, sure, some people snap. But not A.R. Beauchamp, his ego is healthy enough, despite all his self-flagellating, to merely send him to a better place. It’s how you preserve your sanity, through escape. Your unconscious mind has found a useful mechanism.”
“What do I do if it happens again?”
“Recognize it. Enjoy it.”
“It wasn’t the gupa?”
“What’s gupa?”
“Never mind.”
THE SPEAKER
Monday, November 25, was the brief opening day of a runt first session of the new Parliament: three weeks, then a break for the holidays. Margaret fully expected it to be the crappiest Christmas since God set her on this earth. She would have to brace herself for a week of intense prep — her bossy lawyer would fly out to Ottawa for that — then three days cloistered in a room in the Calgary Courts Centre with Emil Farquist, their lawyers, and an official court reporter.
She had just taken her seat in the Opposition backbenches, beside Jennie. MPs were filtering in through the chamber’s many orifices, and the galleries were almost full. Today’s sole item of business was the election of a Speaker. That promised to be quick because only one name had been put forward: Orvil Legault, a jovial old New Brunswicker. NDP members had been whipped into supporting him, one of the Liberal old guard. That still left the Liberals with a one-vote minority, thanks to Landslide Lloyd, who’d just taken his seat behind Margaret. She had deliberately assigned him that seat, so he’d be out of her view.
“Asshole alert,” said Jennie.
Margaret thought at first she meant Chalmers, but Jennie was indicating the heavyweight glad-handing his way along the Opposition front bench. Farquist finally approached his main rival, Clara Gracey — a favourite of the Conservative caucus, which no doubt irritated the shit out of the great man. Yet he had a slight lead in committed delegates, 43 percent to Clara’s 38, two outliers far behind.
Farquist made a show of shaking Clara’s hand, trading a bit of banter, then lowered his infamous bottom onto his seat on the Opposition front bench. It felt odd to be on his side of the aisle, getting a view of his rock-like skull.
It had been a struggle for Margaret to keep a lid on Glinka’s clandestine business with Igor Novotnik. She was seriously tempted to leak it anonymously somehow. No harm in going that far. There was proof, after all! Photographic evidence. It could be the only way to stop Coast Mountains Pipeline. They were already moving machinery into place, preparing to cut a swath through the Rockies.
But her overly cautious counsel would be furious if she even hinted at the Russian connection. Arthur had little appreciation for the art of politics. She was piqued at being held on a short leash.