She was getting ready for her role. It was the actress in her. I knew the actress she was. Two years ago, I watched my own three-month performance. I never faulted it. I didn’t know it was a performance. Then the bad times came. Then the acting stopped. It wasn’t needed anymore. No one needs to act for someone they love. We all know that.
We didn’t know the rules of the game. Could we make our own? Could we make him play by ours?
If we could make the rules, and if we did make them, could we make them as we went along? Perhaps we could. If we made them as we went along, could we change them as we went along? Perhaps we could.
Would our rules unbalance him? Would I glimpse his closed places again? Like I did before?
But could we make the rules? And could we change them as we went along? Would Prouse make the rules? Have us play by them?
The Major came too. I wasn’t surprised. He came on board first. Prouse came on second. Nelson did not approve.
It was as though there was no past. No memory of the things that happened. He was pleasant, he was polite, he was charming. He shook my hand. He wished me happy Christmas. He wished me a prosperous New Year. This was not the man who ‘inconceivabled’ me in Eaton Square. But yes it was. This was not the man who tried to destroy me. But yes it was. This was not the man who arranged for the things that happened to Annie. But yes it was. This was the man I hated more than any other person on the planet. I knew he felt the same. So, we were polite.
He kissed her on the hand. Then he kissed her on both cheeks. He held her hand. He looked at her palm. He looked at the scar of the crucifixion. The crucifixion he arranged. He didn’t smile or frown. It was a look of dispassionate interest. A look, empty of all good things. He kept his closed places closed. I, almost, admired his cool. I didn’t admire the cold, uncaring solipsism of his warped and buckled mind.
She didn’t wear the eyepatch. The ruined eye, the deformed socket, were not pretty things to see. When first seen, less pretty things to see. When seen in isolation, ugly things to see. When seen in the wholeness of the strange and arcane beauty of her face, they weren’t ugly things to see. Not to me.
He looked at her face with the same regard. The same lack of regard. I hated this man. I didn’t show him how much I hated him. I think he knew already.
Once, Annie was his mistress. Once, perhaps, he saw her beauty. Once, perhaps, he cared for her.
Once, Annie was his mistress. For years she was his mistress. He wanted her for her beauty and her height. He was small and average. She wasn’t small or average. He looked insignificant, even when he wasn’t. She didn’t look insignificant, because she wasn’t. So, when people looked at her, they looked at him. He liked that. It made him significant. It made him not insignificant. Everyone needs to feel significant, for some of the time.
Of course he was significant. He was a man of wealth and power. He knew he was significant. He just didn’t look it. Life can be cruel.
Everyone needs to feel significant, for some of the time. Everyone needs to feel special, for some of the time. To feel significant and special, to some other person, for all of the time. That can be hard. I knew how hard.
Those things were done to her, because she loved me. Because he thought I loved her. But I didn’t. It was the time I hated her. Thought I hated her. But I didn’t. It was a complicated time.
He thought doing those things would hurt us both. But it didn’t, not then. I didn’t care for her, not then. Not after the bad things she did. I hated her. I thought I did. I didn’t. I was wrong. It was a complicated time.
We drank Mumm in the saloon. We ate on the fantail. Mr James sat with the Major. The Major never took his eyes off me. Mr James never took his eyes off the Major.
I don’t remember what we ate. There were more important things to remember. We went back to the saloon. Julie brought in the girls. Prouse gooed-and-gahed. It was a performance. It was his caring uncle routine. I saw it once before. This caring uncle was really King Herod. I knew that. King Herod killed boys. Prouse would kill anyone.
The A’s smiled at me. I knew what was about to happen. I knew what they planned. They were about to pull their ‘Kings-tennis-stunt’.
They took off their tops. The girls were hungry. Annie put Catherine to her left breast. I knew why she did that. She did it to give Prouse full view of the scars. The scar above her right breast. The scars from the knife. The scars from the surgery to keep her alive.
I almost admired his cool, before. But not now. Now, for a moment, he gave me a clear, clean view of his inside places. His closed places. For a moment, I saw the man he was, really was. The man he was when he was alone. The man he saw when he looked in the mirror. An insecure man. A man of wealth and power. A man insecure in his wealth and power. A man who looked in the mirror and saw a little man, a man who should be a better man than the man he knew he was, really was.
I was like that, until I met Annie.
He saw me look into his closed places. He knew what I saw. He knew I saw the man he really was. The small, insecure, weak man. He saw me see it. He knew I knew it.
But it wasn’t the scars on Annie’s chest that opened his closed places. It was her breasts. The sudden appearance of breasts. Of Annie’s breasts, of Ambrosia’s breasts. The nurturing of young.
To breastfeed was abhorent. The sight of it disgusted him. It was a vulgar thing, a disgusting thing, a lower demographic thing. His deep places opened. I looked inside.
Annie’s scars didn’t trouble him. The sight of ‘Motherhood’ did. Ambrosia’s big black breast suckling a small white child. The slurping sounds of hunger.
As Ambrosia fed, the unoccupied breast leaked milk down her tummy. It always did. I was used to it. Prouse wasn’t. It horrified him. He wanted to be elsewhere. His dark places opened. I looked inside.
We weren’t winners, not yet. We were ahead on points.
We talked of nothing in particular. We talked for half an hour. Julie took the girls away. Prouse said he should go. He said they would sail that night. Their launch came over.
We stood at the rail, as we waited for it to come. Prouse turned to me and shook my hand. He said in a quiet voice, “This looks as though it’s going to be a long game, Tarquin, so, stay fit… All of you.” It was the most sinister thing I ever heard.
Prouse boarded first. Nelson did not approve.
Fourteen
Tommy got his first, and I knew he would; there was never really much doubt that he would. I met Dr Walker at his graduation, the one for his degree, for his first, his 1.1, not the one for his doctorate. That wouldn’t be for another six months and we would have to fly back from Darwin for that. I knew Tommy would want to receive it, and why wouldn’t he, because why would anyone not want to receive their doctorate?
I thought I knew him well by then, but sometimes he surprised me. Most of the surprises were small, but sometimes they weren’t, and sometimes they were big, so maybe he wouldn’t want to come and receive it after all. I wasn’t sure. In the end, he did, but not for a long time. For a long time, there were other things to occupy his mind, and receiving his doctorate wasn’t that important to him, not until much later.
I could never be absolutely sure what Tommy wanted to do. I could read most of him, most of the things he was thinking, most of the time, but there would always be parts kept closed to me, and they were those parts he kept closed to everyone. I think I was responsible for those closed parts that never saw the light. They were there when I first met him, but they weren’t closed to me then, because he didn’t know he had those parts. Those parts weren’t closed back then, because you can’t close something you don’t know you have.
Now, he knew those parts were there, and he didn’t like them being there. He didn’t like them being a part of him, and that’s why he hid them away from us all. He tried pretending they weren’t there, and that they we
ren’t a part of him, but we both knew that they were. They were the bits I saw when he rang me that awful day, when he said all those terrible things to me, the things that made me sadder than I had ever been sad before. They were the things we both wanted to forget. So, now he knew the man he was, but he didn’t want to be all of the man he was. He didn’t want to be the man who said things like the things he said to me that day, the things that made me know that I’d made a mess of my life, and of Tommy’s life too, and that I’d lost the only man I’d ever loved. It was the worst time of my life. You may know that already.
Neither of us wanted him to be that man again. That man wasn’t the man I loved. We were lucky that, the man he didn’t want to be, disappeared back down into his hidden places. But it worried me that he was still there, somewhere, and I think it worried him too. Sometimes it’s not so good to ‘know thyself’.
There were lots of things that were to happen, before I could watch the Vice-Chancellor hand him his doctorate and doff his cap. That’s what the rest of this book is all about.
Tommy flew home a week before us. He said he had some business to attend to. He asked us to pack up the house and ship things home. I was happy to do that, but I did wonder what the ‘some business’ was.
Fifteen
Perhaps I should have told him face to face. Perhaps I should have asked my son Iain to do it for me. Perhaps I should never have told him at all. Sometimes it’s best, for the people we work for, not to know the things we know. In my line of work you find out a lot of things the client wouldn’t want to know, so sometimes we don’t tell them. It’s always a difficult decision to make.
People think of me as a dour and unemotional old Scotsman and, I suppose, in many ways, I am. But I had grown to like Tom, and I had grown to like his family too. People thought of me as dour, and with that came the expectation that I would be a Scottish Jove, a man to sit in judgement on the lives of others, but I’m not like that. That’s not the man I am. That was the man my father was. He was all John Knox and hellfire. I am not like my father, however much it may appear that I am.
My grandfather started the company that I now run. In those days it was about hiring hard men to protect rich men. Hiring the hard men of Glasgow to protect the rich men of Glasgow. His trick was to hire harder men than the hard men he was protecting his rich men from. A lot of what we do now is much the same. We just do it with more sophistication. My father made us National and I made us International. Occasionally I have to deal with Hollywood film stars. Most of them are nicer than their reputations suggest, but their managers aren’t. Film-star managers and sports-star managers are never nice people. I have to deal with Russian oligarchs and Gulf oil pumpers too, and they are never nice people either. Now, I leave most of that to my sons. I have four sons.
I put my youngest son, Iain, in charge of the Laroche-Lodge family and the Laroche Trust. I trusted him, and I knew he would do it well. I wanted him to take charge of it, and for it to be the one thing he did for us. I knew it would be hard for me not to interfere.
In any line of work that involves human interaction, there will always be favourites. I like most of my clients, but have learned, over the years, that it is harder to like an oil sheik or a rich Russian. I liked Tom, and I wanted to protect him. I knew who and what I needed to protect him from, and I knew it better than he did. When Tom had his family, I knew I needed to protect them too. I knew the sort of man Sir Peter Prouse was, because our paths had crossed before, and I knew things wouldn’t be finished yet, and I knew that Sir Peter’s setback with the Melancholy would only enhance his antipathy towards Tom.
We found out who Anne’s attackers were. Tom asked us, often, if we had. I’m not sure, in retrospect, whether we should have told him, but I think it would have been wrong for us to have known, and for us not to have told him. So, we told him what we’d learned, and he told us what he wanted. Some of what he wanted was on the edge of what the law would find acceptable, but he was the client and I felt we should comply with his requests. I had a long talk to Iain and he said he would make the arrangements.
Sixteen
The dogs knew it was me before I got out of the car. Dogs can do that. I don’t know how. It must be smell. They couldn’t see me. They couldn’t hear me. It must be smell.
I like dogs. I always have. My first dog was Candy. She was a cocker spaniel. Mother gave her to me for my birthday. I was six. I loved her. My father shot her. I hated my father. You know that already.
I like dogs. I don’t understand them. Not really. I’d like to understand them. Understanding dogs, would make me a better person. We all want to be better people. Well, most of us.
The dogs were pleased to see me. I was pleased to see them. I didn’t have a tail to wag, to show them how much.
Wouldn’t it be good if we had tails? How much of the world’s misunderstandings could be avoided if we had tails? Sitting on a chair might be hard.
Life without a dog can be a difficult life. Life with a dog can be a difficult life. All life can be difficult. It was never meant to be easy. But life with a dog is an easier life. Most of the time. Trust me.
‘Oh Lord, please let me be the man my dogs think I am.’
(I’m not religious either.)
When Roman generals rode in ‘triumph’, a slave stood beside them in the chariot. He whispered, “You are not a god. You are not a god. You are not a god.” The dogs do the same for me. I can’t pretend to the dogs. They may think I’m perfect, but they know who I am. In the knowing of who I am, they accept me as who I am. They don’t judge me for the parts I hide away. They knew those parts of me, from the start. Knew them before I did. Dogs know who you are. If you want to live a lie, don’t keep a dog.
But enough of dog philosophy. This is a racy novel, with evil villains, good guys and big-breasted women.
So, why did I come back early? So, why did I come back alone? I came back early and I came back alone, because there was something I needed to do. And I didn’t want them around when I was doing it.
Iain told me the things I wanted him to tell me. The things I’d wanted to know for two years. He knew the names of the rapists. The two mutilating, crucifying rapists. And now, I knew them too.
As rapists do, almost always do, they did it again. It was what Mr Munroe said at the start. It was why Mr Munroe was optimistic from the start. “Sooner or later, Tom, we’ll know them.” He was right. We knew them.
Another woman had to be raped, before we knew them. That was a sad thing. They were brothers. They worked together. They weren’t ‘Hells Angels’. They were the other lot.
They raped her behind a nightclub. They raped her at three o’clock in the morning. They raped her on CCTV. Bikers aren’t smart.
In all of recorded history, nothing good has ever happened behind a nightclub at three o’clock in the morning. We all know that. If you didn’t know that, you should. Anyway, you do now.
Their DNA matched what they put into Annie. Matched the specimens the doctor took out of Annie. I didn’t ask Iain how he found out. I knew Munroe & Sons had ways of finding things out. Things they weren’t meant to find out. I knew that from the time they told me about Annie’s bank accounts, and Southwell’s and Karlsberg’s too. You may know about that already.
I knew that from the time they showed me things. Things that were photos of Annie kissing Prouse. Things that were photos of Annie, Prouse and the Major, the three of them boarding a boat called Esmeralda. Things that were papers for her gallery, financed by Prouse, owned by Prouse. Things that were papers for her apartment, financed by Prouse, owned by Prouse. Things from the time I started not to love her. Things from the lowest point of my life. Well, the lowest point so far.
Iain said they had their ways. I never asked him about their ways. I was happy they had their ways, that was all. Without their ways, my life would be a disaster. A disaster then, a disaster l
ater, a disaster now.
The brothers were in jail, in Remand, not in General Population. There were always bikers in Remand, we were counting on that. We couldn’t get to them there. We knew people who could. I decided to visit.
I took Macs and Jimmies, a lot of them. It was the smart thing to do.
Seventeen
Tommy didn’t tell me why he needed to go home before us, but I knew it was something he had to do on his own. Something he didn’t want us to know about. I hoped it wasn’t anything bad, and not something that could upset the happy life we all had now, and not something that was dangerous.
I could ‘read’ Tommy, right from the start. It was as though he was written in Calibri 24, but when we met again, after the disaster with the Melancholy, he was a different man.
Now there were ‘No Go’ areas that were never there before. There were whole new chapters to him that I couldn’t read. There were places he kept closed to me, and I couldn’t reach them, however much I tried. Even after he forgave me, those places stayed closed. I was responsible for those closed places, and for the reasons he kept them closed.
It worried me, when I thought about what he might be going home to do, and how it might affect the happiness we had, and that by doing, what I thought he might be doing, we could see our happiness ‘thrown into the hazard’.
I knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid, because he wasn’t a stupid man, but I thought he might be going to do something that would change what we knew was valuable, invaluable, the richness of the peace we had. He said he’d made peace with Peter, but now I wasn’t so sure.
A Judgement on a Life Page 7