But how the hell was I gonna find him and tell him all that stuff? I didn’t know.
So, I couldn’t find him by trying to find him. So, perhaps I could find him by trying to find who it was who was watching me. To find out if they were watching me, and if they were watching me, why they were watching me.
Were the watchers Tom’s or someone else’s? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure how to find out. But then I had an idea. It came to me out of deep left field.
Eight
I was sad when I lost our baby. That’s what people from ‘Tom’s world’ would call an ‘understatement’. That’s what people from ‘my world’ would call a ‘fucking understatement’, but not me. I was brought up to never say that word, and I’d only ever said it once, but you know about that already
I’d never wanted anything more in my life than to have Tom’s baby. I almost did, but I didn’t in the end. It was a little boy and I lost him. We both lost him. I was sadder than I ever thought it was possible to be sad.
I knew Tom was sad too and that his sadness was a ‘fucking understatement’ too. I knew he loved me, in that special way he had for loving me. That way that would always be enough for me. I knew he fully loved our baby, and didn’t need a special way to love him. I knew that losing our baby made him angry. Tom was never angry, but he was now.
It wasn’t ‘drunk in a bar on Saturday night’ type anger. It wasn’t anger you could see, not anger other people could see, but I could see it. I could see it and it frightened me.
Nine
So, I went to Leicester Square and gave fifty to a guy in a sandwich board. He said his boss wouldn’t be happy losing it, so I gave him a hundred.
I took it home and put it in my study. It was lunchtime and I knew my wife wouldn’t be home. She was never home at lunchtime. I went round the corner to the print shop in the high street. I knew what I wanted. I leafed through the plastic sheets with the big prints and found what I wanted. I needed two of them, but they only had one. So I bought something else too. Then I crossed the road to the toy shop and bought a Statue of Liberty mask. At the stationer’s I bought some paper glue. On my way home I ducked into the book shop and bought a Latin dictionary.
Ten
We knew where she was. Not where they were.
I flew to London. It was raining.
Mac and Jimmy met me. The men from the Siena met me. They rarely smiled in the Caribbean. They never smiled now. They were serious men. There were serious things to do. Their boss was killed. There would be consequences.
They drove me to Marlow. I stayed at a hotel by the river. It was important not to be seen.
Eleven
Tom flew off and left me and I knew he had to go. We talked about it the night before, we talked about all the things that could happen and all the things that might. He told me about things he would try to do and how he might try to do them. He talked about what he would do and what we would do if all the things he was planning to do, didn’t work out the way he wanted them to. He told me that he loved me and I loved him more for telling me that, even when I knew that what he was telling me wasn’t quite as true as it would have been if he was telling Annie. He told me that if all the things he was going to do didn’t work out the way we wanted them to, then there was always us and we could still be happy in our special, sad sort of way.
I knew some of the things he was going to do would be dangerous things and that, because of what he wanted to happen, he would be happy to do dangerous things and risk having bad things happen, as long as the bad things happened to him and not to the people he loved.
He told me about the things he would try to do, but in the telling of them, I knew he wasn’t telling me about all the things he would try to do, and might have to do, and I knew that not telling me those things, was because he didn’t want me to worry about those things, and because of that I loved him more.
I knew I had things to do too. I had all the things to do that would make me as good a person as I could be and whatever happened to the things Tom wanted to happen, I would be waiting for him, and be as good a person for him as I could possibly be.
I knew Annie as well as any woman has ever known any other woman, and I knew that what she wrote in that letter to Tom was not the truth. I knew it wasn’t the truth and ‘Blind Freddy’ could see it wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t the truth because it was all lies. Tom and Annie told me about ‘Blind Freddy’ and about all the things a blind man like ‘Blind Freddy’ could see.
I knew all about the lies Annie told Tom at the start, when she was trying to get Sir Silly-Little-Nutter-Man his silly little painting. That was at the start, when she’d just met Tom, and before she fell for him. I knew the lies in the letter she wrote him weren’t lies like that. I talked to Tom about the lies in the letter. I told him how they weren’t selfish, self-seeking lies. These lies were lies to make things not as bad as they could have been bad. So, they were really good lies, not bad lies like the lies she told him before. They were good lies, white lies and, knowing they were white lies, was a good thing for both of us to know.
Annie knew they were lies, because she was the one telling them, writing them, and we came to know that they were lies, because they had to be. There was no way on earth that they couldn’t be.
Annie knew we knew they were lies, and we knew Annie knew we knew they were lies. Those things were good to know and the knowing of them bound us all together. We were all in this together and I knew that made Tom feel better. Not better, just not so bad. It made me feel not so bad too.
Twelve
I knew I was watched each time I walked round the square, and I knew I was being watched each time I left it too. I knew I was watched for longer as I left it. I knew I was watched, and I thought I knew why.
So, I drove in that day and parked near The Star. I met with Sir Peter and left before lunch. I went back to the car and donned an old overcoat, I put on my sandwich boards and Statue of Liberty head.
Thirteen
We knew where she was. Not where they were. Where they were was the secret to it. To all of it. Most of it.
We knew where she was. We knew where she was, was because of them. We knew she let herself be where she was, because of them. We knew she was with him, because of them. Their safety from the madness of Prouse. I knew the things he told her. Must have told her. The things he told her he would do to them. That was what this was about. All about.
What it was all about, was about a man who would do anything to beat me. A man who would kill the girls to win, kill my children to win. A man who already killed my son.
We knew he collected her. He didn’t want to lose her. We knew she wasn’t a prized possession, one he wanted for himself. We knew that. We knew she was a prized possession, because now she wasn’t mine. He had no power over her now, except through them. He had no power over me now, except through all of them.
So where was he hiding them? How would we find them? How, when we found them, would we get them free? How would we do it, when the right time came?
Fourteen
I felt like an idiot. Never in my craziest dreams did I ever think I’d be walking a London street in a sandwich board and Statue of Liberty head, but I was. We can never be certain about what strange things fate has in store for us. Life can be a goddam strange mother of a thing.
If Peter hadn’t wanted me to set up his galleries in Australia, I would never have met Annie. I would never have had the best sex I ever did. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with her, even though I didn’t realise, then, that I had. And for damn sure, I wouldn’t be here looking like a frigging idiot. Life can be a goddam strange mother of a thing.
I knew I couldn’t walk the square as I was, as me. I didn’t want Peter’s people recognising me. I knew I needed a disguise.
So, I donned an old overcoat, put on the sandwich board and slipped on ‘La Libert�
�’. I walked around Eaton Square and was glad no one could recognise me.
If I’d been in the middle of the goddam Arizona Desert, I would still not want anyone recognising me. I looked like what Australians called a ‘dork’.
Fifteen
‘Ego veni ut auxillium’. What was that about?
‘Ego veni ut auxillium’. Written in black felt pen. Written below a print of Piero della Francesca’s Annunciation. The last panel he painted in his Legend of the Cross. The fresco that beguiled Annie. The thin rope loop hanging down. Hanging from the drying bar below the shuttered window. The allegory she could never fathom. ‘Ego veni ut auxillium’, ‘I can help’. What was that about?
He turned around and walked back. ‘Tu scis ubi ego vivere’. What was that about?
‘Tu scis ubi ego vivere’. Written in black felt pen. Written below the body of a reclining nude. A Modigliani nude. A Modigliani nude I owned. ‘Tu scis ubi ego vivere’, ‘You know where I live’. What was that about?
A Statue of Liberty mask. What was that about? Whoever he was, he looked like a dork.
Then it came to me. I knew who he was. He wasn’t a dork at all.
So, he was with us. It was all good. Not all good, just better.
Sixteen
We can’t remember much of that time now, and I suppose a lot of what we do remember is received memory from all the things we’ve been told about those times.
But, I can remember the day Mummy went off and left us in the car with the woman in the white suit. I can remember Mummy was crying and we were too. She went into the house with the man we didn’t like and Catherine was sick on the lady’s coat. We drove a long way and the lady didn’t talk to us. Then we took a ship and then another car and I knew we were going somewhere sad.
Seventeen
So, there was someone inside for us. Someone who might work for us. Someone who loved Annie too.
Iain’s watchers watched. Iain’s listeners listened. The rest of us waited.
We knew where she was, not where they were. Not knowing that concerned us. Not knowing that consumed me.
But now we were doing things. I was out of the fog of the last few months. Those months when all but Ambrosia’s broken body was lost to me. When the impossibility of what was happening almost pulled me under, and left me drowned, defeated, at the feet of evil men.
But then Ambrosia talked to me. I sat by her clinic bed and she talked all night. She talked of certainties, that must never not be certainties. She talked about the three of us and she talked about the five of us and she talked about certainties, that could never not be true.
She talked about the love I thought now was lost to me. She talked about the future, and how it all would be. She talked about Annie, and what she knew she felt for me. She talked about Prouse, and the darkness of his soul. She brought it all to light for me, she lit the path ahead for me, she told me what I knew deep down, and told me it was true.
Annie was where she was, because of her love for them, because of her fear for them. Her fear of what he’d do to them, if he didn’t get his way.
She knew he only wanted her, and to keep her where he wanted her, was to keep her where he wanted her, as far away from me.
Why did he want her? I couldn’t understand it. But perhaps I could. He wanted her to not be mine. The only way of doing that, was to pretend that she was his. The only way to make her his, was to bind her up, and carry her away, in her fear for the safety of the girls, her girls, my girls, our girls, the girls the three of us made. It was through the girls that he bound her, and bound her in the darkness of fear of what he might let the Major do to them. He bound her with fear and carried her away.
But now we had an ally. Someone who might help us. A man I knew loved Annie. And we knew where he lived.
I thought I should talk to him. I didn’t want to ring him. Telephones have ears. I waited ’til the watchers saw him leaving Eaton Square. I met him in the front bar of The Star.
He looked older than I remembered. I suppose I did too. We had one thing in common, her. Her happiness that used to be. Her unhappiness that was. Her happiness that might be again. If she ever was to be happy again. If she ever was to regain the vital spark that made her ‘her’, it would be because of what we did next. The things we did next would decide the happiness of all of us.
I knew he loved her. I saw it at the wedding. I was happy with that. We had an ally.
I drove him to the house in Clapham Common. The house Iain called the Office. We talked and drank. We drank and talked. Iain joined us. We made plans, changed plans, made other plans. We needed to find the girls. Our plans revolved around that.
She would never leave Prouse. Not without knowing they were safe. We knew that. Without them, she would never risk the threat of what he would let the Major do to them. We knew that. It was a great conundrum; we could take her, but not keep her. Not until we could find and take them too. How were we going to find them?
Eighteen
I saw Joe as I was getting out of the car with the Major. I recognised him as a person from the past. He belonged to a happy past, way out beyond all the things I could remember in the scrambled, heaped up and broken memories of what my life was now.
I could remember the happy times we’d had. I could remember our first night together in Sydney. I could remember him telling me about his wife and daughter in London and I knew that hadn’t mattered to either of us. I knew that if I hadn’t seduced him, he would have me. We were lovers and we were friends and that’s always a good thing to be. It went on for years until, after more years, I met Tommy. After I met Tommy, every part of my life changed. Changed for the better, and then changed for the worse, and then changed back for the better again, and then changed back for the worse again, and now I was in the worst worse I ever knew.
I was without all the people I loved, and the people I loved thought I didn’t love them anymore. I’d given them good reason not to love me, but I hoped they still did, and that they would never not love me, whatever I did.
Joe came to our wedding, and I was glad that he did. I was glad that Joe met Tommy, and Tommy said he liked him, and I was glad about that too.
I knew Joe worked for Peter, so I wasn’t surprised to see him in Eaton Square. I suppose I wasn’t, but in a funny way, I was. He was part of an old world that didn’t exist for me anymore.
My life, now, was a simple one, a flat one. A life without depth. My only value was that I was a picture on a wall, his wall, and that was all. My only value was that I wasn’t a picture on someone else’s wall, Tommy’s wall. I was a thing, an object, a commodity, a possession, inert and on display. Wood, canvas, paint and varnish, dead, static, hung and stored. Stored and catalogued as the prize of victory.
The victory of knowing that he had me hanging on his wall. That was all he needed, but to keep me hanging there, he needed insurance. Insurance that I would never dare climb down.
But, if I was a commodity, could I be traded? And if I was a commodity, were the girls a commodity too? And if all three of us were commodities, could we all be traded too? And if we were commodities, what could we be traded for?
It was a small thought, but one that grew.
Nineteen
Herd awareness, an interesting thing. Why do fish change direction at the same time? It’s not a ripple effect. No fish starts it. They do it at the same time. So what’s the organism? The individual fish? The shoal? I go for shoal. Why do starlings do the same?
It’s the same with people. Why are Nobel Prizes shared? For the same thing, at the same time, in different parts of the world? Newton and Leibniz. Priestley, Lavoisier and Scheele. Darwin and Wallace. A whole lot more. Why? No one knows. It just happens.
Multiple independent discovery? No one knows. But it’s more common than we think. More common than singular independent discovery.
‘Recombinant conceptualization’, recombinant occurrences, interesting stuff. And no one knows why.
So why did we think of it at the same time? Both of us, and what we didn’t know then, all three of us. We were conceptualising, in a recombinant sort of way. We realised that later.
We had a way in. We might have a way in. It was an unsure, uncertain, unlikely, unsafe way in. It was all we could think of. It was all we had to go on. So, we did.
So, we knew where the Melancholies hung. He never went anywhere without them. He would never leave them in Darwin. We knew he brought them to London. They were always on display. On display for him, just him. They were never locked away. Joe told us where they were. We weren’t surprised with where they were.
How much were they worth to him? How much did he care for them? How much would he pay for them? So, if we took them away from him, could a deal be done? What was more important to have hanging on his wall?
If you have enough time, money, resolve, access to expertise, and luck, there are few things you can’t achieve. But, if someone with enough time, money, resolve, access to expertise and luck wants to prevent you from achieving what you wish to achieve, things can be tough.
A Judgement on a Life Page 17