A Judgement on a Life

by Stephen Baddeley

  He came back later and said that, if I ever left him, he would have them killed. That, wherever Tommy hid them, he would find them and kill them, have them killed, it didn’t seem to matter which. I believed he would. I knew him well enough to know he would, and that if I ever left him, left his collection, he would have me killed too. He was a bad man, the worst man I ever knew.

  If I was so smart at knowing men, then how come I’d let all this happen to me? How could I have let myself become his mistress all those years ago? Maybe he wasn’t such a bad man back then, or maybe it was his obsession with Munch and the Melancholies that drove him mad and made him bad, but how could wanting a painting, another painting like the ones he already had, make him into a man who would be happy to kill two little girls? How could wanting me, wanting to keep me, a woman he didn’t love, had never loved, and a woman he knew didn’t love him, and had never loved him, make him into a man who would be happy to kill two little girls? There must have been evil in him right from the start, and I just didn’t pick up on it.

  Is there ever such a thing as an evil baby? Or an evil child? So when did Peter become evil? Was he evil from the start? The Catholic church wants us to think he was and to believe all that rubbish about ‘original sin’.

  How does all that ‘original sin’ stuff work? Did I get my ‘original sin’ from my parents, as they did from theirs, and did the girls get their dose of evil from Tommy and me?

  The Bible isn’t specific as to whether the girls might have picked up some additional sin from Ambrosia as they grew inside her. Did they end up with a double dose of sin? They don’t seem to have, but I’m sure the Church will have an opinion on that, and from the opinions the Church usually has, it’s probable that the girls are a particularly sinful pair.

  The Catholic Church likes the idea of ‘original sin’ and the idea that we are all born with a burden of evil, just because Adam ate a fucking apple for Christ’s sake. Seems a bit far-fetched to me.

  So, let’s say Peter wasn’t born evil. So, when did he become evil? Hard to tell.

  Maybe it was the aura of wealth and sophistication that blinded me, back then, to the man he really was, and the man I only came to know later. I was young then, very young, and that’s my excuse. Not much of an excuse, I know, but it’s the only one I’ve got, so it’s the only one you’re going to get.

  So, I knew the girls were safe and that helped me to know other things too, and to hope for other things too. I knew Tommy still loved me, or I hoped he still loved me. Surely he must know why I did what I did, he wasn’t a stupid man. At least I hoped he knew why I did what I did. Or was he only interested in getting the girls back and then forgetting all about me? That was a thing I tried not to think about, and, when I did think about it, I became more depressed than the baseline of depression that was a part of me now.

  But then Peggy came to talk to me and I have to say that that was the turning point of my life at that time. After she came to see me and after we talked I knew there was a reason to go on living.

  I’d been back with Peter for months now and all the terrible things with the courts and the girls were over; not over, just not as raw anymore. All the terrible things I knew I’d done to Tommy were over. Finished, but not over, because this was never going to be over, never over for me and, I knew, never over for Tommy or Ambrosia and never over for the girls either.

  To save something I loved, I had destroyed something I loved, but I knew Tommy was strong, stronger than any of us thought and he’d survived once before, we’d both survived once before, but then this new thing happened and all the bad times returned, but seemed worse times than the times before. Worse now, because there was more to lose, and not just for me to lose. There was more love to be lost and more people to be hurt. It was a bad time for all of us, and I couldn’t see that there was anything I could do to make it better.

  But then Peggy came to talk to me, and I knew I had a friend. She told me how sorry she was for all the things that had happened, and all the things Peter had done to get his revenge on Tommy. I knew she didn’t like Peter. She didn’t like him for all the things he did to us, and because he wasn’t a likable person.

  We only found out later, how much Peggy didn’t like him, how she hated him as much as we did. We only found out later, why she came to work for him. How she came to work for him to find out things about him, things she could use later on to help destroy him. We only found out later, about her brother who died. About how Peter had ruined him, by ruining his business and ruining his marriage, and, in doing that, driving him to alcohol and suicide. It was a common story with Peter and the men who did business with him.

  Now Peggy was our mole in the midst of his evil empire.

  She became my friend, my only friend in a house full of my enemies.

  She knew what I was feeling, how I must be feeling, and she knew how lonely I was feeling and, to help me, not just to help me, she came to my bed, and did things to me that no one had done to me for such a long time. Then I did those things back to her. I remembered how much I liked doing those things to the two funny people I loved.

  We became lovers, and then we became friends, and then I told her everything. Everything I could think to tell her. Things about Tommy and Ambrosia and the girls and about our lives together. I told her everything, but not absolutely everything, not the things that were just for us, not the things Tommy said were the things from our deep places.

  When I was finished telling her about Tommy, telling her all the things I could think to tell her about Tommy, I knew she wanted to go to bed with him too, and to do all the things to him that I told her I did to him, so we could, in a funny middle-man sort of way, share the experience of him. I wanted her to do that and, in doing that, tell Tommy all the things I hoped he already knew and all the reasons why I did what I did.

  I knew, if I told Tommy about what Peter had said he would do to the girls, if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do, then Tommy would say he could protect them and could keep them safe, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to do that for ever, not without locking the girls away for ever and ruining their lives. So, I knew it was my happiness, Tommy’s happiness, Ambrosia’s happiness, or the girls’ lives. So, I hoped he could see what a hard choice it had been for me to make, even though there hadn’t really been any choice at all. Children’s lives always take precedence over our own, and I knew he would feel the same way too.

  It was the worst thing I have ever had to decide, but, even now, after all the other things that were about to happen, I knew what I did was the right thing to do.

  So Peggy and Tommy became lovers, and I was happy that they did. I tried to imagine them in bed together and to think about all the things I knew Tommy would be doing to her, all the things I taught him to do to me, and then I thought about all the things Peggy would be doing to him, because I’d told her about all the things Tommy liked me to do to him.

  So, Tommy and I could talk through Peggy, in a second-hand sort of way, and now we could make love, in a second-hand sort of way too.

  I told him I loved him. He told me he loved me too. He told me the girls were safe, hidden where Peter could never find them. I told him how important it was to keep them safe, because of the sort of man Peter was. We both knew the sort of man Peter was, and in the knowing of that, we knew there would be no happy end to all of this until people were dead. Us or them. If we were ever to get our old lives back, and if the girls were ever to be safe, safe forever, then Peter, and probably the Major too, would have to die. We didn’t want to have anything to do with murder, but neither of us could see a way around it, not to a happy ending and not with Peter still alive.

  I knew, if I left Peter and went back to Tommy, that things would just be back to where they were before, and that Peter would have the same hold over me. The threat to the girls and the knowledge that the only way to keep them safe was for them to b
e with me, and the three of us to be with him. To belong to him and not to be with Tommy, because that’s what this was all about.

  So, Peggy and Tommy met on Wednesdays, and I was glad they did. I gave her messages to give him and told her things to tell him. I asked her to do things to him and for her to ask him to close his eyes as she did them and for him to pretend that it was me who was doing them. I asked her to ask him to do things to her that I liked him to do to me and to close his eyes as he did them and to pretend he was doing them to me. It was an unusual way of making love, but it seemed to work. Peggy said she enjoyed doing the things I asked her to do and having Tommy doing the things I asked him to do. I wasn’t surprised when she told me how much she enjoyed it. Not surprised, but perhaps a bit jealous and perhaps a bit more than just a bit.

  So, through Peggy, we got to know Peter’s routines and the Major’s routines. The Major’s routines were the same as Peter’s, because he was never far away, most of the time. ‘Most of the time’ means ‘not all of the time’.

  It was the little bits of ‘not all of the time’ that interested us most of all.

  I was sure, and Tommy was sure too, that it was the Major who arranged my rape, etc. Arranged for two of ‘Mr Beale & Friends’ to do all the things I remembered so well. I was sure and Tommy was sure too.

  We knew that Peter would have to die if any happiness was to come back into our lives. We knew that the Major would probably, but not certainly, have to die too. We didn’t know what energy kept the Major alive. With Peter dead would he shrivel and deflate, like a balloon on Boxing Day, or did he have his own source of energy, his own vital spark? We didn’t know.

  I knew Peter had to die, because I could see no way around that, not if we wanted a happy ending. I knew Tommy knew Peter had to die too, but I worried about that. I knew the way Tommy’s mind worked and I knew he would try to think of ways through to a happy ending without having to kill Peter, but I knew Tommy and I knew that the thought of killing Peter would not sit happily with him, however much he used to say that he would kill them both. I knew Tommy would sit in judgement on his life, but I knew too that he wouldn’t be able to think of any other way, the same as I couldn’t, and that he would come to the same conclusion as I did, that Peter had to die, whatever sort of judgement he would make on his life, after we’d done it.

  So, if we wanted a happy ending, Peter had to die. It was a sobering thought for me. I was always a law-abiding person and even felt guilty about parking fines. So the thought of murder, or whatever it turned out to be, wasn’t an easy thing for me to live with. I would have to sit in judgement on my own life too.

  When I thought about the girls and Tommy and Ambrosia and what Peter was doing to us all, it wasn’t quite so bad. He was an evil man and the world would be a better place without him, but still, the thought of killing him wasn’t a happy one. I wondered who would do it. I didn’t want to, but I would if I had to.

  Thirty-Two

  I stayed on the Mermaid with the kids and a squad of Iain’s hard-men. I thought of them as a squad, because they acted like a squad. I’d done my time in Nam, like a lot of guys of my age, so I knew enough about soldiers to know these guys for what they were. Men not to be messed with. It was good to know they were there. They reminded me of my brother Benny.

  Tom and Iain were back in Darwin. We knew Annie and Prouse were back there too. I knew Tom and Iain were working on some plan to get Annie back. We knew Prouse didn’t have the same hold over her now, not like when he had the girls hidden away on the Isle of Wight, but there was something he still had over her, or she would have left him by now. He wouldn’t risk keeping her against her will. He may have been a bad mother-fucker, even a mad mother-fucker, but we knew he wasn’t a stupid mother-fucker. So she stayed with him because she had to, and we sorta’ knew that. We sorta’ knew that if she left him, the game would just crank back up all over again and the girls would never be safe. We knew we were dealing with a maniac, and we knew we couldn’t keep the girls hidden away for ever. We knew we could keep them safe, but only in some sort of hidden away, half-life that none of us wanted them to live in, not forever. We knew Prouse would know that, and get off on knowing it. He knew we had the girls hidden away some place he couldn’t find them. So, some place Annie and Tom couldn’t be with them, and they couldn’t be the happy family they once were. We knew he would get off on knowing that, and knowing they weren’t happy would help him live his own unhappy, twisted life.

  We knew something needed to be done. We knew, sorta’ sadly, what needed to be done, but we didn’t like thinking about it or talking about it. Talking about it made us think about what we were planning to do, so, what we were planning to become ourselves. No one wants to be a murderer, even if it’s for the murder of an evil, crazy son-of-a-bitch like Prouse.

  What’s the morality stuff around murdering a murderer? Is it OK to murder a murderer? If it is, then is it OK to murder an evil, crazy son-of-a-bitch who does things just as bad as murder? I didn’t know the answer to either of those questions, but I spent one hell of a lot of time thinking about ’em.

  To walk into, break into, another guy’s house, and kill him, was not something any of us wanted to do, and, if we did decide to do that, we knew it wouldn’t be a push-over thing to do. We knew about men like Prouse, because we knew Prouse. We knew he knew what we might be planning to do, and he knew we knew he knew it. So, what to do next, because none of us was sure, even though we talked about it one hell of a lot?

  I thought about it a hell of a lot too, but I didn’t tell Tommy or Iain what I was thinking. I thought I’d think about things a bit more, before I told them what I was thinking we might do.

  But I did ring my brother Benny.

  Thirty-Three

  So, we needed to kill him. We knew we needed to kill him. In the killing of him would we need to kill the Major too, probably. That didn’t worry me. Not at all. I often thought about killing the Major. I thought about it since the crucifixion. It wasn’t necessary to kill the Major. I knew that. The others told me that. They said, Prouse could be killed without killing the Major. They were right. I knew they were right. But, by killing Prouse I would be a murderer. Killing the Major wouldn’t alter that. I wanted to kill the Major. I didn’t tell them that. What would be the judgement of ‘good men’ if I did that? What would be my judgement on myself? Could I live a happy life with the judgement I might make?

  That was the way I felt. I wanted Prouse dead, of course I did. We needed Prouse dead. I wanted the Major dead too. I didn’t need him dead, I just wanted him that way. It was clear. It was simple. Well, I thought it was simple at the time.

  If we were going to kill Prouse, and I was going to kill the Major, it mustn’t fail. It mustn’t hurt Annie, and it mustn’t hurt Watson. I wanted the bastards dead. I didn’t want collateral damage. I could live with killing them, but not with collateral damage. There was already collateral damage in our lives. Ambrosia was collateral damage. Ambrosia would live with collateral damage all her life.

  So, I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. I talked to Iain and Joe. We talked a lot. We talked about what to do.

  I can’t remember who first thought of it. I think it was me. The idea that they could die, without having to be killed, well, not murdered. Not by us.

  There was too much soul-searching going on. Too much navel-gazing. Too much sitting in judgement on ourselves. Too much agonizing about what we knew we had to do. It was time to get on with it.

  So, we got on with it. We went to war. There are two rules of war: Rule No. 1.) Never march on Moscow. Rule No. 2.) Never assume.

  We didn’t march on Moscow.

  We did assume. Everyone assumes. Some of our assumptions were right. Some of them weren’t.

  Thirty-Four

  I knew Tom from the time when he was building his house on the beach, and from the time the Guv’nor aske
d me to take over running the security for Tom and his family, his home, the Collection and the Laroche Trust.

  He wanted me to make Tom my opus magnum. It was easy for me to do that, because I liked Tom and I liked them all. I liked the way they were bringing up the wee twins, and the way they had no time for the self-imposed rules so many of us, and especially so many of we God-fearing Scots, are more than happy to accept. The rules we invent to keep us living in the straightjacket of a ‘polite society’, the sort of society the Kirk of John Knox, with the threat of hellfire and brimstone, has been forcing us all to lead for so many centuries. They’re the rules most of us are only too happy to be sedated by. I’d spent my teenage years at a boarding school near Aberdeen, so I knew all the subtle threats and nuances, of ‘polite protestant society’.

  When the Guv’nor was killed I knew it was, in some way, tied up with what was going on between Sir Peter and Tom, and Sir Peter’s obsessions with both the Melancholy and with Anne, and with his obsession with punishing Tom. We’d run an ‘In-Depth’ on Sir Peter and Major Wilson, right back at the time when Tom had to leave the country and go into hiding. We knew, back then, who was at the bottom of the business with the fake Munch and then later with Anne’s crucifixion. We already knew the sort of people we were dealing with. We didn’t know, yet, the full extent of what they were capable of, or how far they were prepared to go to get Sir Peter what he wanted.