A Judgement on a Life

by Stephen Baddeley

  So, we made love and then she told me all the things Tommy had asked her to tell me and then she told me about all the things he’d asked her to tell Peter. Now I knew what was going on and now I knew what the plan was. It was clever.

  Then I saw the Esmeralda coming back, so I kissed her goodbye and she left.

  So, I knew what Tommy and Joe and Iain were thinking and knew what they were doing. I knew Tommy was a clever man, and I knew the others were too, and now I knew that what he was doing was up there with all the clever things Tommy was capable of doing. Knowing what Tommy was planning made me love him even more than I did before and the increase in the love I felt for him, was because I knew he still loved me enough to be planning those things.

  Thirty-Nine

  I felt I was out of the main game and that’s because I was, I guess. We were all savvy enough to know that all of Prouse’s power was focused on just one thing, and that one thing was finding the girls. We knew he could round up as many smart guys as we could.

  One of us had to stay with the girls and, I guess, it was smart for it to be me, but being away from the main game didn’t mean I couldn’t think about it and think about all the things that’d happened so far and, maybe, just maybe, all the things that were going to goddam need to happen in the near future, if we were ever gonna get a happy outcome out of all this lousy pain and misery the lot of them were going through right then. It was time the bad guys got a taste of their own lousy stuff.

  It was smart to be careful, communicating with the others, and those guys with me. We knew Prouse had his eyes and ears all over Tom. So Iain had SOTA communication stuff installed on the Mermaid. It was clever stuff. Now I could talk to them on their secure phone and I could talk to the rest of the world too. So, I rang my brother Benny and we talked some. I told him a heap of things and I told him not to write things down. Benny isn’t too smart, but he’s got a good memory. Good for simple stuff and that was part of what made him a good Marine. Benny’s mind wasn’t all seized up with heaps of complex stuff and that’s another part of what made Benny a good Marine. Once Benny was told to remember something, and got that something in his head, it would stay there and keep on staying there until he was told to forget the thing he was told to remember.

  But there were some things Benny would never forget and that was because he was told never to forget them, and however many times he was told to forget them, he wouldn’t. Those things were loyalty, respecting guys in authority, the need to keep going, however lousy things got, the need to look after his buddies, the need to ignore pain and the need to do what he was told to do. All of that made Benny a good Marine. Right now, I guessed, we could use a guy like Benny.

  Forty

  So, what to do? We had ideas. Iain had ideas. They were interesting. Some were good. We researched them. Not all of them were good. Some were bad. Only some of them were good.

  Sound, ultrasound, can kill a man a hundred yards away, if the dial is turned to ‘max’. Not the same ‘max’ as the ‘max’ on Dr Helen’s ultrasound machine. So, sound, enough sound, the right sort of sound, could kill a man. But it would still be murder.

  Electromagnetism, microwaves, can kill a man a mile away, if the dial is turned to ‘max’. Not the same ‘max’ as the ‘max’ on the microwave in the kitchen. So, microwaves, enough microwaves, the right sort of microwaves, could kill a man. But it would still be murder.

  Joe had ideas too. Some were interesting. Some were good. None were subtle. He didn’t need research. Not to come up with what he came up with. What he came up with was Benny.

  Benny lived in Wisconsin. Joe told us about Benny. What he told us was frightening. Frightening if he wasn’t on our side. Benny was the sort of man we wanted on our side. Benny was not the sort of man we wanted on Prouse’s side. Were there other men like Benny? I wondered about that. And if there were other men like Benny, would Prouse have other men like Benny on his side?

  Yes, there were other men like Benny. Not many, but a few. No, there were no other men like Benny on Prouse’s side.

  That was good.

  So, we laid our plans. Our plans were subtle and non-. Tom talked to Peggy, Peggy talked to Prouse. Iain brought men with machines. They did frightening things to a flower bed in the garden. Mr B. wasn’t happy. Mr B. liked flowers. Benny arrived.

  Forty-One

  I knew something was going on, but not all of what it was, not really, not fully. Peggy told me all of the things Tommy had asked her to tell Peter, things he’d asked her to tell him when they were alone, when Peter was alone with Peggy, when the Major wasn’t around. I wondered why he’d asked her to tell him those things, and I thought about it all day. I knew Tommy was a clever man and I always, right from our first meeting on the beach all those years ago, knew he was a good man too, not a man who would take pleasure in doing bad things, but I didn’t realise how much he could be a devious, oblique, circuitous, roundabout and shifty man as well, but now I did.

  I thought I knew Peter as well as anyone could know him. Perhaps not as well as the Major knew him, but well enough to know that the things Tommy had asked Peggy to tell him were just the sorts of things that would produce in Peter the sorts of feelings and the sorts of thoughts that I thought Tommy might want to produce in him.

  For the first time, I could start to believe that the nightmare I’d been living in, we’d all been living in, might, just possibly, have some sort of an ending, maybe even a happy ending, but there were a lot of things that would have to go right if that happy ending was ever going to happen. There were so many things to go wrong, and so many ways for the people I loved, to get hurt.

  I yearned to be home, to be back with the people I loved and with the people I knew, now, still loved me, with the people who never stopped loving me, even after the terrible things I did to them. Things I did because of our daughters, and the knowing of what Peter would tell the Major to do to them if I didn’t do what Peter said I must.

  Do any of us really know ourselves? Probably not as well as we think we do, and I think it’s at times of stress and times of trial that we get to know the bits of ourselves, some of the bits of ourselves, that we didn’t know before, and didn’t know we had, and didn’t know were always a part of what made us who we were, who we are.

  Over the past year I’d discovered things inside me that I never knew were there. They were things I’d never suspected might be there and things I wasn’t happy to discover and wasn’t proud of when I did. I had no choice, none of us has, not when it comes to discovering the people we really are.

  I discovered, inside me, a need for revenge, not a desire for revenge, a need for it.

  We had an English teacher at Wymona, and she taught us the English poets and I can still remember some of the poems we read. She called them the ‘vengeance poets’. They seemed excessive at the time, but were probably the way people thought and acted back then, back in the centuries gone by, but perhaps that was the way some people still thought and some people still acted, even now, even me.

  Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,

  Scarce can endure delay of execution.

  Him, the vindictive rod of angry justice,

  Sent quick and howling to the centre…

  As meditation or the thoughts of love,

  May sweep to my revenge.

  I, fed with judgement, in a fleshly tomb, am

  Buried above ground.

  A man who dwells on vengeance, keeps his wounds green.

  So, I was in good company. Or was I. Revenge drove Hamlet to his death, so would it me to mine? Would vengeance see me buried above ground in a fleshly tomb? Would vengeance keep my wounds green? I thought they might, but I didn’t care. I wanted vengeance, I needed vengeance and that was all that mattered. It mattered more than all the things the poets warned me about.

  So, vengeance was what it was about, all a
bout, and it was all I could think about. I knew it wouldn’t be the same for Tommy, because I knew Tommy was driven more by love than by revenge. It was his love for me that was keeping him sane and it was my hate for Peter that was driving me mad.

  I wanted to hurt him as he was hurting me. Not just hurt his body as he was hurting my body, but hurt the rest of him. Hurt all the other bits of him, the evil bits of him, as he was hurting the bits of me that were the good and decent bits, the better and more decent bits.

  So, I told my thoughts to Peggy and she told my thoughts to Tommy.

  Forty-Two

  Enough now. Enough now. Time to get on with it. Time to get Annie back. I knew what Prouse was doing to her. Peggy told me.

  So, we got on with it. The getting on with it relaxed me. It relaxed a part of me that wasn’t relaxed for a long time.

  There were things to be getting on with. More than one thing.

  It was time to get on with it. It was time to finish it. It was time to bring on the end. It was time to win or not win.

  Was ‘not winning’ the same as losing? I supposed it was, and, in the supposing that it was the same as losing, I knew we must win. Whatever happened on the way to winning didn’t matter, it was winning that mattered. Nothing else mattered.

  That was wrong. Who might fall, mattered. Who might fall along the way to winning, mattered. Mattered, but mattered less than winning.

  Was I Wellington? Was this Badajoz? Were my friends, ‘the forlorn hope’? I hoped not. I suspected I was. I suspected it was. I suspected they were.

  We needed to know things. Things from Watson. About what Watson told Prouse. What effect those things were having on him. So I asked Watson to ask Annie. So she did. Annie told Watson what she saw, what she thought. What she saw and what she thought, were good.

  So, what I thought might work, might work, might be working. Working inside their heads.

  But, what was working inside Prouse’s head and the Major’s head was only a part of it. Only a part of it, because there were other things going on too.

  Iain brought machines. Joe sent us Benny. Benny was a machine. Benny came with instructions. Instructions on how to use him. Benny’s instructions didn’t mention the ‘on’ button. They didn’t mention the ‘off’ button either. That worried me.

  I never met a man like Benny before. Benny frightened me. His quiet, polite way frightened me. I never met a living ‘machine’ before.

  Benny was quiet, polite and frightening. He didn’t volunteer things. He answered my questions. Every answer ended with ‘SIR’; not ‘sir’, not ‘Sir’, just ‘SIR’, always ‘SIR’.

  Joe talked to Benny on the SOTA. Joe told Benny to do what Iain and I told him to. We talked to Joe about Benny.

  We talked to Joe about the ‘SIR’. Of ways to stop the ‘SIR’. He said Benny would always say ‘SIR’. It was part of what made Benny Benny.

  Benny frightened me. It wasn’t the ‘SIR’ that frightened me, just everything else.

  We had our blunt instrument. But we had more than that. In having Benny we had an artist. A clever, cultured and refined artist. An artist in the art of killing people.

  We had our blunt instrument, our clever, cultured and refined blunt instrument. Benny frightened me.

  Iain brought machines, inanimate machines, clever, cultured and refined machines. He brought machines the world didn’t know about. Machines only scientists and generals knew about. Machines Iain knew about, and got.

  Iain told us the things they could do. What he thought we could use them to do. What he thought we should use them to do. Joe was quiet at the end of the phone. The machines frightened Joe. They frightened me too. Not as much as I was frightened by Benny.

  So, I was frightened by machines, animate and in-. I wasn’t frightened by them, but by the things they could do. Frightened by what Benny and the machines could do. What we were going to get them to do.

  The whole bloody thing was frightening, but in a happy, anxious, and expectational ‘sort of’ way.

  Forty-Three

  Peggy asked me the things Tommy wanted to know and the things he wanted to know were things about Peter and the Major and whether I thought the things she’d told them were working and if I could see a difference in them since she’d told them those things we hoped would confuse them, discombobulate, disconcert and disturb them. So, I told her the things Tommy needed to know and they turned out to be the things Tommy wanted to know and that the things she’d told them were working.

  I was born under a ‘man-knowing star’ and you may know that. I was able to know and understand men right from the start. Even before I was sixteen, that time you may remember, when I let Kevin Fuller play with my breasts. I thought I might know men, in the way I did, because I’d grown up in a house full of brothers, but I knew it was nothing to do with that. I was born with the ability to know and understand men and know the things they were thinking about. I could tell things about men, just by looking at them, and tell more things about them by smelling them, and even more things about them by listening to the things they said. So, I knew things about Peter and the Major, I knew the way they acted and the way they treated the staff and the other people around them. I could see how things were changing, how Peter was treating the Major in a different way to the way I was used to, and I could see the new way the Major looked at Peter when Peter wasn’t looking to see how the Major was looking at him. That there was a difference, in both of them, since Peggy told them the things Tommy had asked her to tell them.

  Reading ‘body language’ is an overrated thing. ‘Blind Freddy’ can tell that a man with his arms crossed, feet apart and po-faced look, is pissed off about something. But what I could see and, with Peter, see easily, was that they were no longer joined-at-the-hip as they’d always been. That there was a distance between them that was never there before. It was a subtle change and most people wouldn’t have noticed it, but, to me, it stuck out like dogs’ balls.

  It wasn’t so obvious with the Major as it was with Peter. It was only when Peter wasn’t looking at him and when he was looking at Peter that I could see the difference in him. It may not have been as obvious with the Major as it was with Peter, but it was there and I could see it. The reason, I think, why it was harder with the Major, was that he was better at hiding his thoughts. I reckoned it was down to the long practice of a professional con artist, thief, thug and general, all round, twenty-four carat, ocean-going, weapons-grade, chateau-bottled, lying arsehole, as my darling Tommy would have said.

  God, how I missed him back then, and missed all the funny things he said, in that funny, jerky way he had of saying them.

  So, perhaps things were moving along at last. The status quo wasn’t as ‘status’ as it was before, or as ‘status’ as I once feared it might be for ever. Now I knew they were coming to get me and the Fifth Cavalry wasn’t far away.

  I told Peggy the things I knew, the things I was sure of, and I told her the things I suspected, but wasn’t sure of. Then Peggy told Tommy those things. Then Tommy told Peggy more things that he wanted Peter and the Major to know. Tommy asked Peggy to tell me about the things she was telling to Peter and the Major. He wanted to know if those things that she told him, before, were doing those things that we hoped they would do. So, she asked me to tell her, so she could tell Tommy, if those things were doing those things that we hoped they would do. So, I told Peggy about the things I saw and about the things I knew and about the things I didn’t fully know and only suspected to be true. I knew Peggy would tell Tommy about all of those things.

  I couldn’t speak to Tommy, but I could speak to him through Peggy. It was second best, we both knew that, but it wasn’t a bad second best. Speaking to him through Peggy made me feel like I felt when Ambrosia said she’d have our babies.

  So, I did the best I could, because, if I was ever going to get out of this nightmare,
it was going to be because all of us were doing our best to get me out of it, and to get me out of it for ever, and for me never to have to come back.

  Then Peggy told me about the things Tommy gave her and what Tommy wanted her to hide, and where Tommy wanted her to hide them. Hide well, but not too well. Hide in the Major’s room, but not hide too well. Hide in Peter’s study, on Peter’s desk and in Peter’s desk, but not hide too well.

  Forty-Four

  I only knew the history of things. I knew the history of army things. I didn’t know about real army things. Nothing about the things Benny knew about. Nothing that could be of use to us now.

  I knew about the Punic Wars, all the Punic Wars. I knew about the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War, about the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the War of the Bavarian Succession. I knew a lot about all of those things, but nothing about the things Benny knew about. Nothing that could be of any use to us now.

  Most of all, I knew about Napoleon. The battles he fought. How he won some and lost some. How he lost the last one, and that’s always the one that counts, and the only one that would count for us. I knew about all the those things, but nothing about the things Benny knew about. Nothing that could be of any use to us now.

  One thing I did know about, a thing I knew Benny would know about, was a thing all snipers must know about. That, if a sniper wants to snipe without being sniped, a sniper must stay still. Stay still and invisible and both of those for ‘a very long time’.