I hoped he wouldn’t do anything dangerous. I knew Mr Munroe and Iain would look after him, but you can never be sure. I worried, and I suppose, women were born to worry about men, and I think it must be that worrying is on the two X-chromosomes we have. I read all about that in one of the books Tommy gave me to read before Ambrosia had our babies.
Women worry about their men, and then their men go off and do stupid things, sometimes stupid and dangerous things. History is full of examples of that. Songs are written about that. Tommy wasn’t a stupid man, but I knew sometimes men did stupid things, to protect the things they cared for. I hoped Tommy wasn’t going home early to ‘take a bullet’ for me, for us. I knew what it might have been about.
I was proud of Tommy, that day Peter came to the Siena for lunch. I thought all might be resolved, but suspected it wasn’t. That part of Tommy wasn’t open to me anymore, so I never quite knew what he was thinking, not when he was thinking about those things to do with Peter and the Major.
So, now I knew there were closed-off areas, and I couldn’t see past the barriers he’d built. I knew there were things, on the other side of the barriers, that he didn’t want me to see. I knew I might never get to see the things he didn’t want me to see, and perhaps that was a good thing. They were things he was protecting us from. So, perhaps something not that nice.
I thought we’d convinced him that killing Peter and the Major would damage us all, and I knew that he’d never risk the happiness of the girls. I thought, too, that we’d convinced him not to have them killed. That would be the same risk. I knew he still hated them both and I suppose I did too. I didn’t hate them enough to see them dead, well, that’s what I thought back then. Wanting people dead is a man thing, usually, but not always. Women make cleverer murderers than men, or so I’m told.
Eighteen
Tom left and we packed up the house. That’s not really true, because Annie arranged for packers to pack up the house. They did it real quick, and it was all done in a day. I suppose that was because they were used to doing that sort of stuff, and that’s what made them so quick. When you do things a lot you get to do them quick. (Tom read that and said I should have written ‘quickly’. He’s a grammar freak. We don’t say ‘quickly’ in Antigua. They don’t in Australia, much.)
We had time to spare, so we took the girls to Florence, and Julie came with us. They were walking well now and were eating solid food. My breasts were back to normal size and Annie had me doing sit-up exercises to get my tummy back in shape. I knew she would still love me, even if I had a saggy tummy, but I knew she wanted me to look my best for her and for Tom too. I knew he loved me and I wanted him to love me as much as he could, so I didn’t want to have a saggy tummy.
It was important for me to get back in shape. I was always vain about my body, right back to the time when I let Melena kiss me, and I knew that, if I didn’t get back in shape, I would think less of myself. So to have a happy mind I’d need to get back to a happy body. People sometimes forget the nexus between the body and the mind. ‘Nexus’ is a word Tom taught me. I think I’m the only person from Antigua who uses that word.
In Florence, we stayed at a fancy place called The Savoy Hotel. I’d hate to think what it cost. It looked out onto an even fancier square. Annie said it was the hotel where Tom once stayed with his mother. She told me all about Tom and his mother, and how they were in love, and were almost lovers, but not quite. I didn’t tell her that Tom had already told me all about that before. That he told me at the time when he thought Annie hated him, and when he was sure he hated her back.
The best thing I’ve ever done in my life, is to convince Tom that he still loved Annie. I thought I might be the loser after convincing him about that, but I wasn’t.
Doing good things is a good thing to do, but not everybody knows that. Some people think that doing nasty things to other people, things that will make their lives worse, will make their own lives better. They start out as sad people, and end up as sadder people. So that’s sad in itself. Making other people happier, almost always, makes you happier too.
The Savoy Hotel was different to the one Mama and Dada ran in English Harbour. Quite a lot different.
Annie took me to see a carving out of some sort of white stone. It was enormous and there were a lot of people looking at it. People were buying little copies of it in the street outside. She said it was a sculpture, but it looked like a carving to me, just an all smoothed out one. I’m just a dumb little black girl, so how would I know. She said it was a statue of the David out of the Bible. I knew about David, because he was the man who killed Goliath and then went on to do better things. I know Goliath was a bad man, well, he was if you were on David’s side, but was killing him really a good thing to do? Couldn’t they have just talked about it, and sorted it out without all the killing? There’s a lot of killing in the Bible, the Old Testament bit anyway. There weren’t enough women around back then, and I think that’s why there was so much killing. I suppose there were women around back then, but no one seemed to take any notice of them. It’s a bit the same today.
A man called Michelangelo was the guy who did the carving and Annie said he was a genius, but I’m not so sure. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of David having no clothes on, so he got that wrong, because no one wants to upset Jesus.
I found out, later, that this Michelangelo character was a fag, so maybe that explains the no clothes bit. I wonder if he got-off on carving the bum. He got the size of the cock all wrong too. It was half the size of his thumb, but I’ve been spoiled when it comes to the size of cocks.
I’m sounding a bit like Tom sounds when he talks about Aristotle. I’d never heard of Aristotle, not before I met Tom. He’s taught me a lot about everything. He still does. I even know that Pliny the Elder was an idiot, but that his son wasn’t. Tom hasn’t taught me anything more about the son yet. He’s called ‘the Younger’. That’s all I know. By the time we’ve finished writing this book, I may be able to tell you some more about him.
I was looking forward to getting home. I was looking forward to seeing Tom. I knew Annie was too.
It was warm in Florence and we slept without covers. We liked having the windows open so we could lie in the almost darkness and listen to the sounds of the square outside. We liked lying face to face. We liked the feel of our breasts touching. I liked telling her about all the things we should do to Tom on our first night home. When I told her those things, she giggled like a schoolgirl. I liked it when she did that.
The last thing I did each night, before we went to sleep, was to kiss her on her ruined eye and tell her I loved her. I loved her so much and I knew she loved me too. We both loved Tom. You know that already. If you don’t know that already, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Florence was a happy time for me. Terrible things were going to happen to me later, but I would always remember that happy time, and even with all the bad things that were going to happen to me, I would still have a happy life.
Nineteen
Jimmy used bolt cutters. That’s how we got in. The Hummers passed through. We drove up to the house. It was a dump. Four men with shotguns stood outside. There were six motorcycles. There was a broken-down ute parked down the side. There was grass growing on the roof. It wasn’t going anywhere.
We opened the doors. The Macs and the Jimmies spread out on both sides. They had more than shotguns. They had things most armies didn’t have. I didn’t know where they got them. I didn’t know how Munroe & Sons got the things they got. They were on my side. I was glad about that.
“What the fuck you cunts want?” He was big, fat, sweaty, and tattooed.
“A chat,” I said.
“What’s a fucking chat?” He would have missed out the apostrophe.
“A talk.”
“Well, talk, cunt.”
“Inside please.”
“Ta
lk here, cunt.”
“We’ll talk inside… And, if you call me ‘cunt’ again, this man will shoot you through the kneecap.” Mac made funny mechanical noises with the ‘thing’ he was holding to his shoulder.
“Talk outside. No one comes in.” Two sentences without a ‘fuck’ or a ‘cunt’. It might be a first. I didn’t know.
“Are you the leader?”
“Yeah, wot you want?”
“A chat.”
“About wot?”
“About Joe and Billy Henderson.” I saw a movement. It was behind the window to the left of the doorway. Jimmy saw it too. The ‘thing’ he was holding swung imperceptibly towards it. Imperceptibly, but enough that everybody saw it. So it can’t have been imperceptible, can it? But you know what I mean.
Perceptible enough. Perceptible to the man behind the window. He disappeared and reappeared at the front door. He was holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. Small change. That left only one man unaccounted for. Perhaps.
“Never make assumptions, Laroche-Lodge. Should you do so you may find many of them to be false. Extrapolation is a dangerous business. Avoid it.” My housemaster taught me that.
“Wot about ’em? They ain’t ’ere.” I could see he was worried. He was sweating more.
“We’ll talk inside please. Just you and me.” His piggy eyes surveyed us. He saw what we had on offer. He knew what he had on offer. It wasn’t a lot.
“Awright… just you. The other cunts stay ’ere.”
“Careful, Mr Beale, that ‘thing’ has a hair trigger and Mr James doesn’t like you already.”
“Ow j’ know I’m Beale?”
“I know you are ‘Mr Beale’, Mr Beale, because I am not stupid… Empty the house.” The fat slob turned and nodded to the man with the rifle. He walked out and joined the others. “Empty the house,” I said again.
“It is.”
“I need one more face. You have ten seconds. Then it’s the kneecap again.”
“Ow j’ know?”
“I know, Mr Beale, because I’m not stupid. I can count.”
He yelled out “Scruffy”. Scruffy appeared at the door. He carried the mandatory shotgun. True to his name, he was scruffy. Not noticeably more than the rest. There was ‘FUCK OFF’ tattooed on his forehead.
“Stay here,” I said to Beale. “Check please,” I said to Mac and Jimmy.
They weren’t new to it. You could tell by the way they moved. There was a fluid motion to them. There was a duality of action. It was beyond the need for speech.
I knew Mac was wounded at Goose Green. The same day Colonel H. was killed. I knew he won some special medal that day. Something more than ‘just’ the Falklands Medal. He never talked about it. The house was empty.
I went inside with Beale. It was disgusting. I wasn’t surprised. Some human beings make pigs look clean. Men like Beale made pigs look clean. He sat in something resembling an armchair. I stayed standing. I laid out my proposition. The sticks and carrots.
The law frowned on too many carrots. Mr Munroe told me that. Men like Beale might balk at too many sticks. No one had to tell me that. I needed him ‘on board’. I knew I couldn’t make him an enthusiast. Not for the plan I laid out. I knew the pluses and the minuses would concentrate his mind.
I spoke. He listened. I spoke. He smoked and listened. It took ten minutes. You can say a lot in ten minutes. Complex concepts can be addressed in ten minutes. If it takes more than ten minutes, it’s waffle. Nothing I said was complex.
I spent the last two minutes on a summary. I didn’t want to leave without being sure he had things clear in his mind.
We withdrew. We went home. I took the dogs to the beach. The Hummers went home to Sydney. I have no idea what happened to the ‘things’.
I looked forward to seeing my family.
Their screams woke everyone. All the prisoners in the jail. By the time the guards got to them, the acid was eating out their eyes. They wouldn’t see again.
Was that an evil thing to do? I didn’t think so. Was that a bad thing to do? I didn’t think so. I thought it was a good thing to do. I didn’t know how many women would not be raped behind a nightclub at three o’clock in the morning. It could be a few.
A blind person can’t be a rapist. Not if the rapee doesn’t fancy being raped.
I was glad it was painful. I once got chilli sauce in my eye. Nitric acid (conc.) would be worse than that.
I met a scientist later. He told me it was the ‘oxidizing’ effect that did it. It made nitric acid (conc.) more destructive than sulphuric acid (conc.). You learn new things every day.
At the SOTH, you did basic chemistry, even in the humanities. We never used strong stuff (conc.) only (dil.) stuff. That wouldn’t do what we wanted.
I didn’t tell Mr Beale how to do it. I told him what I wanted. I told him what would happen if I did, or did not, get what I wanted. The nitric acid (conc.) was his idea. Perhaps he was an enthusiast after all.
Twenty
It was good to be home, and it was good to see Tom in his home. Tom liked home. Being home made him a fuller person than he was when he wasn’t home. That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with him when he wasn’t home, but he was fuller when he was.
We’d enjoyed being in Cambridge, but it wasn’t home. We’d enjoyed it because we were people who enjoyed things, almost everything. We were lucky to be like that and we knew that we were. I don’t think that nasty man, the man Annie called ‘Peter’ and Tom called ‘Prouse’, ever enjoyed anything. Maybe he enjoyed being nasty to people and having power over people, and that’s just sad. Having lots of money should make people happy, but it doesn’t seem to, not a lot of the time. Sometimes, I think people with a lot of money live lives that are more complicated than they need to be. It’s much easier and nicer to live a simple life. Tom has lots of money, and he’s happy with a simple life. So not everyone’s the same.
I like being simple, not simple-stupid, just simple-not complicated, and Tom and Annie like being that sort of simple too. I wouldn’t want to be a complicated person. The world is too full of complicated people and complicated things. Tom and Annie say they’re simple people, because they want to be simple people, but they aren’t, not really. They’re not simple people, but they’re not complicated people either. I think they’re what’s called complex people. I hadn’t heard of that word, not until Tom started teaching me things.
Tom has taught me almost all the things I know. Not all the things, but all the things about the world and about words, and about the clever people who said clever things with words. He taught me how to read words in a way I’d never done before. Before I met Tom I read words so that I could buy the right dress or find the right exit. He taught me how to read words that meant something, and that did things to how I felt.
He taught me about the world and about words, but he didn’t have to teach me about life. I knew about life and I knew more about it than he did. While he was teaching me about the world and about words, I was teaching him about life, and how things worked between people. He didn’t know much about that. I think I was good for him, during all those bad times, when Annie left us and went back to the man called Peter, or Prouse, or whatever.
When we flew home and Tom picked us up, I could tell something was changed inside him. I couldn’t see what it was. I knew it was a secret, and I knew he was going to keep it a secret. Something he was going to keep secret and hide away. I knew Tom had places where he hid things. I knew he had a lot hidden away inside them. This was different. This was something new. This was something that wasn’t there when he left us in Cambridge.
I knew Annie knew about the change in him, about the new thing he was hiding. I don’t think she knew what it was either. We didn’t talk about it. Sometimes we’d look at one another, and she’d put on that funny look she gets sometimes, and we’d kn
ow we were thinking the same thing. Women can do that. Tom says men can’t. Men can do a lot of things better than women, but not that. I’m glad women can do that and, anyway, reading maps isn’t that important.
This was my family. Possibly the only family I would ever have. I dreamed sometimes about Tom and me having our own baby. But I knew it was too much to dream for and dreaming about it would just make me unhappy. I was on the tablets that stopped me having Tom’s baby. I’d been on them since the bad times and stayed on them until they did the things to me that helped Annie and Tom have their babies, our babies, the girls. I went back to taking them after the girls were born. We were all so happy, and I didn’t want anything to upset that happiness. I still dreamed about what might happen in the future, but I just kept them as dreams. Like dreaming about holding hands with Jesus. I dreamed about that when I was a little girl. I don’t dream about that now. Perhaps sometimes, but not often. Sometimes I dream about Jesus forgiving me for all the wicked things I’ve done in my life. Having Annie’s babies wasn’t one of the wicked things. I know Jesus would understand about that. His Father wouldn’t. I’m not sure about the Holy Ghost.
They were Annie and Tom’s babies, but they were my babies too. They grew inside me and I could feel them there every day, even before they were the size of orange pips. I knew they were there and without me they wouldn’t be alive. I loved them. I loved them as much as I loved Annie and Tom.
They were happy days. The happy days before the unhappy things started to happen.
Twenty-One
A Judgement on a Life Page 8
