A Judgement on a Life

by Stephen Baddeley

  So, Prouse loved my mother. Always loved my mother, back to the time before I went away to school. So, Prouse loved my mother, the wife of his best friend. The mother of the man he was hoping to destroy.

  Thirty-Nine

  She went to her ten o’clock lecture. She said she’d be home for lunch. Ambrosia showed Mrs B. how to make fish-gumbo. She didn’t come home for lunch. I rang her office. No one answered. I drove to the university. Her park was empty. Her office was empty. Her secretary didn’t know where she was. She attended a meeting and left. Did she forget? Did she go to meet us at the Sailing Club by mistake? She didn’t. She wasn’t there. I went back to her office. She wasn’t there again. She could be shopping. She didn’t like to go shopping. She never went shopping. Never on her own. Where was she? I sat at her desk. I opened the drawer. There was an envelope. There was ‘Tommy’ written on it. I opened it.

  Forty

  Tom always looked like a fit and healthy man, and he looked like that because he was a fit and healthy man. I never saw Tom look so bad before. So sick before. He came into the ‘Long Room’ and looked like he was going to throw up. I knew he wasn’t sick, not really sick. I knew it was something worse than being sick. I knew it was something bad, real bad.

  Forty-One

  Dear Tommy,

  It’s no use pretending anymore. I’ve tried as hard as I can. You know I’ve tried hard to love you. You know it’s never been easy for me. I told you that back at the start. I’ve been pretending to myself for a long time now. My capacity for love was damaged when I was young. I know now, that it hasn’t ever recovered. I have to be honest with you and to try not to hurt you any more than I know I have already. I don’t love you and never have loved you. I’m so, so sorry.

  If I love anyone, I love Peter, I realise that now. I tried to hide the truth of that from myself and from all of us, but it’s no use pretending. I have to go to him and be with him. It’s what I know I have to do. I know it’s the only way I can ever be happy. I hope you can forgive me. You must know that, even though I don’t love you, you are ever in my thoughts and I wish you and Ambrosia all the happiness for the future. I know the two of you can be really happy together. Happy in a way the two of us or even the three of us could never hope to be. Please forgive me once again,

  Your dear, dear friend.

  Annie Rinsler.

  Forty-Two

  He called me on the telephone and I found it hard to believe the things he was telling me. It was the middle of the night when he called me, but that didn’t matter. Edinburgh is ten hours behind Darwin, and I knew he wouldn’t have called me at that hour, not unless it was for something important.

  It was six months now, since the Guv’nor had asked me to take over the security of the Laroche Trust and the Lodge family. I knew the Guv’nor was a man who rarely showed emotion, he seldom had when we were children, but I knew that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of any. I knew the Lodge family were special to him and I think that’s why he had asked me to take a special interest in them. I knew he had flown to Darwin to talk to Tom about it. I knew Tom was happy for me to take over. I knew he trusted me and I think that trust came through the trust he had in the Guv’nor and the trust the Guv’nor had in me. I’m the youngest of the sons, and I was flattered to be asked.

  I’d only met Tom a few times. Mostly before ‘the-bad-times’ came and when we were getting the security for the compound and for the house sorted out, and then a couple of times since, when Tom was living with Anne and Ambrosia and then again after the twins were born. I arranged the security for them when they went for a holiday to the Caribbean.

  I know people expect the Guv’nor to be judgemental. I’m not sure why they think that way, because he isn’t. I think it may be his dour demeanour that suggests to people that he’s going to be judging them.

  He’s been exposed to all the highs and lows of human nature, for most of his life, and there have probably been more in the way of lows than of highs. I suppose it’s easy to become disillusioned about human nature, especially when you have spent as much time as he has looking at it. After he got out of the army at the end of the war, and then joined Grandpapa in the business, a lot of the Guv’nor’s time was spent protecting greedy rich men from greedy poor men, and because I know that and because I have had some experience myself now, it has always surprised me how accepting and optimistic he still is about human nature. He still expects the best of people. He’s a realist though, and he knows, more than any of us, how the real world works. He doesn’t live in a Mary Poppins kind of world. I think he wants people to be good and to be decent, even when he knows they will probably turn out not to be either of those things.

  I think that’s why he likes Tom and his family so much. I think they restore his faith in what people can be like, if they want to be. I know Tom inherited an enormous fortune, and I know he’s working hard to get rid of it in ways that will do good things in the world.

  That’s not a common thing though, not in the world we live in, and certainly not in the world of high-end security. The world we live in is full of people who don’t want to part with what they have, and often what they have has been come by in ways that don’t need looking at too closely. Not by their security consultants anyway. We see a lot of things at the other end of the spectrum from Tom and the Trust. We see a lot of people scared and greedy. Money hasn’t given them a better life, because it’s given them a closed and watchful life. They fear losing what they’ve taken and they see the world as being full of people just like them. They have reason to see it like that, because, for them, it is. The world they live in is a dirty place full of greed and fear. How contorted and miserable do the accumulators look, and how happy and content do the disseminators look in comparison.

  Sometimes, I feel that the accumulators have earned the miserable lives they so often lead. I know I should try not to be judgemental, but sometimes it’s difficult and occasionally impossible. I know the Guv’nor has managed, better than I have, to insulate himself from being judgemental about the dirty world we spend our lives protecting.

  It would be easy, in our line of work, to make judgements and the Guv’nor has told us how important it is for us not to do that. We may not be able to respect our clients, but we shouldn’t despise them. We shouldn’t sit in judgement on them. As soon as we started to do that we would be less than we should be. We would lose our motivation to do our job as best we could.

  With Tom and his family and with J. Maz and the Trust, that was all different. Looking after them was a clean and decent thing to be doing. It made me feel privileged to be doing it and I know it was the same way the Guv’nor felt about it too.

  I was flattered to be asked to do it, and I knew I had to do it as best I could.

  I lay in bed after Tom phoned me. I couldn’t work it out either. This wasn’t the attack on the Trust that we had been expecting and which we had rebuffed, and not really on their persons. But I knew, like Tom knew, that this was skulduggery writ large. I rang the airline and booked my ticket, and then I rang the Guv’nor and we talked. I told him what I planned to do, and he said he agreed. He said he would come too.

  I arrived in Darwin the following day, but the Guv’nor never came. He was killed when Rob Roy, his boat, exploded off the Isle of Skye. It was on the day before he was meant to leave.

  Forty-Three

  Lawyers sent us letters. Prouse and Annie’s lawyers, Prouse and Anne Rinsler’s lawyers, sent us letters. Our lawyers sent letters back. Prouse and Rinsler took us to court. So, we went to court. We went to court, and we went to court, and we went to court, and we lost the girls. We lost the girls to Prouse and Rinsler. Prouse took my wife. My wife took herself to Prouse. I couldn’t get that out of my head. They took my daughters. Prouse and Rinsler took my daughters. I couldn’t get that out of my head.

  I thought I hated her. Like I did the first time. But I didn’t
. I knew I didn’t. I couldn’t. I loved her. I would always love her. Like I loved the girls. Like I would always love the girls. It was the love of ‘lost loves’. But would it always be that way? I didn’t know.

  And I still had Ambrosia.

  Ambrosia thought she was pregnant. She was right. She went to the hospital to see Dr Helen. On the way home she was ambushed by bikies. They shot her. She lost the baby. She was paralysed below the waist. She didn’t die. She was all I had.

  Part Two

  One

  Enter Chorus.

  Once there was a war, somewhere. There was always a war, somewhere.

  Never was there never a war, anywhere.

  *

  Chorus – moves to centre stage.

  Sergeant Benny liked wars. He liked being a part of wars. He liked killing people. He liked killing people he didn’t like. He liked killing people he was told he didn’t like. He knew that was a good thing to do. Sergeant Benny liked doing good things. He liked doing what he was told, and when he was told to kill the people his country didn’t like, he liked that most of all. The people he didn’t like were the people he was told not to like, and killing them was a good thing to do. Sergeant Benny was a good soldier.

  He was a good soldier, and he was a good citizen. He was proud of being both of those.

  America would be a better place, if there were more people like him. He knew that, and he knew that everyone else should know that too. He knew they should know that, but he knew that some of them didn’t know that. Knowing that some of them didn’t believe in the ‘American People’ upset him. Sometimes it made him angry.

  He didn’t like being angry. Sometimes, when he was angry, Sergeant Benny did things he would later regret. Sergeant Benny wasn’t at his best when he was angry.

  Benny’s family came from Milwaukee, from near Milwaukee. His father was a hog farmer with a lot of hogs. He had a lot of sons too, so Benny had a lot of brothers. Benny was the youngest of the brothers.

  Joe was the oldest brother. Benny looked up to Joe. Joe didn’t do hog farming. Not like the other brothers. Joe lived in London. Not the London in Arkansas, or even the London in Canada. Joe lived in the London in England, and that was a long way from Milwaukee. Benny found that strange, because why would Joe want to live in England? Why would Joe not want to live in America? The whole world wanted to live in America. It was only right that they should. America was the best place on earth.

  There were some Americans who didn’t want to live in America. Who didn’t like America. Who thought America was a bad country. They were bad Americans, and if he was told he didn’t like them, and if he was told to kill them, then he would.

  Joe wasn’t a bad American. Joe was a good American, who just liked funny things and liked living in funny places. He liked pictures that you could hang on the wall, if you wanted to, if you felt the wall would look better that way. He liked paintings and went around the world buying them for a man who was some sort of a Limey Lord. Joe didn’t call them pictures and he didn’t even call them paintings. He called them canvasses. Benny didn’t know why. He supposed they must be made of canvas. It seemed a waste of canvas. Canvas should be used for tents.

  One day Benny heard Joe telling their father that he’d just bought a painting for the Limey Lord that was worth ten million dollars. He said it was very old and was painted on wood. Benny thought that was strange. If it was painted on wood, shouldn’t it be called a wood? Benny was going to ask Joe that, but he thought it might upset him, to have his little brother questioning him about canvasses and woods. Benny looked up to Joe. He wouldn’t want to upset him, not over a silly thing like that.

  Benny wasn’t smart and he knew that. He knew his ma and pa knew that, and he knew his brothers knew that too. Not being smart didn’t worry Benny because he knew being smart wasn’t everything.

  Benny wasn’t smart, but he was proud of being what he was, and what he was, was the best sniper in the whole of the United States Marine Corps. Well, until they kicked him out. Kicked him out for something that wasn’t his fault, not really his fault. For something that just happened, a mistake that just happened. Benny had spent all of his adult life in the United States Marine Corps and he knew it didn’t tolerate mistakes, sometimes not even small ones, not even when they weren’t your fault, not really your fault.

  But Benny loved the United States Marine Corps and he accepted what had happened to him, even though he didn’t like what had happened to him. Benny was a good Marine, even after he wasn’t one anymore.

  *

  Joe Hargrave lived in London, the one in England. He was married and he had a daughter. He worked for Sir Peter Prouse. He was head of the Acquisitions Department at Prouse-Pinkerton. It was a good job and he enjoyed it. His salary was large, larger than anything he would have got in the States. His daughter was at school at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and he knew that pleased his wife. He knew his wife liked telling her friends about Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She especially liked telling her American friends. He knew his wife was a snob. She hadn’t been a snob when he married her, but she became one later, after they got to England. He knew a lot of expat wives became snobs, and he was pretty certain that it was because they didn’t have enough to do.

  He found his wife things to do, but she wasn’t interested in doing them, and didn’t like doing them, even when she did them. He said she should get involved in charity work, but she wasn’t interested in that either. He knew she didn’t like mixing with poor people, or even thinking about poor people. Her family were from Georgia and she wasn’t interested in helping with anything to do with Africa, or Africans, or dark people. Her brother was killed in Vietnam and she wasn’t interested in helping with anything to do with Asia, or Asians, or brown, or yellow people.

  He said she should take up sports again. She was good at golf when he first met her. She said she didn’t want to. She liked being with her friends and none of her friends did outdoor things like that. Her friends liked going out to lunch and, so, she liked going out to lunch too. They’d grown apart. That made Joe sad, sometimes, but not always, and not as sad, or as often, as it used to.

  The only time Joe didn’t enjoy his work was when he got the feeling, only sometimes got the feeling, that Sir Peter thought he owned him, and when Joe got the feeling, increasingly frequently got the feeling, he thought Sir Peter might be right, and that he could ask Joe to do anything, and knew that Joe would do it, had to do it, had no choice but to do it. He didn’t get that feeling often, not at the start, but, when he did get that feeling, it made him think about the future. He thought about the future more often now.

  He didn’t like the feeling he got, when he felt he was owned, and he didn’t like the woman his wife was becoming. The woman his wife had become. He didn’t like the person his daughter was becoming either. Was becoming and would soon have become. He was a midwest boy at heart and he wanted his daughter to be a midwest girl at heart too, but that wasn’t happening, and she was becoming like her mother.

  He didn’t mind the English and he even had English friends. They weren’t the same as his American friends, but they were ‘OK’. What he didn’t like about the English was the way they liked to label people. Liked to put them in pigeon holes and, once there, leave them there. Once you were in your pigeon hole you weren’t allowed to leave it. Nothing you could do would ever move you to another pigeon hole. English people did that to one another, and the sort of English people he got to meet, did that more than most of them.

  Joe knew that the easiest way for an Englishman to put someone in a pigeon hole, was to hear them speak. One sentence would put them where they belonged, and no amount of talent or success would ever move them.

  Joe knew that, for some reason, a good suit and an American accent put you into a higher pigeon hole. Not the highest, it could never be the highest, not for a foreigner, not for someone
who wasn’t ‘one of us’, but pretty high none the less. Joe didn’t like the way the English did that. Joe was a Midwest man. He didn’t put people in pigeon holes.

  But his wife liked the way the English did that, and their daughter was starting to like it too. The sooner she finished with her fancy school and the sooner he shipped her back to college at Marquette, the better. Joe was a Marquette man and he thought the mix of Midwest wisdom and Catholic decency would be good for her. His wife wanted her to stay on in England and go to ‘college’ in Oxford. He knew they would argue about it. He knew his wife liked arguing with him. He knew she liked it because she knew she would win. When it was something to do with their daughter, she always won.

  Joe didn’t love his wife anymore. He’d loved her once, before she became the person she became. He doubted any man could love the woman she became. She was still an attractive woman. Attractive, if you only looked at the surface, but not so good underneath and you didn’t have to go too far underneath to find out what was there. What was really there, and what all the false bits and make-up and fancy clothes were there to hide. Trying to hide, but couldn’t.

  He knew she had affairs. He knew, when he travelled abroad, she had affairs. It didn’t worry him much. He didn’t love her anymore and you can’t be jealous about something you don’t care for.

  Joe had affairs too, because he needed to. He needed women and he’d needed them all his life. The women he needed to have affairs with were the sort of women he thought his wife once was. They were women like the woman she was when he first met her. They were nice women, decent women.