‘A very long time’ is a relative term. To the mayfly, a short summer’s day. To the galaxy, a billion years. So, how long was ‘a very long time’ to Benny?
Longer than I thought.
Benny needed practice, he said he did, that’s how we knew he did. Practice to get back into practice. So, he went to the garden to practise. We watched him. He disappeared. We watched him disappear. He went into the garden and disappeared and we watched him as he did. One minute he was there. Then he wasn’t. He disappeared for the morning, the afternoon and then for the evening. Then for the whole of the night.
We were worried by mid-morning. We thought he’d gone AWOL. We were worried, that’s why we rang Joe. Joe said not to be, that Benny was somewhere and would appear when he wanted to.
He said Benny did this as a boy in Milwaukee. More when he joined the Marines. He did it for practice. Snipers need practice, if they wish to stay sniping not sniped.
Joe said, ‘don’t worry’. We could perhaps try to find him. He laughed as he told us to try. I knew he didn’t think we could. We went out into the garden to see if we could. Joe was right, we couldn’t. He was nowhere to be found. We gave up by midday. We sat on the terrace. We drank beer before lunch. I liked drinking beer. I still do. I looked out on the garden. I knew he couldn’t be there. Then something hit me. A dried pea hit me. It hit me above the left eye.
Then Benny was there. He rose up from a flower bed. He was covered in stuff. It was green stuff and brown stuff, flowers and soil stuff. I found it hard to believe.
Benny was happy. That made us happy. We rang Joe. Joe was happy too.
But would Benny want more than a pea-shooter? Would Benny need more than a pea-shooter? It was ‘yes’ to the first one, and ‘no’ to the second one. We talked and convinced him. Talked for an hour to explain it. Talked for an hour to convince him. At the end of an hour, Benny said ‘SIR’.
Forty-Five
It was fun being on the ship, to start with. It was better than being in that big cold house, the house with the lady in the white suit, the lady who gave us chocolate even though we knew she wasn’t giving it to us because she liked us, but just to keep us quiet and to stop us from asking her all the questions we wanted to ask her, but that we knew, in the end, she would never answer, because she’d been told by the man we hated and the other man, the man we knew Mummy was scared of, not to answer the questions we asked her. She was a nasty lady who never smiled.
We missed Mummy and we missed Daddy and we missed Mummy Brosie too. We hadn’t seen Daddy or Mummy Brosie for such a long time, and now it seemed such a long time since we’d seen Mummy too. We weren’t allowed to talk about Mummy and Daddy, not when the lady in the white suit could hear us. We talked about them when we were in bed and sometimes we cried when we talked about them. I think we cried every time we talked about them. Catherine cried more than me, because I was stronger than Catherine, even though she said it was the other way round. Neither of us was really strong, not as strong as we knew Mummy and Daddy would want us to be.
We knew Daddy would get Mummy back, somehow. We knew that, when Daddy and Mr Iain and the nice man with the American voice, rescued us from the lady in the white suit and took us up into the sky on the noisy helicopter, that everything was going to be alright and that Daddy would find a way of rescuing Mummy and getting Mummy back too, so that we could all go home and be with Mummy Brosie and be happy for the rest of our lives. To play with Henry and Maggie on the lawn and be happy like we used to be happy and to be happy like that for the rest of our lives.
It was alright being on the ship, even though it wasn’t a ship, because the captain and the nice man who called him ‘skipper’ called it a ‘boat’. We thought, when a boat got bigger, it became a ship, like when a puppy becomes a dog, but the nice man who called the captain ‘skipper’ said that it didn’t always work like that, not all the time, just sometimes.
We knew the captain’s name wasn’t really ‘skipper’ because Mr Hargrave, the nice man with the American voice, who told us to call him ‘Joe’, called the captain ‘Captain Hiley’. Catherine and I liked Captain Hiley even though he talked in a funny way. He didn’t talk in a funny American way, not the way the man who told us to call him ‘Joe’ talked. Captain Hiley talked in a way where only some of the words were different to the way we talked and to the way Mummy and Daddy talked. Captain Hiley said ‘sux’ instead of ‘six’ like the rest of us said, and he said we were ‘twuns’ not ‘twins’. It was a funny way to talk and the nice man who called him ‘skipper’ said it was because he came from a faraway place called New Zealand and that if we dug a hole in the garden in the house we used to live in, the house in Cambridge in the country called England, and if we kept on digging for a long, long time then we would come out into the country called New Zealand where people said ‘sux’ and ‘twuns’ and ‘hup’ when really they meant ‘hip’. It sounded like a funny place and we wanted to go there. We said we would go there when Daddy worked out how to get Mummy back and we could all be happy all over again, and be happy for the rest of our lives.
It was fun to be on the ship, even if it was only a boat. It was fun to start with and it was fun to go onto the island in the ‘rubber-duckie’ and chase the little crabs up and down the beach and play in the sea and build sandcastles and get the nice man called Joe to bury us in the sand.
It was fun to start with, but we wanted to go home.
Forty-Six
Benny was sorted. Prouse was sorted. ‘Sort of’ sorted. Sorting itself, ‘sort of’. Wednesdays, when I met Watson, before I went to bed with Watson, we talked. She told me things. Things Annie asked her to tell me. Things Annie asked her to ask me. It worked. It was slow, but it worked. We wanted a result. We wanted it quickly. We were impatient. That wasn’t a good thing to be. Almost never is it a good thing to be. So, we tried not to be. It wasn’t easy. Lots of things in life aren’t easy. ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy.’ I read that.
So, we got things sorted, ‘sort of’ sorted, as much as we could get them ‘sort of’ sorted. Things were as sorted as they were ever likely to be sorted. So, now it was time to make our move. It was exciting, in a frightening ‘sort of’ way.
The Triumvirate met. We talked, not just talked, just mostly talked. Prouse was watching us. We knew that. He was looking for the girls. Looking everywhere for them. He wanted them back. He thought they were his. He wanted them to hang on his wall with their mother. To know they were his. To know they weren’t mine.
So, we met, The Triumvirate met. Met where no one would expect us to meet. Where no one knew we could meet. We met for a day. Final things were finally decided. It was the Rubicon. And now we waited. Only waited. Waited for Prouse. Waited for what Prouse would do. What he would do when he knew the things we wanted him to know. What the Major would do. What he would do after Prouse did what he was going to do. What the Major would do to Prouse after he knew the things we wanted him to know about what Prouse was planning to do to him.
The Major never did arrange for a man to tamper with the helicopter. The tampering that crashed the helicopter. The crash that killed my parents. Killed the woman I loved. Killed the woman Prouse loved. But we made Prouse think he did. Made Prouse think he did it out of spite. Spite for being owned. Spite for being held in the palm of another man’s hand. Spite for being held as a prisoner of undeclared threat and declared obligation. A prisoner hung on the wall. A prisoner to be returned to jail should the owner of the wall so decide. A prisoner hung, like Annie was hung. It was a sneaky thing to do.
The Major never arranged for the helicopter to fly across the Cascapedia into the hill above ‘Bullseye’. But we made Prouse think he did. It was a sneaky thing to do. We were about to go beyond sneaky now.
I enjoyed planning the devious things we planned. I enjoyed the devious things we did. Perhaps I was a devious kind of person.
Do we all h
ave different things inside us? Things that can make us into different sorts of people, depending on what’s happening to us? Depending on what person we need to be? I think we do. I read about it somewhere. It’s called ‘epigenetics’, I think. It’s about what triggers inside us turn on what switches inside us. It’s complicated stuff.
It seems unlikely that who we are now, with our strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, wants and needs, was set in stone the moment we landed into this cold, bright, unusual place called reality-on-earth. If I wasn’t born with ‘tangled speech’, if I wasn’t left-handed, if my left side didn’t grow faster, if my brother wasn’t such an arsehole, my father such a pig and Mother not so perfect, would I be a different person to the one I am now? I think I would be. If all the things that happened to me, the good things, and the awful things that happened to me, had never happened to me, would I be a different person to the one I am now? I think I would be.
So, why is it that most of us, almost all of us, and even the best of us, look down on someone like the Major? Think less of him because of what he is? Is, what he is, his fault? Or is it the fault of all the little things that might, or might not have happened to him? Should we accept him for what he is? Should we pity him for what he is? Should we forgive him for what he is?
I wasn’t going to. I was going to see him kill Prouse and then, hopefully be killed himself.
Forgive me for what I am.
Judgement could wait. I could judge myself later. I would judge myself later. Now was the time to get on with it.
We knew Prouse was in love with my mother, with his memories of my mother. That he was consumed by his love for my mother. That he made a shrine to the memory of my mother. That he worshipped there. Was only human there.
We knew, too, he wouldn’t like to know she was murdered. Not by the man closest to him. The man he trusted more than anyone. The man he trusted with his life. By the man he trusted, because he knew the man he trusted was in the palm of his hand. That any shake of the palm of that hand would see the man’s daughter sent back to where she was before and would see the man he trusted back in jail for the rest of his life. The man who knew that. The man he had that hold over because of that. The man he had hanging on his wall.
We knew he wouldn’t like to know my mother was murdered. And not by that man. Even though we knew she wasn’t. That didn’t matter. The truth was immaterial to our plans.
So, we let him believe my mother was murdered. Murdered by the Major. We let him know that, by what Watson told him, told him in private, about what the maid told her, told her in private, told her about what she found in the Major’s room, and what she read in the Major’s room. What Prouse went and found in the Major’s room, and what he read in the Major’s room.
It was a convincing narrative. Only convincing if you knew the Major, and the sort of man the Major was. We knew Prouse would know the Major and know the sort of man the Major was. So, we used that knowledge as we composed our narrative. It was all good.
Forty-Seven
I knew Tom and Joe weren’t too keen on my ‘wee toys’ and I knew they wanted to get through all of this business with the minimum of bloodshed, and especially bloodshed that would need to be accounted for.
The world of International Security is, by and large, a world of law-abiding men. I wasn’t sure the Guv’nor would be happy with my ‘wee toys’.
I liked what Tom and Annie and Peggy were doing. I liked the idea of ‘disinformation’. It had a D-Day flavour to it and I know the Guv’nor would have liked that.
I knew they weren’t keen on my ‘wee toys’, but I thought they might have a role. Maybe not a big role, but a role somewhere. Tom came to talk to me. Then we both talked to Joe. So, there was a wee role for my ‘wee toys’. We brought them into the Long Room. I played with them until I was ‘toy perfect’. We wheeled them out onto the terrace and did things to buoys floating out to sea. It was an exciting time for us. I was all afire to avenge the Guv’nor.
Forty-Eight
Enter Chorus.
One moonless night, the last moonless night before Prouse discovered the things about the Major, the things that told him he was Tom’s mother’s murderer, a large clump of seaweed washed up on the beach in front of Prouse’s copy of Tom’s copy of the house he was brought up in.
It didn’t wash up at the front of the house, but rather to one side, quite close to the electrified fence that ran down to the beach and quite close, but not too close, to the guardhouse that sat in that corner of the garden. The two guards noted the seaweed, as it washed up onto the beach, but took no further notice of it. They had been told to watch out for things, but seaweed wasn’t one of the things they’d been told to watch out for. When dawn came, and when their relievers came, they didn’t mention the seaweed and that was, possibly, because the seaweed was no longer there.
Exit Chorus.
Forty-Nine
I knew that what Tommy was hoping would happen was starting to happen. More than just starting to happen, was happening.
‘The air was electric with…’ I wasn’t sure what. Electric with something, anger maybe, hate maybe, impending violence maybe and, whatever it was that it was electric with, was fizzing and sparking in spades.
At dinner that night, the air was ‘electric’ with something and the electricity wasn’t just Peter’s.
What Tommy might not have told you so far, and neither have I, is that Peggy had been talking, not just to Peter, but to the Major too, and had been showing things, not just to Peter, but to the Major too. Not things that were true, of course, but things the Major might think were true. Things he might think were true if, what we wanted him to think were true, were convincing enough for him to think they were true.
They were things to show him what Peter was planning to do, to upgrade his security. To be more secure from the things Tommy might do, to redress the things he’d done to Tommy. To protect him ‘round the clock’, and to protect him with professionals, more than one professional. So Peggy showed things to the Major, showed him letters that Peter wrote. Letters to Mitchell WWSS, America’s Munroe & Sons. They were things she showed the Major letters to and letters from. Peter’s plans to replace him. Replace him and then discard him. Maybe send him back to jail.
There were other letters too. Letters to the nursing home in Windsor. Letters to release the Major’s daughter from their care. Letters to have her returned to the NHS home for the elderly in Leeds.
That’s why the air was ‘electric’.
I knew they were armed, both armed. I knew that, not because I was a woman who could tell things and know things about men, but because I could see the usual bulge in the left armpit of the Major’s jacket and I knew it was where he always carried the gun he always carried and Peter would have known he always carried and would have expected him to always carry. There was no point in having a bodyguard, if he didn’t carry a gun.
So, the Major was easy, but Peter was easy too. Peter was easy because Peter was a vain man and a well-dressed man and would never, not normally, have allowed his jacket to be pulled so out of shape, as it was by the revolver, I think it was a revolver, that he had in his right jacket pocket. I never knew Peter to carry a gun before. He hadn’t needed to carry a gun before, because he had the Major to carry a gun for him. So, why was he carrying one now? I thought, I hoped, I knew the answer to that.
So, what was going to happen? I didn’t know. I don’t think they did either. After all the years they’d spent together, and after all the low and nasty things they’d done together, the low and nasty bonds that bound them, they can’t have had any misconceptions about what the man across the table was like, or the things the man across the table was capable of doing. Of what sort of a man he was. I didn’t either. So, I did what seemed to be the right thing to do, I filled their wine glasses. I went to the French windows and walked out onto the terrace. Peggy
followed me out. It was like the terrace at Tommy’s where I’d had so many of the good times in my life. Peggy turned on the down-lights and we sat on the sofa and waited for the men to join us. I knew that joining us was what they would do, not because I knew things about men, but because they always joined us on the terrace after dinner.
I sat on the sofa with Peggy and looked out to sea. I looked out across the lawn and out across the sea. We chatted about unimportant things. We tried to look relaxed when relaxed was the last thing, either of us, could possibly be.
There were two shapes on the lawn. They looked like the Dobermans I hated, as much as I loved Henry and Maggie. Men like Peter kept Dobermans and men like Tommy kept spaniels. That explains all the differences between them.
Do certain kinds of men buy certain kinds of dogs, or do the men who buy certain kinds of dogs become like the certain kinds of dogs they buy? Or is it the other way around? Do angry men breed angry dogs, or do angry dogs breed angry men? Who knows? All I knew was that Tommy would never own a Doberman and Peter would never own a spaniel.
The shapes on the lawn were the Dobermans, but they weren’t really. They were the dead Dobermans, and they were dead because their livers were ruptured. Their livers were ruptured because of microwaves from a boat far out to sea. A boat we couldn’t even see.
Peggy told me about, because Tommy told her about, because Iain told him about, microwaves and what microwaves could do, if the dial was turned to ‘max’. It was then that I knew it would be over tonight.
A Judgement on a Life Page 24
