For the Good of the State

The head-scarfed mother detached herself from the overhang, still holding the machine-pistol stiffly at the ready, ignoring him and her empty push-chair equally as she sidled step-by-careful-step across the path—the old professionally well-balanced step, ready for anything: he had seen that before, the fluid careful body, the steady gun and the watchful eyes! But he had never really been in that class, in which preservation was not a sequence of precautions, but a violent pre-emptive action against the terrorists—

She reached the edge of the path, and took one quick up-and-down glance over it, only to confirm what she already knew while hardly taking her eye off the path over Tom and beyond him, just in case (and just in case was another hallmark of the pro)—

But now, at last, she looked at him, and advanced towards him.

And, just as he was testing the idea that maybe she wasn’t a woman after all, she smiled at him, and he knew that she was, of course: it wasn’t just that remembered voice, and certainly not the smile, it was everything about her which made her a woman.

‘Hi there, Sir Thomas.’ She was late-thirties at close quarters, but not noticeably hard-as-nails. ‘I’m Shirley.’

Tom felt at a disadvantage. ‘Hullo… Shirley.’ Part of the disadvantage was a feeling of intense gratitude. Which, because she had only been doing her job, made him also feel foolish. But there was also the fact that he couldn’t stand up: as she moved cautiously past him and he tried to keep her in sight his broken Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State bones reminded him painfully of his fall. ‘I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle.’

‘Is that a fact?’ The path was empty except for the rifle which Sadowski had reached for in vain. But she wasn’t interested in that.

‘Is there anyone else up there, Sir Thomas?’ She watched the hillside as she spoke.

‘No.’ The pain made him catch his breath. ‘There were just the two of them.’

Two?‘ She shifted her attention to the outside edge of the path.

’Hmm… well that surely makes two.‘ She studied what he couldn’t see for a moment, then she peered further back. ’You can come on up, Wilhemina.‘

Tom’s disadvantaged feeling expanded into embarrassment. He should have known, of course—children, clogs or kites, none of them were Willy’s scene. But chiefly it was obstinate disobedience which came naturally to her.

‘Wilhemina!’ This time Shirley shouted the name. ‘Come on up!’

‘I’m coming—I’m coming!’ Willy sounded angry, rather than scared, in the distance. ‘I fell halfway down the hill, darn it, Shirl!’

Tom sat up with difficulty, holding his injured leg with both hands unsuccessfully. Not that he was about to regain much dignity, with his knuckles skinned and bloodied by his fall through the gorse, and his face not much better, by the feel of it.

‘Hmm…’ Shirley stared down at him. But there was a surprising lack of disdain in her expression. ‘You got the other one, huh?’

Tom hid his surprise beneath his pain. But then he realized that she Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State must have been round the point of the path when Sadowski had killed his comrade: she must have been covering Audley when the freak wind had carried the sound of Sadowski’s shot—or one of the shots—back to her; and Willy had been behind her, and therefore been closer to this point; so Willy had arrived here first—

was that it?

Quite deliberately, he let the bones grate again, and cried out in genuine agony.

Tom honey! For God’s sake—! ‘ Willy’s anguished cry also came to his rescue.

‘He’s okay.’ Shirl’s voice was coldly matter-of-fact. ‘He’s just hurt his ankle—that’s all.’

‘Tom honey!’ With the hood of her anorak down and her hair out she was Willy. ‘I thought you were shot!’

‘I’m all right.’ She was going to fuss over him, and he liked the idea of that because it gave him time to think. ‘Honestly I am, Willy,’

‘Oh, Tom—you’re a mess!’ Her eyes were dark with concern,

‘You’re not fit to be allowed out on your own—that’s the truth!’

What Tom thought first, as she brushed his own hair out of his eyes, was— I’m the only one who knows what really happened, in all its confusing completeness—

And then the thought betrayed him: in the second place it wasn’t quite so confusing now—

But he looked at Shirley, with sudden knowledge conferring power greater than pain. ‘Is Audley all right?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘When I last saw him he was just fine.’ Shirley rewarded him with a look of undeserved professional approval. ‘I think he was quite enjoying himself, maybe.’

Tom tried to concentrate on her, to the exclusion of Willy’s perfume and her soft solicitous touch. ‘Enjoying himself?’

‘Yeah.’ Shirley shared one efficient minder’s secret with another less-efficient minder. ‘Dr Audley likes winning, Sir Thomas.’

“W — ‘ Tom caught the word before it betrayed him, and turned it into a very different word. ’ Willy… I love you, Willy.‘ But, as he changed the word, it became the absolute and ultimate truth. ’Do you love me, Willy?‘

Wilhemina Groot considered the wreck of Sir Thomas Arkenshaw critically. ‘I don’t know about love, Tom honey. But someone has got to look after you— that I do know!’