Spectacularly Badly Wrong

Edmund Blackadder did not consider himself a man of letters. At school, he had spent most of his English classes scribbling filthy limericks into a fifteenth-hand copy of Much Ado About Nothing. When limericks paled, he would take a siesta. He got very good at sleeping face down on his desk (it didn't do the shape of his nose any favours, but you can't have everything), and managed to escape any contact with literature whatsoever – other than, in the course of his limerick endeavours, acquiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of all possible rhymes for the word 'arse'.

So he was the least likely of men to write any kind of book, apart, perhaps, from one called A Beginner's Guide to Cunning Plans – or, in his darker moments, one entitled 1001 Ways To Kill Baldrick Using Nothing But A Teaspoon And A Medium-Sized Piece of Boot. And yet, had he been minded to put his acknowledged genius (acknowledged, at least, to himself) to a work of literature, there was at least one that he could have penned without any trouble at all: How To Really, Really, Really Piss Off Kevin Darling. Perhaps not a bestseller, but impeccably researched during many tedious visits to HQ. Blackadder considered himself something of a virtuoso on the subject, playing Darling like a lanky, annoyingly-moustached violin. If the mood was right and the General didn't show up too early, Blackadder could have Darling's face go from stationary to twitching in under 60 seconds

To summarize: Blackadder was really good at annoying Darling.

Kevin Darling did not consider himself a man of letters. He had spent most of his school English lessons hiding under his desk to avoid the ink pellets which seemed inevitably to fly in his direction the minute Mr Scabtree's back was turned. On one occasion, he had opened his sixteenth-hand copy of Much Ado About Nothing to find a series of obscene poems scrawled in the margins, poems which Mr Scabtree discovered, assumed Darling had written, and promptly caned him for.

Darling, who was usually teacher's pet, had never been caned before. It hurt a lot, and he had to write and tell his parents, who wrote back urgently telling him to behave and be good and not in any way jeopardize his scholarship, because the whole family had been living on bread and dripping for the past year in order to afford his school uniform, and if he put even a toe out of line from now on they would break his legs. And the other boys taunted him mercilessly, especially that git Blackadder in the year above, who made it his business to trip Darling up whenever they met, declaring that anyone who could treat Shakespeare's works in so cavalier a fashion deserved everything he got.

As a result, Darling spent most of that term:

a) with a nosebleed from falling flat on his face

b) trying to avoid Blackadder whenever possible, and

c) with a healthy resentment for English Literature which had got him into this predicament in the first place.

He was not, then, the most likely fellow to try his hand at book-writing. And yet, had he ever decided to try, there was one book he might have written easily: Blackadder Is A Total Git Bastard with Stupid Hair And One Day He'll Get His, You See If He Doesn't. He had sometimes fantasized about seeing it in a respectable bookshop when he got home, bound in blue paper and priced at two and sixpence.

In particular, he fantasized about flicking to the index, and finding one particular entry:

Blackadder, Edmund, victimizes the author at school, 1-11; meets the author again in the army, 53; fails to recognize the author, 54; is an irredeemable prick, 55, 56-70, 71, 73, 77-80, 86, 91, 99, 100-299; feeds the author a slug, 300; ties author to a chair and places potty on his head, 303; is an arrogant, insufferable, swaggering popinjay with an annoying voice, 307- 400; sudden disgrace, 402; loses all limbs, 403; goes blind, 404; goes mad, 405; develops bad breath, 406; loses entire family in freak croquet accident, 407; is mistakenly believed to be Welsh, 409; is court-martialled, 410; painful and messy death, 411 – 421; various august personages of the realm pass water over his grave, 422-32.

To summarize: Darling was really good at hating Blackadder. Most of the time.

Because Darling would, on occasion, Not Quite Hate Blackadder. It was horrible, and ghastly, and completely against every law of decency, and most of the time he tended to brush the whole thing under the metaphorical carpet, which was ironic when you thought about it because Darling was conscientious about tidiness and would never sweep things under a carpet in a literal sense, any more than he would forget to dust or polish his desk or wind the clock or lay out the General's extensive collection of moustache combs.

But as far as the inner workings of his psyche went, Darling was far less meticulous, and he preferred not to notice what was going on at all - apart from making a note in his diary whenever one of these unpleasant episodes occurred. It was important to keep good records, after all.

June 12th

Unfortunate thoughts: 9.45-9.57 AM, 1.01-1.14 PM, 10.04-10.22PM. (Unsatisfactory).

B. here for briefing again. He appears to have had haircut ?how whilst living in trenches? Suits him. As we talked, a single shaft of sunlight from the window bathed him in ethereal golden luminescence. Bastard. He called me a miserable penpusher, and deliberately knocked over box of pencils I had just finished sharpening. This is the fifth time this month (unfortunate thoughts, not knocking over of pencils). Am I going mad? Will sharpen more pencils, then re-catalogue stamp collection.

NB. Request transfer. General is genial but insane, and much less liberal with the wine than previously. B. damned nuisance, don't want to end up like Uncle Horace, after all. Mum said that at the end he was eking out a living on street corners, performing a one-man pirated version of Salomé. Ugh.

?apply to women's auxiliary balloon corps again?

Pros: Strapping ladies in tight trousers, excellent food, no Blackadder.

Cons:… No Blackadder.

Ah. Bugger.

It was 1917. The Germans were in their trenches, and all was wrong with the world. And Blackadder, as well as being in perpetual fear for his life, was lonely – though he would have rather had his eyes torn out and served as canapés at a cannibals' dinner party than have admitted it. There was George, of course – a tragic example of why marrying one's cousins should be illegal. Then there was Baldrick, described on his passport as 'vaguely humanoid', described by Blackadder as 'stupider than an incredibly stupid person who's got lost on the way to a stupidity convention to celebrate international stupid day'. Blackadder also suspected him of baking his only remaining copy of the Harrods' lingerie catalogue into a large and dubious looking pie, although he had no proof on this score.

And then there was the General Melchett. In his charitable moods (which were rare) Blackadder was wont to remark that if the general had been born a sheep, he would be considered only moderately dense. In his uncharitable moods (which were frequent) he tended to liken Melchett's leadership skills, conversational prowess, and standard of personal hygiene to those of Neville the fat hamster.

Such, then, was the intellectual standard of Blackadder's colleagues. Compared with such vacuous cretins, even Darling began to look slightly less of a contemptible and pointless excuse for a human being. He had, Blackadder conceded, a few more brain cells than the rest. There was no point needling people like Baldrick, who only understood disapprobation when expressed via physical violence. George's insufferable cheeriness was practically bullet-proof (Blackadder sometimes toyed idly with the idea of shooting the Lieutenant, just to test this theory). The general, as well as being stupid and poorly-laundered, was also quite mad, and hence better left alone.

And so that left Darling as the only real source of intellectual entertainment Blackadder had at his disposal (other than thwarting frequent threats to his life, usually courtesy of his minibrained superiors).

Of course, with a man that priggish and sycophantic, you had no chance of sharing the joke. Darling would never be on Blackadder's side. He might understand Blackadder's barbed asides at the expense of his superiors, but to show amusement would be an affront to his dignity. Instead, he responded with antagonism, hostility, and – eventually – mild panic every time Blackadder appeared on scene.

Oh, goody, Blackadder thought, after their first meeting. This was going to be fun.

Not much fun, but that was war for you. You took your entertainment where you found it. Until fate, like a badly-tempered cocker spaniel called Ralph, decided to bite Blackadder on the arse once again.

'He fancies you, of course,' said Nurse Mary, taking a sip of contraband whiskey.

Blackadder looked up from the desk, where he was enjoying his twelfth cigarette of the day.

'Who fancies me?' he demanded, sharply. He had a sudden, horrific dread that she might be talking about Baldrick.

'Oh, that weedy chap who follows you around … some silly name or other. You know. Bullet in the foot. Annoying moustache. You tied him to a chair and accused him of being a German spy.'

'Darling?'

'Yes?'

'No, that's his name.' Blackadder paused, something he assumed was nausea battling with the feeling that Nurse Mary had just given him a very valuable piece of information indeed. 'Are you sure he fancies me?'

Nurse Mary looked amused. 'Of course I'm sure. I'm the first remotely female thing most of the men here have seen since leaving Blighty. You think I don't know what debilitating lust looks like?'

'Well. Point taken.'

'I'm surprised you haven't noticed yourself, actually. You being the great spy catcher and all.'

'But he loathes me.'

'So he's a complex character, who cares?' She finished her drink, and set the glass carefully down on the bookcase. 'Anyway, do you want to have sex again, or what?'

Blackadder stubbed out his cigarette. 'Alright, then.'

He did like Nurse Mary. It would be quite a blow to have to hand her over to the authorities at the end of the week.

How Blackadder's mission to catch the spy in the field hospital went awry is recorded elsewhere. For the purposes of this history, let us cut to the moment in which Darling discovered Nurse Mary, far from being the spy, as Blackadder claimed, was in fact nothing more than an innocent and sexy nurse. The actual security leak, it transpired, was none other than the addle-brained whippersnapper George (a man whose mental activity was more or less equivalent to that of a dead pelican encased in cement, Blackadder had observed on one occasion – Darling hadn't smiled, but it was a near thing). As the reader doubtless recalls, Blackadder, taking in this information at an instant, had quickly fled the scene, with Darling hot on his heels. This time, Darling thought, this time, there would be a reckoning.

They dashed down the corridor – it would have looked rather impressive in slow motion, but as it was, Darling had an uncomfortable idea that it just looked extremely daft.

Blackadder gave him a shove, nearly sending him flying into the wall. Darling shoved Blackadder back, nearly sending him tripping over a nearby table. And then they both tried to shove each other at the same time, became entangled, and crashed to the floor in a singularly graceless fashion.

'Glurgh,' Darling said, helplessly. They had fallen with quite a thud, and he had knocked his head heavily against the stone floor.

'Phlerugh,' Blackadder agreed.

'I can't feel my legs,' Darling said, vaguely panicky.

'Well, I certainly can,' Blackadder retorted, sounding dazed and annoyed in equal measure.

'Feel your legs?'

'Feel your legs, you idiot. You're lying on top of me.'

'What?'

'Get. Off. Me. You. Moron.'

'You'll have more than that to worry about before long,' Darling retorted, heaving himself painfully into a sitting position. 'I'm so looking forward to what the General has to say to you.'

'Well why don't you go off and tell him, then,' said Blackadder, sitting up, 'or are you hoping if you lie around here long enough you can cop a feel and pretend it was an accident?'

'Honestly Blackadder,' Darling snapped, 'I –'

'Oh, can it, Darling,' Blackadder broke in, 'we both know you crave my fabulous sinewy body. You've been slavering over me since the day we met.'

Damn, Darling thought. Unwittingly or not, Blackadder had touched a nerve – the same nerve he had been prodding at all week, as a matter of fact. Blackadder clearly wanted to send him fleeing the scene, leaving him free to tell the General what had occurred – or, more likely, to devise some kind of devious plot to sort the whole sorry mess out.

Well. Darling would show him. He would just have to brazen it out, that was all. Of course, he wasn't the sort who would normally be able to brazen his way out of a paper bag, let alone a situation of this massive ghastliness, but he would give it a go.

Ignoring his body's protests, Darling heaved himself to his feet. 'You may think this is amusing, Blackadder,' he said, in what he hoped was a coolly disdainful tone, 'but you'll be laughing on the other side of your face when they court-martial you. And maybe a bullet through the neck will shut you up if nothing else will, and then you'll be dead and bloody good riddance.'

Blackadder stood up too. ''Good riddance', eh?' he said, with an expression Darling had learned to hate. It was the look he wore before bad things happened, usually to Darling. It was the look that betokened the fact that the man was Up To Something.

Of course, it rather suited him to look Up To Something, but that only made the whole thing worse.

'You heard me,' Darling said primly. 'Now, why don't you leave me to tell the General of you spectacular incompetence, whilst you seek out those halfwit accomplices of yours and concoct some harebrained scheme for sorting all this out. You're bound to cock the whole thing up, of course, but that only makes it more fun for me in the long run.'

'No, I don't think so,' Blackadder said.

Darling blinked. He had been expecting Blackadder to make some puerile joke about cocking things up (it had not been the happiest choice of phrase, he had to admit), and this response rather took him aback. 'What?'

'I don't think your plan will do. For one thing, my schemes are never harebrained,' – here he took a step closer – 'and for another, we haven't finished our discussion yet.'

'What do you mean?'

'I want to help, Darling,' Blackadder said in a tone of mock-concern, his eyes glittering with amusement. 'All this hanging around, making a nuisance of yourself? Even following me to the hospital? Need I mention the Bottom Fondling Incident? You clearly want to make some kind of declaration of undying passion to me, and I thought I'd put you out of your misery. Decent of me, really, considering the circumstances, but that's the famous Blackadder altruism for you. Family trait, you know.'

'Have you actually gone mad, Blackadder, or are you just concussed?'

'I'm serious, Darling,' Blackadder said, looking anything but serious. 'Here's your opportunity. Confess your profound and unstinting love for me. Get it out of your system.' He paused, glanced at his watch. 'Go on, I'm listening. Just don't take all day, alright? I'm a busy man.'

Darling said nothing for a moment. Indeed, for a moment he could barely breathe. Despite his resolution, he was tempted to turn and flee. Of course, if he did, he would never be able to face Blackadder again. The joke would be all over the trenches by teatime. He would have to get the General to shoot him in the foot again. Although perhaps the head would be preferable.

Darling writhed inwardly. Then he abruptly lost his temper.

'Let me tell you what I think, Blackadder,' he began, taking a step towards his tormenter. 'I think that you've been living with those idiotic friends of yours for too long. You think everyone's as dense as they are. You think I don't see what you're playing at? You think you've found something out, something you can laugh about? Something you can torment me with? You think I don't know what you're up to?'

He had intended to continue his speech, outlining the manifold ways in which he saw through Blackadder and Blackadder's attempt to disconcert and incriminate him, suggesting that Blackadder had better damn well hope that no one he goaded so shamelessly ever snapped, or things would go badly for him. He would then move on to dwell with some detail upon Blackadder's numerous physical, mental, and moral shortcomings, and conclude with a general wish never to see, hear, or speak to him again, perhaps adding a brief coda on Blackadder's impending appointment with the firing squad, and how much he, Darling, was looking forward to attending, ideally with a large bag of popcorn and a little flag with good riddance you bastard written on it in fancy lettering.

Then it occurred to Darling that:

a) the chances of Blackadder keeping his mouth shut through the length of such a monologue were slim to none

b) this kind of repartee was actually something of a turn-on, and

c) he had had perhaps partaken rather too freely of the General's claret at lunch

so he abandoned the speech, and kissed Blackadder instead.

It would have been difficult to say who was the more surprised.

'Ah,' Darling said. 'Right. Didn't quite mean to do that, actually.'

Blackadder said nothing. Blackadder said nothing. He wore the glazed, horrified, completely and utterly discombobulated look of someone who had unwarily eaten a spoonful of Baldrick's signature dish, Wasp Surprise.

'Sorry,' Darling hazarded.

'What do you mean, 'sorry'?' Blackadder snapped, at last. He looked slightly breathless, and was now staring vindictively at the floor, as if it, rather than Darling, was the one who had assaulted him.

Darling twitched. 'I –'

'This is horrible.'

'I know.'

'I could have you court-martialled.'

'No you couldn't,' Darling pointed out. There was no point getting inaccurate. 'You haven't any proof.'

'Well. I could make things very difficult between you and Doris, anyway.'

'No you couldn't. As I just pointed out, you don't have any proof. Besides, I had a letter from Doris this very afternoon. She's going to marry Mr Pratt of Pratt and Sons. Says she's very happy. Mr Pratt wants me to be best man.'

Blackadder looked at him, eyebrows raised. Darling said nothing. He didn't quite trust himself to speak. Blackadder wasn't stupid (if he was, Darling wouldn't be in this mess in the first place), and if Darling got shrill or over-defensive, Doris was done for. He had invested a lot of time and effort in Doris during his time in the army, and he'd grown rather fond of her. He wasn't about to let her down now.

'Well,' Blackadder said, finally. He seemed to be reasoning something out in his head. 'This is distinctly awkward.'

'Yes.'

For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

'Look,' Blackadder said, seeming to come to a decision, 'this is probably a horrible idea, a really horrible idea, the worst idea since someone said 'yeah, let's take this suspiciously large wooden horse into Troy, statues are all the rage this season'. But–'

'What?'

Blackadder's reply, which was not given in words, seemed be something along the lines of it being as good a time as any for them to kiss again.

It was extremely odd, but not unpleasant, and it certainly made some things a lot clearer.

'…Yes. Well,' Blackadder said, when the second kiss had gone the way of the first. 'That's…that, I suppose. Point taken.'

'Quite,' said Darling, whose knees had nearly given way.

'But chemistry aside, we hate each other.'

'True,' Darling conceded.

'And I'm in the middle of a potentially lethal crisis in my career,' Blackadder continued.

'Also true.'

'And you really are a colossal prat most of the time.'

'Well, so are you.'

'And you're a bloke. Well. A bloke of sorts. So if we get found out we'll face an execution faster than a French barmaid.' He looked Darling up and down with a smile that made Darling acutely uncomfortable. 'And to be honest, you're not much of a catch.'

'Well, thank you very much,' said Darling, nettled. 'You're not exactly Squadron Commander the Lord Flashheart yourself, you know.'

'Flashheart?' Blackadder repeated, gleefully. 'Really, Darling?'

Darling felt himself flush. 'Oh, shut up.'

Blackadder looked about to press his advantage, and then – astonishingly – seemed to change his mind. 'Well then. Now that that's settled. What shall we do now?'

How Blackadder wrangled his way out of the mess he had created for himself over Operation Winkle is too lengthy a tale to concern us here. Let it merely be said that his solution involved a large laundry basket, five pages ripped at random from The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, a heated debate over the German word for 'eunuch', and a Very Cunning Plan Indeed.

Rumour has it that Baldrick was despatched to deliver Nurse Mary's reprieve.

It is perhaps fortunate then that legend (rumour's wilder, sexier, harder-drinking older sibling) tells us that Nurse Mary was unexpectedly rescued on the way to meet the firing squad. Her guards were afterwards unable to identify the masked intruder who snatched the comely nurse from their clutches, but his battle-cry of 'WOOF WOOF!' may give those well-versed in the Blackadder chronicles some food for thought.

Blackadder's attitude to sex was rather like his Aunt Ethel's attitude to silver plate: get as much of it as possible, as often as possible, and don't ask too many questions about where it comes from. So really, the whole situation should have been relatively simple (Blackadder not being one to lose sleep about breaking the odd law or five). And yet something, Blackadder decided, not much later, had gone Spectacularly Badly Wrong.

It wasn't that there were pink hearts and singing cherubs cluttering up the place. Darling still got on his nerves, and seemed to have no compunctions about pointing out his shortcomings at every opportunity. He retaliated by driving Darling to the point of incandescence and then laughing at him. Most of their public acrimony was genuine. Blackadder was, after all, Not a Nice Man. Although Darling, who wasn't much of a Nice Man himself when you got down to brass tacks, didn't seem to mind the fact too much.

It was just – fun, somehow. Sometimes he was almost happy about things. Darling, amazingly enough, had turned out to be significantly better than Harrods' lingerie catalogue (RIP). Perhaps, Blackadder mused, he should acquaint Darling with this fact – in a low voice as he stood next to the General, pretending to take an interest in whatever old walrus-face was burbling on about. The last time he had used such tactics, Darling been so disconcerted he had developed an unseemly coughing fit, and had to leave the room – throwing behind him a look which promised Blackadder that he would pay, and pay dearly.

(Oh, goody.)

And yet. Blackadder's life, as he would have been the first to observe, had hitherto been blighted by rain, mud, Charlie Chaplin, carrier pigeons, machine guns, inadequate plumbing, mindless stupidity, court-martials, hunger, rat au vin, moustached idiots who said 'BAA' very loudly, and Baldrick. To be almost happy about things seemed asking for trouble, somehow. It meant that worse misery was on its way. It was all going to end in tears, he was sure of it.

Unless, gentle reader, you are a descendent of Private Baldrick, you will recall that Edmund Blackadder did not consider himself a man of letters. And yet, had someone approached him for a sequel to the moderately successful volume, How To Really, Really, Really Piss Off Kevin Darling, he might now have been able to suggest a new title. How To Reduce Kevin Darling To A Quivering, Ecstatic Wreck Of A Man, Even If You Have Five Minutes At The Most And Melchett Is In The Next Room Doing His Exercises And Humming Gilbert and Sullivan Tunes At The Top Of His Voice. A cumbersome title, he would have conceded, but an informative work, none the less.

Some of it was new. There was another body to learn, a half-prudish, half-critical gaze which – if he got it right, and he usually got it right – could blur and darken suddenly into pleasure. And it was another man, which made it awkward, and it was Darling, which made it grotesque and hysterically funny and yet somehow – nice. (Nice, when applied to someone prone to saying things like 'not on the desk, I just organized those papers – no, look, stop it, when I said 'not on the desk' I meant not on the desk, now look what you've done, that's an hour's work you've cost me, and stop that right now, someone might come in –!' at inopportune moments, being nothing short of miraculous, really.)

Some of it wasn't so new. The excitement of a worthy opponent. The shared language only the two of them understood. Coaxing response after response, relentlessly piling reaction on reaction like a military attack, until suddenly it was too much, and the other man snapped, shuddered to pieces in his hands.

They had been doing this, or something very similar, for a long time. Odd that neither of them had noticed it before, actually.

Perhaps, this wasn't so Spectacularly Badly Wrong after all, Blackadder speculated. Perhaps it would be, if not ideal, then at least alright. Or perhaps they would have killed each other by next Thursday. He would just have to wait and see.

So far so good, anyway.

It was midnight in the dugout. Baldrick was sleeping like a large and hideously ugly baby, and George seemed to be having a dream about being Gorgeous Georgina again – as he passed his bunk, Blackadder heard him murmur 'Oh General, you do amuse!' in a flirtatious tone, and wave an imaginary fan. But Blackadder was bound for HQ. Despite the late hour, Melchett had ordered Blackadder's presence post-haste. Something about a toast rack, the message had said – Blackadder sighed, not surprised to find that he was not surprised. Considering the uniform stupidity of Melchett's plans, a toast rack seemed positively restrained. Melchet probably wanted to make it his second in command. Or get married to it. Or issue it to the men as defence against enemy fire. Still. Darling would be there.

Suddenly, the man's stupid name seemed utterly hilarious. He muttered it to himself under his breath, shaking with silent laughter. Darling, darling, darling.

Blackadder picked up his overcoat, and went to the door. Outside, the night sky was clear and lovely, making a mockery of the ravaged land below. The guns had stopped.

So far, so good, Blackadder thought. Then he went out.