There had to be a better way of going about things than this, I felt. Why did all the ideas have to his while all the blame would be mine?
With my kind of personality, it wasn’t enough just to do what people usually did when they were in a situation like this. It wasn’t enough just to hate him in silence, or mutter that he was born out of wedlock. Instead, I felt compelled to identify and dissect the kind of evil he perpetrated, to put it into a broader perspective than the world of fire extinguishers and sales targets. And I was greatly helped to do this by making constant reference to my collection of books.
On first discovering these in the attic, carefully packed into two huge boxes, I had at first just browsed through them, only gradually becoming aware of their true worth. As a Scotsman, on both sides of the family, it had been an eye-opener to find out in one of the first books I looked at that a lot of us had originated in Greater Scythia and had crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea to get here. It was even more interesting to learn too that Adolf Hitler had thought very highly of us as soldiers, and had said so in Mein Kampf, unlike another great butcher, the Duke of Cumberland, who had tried to destroy any evidence that was left of this by ordering the shooting to kill of the fleeing and bedraggled remnants of Charles’ army at Culloden in 1745.
But to me these books were much more than just a way of gaining a knowledge or understanding of significant events. They weren’t just history books. I had found some of them contained things which I would often see, in essence, being re-enacted around me.
For the most part the books, in the box easiest to get at, were concerned with personalities and events in recent history and had a lot to say about both World Wars. But there were some on religion, and one or two on gardening, too.
I didn’t bother with the last of these, and I seldom opened the ones on religion, at least not until I encountered Pastor Mackenzie, that is.
Inclined to be a deep thinker, or at least accused of being one by Aunt Grace, amongst others, perhaps in surprise because of my ability to fail exams, it definitely seemed to me that many of the events described in these books bore a strong resemblance not only to what was going on in the world around me but also to what was actually going on in my own life.
Although there didn’t seem to be anything wrong in identifying with the characters and events in these books the practice was sufficiently unusual to make me wonder, on occasion, just what lay behind it. For instance could I be like the Jewish American film star who confessed to reading avidly on the Holocaust because the sufferings described there had made him feel better able to face up to his own more everyday and less severe sufferings?
Or was I just escaping from reality, like the Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower was when reading between, and even during battles, cowboy books and possibly seeing the odd encounter shaping up like the gunfight at the OK Coral? But what was the harm in it? Neither of us thought for one minute that we had actually become the protagonist and would need a change of clothes.
And there was also the fact that military history and drama were closely connected. Surely I was just putting some added meaning into life and gaining valuable insights into the human condition along the way.
And wasn’t this a good thing when 1066, 1314 and a king with six wives were all I could remember from school, and not much less than I had remembered at exam time. Surely as an adult it was now important to get these things into perspective. For example, the average number of wives got through by one man was quite high these days but Henry VIII’s achievement, although perhaps not his methods, were something that should be kept in mind.
People like Sears were everywhere, I read in one of the books, in all classes and in all countries and it wasn’t always power that made them corrupt, as was commonly thought. Many of them were corrupt from the start. Power was only a vehicle not a first cause. While Sears didn’t indulge in the overt acts of violence of the SS guard described in one particular book, he nevertheless had the same malicious disposition. He knew he had you in his power. You were a kind of prisoner who couldn’t easily escape from him because of the mortgage repayments you had to make, amongst other things, and the slim chance you had of finding another job.
He could threaten, bully and insult you, just like the guards did in a Nazi concentration camp. In any attempt to explain the horrors of the camps, and indeed the many similar barbarities that occurred outside them the plentiful existence of people like Sears, often in the most unlikely of places, couldn’t be left out.
He was forever cutting the rate of commission. What could a prisoner have said to having his rations reduced in this way? What could I say to him?
He didn’t physically abuse and kill, as did the SS guard, but the difference in behaviour was one of degree, not of kind. I felt sure that if he had looked for work in the SS, and been given an aptitude test, he would have been a very successful candidate.
To put it simply, I was working for a heartless employer, had the status of a camp inmate, and the feeling that I had not dissimilar prospects. God forgive me for my overstatement, although it should be kept in mind that a bad toothache is still very bad, even if it won’t kill you.
But what had I got myself into?
Andy came into the office to save me from my thoughts, I felt, as he smiled over at me.
A few inches above average height, he had dark brown hair, slightly thinning at the front, and a strong, intelligent look about him. Although more than a pound or two beyond having an athletic build, he seemed to be in peak condition. He didn’t look like he belonged in this place. His suit hung well on him and he had a military bearing, except for a certain casualness in his manner. Wearing a pleasant, faintly amused expression when talking to you, his features would often take on what seemed to be an intense, supportive look, as if, while not yet having fully appraised what you had just said, he nevertheless sympathised with you and was on your side. I often wondered how he had ended up in a place like this. Although I knew he wouldn’t move in the same circles as me, not that I had any circles now, except under my eyes, he was one of the few people in Bartons I could seriously tolerate.
“Where to tonight, John?” he asked me.
“Nowhere special.”
“Do you fancy a drink?”
“I certainly do.”
“I’m buying tonight. How about the Old Toll Bar, in Cartvale Road. I’ll introduce you to Karen, and of course Big Tom, and some of the others. I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time.”
When he had gone, I sat for a while listening to Benny at work on the telephone. At first, because of the poor quality of the leads, I had to admire his enthusiasm, but since Clausewitz, the great Prussian strategist, had said in one of the books in the Collection, that determination proceeds from a strong mind rather than a brilliant one, and Benny had neither, it didn’t surprise me when he soon began to falter, looking frustrated and discouraged. Wellington, too, on the next page of the same book, had cursed his cavalry for being like this – unduly high-spirited at the start of a venture and unduly low spirited when it didn’t instantly succeed. And he should have known since he routed Napoleon for us at Waterloo in 1815.
Benny’s strong point was really the computer, I knew, although he was inclined to spoil it by not updating the Sales Sheets often enough. The computer, like the famous fictional gunfighter, Shane, had once said about his particular weapon of choice, was only as good or as bad as the man who used it. In this respect I felt Sears deserved Benny whose shortcomings helped him to be as ill-informed as he often was.
*
Before I even looked up at the picture on the Sales Office wall, I knew the girl in it was going to be Linda again. It was warm and sunny on the depicted riverbank, just as it was outside in the real world, too. I longed to get out of the place and drive up to see her.
I knew that this wouldn’t be as undemanding as an imaginary stroll along the
riverbank for, in the real world, there had been nothing between Linda and me but smiles and polite words. To think of her in the way I had been doing, and to give her such a prominent place in the picture, was something fifteen year old boys would be inclined to do. I didn’t have anything tangible to build my hopes on.
Meeting someone like her in the way that I did had taken me completely by surprise. I had only gone to the church to please Aunt Grace. For years I had successfully resisted her efforts to get me to attend regularly and dropping her off at the door in bad weather was usually as near as I got.
I would do anything for my Aunt Grace, anything I could, but from the occasional visits to church I had made over the years I had formed a picture in my mind’s eye of what it involved and had decided it definitely wasn’t for me. It was only when she was leaving to take up residence in the Home and brought up the subject of my ‘heathenship’, like a valedictory address, that I felt constrained to give in. I could go, maybe once or twice, even introduce myself to the new minister she thought so highly of. It didn’t seem too much to ask. The idea of Aunt Grace no longer being around to look after me had affected my judgement more than I realised at the time.
On my first visit I decided to sit near the back and, having arrived a few minutes early, I brooded on the preponderance of bald heads and grey hair in the view from the rear that was confronting me. There was a smattering of younger female heads and shoulders, too, which looked more interesting. But this was hardly the place for that. Generally speaking I felt bored, but not too out of place, even if I was.
When Linda came in and sat in the row in front slightly to my left, everything changed. I felt almost dazzled by the beautiful sheen on her hair, and I could see just enough of her profile to make it difficult for me to take my eyes off her. The way I had to squint at her to avoid attracting attention, made me feel undignified. But I was anything but bored now. What did she look like from the front? I kept asking myself.
The new minister, I soon discovered, wasn’t someone you were likely to forget, either, once you had heard what he had to say. For the next few weeks, he announced, his sermons were going to touch on a subject that could effect most of the people on the planet.
Climate Change as a sermon was far from what I had expected so when he described some of its manifestations and placed these in a Biblical context I was surprised enough to listen.
Beginning at the beginning, as he put it, which was the book of Genesis, he read out in a firm clear voice from Genesis 19, verses 18 and 19 – ‘And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth and of them was the whole earth overspread.’
His voice and demeanour made it plain that to him this was an historical fact not a geological controversy over how much of the earth had actually been covered by the alleged flood.
Twelve families came from Japheth, he continued, twenty-six from Ham and twenty from Shem, each family being given its own language and its own land and thereafter becoming a nation.
‘And so we have the origin of the fifty-eight basic nations,’ he had declared.
Going on to describe the Japhetic group of families as belonging to the northern parts of the earth, the families of Ham to the southern parts, and the Semitic group to the central belt, the new minister drew attention to how those living in lush river valleys would have a different physique and character from those living on hilly, infertile regions and that the people of one nation would be very different from those of another.
When he went on to talk about the development of Israel from Abraham or Abram, as he was then called, and some later additions and developments, I felt he had at least excluded himself from the contemporary world view. Racial distinctions and national borders, according to his way of looking at things, proceeded from God. That there should be one nation of men wasn’t in line with the natural order of things, according to him, and in keeping with this, only one hundred years after the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the symbol of human unity, had been summarily destroyed.
So much for the multi-cultural society I had thought at this point, seeing a connection between what the Pastor was saying and what someone in the Book Collection had said on a not dissimilar subject. Schact, the great German banker of the period between the two World Wars, found to be not guilty of war crimes, had reminded his countrymen that culture and civilisation weren’t the same thing and that it was dangerous to ignore the difference. Culture had its roots in religion and any country which relegated it to mere reason and enlightenment would lose its soul. Civilisation, for its part, didn’t have a soul.
The Pastor’s world view, far as it was from mainstream thinking, didn’t seem so outlandish at this stage. Schact had gone on to point out in words that could indeed have been the Pastor’s own, that the religion of his country (Germany) was Christian and that its cultural direction should never be handed over to people of other religions although, of course, it was of paramount importance that such people should be treated with the same affection, respect and support as everyone else.
That Germany had trampled the latter part of Schact’s advice under foot with such disastrous and infernal consequences surely gave some strength to what the Pastor was saying. He was surely at least worth listening to.
As Linda stood up at the end of the service and turned to leave, my thoughts on who or who not to listen to instantly lost their appeal. She was dressed formally in a dark costume and looked striking, with a smooth complexion, beautiful brown eyes, and well-shaped lips. Her long dark hair and interesting profile had been sending out the right signals.
But how could I hope that the visits I had afterwards made to the café with her meant she thought about me in the same way I thought about her? Our conversations had usually been about the sermon and, since the café was on the way home, our visits there hadn’t been actual dates, only dates to me in my mind’s eye.
That Linda liked me was not in doubt. She was always nice and polite to me and quick enough at catching my eye in the church grounds after the service. Her willingness to walk with me on the way home was surely a very positive feature, if nothing more than that, I told myself.
Unfortunately, the relationship hadn’t developed much further than this. In the café, I had mostly agreed with her in conversations about her beliefs and since, as I had soon learned, she was the Minister’s daughter, I had kept most of my troublesome opinions to myself. We had got on very well, indeed, therefore, by certain standards. But had there really been anything else between us? This was something I was going to have to find out. I had to. Looking back on it, I could see now that I had used the fact that I had walked out of my job as an excuse and had, in a sense, walked out on Linda and the church too. In deciding to keep my own company for a while, I had thought I could leave the interest I had in her until later. I had felt I needed a rest from the strong impression the Pastor was making on me, and had quite wrongly thought that I had needed a rest from Linda too. It was time to put the matter right.
chapter five
As I reached the outskirts of the town I realised I could hardly say to Linda that I was just passing through the district by chance. If I was, where was I headed? Nobody passed through the outlying village in which she stayed except tradesmen and neighbouring residents.
My timing wasn’t good either except for the fact that I remembered a mid-week social event was sometimes held about then in the Church Hall.
I envied those rich emigrants, I had often read about, returning home after they had made their fortune overseas. Instead, here I was, returning too in a sense, but worse off than I had ever been before.
The church hall was well lit up and I could see, beyond a crowd gathered at the entrance, that a dance was in progress. But what now? ‘So much for being proactive’, I lamented under my breath.
From the doorway I was able to take in most of the dance floor. If she was here, she wasn’t dancing.
I inched my way down the side and took in the four corners of the hall, my eyes scanning the faces of the women gathered at the refreshment table, too.
At last I spotted her. She was sitting with someone at the side of the hall, watching the dancers. I could see that her companion was a refined, pleasant looking man of about my own age. From where she sat, mine would be only one in a sea of faces on the other side of the dance floor, which allowed me to peer over at her, like a plain-clothes policeman on surveillance, while I decided what to do.
Melting into the crowd at the refreshment table, I hoped, I poured myself a cup of tea and tried to gather my thoughts. The direct approach, I felt strongly, now that I was beginning to get my bearings, wouldn’t do. Telling her I had come all this way just to see her didn’t sound right, especially not if it was in the presence of an unknown male companion. I leaned over the table and stared blankly at the food.
Anxiously turning to continue my surveillance, I was in time to see that she and her companion had risen to their feet, about to join the dancers. Fearful she might spot me on her way round the floor and still having no idea what I was going to say to her, I decided to think rather than act.
Getting back in the car, I sat for a while scanning the dashboard for inspiration. It would be better to start again tomorrow, I finally concluded. And anyway, a dance hall was not really a good place for a meeting of this kind. I went over it all again. Would she be really pleased to see me, or had I misjudged the relationship to the extent that her response would be one of near-indifference?
No further on in my thinking, I drove through the town and out onto the open road. Without a destination, and with muddled thoughts, the journey was pointless. But it wasn’t too late yet, I finally realised, executing the worst U turn in the world.
Am I Being Followed? Page 4