“I do,” said Karen, getting up and stretching herself in delightful silhouette against the sun.
“Anyone else?”
“Big Tom stood up too.
Watching them go, Andy and I settled back down on our deck chairs.
Woman was made for man, I reflected philosophically, feeling sorry the girls had gone. But man was made for man, too, in an entirely different but equally important way, I felt, as I watched Andy refill our glasses. It was good to have a friend like him, someone you felt outclassed you in some way, who could do things you couldn’t do. Someone whose background and personality were so very different from yours and yet whose spirit nevertheless seemed similar in some essential way to your own. I was glad I had met someone like him.
“Oh yes, Cairns Décor, the big paint company,” I told him, in answer to his question. Although I was surprised that he had asked me, I guessed he would have a reason for bringing up something like this, the kind of thing we had come here to forget about.
“He’s considering my quote. I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
“Mm,” he said, sitting up to face me.
I knew what he was going to say.
“If you can’t close it, forget it. Move on to the next one,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s likely I’ll get the contract?”
“You’re too honest, John, and you project your outlook in life onto other people. With big contracts you’ve got to try and lower the odds a bit.”
“Lower the odds?”
“Offer an inducement. It’s too late for that now, and an MD is a bit too high up, but what about some of these other appointments? Fire protection is often handled by ordinary members of staff who don’t think their boss pays them enough.”
As I sat listening intently to his explanation of how these things were done, I saw again just how different his way of looking at things, his world was, from mine. And yet it was events in my world that had put me under. I was down, and I couldn’t get back up. In what way, therefore was my world any better than his?
Andy worked to a different set of values from the ones I was used to, but they seemed to be getting better results. Was I missing something? was the question I was now asking myself about my outlook in life in general.
“Forget the appointments,” John,” Andy said, with perfect timing. “I’ve got something more definite for you.”
Rising quickly from his chair and going into the caravan, he returned, unfurling a sheet of paper as he did so, which he spread out before us on the table.
“See this?” he said, pointing to a thick black line drawn across the top half of the sheet. “This is the canal.”
“What canal?”
“I’ll give you a map later,” he explained. “This is the canal,” he repeated, running his fingers along the line. “And this is the pathway between the canal bank and a small housing estate,” he went on, pointing to a slightly thinner black line drawn perpendicular to the first one. “The point is, if you walk up this pathway you can easily check that no one is on it but you, and no one can see you unless they are. When it’s clear, which it usually is, you make the drop.”
Pressing his forefinger onto a cross clearly marked on one side of the perpendicular black line, he glanced at me with a look of authority on his face. “You’ll see a chalk mark on one of the trees, one that has a hollow at the bottom of the trunk. Put the package inside. And that’s it. OK.”
“Sounds straightforward.”
“It is. You’ll be on your own, of course, there and back, and there’s to be positively no mobiles.”
“What if I need to get in touch with you?”
“You don’t. Mobiles can cause more problems than they solve in this kind of thing.”
“Even if the car breaks down.”
“Even that. Join the AA or something. Just do what you would normally do. Keep it simple and clean. And, of course, you’ll get a hefty cash payment as soon as you get back.”
I felt as if I had just been briefed by a company commander out of the Book Collection. And the spoils of war, a hefty amount, were just what I needed, to put it mildly.
*
That evening, while Andy was away on a short trip and Tom and Liz had gone into the nearby town, I wandered with Karen up to the hall at the far end of the Caravan Park. We stood for a while listening to the music. There was a sense in which Andy had left her in my care, I persuaded myself, and I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t ask her to dance.
I had seldom had a partner quite like her. I wondered what she would be thinking of me. Would I seem to be just the right height and just the right build, too? It wasn’t likely. But whether or not I would stand a chance with her was academic. It had to be, of course, because of her relationship with Andy.
Not too good at ballroom dancing, when she was dancing with me that is, she tripped over my feet a few times at first. Of course it made no difference to the effect she was having on me. How she looked was of much more consequence to me than how she could dance.
It was the same off the floor, too. As we sat sipping our drinks, watching the other dancers, we hardly spoke and yet she was commanding my full attention. I had said more to a stranger sitting next to me in the Reading Room of the public library. And yet it wasn’t an awkward silence, I hoped. She seemed as content as I was.
But I couldn’t let this go on for too long. Being with someone like her demanded something of me but again, in view of her relationship with Andy, I felt that there wasn’t much more I could do. But I couldn’t blame myself for being attracted to her, I told myself guiltily. Who wouldn’t be attracted to her? If I hadn’t been there, someone else would have been asking her to dance. It was the same as it had been with Liz at the party – girls who looked like they did would attract plenty of attention. It wasn’t my fault she looked like this.
On a positive note, however, I felt I had come a long way in my relationship with her. Only a few days ago, in the Old Toll Bar, she had misunderstood me and would hardly speak to me. Although she wasn’t saying much now either, it was definitely a different kind of silence. I couldn’t expect her to feel about me the way I felt about her but I was sure I had gone up in her estimation. I would have to make do with this in the circumstances. We were getting along fine, and feeling that her presence demanded something of me, was probably just nerves, I told myself, not liking the sound of the word ‘excitement’.
I asked her to dance again and only on one occasion, when our eyes met on our way round the floor, did I feel the existence of something between us which I couldn’t put into words but which I felt good about. Maybe if we had met in other circumstances things would have been different.
Later, as we strolled back to the caravan, the cool night air inducing a change of mood, I felt like someone who had rented or borrowed an expensive new car, pleased with the fact that people would think she belonged to me. I regretted the darkness and the absence of passers-by.
Growing restless waiting on the others to return, we went down to the beach. In the water, almost up to our knees, we splashed about, aimlessly at first, then with purposeful movements at each other. She stumbled and fell in the water.
As I helped her to her feet, my arm around her waist, I didn’t expect her to look at me the way that she did. She didn’t seem to be annoyed or embarrassed. She seemed to be enjoying herself, in the same way that I was. Maybe in other circumstances…
chapter sixteen
It was part of the arrangement I had made with Andy that I wouldn’t be told what was actually in the package and I knew that thinking about what it was would do more harm than good. I had agreed to deliver it, whatever its contents were, and I tried to put the question out of my mind.
Most of the cars that appeared behind me seemed to be following me, although I knew that they weren’t. One car, however,
a blue Mondeo with two men in it, had been in my rear view mirror for far longer than any of the others and, as a precaution, I drew into a lay-by.
As the car approached I peered at a road map, not taking my eyes off its colourful contents until the vehicle had gone well past. I watched it turn off onto a narrow track which led up to a small cottage standing beside a wooded area on the edge of a field. It was a false alarm, obviously, but I nevertheless felt pleased with my vigilant response.
Later, I turned into the estate and had very soon found the pathway that led up to the canal. My first delivery was going to be easy, I felt. There was no-one in the residents’ car park and I could see that none of the windows in the adjacent houses directly overlooked it. Strolling up the pathway I turned every so often to check that no-one was following me.
Soon, the canal embankment came into view and, as I had still not spotted the chalk mark, I began to feel less sure of myself. What if I couldn’t find it? Having to take the package back to Andy and tell him that I had got lost was something that filled me with dread. Was I going to fall at the first hurdle? Heaven forbid! Fortunately, just as I was thinking I might have to retrace my steps I saw the mark, and very soon had the package snugly tucked up inside the hollow trunk. Confident again, my nervousness beginning to subside into a mere clammy feeling on my forehead and hands, I made my way back to the car.
Reflecting on what I had just done, I felt good about the smoothness of the procedure. As Andy had said, I had been able to see quite clearly that there had been no-one else on the pathway and that I wasn’t being followed. No outsider would have known I was going there and there was nothing to connect me to Andy’s people either, only Andy himself.
As I turned onto the motorway that would take me to Linda’s I experienced only one negative twinge, and I was aware that it had come rather late. No matter how indirect my relationship was with the criminals who must be behind this work, in practical terms I had become one of them. But what I had become had to be weighed against what I had been, I told myself, I had to keep a balanced view. I wasn’t doing this for fun.
It should take me about half an hour to get to Linda’s, I calculated from the map, and by the time I had reached the main road my thoughts on the rights and wrongs of what I was doing had given way to those concerning the relationship I hoped to have with her.
If she had been a golfer then things might have been easier, I reflected not too seriously, but I knew that that would have been asking for too much. And anyway, a lot of golfers, probably most of them for that matter, didn’t make off with woman golfers. What else might I have in common with her? I wondered. Maybe if she had liked Chopin that would have helped. I could have impressed her with my playing, in spite of my large bony hands, like some elderly piano teacher might do when hammering out a short, loud and spectacular excerpt from a great piece before the student’s parents, knowing full well that a performance of the whole piece or even half of it was well beyond their present capabilities. I could have played Liszt’s ‘Liebestraum’ with certain difficult passages left out, or one of Chopin’s own favourites, ‘The Revolutionary Etude’, whose power and volume were inclined to drown out the mistakes. I could even have managed ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ if I had shrunk some of the difficult chords to suit my lack of technical expertise. But then again would these musical stars have shone so brightly in Linda’s firmament as they did in mine? Were they really the kind of help that I needed to strike up a serious relationship with her? They weren’t, I finally realised. The huge obstacle, and I was beginning to see it as that now, which lay in my path if I was to get anywhere with Linda was not that we didn’t have very much in common. It was something which went much deeper than this. It was a world view, no less, her father’s world-view and, whether I liked it or not, I would have to come to terms with it, try to understand it, so that I could relate, in the way that I hoped, with the woman who shared it with him.
At first the effect of his sermons had been similar to that which was often experienced when listening to someone on the radio enthuse over a subject you were unfamiliar with, where the incomprehensible whole nevertheless contained snatches you could understand and appreciate. Although, of course, you could always turn the radio off.
Gradually and surprisingly, however, he had begun to catch my attention and I hadn’t wanted to switch him off so often. His thoughts on Noah, for instance, were worth paying some attention to when the benefits of the multi-cultural society were being lauded by so many people these days.
Not so with the Pastor, however. National barriers and racial distinctions proceeded from God, according to him, Who divides and compartmentalise the human race rather than communises it. The idea of one community of men, one family of human beings just wasn’t on. It wasn’t in the natural order of things, he would strongly contend, and in the long run no good would ever come of it.
With the Pastor you didn’t have to go as far back as Adam or get lost in space with some scientific theory, to see the significance of the fact that ‘just as it was in the days of Noah …’ so might it very well be in our own days too when global warming intensifies and the climate changes for the worse.
It wasn’t too difficult to understand how he thought that mankind was headed in the wrong direction, down rather than up, and that the glorious scientifically induced future of the evolutionists didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. It was good that I could see there might be at least a modicum of truth in all this. I had to, if I wanted to get anywhere with Linda.
But to do this I would have to get my facts right, or rather her facts. To her the book of Genesis was history, plain and simple, and the Great Flood was a starting off point for many of her beliefs.
The Flood had been God’s judgement on the whole human race living at that time, all of whom, apart from Noah and his family, were drowned and swept away. After The Flood, according to her, Noah’s three sons had founded the original 58 nations. Shem, produced 20, Ham 26 and Japheth 12.
Getting lost when she had added a few more – Israel from Abram, the Moabites and Ammonites from Lot, Ishmaelites from Ishmael, and Edomites from Esau – I could nevertheless see what she was driving at. Man had been divided up, not joined up.
*
My beautiful history teacher, for surely that’s what she really was, stood in the doorway of the manse wearing plain anorak and jeans, but still with a distinctive look about her, her attractiveness undiminished.
“Dad says I’ve to give you his regards”, she told me apologetically. He’d to go down to the Hall.”
We drove along the Shore Road for a few miles and, as I drove past the entrance to one of the many caravan parks in the area, I spotted Steve driving out in a workshop van. I was glad that he didn’t see us. I wanted to keep my relationship with Linda separate from my friendship with Andy and the others. She wouldn’t have anything in common with them, apart from the fact that she knew me, of course.
After a while we crossed a hump-backed bridge and parked in a lay-by which overlooked the bay. The tide was coming in, accompanied by a strong breeze, and huge waves sprinkled with surf were crashing onto the beach.
The sea had been calm when I had, on that other occasion, walked along the shore with Karen, I remembered, thinking how appropriate that had been, now that I was here with Linda. There had been nothing at stake then. Karen had belonged to Andy, not to me.
And here, although Linda didn’t belong to me either, I thought the turbulent scene well-suited to the challenge and uncertainty present in our relationship.
“What did your father say about me turning up again?” I asked her, as we left the car.
“Not much,” she said, obviously not wanting to give me a direct answer.
“And are you working somewhere in this area now?” she asked, as we settled in a sheltered spot in which there were some rocks we could comfortably sit on.
“No. I came
here to see you, that’s all,” I told her bravely.
“Seriously John,” she protested, still smiling but avoiding my eyes.
“I am being serious.”
“You came to see me,” she repeated. “And that’s the only reason?”
“It is. Have I done the wrong thing?” I asked her, aware that the conversation was going in a familiar direction, and that once more the hopes I had about her feelings for me could be dashed so easily by her answer.
“I suppose not,” she answered, still avoiding my eyes, her smile fading.
“Suppose?” I ventured hopefully.
“Yes. I’m glad you’ve come all this way just to see me,” she said, looking up and speaking in a stronger tone of voice.
But the feeling of relief her answer engendered was to be short-lived.
“But you know we still have a problem, don’t you?” she said, at once unnerving me again. I hadn’t meant the conversation to be as all-inclusive as this. It was too soon.
“Which particular problem?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.
“You know what my father is like?”
“I have a great respect for your father, Linda, you know that,” I told her, immediately on the defensive.
“I know you have John. But that’s not really the point is it? Most people respect him, don’t they?”
I hadn’t expected this, although, of course, I knew it wasn’t the point. But I didn’t feel ready to face up to what was.
“Linda, I’m sorry I don’t seem to fit in too well,” I struggled.
“You don’t have to apologise, John. I just thought it was better to get this particular matter out into the open, that’s all.”
She was right, from her point of view, but definitely not from mine. She was her father’s daughter and it would be unrealistic to expect her to go against him. Bringing up my hesitancy about things concerning the Church, or the Bible would be inclined to bring me into conflict with her father’s ideas which I had every reason to think would be no mean task.
Am I Being Followed? Page 12