Am I Being Followed?

by G. M. Hutchison

  As he was joined by Steve, who had risen shakily to his feet, his eyes screwed up too, with tears running down his cheeks, I knew the effect of the powder, which was an irritant and not a poison, would soon wear off. But not too soon, I hoped.

  “You’d better take this, John,” Karen said, handing me the weapon and going over to get the package.

  “You win, John,” Steve said resignedly. “No hard feelings.”

  “Now what?” Karen asked, almost in a whisper, as she rejoined me.

  “Nobody’s really got hurt,” Steve remonstrated with me. “Can’t we just call it a day?”

  “What do you mean nobody’s got hurt? You shot Andy, didn’t you?”

  They stood there, both men, the fight having gone out of them, their eyes continually coming to rest on the gun.

  “I didn’t want that to happen,” Steve said. “But you know what Andy’s like. I tried to make him see sense. But I knew he was going to come after me and it was the only way I could stop him.

  “By shooting him, you mean.”

  “I tried to shoot him in the foot.”

  The scene was halfway into a gangster movie and I was acting my part quite well, almost believing it myself. But it had to end in the real world.

  I hadn’t the patience to tie them up and I didn’t have the time either, for people were beginning to appear outside some of the neighbouring caravans.

  In the real world, I wasn’t going to finish this the way I should have. I wasn’t going to shoot anyone. I couldn’t bring myself to go as far as that, not quite. Was I, after all, neither one thing nor the other and was the human race that way too, neither essentially good nor essentially bad? That I was still determined to be a player of some sort seemed to answer my question.

  “If I let you go, how do I know you won’t come after us?” I asked him, looking at the smiling man, too.

  “It’s all gone wrong for us now,” Steve said. “We took our chances, and it hasn’t worked out for us.”

  “The whole business is too messy,” the smiling man agreed. “All we want to do now is to put in some mileage, which is what we should have done in the first place,” he said, glancing at Steve.

  They looked as though they meant it. It sounded right. But I believed them mainly because I wanted to believe them. We had to get away.

  With Karen by my side clutching the package, we moved back from them towards the bushes. They made no attempt to follow and, as we crouched down in the same position we had taken up when we had first arrived, we watched them get into their car and drive off.

  It seemed that we were almost home and dry. But I wasn’t certain. This was the big league I was in. Was I considering all the angles?

  I looked at Karen as she once more settled in the car beside me. How I felt about her wasn’t clear. Although she belonged to Andy there was a sense in which she seemed to belong to me, too. How much closer could you get to someone after all this?

  Her cardigan was crumpled, with a button missing at the top, and a strand of hair was hanging down over her eye, but her dangerous and demanding encounter with these men had left her looking every bit as attractive, although in an entirely different way. How many ways were there?, I had to ask myself.

  Sure now that we weren’t being followed, I began to look forward to seeing Andy. What had happened showed I was no longer at the bottom of the learning curve, struggling to survive in Andy’s world. I had made my mark.

  We sat in silence for most of the journey. I felt relieved and satisfied, and for a while gave little thought to the overall situation. The Operation, Steve, and the smiling man were all still out there somewhere. But surely, as soon as we got back, Andy would know what to do.

  As we reached his caravan Karen handed me the package. This was what I had wanted her to do. I was the one who had lost the package and I wanted it to be clear to Andy that I was the one who had got it back.

  But I wasn’t pleased that she might be aware of this, and not just because she had played as big a part in it as I had. Maybe I did want a pat on the back from Andy, but what she might think of all this felt more important. Having gone up in her estimation, I wanted to stay there.

  I had managed to get the package back. I could do what criminals were inclined to do. I could survive in this world, even if I didn’t belong in it. I had shown Karen that I was up to it and I was looking forward to letting Andy know I was, too.

  But I wasn’t that far gone. Deep down I knew I was thinking like the salesman whose sale had dropped into his lap, although in this case I had been throwing rather than selling an extinguisher. And it might not even have gone off. Like a second-rate salesman I was trying to take the credit for my good luck.

  If I hadn’t laid the package down on the passenger seat at that point, so that she could take charge of it, I felt I would have deserved what happened next.

  “Andy’s not here,” she shouted from the door of the caravan. “And he’s left his crutch behind.”

  chapter twenty

  Andy couldn’t have walked very far without a crutch, and his car was still there. He might still turn up, we hoped.

  Meanwhile, we drove slowly round the Park several times, and looked on the beach, too. Eventually Karen made some tea and we hung about for a good while longer.

  Much later, in the Old Toll Bar, we stayed until closing time, still hoping that Andy might hobble in, apologising for not letting us know where he had gone. But he didn’t, and eventually, we had to assume that it hadn’t taken the Operation long to find out that the package had gone astray. And it wouldn’t take them long to find out about us either, I realised anxiously. When we left, having invited her back to the flat, I drove off quickly, anxious to leave the unlit corners of the car park behind. The package was lying at her feet, as if it was a time bomb, except for the banknotes that were protruding from the tear made in it by the smiling man.

  As we went into the flat I felt something akin to a sense of occasion. This was where I nursed my disappointments, got transported by Chopin, and renewed my strength. Karen was crossing more than one threshold.

  I had everything I needed here. I could shut myself away for days. The freezer was full. The location was secluded. I had a sanctuary.

  But not now. As Andy had put it, I was a target. How long would it be before some faceless person from the Operation came knocking on the door?

  “This is a nice place you’ve got here,.” Karen said, as she settled across from me on the sofa. “Is that an original painting?” she asked, noticing the picture propped up on a chair in the corner.

  “You like it?”

  “I do,” she answered, going over to take a closer look.

  “It looks better from a distance,” I advised her.

  “John Grant,” she read out. “Is he a relative?” she asked coyly.

  “He is,” I said, pleased at the effect this would have on my image.

  “Art was my favourite subject at school,” she then told me. “I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.”

  “You too?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Would you like some beans on toast?” I asked, to avoid going into the matter of my precarious pathway through life, but also to take my mind off the effect she was having on me. There was nothing I could do about this, I had to keep reminding myself. But if she hadn’t been Andy’s girl would I have stood a chance with her anyway? I knew I had to stop thinking about her in this way. What good could it possibly do!

  “Beans on toast,” she exclaimed, her face lighting up. “Where’s the kitchen?”

  As we lingered over the meal, I felt as if I was sitting in an expensive restaurant. The same crumpled cardigan fitted her very well at the shoulder and the button missing at the top had become an adornment. With someone like her it wasn’t clothes that made the woman.

 
Her attitude towards me was completely different now, but since she was, in a sense, a captive audience and might feel obliged to be as nice to me as she was being, I knew I couldn’t make too much of it.

  We ate in silence for a while. But again, as it had been at the dance in the caravan park, it wasn’t an awkward silence. It definitely wasn’t, even if she did have plenty of other things on her mind, just like I had. What on earth were we going to do next, for instance?

  “And your job at the Casino, have you been there for long?” I asked her. It wasn’t small talk. Everything about her interested me but I had another reason for asking, too.

  “Four or five years.”

  “Good people to work for?”

  “The best employer I’ve ever had.”

  “How well do you know them? I mean could you ask them to put us in touch with the Operation?”

  “John, I’m only an employee, she protested. I’m in Personnel and Accounts most of the time. It’s not much different from any other job.”

  “So it’s not a good idea.”

  “I suppose I could always ask.”

  So she wasn’t involved with the Operation, at least not in the way that Andy was. I knew that for certain now. But her mood had changed, and that seemed just as important right then.

  “Will I put on some music?” I asked her, going over to the drawer and thumbing through the CDs.

  “What do you have?”

  “Chopin, mainly.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “World class piano music.”

  “Really?”

  But I knew she didn’t mean it. Karen wouldn’t be short on general knowledge, and everyone knew who Chopin was.

  “I don’t suppose he’ll be your cup of tea,” I said awkwardly trying not to sound patronising.

  “Too sloppy,” she said, screwing up her face.

  I fell for it.

  “Don’t worry, I told her, I can listen to ordinary music too. But what makes you think he’s sloppy”, I asked. “He’s anything but that.”

  “Only kidding,” she said. Of course I would like to hear some Chopin.”

  “He’s not just a collection of pretty tunes, you know.” I pointed out, still hoping to save face and justify my taste in music.

  Slipping the CD into place I pressed the button and sat back in my chair, exactly as I had done so many times before. But I didn’t want to be transported to that other world of being, not right now. The music was for her. With her legs crossed, she began to rock her suspended foot in time with the waltz and her ankle and leg, swinging rhythmically in support, were soon competing with the music for my attention. For a while, Chopin faded into the background.

  When I changed to the Nocturnes, however, Karen and the music converged. What she did to me and what Chopin did to me were clearly related. But having them with me in the same room must have effected my judgement for what was I doing thinking about her in this way, yet again? It wasn’t Karen and Chopin that belonged together, it was Karen and Andy. Karen was Andy’s girl, not mine.

  But I couldn’t help thinking that the Nocturne in C Minor had been written with a situation like this in mind. The music was beginning to ‘beam me up’, in spite of myself, indicating perhaps that Chopin had once experienced something similar to what I was going through with Karen. I wondered what he had done about it. If only I could learn something from him, in this higher world of knowledge or being that he took you to.

  *

  She came through from the bedroom wearing the dressing gown I had given her the night before. It certainly looked better on her than it did on me, probably for any one of a number of different reasons that were rattling about in my head.

  “Just what I needed,” she said, as she watched me pour some cornflakes onto her plate.

  “Did you sleep?”

  “The bed was fine.”

  I tried to ignore the appeal of the unruly strands of auburn hair that brushed her shoulders. I knew I had to keep my thoughts focused on the idea that had come to me during the sleepless night I had spent on the sofa.

  The immediate danger was less than I thought. I could see that quite clearly now. Until the Operation actually got the Package back it was unlikely they would attack us with wilful abandon.

  I had got things the wrong way round. I shouldn’t be running away from these people, I should be trying to get in touch with them. They wanted the package, and I wanted to give it to them, albeit in exchange for Andy, and in the hope that they would leave us alone.

  “We’ll have to handle this one step at a time,” I said to her, reluctantly trying to put my feelings for her to one side.

  But she was looking at me wide eyed, as she had done when we had crouched down behind the bushes outside the caravan. Seeing that side of her again almost overwhelmed me.

  “They want the package, and we want Andy,” I stated, as solemnly as I could.

  “Right.”

  “So we give them the package.”

  “Give it to whom, exactly?”

  “The Operation.”

  “I know that. But how?”

  “Instead of waiting on them to come to us, we go to them,” I told her.

  “So you’ve decided you want me to speak to someone at the Casino, after all?”

  “I can’t think of anything else.”

  As she went to get dressed, I settled in my usual chair and looked about the room. Only a few days ago I had dreaded losing this place. Now it seemed no more than a staging post, one that I would willingly leave behind if only I could leave my present set of circumstances behind with it.

  I reached for a CD but decided against it. Chopin could relate to an event that was in the past, or one that I hoped might occur in the future. He seldom pushed me into taking action, or enlightened me as to the best course I should take, right now, which was what I needed.

  But I had to think all this through, I told myself warily. Was asking her to go to the Casino really such a good idea? Hadn’t she done enough already? What was I thinking of, putting her at risk again in this way?

  “Forget it, Karen,” I said, as she came back into the room.

  “You don’t want me to go, after all?” she enquired.

  “No.”

  “So what do we do instead?” she asked.

  The two ideas hadn’t come to me at the same time. I knew in my heart which one had come first, and I was glad about it. I had to get her to a safe place. But I had to get the package to a safe place, too. Although it had got us into all this trouble it could also, if used as a pawn to bargain with, be the means of getting us out of it.

  “Do you have anywhere you could go to get away from all this? I asked her.

  “Where we could hide out?”

  “Where you could hide out, with the package?”

  “And leave you here by yourself, you mean?”

  “They could burst in here at any time and take it off us, Karen,” I pointed out impatiently. If that happens what do we do about Andy then, assuming we’re still in one piece?”

  “You don’t think they’ll let him go? I mean as soon as they get the package?” she asked.

  “Karen, I don’t know the answer to that. But as long as they don’t have the package he should be all right. I’m almost sure of it.”

  Later, we walked down a long country lane into a neighbouring estate. As on the first run, on the pathway leading to the canal embankment, I felt confident that no unseen person was following us, although I took more than an occasional look over my shoulder just to make sure.

  “Phone me later this evening,” I told her, giving her my number as she boarded the bus. “Don’t say where you are, unless I specifically ask you to,” I warned her.

  I felt a sense of relief that she would soon be out of danger but it saddened me
to think that there wasn’t going to be a completely happy ending to this part of it. Not the ending that I wanted. Karen wasn’t going to be a permanent feature in my life.

  But hadn’t I known this all along? Why was there now a sense of loss attached to it? How could I lose her when she had never belonged to me in the first place?

  She turned, unexpectedly, and stepped back down from the platform to embrace me in what I reluctantly felt was no more than an affectionate farewell hug. As her thighs pressed against mine they felt like objects of worship. Was this as close as I was ever going to get to her?

  I had no idea where she was going but if the Operation caught up with me it wouldn’t do them any good. I wouldn’t have the package. I wouldn’t even know where it was. If they wanted it, they were only going to get it when Andy was safe.

  But how long was I going to have to wait for something to happen?

  The Operation hadn’t taken long to come on the scene once the package had gone astray. Only a short period of time had elapsed since the smiling man had held me up in the lay-by and Andy had disappeared from the caravan.

  But did it make any difference? Sooner or later they were going to find me. I would just have to sit about in the flat indefinitely until they turned up.

  But as I thought of the protracted mental and emotional torment involved in hanging about like this I decided instead to head for the office. I had to find something to occupy my mind. They could just as easily catch up with me there anyway.

  chapter twenty-one

  Oh how I envied Benny as I saw him sitting there at his desk trying to look and sound like a ‘real’ salesman. Up until I had lost the package most of my worries hadn’t been all that different in kind from the ones that he would be dealing with right now. His mind would be occupied with thoughts about where his next sale was coming from and how he could avoid getting on the wrong side of Sears.

  Of all people, I knew exactly how he felt. Although the word that best described his circumstances was seldom used nowadays, Benny was in bondage, almost a kind of modern day Hebrew slave. And I wasn’t being facetious, for Sears could deprive him of the only means he had of paying his mortgage, upon which rested so much. But in the light of what I myself was going through now I wished I could change places with him. Losing your job was bad but it wasn’t lift-threatening. Neither was meeting with total failure in the attempt to close a sale. All of these paled into insignificance as I again weighed up the facts surrounding the disaster which had befallen me. The thought of being put out of my house, as Benny’s fellow Jews in Europe had once been, no longer seemed so bad. But I had moved to the next stage, which for them had been deadly, and I felt almost as bad as they must have done. I was being hunted down.