Am I Being Followed?

  But just as intense and formidable as my feelings were for Karen at this point, were the feelings, of an entirely different kind, that I still had for Linda.

  These were feelings that had bothered me since I had first met her and which had now crystallised into a stark realisation of the fact that Linda was too good for me. She outclassed me as a person. The taunt of many a deprived person directed at someone more fortunate – “You think you are better than me” – had been reversed in my view of her. I could have said to her, in all sincerity, “I think you “are” better than me.”

  Linda represented a kind of undeniable excellence, like that emanating from the scene of a beautiful, winsome young concert pianist playing Chopin on a Steinway – who had shown excellence in her personal qualities, excellence in her ability as a pianist, excellence in her choice of instrument, and excellence in her choice of composer.

  So too, as far as I was concerned, did excellence emanate from Linda in her world – a world that I couldn’t truly belong in and should never even have tried to.

  Linda was definitely far too good for me! Excellent in her personal qualities, excellent in the way she could adhere to, express and emphasize her beliefs, and excellent, even if controversially so, in her choice of creative source material.

  What therefore was my next step going to be? Now that the dangers which had brought Karen and me together had passed? What, if anything, did I really mean to her? Was there anything other than wishful thinking to give me hope? Once more, in spite of my aversion to the idea, I would have to become a supplicant, a suitor. But with Karen I wasn’t going to shrink from the idea. I couldn’t.

  And surely the odds weren’t altogether stacked against me this time. Of course the money wouldn’t decide everything, but it would help. I was nobody’s man now.

  But how much money in real terms did I actually have?, I asked myself. It certainly covered the full spectrum of my immediate needs. I had moved from insufficiency to sufficiency, almost to abundance. But I hadn’t done it alone. The money really wasn’t all mine. So how much of it should I actually keep for myself I wondered. I would have to get this clear before I went to the party.

  But ‘How much should I keep?’ didn’t seem to be the right question. It sounded much better to ask, ‘How much did they deserve?’ If there was a way of dividing up the spoils that didn’t remind me of the way Sears arrived at his ungenerous rates of commission I was going to find it.

  There was Andy, Tom, Karen, Liz and myself to consider. Should I split it five ways?

  But Liz hadn’t really been in on it, and Tom had only got involved at the last minute.

  And yet, what Tom had done had been absolutely crucial. And Liz had always been there for us and would have helped if we had asked her.

  As for Karen, she had almost done as much as I had. I started again.

  Although the theory and practice of tricking Sears, and quite a few other things, had been down to me alone, none of this would ever have happened without Andy. The bottom line was, Andy had helped me when I really needed it, when there was no one else, and I had done much the same for him. It had to be fifty fifty.

  Andy could take care of Tom out of his half and I could take care of Karen out of mine. Karen could take care of Liz.

  chapter twenty-seven

  Dancing with Liz was challenging but enjoyable, just as it had been at the previous party. It wasn’t anything remotely like that with Karen. No matter what I said I couldn’t get her to respond in the right way.

  Although she seemed relaxed and quite friendly, there was absolutely no trace of the intimacy I had been hoping for.

  I was glad when the dance came to an end. Dancing with Liz had been physically exhausting but this particular dance, with Karen, had been a mental and emotional strain, an ordeal almost as intense in its own way as the one I had so recently gone through. As we parted at the end of the dance, she going to the opposite corner of the room, I tried to face the fact that what I feared, concerning my relationship with her, had come to pass. Now that the events which had drawn us together were over, I was finding out where I really stood with her. Nowhere, it would seem.

  Andy waved me over. He was beginning to look like his old self again and had been banging his crutch on the floor in time with the music. As I took my seat beside him he propped the crutch up against the wall and leaned over the table towards me.

  “Here’s something to tide you over John,” he said, slipping an envelope to me under the table. “And there’s stuff for you at the Casino, too, if you want it. It pays a lot more than you ever got in Bartons. A lot more.”

  “Actually I don’t need the money, Andy,” I said hesitantly.

  “John, I owe you one,” he insisted. “It took a lot of guts to do what you did.”

  If I wasn’t getting things right with Karen, at least I was getting them right with Andy, I felt strongly, in this role reversal. At the previous party it had been me who had been thanking him for the loan, feeling grateful even for his friendship. It was almost the other way round now.

  “Andy, I couldn’t have got the package back if Karen hadn’t gone with me to the caravan, and what would have happened if Big Tom hadn’t turned up at the boat? Don’t thank me, thank them.”

  “I’m thanking the whole bloody lot of you, but you first, John.”

  As I listened to him explain further about his involvement in smoothing the way for the new owners of the Casino, and then about where Sears had fitted in, with his position and influence on various Planning Committees and a good few other things, I realised how lucky I had been to come out of all this unscathed, how much out of my depth I had really been. But it was still Karen who was deciding my mood.

  “I warned Sears about using small-time people like Steve,” Andy went on. “But he wouldn’t listen. He certainly got what was coming to him.”

  “Actually, he didn’t ‘get what was coming to him’, Andy. Not exactly,” I couldn’t resist saying.

  “He didn’t?”

  Andy looked puzzled. Once more it was actually me who was setting the pace.

  “No. I got what was coming to him,” I said.

  His puzzled look changed to one of amazement as I explained to him about the money under the freezer. But he didn’t say much, remaining silent as I told him how I intended to split it up.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked at last, still with a look of bewilderment on his face.

  “Well, what else?” I replied.

  “John, you’re a bloody wonder,” he said.

  Still feeling low from my encounter with Karen, my spirits rose momentarily at Andy’s words. I had almost forgotten where I had started out in all this, right at the very bottom. But here I was, safely on a ladder almost as good as Jacob’s. I could forget about the fact that the lack of money was a kind of impotence. And I was no longer a kind of fugitive either. But my spirits sunk again as I thought of Karen.

  “I’ve just been lucky, Andy,” I added truthfully, without enthusiasm.

  Leaving him to pass on the information about the money to Tom I decided it was time to tell Karen, too. If I needed a reason, as I felt I did, to ask her for another dance, then this was certainly it.

  But it was the same again. I had seen the look before, in the Old Toll Bar when I had hardly known her, and in the car when she had suspected me of lying to her about my connection to the Operation.

  The unwelcome reserve in her manner could only mean one thing, I supposed. She didn’t like me in the right way. She knew what my feelings were for her, and she wasn’t going to offer me any encouragement. That explained it. But I couldn’t give up. Not just yet.

  “Have I said something wrong?” I asked her stupidly, aware that I hadn’t said anything at all, yet.

  “No. Why?” she asked, looking up at me as if I hadn’t said somethin
g stupid.

  “I’m disappointed in your attitude, that’s all.”

  “My attitude?” She asked, looking puzzled now. “My attitude to what?”

  “To me,” I told her, deciding it had to be plain speaking from now on. “To the fact that I was mistaken about you and Andy.”

  “And what exactly did you think my attitude was going to be?” she snapped.

  I struggled to find the right words. But if her question was an honest one, and from the look on her face it seemed that it was, then what was the point. It seemed that my doubts had been right all along. I had been hoping for too much. Whatever the bond between us had been, it didn’t follow that the feelings we had for each other had to be identical. What other way could she have acted in those last few days, anyway? Of course we had got on well. Of course she seemed to like me. She probably did. She had to, in a situation like that, with people like Steve and the smiling man to contend with, and then the fear that we were being stalked by the Operation.

  “You’ll go to sleep dancing with him, Karen,” Liz cut in, as she jerked and wriggled past us with Big Tom on her arm.

  “Cheers, John,” Big Tom shouted above the noise, making a thumbs up sign that signified Andy had told him about the money he would be getting.

  Like Andy, Tom was important to me. A friend from the start, boyishly good-natured, yet formidable and threatening with others whenever it was called for. It felt really good to be doing him a favour.

  “Cheers big man,” I shouted back, returning the thumbs up sign, glad not only that I had earned his respect but also that I had been able to demonstrate my friendship.

  But was I just a friend to Karen, too. Was that all. How far wrong about this had I actually been?

  “There’s something important I have to tell you,” I said to her.

  “About what?”

  “The money.”

  “What money?”

  I searched her features as I told her, hoping the revelation might at least make her soften a little towards me. But she looked less surprised than Andy had been, and not even impressed.

  “And that’s between Liz and me?” she asked, in a formal tone of voice.

  “Give Liz whatever you want.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said, as if I had just given her an uninteresting birthday present.

  The dance was coming to an end and she began to look about the room.

  “I’d better find Liz and tell her the good news, she said, breaking away from me.

  As I watched her go I felt I had to get away from this whole situation, from everything. I had come through all this travail successfully. I was a victor. But because of Karen, I had nothing but the taste of defeat in my mouth.

  chapter twenty-eight

  I no longer had my back to the wall. I had reversed the likely outcome of a devastating set of circumstances. But it didn’t seem to matter now. My relationship with Karen had spoiled it all.

  On this occasion I wasn’t running away, I almost convinced myself, or making a statement. I was merely moving on. It was best to get as far away from her as possible.

  As I wondered where this well-trodden pathway might lead, other than to joining the Foreign Legion, I had to admit that it had never occurred to me up to that point that Aunt Bethea might be able to provide me with an answer of some kind. The reason I had come to see my great aunt, on this particular occasion, still wasn’t too clear to me.

  I knew it was unlikely she would have much more of immediate interest to tell me about my father, my grandfather, or my great grandfather. She had already told me so much. But finding out that behind the scenes she had often been active in my behalf, and had, contrary to what I had been led to believe, considered me to be part of the family had awakened in me a sense of belonging, to her as well as to my Aunt Grace. I wanted to clarify the effect that the events of the last few weeks had had on me in the light of this. I wanted to get my feet back on the ground, to decide in which direction I was meant to go, without Karen, unfortunately.

  As I sat across from my great aunt, unhindered by the debasing need for financial help, and feeling quite entitled to be there, I at first misunderstood the reason for her thoughtfulness. She was about to say something about fire extinguishers, or an oil painting, or a distant family relative, I supposed.

  “You weren’t happy at the Food Importers?” she asked instead.

  The question shouldn’t have affected me the way that it did. After all, I now knew that it was her who had got me the job there in the first place. But it was the worst thing she could have asked me. How could I explain why I had left without lowering her opinion of me? I couldn’t’ lie to her. Perhaps she even knew already. What had happened in the ante room at the Annual Staff Dance was something I wanted to forget about. The part I had played in my recent problems showed me up in a very poor light indeed, and it might look even worse than that to her.

  “The work there was fine,” I told her, deciding to feel my way.

  “But you prefer working with fire extinguishers?” she returned.

  “I don’t actually,” I had to say. How could I say otherwise.

  “I’ve been in touch with your old boss,” she told me, taking me completely by surprise.

  “The young one?” I asked at once. I loved the interest she was taking in my plight, but had she got to the bad part about the events in the ante room? I wondered feverishly.

  “No, his father,” she told me.

  Did it really matter? Everyone in there would know the story, anyway. But it did matter.

  “He thinks very highly of you.”

  “That’s good to know,” I returned, trying not to show how relieved I felt that the incident in the ante room didn’t appear to have come up.

  “He was telling me his son has settled down now and that they both regret that you left in the way that you did.”

  “They do?” I gulped, again taken completely by surprise.

  But I rallied quickly as I guessed what she was about to tell me. What would once have seemed ridiculous now seemed interesting, even possible.

  “They want you to go back,” she said snappily. “What do you think of that, and there will be a promotion in it for you.”

  “Did he explain why I left?” I asked, no longer so anxious about this but not yet sure how exactly to respond.

  “It seems you have a temper,” she said, smiling gently.

  “Is that what they told you?” I asked, pretending to be indignant so that I would have more time to think.

  But I didn’t need more time. I was fooling myself. I could go back, because I didn’t need to. But I was still fooling myself.

  I would go back, mainly at that point, because of Karen. Without her, my destination seemed unimportant.

  chapter twenty-nine

  The waltzes of Chopin were so varied in effect that one of them would be bound to reflect my mood, I felt, as I pressed the button on the CD player.

  But what was my mood? I had to ask myself. I wished it was the euphoria I had experienced on the boat when I knew the money below the freezer was mine and that I had achieved my various objectives.

  It had been great feeling that the pressure was off, that my worst fears hadn’t come to pass, that I had been able to keep going and come through all this. If only it felt that way now.

  Since the waltzes, to my great disappointment, didn’t take me anywhere near the higher world of knowledge or being, my thoughts turned to the picture on the wall of the Sales Office. I found that I could remember it clearly enough for my purpose. I wanted to walk along the depicted riverbank, as I had done so often in the past, and find a place to sit and take stock of the situation.

  I was going back to the Food Importers, back to where I had started. In a sense I was going back to where everyone else was, to an ordinary everyday existe
nce, with sufficient money to pay for shelter, food and clothing and sufficient free time to indulge myself, perhaps more than ever now, in my Book Collection.

  But would I be the same person? Could I be, after all that had happened?

  At first I thought the answer had to be ‘yes’, for I was now characteristically thinking about Karen, as I had once thought about Linda. Instead of giving my attention to more important matters I was brooding on the fact that she was out of my reach. For a while she was all I could think about. I would miss Andy and the others but it would be much more than that with her. There would be something missing from my world, as well as from the picture.

  But what were the other more important matters I should be thinking of? I asked myself. Settling back into the Food Importers and into my old way of life wasn’t really one of them, as it should have been. I felt confident, after working for someone like Sears, that I would be able to settle my differences with the new boss. If he had changed, and I knew, as a result of recent experiences that I had, then the incident in the ante-room at the Annual Staff Dance would surely be something we could put behind us. We had both been at fault, and the fact that he wanted me to come back was something I felt neither of us were going to regret. After cold calling on shops I was going to be filled with a new enthusiasm for my old job, particularly now, when I knew I had an Aunt in high places, and the future looked bright.

  Perhaps it was important that I concentrate my attention on the things I had learned during the events of these last few weeks. It would be hard to do this without the help of the Book Collection, I realised, although the books were no substitute for the harsh way in which I had found out what the world outside was really like. It had taken a first hand experience of deceit, despair and determination to do that. But the Books, nevertheless, continued to shed light of a kind.