Am I Being Followed?

by G. M. Hutchison

  In the Book Collection there were people I admired, and people I felt I could sit in judgement of. There were heroes and villains. But could I now ask myself which of these I had been when events had challenged me as they had been challenged? Although I had won my war, my little war, I knew the answer wouldn’t be flattering.

  I had been able to flit in and out of my moral dilemmas with comparative ease. The right thing to do had always ended up being what I felt I had to do, and I knew that if events had taken a turn for the worse I would have progressed yet further in my criminality. What had started out as a mere attempt to augment my income, albeit by dubious means, had almost ended up in murder, and yet even with the benefit of hindsight I had almost persuaded myself that most of what I had done had been right. Apart from my initial mistake in leaving the Food Importers, I thought that none of what had happened afterwards had really been my fault. I had been carried along by events and forced to go in a certain direction even after I had had second thoughts about where it might lead me. But how many of these people in the Book Collection had sincerely thought, and in many cases had actually pleaded, that they had had the same excuse?

  In using the Book Collection, in the way that I did, to magnify, to enrich, even to dramatise the relatively mundane events of my life had I stumbled upon something? Wasn’t the excuse that I was using to justify my actions the one that mankind in general used? For if so, and everyone thought that his war was a just war, that his problems weren’t his fault, and that necessity decided what was right and what was wrong then it was easy to see how even mass murder could be justified, by good men dropping the atom bomb, as well as evil men exterminating people.

  Perhaps this was what I should be concentrating on, the fact that I couldn’t see how mankind had the ability to make it on its own. This is what I seemed to have learned from my experiences. Mankind was heading for trouble.

  I had been heading for trouble, too, but I had got away with it this time. Could I count it as a warning? But mankind has had its warnings, too, as the Pastor pointed out so well. Even my Aunt Grace seemed to know this, with the severity of her less well-defined famines and floods, and her earthquakes of increasing intensity that she was always telling me about.

  I wished I could see it all as clearly as the Pastor did. But then, as he had pointed out, the spirit that had gathered together and revealed these truths, upon which so much depended, could conceal their meaning, too.

  How much had been concealed from me, I asked myself. Or more importantly, how much had been revealed to me. I had certainly had a glimpse of the kind of destination I had been headed for.

  It was the same one that men in general were headed for, men who could look askance at the description of a man given in a book, because it was made up of copies of copies and yet could have blind faith in the existence in a puddle of water millions of years ago of the substances and conditions that would cause life, men who would stake all their beliefs, or their lack of them, on this.

  But why could I see where it was all heading if they couldn’t? I certainly didn’t know why, but I thought I knew how.

  I was there, in the Book Collection, with the American marines fighting the Japanese in the 2nd World War. Would the water level over the reef they would have to cross on their assault on the island of Tarawa be deep enough? Most of the people who had lived in that area said that it would be five feet at high tide. Admiral Hill, the man in charge, enquired of any ships’ pilots present who had ever been at Tarawa if they could remember any occasions when boats had been unable to cross the reef at high tide? None of them could.

  But an old retired soldier who had lived on Tarawa at that time had strongly disagreed.

  “You won’t have three feet,” he had stated categorically during the discussions. And “You definitely won’t be able to cross that reef,” he had stated with equal vigour at the end of them. But no one had listened to him.

  Many things had gone wrong at Tarawa but it was the shallow water over the reef which had claimed the most lives. The marines forced to get out of their boats and wade ashore had been slaughtered. The old resident, the owner of the lone voice, had been right.

  Had another lone voice, the voice of Pastor Mackenzie, been right too? In a sense, I could try to forget his daughter Linda, but I could never forget much of what he had said to me concerning certain great truths that mankind had disastrously denied but can never refute.

  chapter thirty

  I didn’t have to wait long outside the Old Toll Bar. She drew in quite near to me and as she got out I opened the car window in preparation for the ordeal.

  I was going against my better judgement in coming here but I couldn’t help myself. She now occupied a permanent place in what I remembered of the picture on the sales office wall. I couldn’t listen to Chopin without thinking about her, either.

  “Karen,” I almost trumpeted

  As she came over I thought she looked as enticing as she had that day on the beach, the day she had stumbled in the water. It made me feel foolish. Why couldn’t I accept the fact that she too was out of my class? But at the same time it encouraged me, as I remembered the way she had looked at me that day on the beach, as I had helped her to her feet.

  “John,” was all she said as she came over.

  “Could I have a word with you, Karen?”

  As she got into the car I felt foolish again. What good reason did I have for inviting her into the car to discuss what I merely wished, rather than felt, existed between us?

  But I would have to go ahead with it now.

  “I’ve got my old job back, Karen,” I told her. “I’ve just come to say goodbye.”

  I had an idea what her response was going to be. It wasn’t going to be overwhelming.

  “I hope everything goes all right for you,” she said, just as I had expected.

  The Karen of my dreams had definitely gone forever, I could see, wishing that I hadn’t come.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised you’re going, John,” she said, opening the car door to get out only minutes after she had got in. “You don’t really belong here, do you,” she added.

  There was an iciness in her tone that compelled me to answer. She might want rid of me but she didn’t have to overdo it.

  “I don’t belong?” I asked indignantly. After all that has happened?”

  “I didn’t mean it in that way. How could I,” she said in an apologetic tone that I hadn’t expected.

  “Well, in what way?”

  To my surprise she settled back down in her seat again and turned to face me.

  “I suppose I’m just not used to people who own original oil paintings with their name on them.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” I protested, and anyway I thought you liked the painting,” I added hopelessly.

  “It’s not just that. What about all this religion and Chopin?”

  “What religion?”

  I saw at once what she meant. It was even worse than I had thought. This was how I had been coming over to her. I was a kind of upgraded wimp, which would more or less finish the matter once and for all.

  “Well, that girl you told me about,” she went on. “She’s religious isn’t she?”

  “Linda?”

  “Yes her. It’s to be you and me in the pub and you and Linda in the pew. Is that it?”

  ‘You and me’. Had the Karen I loved reappeared, if only to taunt me?

  “You’re too much for me, John. It’s just as well you’re going away.”

  It was the way that she said it. Had I just been thrown a lifeline right at the very last minute?

  “Too much? In what way?”

  “You come across as though you’re too good for all this and the next minute you’re behaving like a criminal, beating these people at their own game. And now you have all this money. My God, J
ohn, who are you?”

  I loved this. The Karen of my dreams had definitely reappeared. How was she to know that desperation had played as big a part in all this as had determination? All she could have seen was what I had let her see and hadn’t I been careful in acting the part, anxious to look good in front of her? I had very nearly talked myself out of something.

  “I was lucky Karen. That’s all.”

  “Lucky to the tune of £100,000, John? Do me a favour.”

  “Karen, you’ve got me all wrong. You’ve completely misunderstood me.”

  “Well, who are you, John? Tell me.”

  “An unemployed ex-fire extinguisher salesman,” I said bluntly. “But I’ve had the offer of a job, as I’ve just told you.”

  That she would prefer me in this lowly capacity was something I hadn’t even considered. When I finally told her about Aunt Grace, and the Foot Importers, about Linda, about the oil painting and Aunt Bethea, I was overwhelmed by the change that came over her. She was back! Karen was back!

  “I know you won’t believe me, John,” she said later. “But I actually like Chopin very much.”

  “I don’t really care if you do or not,” I replied, pushing my idol into second place where he belonged now. She was looking at me, wide-eyed, as she had done crouched down behind the bushes outside the caravan. Karen was back to stay.