Epilogue

 

“… and after all is said and done, and all that’s happened… well, it’s just karma, eh?” said Adrian.

“Eh?” said Harry and Pru in unison. The friends were sitting at a pavement table outside Gandalf’s, a light breeze rippling the chequered linen cloth. At their elbows were tall glasses of something cool and refreshing with green bubbles, topped off by magenta striped parasols.

“Karma. Fate. Some foreign chap was telling me in here one day, Indian I think he was. Once upon a time, there was this bloke Buddha, a great and import -”

“Yes, we have heard of him.”

“So one day he was walking along the bank of a great river with one of his disciples – they’re the people who -”

“We’re familiar with the term.”

“– and they saw this other bloke drowning in the river and shouting for help. ‘Help, help,’ he shouted. So after he’d come up for the fifth time, the disciple asked whether maybe they should save him, or let him drown `cos that’s his karma. ‘Ah, but not so,’ said Buddha.”

“Who’s this Arbuthnot?” asked Harry. “You didn’t mention him before.”

“No, do keep up,” said Adrian. “Buddha said ‘No, it’s his karma to be drowning in a river near two people discussing karma’. So there it is.” He sat back with a satisfied smile, apparently having finished.

“Where is it?” asked Harry. “What?”

“Well, did they save him or not?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The Indian had forgotten that bit.”

They looked at him with a mixture of frustration and incredulity. Harry smoothed his moustache and drummed his fingers on the table for a while.

“So what exactly was the point of the story?” he asked eventually, with admirable restraint.

“`S obvious, isn’t it? Fate.” Adrian seemed surprised to be asked.

“If everything’s all planned out anyway, there’s no point in getting so worked up about it. You just do your own thing.”

Having been a civil servant and thus with ample experience of impenetrable logic, Prudence had been following the discussion quite well, but couldn’t help protesting at this point.

“Just a minute,” she said, “that’s not right. You can’t do your own thing and have everything planned out. It’s not rational.”

“Who said Heaven has to be rational?”

“But that’s how we are,” she objected. “And if we don’t know that everything’s planned out by Fate, we have to assume it isn’t, don’t we?”

“Exactly my point,” said Adrian. “So you just do your own thing.” Pru sat back perplexed. It wasn’t the conclusion she’d intended to get to. Meanwhile, Harry was looking from one to the other in total mystification, although as a decisive leader of men who rarely had any idea where he was leading them he probably should have understood.

“Deuced if I know what you’re on about, young man,” he said, “and I don’t suppose the drowning chap would have been very impressed either.”

“Ah, well actually you’re right there,” nodded Adrian, “`cos I’ve just remembered he wasn’t a Buddhist anyway.”

“Rough, innit?” said Bonzai.