If you have reached this point without falling down any other rabbit holes, then I fear that you are about to feel sorely disappointed
Because it is at this point that a chimerical narrative reaches its unwonted ending. It continues apparently, for a few more beats… but only pro forma.
Suffice to say that I awoke one afternoon to find myself not in a London park but on a hillside above a strangely familiar village. Perhaps the one within which nestled our legendary perfect country pub, our Brigadoon.
Do not worry. I am not about to pull some sort of “it was all just a dream” stunt. I’m not even going to attempt to psychoanalyse myself.
It’s true though. All quests mutate. At the beginning it’s about the going out; but at some stage it becomes all about a return to home. And it will be doubly frustrating for you to realise that I don’t intend to outline here the toxic turning point or the insipid violence at the tale’s dark heart. Another time, another place. Perhaps.
(Your) disappointment aside, though, it's worth us all
Towards vindication: on a vast beach at low tide on the hard wrinkled sand
acknowledging that all stories end unexpectedly. They never really go the distance. Not a one.
There comes a point in even the best told tales when you realise it all ended pages ago and you’ve now entered the wind-down, the bit where the loose ends (most of them at any rate) are tied off.
And in a sense it's only the numinous spirits of your characters that ever persist, keeping on doggedly towards that region wherein vindication may be sought, drifting almost as if through a mist, at dawn, on a cold morning, on a vast beach at low tide, its sand hard and wrinkled.
So, no, I'm not going to revisit the
point (or concatenation of points) where the plot was truly lost. The point at which friendships were misplaced or even ended. Where jeopardy took on an aura of many shimmering colours.
I'm not even going to rehearse the insane logic that led me to buy a ticket, as Hannay did in The 39 Steps itself, that would take me Killin-ward by train.
Or, come to that, the delusional mindset that could make me believe that an envelope containing a few dog-eared documents and pictures could amount to some sort of unimaginable treasure.
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