What became of Johnson after Mulgan’s Man Alone ended?

The hero of John Mulgan’s Man Alone meets his maker in a satisfying sequel.

‘There are some men … you can’t kill,” John Mulgan wrote of Johnson, the hero of his peerless novel Man Alone. And it’s certainly true of his fictional characters. It’s been almost 80 years since Mulgan closed the book on Johnson, leaving him in a border tunnel trying to get out of civil-war Spain. Now he’s back, resurrected by playwright Dean Parker in a satisfying sequel simply entitled Johnson.

Mulgan’s Man Alone was all about

“the peace” – “the bit in between” the wars – as the recently demobbed Johnson tried to make a life for himself in New Zealand, working on boats, farms, orchards and road gangs before making that unforgettable Man Alone trek across the Kaimanawa Ranges after accidentally shooting and killing his boss.

Parker’s novel, by contrast, is all about the wars – Franco’s in Spain, then Hitler’s in Greece. And although there’s not a whole lot of New Zealand in Johnson, there is a fair bit of Mulgan. Both Johnson and his original creator spent time in Egypt, and in Greece among the partisans engaging in heroic deeds. (Mulgan, who has a cameo role in Johnson, was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits. He committed suicide in Cairo in April 1945.)

It’s impossible not to compare Mulgan’s Johnson with Parker’s, and wonder if the “real” Johnson (isn’t fiction strange?) would really have said this or done that. But the identity questions soon pass, and Johnson is just Johnson, that taciturn man’s man who survived the New

Zealand bush eating birds and drinking old tea, and will survive the hardships and horrors of war in Crete and on the Greek mainland. “Solitude had always been his familiar companion,” Parker writes, “an easy listener, and – generally speaking – a wise enough counsellor.”

Just as he did in Man

Alone, the Johnson of

Johnson spends time with a series of fellow travellers who come and go, such as the “little nuggety Irishman” Jack O’Reilly (as Mulgan first introduced him) who is killed in Spain, and the Ngati Porou soldier Arthur Rapana, with whom Johnson falls out over a woman. The exception is a New Zealander named Hilary, who is here, there and everywhere Johnson is: Spain, England, Greece, Egypt, then New Zealand.

Could the “real” Johnson fall in love and give up his Man Alone ways? Johnson is worth reading to find out. l JOHNSON, by Dean Parker (Steele Roberts,

$34.99)