Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Read online

  ‘Anyway,’ Mr Maccabi continued, ‘I asked Mr Disvan to pop round to see if he had any suggestions to make...’

  Disvan butted in, apparently keen to bring matters to a brisk conclusion. ‘Mr Maccabi kept dreaming that he and his family were in a bus queue, waiting to go to Goldenford, with three other people...’

  ‘A mother and child and a chap going to work,’ said Maccabi.

  ‘Whatever. But when the bus turned up, it went out of control and ploughed into the queue, presumably killing everyone. Mr Maccabi said it was so vivid, it had to be more than merely a dream. Not only that, but he was intending to make just such a journey in the near future. And all I advised was that he and his family, being forewarned, shouldn’t be there to be run over.’

  ‘Ah yes, but that’s not all,’ added Mr Maccabi, addressing his comments to me. That, I agree, was just commonsense. Why I’m really obliged to Mr Disvan is that he went on to explain we still had to catch the bus to Goldenford that morning because that was also ordained. If we’d just not turned up, things would have got all twisted. It might have meant the accident was merely postponed and the bus would catch us some other time when we weren’t expecting it.’

  Mr Disvan didn’t seem happy with this.

  ‘I put it a little more subtly than that, Mr Oakley. I seem to recall speaking about the concept of wyrd, the threads of fate and so on.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Maccabi, ‘there was a lot of superstition mixed in there but the majority of it was sound.’

  Mr Disvan rested his head on his hand and looked away.

  ‘Anyway,’ Maccabi continued blithely, ‘I gave it a lot of thought and decided to confront the prediction on the ground it’d chosen. We turned up at the right time but, beforehand, I’d rung the bus depot. I’d said there was a serious fault on the Binscombe bus. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t believe me at first. I heard someone say “we’ve got a right loony here” and then they hung up.

  ‘I had to ring back and say I’d got into the depot the night before and tampered with the brakes, the steering, you name it. The next stage was to say the Binscombe Liberation Front, or someone, had planted a bomb on it but luckily it didn’t come to that.

  ‘They must have taken a look at the bus and found out whatever the fault was. Either way, when the bus turned up, it wasn’t the one I saw in my dreams but an older, replacement vehicle. It rolled up, stopped safely and took us to Goldenford.

  ‘A tragedy averted and six people saved,’ said Bridget Maccabi. Her voice was like the crack of a playful whip.

  ‘Precisely. So that’s the end of that,’ her father agreed, and toasted the supposed agent of their salvation. ‘Here’s to you, Mr Disvan!’

  I looked at Disvan and saw at once that he was harbouring doubts so far unexpressed. I was wondering what these might be, when a noise from across the table distracted me.

  Mr Maccabi had stood up with a strangled cry. He was staring in horror at his pint of Guinness on the table.

  ‘What’s the mat—’ I started to ask.

  Maccabi didn’t seem to hear me. He lunged at the drink and began a furious search of the glass’s contents with his fingers. Great gouts of Guinness flew everywhere, covering our party and the surrounding area.

  The landlord, who hated seeing good beer go to waste and who liked seeing it on his floor even less, shouted a no-nonsense assessment of events at Mr Maccabi, but he took no notice.

  Bridget Maccabi was on her feet and I thought her gaze would shatter the unoffending glass.

  When less than a third of a pint remained to distribute, Mr Maccabi seemed to come to. He looked at the damp and sticky havoc he’d caused and silently appealed to us for sympathy. We all remained silent, not knowing yet whether we ought to give it.

  ‘There was an eye in there,’ he said, to no one in particular. ‘Honestly—an eye—floating in the beer. It blinked at me!’

  He returned to staring into the glass and shook his head sadly. His voice became softer and more reflective.

  ‘Really, there was an eye,’ he said. ‘It was looking at me.’

  ‘Alas no,’ said Mr Disvan, finding an age-old lampshade suddenly fascinating in his attempt to avoid Mr Maccabi’s face. ‘It was looking for you.’

  * * *

  ‘Dad needs to see you,’ said Bridget Maccabi. ‘Now, please.’

  The request seemed to dispense with actually consulting our brains and cut in at some reflex level. We found ourselves rising to answer the call before really considering it.

  A mere minute or two after entering the Argyll, Bridget Maccabi had prised Mr Disvan and myself out and was ushering us down the street. I was going to compensate for this brutal herding by some jocular comment about Bo-peep and sheep but a cautious look at those black, flashing eyes caused me to reconsider.

  In fact Mr Maccabi did need to see us—or someone at least. He looked in terrible shape. In the three days since we’d last seen him, rings under his eyes had grown and joined together to simulate mascara. He was chain-smoking with suicidal ferocity and glanced about like an American tourist in Beirut.

  Despite the evident state of emergency, civilisation in the Maccabi household had not yet fallen. He welcomed us in and arranged for tea or coffee to be brought. It was clear, however, that Mr Maccabi was anxious to get to business. Mr Disvan seemed happy to go along with that.

  ‘What is it that we can do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘I just want you to look at something,’ Maccabi replied, looking fixedly at the glowing tip of his cigarette. ‘First of all, anyway.’

  He got up and, moving to one corner of the living room, lifted up the edge of the carpet.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘or hoped, that the scratching might be mice. But when I investigated... well, this...’

  He pointed to what appeared to be a knot in one of the floorboards.

  Mr Disvan went to the spot. I was going to remain safely where I was but, at that moment, Bridget Maccabi re-entered the room with a tray of cups and, for some silly reason, I felt obliged to go and join the two men.

  I found that Disvan had removed a mirror from the wall and was holding it over the area indicated by Maccabi. Maccabi himself was puzzled.

  ‘Why don’t you just look?’ he asked.

  Mr Disvan didn’t reply immediately. He continued to experiment with the angle of the mirror until we were given a clear, bird’s eye view of that section of floor.

  There was indeed a knot-hole clean through the bare floorboard. Through it, from some dark space beneath the house, an eye starred up at us, or so it appeared. Entranced, we watched it for some time. The eye was alive and active. It blinked and looked from side to side, as if searching into the room.

  Mr Disvan was the first to break the silence.

  ‘This is for you, I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, ‘and it’s for the best that others don’t draw themselves to its attention. I should put the carpet down now.’

  Mr Maccabi let the edge drop back into place. In a fit of fury, he ground his heel into the spot where the eye should be. We heard no response to this assault.

  Mr Disvan had already re-seated himself and was spooning sugar into his tea. He motioned for us to join him.

  Bridget served everyone with ginger-nuts that no one really wanted and then went to bring Joseph down to complete the gathering. The biscuits were surreptitiously passed on to the baby when Bridget’s gaze was elsewhere.

  ‘What else?’ asked Disvan simply,

  Mr Maccabi, a good way towards the end of his tether, leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, and looked into space.

  ‘Eyes everywhere,’ he said wearily, ‘and note the plural. Prying eyes peering at us from every nook and cranny, through chinks in the curtain and keyholes—even floating in my cornflakes on one occasion! I don’t doubt there’s one in my cup of coffee if I could bring myself to check.’

  By an effort of will, I avoided looking to see if this was true.


  ‘To put it mildly, Mr Disvan, we’re under observation.’

  Disvan silently concurred.

  ‘But they’re not the only irritation,’ Maccabi continued. ‘I’ve started to hear whispering. I can’t tell what they’re saying, but I know it’s about me.’

  Disvan and I exchanged a covert glance which, swift as it was, was registered by Bridget Maccabi.

  ‘It’s true’ she said. ‘So listen!’

  We did so. Mr Maccabi appeared unaware of the interruption. He was lighting a new cigarette from the expiring corpse of another.

  ‘Only last night,’ he said, ‘I went into the kitchen and, even above the noise of the howling wind and rain, I could hear them whispering—two or three different voices, just outside the window. I went up to the blind and I wanted to lift it aside and see what they looked like. But I didn’t. I just locked the back door and they went silent when they heard the noise. I know it was a bit cowardly of me but...’

  We nodded our understanding. Mine, at least, was entirely genuine.

  ‘When I left the kitchen and turned the light off, it was like a signal. The hissing and whispering started up again. Now, it hardly ever lets up. Eyes and whispering, whispering and eyes. I tell you, Mr Disvan, they’re everywhere—in the empty spaces of the house—all of the quiet gaps in life.’

  ‘We can also hear it on the baby intercom gadget,’ said Bridget Maccabi, matter of factly. ‘You know, the link-up with the baby’s room that lets us know if Joe’s awake or not. I’ve heard him answering their noises. But when I run up there, there’s never anything to be seen. That concerns me, Mr Disvan. What sort of things are being said to him?’

  Disvan shrugged.

  ‘And then there’s the shadows that aren’t quite right—I mean that are too dark or fast or just the wrong shape. What are they?’

  ‘But just about the worst thing of all,’ said Mr Maccabi, rejoining the testimony session, ‘is this.’

  He pointed at his son.

  Joseph was sitting on the floor, silent and engrossed in a way that year-old infants usually aren’t for extended periods. Mouth open, he was tracking some invisible object around the room.

  Bridget was nodding to confirm our suspicions.

  ‘It’s going on all the time,’ she said. ‘All of a sudden, he’ll go out of phase with us. There’s something that holds his attention and won’t let go.’

  Mr Disvan, who had an infinite store of kind feeling for children, leaned forward and flicked his fingers in front of the child’s face. Even he appeared concerned at the lack of reaction it produced.

  Mr Maccabi steeled himself to sip his coffee. It was, apparently, eyeless.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Mr Disvan’s interest was still on the baby. At that precise moment, it fell free of whatever glamour had been in operation and returned to noisy play with soggy biscuits and a doleful furry bear.

  Disvan sighed and seemed to have to force himself to reply to Maccabi.

  ‘ “It has been said”,’ he announced, ‘ “that the Angel of Death is all eyes”.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I asked, on behalf of all.

  ‘It’s a quote from Judaic scripture, Mr Oakley. Abodah Zarah: 20.’

  I had still to make the connection. ‘What about it? I mean, Mr Disvan, is this the time or place to start discussing religion when...’

  ‘Shut up, Mr Oakley,’ said Bridget Maccabi. I did so.

  ‘Do you mean,’ she continued, ‘that those eyes belong to...’

  Disvan nodded.

  Mr Maccabi took the blow manfully. ‘And? he said.

  ‘Well,’ replied Disvan in measured tones, ‘that depends. Do you want the bad news, or the really bad news?’

  The Maccabi response was speedy and surprisingly resolute given the circumstances.

  ‘Neither. We want help!’

  Bridget Maccabi signified her solidarity with this stand.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Disvan, somewhat more cheerfully, ‘it’s help you want, is it? Now, that requires a degree of thought and some time. If you’ll bear with me, I’ll see what I can do.’

  He rose and, with almost indecent haste, made to leave. I naturally followed suite. The Maccabis, while hardly placated, seemed to have a touching faith in Disvan’s limitless powers of intercession. Bridget saw us out while her father cautiously investigated a long-stemmed vase that had aroused his suspicions. It too turned out to be, for the moment, an eye-free zone.

  Needless to say, the questions had been relentlessly building up in me and, as the Maccabi door closed behind us, I turned to unleash them on Mr Disvan.

  He stopped me in my verbal tracks by raising his hand, like some flustered, disillusioned traffic policeman.

  ‘Don’t even ask, Mr Oakley,’ he said, with all the very considerable firmness he could muster. ‘Things will just have to take their course, that’s all.’

  * * *

  A week passed. Then, one evening, a wretched looking Mr Maccabi sought us out in the Argyll.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘tell me the bad news first.’

  For a moment, Mr Disvan looked doubtful about whether to do so. However, this rare internal debate was only a short process. His jaw set, and Mr Maccabi visibly braced himself for what he was about to receive.

  ‘The bad news is,’ said Disvan, ‘that I can’t help.’

  ‘Can anyone?’ asked Bridget Maccabi.

  Again, there was just the flicker of uncertainty in the Disvan visage.

  ‘Er... possibly. In fact, yes, very probably—but we’ll come on to that later.’

  Humanitarian motives moved me to go to the bar and buy Mr Maccabi a large brandy. When I returned, I found that he was recounting another episode from his tribulations. The cigarettes were being consumed fast and furious.

  ‘They really mean business now, whoever they are,’ he was saying. ‘Last night I heard a noise in Joseph’s room. When I went in, there was a sort of “child shape”, dancing round his cot and looking in. You couldn’t see any detail, it was just a kind of gap in the darkness—but it was definitely a child. Standing alongside was a larger figure and I somehow knew that it was the child’s mother. She was just standing there and looking at me. There was real menace, Mr Disvan, real ill-intent. You couldn’t mistake it for anything else.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, alarmed for the baby’s sake.

  ‘The noise must have woken Bridget as well. She went charging past me, into the room, waving a carving knife, and the shapes simply vanished.’

  Speaking for myself, I didn’t blame them.

  Mr Maccabi knitted his brows and tried to see to the bottom of the brandy that he’d snatched from my hands.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think that those shapes are the woman and child whose lives we saved from the bus crash. The two things are connected somehow...’

  Mr Disvan made signs of agreement.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ shouted Maccabi. ‘The woman’s a witch and she’s put a spell on me... for some reason,’ he tailed off weakly.

  ‘Would it were so straightforward,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘That we could deal with. No, you were right to begin with. Those shapes and the people in the queue are connected, but not in the way you think.’

  Mr Maccabi picked up his pack of cigarettes and, finding it was empty, threw it, Henry VIII style, over his shoulder. The landlord gave him a very black look indeed but desisted from commenting. In common with all the other people in the bar, he realised that something very serious was being discussed. A force field of privacy was allowed to form around us.

  Maccabi found a fresh pack and scrabbled the wrapper off.

  ‘They’re ghosts of the future,’ said Disvan suddenly, ‘ghosts that should be but aren’t yet. That’s why you couldn’t see any detail. They’re only potential ghosts.’

  Mr Maccabi shook his head, uncomprehending.

  ‘All right,’ said Mr Disvan, sounding a little disappointed at our slowness, ‘I�
�ll spell it out. They’re gaps, in the truest sense of the word, in the universe. They’re spaces, or a diversion of energies if you like, prepared by Death, which were to be filled by the bus crash victims. However, because Mr Maccabi was forewarned, he caused a shortfall in Death’s daily quota. Those “gaps” Death had prepared weren’t filled up, and now they’re running around free.’

  Mr Maccabi felt moved to protest. ‘But you .....’

  Disvan was remorseless and determined that not an iota of doubt about Maccabi’s tormentors should remain in our minds.

  ‘They are, in fact,’ he interrupted, ‘the very worst sort of ghost—unspecified, undirected and unresolved. They’ve no memories, no role and no story. They’re completely free agents who go where and do what they want. Unfortunately for you, what they seem to want is revenge for their non-existence.’

  ‘Revenge on me?’ asked Maccabi, with commendable firmness.

  ‘Seems that way,’ Disvan agreed lightly. ‘Not only that, but Death doesn’t appear to accept your change of its plans. It wants to have a word with you and make you stick to the script—as you will observe.’

  Mr Disvan gestured towards the window and, for the split second before I averted my gaze, I saw that a reddish eye was peering in through a chink in the curtains. It might just have been a rather nosey (and strange) person outside but I was inclined to doubt that. Disvan leaned over and pulled the curtains fully to. Overcome by powerful emotions, Mr Maccabi lit another cigarette, unaware that he already had one in his mouth.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something else,’ he said, his voice shaking a bit at first but then painfully regaining its composure, ‘Death is also getting a touch impatient. It’s calling in accomplices.’

  Mr Disvan somehow gave the impression that that was only to be expected.

  ‘I got up very early this morning,’ Maccabi went on, ‘because I couldn’t sleep. I thought I might as well have a bath. There I was, lolling back in the water, half dozing, when I happened to look up at the opaque panel in the door. A white shape suddenly sort of slid up and pressed itself to the glass. It was a face, trying to see in. The image was all broken up and angular, of course, because of the type of glass, but I recognised my Amy, all the same. My wife’s been gone nearly a year, Mr Disvan, but now she’s been made to come back!’