Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 31

  ‘There’s no need to get excited, Mr Oakley. We were just wondering whether to explain to you about the Binscombe Scholarship—and the consensus seems to be that we should.’

  ‘What’s that? What’s it got to do with anything?’ I asked, made impatient by the mucking about.

  ‘Well,’ Disvan continued, as if to a rather dense child, ‘as the name would tend to suggest, it’s a scholarship. It’s funded by the inhabitants of Binscombe and hence it’s the “Binscombe Scholarship”. Are you with me so far?’

  ‘Yes,’ I sighed.

  ‘Good. Well, the purpose of the scholarship is mainly to permit local youngsters to go to university. Cambridge University to be precise.’

  ‘Really?’ I was quite impressed. Binscombe was hardly the typical Oxbridge recruiting zone.

  ‘And as for what it’s got to do with anything, as you put it—well that, I think, is best seen for yourself.’

  The landlord and Doctor Bani-Sadr nodded their agreement with this point of view. I didn’t understand.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ replied Mr Disvan. ‘We’ve haven’t told you enough to facilitate understanding. However, I’ve got to go to Cambridge on Saturday and, if you accompany me, all will become clear, I assure you.’

  Now I was astounded as well as puzzled.

  ‘You, go to Cambridge? I didn’t think you believed there was life north of the Thames.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about bits south of it either,’ said Disvan, good humouredly. ‘Croydon and Horley, for instance. However, this is an emergency. It’s young Vladimir Bretwalda’s birthday on Saturday, and his mother asked me to deliver a cake and some clean laundry to him.’

  I was now doubly surprised. While absolute monsters of integrity, industry and so on, the Bretwalda family were not known for their soaring intellects.

  ‘There’s a Bretwalda at Cambridge University?’ I asked, just to make sure I’d heard aright.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Disvan, ‘but young Vladimir is exactly the sort of person the Binscombe Scholarship was designed to help. Cambridge University has been the making of him.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to cast aspersions.’

  ‘I should hope not. Anyway, you said you wanted to know what’s going on here; will you be with me on Saturday?’

  I thought about it, remembered I’d arranged to meet my girlfriend’s parents that day and so said, yes, I would accompany him. I was flattered to note that Mr Disvan seemed pleased to hear this.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘it’s always best to have company while in uncivilised parts. I’ll pick you up at eight.’

  I felt more relaxed now. The idea of a casual weekend jaunt into pastures new was a pleasant one. The slightly threatening atmosphere caused by my heretical views appeared to have passed. Then I heard Mr Disvan speak and his voice was like that of the lion saying ‘trust me’ to the lamb.

  ‘You’ll see what’s going on here,’ he said—‘and everywhere else.’

  Whereupon all my misgivings sprang back into fresh and vigorous life.

  * * *

  Mr Disvan arrived in his Porsche, punctually at 8:00. I lowered myself in and was whisked away at alarming speed.

  ‘The fluffy dice are new, aren’t they?’ I said, once the G-force permitted speech. Disvan nodded.

  ‘Hmmm. I saw them for sale at a garage. Rather nice, don’t you think?’

  Rather than say the truth, I said something else. ‘I banged my head on them getting in.’

  Mr Disvan took his eyes off the road and looked at me in a quizzical way. ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked.

  I sensed it was going to be one of those days.

  ‘It was an accident, Mr Disvan. Believe it or not, I don’t head-butt fluffy dice on purpose.’

  To my great relief, Disvan looked away again and paid some attention to the way ahead.

  ‘Well,’ he said tersely, ‘I hope you haven’t damaged them. They weren’t cheap, you know.’

  Not surprisingly, I kept quiet after that and just watched the urban concrete sprawl flash by. Mr Disvan concentrated on his driving, flicking in and out of columns of traffic and gunning the motor like a stunt driver under interview. In very little time we’d left the green belt and then London behind and were well into East Anglia.

  It was only then that Disvan spoke again.

  ‘Pleasant countryside, don’t you think?’ he said, his two hands gesturing to indicate the flat expanse through which we were racing. For a moment the wheel spun wild and free. ‘Looking forward to our little outing, are we?’

  It sounded reasonable enough, but I was still sulking and spiky. For once he wasn’t the sole holder of historical weaponry. I’d taken the trouble to do a little reading, and I was determined for him to reap the benefit of it.

  ‘So-so. Anyway, I meant to ask, why so keen on old Oliver Cromwell, Mr Disvan? I mean, didn’t he smash up your precious Levellers? The executions at Burford church, Lilburne in prison and all that?’

  Disvan blushed and coughed and pressed hurriedly on.

  ‘We don’t think—I mean talk—about that, Mr Oakley. I prefer the broader picture. Like this one, for instance.’

  Again he abandoned the wheel to indicate the flat East Anglian vista. Outside of Binscombe, landscapes didn’t usually send him into raptures. This one was nothing special. I had him but, influenced by road safety and soft-heartedness, declined to press the advantage. Later on I’d regret that. Never withhold the stiletto from a prone foe. Life might not give you another chance.

  ‘Could be worse,’ I answered, as soon as the driver was back at the helm.

  ‘Yes, that’s well put, Mr Oakley. It could be worse. I mean, it’s quite like England in many respects.’

  I sighed heavily. We’d been through all this before.

  ‘It is England, Mr Disvan.’

  ‘Well, yes... technically, I suppose. But not in strict law. All this stuff, all the land above the Thames, was ceded to the Danes by Alfred the Great. You know, the Treaty of Wedmore in 878.’

  ‘That was more than a thousand years ago, Mr Disvan...’

  ‘I realise that, but I still think it makes a difference. I mean, if you pawn something away and then get it back, you never feel the same about it again, do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Well, you don’t. You’ve relinquished ownership to unfriendly strangers—however temporarily—so you can never have valued it much in the first place, can you?’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mr Disvan. If it makes you happy, England stops north of the Thames.’

  Disvan frowned.

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous, Mr Oakley. You can’t take these things literally.’

  ‘But it was you who...’

  ‘Oliver Cromwell’s head,’ said Mr Disvan abruptly.

  The unexpected change in conversational direction stopped my reasonable protest dead in its tracks. I regrouped to face this second front.

  ‘What about it?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘You were enquiring about it the other night.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes, I told you that Cromwell’s body was somewhere in Tyburn Pit and you asked what happened to his head. I said it had had a chequered history. Remember?’

  ‘Um... I vaguely recall something like that,’ I said falsely. ‘What about it?’

  ‘So, would you like an update on the fate of the head?’

  I gave the question a moment’s consideration. It was a reasonably alarming thought that the object might be still knocking about somewhere. I was in the position of being a captive audience. Accordingly I said, ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Disvan as he scared the wits out of a milkman by overtaking at jet-fighter speed, ‘you’ll remember that we left it on a spike, at the corner of Westminster Hall, round about the fifth of February, 1661.’

  ‘If you say so.’

 
‘I do. So does Samuel Pepys in his diary. Anyway, there it remained until the Great Storm of 1703, when it was blown off its perch, to land—so the legend has it—right in front of a sentry. He sold it to a passer-by for a shilling and then we lose sight of it for a bit. In 1710 it was on show in a London “Museum of Curiosities”. Then, in the 1780s, it came into the hands of a drunken actor called Samuel Russell, who first put it on show and later sold it when times where hard. After that, there were lots of owners until, in 1813, it fell on its feet, so to speak, in being acquired by a family called Wilkinson. To their credit, they retained possession for nearly 150 years—and treated it with a modicum of due respect, I might add.’

  I did a little bit of mental arithmetic and realised that Disvan had dragged the head as far as the 1960s. Being interested to hear what it was up to while I was undergoing education and adolescence, I asked what happened next.

  ‘A sort of happy ending, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan. ‘A member of the Wilkinson family bequeathed it on.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And the head arrived at Sydney Sussex College Cambridge—as have we.’

  Disvan slewed the car to a halt and switched off the engine. I looked out and found that this was true.

  * * *

  ‘Why here?’ I asked as we passed through the college gate, after a minor dispute with college servants about Mr Disvan’s parking arrangements.

  ‘Cromwell went to university here. It’s as appropriate a resting place as any.’

  I thought to myself that I wouldn’t wish to lay my bones (or ashes) within a hundred miles of any of my schools or colleges. It also occurred to me that, since severed heads have no say in such matters, Oliver Cromwell might have felt the same way. For the first time, I felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

  Mr Disvan seemed to know his way about the building. He led me up and down various staircases and along empty corridors until we came to what was unmistakably our destination.

  I’d always felt that Mr Bretwalda, senior, was about as big as a human being could be without forming part of some new species. However, his son, Vladimir, pushed the boundaries a little further up and out. He was occupying, in the very truest sense of the word, a sort of ante-room, onto which faced a heavy oak door bearing a brass plate announcing: ‘THE BINSCOMBE SCHOLARSHIP ROOM.’

  The young Bretwalda got up and looked down on me from a great height.

  ‘Hello Vladimir,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Happy birthday!’

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Vladimir, referring to me and ignoring the greeting.

  ‘Mr Oakley,’ Disvan answered swiftly. ‘Your father must have mentioned him surely?’

  ‘What, that newcomer?’

  ‘The same. Don’t worry, I can vouch for him.’

  Vladimir looked dubious and studied me even more closely. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. Look, here’s a bag with some fresh clothes from your mum—and a birthday cake as well.’

  ‘Ta,’ growled Vladimir and inspected the vast bag’s contents as if to check we hadn’t stolen one of his shirts to use as a bed sheet.

  ‘So it’s all right if we go in, is it?’ Disvan queried, for the fruit of Mr Bretwalda’s loins still blocked out floor to ceiling in front of the door.

  ‘S’pose so—but you tread careful, mind,’ he said, quite unnecessarily, to me. ‘I’ve got my eye on you!’

  I was so upset by this mindless aggression that, had I been much bigger and braver than I am, I would have wanted to anoint Master Bretwalda with my fist. Instead, being a reasonable man, I let Mr Disvan usher me round the human mountain and through the door. What I saw there made me forget present upsets in favour of more interesting matters.

  In some respects, the average sized room we were in was academia personified. Books and papers covered every wall and most of the floor. To some extent, it was also academia updated, since there was also a fair quantity of high-tech present in the form of TVs, PCs, videos, radios and so on.

  A pale young man, who somehow struck me as a typical Binscomite, was reading aloud from a newspaper to the focus of the room—to which all the televisions et al were also directed. This focus comprised a stout wooden box, maybe two feet square, with a metal grill set in one side. Over it arced a formidable iron cage in which considerations of security prevailed, without much of a struggle, over beauty.

  The young man carried on reading.

  ‘…and the bill is expected to pass its committee stage without further significant amendment—hello, Mr Disvan—although its opponents have vowed to place every procedural barrier in its way.’

  A long silence followed. In place of something to say, I pretended I was about to have something to say and said ‘Er...’ in the accepted English fashion.

  ‘Er...’

  Mr Disvan hushed me and the silence continued. What eventually broke it was a deep and gruff voice that, had I not known better, gave the illusion of coming from the wooden box.

  ‘I see. Thank you. Not time yet, I think,’ it said.

  I inspected the container with care. It looked too old to be a radio and, in any case, I couldn’t see any sign of wires or switches about it. The voice must have come, in that case, from one of the myriad gadgets around the room and tricked my ears in some way as to its point of origin.

  I then noticed that Disvan and the young man didn’t share this interpretation. They continued to stare at the square box in the corner.

  ‘And that’s about it,’ said the young man—although not, it seemed, to us. ‘The next news is on BBC 1 at midday. I’ve set the video timer.’

  ‘I am obliged to you, sir,’ said the gruff voice.

  The young man now seemed to consider himself ‘off-duty’ in some way and got up to greet us properly. Mr Disvan introduced me and I received a better welcome than that offered outside the door.

  ‘Mr Oakley, this is Jeremiah Thurloe, the second of our two Binscombe Scholars,’ said Disvan.

  We shook hands.

  ‘What station was that you were tuned to?’ I asked.

  Thurloe looked puzzled for a moment.

  ‘You mean you haven’t told him?’ he said to Mr Disvan.

  ‘The number of clues that have been dropped,’ Disvan replied, ‘I didn’t think I needed to. However, since he has been rather slow, perhaps you’ll do the honours for me.’

  Thurloe smiled and waved me forward to the centre of the room. He then gestured towards the caged box.

  ‘My Lord Protector,’ he said, ‘please meet Mr Oakley of Binscombe. Mr Oakley, please meet the Lord Protector, Mr Oliver Cromwell.’

  ‘How do you do, Mr Oakley?’ said the box in that plain, deep voice I’d heard before. ‘Funny sort of weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?’

  Fortunately, Mr Disvan had a chair ready for me to fall back into.

  * * *

  ‘He knew the end was near, you see,’ said Mr Disvan, ‘and there are certain precautions a person with contacts can take in that situation. Certain advisors that can be called upon.’

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed Thurloe, fiddling with the cherry on a stick in his Babycham. ‘In fact, I think it was pretty clear to anyone with a pinch of sensitivity that he was on his way home. For instance, the month before the Lord Protector departed, George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, met him in Hampton Court Park and recorded afterwards that he felt, and here I quote: “a waft of death go forth against him” and that Cromwell “looked like a dead man.” When it got that obvious, provisions were made for what was to come afterwards.’

  We’d all retired to a nearby wine-bar, which was very much my sort of milieu in the normal run of events, although Mr Disvan clearly didn’t feel at home. He had ordered a glass of Lebanese Chateau Musar (which impressed the proprietor) and then fled to a corner seat from which to eye the clientele with deep suspicion. Vladimir Bretwalda had also joined us, first securing the door of the Binscombe Scholarship room with five separate keys and padlocks. Like Thurloe, he too wa
s a Babycham fan.

  A quantity of champagne was making me feel better as it almost never failed to do. I was able to chose my next question with a degree of calmness.

  ‘What “provisions”?’ I asked firmly.

  ‘That needn’t concern you,’ said Disvan, just as firmly, ‘although,’ (this in a more kindly tone), ‘I can confirm that Binscombe was involved in some minor capacity.’

  Thurloe moved to lessen the snub.

  ‘In fairness, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘I think it’s true to say that there are few now who know the fullness of the matter. We just deal with the consequences.’

  I thought I’d ingratiate myself with Vladimir Bretwalda by drawing him into the conversation.

  ‘And what are those consequences, Vladimir?’ I asked.

  He didn’t even deign to tear his glance away from a loud woman of indeterminate age in white stretch lycra.

  ‘Search me, Mr Oakley. I’m just here for security reasons.’

  ‘And the rowing,’ prompted Mr Disvan.

  ‘And the karate,’ added Thurloe.

  Vladimir nodded. ‘Yeah, them also—and in my spare time, I read about the demolition business so I can join my dad’s firm when I’m through here. “Consequences” are more Jerry’s field of work.’

  ‘Broadly speaking, that’s true’ Mr Disvan agreed. ‘We try and tailor the Scholarship to students’ aptitudes. Your last question is more in young Thurloe’s line.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ asked Mr Disvan in all innocence.

  I had the patience to outlast them. ‘Well-what-are-the-consequences-Mr-Thurloe?’

  Thurloe came back to life and proved that he had learnt his lessons well. Perhaps too well.

  ‘The consequences are potential rather than actual, Mr Oakley, and we deal with the phase of transition from potentiality to actuality.’

  I leaned back in my chair and poured myself another drink.

  ‘Thank you for baring your soul in that way, Mr Thurloe. It’s all crystal clear to me now.’

  Mr Disvan also seemed a little shocked at this outbreak of gobbledegook from a fellow Binscomite on whom so many advantages had been showered.