Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Read online

  ‘I must say though,’ he added, ‘some of us will miss you.’

  Mrs Disch was miraculously revived from her torpor and full of cheerful energy.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said to Disvan, her eyes flashing with joy. ‘It’s not a trap?’

  He was adamant.

  ‘Absolutely not, Linda. Mr Oakley believes in the power of human reason and the exercise of free will under reason. Now that he’s been warned, I have to respect his beliefs, however outdated they may be. So on you go at your own speed whilst I fetch some drinks. The usual for you both I presume?’

  We nodded and off he went. At that precise moment I suddenly realised that stern self reliance was all very well, but it had its lonely limits. Still, assisted by the once more beguiling features of my present company, I rode and suppressed the temporary weakness.

  ‘It all started with a ringing noise...’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ve had all that,’ I replied. She seemed not to notice.

  ‘I was only little at the time but I remember it well. A stuffy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do. Dad was reading the paper and Mum was having a snooze. There was too much quiet to be natural. It was like the house was cut off or smothered in something. I recall feeling serious and grumpy, not wanting my toys.’

  ‘Sounds like every Sunday afternoon I’ve ever known,’ I said, still trying to impress with lightweight wit. It failed.

  ‘Then the noise started. Very faint on the edge of hearing, so low you thought you were imagining it. Mum woke up and said there was a ringing in her ears. Dad could hear it too, getting louder and louder. “Is that the pipes?” he said.

  ‘Suddenly the ringing stopped with a crashing sound and all that hot closeness in the air went, just as if something had burst.

  ‘The council never found anything wrong with the water system, and so that was the end of it as far as Mum and Dad were concerned.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, this being the poor best I could devise.

  ‘But it wasn’t the end for me, Mr Oakley.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Something had arrived with that noise, something had burst through.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  She ignored my question and pressed on with the flood of irrelevancies.

  ‘At the top of the stairs, there was a place where I used to play. The other side of the landing led off to the bedrooms and that. But one side was just a space, a nowhere space, a blank alcove. I used to spend ages up there. Mum and Dad called it “Linda’s little house”. I thought it was cosy—the banisters on one side, a blank wall on the other and another blank wall to rest my back against. Can you see it, Mr Oakley?’

  ‘Er... just about, I suppose. Sounds... very nice.’

  ‘1950s council house layouts were often a bit eccentric, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, taking us by surprise in making a silent return. ‘The recipients were in no position to turn their nose up at what was provided.’

  He placed the tray he was carrying on the table and passed the drinks round. I grasped mine like a dying man.

  Linda Disch applied her scarlet lips to a Bloody Mary before proceeding.

  ‘One morning,’ she said, ‘I was playing there with all my dollies and that, when I felt something strange. The wall behind me seemed to have some give in it. It shouldn’t have. It’d always been just a nice plain, solid wall, it made me feel safe and protected. I wasn’t worried though. Children don’t have much fear, do they, Mr Oakley?’

  You obviously didn’t go to prep school, I thought—but kept it to myself.

  ‘Leastways, I didn’t have much scare in me,’ said Linda. ‘I just took things in my stride in those days.’

  ‘But what about this wall?’ I asked (she seemed to be dallying).

  ‘It wasn’t a wall anymore, Mr Oakley. It was a door.’ Linda was wide-eyed with wonder, as if the incident was only five minutes in her past. ‘I looked up and saw there was a big brass doorknob above my head. When I got up I found the wall was now a great oak door—keyhole, panels, the lot.’

  ‘And when you tried the handle?’ I asked, urging her on once more.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t, Mr Oakley. I was brought up to knock before I entered rooms, and somehow I didn’t fancy doing that. What I did do was have a quick squint through the keyhole.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. It was all old and grimed up. You couldn’t see a thing.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t. I was just standing there and gawping, wondering how I’d missed noticing this room before. Then I saw that the door was a poor fit. There was a fair gap at the bottom, half an inch or so. Straight off. I shimmied down on to my tummy and tried to see into the room.

  ‘There was light in there from a window or something, because I could see bits and pieces of what was beyond. A ray of sunshine was lighting up the gloom. “There’s no carpet,” I remember thinking. “How come Mum stands for that?’” It looked dirty and dusty, all neglected and forlorn. There was faded wallpaper starting to curl off in places and sheets of yellow newsprint lying about. It occurred to me that perhaps even Mum and Dad hadn’t found this room yet. But there again, how could that be? They knew everything. They wouldn’t miss a part of their own house, surely.

  ‘Then a pair of feet crossed my line of vision, great grey slabs of feet, slowly pacing up and down the room, in and out of that beam of sunlight. I must have gasped or something, because the feet stopped in their tracks as though I’d been heard. They changed direction and headed straight for me.

  ‘A few seconds after that I was taking the stairs two at a time, my hair streaming out behind me. I thought I heard the sound of a door handle being tried and the creak of an old hinge, but maybe that was just my imagination. Either way, it speeded me up a bit. I hit the living room like a bullet out of a gun. It was a wonder I didn’t trip and break my neck. Come to think of it, maybe that was the idea—to start with.

  ‘Of course, Mum and Dad didn’t believe a word of it but they had a lot of time for children, so they came to see anyway, just to check it out. Dad tried to make a joke of it when he’d eventually coaxed me back up the stairs.

  ‘ “Look angel-face,” he said, “I’d like another room or two but this is just an old wall, like it’s always been. Don’t let a silly fancy spoil your favourite cosy corner.”

  ‘Looking back, he went to a lot of trouble to put my mind at rest. He showed me there was no space for there to be a room where I’d said. Just the other side of that wall was Mum and Dad’s bedroom, a nice big, airy place, nothing like what I’d seen. Dad had me stand on the landing while he went in the bedroom and tapped on the dividing wall for me. It came through loud and clear so there simply couldn’t be a room in-between, could there? Like Dad said: there was no room for a room.

  ‘It was all very reassuring and that, but children’s thoughts don’t run that way, do they? They’re very open minded and willing to accept paradoxes. I knew I’d seen that room and those feet. It was just that they didn’t impinge on the grown-ups’ world. That was true of lots of things anyway.

  ‘Mum asked me if everything was all right now and I said yes. I realised which way my bread was buttered. When it came to a contest, the adult world was always right. They had all the big guns on their side. Still, at the same time, I couldn’t ignore the plain facts. That room was still lurking around the house, never mind what Dad said.’

  There was a long (in other circumstances, I would have said pregnant) pause. Mr Disvan appeared caught up in listening to the birds’ evensong.

  ‘And?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘And it was still there,’ Linda blurted out. ‘I never saw it come or go but, from time to time, it was just there. When I went up the stairs, I never knew whether it’d be at the top, waiting for me, as it were.’

  ‘Why should it be waiting for you?’ I asked. ‘What was so special about the young Linda Disch?’

  Mr Disvan put on his ‘good question’ expres
sion and looked pointedly at the woman for her reply.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, with disarming candour. ‘Perhaps it was all just coincidence. Bear in mind, though, it’s not some junior talent show or bonny baby contest we’re talking about here. It just came to our house and seemed to latch on to me. That’s all that can be said about it. Maybe there was a good reason for it, maybe not. But I don’t see myself as “chosen” if that’s what you’re implying.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Disvan, turning to me, ‘show a bit of compassion won’t you. Think of the poor child.’

  This was rather a tooth-grinding sort of turn-about by him but I let it pass. A modicum of ill-tempered shrapnel did however ricochet into my conversation.

  ‘Okay, all right,’ I said. ‘So your house had a free, magic extension—what of it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Linda, swirling the red remains of her drink round and round the rim of the glass, ‘things didn’t rest there. They progressed. Since I wouldn’t enter the room, the room came out to meet me.’

  She looked slyly up at me from under her long lashes to check I was suitably agog.

  ‘That was about a year later,’ she said softly. ‘I’d almost got used to the door being there off and on, and sometimes didn’t even give it a glance. Mind you, I wouldn’t play in that spot any more. Not only that, but I used to rush by it most days. I didn’t want to hear those great feet padding about if I could help it.’

  This seemed extremely reasonable, having my own dim memories of the bogeyman who lived in the gas meter cupboard, and I said as much.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Oakley.’

  Her gratitude for this little bit of understanding seemed genuine. Then she sighed and ploughed on.

  ‘Anyhow, one day—I must have been about nine or ten or so—I’d gone to bed at the usual time but couldn’t sleep. I’d gotten convinced that I was thirsty. There was some more-ish cherryade downstairs in the fridge, going begging, so I thought why not sneak down and indulge myself? Off I went, a bit dazzled by the landing light, and got as far as the top of the stairs. Then I must have registered there was something wrong because I paused for no good reason. I looked round and saw the door was there. And it was open.

  ‘I wasn’t given the chance to take much in. Something glided through the doorway towards me. I stood there frozen for about the longest second in history and then I was away, screaming blue murder.’

  ‘Hang about,’ I interrupted. ‘What was it “glided through the doorway”?’

  ‘More drink, Mr Disvan,’ said Linda brusquely, holding out her empty glass to one side. To my amazement, Disvan took it and obediently trotted off.

  Somewhat stunned, I was tracking his departure down the garden path when Mrs Disch (divorced) felt able to resume and answer my query.

  ‘I’m not too sure, Mr Oakley,’ she said, clearly trying to frame the memory and hold it still. ‘It had something of the human about it—and then again not. There was a long white gown, like a nightie—I recall that. Also a dead white, pretty face with shiny eyes and lips, a bit like a Victorian china doll...’

  ‘Ugh,’ I said, expressing a sentiment from the heart. I’d never got on with said dolls, associated always in my mind with visits to aged aunts and sad junk shops. Often hairless, usually vicious looking, their gaze followed you round the room and transformed me, of all people, into a temporary believer in the evil-eye. They were the one sort of antique I’d never collect.

  ‘It was rather grim,’ Linda confirmed, ‘this great lank-haired, tall thing, all musty smelling and indistinct, floating towards me. And, like I said, for a moment I couldn’t get my legs to move. She got awfully close. Her chubby arms had started to reach out for me and at that point our eyes met...’

  Mr Disvan chose that moment to return and silently handed Linda another generous vodka/tomato-juice mix. She gratefully buried her head in it, seeking the strength and solace to carry on. In due course she evidently found it.

  ‘I couldn’t see any sense there,’ she said, ‘only cunning. Her eyes were like polished glass. But there was movement and a spark of life—of one sort or another. The eyelids opened and closed, the mouth pursed and grinned. I knew she could see me well enough. That’s when I found the power to shift.’

  The drink was drained and placed back on the table. With a surprisingly elegant gesture, she wiped her lips with one long finger.

  ‘I was hysterical for hours, as you can imagine.’

  I indicated that, yes, I could well imagine that.

  ‘And Mum and Dad were beside themselves with worry. Of course, they got the gist of it out of me and went to investigate. Naturally they found nothing. So, from that evening sprang my grand tour of the child psychiatrists.’

  Linda leaned forward as if to confide in me alone.

  ‘I think they turned me a little funny you know,’ she whispered loudly.

  This was a bit of a poser to reply to. Politeness warred with the blindingly obvious.

  ‘Oh... really?’ I said gamely.

  ‘I suspect so, Mr Oakley. Even so, it wasn’t a total waste of time. I can still speak fluent Freudian to this day.’

  ‘A contradiction in terms surely?’ said Mr Disvan, smiling gently.

  Linda shrugged.

  ‘Maybe, Mr Disvan. They didn’t seem to do much good anyway. There was a different opinion for every different “expert”. Worst of all, we’d occasionally come across a hard-liner. They’d diagnose “attention seeking” and recommend I was snapped out of it a.s.a.p. The thing at the top of the stairs seemed to know in advance and would be waiting for me. There was poor old Mum and Dad, thinking it their duty to drag me, kicking and screaming, up the stairs by brute force whilst telling me not to be so silly. All the while, the creature from the secret room was looming over the banisters, staying parallel to us and staring at me. Mum and Dad couldn’t see it, but I could. Even when I shut my eyes, the picture was still there. I could still feel her presence a few feet away.

  ‘Eventually Dad would settle me in my room and be real nice about everything. But how can you sleep in those circumstances? I used to lie there all night, wondering if she was just the other side of the door, waiting her chance to get in.’

  Linda paused and looked wistfully at the sky. A few birds wended their way home across her line of vision, but I doubt that she saw them.

  ‘You have that happen to you, once or twice a month, throughout your childhood,’ she said sadly, ‘and it tends to leave its mark.’

  My mind was gingerly calculating the horror and dark corners of a young life spent in that way.

  ‘How did you…’ I said, stumbling somewhat. ‘How could you..?’

  ‘You just get used to it,’ said Linda decisively. ‘It still goes on to the present day. But, now I’m on my own, there’s no one there to worry about my reactions or behaviour.’

  I suddenly realised that Disvan was studying me closely.

  ‘Don’t get awash with sympathy, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘There’s more to all this than what you’ve heard.’

  Linda Disch fairly leapt in at this point.

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Oakley—much more!’

  Mr Disvan looked askance at her but held his peace.

  ‘For instance,’ she hurried on, ‘I haven’t told you about the terrible dreams I had.’

  I didn’t take the bait and silence ensued. Her eyes flicked nervously between the two of us before she decided to ignore the death of conversation.

  ‘Yes, really,’ she said, ‘they were awful because you couldn’t get away or out of them. I kept seeing myself in that room beyond the door. I would be floating, a few inches off the ground, and so was the creature in white. She was always there with me. My back was turned to her but I could sense her, even so. We’d be just sort of... resting, hanging there amidst the dirt and dust and old rags, thinking of nothing.’

  Linda paused and flicked her long hair back from her face. She used the opportunity to size up her audience’s reaction. It see
med she was getting what she wanted.

  ‘The dream would go on and on for ever—or that’s how it felt to me anyway. Then, sooner or later, the scene would cut off, as if the plug had been pulled on it. I’d find myself sitting bolt upright in bed, wide awake and yelling. That generally meant another trip to the psychiatrists.’

  Full of faith in the twentieth century, a question occurred to me.

  ‘But Linda, didn’t you ever think to come clean with these people? I mean, tell them what was actually happening to you?’

  She laughed bitterly.

  ‘You must be joking! They extracted enough perversity out of my nice ordinary childhood as it was. God knows what theory they’d have erected on all the real weirdness that was happening. I had sufficient suss to keep schtum. I didn’t fancy a lifetime under the chemical cosh, Mr Oakley.’

  Mr Disvan looked at me as if to say “try answering that, clever clogs”. Fortunately I didn’t have to; Linda Disch wasn’t finished.

  ‘And you try acting normal, working hard at school and all that,’ she said, ‘when you’ve spent night after night in that sort of dream world. It’s not easy, I can assure you.’

  I could hardly argue the point, and pulled a face that suggested understanding, sympathy or something akin.

  Linda seemed to appreciate the gesture and drew encouragement from it.

  ‘But, like I told you, Mr Oakley,’ she said, smiling at me, ‘you can get used to anything. Used to that... thing standing at the top of the stairs in the moonlight. Used to dreading bedtime. Used to a door to nowhere. Used to being thought raving mad. Anything. It just pushes you a bit sideways, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I can well imagine,’ I said lamely. Linda took no notice, she was in full stream.

  ‘And it projects forward and back,’ she said eagerly. ‘It blights the future and colours the past. Do you understand what I mean? It’s the thought of that figure, just standing there in that room, in the still and silence in there. Whilst all about, our normal little life was going on—all the small family joys, parties and holidays and Christmas and all that. That thought casts a pall over all my memories through the years.’