Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 39

  ‘Well, it would,’ I said in all truthfulness. Anyone’s past held enough horrors without this.

  Linda nodded sadly.

  ‘Then Mum and Dad died, which made it a lot easier. I know that sounds a terrible thing to say but... well, it just did. I didn’t have to pretend or explain anymore. And after that, I was married for a bit—but the atmosphere, those memories I was telling you about, got to him. He upped and left me.’

  Mr Disvan shifted in his seat and looked skyward. He seemed to be saying that he could tell another story. Linda either failed to notice or let the silent comment pass.

  ‘I don’t think the creature approved of us anyhow,’ she said. ‘The day we got married, when I came out of the house to go to the registry, I saw her at a window, staring down at me.’

  This seemed vaguely (in retrospect, very vaguely) important.

  ‘So this room had a window, did it?’ I asked.

  ‘When it suited her, yes. Not usually but sometimes. The window just appeared. It did that day for some reason. So there I was in my white dress, about to get in the taxi and having a happy day, when I noticed her. A great black shadow, she was, pressed against a dirty window pane. It was an omen. Nothing worked for us after that. Like I told you, it got to him and he went away.’

  Ever keen on elegant solutions (or easy ways out), a question hijacked my thoughts.

  ‘Why didn’t you follow his example?’ I said. ‘Why not clear off and leave the thing behind? Your answer might be as simple as just moving house!’

  Linda shook her head emphatically and yet managed to look evasive at the same time.

  ‘That’s not the way to do it, Mr Oakley,’ she said, her voice charged with emotion. ‘It’s not that cut and dried. I mean... there’re advantages to staying as well. There are other considerations, other—’

  Mr Disvan butted in.

  ‘Did you ever watch a program called Opportunity Knocks, Mr Oakley?’ he asked.

  Years of Binscombe life and Disvan’s acquaintance allowed me to withstand the G-force of such sudden changes in direction. Outwardly, I was as calm as... well, something very calm.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I had that misfortune on occasion.’

  Mr Disvan looked pleased.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll know what I’m on about when I borrow Hughie Green’s immortal phrase and tell you: Mr Oakley, it’s make your mind up time! See you later, I hope.’

  He got up from the table, tipped his hat to Linda Disch and walked away towards the Argyll.

  I was completely bewildered. What had he meant? Would my dignity be totally blown by calling out after him for an explanation? Alas, indecision lasted long enough for him to disappear from view into the bar.

  By process of elimination, I had to turn to Mrs Disch for guidance. I shifted in my seat to face her.

  ‘What do you make of that? I asked. ‘How come...’

  My voice trailed away into nothingness. Either my hormones had spontaneously erupted or something had happened to Linda Disch. She was once again the delectable vision that had first captured me. Every plane and curve was saying something urgent to anti-rational parts of my brain. It was, in short, a bit of a shock—as in electric.

  She smiled at me and thus made the situation worse.

  ‘I... er... don’t quite follow,’ I said, playing for time. ‘You appear to have... er... altered.’

  ‘For the better, I trust,’ she replied coquettishly.

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I think so.’

  That tiny qualification was a last attempt at balance. She was attractive, overwhelmingly so, but the attraction was... basic. Overdone. By some miracle she managed to just carry it off, all the heavy make-up, the gleaming eyes, the moist and moving lips—but at the same time it was all too much, too doll-like. I could hardly deny the effect, though.

  ‘It’s all part of the deal, I think,’ she whispered to me, ‘the bargain that keeps me where I am. It’s a little compensatory present. Or maybe a ploy. You see, I reckon the creature is lonely, or perhaps it’s the room itself. It longs for life, it wants company. That’s the feeling I get when I go there in my dreams, anyway. Who knows, that could be where I go when I have my black-outs. What do you think?’

  I was thinking that maybe fright could overcome even rampant desire. Linda Disch was continuing to change before my very eyes, becoming more inhumanly wonderful by the minute.

  ‘So,’ she trilled, ‘as the flower is to the honeybee, so am I to finding “company”. Normally I’m not allowed to find our “company” in Binscombe. The villagers don’t permit it. However, Mr Disvan seems to have made an exception of you, doesn’t he?’

  She leaned right forward and winked one great be-lashed eye at me. Her face, like that of a beautiful, faultless, heartless china doll, was close to mine.

  That last thought rolled lazily around the parts of my mind still answering the helm. Where, I wondered, had I heard about dolls, china dolls, just recently? Why should the question seem relevant—important even?

  ‘Mr Oakley,’ said Linda seductively, ‘are you in a company sort of mood? Would you like to visit us?’

  Her white and slender hand sped across the table to rest on my arm. The touch of it was as cold as death.

  I looked into her glassy eyes. My reflection was missing. Instead, I saw twin images of a room. There seemed to be bodies, the bodies of naked men, sprawled over its floor. Was I imagining things or did one look a bit like me?

  ‘Well,’ said Linda—or whoever, ‘how about it, Mr Oakley?’

  When I sped, rocket-style, sweat spangled and wide eyed, into the bar of the Argyll, the regulars, Disvan included, seemed to be half expecting me. They had a good laugh at my expense and then sang me a ragged chorus of a Cliff Richard song.

  Like no piece of music before or since, it made a deep impression. To this day, if ‘Living Doll’ comes on the radio, I turn it straight off.

  PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO MOST MEN

  ‘Same again, Mr Disvan?’

  Disvan looked into his glass and gave the question more thought than usual.

  ‘Maybe not, Mr Oakley’ he said eventually. ‘Given the season of the year, perhaps we should consider an alternative.’

  This sounded a bit ominous. Mr Disvan was a creature of habit, like most old men, and not the sort to let the occasion of Christmas Eve interfere with the orderly passage of Binscombe life.

  ‘Alternative?’ I asked cautiously. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like going to midnight mass at St. Joseph’s, for instance.’

  This really was a bolt out of the blue. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I tried to express my ‘stunned ox’ status in a reasonable fashion.

  ‘Church? But you’re not a Christian, are you? I mean... well... and as for me...’

  ‘As for you,’ muttered Disvan, ‘you’re what’s called a “yuppie”. Yes, I’m aware of that; too “Porsche and £” orientated for matters spiritual.’

  This really took the biscuit, since Disvan drove a Porsche himself, but by that stage in our acquaintance charging him with hypocrisy was like mentioning ‘late library books’ at the Nuremburg Trials. So I just bit my lip—again. There were calluses there now.

  ‘It’d still do you some good to go,’ he went on. ‘Me likewise. I realise I may be some distance from Christian orthodoxy...’

  I intervened with an overdone ‘you’re not kidding’ expression.

  ‘…but it’s a respectful distance, even so.’

  Disvan was clutching at straws, I could tell. But he pressed gamely on.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘it’s sort of traditional and... appropriate. There was no point in asking any of this lot,’ here he gestured to indicate the rest of our friends and acquaintances in the Argyll’s public bar. ‘They’re neo-heathens for the most part. I thought you might be interested, though.’

  Not wishing to disappoint, I gave the notion a quick once-over. It wouldn’t hurt, I concluded and, all things cons
idered, my bachelor Christmas could do with an injection of festive jollity.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m game for a laugh.’

  Mr Disvan smiled but not, I suspected, at my little joke.

  ‘Oh, there’ll be laughs, Mr Oakley’ he said, ‘I can assure you. That’s half the reason for going. So come on then, off we go.’

  He was already on his feet and labouring into his coat.

  ‘Hang about,’ I said, staying put in my seat. ‘There’s miles of time yet.’

  Disvan looked very concerned.

  ‘No there isn’t, Mr Oakley. We’ve got to be early and get a seat at the front.’

  ‘But it’s only ten thirty!’

  He shook his head and tutted.

  ‘Don’t you read the papers, Mr Oakley? It’s all change in the C of E nowadays. Midnight mass starts at eleven.’

  * * *

  It had sounded like a bit of peculiarly Disvan logic, but proved to be true. ‘Midnight Mass 24/12/1998—11:00 PM,’ stated the notice board outside the church.

  I accepted the anomaly, rode it and forgot it. Like the workings of the City of London, whence I commuted each day, life in Binscombe village was quite often a few degrees askew from normality. The secret was not to worry about it.

  The bitter cold was less easy to sublimate. It was a brisk, frosty night and, with twenty minutes in hand before the service, I’d envisaged waiting inside the church. However, Mr Disvan restrained me from entering.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, barring my way, ‘there’s a bit of a practice going on.’

  I listened carefully. Sure enough, I could hear the sound of singing coming from somewhere within.

  ‘Maybe they’ve started early,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see.’

  Disvan was emphatic.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We must wait for the practice to end.’

  ‘Okay, fair enough,’ I thought—but at the same time, I was now very cold, increasingly fed up and, truth be told, a bit sulky with it. First we didn’t have to be late, now we had to hang around outside. What the hell was going on? Why was I being mucked about?

  By now, other people were turning up and queuing up patiently alongside us. To my surprise, and despite Disvan’s opinion of them, some of the Argyll crowd, Mr Bretwalda, Mr Patel, Doctor Bani-Sadr et al arrived. They nodded politely to everyone and waited in silence.

  I didn’t feel so stoical, and started to stamp my feet to restore life to them.

  ‘It’s the choir, is it?’ I asked, addressing no one in particular.

  Apparently I was speaking Albanian. The Binscomites exchanged blank looks and then ignored me.

  ‘The singing,’ I persisted, ‘it’s the choir, is it?’

  ‘Um...’ Disvan replied.

  ‘They sound very cheerful.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Oakley, they do, don’t they?’ He seemed pleased to have something he could agree to. ‘And why shouldn’t they at this time of year.’

  ‘I don’t recognise the tune, though.’

  Disvan raised his eyebrows as if shocked to the core.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Doctor Bani-Sadr disguised a snigger under the cover of a coughing fit. I was beginning to feel subtly got at.

  ‘I mean, are they all little boys or something? I asked. ‘Because the voices are very high. Shrill, almost.’

  And at that precise moment the singing rose to a crescendo and stopped. A deep silence followed. No one seemed inclined to break it.

  Then the church door creaked open and a grinning face emerged from within.

  ‘Good evening, Reverend Jagger,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Merry Christmas to you!’

  ‘And to you—to you all!’ the vicar replied. Welcome to St. Joseph’s. Please come in out of the cold.’

  We did exactly that. It was nice and warm inside—and, apart from the Reverend Jagger, entirely empty.

  ‘Where’s the choir? I asked Mr Disvan as we settled down in our pew. ‘Where’ve they gone?’

  ‘What choir?’ he replied innocently.

  I ground some enamel off my teeth and pretended to rise above it all. He was in one of his annoying moods.

  Disvan had insisted on a seat near the front. This happened to place us in the shadow of the pulpit and under the vicar’s eye. Happily, to start with, the holy man was safely occupied browsing a great bound Bible (‘Looking for loopholes,’ whispered Mr Disvan) but soon enough he glanced up and caught our gaze. Vicars, like policemen, made me feel guilty without cause.

  ‘Hello there, Mr Disvan,’ he boomed. ‘Glad you could make it. Good year?’

  ‘Middling. And you?’

  ‘Could be worse.’

  ‘Looks like you’ll have a fair crowd in tonight.’

  They both surveyed the rapidly filling church. It was true. The front portion at least, was getting to be fully occupied.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jagger agreed. ‘And there’ll be more before kick-off. You get all types at this service.’

  This seemed to amuse them and they had a swift laugh-in from which I was excluded.

  ‘Of course,’ the vicar continued, ‘I hope there’s no trouble, but there always is.’

  ‘The times we live in,’ said Disvan sadly—but he was still smiling.

  ‘Yes, absolutely’ echoed Jagger, also beaming brightly. ‘Still, it’s an ill wind, eh?’

  With that he returned to his reading.

  ‘Trouble?’ I hissed. ‘What trouble?’

  Mr Disvan didn’t seem very alarmed.

  ‘Well, you know how it is, Mr Oakley. Midnight mass attracts these types, straight out of the pub.’

  ‘Like us, you mean?’

  ‘No. I mean drunks and yobboes and lager-louts, come to lark about and disrupt the service.’

  ‘Oh.’

  This didn’t sound very promising. I don’t like close physical contact (saving the sexual kind), particularly in the context of brawling with drunks.

  People had continued to stream in, including, puzzlingly enough, the choir, who’d arrived in ones and twos and gone off to get changed. The front four or five pews were now jammed. The rest were much more thinly dotted with worshippers, anonymous latecomers, heavily wrapped up against the chill.

  I was absorbed in staring at a crucifix and had calculated a forty-sixty percent chance against God’s existence when the service suddenly started.

  The Reverend Jagger slammed his bible shut and the organist abruptly piled into ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ as the clock in the tower above began to strike eleven.

  Everyone bar me seemed prepared, whereas I had to leap to my feet, grab a hymn book and desperately flick through it looking for the right page. I never did find it and had to ‘hmmmm’ along instead. Then we all sat down again.

  ‘Dearly beloved...’ said the Reverend Jagger—and so on.

  It went along painlessly enough until the sermon. At that point the door crashed open and a rabble of riffraff sauntered in. They came and sat uncomfortably close to us, only a couple of pews back, and started to make loud, inappropriate comments. One of them blew a raspberry (at least, I hope that’s what it was) and their own incense of beer and Brut wafted before them. My back felt horribly vulnerable and I heard Mr Disvan sigh.

  ‘ ‘Ere!’ came an Eastenders-coached voice from their general direction, ‘look at that pooft-aaargh!’

  Up to then I’d not dared to look round but instinct took over. The yobboes were being effortlessly hauled away by members of the congregation, their cries of protest (or worse) cut off by hands clamped over their mouths. It was a very neat, indeed surgical, operation.

  ‘I’ve never heard of a church with bouncers before,’ I whispered to Disvan.

  He smiled wisely.

  ‘No? These came with the church.’

  ‘But I don’t recognise any of them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Mr Oakley. They’re from before your time.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But why
are they taking the yobs down into the crypt? Why not just chuck them out?’

  Disvan smiled again but said nothing.

  ‘And,’ cried the Reverend Jagger, distracting me, ‘there you see proof with your own eyes. The Lord will provide us with our daily bread, whoever we are, whatever we may be!’

  The congregation tittered politely but I couldn’t see the joke. It was all a bit puzzling. And was that someone pouring water down in the crypt or—sort of gobbling noises..?

  The same process happened a few more times. Groups of undesirables fell in the church, misbehaved and were duly dragged away, not to be seen again. It must be getting awfully cramped in that crypt, I thought.

  Naturally, I was full of admiration for the dark and silent ‘bouncers’. They appeared to be absolutely fearless and were doing a great job, overpowering the opposition and then keeping them out of the way. My only cavil was that some of them were taking too much interest in innocent little me. Every time I looked round it seemed that five or six pairs of eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon me. I found myself trying to act as respectable as possible, visibly joining in the prayers and shouting out the responses.

  The final incident was when some tipsy adolescents chuntered in and started playing the fool. They too sat not far back from Mr Disvan and me, and their shrieks and cat-calls sounded much too close for comfort. Accordingly, when a powerful gust of wind raised the hair on the back of my head, I suspected a prank on their part and turned to protest. I was just in time to see some Levi 501s and a pair of trainers disappear through the trap door into the belfry.

  It couldn’t have been a bat carrying him, I insisted to myself. Bats just don’t grow that big.

  The remaining youngsters were still in a state of shock, staring open mouthed up at the roof.

  ‘‘Kinnell!’ said one but the rest were struck dumb.

  It didn’t save them. They too were manhandled (or possibly not man-handled—my suspicions were already alive and twitching) away down to the crypt.

  ‘Right then,’ said Jagger, ‘let our voices, like our brother just now, rise up to the Lord. Hymn number 30: “While shepherds watched their flocks by night”.’