Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Read online

  ‘So you’re back from university, are you?’ said Mr Wessner, our ‘man from the Town Hall’, stating the obvious as a conversational gambit.

  ‘Yes,’ Trevor smiled, ‘we’re finished there now. The results will be out in a month or so and then we’ll know whether we’ve wasted the last three years or not.’

  ‘We’ve every confidence in you,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘I’m sure you’ll do well in your exams.’

  Trevor smiled knowingly at Tania. ‘Let’s hope your faith isn’t misplaced,’ he said.

  ‘What subject did you read?’ I asked.

  ‘Electrical engineering; we both did.’

  ‘Oh, that’s interesting because—‘

  Mr Disvan closed off this avenue of inquiry by interrupting. ‘And what are you up to at the moment?’

  ‘Decorating mostly, in between writing job applications. As you know, Tania’s father gave us a place in Quarry Lane as an advance wedding present and it needs quite a bit of work doing on it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Disvan, ‘I know the place. It used to belong to a couple called Bellingham, Jehovah’s Witnesses as I recall. When the wife died, old man Bellingham lost interest in things, religion included, and let the house and garden go rather.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Trevor, ‘that’s all getting away from why I came over to see you. I wanted you all to see our car.’

  ‘You’ve bought a car?’ said the landlord who was with us.

  ‘Yep, our first. We got it today.’

  ‘We’ve just driven it back from the car auction,’ added Tania. ‘It seems very nice. Come and have a look.’

  Since the game’s conclusion now seemed forgone, the Binscombe spectators, a dozen or so in all, duly did as they were bidden and we trooped up over the recreation ground and through the children’s swings to the double-yellow-lined roadside.

  ‘Isn’t it a little bit dodgy to buy from motor auctions if you’re not in the trade?’ asked Mr Wessner, whom life and experience had made a pessimist.

  ‘Sometimes,’ replied Trevor, nothing daunted, ‘but Tarn and I are pretty good with machines and we gave it a thorough going over before buying. As far as I can make out it’s as sound as a bell.’

  ‘The dealer said it’d only had one careful owner,’ Tania said.

  A few covertly smiled at this, but no one was impolite enough to voice their cynical views. Mr Patel said that his brother, the one from Winchester, had had one of those cars once and he’d been full of praise for it till he wrote it off on the M25.

  Still consumed with pride at his acquisition, despite this last hint of mortality, Trevor got in and revved the motor for us. Then he invited us to inspect the engine and we, instant experts all, made obliging approval noises at its tone and appearance.

  ‘Well then,’ he said by way of summation, ‘what do you think?’

  We all agreed it was ‘very nice’.

  Obviously pleased with this, a further idea struck the young man. ‘Tarn, how about a picture?’

  Miss Knott looked into the depths of her bright red bag and brought forth a little camera.

  ‘Would you oblige, Mr Disvan?’

  ‘Not I, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘I’ve no facility with such things. You’d come out minus your heads or feet.’

  ‘How about you, Mr Oakley, then?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Accordingly an informal study of the car and its proud owners was taken. It was a quite pleasing shot with the young couple arm in arm beside the vehicle, with the church and sunset as a backdrop. My only anxiety was that there might not be enough light.

  The moment and their pleasure thus captured for all time the Jones-to-be bid us farewell and sped off. Us older folk, probably all engrossed in our own memories of youth, slowly returned to the dying stages of the bowls match and the celebrations to follow.

  * * *

  ‘Hang on—who’s the little girl?’ said the landlord holding the photograph aloft.

  ‘You may well ask,’ replied Trevor, an unbecoming pensive look on his face.

  The assembled company formed a jostling semi-circle around the bar seeking a view of the picture the young couple had brought in. A certain respectful space was left for Mr Disvan and, since I was beside him, I was able to gain a relatively clear view.

  My fears about lack of light had been unjustified. In technical and aesthetic terms the picture was faultless. The car featured well and the couple’s shared pleasure in life was evident from their easy pose and unforced smiles. The church spire and golden red glow of the sky added a touch of timelessness to the human event that the picture celebrated. All of this however went unnoticed and unappreciated, because clearly visible in the back seat of the car was a little flaxen-haired girl.

  The fact that her presence there was unaccountable may have had something to do with it, but it seemed to me that her face, partly turned towards the camera and partly hidden in shadow, was not regarding us in any friendly fashion.

  ‘It’s a trick of the light,’ said the landlord. ‘Here, have a drink on the house.’

  Tania accepted the proffered brandy with thanks. ‘Do you really think so?’ she said. ‘It seems an awfully clear image.’

  ‘It must be. What else could it be?’

  A silence fell as everyone pondered possible answers to this rhetorical question.

  ‘Perhaps there’s something wrong with your camera,’ suggested Mr Disvan. ‘Were the other pictures on that film all right?’

  Trevor flicked rapidly through the rest of the photographs in the yellow envelope he held. ‘As far as we can see, yes, they’re all perfectly normal. There’s one taken on our holiday in Spain, some from the trip out to Basing House; all sorts of lighting and conditions, but they’re all okay.’

  ‘Maybe the camera was fed up with just seeing you two and decided to add someone to the last picture for variety’s sake,’ said Mr Wessner, in a rare stab at humour.

  Trevor glared at him. ‘It isn’t funny. Seeing this has put Tania right off the car.’

  One did not need any great powers of insight to observe that his fiancée was not the only person thus unnerved.

  ‘Here,’ said the landlord, taking the photograph and passing it round, ‘does anyone recognise her?’

  The picture was duly exchanged from hand to hand and each person more or less gingerly inspected the girl who should not be there. No one thought that her face was familiar.

  When the picture reached me I saw that the image of the intruding cuckoo-in-the-nest was hard edged and well defined, unlike any of the other photographic oddities I’d seen from time to time. Lines of the car’s interior shape disappeared out of sight behind the figure as they would do with a real person. The shadows which partly covered her and mercifully hid half of her face consistently affected the surroundings as well.

  At present our technology can record events, but not the emotions which accompanied them. To me, however, this photograph somehow made the necessary leap into the far future and faithfully evoked a sense of malevolence that had come unbidden into what should have been a happy scene. From the various expressions of my fellow patrons in the Argyll I could see that I was not alone in feeling this.

  ‘Of course it’s a trick of the light,’ the landlord continued. ‘It’s something to do with the peculiar effects of the sunset, I expect.’

  He smiled reassuringly at the young couple but though they mustered a friendly expression in return it was plain that they were unconvinced.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll prove it to you. Lottie, go and get the camera please. The rest of you follow me.’

  His wife went off to do as she was asked and we all obediently shambled after him as he came round the bar and headed for the door.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Trevor.

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ the landlord replied. ‘If there is something in the car then it’ll show up again. If there isn’t and it was just a one-off freak effect, then a
ll a photo will show is a car. Simple as that, isn’t it? I’ve got a Polaroid so we’ll know straight away. Where’s Lottie got to?’

  The landlady came forward and gave him the camera. We all assembled in the pub forecourt and congregated in a circle round the Jones’s car. Passers-by, commuters home from London, looked furtively at this strange gathering in a car park but did not slow their onward rush in order to see its outcome.

  ‘People hurry their lives away, don’t they,’ said Mr Disvan observing them sadly.

  ‘Sunday drinkers,’ remarked the landlord in a disparaging tone concurring, as always, with Disvan. ‘Anyway, never mind them; let’s get this business sorted out.’

  He whipped the camera to his face and snapped off a rapid picture in the car’s general direction. A few seconds later the print began to emerge slowly from the camera’s base.

  ‘You’ve got to allow a minute or so for it to develop. Keep your fingers crossed.’

  An air of anticipation grew as we looked from camera to car and back again, all of us doubtless wondering if an unseen passenger in the car was similarly observing us. This thought provoked uncomfortable sensations and silence fell. Trevor and Tania exchanged hopeful glances, although the former tried to appear reassuringly confident.

  At last the landlord ripped off the black protective covering from the picture and scrutinised it closely. Instantly his jaw sagged and his eyes widened. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Oh no!’

  ‘What is it? What is it?’ shouted Trevor. Tania looked sidelong and fearfully at the car.

  ‘Nothing, just a picture of a car,’ said the landlord, smiling and in his normal voice now. ‘I was just having you on. See for yourself.’

  Trevor almost snatched the photograph from him and gave it his undivided attention. A smile then similarly spread across his face and the still sticky picture was passed around the group. As the landlord had said, all it showed was an unremarkable, quite unoccupied yellow Ford Fiesta.

  ‘Praise be,’ said Tania.

  ‘A trick of the light, like I said,’ the landlord concluded, pleased with the obvious triumph of his theory. ‘Look, I’ll prove it to you further. Someone go and get Lenin from behind the bar.’

  Mr Disvan, who liked animals, went to fetch said Alsatian and soon returned with him trotting obediently by his side.

  ‘Okay,’ our master of ceremonies continued, ‘now, as you all know, it’s said that dumb animals can sense wrongness and see things that we don’t see. Is that not so, Mr Disvan?’

  ‘It is so said,’ Disvan replied.

  ‘Well then, young Trevor, with your permission we’ll try and get Lenin to sit in the back seat of the car. If there’s something nasty there he’ll refuse or growl or do some such thing, won’t he?’

  Trevor, torn between his electrical engineering world into which such beliefs did not intrude and his desire for undisputed ownership of his car, mumbled vague agreement.

  ‘Right, let’s go. Come on, Lenin, in you go, there’s a good boy.’

  Trevor unlocked and held the door open for the huge dog while the landlord ushered it in.

  Lenin, although perhaps a little puzzled, did not hesitate at all. With one bound he was seated in the back of the car, huffing happily away at his master in anticipation of what would happen next in this game.

  ‘That concludes that, then,’ said the landlord.

  We all smiled in relief, already beginning to revise the episode in our minds so as to minimise the seriousness with which we had treated it.

  ‘Poor old Lenin doesn’t understand what’s going on, do you, boy?’ said Lottie the landlady, for the dog was looking perplexedly from face to face, waiting for the next development. ‘He does look funny sitting there. I think I’ll take a picture.’

  This she duly did.

  The crowd started to wander back to the Argyll while Trevor lingered behind to lock up his car. Lenin, pleased to have been of service even if he didn’t know how, walked jauntily by the landlord’s heels, tail wagging hard. Suddenly, just as Mr Patel in the lead placed his hand on the door to enter the bar, a piercing female scream from behind brought our progress to a halt.

  The landlady was standing aghast, staring at a picture held in both hands. The camera, broken and unregarded, lay where she had dropped on the ground.

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said, ‘she’s there. She’s got her arm around Lenin and... and she’s baring her teeth at us!’

  * * *

  ‘It took me weeks and weeks to persuade Tania to ride in the car again after that second photograph, and now this happens!’ said Trevor, leaning dejectedly against the bar.

  ‘You mean you managed to explain that picture away?’ said the landlord.

  ‘No, not really, it’s just that with the passage of time she got over the shock and let it fade from her mind.’

  ‘It shan’t fade from my mind, I can assure you,’ said Lottie. ‘There’s something evil about the whole business.’

  ‘Probably, probably,’ Trevor replied, waving a placatory hand at her, ‘but just please don’t say such things when Tania is about.’

  ‘I felt terrible about poor old Lenin,’ Lottie continued unabashed. ‘I took him for a thorough shampoo the next day to get rid of any taint.’

  Hearing his name mentioned, and apparently none the worse for his encounter with the unwelcome passenger, Lenin woke from sleep beyond the bar and looked up expectantly.

  ‘What did you do with the photograph, Trevor?’ said Mr Disvan.

  ‘Well, first off I thought to burn it—that’s what I told Tania I’d done, but in fact I’ve got it here. Do you want to see it again?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  The picture was produced and for the second time we were able to see the little girl visible in the back of the car, with her arm cradled around the dog’s neck and her snarling face close up against the window. As before, dark shadows covered most of her features.

  ‘That’s sure some trick of the light!’ exclaimed Mr Wessner.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said the landlord angrily wiping the bar top, ‘so I was wrong. I freely admit it. There’s no need to rub it in.’

  ‘Yes, I think we can safely discount that theory, attractive as it was,’ said Mr Disvan.

  ‘So what is going on, then?’ asked the landlord.

  Trevor’s retort was almost angry, and a look of frustration briefly occupied his features. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here asking you lot for advice, would I?’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Disvan, ‘there’s no call for harshness. We want to assist you. Just describe to us what happened to you today.’

  ‘Okay, I will. Sorry I shouted, Barry.’

  ‘Consider it forgotten,’ said the landlord.

  ‘Well anyway, nearly two months have passed since that incident with the dog as you know, and I’d almost succeeded in putting the matter aside. So all right, there’s something peculiar in the back of my car. So all right, it makes me uneasy when I’m driving alone. But I can live with that. You simply pretend that it never happened and get on with life. After all, no one could force me to look at those two photographs, could they? We ought to be celebrating our exam results and various job offers instead of fretting about weird pictures, didn’t we? Well, Tania was beginning to come round to that point of view and agreed to accept a lift into Guildford. Up to now she’s been using the bus or train you see—anything rather than get in the car.’

  ‘Well it’s understandable, poor girl,’ said Lottie.

  ‘Yes, of course; I’m not blaming her. So there we were driving along with the radio on and everything seemed fine. Tania kept glancing over her shoulder but there was nothing there, and I didn’t feel any more uncomfortable than usual in the car. There was a programme of 1960s’ music on the radio, as I thought quite cheerful stuff really and, what with the sunshine and everything, we were in good spirits. That’s when the news came on.’

  ‘What of it?’ said Mr Disvan.

  �
�It said Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Mr Patel. ‘It wasn’t on the six o’clock news.’

  ‘And it went on to say that President Dubcek had been deposed.’

  ‘But that was in 1968.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘We were listening to radio from the 1960s.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said the landlord. ‘Perhaps they were re-running a set of old programs.’

  ‘I’ve rung the radio station and checked.’

  ‘And is that all that happened?’ asked Disvan.

  ‘Hardly. The truth was just beginning to dawn on Tania and me when the radio program suddenly went off and something else came on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A scream. A long, high pitched, hate-filled scream.’

  ‘A little girl’s scream?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We ditched the car and got a taxi straight home. Doctor Bani-Sadr is round seeing Tania now and I’ve come out for a stiff drink. Gordon from the garage is going out to fetch the car back.’

  ‘And what are you going to do now?’ asked the landlady in a horrified tone.

  Trevor’s voice was full of determination and dark intent. ‘Tomorrow, as soon as I wake, I’m going to take action.’

  * * *

  From his manner we had feared that the ‘action’ Trevor proposed would be both decisive and violent. Images of the offending car being found burnt out in a lay-by or at the bottom of a cliff suggested themselves. In the event, however, perhaps influenced by the moderating spirit of rational inquiry which had pervaded his university training, Trevor’s action was to take the vehicle to be further tested.

  ‘An old friend of mine in London has gone into photography,’ he explained to us in the Argyll upon his return. ‘He does stuff for advertising. Attractive pictures of meat balls and new brands of soup, that sort of thing, you know.’