Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 9

  ‘I think that that’s irrelevant,’ said Disvan.

  ‘Many things in this world are irrelevant or illogical but are still powerful forces nevertheless.’

  An attempt at profundity was the last thing I was expecting from a man of such surpassing anonymity, and I felt a spark of revived interest in what he was obviously bursting to tell.

  ‘That’s very true,’ I said.

  Springer perhaps mistook interest for sympathy and turned to me as if to an ally.

  ‘Mr Disvan says that, having been caught once, I’m in no further danger, but that’s easy for him to say and besides, how can he be sure?’

  ‘Now, now, Bob,’ said the man in question, ‘you know me better than that. I don’t say things for effect and I wouldn’t state things of which I’m not sure.’

  ‘No doubt what you say is true, Mr Disvan, but I can’t help my fear.’

  Successfully hooked at last I could not forbear to indulge my curiosity. ‘Fear of whom?’

  Springer looked at Disvan in a querying manner and he, by way of reply, merely shrugged. This seemed to answer whatever doubt held him back and the old man could then unload his burden.

  ‘Fear of the person or thing that took forty years of my life.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean someone took forty years of your life but you don’t know their name?’

  ‘No, he never told me it—not in all that time. His name’s not all that important.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Well, how were all those years stolen from you, then?’

  ‘By holding me captive so that the active years of my life passed me by and were wasted in nothingness.’

  ‘That’s very serious. Who was responsible, then? The state?’

  ‘Certainly not, I’ve never ever been in trouble with the law.’

  ‘Some person, then...’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  I sighed, being somewhat exasperated, and tried another approach. ‘Well, where were you held prisoner then?’

  ‘At the bus stop.’

  My initial response was one of anger at being so obviously taken for a fool but this was soon overridden by the transparent sincerity of the old man’s face. Nevertheless my response was still rich with sarcasm. ‘You were imprisoned for forty years at a bus stop, were you?’

  ‘Not any bus stop; the bus stop on the way to my house. But essentially, yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘If that’s so, I ask once again: who by?’

  ‘By the creature that waits there.’

  ‘And that’s the reason you won’t pass by it on your own?’

  ‘Exactly. He might see me and make me wait with him again.’

  ‘But if you’re with other people that can’t happen?’

  ‘I’m not sure but it seems a lot less likely.’

  ‘Explain this to me.’

  ‘What’s to tell? I’ve told you it all.’

  ‘It’s not much of a tale for an event of forty years duration.’

  ‘Time itself means very little. What is there to say of an accountant’s life even if he lives to be a hundred? Nothing very much happened to me in those forty years so there’s nothing much to recount.’

  ‘Go on, Bob,’ said Disvan, ‘you ought to tell him the full story.’

  Springer took this in and then turned to address me. ‘Do you want that? Do you genuinely want to understand why I am as I am?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied in all truthfulness. ‘Tell me how you were deprived of the days of your youth.’

  ‘My youth?’ He chewed upon that bitter notion before continuing. ‘Yes, that’s what I lost, I suppose—and my young manhood and early middle age as well. I was only in my twenties when I was captured, you see.’

  ‘How did it occur?’

  ‘On a ordinary day, or evening to be more precise. I was going to get a bus into Goldenford to see a movie; on my own as usual. It was about sevenish. I was done up to the nines and I can remember very clearly that the sun was almost down and it was drizzling. The shelter wasn’t there in those days, just the stop and the bench set back from the road, and I recall getting quite wet and feeling miserable.

  ‘Then, just a few moments before the bus would arrive—for you could trust the timetables then—I heard a voice call me by name. That surprised me because I’d thought I was alone but when I turned round I could see that there was an old man sitting on the seat and he was beckoning me. There didn’t seem to be anything really amiss although I felt sure there’d been no-one on the seat when I’d arrived. Even so I put that out of my mind for I very often travelled from that stop and consequently felt pretty much at ease there.

  ‘ “How can I help you?” I said, going up close to the person who’d spoken to me. It was nearly dark by that time, you see, and all I could make out was the outline of the old boy.

  ‘ “You can wait with me,” he said back.

  ‘Well, I didn’t like his tone at all. It sounded very bitter, vicious almost, but I was an obliging sort of young man, very reluctant to give offence (more fool me) and so I said, “Very well,” and sat down beside him.

  ‘ “Do I know you?” I enquired, for he’d approached me by name.

  ‘ “No,” he said, “but I know you.”

  ‘ “How so?”

  ‘ “Because I’ve often seen you here.”

  ‘Well, he sounded so nasty and unfriendly that I let it go at that and we waited on in silence.’

  ‘Till when?’

  ‘Till the bus arrived, Mr Oakley. Then by the light the bus gave out I saw that it was no man I was sitting alongside, leastways it may have been a man once but no longer. Horrible it was, pink and shrivelled and hairless and the skin on its face was taut and shiny. I could see its bared teeth and empty eye-sockets and it said:

  ‘ “You can wait with me.”

  ‘As you might imagine, I screamed and went to make a run for it but found I couldn’t. No noise came from my lips and I remained rooted to my seat next to that… thing.’

  ‘What about the bus?’

  ‘That was almost the worst bit. The buses always stopped you see, just to check there was no-one waiting on the bench which was usually in shadow. I stared straight at the driver and, as I thought, he looked straight back at me. I even, in my distress, waved my arms at him but then he just turned his head and drove off. I realised then that, the Lord have mercy on me, I was no longer visible to the world of men.

  ‘I watched, with a yearning I can’t convey to you, the lights of the bus go off into the distance and the thing beside me chuckled—the sort of laugh cruel children make. And that’s when it all began.’

  ‘For forty solid years?’

  ‘Almost, but not quite, to the day. Buses came and went—with decreasing frequency as the years went by I might add. Queues formed and then boarded, day succeeded day and season succeeded season, but still I was held there.’

  ‘But what about food and drink, what about winter weather, cramp and things of that nature?’

  ‘I never seemed to be hungry or thirsty, the cold and wind passed around me and whatever happened in the real world appeared not to be applicable to me. All I was allowed to do was wait. Wait with that foul creature.’

  ‘That’s appalling!’

  ‘You can’t imagine how appalling. Please don’t get the impression that I didn’t try to save myself because for the first few weeks I did little else. Every bus that arrived I begged and pleaded to be allowed to board it and every queue that formed I shouted and waved at but, all in all, I might just as well as saved my breath. People I’d grown up with waited just a few feet away, some even sat on the seat with us, but none of them could see or hear me.

  ‘Once my dear mother, God rest her soul, came there and waited for a bus and I nearly went berserk trying to catch her attention. She seemed to realise something was wrong for she got fidgety and unea
sy and kept looking round for whatever it was that was disturbing her, but when she did she looked straight through me.

  ‘Eventually her bus came and she got on and once she was sitting down she stared at the bench as if she knew her son was sitting there and she continued to look as the bus drew away.

  ‘That was very bitter. I never saw her again, for I later found out that she died soon after.

  ‘How that creature laughed to see my tears that day and his every laugh sounded like the death of a baby on Christmas Eve. In my fury and horror I struck him but his flesh burned like acid and where I’d touched him my skin smoked. Look, the scars still show.’

  It was true. A wide band of skin across each of his knuckles was brownish, twisted and quite dead.

  ‘After that experience it was hard to imagine anything worse happening and so, after a fashion, I resigned myself to my fate. Still I asked to board each bus that came but the creature would just snap ‘No!’ in its nasty voice and that was that.

  ‘With the passing of the years I grew to be almost philosophical about my predicament and took pleasure in watching the leaves on the trees change colour and all the other slow annual mutations in the rest of nature, for that was something I’d never had the time for up to then. Bit by bit I observed different buses come into service, all efficient and new, and then see them pass through their working lives till their engines were crotchety and their livery battleworn. Watching the changes in people’s fashions was interesting too, spring clothes, winter clothes and then back to spring again and new styles kept appearing as well. Quite fascinating really, if you’ve got nothing else to do.

  ‘There were also moments of relative excitement like when workmen came to erect a shelter and light in... 1973 I think, and when an advertising station was put up about a year later. After that I had the pleasure of watching the advertisement posters being changed at regular intervals and it allowed me to keep in touch with things in some small way.

  ‘I noticed that I was getting older but, since otherwise time was suspended for me, I learnt just to relax and observe, which is something few other people have the opportunity to do in this world. In time, you see, all Binscombe life passed by my bus stop.’

  ‘You make it sound almost idyllic!’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that for I was held against my will, remember, and that fact coloured everything else. And, if the creature even suspected that I was taking pleasure in something, it would talk to me.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘It is best, believe me, for your sake that you don’t know. Suffice to say that he said bitter and twisted things, of individuals queuing for a bus, for instance, that showed people in a low and degraded light or emphasised the misery and futility of human life as he saw it. His words were designed to produce an effect in me. Whether they also represented the truth or not I’ve no idea.’

  ‘How did it end?’

  ‘As simply as it began. One day a bus arrived as per normal and the creature said, “Here is your bus.” Suddenly I found that I could move and I saw that the driver’s eyes were focused on me. He could actually see me! Despite forty years disuse my legs could still carry me as if I’d merely had a short sit-down and, as you might expect, I was on that bus like a streak of lightning. Then, just as the doors closed behind me, I heard the creature say, ‘Thank you for waiting with me.’ The doors slid shut, and when I turned round to look I couldn’t see the thing, even though the last words it’d said were still ringing in my ears. Then the bus pulled away.

  That wasn’t the end of all my problems by any means. In effect, one major affliction was replaced with myriad minor ones. You can’t just leave your life for forty years and expect to take up the reins again on your return. Difficulties began from the moment I boarded that long delayed bus. Take for instance the problem with paying my fare. I’d missed out on decimal currency, you see. I knew nothing about it and the driver wouldn’t accept the coins I offered him. He thought I was either drunk or a joker when I handed him three old pennies. When he told me how much the fare really was, it was my turn to think that it was he who was joking—inflation being another thing I’d yet to learn about.

  ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, my mother’s house had been sold many years before. I’d paid no National Insurance so there was no pension awaiting me. Most of my old friends were dead or gone away, and all in all I had to start from scratch.

  ‘In time, of course, everything came together. I found a place to live, I caught up on forty years of world history in the public library, I even got married and God knows (begging your pardon Disvan) she’s been a solace, bless ‘er. So here I am. My life’s not so bad, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and that’s why I’ve no intention of ever being made to wait for a bus again.’

  ‘Do you think then that the creature is still there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just assume it is and act accordingly. You see, I’ve been free for a number of years now and for all I know the thing may be getting lonely and in need of company again, so I’m not inclined to put the matter to the test.’

  ‘I get it. So that’s why you won’t pass the bus stop on your own.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He paused, something clearly bothering him, and then continued in a rush of words. ‘Tell me, Mr Oakley, do you believe that what I’ve told you is true?’

  I considered the possibility of this while studying Springer’s guileless, indeed vacant, face and found that an honest answer came to me easily.

  ‘I’ve only lived here a short time, but long enough not to totally discount what you say.’

  ‘That is a good answer—if slightly enigmatic,’ said Disvan.

  ‘Mr Disvan believes me, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, Bob. I accept what you tell us. But what I don’t accept, as I’ve said to you many times before, is that you’re in any further danger. You’ve done your stint of waiting and your company is no longer required.’

  ‘Fine words, but I’ll not believe them till I’m safely in my grave.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  I felt some need to make amends for my earlier incivility and in debt to Springer for his candidness.

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I—or perhaps we...’ Disvan nodded in affirmation, ‘would be happy on this occasion to provide an escort to your house.’

  The old man thanked us gravely.

  ‘I’ll not impose on your good nature with any regularity but tonight I would welcome a short walk home and human company on the way. I’m obliged to you.’

  * * *

  And, at closing time, an escort and human company we duly provided. As we passed the bus shelter of which we had spoken all evening Springer once again asked that we avert our eyes and quicken the pace, and this time I did so with good grace although not before noticing that the stop was devoid of any life I could see.

  Once we were past this lonely spot we slowed to a normal walk again and I felt able to ask the one question—the one question, at least, that seemed capable of any resolution—that still puzzled me.

  ‘Bob, why do you think you were chosen?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I mean chosen out of all the people who ever waited at that stop. Why did the creature select you in particular to keep it company?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. It was just written, I suppose.’

  ‘I think that’s true,’ interposed Disvan, ‘but not to the extent that it was just a random act of fate. I think, if you’ll please excuse me saying so, Bob, that you never were a man marked out for great deeds or an eventful life. It was written very plainly on your face even when I knew you as a boy.’

  ‘That may be so.’

  ‘And being such a very unexceptional, ordinary man made you ideal material if someone was to be snatched from life for forty years. It may be that the powers that rule us would only sanction such an event if the disruption to the normal world was minimal, as it was in your case.’

  ‘True—cruel,
mind you—but quite possibly true. I had no career worth speaking of, few friends to miss me, and mother was all the family I’d got.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  Disvan’s last comment could either be taken as rounding off the successful presentation of his case or as the announcement of Springer’s safe arrival home, for we were indeed before his door.

  Lost in private thoughts the old man let himself in and almost forgot, in his preoccupation, to bid us farewell. Just as the door was about to shut, he came to and said, ‘Thank you gentlemen for your patience. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ we replied in kind and immediately set off home as if eager to be free of his company—although I, at least, was not.

  ‘I’ll make a minor detour and walk with you part of the way,’ said Mr Disvan.

  ‘That would be welcome,’ I said and we walked along in silence until once again we drew close to the yellow-lit, deserted bus shelter. As though by prior consent we halted opposite it, looking perhaps for tokens to confirm Springer’s story. In its present condition the shelter looked the very epitome of lifeless anticipation.

  At length I finally broke the silence. ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘Well, he certainly did disappear for forty years.’

  ‘But do you believe him?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘And would you wait for a bus at that stop?’

  ‘I rarely would have occasion to, but the straight answer is no, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then how can you be so sure that Mr Springer isn’t in danger?’

  Disvan paused, exhaling air and sadness through his teeth.

  ‘Partly because he’s done his turn but mainly because soon after he arrived back in Binscombe, ten years ago now, young Mark Brown went missing. He often travelled by bus, you see, and he was most certainly a very unremarkable chap.

  ‘No, Mr Oakley, I don’t think there’s anything for us to fear over there at the moment because, as the saying goes, two’s company—but three’s a crowd.’