Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (4 page)

‘Didn’t he find anyone?’

‘No. He did say that one night he saw a light in the far distance but it only lasted a few seconds and he said it might have been just wishful thinking on his part.’

‘What else did he say?’

‘That Waterloo Bridge had been dynamited by the looks of what remained, and Big Ben was also down. There was no sign of life whatsoever in the City. It was as if everyone had upped and gone one day and there’d not been a single visitor since, until he arrived. Anyway, as I recall, he said that he went and wandered round the British Museum for a while, for want of anything better to do. Then he dined on some tinned food from the Savoy and ended up sleeping under Nelson’s protection in Trafalgar Square. The next thing he knew was being woken up by a policeman and arrested for vagrancy—in our world, needless to say.’

‘So how did it all end?’

‘Well, strangely enough, it was possible that the gypsy woman was at least partially right. Perhaps the other Binscombe was coming ever closer to Mr Bolding because each occasion he went there he was staying longer and longer. As you can imagine, his health and nerves were suffering, not to mention his business. That was shut up half the time since he was either over in the other place or too worried about going there to devote his mind to work. His trade was drifting away, as you might expect, his wife wasn’t talking to him and was fit to leave him at any minute because of the ideas she’d got in her head which he wasn’t able to correct, and generally speaking he felt his role, his reason for being in this world if you like, was dwindling away.

‘So, in the end, he had to give some attention to the life he was leading, willing or no, in the other Binscombe. After all, he was spending a lot of time over there by this stage. Accordingly, he mended the roof of his house and dug the garden over so he could plant vegetables—otherwise he was likely to starve for there wasn’t much food to be found. Apparently he went on foraging expeditions, sometimes as far as Croydon or Winchester, on his bike and he’d be away from the house—the one in the other place that is—for days on end. London he henceforth avoided since he said it gave him the creeps to see that, of all places, overgrown and silent as it was.

‘In time he found most of the tools and suchlike that he needed to survive and he also ransacked a few shops to refurnish his house in finer style than it had ever been in our world! He said he even managed to find an old wind-up gramophone to give him a bit of company.’

‘It sounds almost cosy.’

‘Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. His little, inhabited, cultivated spot was set in a great quiet jungle, so to speak, and I don’t think his life can have been easy. I mean, how could you feel at home in that situation?

 ‘Anyhow, during the times that he was in our world, he took to filling his pockets with seeds and shotgun cartridges and suchlike useful things so that when he crossed over again he’d have something to add to his stores. The point was, you see, that he was growing less and less sure that he ever was coming back here to stay.’

‘Apart from you and he, did anyone else know what was happening?’

‘A few. Some of the wiser and more trusted types—his friends from the Argyll, people he’d grown up with, folks whose family had been here since early times. When things got really serious, he had to take them into his confidence.’

‘But not his wife.’

‘No. That’s merely the way things were. I don’t say it was right.’

‘Okay. How did these people take it?  Did they believe him?’

‘But of course. Jack Bolding never lied, like I’ve already told you. As for your first question, people took the news very well. They rallied round and gave him useful, portable things he could carry round with him ready for the next trip to the other pace.’

‘That sounds a bit cold blooded. What about sympathy?’

‘Sympathy is cheap but help is help and it lasts longer.’

‘Maybe, maybe but even so it was rather an incredible story to accept just like that.’

‘Well, yes and no, because it wasn’t the first time we’d heard of the other place.’

‘No?’

‘No. There’ve been stories about it before from time to time. Your grandfather would have told you about them if he’d lived long enough. Most of the old families around here know about the other place. Some of them have had people visit it, for there’s a variety of means of entry. The ‘Along-side Time’ was the old name for it. I’ve heard it said that some people have lived out their lives there as either volunteers or conscripts like Bolding, though whether that’s true or not I couldn’t swear.’

‘And that’s where he is now?’

‘I presume so. Who can say?’

‘Did he just disappear, never to return?’

‘No. I think he must have had a premonition that the next time he crossed over he wasn’t coming back, because one particular night he came into the Argyll to say his farewells. He said that he’d already kissed his wife goodbye—not that she understood of course.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Not much. He stood us all a drink or two, for he didn’t need money where he was going, and then he asked us to remember him from time to time, seeing as how our paths might be crossing although we’d not know it.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘Well think of it. We could be walking down a street here and in the other Binscombe, Jack might be strolling alongside us in the selfsame street at exactly the same time. It’s possible we could even be occupying the same bit of space!

‘So anyway, we wished him all the best and presented him with one of those Swiss army knives—very useful things, them—which we’d clubbed together to buy, anticipating such an event. We’d put a nice inscription to him on it and it had just about every tool conceivable so I thought we’d chosen well.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, that seemed to choke him a bit so he just said cheerio and left for home.’

‘Never to be seen again.’

‘That’s right. Mind you, we leave a drink on his place at the bar in the Argyll every anniversary of that evening so as to remind us of him and just in case he comes back.’

‘Do you think he ever will?’

‘No, I don’t suppose so. He’s where he’s meant to be.’

Conversation faltered as I harvested the weirdness in. It was an eerie thought. Bolding working away in his garden in Binscombe Crescent, all alone and surrounded by ruins and nature run wild while back here, in our Binscombe Crescent, a family lived out their normal life in the same spot. Then Disvan spoke again, raising suspicions that he’d been trespassing in my mind.

‘Yes, curious concept isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I often wonder if they ever catch a glimpse of his shadow or hear just a faint whisper of his gramophone playing. Perhaps he can sometimes sense some of their activities. Leastways, I hope that’s so because it might be a comfort to him to know that life in his old home goes on. However, nothing of the kind has ever been reported to me.’

‘Yes, I see. I suppose it depends on how close the two Binscombes are to each other, or maybe they even drift apart and then come together again in a cycle.’

‘No one knows, Mr Oakley, although a lot of thought’s been given to it. Not least by those who go there.’

Mr Disvan looked up and round and seemed lost in meditation for a considerable while. What I had just heard equally occupied my mind as I tried, with limited success, to reconcile its other-worldliness with the prosaic normality I saw all about me in the recreation ground. At length he broke the silence.

‘Of course, to those who are aware of it, such knowledge breeds a kind of uncertainty. That’s how I knew, right away before you said anything, that you had a close connection with here. It’s passed on in the blood, and what’s bred in the bone comes out in the meat. It shows in your manner even though you might know nothing about it.’

‘What do you mean, ‘uncertainty’?’

‘Well, consider Mr Oakley; there you are on a misty street, or turning a corner during a solitary walk, or waking in a darkened room, or even leaving your front door, and the question always arises. Which Binscombe am I in?’

TILL DEATH DO US PART

‘It is rather good, though I say it myself,’ said Mr Morton and even I, for all my ignorance of fish, had to share in the general admiration of the monster catch he’d brought in to the Argyll.

‘How big is it?’ said Mr Disvan.

‘Just a touch over fifteen pounds.’

‘I’ll warrant that’s an all time record catch for the lake.’

‘Possibly, possibly,’ replied Morton with characteristic modesty. ‘The Club Captain thought it might be, but the old records will need to be checked before we can say for sure.’

Disvan was adamant. ‘Take my word for it, Harry; that pike is the biggest ever caught in Broadwater or I’m a Dutchman.

‘How about donating it to the Argyll?’ said our host. ‘I’d be prepared to have it stuffed and mounted in a frame, all nice like, with a bit of water weed in the background and a little plaque on the front.’

‘I’d be happy to give it to you, just so long as the fishing club’s name was given due prominence, of course. It’s only because of the experience I’ve gained with them over the years that I was able to catch the fish.’

‘Nonsense, Harry,’ said the landlord, ‘you’re too self-effacing. You’ve forgotten more about fishing than that lot ever knew. Look at the way they stand out in the cold and rain for hours with not a minnow to show for it. Whereas you on the other hand—well, I can’t recall the last fishing trip you didn’t bring in a whopper. When you’re allowed to go, that is,’ he added darkly.

Mr Morton steadfastly ignored this passing reference to Mrs Morton (who was well known to us all) although a brief shadow crossed his face.

‘Yes, I think the fish would look nice in a case above the bar. Perhaps you should take it now and put it in your freezer.’

‘Righto. I’ll ring up the brewery tomorrow and see if they’ll cough up the necessary. ‘A sporting trophy,’ I’ll say, ‘the displaying of which is intended to encourage the regular patronage of the local Angling Society.’ You have to dangle increased profits in front of them before they’ll sanction a new towel for the gents nowadays you see. It’s the company accountants up in Reading to blame—never been in a public house in their lives I bet. Wine-bar types, more like it.’

The subject of brewery policy was one of the landlord’s pet hobby-horses, one he could ride into a mad lathering gallop given a hint of encouragement. Accordingly no one spoke for a moment in order that a little blessed peace might settle. Mr Disvan, safe in his local authority, was the natural person to resume the conversation, and when he did so it was in order to steer us back to the uncontroversial subject of the silver white corpse before us—a being whose every passion was spent, whose hunger had been finally satisfied, and whose ears could no longer take offence.

‘Pike specialist are you, Harry?’

Morton considered this, seeking as ever for the strictly truthful answer before replying.

‘Only in a manner of speaking; I don’t think there’s a kind of native fish that I haven’t gone for at some time or other but, yes, I like taking pike because there’s an especial lot of thought and cunning involved.’

‘What did you use to catch it?’ asked someone.

Morton looked a little shamefaced. ‘Ah... livebait, I’m afraid. A small gudgeon. It’s sad, but that’s the best way to do it.’

‘Vicious looking brute, isn’t he,’ said the landlord.

‘She, actually, but yes, they are vicious as we would see it, although they’re just obeying their orders, so to speak.’

‘Just obeying orders isn’t a valid defence, Harry. Nuremberg War Trials 1945,’ said Disvan.

‘Well no, Mr Disvan, but that’s with reference to Nazis, not fish. Fish have to do what the Almighty designed them to do, like it or not.’

 ‘Perhaps,’ said Disvan—refusing, however unreasonably, to relinquish the last word.

I sensed the start of one of the long, discursive and ultimately absurd dialogues peculiar to Binscombe people who saw nothing strange in debating Nazi fish or the ethics of aquatic life, but this one, sadly perhaps, died the death. Instead, conversation lingered fitfully in the realms of the material world.

‘The pike used to be called “the water wolf” you know,’ said Mr Morton, ‘seeing as it’s so savage. In fact, some of the older anglers still call it that so as to keep in mind what they’re trying to catch.’

‘Is it true that they pull down ducklings?’ said the landlord.

‘Apparently, though I’ve never seen it done. They’re quite capable of it and this one was certainly strong enough.’

‘A sort of duck version of
Jaws
, eh, Harry?’

‘What?’

‘
Jaws
. A film.’

‘Was it about fishing?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘This one’s been around for years and years ruling the roost in Broadwater,’ Morton continued, unworried by his lack of cinematic knowledge. ‘She’s been hooked before so we knew about her but up to now she’s always managed to slip away.’

‘Well,’ said the landlord, putting his face down on a level with the fish’s, ‘that’s an end to your little game. No more duckies for you.’

‘In America,’ said Morton, ‘there’s a species of pike called muskel-something which can be six foot in length.’

The Landlord continued his eyeball-to-eyeball gloat over the fish for only a few seconds more after receiving this intelligence. He withdrew his face and stood up.

‘Well, even if you do have relatives taller than I am, it’s still the end of your game.’

This reassertion of human supremacy might just as well have been directed to Mr Morton for, a few seconds after, the pub door crashed open and Mrs Morton not so much entered as boarded the premises.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ she shouted.

Harry looked around for support but found none. The group beside him melted away as if from one singled out by the finger of the Grim Reaper. Even the Landlord, whose home after all it was, suddenly found some urgent glass washing and bottle rearranging to do. Only Disvan, for reasons best known to himself, and I, a poor ‘foreigner’, stood by Morton, whose pallor was fast becoming as pale as that of the fish on the bar. Elsewhere, embarrassed conversations started as, out of the best of intentions, everyone pretended their minds were any place other than on Harry’s humiliation.

‘I said,’ she continued from the open doorway, ‘where the hell have you been?’

‘Fishing,’ Harry replied with a defiance in which not even the most generously inclined witness could detect conviction.

‘And—what—about—the—bloody—decorating, you stupid little man?  Fish we can buy any time, but the house is where I have to live, damn it—in case you’d forgotten. Didn’t I set this weekend aside for decorating?’

‘Well you did, but...’

‘So you go fishing.’

‘It was a club match and I’d already promised...’

‘Shut up.’

‘But....’

‘Come here.’

He did so, slowly perhaps and with an apology to each group of locals he passed, but come he did like a puppy to its bath. At length, upon his arrival at the door, Mrs Morton placed her formidable hand upon his back and propelled him through. At us, huddled together like a defeated tribe, she cast a leisurely glance that conveyed within it a degree of withering contempt worthy of a great actress. Then she made to sweep out when Disvan’s commanding tones broke the silence.

‘Mary Morton,’ he said, pointing at her but without the least trace of anger in his voice, ‘woman and girl I’ve known you, and you never were any good. You’ll come to a bad end.’

I’d never heard Disvan directly rebuke anyone in this way before and in Binscombe terms it should have been the equivalent of excommunication and lifelong exile rolled into one.

For all the effect on Mrs Morton it might as well have been a sheep’s growl. Eyes blazing with grim delight she wordlessly advanced, like the war machine of a science fiction epic, upon Disvan, stood before him a second, and then, with a gesture of disdain, flicked off his Panama hat.

The whole episode, from the moment of her entry, had seemed improper, and seeing Disvan, bareheaded and saddened, gazing at Mary Morton’s retreating back, made it doubly so. Accordingly, as if by common consent, when the pub door slammed shut behind the female fighting fury, one and all acted as if nothing had occurred.

With considerable dignity, given the circumstances, Disvan retrieved his hat and resumed his place at the bar. The landlord now felt able to abandon his bottles and joined us once more.

‘There goes a man who must envy the dead,’ he said.

‘Poor devil,’ I replied. ‘Why does he stand for it?’

‘God knows.’

As ever, Disvan winced slightly at this cavalier attitude to the third commandment.  ‘Now, now,’ he said, ‘I’m sure she must have some redeeming features otherwise he wouldn’t stay with her.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure. It has to be said that although Morton’s a very nice man, a very nice man indeed, he’s also a fool and too weak to leave her. You know that she’s off with other men, don’t you?’

I raised my eyebrows in a gesture that committed me to no particular opinion and Disvan said, ‘So they say,’ in a tone that meant: yes, I do know and no, I don’t approve of gossip.

‘Flaunts it in his face she does, but still he don’t do anything about it. Too weak and foolish.’

‘Since when,’ said Disvan, ‘has a weakness of character made anyone a fool?  It’s just the way he was born.’

‘Ah, well now you’re getting back to the morals of fish and Nazi war crimes, and I’m afraid I’m not much of a one for philosophy.’

The landlord turned away, bringing a physical end to the conversation and pseudo-inquest on the distasteful incident which had preceded it. He took with him the monster pike which had lain on the bar throughout. On his way he raised it to his face level as if in conversation.

‘It’s all your fault,’ he informed it.

*  *  *

‘Oh yes. Horrible agony!’

Inhibitions loosened by barley wine, Doctor Bani-Sadr was regaling, if that is the right word, the assembled company in the Argyll with an account of Mrs Morton’s sudden and tragic death.

‘But how on earth did she come to eat a fish-hook, of all things?’ said Mr Disvan.

‘Because it was embedded in a fish she was eating at the time. It was an old, rusty hook that the fish must have swallowed whole at some point in the past and in the course of time it became enveloped in the flesh of the still living fish. It’s an unusual process but not unknown.’

‘Still, you’d think she’d have felt it in her mouth when she chewed the fish.’

‘Did you ever see her eat?’ said the landlord. ‘ “Guts”, we used to call her at school, ‘cause she’d put food down like it was going to be snatched away from her. A very distressing sight.’

‘That’s what I presume happened,’ said the doctor. ‘Anyway, by the time I was called and then the ambulance got her into hospital, half her insides were torn to shreds. Horrible agony as I said. Nothing we could do to save her—disembowelled from the inside, she was. Last time I saw anything that bad was a booby trap the Mau-Mau rigged up when I was doing my National Service. It did much the same to my colour-sergeant.’

‘You said she’d come to a bad end, Mr Disvan,’ said the landlord.