Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (40 page)

In fact Mr Maccabi did need to see us—or someone at least. He looked in terrible shape. In the three days since we’d last seen him, rings under his eyes had grown and joined together to simulate mascara. He was chain-smoking with suicidal ferocity and glanced about like an American tourist in Beirut.

Despite the evident state of emergency, civilisation in the Maccabi household had not yet fallen. He welcomed us in and arranged for tea or coffee to be brought. It was clear, however, that Mr Maccabi was anxious to get to business. Mr Disvan seemed happy to go along with that.

‘What is it that we can do for you?’ he asked.

‘I just want you to look at something,’ Maccabi replied, looking fixedly at the glowing tip of his cigarette. ‘First of all, anyway.’

He got up and, moving to one corner of the living room, lifted up the edge of the carpet.

‘I thought,’ he said, ‘or hoped, that the scratching might be mice. But when I investigated... well, this...’

He pointed to what appeared to be a knot in one of the floorboards.

Mr Disvan went to the spot. I was going to remain safely where I was but, at that moment, Bridget Maccabi re-entered the room with a tray of cups and, for some silly reason, I felt obliged to go and join the two men.

I found that Disvan had removed a mirror from the wall and was holding it over the area indicated by Maccabi. Maccabi himself was puzzled.

‘Why don’t you just look?’ he asked.

Mr Disvan didn’t reply immediately. He continued to experiment with the angle of the mirror until we were given a clear, bird’s eye view of that section of floor.

There was indeed a knot-hole clean through the bare floorboard. Through it, from some dark space beneath the house, an eye starred up at us, or so it appeared. Entranced, we watched it for some time. The eye was alive and active. It blinked and looked from side to side, as if searching into the room.

Mr Disvan was the first to break the silence.

‘This is for you, I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, ‘and it’s for the best that others don’t draw themselves to its attention. I should put the carpet down now.’

Mr Maccabi let the edge drop back into place. In a fit of fury, he ground his heel into the spot where the eye should be. We heard no response to this assault.

Mr Disvan had already re-seated himself and was spooning sugar into his tea. He motioned for us to join him.

Bridget served everyone with ginger-nuts that no one really wanted and then went to bring Joseph down to complete the gathering. The biscuits were surreptitiously passed on to the baby when Bridget’s gaze was elsewhere.

‘What else?’ asked Disvan simply,

Mr Maccabi, a good way towards the end of his tether, leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, and looked into space.

‘Eyes everywhere,’ he said wearily, ‘and note the plural. Prying eyes peering at us from every nook and cranny, through chinks in the curtain and keyholes—even floating in my cornflakes on one occasion! I don’t doubt there’s one in my cup of coffee if I could bring myself to check.’

By an effort of will, I avoided looking to see if this was true.

‘To put it mildly, Mr Disvan, we’re under observation.’

Disvan silently concurred.

‘But they’re not the only irritation,’ Maccabi continued. ‘I’ve started to hear whispering. I can’t tell what they’re saying, but I know it’s about me.’

Disvan and I exchanged a covert glance which, swift as it was, was registered by Bridget Maccabi.

‘It’s true’ she said. ‘So listen!’

We did so. Mr Maccabi appeared unaware of the interruption. He was lighting a new cigarette from the expiring corpse of another.

‘Only last night,’ he said, ‘I went into the kitchen and, even above the noise of the howling wind and rain, I could hear them whispering—two or three different voices, just outside the window. I went up to the blind and I wanted to lift it aside and see what they looked like. But I didn’t. I just locked the back door and they went silent when they heard the noise. I know it was a bit cowardly of me but...’

We nodded our understanding. Mine, at least, was entirely genuine.

‘When I left the kitchen and turned the light off, it was like a signal. The hissing and whispering started up again. Now, it hardly ever lets up. Eyes and whispering, whispering and eyes. I tell you, Mr Disvan, they’re everywhere—in the empty spaces of the house—all of the quiet gaps in life.’

‘We can also hear it on the baby intercom gadget,’ said Bridget Maccabi, matter of factly. ‘You know, the link-up with the baby’s room that lets us know if Joe’s awake or not. I’ve heard him answering their noises. But when I run up there, there’s never anything to be seen. That concerns me, Mr Disvan. What sort of things are being said to him?’

Disvan shrugged.

‘And then there’s the shadows that aren’t quite right—I mean that are too dark or fast or just the wrong shape. What are they?’

‘But just about the worst thing of all,’ said Mr Maccabi, rejoining the testimony session, ‘is this.’

He pointed at his son.

Joseph was sitting on the floor, silent and engrossed in a way that year-old infants usually aren’t for extended periods. Mouth open, he was tracking some invisible object around the room.

Bridget was nodding to confirm our suspicions.

‘It’s going on all the time,’ she said. ‘All of a sudden, he’ll go out of phase with us. There’s something that holds his attention and won’t let go.’

Mr Disvan, who had an infinite store of kind feeling for children, leaned forward and flicked his fingers in front of the child’s face. Even he appeared concerned at the lack of reaction it produced.

Mr Maccabi steeled himself to sip his coffee. It was, apparently, eyeless.

‘Well?’ he said.

Mr Disvan’s interest was still on the baby. At that precise moment, it fell free of whatever glamour had been in operation and returned to noisy play with soggy biscuits and a doleful furry bear.

Disvan sighed and seemed to have to force himself to reply to Maccabi.

‘ “It has been said”,’ he announced, ‘ “that the Angel of Death is all eyes”.’

‘Pardon?’ I asked, on behalf of all.

‘It’s a quote from Judaic scripture, Mr Oakley.
Abodah Zarah
: 20.’

I had still to make the connection. ‘What about it? I mean, Mr Disvan, is this the time or place to start discussing religion when...’

‘Shut up, Mr Oakley,’ said Bridget Maccabi. I did so.

‘Do you mean,’ she continued, ‘that those eyes belong to...’

Disvan nodded.

Mr Maccabi took the blow manfully. ‘And? he said.

‘Well,’ replied Disvan in measured tones, ‘that depends. Do you want the bad news, or the really bad news?’

The Maccabi response was speedy and surprisingly resolute given the circumstances.

‘Neither. We want help!’

Bridget Maccabi signified her solidarity with this stand.

‘Ah, well,’ said Disvan, somewhat more cheerfully, ‘it’s help you want, is it? Now, that requires a degree of thought and some time. If you’ll bear with me, I’ll see what I can do.’

He rose and, with almost indecent haste, made to leave. I naturally followed suite. The Maccabis, while hardly placated, seemed to have a touching faith in Disvan’s limitless powers of intercession. Bridget saw us out while her father cautiously investigated a long-stemmed vase that had aroused his suspicions. It too turned out to be, for the moment, an eye-free zone.

Needless to say, the questions had been relentlessly building up in me and, as the Maccabi door closed behind us, I turned to unleash them on Mr Disvan.

He stopped me in my verbal tracks by raising his hand, like some flustered, disillusioned traffic policeman.

‘Don’t even ask, Mr Oakley,’ he said, with all the very considerable firmness he could muster. ‘Things will just have to take their course, that’s all.’

*  *  *

A week passed. Then, one evening, a wretched looking Mr Maccabi sought us out in the Argyll.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘tell me the bad news first.’

For a moment, Mr Disvan looked doubtful about whether to do so. However, this rare internal debate was only a short process. His jaw set, and Mr Maccabi visibly braced himself for what he was about to receive.

‘The bad news is,’ said Disvan, ‘that I can’t help.’

‘Can anyone?’ asked Bridget Maccabi.

Again, there was just the flicker of uncertainty in the Disvan visage.

‘Er... possibly. In fact, yes, very probably—but we’ll come on to that later.’

Humanitarian motives moved me to go to the bar and buy Mr Maccabi a large brandy. When I returned, I found that he was recounting another episode from his tribulations. The cigarettes were being consumed fast and furious.

‘They really mean business now, whoever they are,’ he was saying. ‘Last night I heard a noise in Joseph’s room. When I went in, there was a sort of “child shape”, dancing round his cot and looking in. You couldn’t see any detail, it was just a kind of gap in the darkness—but it was definitely a child. Standing alongside was a larger figure and I somehow knew that it was the child’s mother. She was just standing there and looking at me. There was real menace, Mr Disvan, real ill-intent. You couldn’t mistake it for anything else.’

‘What happened?’ I asked, alarmed for the baby’s sake.

‘The noise must have woken Bridget as well. She went charging past me, into the room, waving a carving knife, and the shapes simply vanished.’

Speaking for myself, I didn’t blame them.

Mr Maccabi knitted his brows and tried to see to the bottom of the brandy that he’d snatched from my hands.

‘Do you know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think that those shapes are the woman and child whose lives we saved from the bus crash. The two things are connected somehow...’

Mr Disvan made signs of agreement.

‘I’ve got it!’ shouted Maccabi. ‘The woman’s a witch and she’s put a spell on me... for some reason,’ he tailed off weakly.

‘Would it were so straightforward,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘That we could deal with. No, you were right to begin with. Those shapes and the people in the queue are connected, but not in the way you think.’

Mr Maccabi picked up his pack of cigarettes and, finding it was empty, threw it, Henry VIII style, over his shoulder. The landlord gave him a very black look indeed but desisted from commenting. In common with all the other people in the bar, he realised that something very serious was being discussed. A force field of privacy was allowed to form around us.

Maccabi found a fresh pack and scrabbled the wrapper off.

‘They’re ghosts of the future,’ said Disvan suddenly, ‘ghosts that should be but aren’t yet. That’s why you couldn’t see any detail. They’re only potential ghosts.’

Mr Maccabi shook his head, uncomprehending.

‘All right,’ said Mr Disvan, sounding a little disappointed at our slowness, ‘I’ll spell it out. They’re gaps, in the truest sense of the word, in the universe. They’re spaces, or a diversion of energies if you like, prepared by Death, which were to be filled by the bus crash victims. However, because Mr Maccabi was forewarned, he caused a shortfall in Death’s daily quota. Those “gaps” Death had prepared weren’t filled up, and now they’re running around free.’