Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (42 page)

‘Telling me what?’

‘Well, it’s up to you, Mr Disvan,’ said the landlord, ignoring my question. ‘He’s a decent enough bloke, I suppose, but can he take it?’

‘What do you think, doctor?’ asked Disvan.

Doctor Bani-Sadr studied me while sipping his barley wine.

‘Why not?’ he said at last.

‘Telling me what, for God’s sake?’ I shouted.

Mr Disvan looked pained.

‘There’s no need to get excited, Mr Oakley. We were just wondering whether to explain to you about the Binscombe Scholarship—and the consensus seems to be that we should.’

‘What’s that? What’s it got to do with anything?’ I asked, made impatient by the mucking about.

‘Well,’ Disvan continued, as if to a rather dense child, ‘as the name would tend to suggest, it’s a scholarship. It’s funded by the inhabitants of Binscombe and hence it’s the “Binscombe Scholarship”. Are you with me so far?’

‘Yes,’ I sighed.

‘Good. Well, the purpose of the scholarship is mainly to permit local youngsters to go to university. Cambridge University to be precise.’

‘Really?’ I was quite impressed. Binscombe was hardly the typical Oxbridge recruiting zone.

‘And as for what it’s got to do with anything, as you put it—well that, I think, is best seen for yourself.’

The landlord and Doctor Bani-Sadr nodded their agreement with this point of view. I didn’t understand.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘I’m not surprised,’ replied Mr Disvan. ‘We’ve haven’t told you enough to facilitate understanding. However, I’ve got to go to Cambridge on Saturday and, if you accompany me, all will become clear, I assure you.’

Now I was astounded as well as puzzled.

‘You, go to Cambridge? I didn’t think you believed there was life north of the Thames.’

‘I’m not so sure about bits south of it either,’ said Disvan, good humouredly. ‘Croydon and Horley, for instance. However, this is an emergency. It’s young Vladimir Bretwalda’s birthday on Saturday, and his mother asked me to deliver a cake and some clean laundry to him.’

I was now doubly surprised. While absolute monsters of integrity, industry and so on, the Bretwalda family were not known for their soaring intellects.

‘There’s a Bretwalda at Cambridge University?’ I asked, just to make sure I’d heard aright.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Disvan, ‘but young Vladimir is exactly the sort of person the Binscombe Scholarship was designed to help. Cambridge University has been the making of him.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to cast aspersions.’

‘I should hope not. Anyway, you said you wanted to know what’s going on here; will you be with me on Saturday?’

I thought about it, remembered I’d arranged to meet my girlfriend’s parents that day and so said, yes, I would accompany him. I was flattered to note that Mr Disvan seemed pleased to hear this.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘it’s always best to have company while in uncivilised parts. I’ll pick you up at eight.’

I felt more relaxed now. The idea of a casual weekend jaunt into pastures new was a pleasant one. The slightly threatening atmosphere caused by my heretical views appeared to have passed. Then I heard Mr Disvan speak and his voice was like that of the lion saying ‘trust me’ to the lamb.

‘You’ll see what’s going on here,’ he said—‘and everywhere else.’

Whereupon all my misgivings sprang back into fresh and vigorous life.

*  *  *

Mr Disvan arrived in his Porsche, punctually at 8:00. I lowered myself in and was whisked away at alarming speed.

‘The fluffy dice are new, aren’t they?’ I said, once the G-force permitted speech. Disvan nodded.

‘Hmmm. I saw them for sale at a garage. Rather nice, don’t you think?’

Rather than say the truth, I said something else. ‘I banged my head on them getting in.’

Mr Disvan took his eyes off the road and looked at me in a quizzical way. ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked.

I sensed it was going to be one of those days.

‘It was an accident, Mr Disvan. Believe it or not, I don’t head-butt fluffy dice on purpose.’

To my great relief, Disvan looked away again and paid some attention to the way ahead.

‘Well,’ he said tersely, ‘I hope you haven’t damaged them. They weren’t cheap, you know.’

Not surprisingly, I kept quiet after that and just watched the urban concrete sprawl flash by. Mr Disvan concentrated on his driving, flicking in and out of columns of traffic and gunning the motor like a stunt driver under interview. In very little time we’d left the green belt and then London behind and were well into East Anglia.

It was only then that Disvan spoke again.

‘Pleasant countryside, don’t you think?’ he said, his two hands gesturing to indicate the flat expanse through which we were racing. For a moment the wheel spun wild and free. ‘Looking forward to our little outing, are we?’

It sounded reasonable enough, but I was still sulking and spiky. For once he wasn’t the sole holder of historical weaponry. I’d taken the trouble to do a little reading, and I was determined for him to reap the benefit of it.

‘So-so. Anyway, I meant to ask, why so keen on old Oliver Cromwell, Mr Disvan? I mean, didn’t he smash up your precious Levellers? The executions at Burford church, Lilburne in prison and all that?’

Disvan blushed and coughed and pressed hurriedly on.

‘We don’t think—I mean talk—about that, Mr Oakley. I prefer the broader picture. Like this one, for instance.’

Again he abandoned the wheel to indicate the flat East Anglian vista. Outside of Binscombe, landscapes didn’t usually send him into raptures. This one was nothing special. I had him but, influenced by road safety and soft-heartedness, declined to press the advantage. Later on I’d regret that. Never withhold the stiletto from a prone foe. Life might not give you another chance.

‘Could be worse,’ I answered, as soon as the driver was back at the helm.

‘Yes, that’s well put, Mr Oakley. It could be worse. I mean, it’s quite like England in many respects.’

I sighed heavily. We’d been through all this before.

‘It
is
England, Mr Disvan.’

‘Well, yes... technically, I suppose. But not in strict law. All this stuff, all the land above the Thames, was ceded to the Danes by Alfred the Great. You know, the Treaty of Wedmore in 878.’

‘That was more than a thousand years ago, Mr Disvan...’

‘I realise that, but I still think it makes a difference. I mean, if you pawn something away and then get it back, you never feel the same about it again, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Well, you don’t. You’ve relinquished ownership to unfriendly strangers—however temporarily—so you can never have valued it much in the first place, can you?’

‘Whatever you say, Mr Disvan. If it makes you happy, England stops north of the Thames.’

Disvan frowned.

‘Now you’re being ridiculous, Mr Oakley. You can’t take these things literally.’

‘But it was you who...’

‘Oliver Cromwell’s head,’ said Mr Disvan abruptly.

The unexpected change in conversational direction stopped my reasonable protest dead in its tracks. I regrouped to face this second front.

‘What about it?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘You were enquiring about it the other night.’

‘I was?’

‘Yes, I told you that Cromwell’s body was somewhere in Tyburn Pit and you asked what happened to his head. I said it had had a chequered history. Remember?’

‘Um... I vaguely recall something like that,’ I said falsely. ‘What about it?’

‘So, would you like an update on the fate of the head?’

I gave the question a moment’s consideration. It was a reasonably alarming thought that the object might be still knocking about somewhere. I was in the position of being a captive audience. Accordingly I said, ‘Yes, why not?’

‘Okay,’ said Disvan as he scared the wits out of a milkman by overtaking at jet-fighter speed, ‘you’ll remember that we left it on a spike, at the corner of Westminster Hall, round about the fifth of February, 1661.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. So does Samuel Pepys in his diary. Anyway, there it remained until the Great Storm of 1703, when it was blown off its perch, to land—so the legend has it—right in front of a sentry. He sold it to a passer-by for a shilling and then we lose sight of it for a bit. In 1710 it was on show in a London “Museum of Curiosities”. Then, in the 1780s, it came into the hands of a drunken actor called Samuel Russell, who first put it on show and later sold it when times where hard. After that, there were lots of owners until, in 1813, it fell on its feet, so to speak, in being acquired by a family called Wilkinson. To their credit, they retained possession for nearly 150 years—and treated it with a modicum of due respect, I might add.’

I did a little bit of mental arithmetic and realised that Disvan had dragged the head as far as the 1960s. Being interested to hear what it was up to while I was undergoing education and adolescence, I asked what happened next.

‘A sort of happy ending, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan. ‘A member of the Wilkinson family bequeathed it on.’

‘And?’

‘And the head arrived at Sydney Sussex College Cambridge—as have we.’

Disvan slewed the car to a halt and switched off the engine. I looked out and found that this was true.

*  *  *

‘Why here?’ I asked as we passed through the college gate, after a minor dispute with college servants about Mr Disvan’s parking arrangements.

‘Cromwell went to university here. It’s as appropriate a resting place as any.’

I thought to myself that I wouldn’t wish to lay my bones (or ashes) within a hundred miles of any of my schools or colleges. It also occurred to me that, since severed heads have no say in such matters, Oliver Cromwell might have felt the same way. For the first time, I felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

Mr Disvan seemed to know his way about the building. He led me up and down various staircases and along empty corridors until we came to what was unmistakably our destination.

I’d always felt that Mr Bretwalda, senior, was about as big as a human being could be without forming part of some new species. However, his son, Vladimir, pushed the boundaries a little further up and out. He was occupying, in the very truest sense of the word, a sort of ante-room, onto which faced a heavy oak door bearing a brass plate announcing: ‘THE BINSCOMBE SCHOLARSHIP ROOM.’

The young Bretwalda got up and looked down on me from a great height.

‘Hello Vladimir,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Happy birthday!’

‘Who’s this?’ said Vladimir, referring to me and ignoring the greeting.

‘Mr Oakley,’ Disvan answered swiftly. ‘Your father must have mentioned him surely?’