Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (45 page)

‘What is this life, if full of care,

we have no time to stop and stare?’

It seemed to me there was some truth in that (unlike so much else I’d learnt there). Under the influence of such silly feelings, I stopped to study the wider world about me.

On the side away from the motorway, the ground dipped down steeply into a sad landscape of conifer plantations and neglected fields. I wondered whether anyone visited these places from one year’s end to the next.

It was true that there were fences and gates to be seen, so someone must have been by to place and repair them. However, apart from these tokens, if one faced the right direction, the land was free of life—and looked fit to remain so forever. The motorway had cut off these fields from what they had been before and turned them into obscure borderlands. Now they were visited only with difficulty, by those with strong reason to go there—or else flotsam and jetsam of the road like me.

I considered what strange things and evil deeds might be hidden in such a landscape, as remote and unwalked in its way as any Scottish mountain. There were great caverns of darkness amid the trees capable of holding any enormity, just a few yards from Mr and Mrs Average driving from normal A to normal B.

After a fair while, I came to an emergency phone. The pseudo-solitude was becoming oppressive now, and I was looking forward to the sound of a human voice. I spoke to a very nice young lady at the AA and made the necessary arrangements without difficulty. I could hear chatter and clatter behind her in the office and felt reunited with the world of man. Then she replaced her receiver and left me, once again, alone and exposed.

I happened to glance at the telephone while cramming it back into its receptacle. Someone had gouged two great slivers out of its plastic head. I thought about these and was sure that my very best efforts wouldn’t leave so much as a scratch, let alone huge, white scars.

Since I am incapable of learning by past mistakes, I allowed my edgy curiosity to make me look closer. There was a thin scatter of dark and suspicious stains on the telephone, the cord, the container, even on the ground beneath my feet.

These were drips from someone’s ice-lolly, I told myself. Really they were. My walk back to the car and Mr Disvan was exceedingly brisk.

*  *  *

While we were waiting for the AA, I told Mr Disvan about what I’d seen and thought on the hard shoulder.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s a lifeless landscape, Mr Oakley,’ he replied. ‘Not exactly. There’s life of a sort if you know where to look, and should want to. It’s just a bit out of phase with us, that’s all.’

This idea seemed to hold his attention for a moment and there was a lull in conversation. The thunder roll of traffic continued unabated.

‘In fact,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’m not so sure that it’s not us who’re the out-of-phase ones here. After all, we’re the intruders.’

I was looking round for any sign of this alleged life (and not expecting to find any) when my eyes fell upon a dark figure. Quite some way off, standing on a grassy rise, stood a man in a business suit. He held a briefcase in his hand and was observing the motorway with burning interest. I pointed him out to Mr Disvan.

‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of thing I mean. And look over there.’

I followed the line of his finger and saw, in the distance, three or four matchstick men standing beside a giant pylon. They were keeping very, even abnormally, still, their arms by their sides and doing, as far as I could tell, nothing at all. Had these people just arrived, or had I simply failed to notice them before?

‘What are they up to?’ I asked. ‘I can’t see their cars...’

‘Well, no,’ said Disvan. ‘Not all of them have cars. It depends on their individual circumstances.’

I could take this either way and once again opted for the straightforward interpretation.

‘But if they’ve got no car, how did they get here?’

As usual, Mr Disvan was the soul of patience.

‘I’ve just told you that, Mr Oakley. It depends on their individual circumstances. Take that chap in the suit there, for instance, he might have got here by...’

At that precise, inconvenient moment, the AA van arrived. To be more precise, it arrived, slowed and then, to my chagrin, motored on.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Disvan, utterly unconcerned, ‘he won’t go far.’

This turned out to be the case. The van stopped a hundred yards or so on from us and the driver got out. However, instead of coming straight to our aid, he deepened my lack of joy, by lingering by his vehicle.

‘We’re in good hands,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘He must be a veteran.’

I just thought he was bloody annoying and said so. Disvan ignored my unpleasantries.

The AA man raised his hands to his face and I caught the flash of sunlight off a glass lens.

‘Am I going mad,’ I asked, ‘or is he giving us the once over with binoculars?’

‘No. Yes,’ said Disvan concisely.

‘What’s he looking for?’

‘Your tax disc, I should imagine, to see if it’s current.’

‘What’s that to him?’

‘I suppose it’s a good indication of whether you’re a
bona fide
traveller, or something else. Perhaps there are other little signs he can spot as well.’

I was tempted to hit the horn with my head. Work and the normal world seemed a long way away—but unusually attractive.

We had apparently passed the long distance muster and the AA man reversed his van towards us. Mr Disvan sensed that I was not my usual happy self.

‘Don’t give him a hard time, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain it all to you later. In the meanwhile, just let me do the talking.’

In the event, I wasn’t given much choice in the matter. Although it was me who was behind the wheel, the AA man spoke first to Mr Disvan.

‘Good morning, sir. What appears to be the problem?’

Within minutes, a new fan belt had been fitted and tested even to my sulky satisfaction. Disvan and the AA man then set to chatting, seated happily on the bonnet of my car.

‘I see you still have to go through the full security drill,’ said Mr Disvan.

The AA man nodded sadly.

‘Aye, it’s for the best, though some take chances.’

‘And do you lose many?’

‘A few—some of the younger men who won’t believe what they’re told. The rest of us get wise to the tricks and survive to a ripe old age. Like me, for instance.’

Disvan managed to suggest, without such crudities as words, that he lived his life along the same principles. I was left the odd man out: a callow and clueless youth who ought to be at work.

‘Oh aye,’ said the AA man reflectively, ‘it’s a war all right—and we’re on the front line. I mean, you should have seen the mess at the emergency telephone down the road a couple of weeks ago. God knows what went on there.’

‘Actually,’ Disvan replied, ‘my friend noted the aftermath of that. It quite frightened him.’

The AA man turned round and glanced at me.

‘Aye, it looks like it did,’ he said dryly.

‘Do you think it was them?’ asked Disvan, pointing to the stock-still, matchstick men in the distance.

‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said the AA man. ‘Them or any of the hundreds of buggers like them. I spend my days trying to get in before they do or else cleaning up after them. It’s a war, you know.’

They had gone full incomprehensible circle, and I was ready to brain both of them. The murderous moments in my life were getting more frequent...

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s been really fabulous meeting yo,u but I’ve got a living to make and Mr Disvan here has an appointment at the Houses of Parliament.’

‘It’ll wait, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan.

‘No it damn well won’t!’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Actually, on reflection, perhaps it won’t. We must be off.’

‘A pleasure to assist you, gentlemen,’ said the AA man. ‘Safe trip.’

Not a moment too soon, he passed out of our knowledge for good and we resumed our journey. Silence was maintained until we were crawling through a death valley of mirror glass and tan brick somewhere in south London. I turned to Mr Disvan.

‘Okay then, Mr D, explain or die.’

Disvan checked to see that I wasn’t in earnest about this (he could be a very literal person) before replying.

‘We’re late, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘Our journey has been interrupted, has it not?’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘All right, I will. Consider all the interrupted journeys on this motorway, the thousands of them every day. Consider the permanently interrupted journeys—the accidents and crashes, sometimes fatal. Think about all those unfulfilled purposes.’

I considered them as requested.

‘So what? I said.

‘Well, it all builds up, Mr Oakley. Builds up, accumulates and acquires a life of its own. Those tens of thousands of lost thoughts and plans meet up and join together. They get strong enough to reverberate through time and take shape...’

I wasn’t liking the sound of this.

‘What are you saying, Mr Disvan?’

‘Well, think about it, Mr Oakley. Haven’t you ever wondered about all the cars and people you see on the hard shoulder? Surely it’s stretching probability a bit for them all to be breakdowns?’

I duly wondered about this. We’d passed so many stranded vehicles on the hard shoulder—one for every three or four miles of road. Then I started to think of the people without cars. The man in a business suit, the figures by the pylon, the greyish person leaning over the flyover bridge, the hippie with a backpack we were overtaking at that very moment...

As if hearing my thoughts, the young man turned to stare with glassy eyes as we went by.

Mr Disvan could sense that my mind was moving more swiftly than the traffic.

‘Why do you think you see so many carrion crows on the motorway?’ he said. ‘I mean, you know what they’re a symbol of, don’t you?’

Sadly, my reading had provided me with that information.

‘So many people use these roads,’ said Disvan, ‘that it was bound to happen over time. With so many souls adrift, is it any wonder that some of them still wait, their final journey broken here until... well, who can say? Judgement Day, I suppose.’

The horrid sweet-smelling pipe was produced and wielded again. I was too preoccupied to protest.

‘Trouble is, you see,’ said Mr Disvan, in-between puffs, ‘that some of them get impatient. “No exit from motorway” syndrome, to quote a phrase. Then they turn nasty. If you should meet one of those, like the gent in sunglasses, for instance, well... often as not, there’s another broken journey, another car for the police to clean up and tow away—and maybe a new unquiet spirit.’

The wheel shook slightly and I nearly clipped the car in the next lane.

‘But...’ I muttered, without really having anything to join on to it.

Mr Disvan considered the evidence too strong to tolerate any doubt on my part.