Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (65 page)

I coolly took a sip from my drink and liberated one of Mr Patel’s cigarettes from its packet—my first smoke since prep school.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘to put it in a nutshell, and to steal a famous line from
Gone with the Wind
—“frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”’

For some reason that silenced the pub where all else had failed, as though it were the voice of judgement.

‘So that’s it,’ said Disvan, still leaning on Mr Bretwalda’s chest but a smile now brightening his features. ‘The desk!’

‘But so quickly?’ queried Mr Jarman. ‘Surely not.’

‘It must be a real corker,’ explained Disvan. ‘An “ancient of days”.’

‘A “petty pace from day to day” variety,’ recited Jarman, pointedly trumping my film quote with something looted from
Macbeth
.

‘Quite,’ agreed Mr Disvan. ‘Poor old Mr Oakley.’

‘Not so much of the “poor”,’ I growled, ‘whatever it is you’re on about.’

‘Just as you say, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan in as placatory a fashion as he could manage. ‘We’re not seeking to annoy you, not in any way. We understand now. We all do—including Mr Bretwalda. Isn’t that right?’

‘Is it?’ rumbled Bretwalda, tearing his gaze from me for the barest second.

‘Remember?’ prompted Disvan. ‘The desk? Everyone was told. It was just that we didn’t expect...’

‘Oh arhhh...’ interrupted Bretwalda, some form of enlightenment now dawning on him. ‘I recall it. So that’s why.’

‘Exactly!’ concluded Disvan triumphantly. ‘So bygones can be bygones, can’t they.’

Bretwalda thought for a moment and then answered by turning away and lumbering off. His sons and womenfolk obediently followed, though one tapped the side of his nose as he went—signifying ‘while breath remains, I’ll remember’. I gave him the finger in return and sneered derisively.

Meanwhile, the emergency temporarily over, Mr Disvan was mopping his brow with a red kerchief and accepting the drink proffered by Lottie.

‘That was close,’ he said to me. ‘You were nearly part of the hard-core on Bretwalda’s latest site.’

‘See if I care,’ I said with, I thought, passable bravado.

He favoured me with a long scrutiny.

‘Pre-cise-ly,’ he said at last. ‘That will increasingly be the problem.’

‘What problem?’ I snapped. ‘I’ve got no problems.’

Annoyingly he side-stepped the subject and came in on a fresh tack.

‘Would I be right in saying, Mr Oakley, that you’ve had to bring a quantity of work home lately?’

I projected the conversation three or four exchanges on but couldn’t see any obvious traps. It therefore seemed okay to answer truthfully.

‘Fair bit,’ I said. ‘There’s a rush on. What of it?’

He smiled winningly at me. ‘No reason, just curiosity.’

‘You should be careful, Mr Disvan. That stuff kills cats.’

‘So they say. However, I was merely taking an interest. Likewise with that tear I notice in your jacket, Mr Oakley. I bet the work thing and that are connected.’

I narrowed my eyes at him.

‘Matter of fact, they are. I snagged it on my desk while I was working.’

‘And I see there’s a new patch on your trousers.’

‘Who put that on?’ asked Lottie. ‘Did they do it in the dark or something?’

‘He’s going through a bad patch,’ laughed Mr Jarman—before he was brought to a dead halt by my scorching glare.

‘
I
put it on,’ I said heatedly, ‘after catching myself on a drawer handle.’

‘A desk drawer handle?’ hazarded Mr Disvan.

‘Yes, if you must know. And seeing you’re so interested, the bandage on my middle finger arises from trapping it in the same bloody drawer. Satisfied?’

Somehow it seemed that he was, or at least had all the information he presently required. Drawing himself to his full modest height, he nodded.

‘Yes and no, Mr Oakley. Satisfied isn’t really the right word. Let’s just say we’ll bide content for the while. I think you’re almost over the worst.’

‘Worst of what?’ I said, all aggrieved, but was ignored.

‘Come on, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, advancing towards me, ‘you’re in no fit state for company tonight. Off home with you.’

And whereas, while I remained alive, the Bretwaldas would have been unable to, Mr Disvan somehow assumed the authority, the unassailable gravitas, to lead me by the hand to the door.

‘Goodnight, Mr Oakley,’ he said evenly. ‘Have an early bed, I should. No more work.’

‘What the hell gives you the...’ I started, but to a blank door. He had shut it in my face.

My fists clenched and unclenched of their own volition, but in an instant, the torrid wave of anger ebbed away and the swirling cold wind outside the Argyll seemed to second Mr Disvan’s proposal.

I turned on my heels and strode off. On reflection, home seemed like a good idea—but sleep less so. Maybe a few hours midnight-oil burning, perhaps an entire soft-commodities futures and options projection analysis, would lower the level in the black energy reservoir. With a bit of luck, elusive sleep would come to me at last, as it so often did lately, while I was sitting at my desk.

*  *  *

‘Love the black velvet jacket!’ said the landlord. ‘Very Oscar Wilde. Don’t change a thing!’

‘And is that mascara,’ asked Mr Patel, ‘or just rings under your eyes?’

‘He looks like a depressed panda,’ said Mr Bretwalda, grinning, secure in the knowledge that my one allowed surprise attack was used up.

‘Have you gone “Gothic”, Mr Oakley?’ asked Jarman. ‘I’m told it’s all the rage.’

‘No,’ I answered concisely, otherwise ignoring the gibes and edging my way determinedly to the bar.

‘Shame,’ Jarman ploughed on, looking genuinely disappointed, ‘Love the music. And the vampire look on the women—yummy!’

‘I think long hair suits, Mr Oakley,’ said Lottie the Landlady, maternally flicking a lock from over my face. ‘Well, it would if it were washed,’ she added hesitantly.

I didn’t mind. I was past caring. All the petty trivialities that used to fill up my days and thoughts were as nothing now. Like a man tied to a church steeple, I had a certain perspective on life below—at the expense of personal comfort. And now I came to consider it, I realised that that’s what these people were, to be honest. Below me.

‘What do you know?’ I said contemptuously, turning on the crowd in the public bar. They looked at me and then at each other in puzzlement. It was a good question, apparently. What
did
they know?

I took the opportunity of this social dislocation to order a drink.

‘Crème de menthe?’ queried Lottie, incredulously. ‘No beer?’

‘
And
beer,’ I yelled. ‘Monstrous beers—with liqueur chasers—all night long!’

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ chipped in Doctor Bani-Sadr. ‘It’ll be green-bile time tomorrow.’

‘Tonight, I dream,’ I told them, ‘and step outside what is laughingly called my “life”. Tomorrow can mind its own damn business.’

Mr Disvan had been studying me closely all the while. I was well aware of that. I also caught the tail end of something the landlord was saying to him.

‘...for that. Like you say, frustration’s given way to… what d’yer call it: despond. He’s on his...’

Disvan’s eyes never wavered from me. He didn’t seem to share the landlord’s good cheer.

‘No,’ he said, part to me, part perhaps to himself, ‘it’s getting worse, driving deeper. Maybe forming permanent attachments.’

I turned away, too tired, too removed to even comment on their gibberish. In any case, the withering glance I’d mustered had offered sufficient reply.

Then, for a while, the bittersweet chill of crème de menthe and beer was revolting world enough to occupy me and stave off thought.

Later on, responding sullenly to reality’s gravitational pull, I surfaced and caught the tail end of the Disvan/landlord summit.

‘I can even see a case for intervention,’ said Disvan.

The landlord sounded shocked. That was unusual enough to be interesting, almost.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t see it. ‘Sides, it goes against the grain. An Englishman’s home is his castle—and I don’t want to lose the custom.’ This final word was unconvincingly disguised as an afterthought and, though it might only be a suggestion, Mr Disvan took account of just whose suggestion it was.

‘There is that,’ he agreed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll have one more try.’

You didn’t have to actually see the landlord to know if he was pleased or relieved. It trumpeted its existence in the rattle of glasses and the placing of size 13 boots.

‘Now, you listen, mind,’ I heard him say to me, a gale of displaced pub air shooting by my averted eyes, ‘and dwell on it. Sales are bad enough as it is.’

And then Mr Disvan was beside my shoulder, somehow directing his gaze round corners to get my attention.

‘I put it to you, Mr Oakley,’ he said quietly, ‘that “monstrous beers” are no answer to your problem.’

‘What about monstrous crème de menthes?’ I asked facetiously.

‘Nor them,’ replied Disvan, blindly literalist as ever.

I pointedly ordered some more of both, hoping he would take the hint and go away. Naturally, he did neither, obliging me to be more direct.

‘And who says I have a problem?’ I asked him brusquely. ‘You?’

He was quite shameless. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ That sort of honesty was shocking.

‘In my judgement,’ he continued, ‘I’d say your sub-Byronic look, your suicidal attack on Mr Bretwalda, your obvious Hamlet-proportioned disenchantment with life, are symptomatic of a problem, yes.’

He had a good set of arguments there, which made it all the more annoying.

‘Just because I’m more thoughtful...’ I said. But that was as far as I got.

‘More morose, more aggressive,’ continued Disvan, in a telling litany, ‘more violent and—hard to credit—more promiscuous. The risks you’ve taken these last weeks, the people you’ve offended, Mr Oakley—and the drink you’ve put away!’

‘It does have its plus points, I grant you,’ said the landlord, before a glance from Disvan compelled him to silence.

‘It’s all out of character,’ Mr Disvan went on, ‘and accelerating. A mere two months ago, would you have said what you said to the Bishop of Goldenford?’

‘His car was in my way.’

‘Would you have done what you did to Bridget Maccabi?’

‘She shouldn’t have dared me. And I may sue about the scar.’

‘And would you have had an affair with your boss’s wife?’

‘Probably.’

‘And put an advert about it in the
Financial Times
?’

I shrugged. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.