Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (68 page)

How long I stayed that way I couldn’t say. Shock suspends time better than drugs, but the coming down is more sudden. I ‘woke’ to find my mouth open and arms crossed over my chest. A policeman was tapping my shoulder.

‘I appreciate your predicament, matey,’ he said in a grim voice, ‘But you can’t stand here blocking the traffic. Move along please.’

Instinct, fuelled by childhood strictures, got my legs moving where nothing else would have. Even outside of the known universe, one should never argue with policemen or lunatics.

And yet... it
was
the known universe in a way. This Eastbourne seafront and the one I knew from memory weren’t so different. It was only a matter of passing years and progress that separated the two. I had strayed into my father’s world and time and, indicative of the scarcity of solace, I took this as cause for encouragement.

The policeman (or bobby as I now thought of him) had sat down on some railings and was regarding me with infinite sadness.

‘Don’t ask,’ he said wearily, waving me to silence just as I opened my mouth. ‘It’s too much to go through. Go and ask in there. They’ll talk to you.’

I looked across the road at the Eastbourne Grand Hotel to which he was pointing.

Still minded to speak, I turned back but the policeman again beat me to the draw. He shook his head and, stricken with fatigue, gestured me away. It couldn’t be made any plainer. He had enough on his plate.

There was little enough traffic to delay me, just the odd tourer in the distance, and so I crossed the road. Beyond the glass double door, the hotel’s air was hot and still. I could sense, if not yet see, that dust was winning an ancient war here, its enemies worn down into submission. The carpet was thin in defined tracks and the wallpaper a long sad way from its prime. From being the flagship of Eastbourne accommodation that I recalled, the Grand had somehow declined. It had become like an establishment catering to a certain type of furtive ‘weekend away’, where external comforts were of secondary importance. (I had a passing familiarity with same.)

The desk-clerk did nothing to dispel this image. It was all he could do to force himself to talk to me.

‘Pass on through,’ he said. ‘The party’s in there.’

I must have allowed myself to believe I really was in some downmarket passion exchange from my past. Or perhaps I was light-headed. Either way, I actually attempted a witticism.

‘Don’t you want me to sign in?’ I heard my voice saying.

The clerk grimaced and raised his head just a fraction.

‘Young man,’ he said, ‘you’re in, you’re welcome. But please, no humour. This is all well beyond a joke.’

He sounded like he’d endured a thousand years of non-stop accountancy and was accordingly drained parchment dry. I took the hint and moved on in the direction indicated. The clerk returned to listless turning of the pages of a yellowing newspaper.

In due course, led on by voices and the clinking of glass, I found the bar—a glitzy affair stuck in the corner of a large and dowdy room. For all its cheerless air, it seemed popular enough and a thriving trade milled round and about.

I stood and stared at these flesh and blood ghosts, walk-on characters from a long lost age, until one of them spotted me gawping.

‘How do,’ he said, smiling warmly. ‘Are you our exchange visitor?’

I looked blankly at him: a stereotype spiv and race-track wide-boy from half a century ago, and saw, alas, he was too real to ignore.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m lost.’

This got a laugh from the assembled crowd, more at me than with me, and for a second I would have cheerfully mown them down, Valentine’s Day style. They were, after all, dressed for the part.

Mr Spiv advanced and shook my hand.

‘Well,’ he said, seeming friendly enough, ‘that’s a spot of bad luck for you but, on the other hand, we could do with a new face. Come and have a drink.’

I allowed myself to be drawn into the throng and acknowledged a barrage of ‘hi’s’, ‘hello’s’ and ‘how d’you do’s’. In point of fact, they did seem pleased to see me.

‘Here,’ said the white coated barman, handing me a mega-brandy, ‘on the house!’

For its last stand, my sanity retreated to the castle keep of mundanity.

‘Actually, it’s a bit early for me,’ I said.

Again they all laughed.

‘Doesn’t matter, old boy,’ said a bluff, red-faced golfing type. ‘Drink the whole bloody bottle and you won’t feel any different. We’re just going through the motions. Same a-bloody-gain, please.’

‘One just has to drink at a party, doesn’t one?’ announced a tall, gaunt woman. ‘Otherwise it’s just too bore-making.’

‘I don’t understand any of this,’ I said, suddenly inconsolable. My brandy bombshell was downed in one and I found that the man had been right. It tasted, it burned, but it didn’t do the trick.

‘You and me both,’ agreed the golfer. ‘We drink when there’s no reason to, we celebrate when there’s no cause to. Bloody senseless if you ask me!’

‘But what else is there to do?’ asked a young girl with golden, bobbed hair, apparently a hotel chambermaid. ‘Nothing. So let’s get on with it!’

Everyone made ‘yes, quite right’ noises and, the temporary slough now over, the ‘party’ resumed as before.

‘But... don’t you want to know who I am?’ I said, failing to keep the edge out of my voice.

‘Steady on, old chap,’ said the golfer comfortingly. ‘We don’t want to rush things. There’ll be plenty of time for all that.’

I went to speak, paused, and then forced myself on. ‘When?’

‘Well,’ said the golfer, turning a coward’s back on me, ‘somewhen in the years to come, I suppose.’

This finally and definitively flicked my panic button to on, and with a high pitched shriek I turned for the door. Quite where I was heading I’m still not able to say, but at the time it seemed like a genuine bit of hysteria would occupy a few minutes and thus forestall thought.

In the event, my path was barred as a large, crisply-suited man entered the room and occupied the door. He looked down at me from some height (actual and moral), hands crossed behind his back, Duke of Edinburgh style, trim moustache bristling. Short of him wearing a peaked hat with the legend ‘ex-Army’, his history could not have been plainer.

‘STAND WHERE YOU ARE!’ he boomed and I did. The, first tearful, then resentful, years of OTC at school left me no choice in the matter.

‘New arrival?’ he asked, directing the question over my shoulder.

‘Apparently so,’ said the gaunt woman. ‘Biffo’s managed to get through again and this one’s come in his stead.’

A half-hearted and puzzling chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly good Biffo’ did the rounds of the bar.

‘Looks like the racial stock’s deteriorated since our time,’ said the golfer. ‘He seems a bit of a shower.’

‘I see...’ said the black-suited man, putting a thousand rich ambiguities into the simple answer whilst deigning to look at me again. ‘Well, be that as it may, it’s my pleasant duty as manager to welcome you to the Grand. I hope your stay will be an enjoyable one.’

To my astonishment I found myself saying ‘thank you, I’m sure it will.’  Some sort of polite robot (or possibly just Englishness) had evidently taken over my response functions.

Either way, the manager clearly approved of the new stiffness to my upper lip.

‘Good man. Now, if you’d care to step into my office, there’s one or two formalities to sort out.’

There being nothing better or more sensible for me to do, I followed in the shadow of his broad back. As we left, the golfer at the bar seemed to remember something urgent.

‘Forgot to ask you, old boy,’ he shouted, almost toppling off his bar stool as he twisted round. ‘Was there another war?  Did we win it?’

*  *  *

‘Look!’ I said, exasperation making me brave. ‘You’ve had name, age, occupation, political, religious and ethical beliefs, conversational specialities and miscellaneous aptitudes (if any). Isn’t this a bit thorough just to check into a hotel? And when can I ask a few questions?’

The manager ignored me and continued to study his checklist.

‘Do you play a musical instrument?’

‘No.’

‘Have you any dramatic monologues or ballads committed to memory?’

‘No!’

He looked up at me. ‘And yet I see you were educated at a good school. Did your father ever consider asking for a refund?’

‘No. Right, now it’s my turn. Who’s this Biffo character I keep hearing about? He’s not the famous bear of that name, I take it?’

The manager gave me a very cool look.

‘Bears tend not have Christian names as far as I’m aware, Mr...’ he consulted his notes in a leisurely way, ‘Okey.’

‘Oakley.’

‘…since bears don’t have souls to christen—though I’m C of E, of course, and other churches may say differently. No, Biffo was one of the team, a damn fine chap, if a bit of a sort.’

‘Sort of what?’

‘A character, a card, a rough diamond, a go-getter. He got you, didn’t he?’

‘Did he?’

‘Absolutely. Biffo never reconciled himself to being trapped here, never gave up hope of “going over the wire”, so to speak, not even after his first bitter disappointment. It’s a shame innocent chaps like you get dragged in but, there it is. A chap’s got to do what...’

‘…a chap’s got to do, yes. Incidentally, when are you going to start talking sense?’

Like the shock of seeing the Queen die during her Christmas broadcast, I was taken aback to see the manager crack and fail. He buried his head in his hands and a strangled voice struggled through his clenched fingers:

‘Probably never, Oakley. I can’t face telling you. I can’t go through it all again! I’ve wearied myself in the repetition, laying awake in this ersatz Eastbourne, staring at a fake horizon. Just go away, will you?  Go back to the bar, find someone less tired to talk to you.’

*  *  *

‘Oh God, what a bore!’ said the gaunt woman. ‘Can’t you just pick it up as you go along?’

‘No,’ I said with unparalleled firmness. ‘I must know.’

‘Fair enough,’ said a bespectacled bald man sitting hitherto silently alone at a table. ‘I’ll tell him. I can take it.’

‘Well do it, then,’ said a depressed looking vicar, morosely cradling a chartreuse bottle, ‘but for Christ’s sake keep your voice down. I don’t want to hear!’

Taking the advice of this very probably ex-man of God, I swiftly joined the lonely volunteer. To my eyes he looked like a caricature librarian, but I suspect his shaving mirror daily showed him a scissors-sharp intellectual. To be charitable, in his day that wasn’t such an unforgivable thing to be. He peered at me through his John Lennon glasses and was similarly unimpressed.

‘Drink?’ he asked, holding out a bottle of—what else?—champagne. Since a glass didn’t seem included in the offer, I declined.

‘It’s no loss,’ he said, taking a hefty swig himself. ‘There’s no intoxicating effect. Drink ten gallons of it and you’d still be sober. Same with food; we just eat for the sake of it. We feast as much as we like and the stocks replenish overnight. It’s all part of the stupid rules of the place.’