Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (7 page)

Once considered, Disvan’s argument seemed unanswerable, but even so a wave of bitterness at Morton’s fate and the world in general swept over me.

‘Whatever happened to the truth, Mr Disvan?’

‘It lost credibility Mr Oakley, and went into hiding.’

‘Amen,’ said the policeman. ‘Put the boat about. Let’s head for home.’

*  *  *

Mr Morton’s body was washed ashore several days later, ‘slightly bashed  about and nibbled by the fishes,’ as the blunt and thick-skinned coastguard told Mr Disvan on the telephone.

After the legal formalities of autopsy and inquest were served, it therefore fell upon us to attend a second and final Morton funeral within the space of a few months. In contrast, however, to the previous occasion, a sizeable crowd of sincere mourners were present at the obsequies and people were arrayed two or three deep around the graveside.

To my horror I saw that it was intended to bury Harry in a double grave with his late wife, and I whispered to Mr Disvan who was beside me.

‘This is appalling. Can’t we do something to prevent it?’

‘On what grounds, Mr Oakley?’ he answered with a shrug.

Once again, as soon as I gave it more than cursory thought, any mention of the truth became obviously impossible.

‘What I don’t understand,’ I continued quietly, ‘is how she followed us there. I mean, was she physically there? Did she walk all that way travelling by night maybe? How did she know where we were?’

‘The ways of the departed are not like ours, Mr Oakley. They see different things and are subject to different rules.’

‘My God!’ I said suddenly—and too loudly, for Father Wiltshire looked up and gave me a reproving glance. ‘Look, the soil on her grave is all disturbed and churned up. She’s been out of there!’

Disvan attempted to calm me. ‘Not necessarily. The earth on her grave hasn’t had time to settle properly yet, and the digging of Harry’s trench would have disturbed hers anyway.’

I remained unplacated, however. ‘Will she rest now, do you think?’

‘Yes, I would imagine so, Mr Oakley. She got her own way in the end. Harry was made to do as he was told and that was all that ever really mattered to her. He’s back in her power now, so perhaps she’ll be satisfied.’

I fell silent and the sun seemed to lose its warmth as I pondered how Mary Morton had spent the hours after leaving our world behind, and by what long weary roads she had travelled to the sea and her moment of victory.

While I was thus lost in thought, the policeman edged his way over to us and discreetly sought our attention.

‘You seem out of sorts, Mr Oakley.’

Mr Disvan answered for me. ‘I believe he is, Stan.’

‘And would I be right in saying it’s because you think that the Morton woman’s finally won?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you would be right.’

‘There you are then! Can I tell him, Mr Disvan?’

Disvan mused for a moment and then nodded his head. The constable turned animatedly to me and whispered in my ear.

 ‘She’s not going to win. Harry is—finally and conclusively and in a fitting manner. We’re not leaving Harry to spend eternity alongside her. We’re going to weigh her down in death the way she weighed Harry down in life, and we’re going to feed her to Harry’s beloved fish in Broadwater Lake.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

He looked left and right before replying, as if he feared eavesdroppers, even though all those present were well disposed Binscombe folk.

‘What I mean, Mr Oakley, is an unofficial midnight exhumation party. Are you with us?’

I looked at Mr Disvan for confirmation of what I thought I’d heard. He coolly returned my gaze from the edge of his eyes.

‘It seems reasonable, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘She forbade Harry to go fishing and Providence appears prepared to let that be enforced, even from beyond the grave. However, nothing was said that she shouldn’t await judgement day sleeping with the fishes.’

ONLY ONE CAREFUL OWNER

‘Good wood, Albert,’ cried someone as Mr Whiteburgh’s bowl gently kissed the side of the jack on its way past, thereby making the ultimate victory of the Binscombe team seem all the more certain.

Less demonstrative, but just as enthusiastic, Mr Disvan joined with the round of appreciative applause.

‘They’ll not catch us now,’ he confided to me.

The home Goldenford side appeared to share this view and started to relax the frightening degree of concentration they always brought to this local derby. A few of them went so far as to strike up easygoing conversations with their opponents, probably about the drinking which normally followed the game, and the events of the year since the last one.

Although I would not have admitted it in present company, I was relatively indifferent to the match’s outcome. My motives for attending had more to do with the idyllic setting and attendant jollities than any burning desire to witness victory. Someone who was observing me rather than the game would have noticed that, for the most part, my attention was devoted to the river which flowed beside the bowling green and to the boggy Lammas lands beyond. For all my years of residence, I had yet to find in myself the professed and fervid Binscombe patriotism of my circle of friends.

The church clock struck seven. The sun was just setting over its Norman tower and casting a friendly if waning light over the raised ground of the graveyard. Mr Disvan had told me that the vast yews which stood within it had, in their comparative youth, probably provided longbows for the battles of the Hundred Years War. I’d read elsewhere, however, that the best bow staves had been generally imported from Spain. Even so, it was a pleasing notion and so I had kept my sceptical modern theories to myself.

It seemed to me that the setting could be part of a ‘This England’ calendar scene, and I one of the anonymous archetypal Englishmen within it.

As very often happened, no sooner had any halfway agreeable idea entered my head than the world somehow instantly intruded to blow the concept asunder. In this particular instance, the world’s emissary was the screech of car brakes and the repeated sounding of a horn.

Everyone looked up to see that a yellow Ford Fiesta had come to a halt, quite illegally it should be said, on the road that ran parallel to the river and the associated recreation grounds. The highway was some way off and so the owner of the offending vehicle could not be made out.

‘Anyone recognise it?’ said the Goldenford Captain, a burly red-faced man with arms like giant hams. Nobody did and so the game continued.

Obviously frustrated by our lack of response to his signals, the motorist left his car and set off towards us on foot. Another figure, a female one, similarly alighted and followed on at a lesser pace. It seemed their intentions were friendly, for the young man in the lead was waving at us.

‘I know who it is,’ said Mr Disvan, squinting at the approaching visitors. ‘It’s Trevor Jones and his young lady.’

‘Who are they?’ I inquired.

‘Don’t you know them? They’re both Binscombe people. Their families have been around here for a long, long time.’

‘I don’t recall the name.’

‘Possibly not; they’ve both been away at university so you may have missed meeting them.’

‘I see.’

‘We’re very proud of them. As far as I know, they’re the first Binscombe youngsters to go to university, apart from the Tamlyn boy who went to theological college, which isn’t quite the same thing. Also, they started courting before they went away, so they’ve done well to stay together all that time, given the temptations and distractions.’

‘I suppose they have.’

By this time the young couple were almost upon us. Close to, I now recognised them as people I’d seen very occasionally, although never to speak to. The young man, Trevor, as I now knew him to be, appeared bright and personable even if his taste in clothes ran to the somewhat garish. His ‘young lady’, as Mr Disvan quaintly termed her, was as dark haired and dark complexioned as her boyfriend was fair, and seemed as quietly demure as he, by all tokens so far, was not.

Jones sauntered up, a broad relaxed smile on his face.

‘Hello, everyone. Mr Disvan, how are you?’

The men of Goldenford were not used to even such a mild manifestation of eccentricity as this and looked to Disvan for guidance. Should the stranger be dealt with, or could the game continue?

‘It’s okay,’ Mr Disvan announced, ‘he’s known to us.’

Jones seemed genuinely amazed that anyone should doubt this. ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘carry on.’

And, with perhaps the merest tokens of disbelief, this they did.

Young Trevor shook hands with Disvan and was then introduced to me. As eve,r the seemingly irrelevant point of my family’s ancient links with Binscombe was brought up in the same breath as my name. The young lady turned out to be called Tania, Tania Knott, although the apparent intention was that her name should soon become Jones as well. Whereas Trevor’s greeting to me was amiability itself, it struck me that her words of introduction betokened more human warmth behind them.

‘So you’re back from university, are you?’ said Mr Wessner, our ‘man from the Town Hall’, stating the obvious as a conversational gambit.

‘Yes,’ Trevor smiled, ‘we’re finished there now. The results will be out in a month or so and then we’ll know whether we’ve wasted the last three years or not.’

‘We’ve every confidence in you,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘I’m sure you’ll do well in your exams.’

Trevor smiled knowingly at Tania. ‘Let’s hope your faith isn’t misplaced,’ he said.

‘What subject did you read?’ I asked.

‘Electrical engineering; we both did.’

‘Oh, that’s interesting because—‘

Mr Disvan closed off this avenue of inquiry by interrupting. ‘And what are you up to at the moment?’

‘Decorating mostly, in between writing job applications. As you know, Tania’s father gave us a place in Quarry Lane as an advance wedding present and it needs quite a bit of work doing on it.’

‘Yes,’ said Disvan, ‘I know the place. It used to belong to a couple called Bellingham, Jehovah’s Witnesses as I recall. When the wife died, old man Bellingham lost interest in things, religion included, and let the house and garden go rather.’

‘Anyway,’ said Trevor, ‘that’s all getting away from why I came over to see you. I wanted you all to see our car.’

‘You’ve bought a car?’ said the landlord who was with us.

‘Yep, our first. We got it today.’

‘We’ve just driven it back from the car auction,’ added Tania. ‘It seems very nice. Come and have a look.’

Since the game’s conclusion now seemed forgone, the Binscombe spectators, a dozen or so in all, duly did as they were bidden and we trooped up over the recreation ground and through the children’s swings to the double-yellow-lined roadside.

‘Isn’t it a little bit dodgy to buy from motor auctions if you’re not in the trade?’ asked Mr Wessner, whom life and experience had made a pessimist.

‘Sometimes,’ replied Trevor, nothing daunted, ‘but Tarn and I are pretty good with machines and we gave it a thorough going over before buying. As far as I can make out it’s as sound as a bell.’

‘The dealer said it’d only had one careful owner,’ Tania said.

A few covertly smiled at this, but no one was impolite enough to voice their cynical views. Mr Patel said that his brother, the one from Winchester, had had one of those cars once and he’d been full of praise for it till he wrote it off on the M25.

Still consumed with pride at his acquisition, despite this last hint of mortality, Trevor got in and revved the motor for us. Then he invited us to inspect the engine and we, instant experts all, made obliging approval noises at its tone and appearance.

‘Well then,’ he said by way of summation, ‘what do you think?’

We all agreed it was ‘very nice’.

Obviously pleased with this, a further idea struck the young man. ‘Tarn, how about a picture?’

Miss Knott looked into the depths of her bright red bag and brought forth a little camera.

‘Would you oblige, Mr Disvan?’

‘Not I, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘I’ve no facility with such things. You’d come out minus your heads or feet.’

‘How about you, Mr Oakley, then?’

‘Okay.’

Accordingly an informal study of the car and its proud owners was taken. It was a quite pleasing shot with the young couple arm in arm beside the vehicle, with the church and sunset as a backdrop. My only anxiety was that there might not be enough light.

The moment and their pleasure thus captured for all time the Jones-to-be bid us farewell and sped off. Us older folk, probably all engrossed in our own memories of youth, slowly returned to the dying stages of the bowls match and the celebrations to follow.

*  *  *

‘Hang on—who’s the little girl?’ said the landlord holding the photograph aloft.

‘You may well ask,’ replied Trevor, an unbecoming pensive look on his face.

The assembled company formed a jostling semi-circle around the bar seeking a view of the picture the young couple had brought in. A certain respectful space was left for Mr Disvan and, since I was beside him, I was able to gain a relatively clear view.

My fears about lack of light had been unjustified. In technical and aesthetic terms the picture was faultless. The car featured well and the couple’s shared pleasure in life was evident from their easy pose and unforced smiles. The church spire and golden red glow of the sky added a touch of timelessness to the human event that the picture celebrated. All of this however went unnoticed and unappreciated, because clearly visible in the back seat of the car was a little flaxen-haired girl.

The fact that her presence there was unaccountable may have had something to do with it, but it seemed to me that her face, partly turned towards the camera and partly hidden in shadow, was not regarding us in any friendly fashion.

‘It’s a trick of the light,’ said the landlord. ‘Here, have a drink on the house.’

Tania accepted the proffered brandy with thanks. ‘Do you really think so?’ she said. ‘It seems an awfully clear image.’

‘It must be. What else could it be?’

A silence fell as everyone pondered possible answers to this rhetorical question.

‘Perhaps there’s something wrong with your camera,’ suggested Mr Disvan. ‘Were the other pictures on that film all right?’

Trevor flicked rapidly through the rest of the photographs in the yellow envelope he held. ‘As far as we can see, yes, they’re all perfectly normal. There’s one taken on our holiday in Spain, some from the trip out to Basing House; all sorts of lighting and conditions, but they’re all okay.’

‘Maybe the camera was fed up with just seeing you two and decided to add someone to the last picture for variety’s sake,’ said Mr Wessner, in a rare stab at humour.

Trevor glared at him. ‘It isn’t funny. Seeing this has put Tania right off the car.’

One did not need any great powers of insight to observe that his fiancée was not the only person thus unnerved.

‘Here,’ said the landlord, taking the photograph and passing it round, ‘does anyone recognise her?’

The picture was duly exchanged from hand to hand and each person more or less gingerly inspected the girl who should not be there. No one thought that her face was familiar.