Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (22 page)

The tone of Mr Disvan’s reply was one of patience and long-suffering rather than anger.

‘I don’t know, but it can’t be any less use than standing here doing nothing, can it?’

The Constantines considered this for a moment and then as one, like a disciplined conspiratorial cell, nodded their agreement.

‘I’ll go and fetch some drinks and crisps,’ said Dorothy, ‘but I don’t suppose we’ll have to wait too long.’

*  *  *

I was in no hurry to renew my acquaintance with ‘the half finished face’, but as the evening wore on and we were obliged to watch a series of numbing, banal quiz shows and sitcoms, I began to wish Dorothy Constantine’s prediction would come true. Disvan evidently shared my feelings, and after a while fetched down a weighty tome from the Constantine’s book collection and flicked through that rather than watch the entertainment on offer.

‘Tell me if anything happens,’ he said, ‘and I’ll be right with you.’

Merciful release in the form of the epilogue came after what seemed like a geological age of waiting. Dorothy and Esther stirred in their seats and Mr Disvan closed his book.

‘There’s no point in us waiting here all night for something to happen,’ I said, draining my glass thankfully. ‘We can always return tomorrow evening.’

‘That might not be necessary,’ replied Mr Disvan, redirecting our attention to the television. ‘Our guest has at long last arrived.’

It had indeed. The ghastly figure had silently come into view and was close up to the screen, mouthing and shouting as before. Occasionally it ebbed a little further back but, for the most part, the head and shoulders stayed put and seemed close enough to surge forth out of the television and into the room. Within a few seconds we could hear as well as see it, although what we heard made little sense—words such as ‘get’ and ‘hate’ and ‘free’—all in a shrieking voice mixed with uncontrolled laughter and incoherent babble.

As soon as the figure appeared, Mr Disvan waved us to silence and began to study the face with analytical concentration. Despite their earlier distress, the Constantines seemed reasonably blasé about what was happening and looked at the screen with only mild distaste. In the present situation, since I was not permitted to speak, I could only give myself up to examining the apparition, and having seen more than enough of the figure itself, I looked closely at its surroundings instead.

At times the creature, or whatever it was, seemed to be standing in an endless landscape of high prairie grass over which a sky of disturbing shapes and colours rushed at alarming speed. For a while this would disappear to be replaced by a blackness of such intensity as to suggest that I was seeing the deepest part of the earth or a place so distant that no starlight reached it. The ‘prairie’ would then reappear.

Although I later thought myself credulous for feeling so, at the time I clearly felt that I had no business to be seeing these places. It was a distinctly uncomfortable sensation.

After two or three minutes, Mr Disvan said, ‘Right, that’s enough. Turn it off.’

Esther Constantine went to go to the television and do as she was bidden but Disvan prevented her.

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t go too near it. Turn it off at the mains.’

Esther hesitated, changed her tack and, crossing to the other side of the room, removed the plug from the wall. The television screen immediately went blank. It may just have been my imagination but I would have sworn that the sound of the thing’s voice continued for a second, maybe two, after the power was pulled.

Fortunately, perhaps, I did not have too long to ponder on this fact for, soon afterwards, we were caused to jump by the ring of the telephone coming from the hallway.

‘Would you see to that, Mr Oakley?’ said Esther Constantine. ‘At this time of night it must be a wrong number—or those double-glazing people.’

Glad of an excuse to leave the room, I went out and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, it’s 12:30 at night, what do you want?’

The voice that replied seemed very distant and distorted by the line. ‘Where am I?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I want to get out.’

‘Who is this?’

‘I want to live.’

I was about to say something that would bring the conversation, such as it was, to a decisive close, when it dawned on me that, allowing for the effect of the line, I had been listening to this self-same voice only a few moments before. Acting instinctively I held the receiver away from me. The speaker seemed to be aware that I’d done so, and now shouted so that I could hear just as well as before.

 ‘I’ll get you! [incomprehensible] I’m nearly strong enough! I want to live!’

There was long pause. Clearly the voice had nothing new to say, and I was too shocked to be able to alert the others to what was happening. Then, with renewed vehemence he or it began to speak again.

‘Hate you!  Not fair, not bloody [incomprehensible]. I’ll pay in full!’ Suddenly the tone of the voice changed dramatically from raging fury to plaintiveness. ‘Where am I?’

At that moment, Mr Disvan looked round the door into the hall, presumably to see what on earth was detaining me. Gathering from the eloquent look of horror occupying my face that something was very amiss, he beckoned to the Constantines to follow him and approached the telephone. I gratefully passed the receiver to him.

‘Hello,’ said Disvan calmly.

Again there was a long silence before the voice bellowed forth once more in a tirade of foul abuse. Mr Disvan ignored this and again gently said, ‘Hello...’ 

A gap of four or five seconds ensued. Then the voice continued in a still angry but more reasonable manner.

‘I know all about you!’ it said. ‘I’ve been watching you. We all have.’

A long pause.

‘I want to live. You are all [incomprehensible] long enough! I’m nearly strong enough! Before? Why? I’ll pay you back! When I get... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...’

The line abruptly went dead. The voice’s final laugh echoed around the cold hallway.

‘Has this ever happened before?’ asked Mr Disvan.

The Constantines shook their heads, too shocked to reply in words.

We all returned to the living room and sat down. A contemplative silence reigned until Dorothy Constantine spoke.

‘Come to think of it, though, Mr Disvan, we’ve had a lot of what we thought were wrong numbers lately—that or burglars casing the joint—where there was just silence when we picked up the phone. Do you think..?’

‘Probably, Dorothy,’ Disvan replied gravely. ‘Leastways, I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’

Dorothy and Esther looked at each other in dismay.

‘Anyway,’ Disvan continued, ‘I know for sure now what your problem is. The sense of what it was saying on the television was even clearer than last time.’

He paused and looked wistfully at the Constantine sisters.

‘Well..?’ said Esther in an animated voice.

‘Are you sure there isn’t something that you want to tell me first?’ said Mr Disvan, ignoring the prompting.

‘No,’ said Dorothy.

Esther shook her head vehemently. ‘No, nothing—get on with it, man!’

‘As you wish. It seems that at some point in the past, there was a baby born in this house. It would further appear that the child was deliberately done away with very shortly after and buried somewhere in the structure of the building or perhaps the garden. What I was going to say was that it was laid to rest, but that wouldn’t be correct. The spirit is very far from at rest. It has awoken and grown. It seems to want revenge and, worst of all, ladies, it seems to believe that you are responsible for its death and present plight.’ He stopped to consider what he had said for a moment and then concluded, ‘Yes, that’s a reasonable summary.’

‘Us responsible!’ Esther Constantine exploded. ‘Impossible!’

‘Neither of us has ever had a baby, Mr Disvan,’ said Dorothy Constantine, more mildly, ‘and we would never dream of hurting one in any case.’

‘Well, at least you’re not denying the existence of a spirit. That’s progress anyhow,’ replied Disvan. ‘But as for what you say, why should the creature lie?’

‘Perhaps it’s merely mistaken. Perhaps it’s confused us with someone else,’ said Dorothy.

‘That could well be,’ I interjected, already forgetful of the derision with which my previous contribution had been received. ‘As a baby at the time of its decease, it would hardly be in a position to identify its killers, would it?’

‘Maybe,’ Disvan said dubiously. ‘Maybe so. If things in its realm of existence are the same as here—which I doubt they are.’

‘Mr Disvan,’ said Esther fiercely, ‘I don’t give a tuppence for your opinion of our reputations but I tell you straight that neither my sister nor I has ever had a baby. In fact, the last babies born in this house were Dorothy and I, and as you can see we’re both alive and well to report as much.’

‘Well,’ said Disvan, clearly still unconvinced, ‘I hear what you say but, with your beliefs, I’ve always assumed that you were early proponents of free love and it follows from that...’

‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Esther, ‘we’ve never subscribed to the glass of water theory.’

‘The what?’ I asked, somewhat bemused.

Mr Disvan enlightened me. ‘A famous Russian revolutionary called Aleksandra Kollontai said that satisfying the sexual urge should be as simple and casual a thing as having a glass of water when you’re thirsty. The phrase rather caught on.’

‘Did the lifestyle that goes with it catch on too?’ I asked, my interest engaged despite our present circumstances.

‘Not really—although Kollantai practised what she preached, even later on when she was the Soviet ambassador to Sweden.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘This is all irrelevant,’ said Dorothy. ‘We’ve lived our lives according to the precepts of Lenin, not Kollontai—great feminist though she was—and Lenin said, “The absence of self-discipline in sexual life is a bourgeois phenomenon; wild excesses in sexual life are reactionary symptoms.” And that is that as far as we’re concerned. We’ve never practised free love.’

‘Except,’ said Esther, ‘that Party summer school in Cambridge, just before the War.’

‘Oh yes, I forgot,’ agreed Dorothy. ‘With the exception of that week we’ve never practised free love.’

‘And there were no babies arising from it, either,’ added Esther decisively.

Disvan pondered—and accepted.

‘Ah well, if I was wrong for thinking what I did and for refusing to help you, then I ask your forgiveness.’

‘You thought that we...’ said Dorothy, shocked.

Mr Disvan shrugged his shoulders.

‘What else was I to think?  The thing was very adamant on the point. Admittedly, Doctor Bani-Sadr said that neither he or his predecessor had any knowledge of you bearing children, but in the time of your youth such things could be hushed up, couldn’t they?’

Esther Constantine glared at him and ground her teeth in exasperation.

‘Mr Disvan,’ she said, ‘you’re an ill-thinking, suspicious old man.’

‘Life has made me so,’ he replied. ‘However, to return to more pressing matters, if what you say is true then your only problem is to convince the creature. He seems to be hell-bent, if you’ll pardon the phrase, on revenging himself.’