Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (26 page)

‘I suppose so, but it’s damned inconvenient. To think I spent my life in hope of social progress only to come to this. It’s like living in the eighteenth century.’

Esther indicated with her arm to take in both the room we were in and, presumably, her house in its entirety. I followed the gesture with my eyes, so far as the weak candlelight would permit, and realised that Esther Constantine had indeed effectively been pushed, much against her inclinations, several hundred years into our past.

‘There were worse centuries to live in,’ said Disvan.

‘Really?’ replied Esther dubiously.

Directly after the tragic death (or disappearance, as Esther termed it) of Dorothy Constantine, there had been a day of sustained destruction in the house. Electricians from the village, both hired and volunteers, had purged the building of every wire, fuse and cable and, as Esther had said, plunged it, in power terms at least, into a previous age. Subsequently, a kitchen range and various gas lamps were procured and installed, various kind souls repapered the ravaged walls: civilisation, of a limited sort, was restored. In due course the Electricity Board called, gave their bewildered approval to the work that had been done, and completed it by severing the house from the mains supply. The Constantine residence now stood in glorious isolation from the present era.

The video cassette, along with all the other, possibly tainted, electrical devices from the house, I buried in the garden. A ring of blackened grass that appeared a little while later above this spot was associated with the creature gaining freedom from its temporary captivity.

‘Do you think it’s still here?’ I asked.

‘Think?’ Esther replied imperiously. ‘Think? I know it is. Follow me.’

Mr Disvan and I did so and were taken to the kitchen. Esther opened a cupboard door, and to our surprise we saw that, atop a small black box fastened onto one wall, a tiny glass bulb was flashing furiously away.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘It’s here all right!’

‘I hope that’s a battery powered device,’ said Mr Disvan.

‘Yes, don’t worry. I’m not stupid, you know. That filthy dead thing can only get 1.5 volts of itself in. That’s enough for me to tell if it’s there, but not enough for it to be able to do anything.

‘It’s almost good enough to read by,’ I said, regretting it even as I said it. ‘Not to mention a great way of recharging batteries.’

Esther looked at me more in pity than in anger and shook her head.

‘Mr Disvan,’ her voice was all bitter pleading, ‘when will this nightmare end?’

He shrugged.

‘It might not, although I suspect that one day it will. The problem is that time is different in the creature’s world. It doesn’t have any direct relation with our own. The thing has been “born”, it has clearly grown and, by extension, it must someday “die”, that I’ll grant you. But as to when... it’s anyone’s guess.

‘But,’ she persevered, ‘what if it outlives me?’

‘We’ll make sure you’re put to rest a good way away where it can’t get to you.’

‘No, I mean what about the people who’ll come after me?’

‘There won’t be any. You’re going to make provision in your will that the house stays empty until such time as your executor says it can be sold—i.e. when that light stops flashing for good.’

‘And who’s that executor to be, may I ask?’

‘Myself.’

‘You seem to have it all worked out very nicely, Mr Disvan’

‘And you of all people should appreciate the necessity of having it all worked out.’

Esther nodded, conceding the point.

‘Mind you,’ she continued, ‘the light in the cupboard isn’t really necessary. The creature’s still alive in the walls. I only have to put a mirror up for more than a few moments and its ugly face appears in it.’

‘I wondered where all the mirrors had gone,’ said Disvan.

‘Well, now you know. You see, the worst thing is... is...’ she almost broke down, but by an effort of will recovered just in time, ‘is that the thing doesn’t only show himself. He shows images of my dear sister—horrible, detestable images of the two of them together.’

‘I understand,’ said Disvan. ‘Listen, that bulb is sufficient for you to see if the creature’s still about. Put temptation out of your way. Lose all your mirrors.’

Her strength at last exhausted, the old lady could help herself no longer and she began to gently sob, her cardiganed arm across her face.

‘I understand,’ she said, between gasps of despair, ‘I’ll try and do that. But how will I see to brush my hair? How else will I see my sister?’

For once, Mr Disvan’s voice was almost brutal.

‘Where she is, I don’t think you should,’ he said.

BINSCOMBE JIHAD

A very large, pugnacious-looking man entered the Argyll’s public bar. Instead of ordering a drink, he remained in the doorway, surveying the assembled company like a Dalek contemplating lesser species. Returning the compliment, we stared rudely back at him.

At length he deigned to actually speak to us.

‘I’m looking for someone called Disvan,’ he said.

No one replied. One or two people, acting the part of simple-minded yokels to the full, smiled vacantly at him.

‘Well? he said.

‘Well what?’ answered the landlord, leaving off shining a row of glasses.

‘Well, is he here?’ the man said angrily, obviously running on a short fuse. ‘I’ve been told he spends a lot of time in this place.’

‘I see...’ said the landlord, musing upon this ‘news’ as if it was a stunning revelation. ‘Well, suppose that were so—and I’m not saying it is—just what’s it got to do with you?’

‘I’ve business to conduct with him,’ the man snapped back, nothing daunted.

The landlord looked the stranger up and down, conveying with a look, far better than words could ever say, his deep doubts about the man’s ability to conduct ‘business’ with anyone. When this was done, he turned his gaze upwards, and stared at the ceiling.

‘I can’t see him at the moment,’ he said.

Things might have turned unpleasant at that point had not Alfred Bretwalda, the demolition man, stood up and made a pointed show of his twelve-inch height and maybe five-stone weight superiority over the visitor. For a few seconds he was lost in contemplation of Bretwalda’s expression of barely suppressed fury, not knowing that this was a permanent feature.

Mr Disvan stepped into the pregnant pause that followed this deployment of Binscombe’s Armageddon weapon.

‘I know Mr Disvan quite well,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a message for him.’

With some difficulty, the man tore his attention away from Bretwalda.

‘That’s no good, I need to see him personally,’ he said.

‘Okay, let us assume for the sake of argument that I am he—what of it?’

By way of answer, the man crossed the room, making the slightest of detours to avoid Bretwalda’s zone of influence, and tapped Disvan on the shoulder with an envelope he’d drawn from his overcoat.

‘I hereby serve upon you,’ he recited deadpan, in what was clearly a formula learnt by rote, ‘an injunction granted today against you and five other named individuals, preventing you from further interference in the proper workings of that entity known as Senlac Farm—the buildings, lands, employees and business enterprises thereof—from this moment forth.’

Mr Disvan took the envelope and nodded politely.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

The man, clearly glad to be leaving under his own steam and in one piece, swiftly retraced his steps and passed out of our knowledge for ever.

‘Well,’ said the landlord, ‘that’s buggered it.’

‘It would seem so,’ Mr Disvan concurred sadly.

‘Powerful things, those injunctions,’ said Mr Patel. ‘Mind you, it’s far from clear to me how you get one.’

‘In my experience,’ advised the massively cynical Mr Wessner, whose favourite reading was Machiavelli, ‘it seems to be related to being rich and powerful and employing greasy lawyers to tell lies for you in court.’

‘There may be some truth in that,’ said the landlord. ‘Look what Terence the solicitor was able to do for that CBI chap who ate his wife.’

‘So they say,’ added Mr Disvan, ever the enemy of sensation. ‘The evidence wasn’t conclusive.’

‘Not conclusive?’ the landlord retorted. ‘They only matched up the teeth marks they found on the...’

‘This is all very fascinating,’ I said, interrupting out of sheer frustration, ‘but what the devil is this particular injunction about?’

The assembled company looked at one another, speechless for once, until Mr Disvan gestured for the landlord to be spokesman. He accepted the role with gusto.

‘Well, Mr Oakley,’ he said, leaning conspiratorially over the bar, ‘it’s all been happening while you’ve been off sunning yourself in Africa.’

‘Spain, actually,’ I corrected him.

‘Same thing. Anyway, while you’ve been on holiday, the people up at Senlac Farm finally went too far.’

‘In what way?’

‘They only started to try and gas the badgers, that’s all. They got the Min of Ag and Fish crowd in and tried to do it all secret like, but word got out somehow.’

I turned to Mr Disvan.

‘More Binscomite moles in place, eh?’ I asked.

Mr Disvan shrugged innocently.

‘What’s that?’ growled Bretwalda. ‘Moles? Badgers? Are you trying to be funny, Mr Oakley?’

‘Absolutely not,’ I hastily reassured him.

‘Either way,’ the landlord continued, ‘news got out and the ministry people were met by a crowd of protesters.’

‘Including, I’m pleased to say,’ said Disvan, ‘a sizeable number of villagers.’

The landlord nodded. ‘As well as a lot of weirdoes from Goldenford University, animal libbers and that sort.’

‘With their hearts in the right place,’ said Mr Disvan sternly. ‘I won’t hear a word against them.’

‘No, of course not,’ the landlord swiftly agreed. ‘But you’ll have to admit there was a bit of a woolly hat and dungaree problem.’

‘That’s neither here nor there.’

‘I suppose not. Anyway, to cut a long story short, that man Wheldon, the farm manager, cut up shirty and thought he’d read us the riot act—his version of it that is. Spoke to us like a lot of ignorant savages, he did. After that tempers flared, fists flew, the police arrived and arrests were made.’

‘But no gassing ever got done,’ said Disvan.

‘That’s right,’ echoed a man—a churchwarden and local pillar of respectability. ‘Because, by that time, some hooligan—it may even have been me—had put a stone through the ministry van’s windscreen. Whereupon they took off sharpish.’

‘Then,’ continued the landlord, ‘do you know what that Wheldon chap did?  He only waved a shotgun at us—loaded, for all we knew—with the polis standing by and all that. Of course, someone took his bloody gun and smashed it for him!’

‘Bit of a waste that; it was a Purdy,’ said Mr Disvan wistfully.

‘Maybe, maybe. Anyhow, I’m blowed if the coppers didn’t go and arrest young Grace Maxted for doing it!’

‘And she’s still in chokey, “pending serious charges being laid” growled Bretwalda. ‘So don’t tell me Wheldon isn’t pulling strings everywhere, making things worse for the girl.’

The landlord agreed. ‘We all knew he was a powerful man, what with all his lawyers and contacts in London, and all those magistrates and the like who go to the parties he gives. What we didn’t realise till then was that the local polis were afraid of him as well.’

‘It shakes your faith, it really does,’ said Lottie, the landlady, from behind the bar.

Normally, in areas where I had no strong opinion either way, I went along with the tide of Binscombe opinion, nodding judiciously at the appropriate moments. In this case though, it seemed that I was being asked to sympathise with riotous assembly amounting to insurrection and I refused the jump. Risking lengthy ostracism, I asked if there was some pressing reason why this Wheldon person shouldn’t be allowed to clear his farm of badgers.

‘After all,’ I said, to an already deeply unreceptive audience, ‘aren’t a lot of other farmers doing the same thing, because of the badger and cattle tuberculosis link?’

Mr Disvan shook his head sadly.

‘Yes and no, Mr Oakley,’ he said softly. ‘Yes, some farmers are doing what you say—though not in these parts up to now. And no, there isn’t a link between badgers and cattle sickness.’

‘But I read...’

‘Doctor Bani-Sadr interrupted.

‘I know what you’re referring to, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘but, believe me, it’s very doubtful that there is a link—only a few inconclusive studies a long time ago, now largely discredited. It’s just that the theory is convenient to a certain type of person.’

I remained unconvinced. It was hard for me to credit that any government body, even in the interventionist, agricultural field, would stir themselves to take action or spend money unless absolutely obliged to.

‘I think that’s a bit harsh, doctor,’ I said. ‘How do you know that Wheldon isn’t simply acting in the best interests of his farm as he sees it?’

‘Because, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, ‘Senlac Farm is an arable farm. There’s been no cattle there since the seventeenth century.’

‘Oh...’

‘Still want to rush to Wheldon’s defence, do we?’ asked Doctor Bani-Sadr, not unkindly.

‘No, not really.’

‘Good. Your sympathy’s wasted on him. It’s my honest opinion that he wanted the badgers killed just out of devilment.’

‘And to spite us,’ added the landlord.

‘Yes, quite possibly. I strongly suspect, that if the ministry would only oblige, he’d have us all gassed too. We clutter up the place and get in the way of his Bentley and his daughters’ riding lessons.’

‘You may be right, doctor,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘In the brief time he’s been here he’s done nothing but harm. He’s rooted up all the hedges...’

‘And remnants of the ancient forest,’ said Bani-Sadr.

‘Precisely. All those went straight away. Then he deep-ploughed the ring-barrows on his land—and that probable Roman villa site—“by accident”, so he said.’

‘And got a pitiful fine for doing it,’ said Mr Wessner. ‘No wonder he was smirking in that press photo outside the court.’

Disvan continued the litany of errors. ‘He’s sacked some of the longest serving farmworkers and, by all accounts, operates a terror regime over the remainder. He’s cut down the old trees, whether they were in the way or not. He’s sprayed the wayside flowers to death. He shoots people’s cats and dogs if they so much as look at his land and... so on and on, Mr Oakley. He’s a little man, you see. Put a farm or a gun in his hands and he starts to act the bully.’

Doctor Bani-Sadr put the cap on the list of these most grievous faults.

‘And now, when the farm looks like something out of the Russian steppes or American Mid-West—only more sterile—he’s found out about the last vestige of free life in his domain, the badgers. To complete his scorched earth policy, he has to exterminate them.’

Disvan nodded.

‘To tell you the truth, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘despite all my best efforts to see his good side, I don’t like that man.’

I was shocked. I’d rarely heard Mr Disvan condemn a person without reservation. It had the effect of a pronouncement of judgement or a threat, without possessing the form or substance of either.

‘Well okay,’ I said hastily, ‘even if all you say is true—and forgive me if this sounds heretical—what is the great importance of these animals’ survival?  I mean, are they really worth all the trouble?’

I feared that my question would further offend local sensitivities but, if it did, those assembled gave little sign of it. One of the advantages of being regarded as a ‘newcomer’ was that not much was expected of me.