Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (32 page)

‘Hang about,’ I said, ‘how come you know all this stuff?’

‘I learnt it at school,’ the landlord replied. ‘Everyone round here does.’

‘It’s a sort of extra-curricula facility offered hereabouts—to keep us on our toes from one generation to the next,’ said Mr Disvan.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, before I was interrupted,’ the landlord continued, noisily rattling a tray of glasses, ‘there’s a good bit where the poet says:

‘The warriors will scatter the foreigners as far as Durham

they will rejoice after the devastation,

and there will be reconciliation between the Welsh and the men of Dublin,

the Irish of Ireland and Anglesey and Scotland,

the men of Cornwall and of Strathclyde will be made welcome among us,

the Britons will rise again…’

‘And it’s quite specific about what’ll happen to us,’ chipped in Mr Patel. ‘Towards the end it says:

‘there will be widows and riderless horses,

there will be woeful wailing before the rush of warriors,

and many a wounded hand before the scattering of armies.

The messengers of death will gather

When corpses stand one by another.’

‘That’s after the English are defeated,’ explained Mr Disvan helpfully.

Mr Patel nodded and went on: ‘ “And Arthur’s people will reclaim Britain from
Manaw Gododdin
—that’s modern southern Scotland—to Brittany, from Dyfed to Thanet”.’

‘As for us,’ the landlord continued, ‘well, that’s spelt out, like Sammy said:

‘Let them be as exiles...

For the English there will be no returning.

The Gaels will return to their comrades.

The Welsh will arise in a mighty fellowship –

Armies around the ale, and a throng of warriors –

And chosen Kings who kept their faith...

The English race will be called warriors no more.’

‘So, as you’ve heard, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, ‘it’s war to the knife when that day comes. Hence all our precautions.’

I still refused to relinquish my weakening grip on what I saw as sanity, and cast around for further objections to hold on to.

‘But, for pity’s sake, these are just poems and legends and that’s all. They’re not detailed predictions of the day after tomorrow!’

‘Then why, pray tell me,’ said Disvan, ‘are Arthur and his retinue sleeping under Binscombe Ridge?’

‘Er...’

‘The mere “poems and legends”, as you call them, have their origin in the deep magic which keeps Arthur alive. Their composition began the day he passed out of normal existence with his life’s work incomplete. Their power of survival, their predictive power, is all part and parcel of the spells woven on that day. In a sense they each uphold one another.’

Being more than slightly overwhelmed, hoping to find cause for a defensive last stand, I buried my head in my hands. Silence fell on the company. It remained thus for a span of minutes—minutes of furious thought on my part before I raised my head again; a reluctant convert to all I’d heard.

‘Very well,’ I said, consciously trying to put a brave face on the matter, ‘I believe you.’

Mr Disvan smiled and took a sip from his, up to now, neglected drink. ‘Good,’ he said.

‘It’s just that it’s very hard to conceive of Arthur as a living person—a living enemy, more to the point.’

‘Not really, Mr Oakley. Not if you read around the subject in any depth,’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr in a fatherly manner. ‘In the really early Welsh stories—like the “Life of St Cadoc”, for instance—Arthur rarely appears in a kind or virtuous light. A good warleader, yes, but a bloodthirsty tyrant also. And if he behaves like that to his own people—well, you can imagine what he’d do to us.’

‘But why here?’ I asked. ‘Why is he here of all places?’

Disvan stepped in to answer this last semi-doubting query of mine. ‘Because he “died” not far off, in his last battle.’

‘Fighting against his own son,’ the landlord interjected.

‘Against his son, Mordred or Medraut, as Barry says,’ Disvan continued. ‘And, as he passed from his earthly life into the form that he’s in now, acting on the advice of his wisemen and supernatural allies, he demanded that he be buried here—temporarily.’

Stumbling still, I repeated Disvan’s words in the process of trying to accept them. ‘King Arthur demanded to be buried in Binscombe...’

‘That’s right, beneath what was to be called Binscombe Ridge.’

‘But... it’s hardly the general idea of Avalon, is it?’

Mr Disvan smiled, secure in some wisdom that I did not possess. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘we think it’s nice here.’

‘But what he didn’t account for, Mr Oakley,’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr, ‘was that our ancestors would recover from the reverses he’d inflicted on them and fight their way back to supremacy in the area. A mere two generations after Arthur’s massacres, we once again had the upper hand.’

‘And Binscombe was re-founded,’ said the landlord.

‘To keep an eye on Arthur’s resting place,’ the doctor added. ‘Against the day when, thinking conditions are ripe, he rises again to fulfil the prophecy.’

‘On which day,’ said Alfred Bretwalda, standing up and looming high over the company, ‘we’ll be waiting for him.’

‘And you’ll do what?’ I asked, aghast at the atmosphere of long brewed violence I was, for the first time, now perceiving.

‘Well, Mr Oakley,’ said Bretwalda, ‘forewarned is forearmed as the saying goes. Arthur’s people have largely forgotten or trivialised him but we haven’t. Even if he and his men succeed in burrowing out of fifteen hundred years worth of barricade, we’ll be there to greet him. What with Reggie Suntan’s arms trade contacts, with what the Constantine sisters gave us from their Spetsnaz allocation, and what the Israeli Embassy supplied for the information about Terence the Solicitor, we’re pretty well tooled up here. We’re the best armed village outside of the Lebanon!’

He folded his massive arms and gave me the sort of contented look a lion might give a lamb.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I reckon we can give him a run for his money this time. There’ll be no more Mount Badons for my people!’

I looked at Mr Disvan and saw from his mirthless smile, as cold and distant as starlight, that he did not share the general confidence and enthusiasm for the coming struggle.

‘Well,’ I asked him, ‘is that the way it’s going to be?’

‘Possibly,’ he replied, ‘and, thereagain, possibly not. I place no reliance on guns, even if they are Kalashnikovs and Uzi carbines. You used “state of the art” military technology against him last time—in those days it was the Scramaseax knife that gave you Saxons your name—and still you lost. I suspect that Arthur, or Artorius, or Artos the Bear as we once knew him, will have a few surprises up his mailed sleeve as he always did before. I fear that the blood will flow in rivers, just as in the previous time, before King Arthur is put back to sleep.’

Disvan sighed and then spoke softly, perhaps to me alone.

‘And nothing will be resolved, nothing made any better. Just another episode in the tussle over a small green valley and a few fertile fields.’

He looked up, his normal cheerfulness restored.

‘But never fear, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘I very much doubt it will occur in your days. No one will be asking you to risk being ridden down by Arthur’s knights.’

This image blossomed vividly in my mind for a brief second and gave me the spirit to rebel against my co-option into their historical dilemma.

‘There’s no question of it!’ I said fiercely. ‘King Arthur—one side or the other—means nothing to me. You tell me I’m a Saxon or whatever. Well, maybe so, but I don’t feel that way.’

‘Perhaps you don’t just now, but the feeling will grow, believe me. Your roots are here, in this soil, Mr Oakley. You may stretch and strain them as you will but they won’t ever break. Even if you never really feel you’re a proper Binscomite, then, sure enough, your children or grandchildren will.’

A sense of claustrophobic horror, worse than anything the events of the day had caused, crept over me. My fears were now purely personal.

‘But what if I don’t... if I just leave..?’

Again, Mr Disvan took on the appearance and tone of a reasonable and patient father.

‘Surely you now see,’ he said slowly, ‘that knowing what you do, there can be no question of you ever leaving. And if you choose to tell your descendants, nor can they. Your grandfather decided to break the link and for three generations you left us. But now, by the grace of God, you’re back—and more than welcome. The prodigal has returned.’

His smile widened, became more genuine and he raised his glass to me in  a toast.

‘Face it, Mr Oakley, you’re a Binscomite through and through, and now you’ve come home for good!’

I looked at him and then at each of the thirty or forty friendly faces directed at me in that public bar. My words of protest died on my lips and I suddenly realised that Mr Disvan’s every word was true.

REGGIE SUNTAN

Before he even entered the Argyll that afternoon, I was later told, Reggie Suntan’s bodyguards had checked the place out and pronounced it safe. He pointed them out to me, after we had been introduced and Mr Disvan had confirmed my Binscombe security clearance. Sure enough, I saw that there were two strangers in the bar, solitary watchful individuals who come quietly in and blended into the background. One was a Japanese man with a frighteningly neutral stare. The other was a slim, American-looking girl (how had I failed to notice her?) in leather trousers.

‘They’re the very best,’ said Reggie proudly. I tore my gaze away:

‘What, the trousers? Expensive are they...?’

Reggie gave me a very sharp look and frowned. I was very impressed and instantly eager to say the right thing. I began to understand how he’d become so obviously rich.

‘Oh... you mean the bodyguards. Well, yes, I can well believe it. I mean, you’ve only got to look at them...’

Mr Disvan came to my rescue.

‘Mr Oakley misunderstood you, Reggie,’ he said. ‘Bodyguards are hardly a common phenomenon round here, as you, of all people should know.’

Reggie Suntan accepted the rebuke cheerfully, his previous displeasure quite forgotten. For reasons that I’d probably never know, or at least understand, even he deferred to Mr Disvan. In all other respects, however, he was out of the ordinary. He spoke like someone in whom a mobster and an intellectual (talented versions of both) had once waged war for supremacy. At some point in the past, a peace had been forged between the two and a formidable alliance formed.

‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that,’ he said, good humouredly. ‘Bodyguards are a universal phenomenon where’s there’s a mismatch between society’s provision of law and order and existing inequalities of wealth distribution. It’s another supply and demand function really, innit? Take Binscombe, for instance—what about old Malatesta the bookie? Doesn’t he always trail that great Maxted lad round with him? What was his name now... Sigismund, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s different,’ said Disvan bluntly. ‘He’s only employed out of a sense of charity.’

Reggie showed his palms to Disvan in a placatory gesture. ‘Whatever you say, Mr D. Whatever you say.’

Out of the corner of my eye (and I kept it that way) I saw that the Japanese man was studying Mr Disvan with new interest. Disvan noticed it as well and said something harsh and guttural to him that I didn’t understand. The bodyguard clearly did, however, for he quickly looked away and blushed.

‘Anyway, gents,’ said Reggie Suntan, ‘before we get down to business, I propose another round of drinks.’

‘Good idea, off you go,’ said Disvan.

Reggie, not even deigning to look in the direction of the bar, raised his arm and clicked his fingers.

The landlord heard this, clicked his fingers back, and carried on with what he’d been doing.

Reggie grimaced. ‘Things don’t change much round here, do they?’ he said through gritted teeth.

Mr Disvan shook his head, smiling gently.

‘You see,’ said Reggie, ‘I’ve gotten used to the higher standards of service in Spain. Do you still have to fetch your own drinks in England?’

We said that that was, by and large, still the custom.

‘What a country!’ muttered Reggie as he sauntered off to the bar. This gave me the opportunity I’d been looking for, to speak freely.

‘I’m worried, Mr Disvan.’

Disvan looked round sharply, clearly concerned.

‘Why? What’s the matter?’

I thought that might have been obvious but was prepared to spell it out.

‘That man—who is he? A gangster?’

Mr Disvan gave me a broad smile.

‘Lord no! Reggie’s just a local boy made good. You’re in no danger; he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not unless it was strictly necessary.’

‘Then why all the security?’

‘Well, I think he moves in commercial circles which can be a bit... abrasive. But none of that need concern us.’

I looked at the tall man standing at the bar, in his designer golfing casuals and copious gold jewellery. He was waving a £50 note in the air whilst apparently deep in argument with the landlord.

‘If you say so, Mr Disvan. But he certainly looks like a gangster.’

‘I think that’s expected of him,’ Disvan replied, ‘like your business suit is of you.’

‘Right down to the mirror shades and cigar?’

‘Presumably.’

‘But what about his name. That can’t be real.’

‘No, you’re right there. It’s more of a nickname that we gave him, before he even left Binscombe. You must admit it’s very appropriate.’

I did admit it. Reggie’s suntan looked very expensive, the product of an easy life in warmer climes, boundless leisure and the occasional top-up in a private solarium.

‘He was always very particular about having what’s called ‘a healthy tan,’ Disvan continued. ‘Said it was the “essential him.” Always off on holidays he couldn’t really afford in the early days, he was, just to get and keep one.’

‘What does he do now?’ I asked.

Disvan shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’m not sure. It must be profitable, whatever it is, because someone tried to kill him for it last year. We read all about it in the papers. Terrible carnage, there was.’

‘Thank you. That’s reassured me no end.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Disvan, seemingly missing the sarcasm. ‘Like I said, Mr Oakley, that side of his life doesn’t impinge on ours—the real life lived here.’

This bold assertion could have been the genesis of another, entirely new, debate but I let it be, in favour of continuing to gnaw at the problem to hand.

‘Does he often come back to Binscombe?’

‘No,’ said Disvan, with just the tiniest hint of regret or rebuke in his voice, ‘not since his old mother passed on, ten years back. But don’t misjudge him, Mr Oakley. He’s not a bad lad. He does a lot of good works on the quiet and, if you’re a friend, you could trust him with your life.’

‘But not your wallet or your wife, I suspect.’

Disvan weighed this up and then nodded.

‘You may have a point there. Anyway, I think he must want something now or else he wouldn’t be back.’

‘Speaking of which, he’s heading back to us now. What shall we do?’

‘Nothing, Mr Oakley. Just don’t let him intimidate you. He’s a very nice person once you get to know him.’

I took (silent) leave to doubt this. Reggie Suntan had just left the bar, still engaged in a loud altercation with the landlord.

‘...and less of your bloody mouth,’ were his parting words, ‘I had enough of that from you at school!’

Few people dared to speak to the landlord like that, even in semi-jest, but by the time he’d had returned to our table, Reggie Suntan had apparently forgotten all about the row. It was clear that he was no stranger to unpleasantness.

‘Well,’ he said, extending his hand to me, ‘it’s been very nice meeting you, Mr Boakley. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other again during my next trip back to the mother country.’

I didn’t know what to do or say. If I took his hand, I was accepting his dismissal of me from the company. If I didn’t...

‘I don’t know why you’re saying goodbye to Mr Oakley, Reginald,’ said Disvan, sounding genuinely puzzled, ‘in view of the fact that he’ll be here till closing.’

‘He will?’ said Reggie, eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, he will.’

‘Is he to be trusted?’

Mr Disvan equivocally flicked his hand back and forth.

‘In so far as anyone is,’ he said.

I filed this faint praise away for future complaint.

‘But is he blood?’ Reggie persisted.

‘Of the oldest, recently returned.’

Reggie Suntan turned to look at me and the look was prolonged into a full blown scrutinization. At long last, he smiled and only then withdrew his proffered hand.

‘Sorry, Boakley,’ he said, ‘no offence taken I hope. If Mr Disvan says you’re okay then I accept that—even if you do look like a Londoner.’

I was still slightly affronted.

‘What’s so bad about that?’ I asked him.

Both Reggie and Disvan looked at me with shocked expressions as if I’d questioned the virtue of their mothers or the rising of the sun. Neither seemed to feel that my question deserved a response, let alone an answer, and they turned to other matters.

Reggie Suntan shifted in his seat and, with the subtlest of gestures, indicated that his bodyguards should proceed outside. While they did so, he turned back to us, leaning forward conspiratorially.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘there is some business I need to discuss, Mr Disvan, but I don’t think that here is the right place. Let’s go and eat. My treat, no expense spared—and Boakley can come too, if he likes. I know of a very suitable little establishment for this sort of thing...’

Despite the slightly sinister overtones of this last statement and all my other misgivings, Mr Disvan and I accompanied Reggie Suntan to the door.

*  *  *

‘My dear old Mum used to bring me here, when she could scrape the pennies together,’ said Reggie. ‘Bless her heart.’

To my astonishment, I thought I saw a tear form in the corner of one of Mr Suntan’s hard eyes—although it may just have been a trick of the light.

‘God save us, but I miss that woman!’ he continued in a voice tremulous with emotion.

‘So do we all, Reginald, so do we all,’ Disvan agreed.

‘A saint she was, a real saint.’

Mr Disvan signified his approval of the canonisation by nodding sagely.

At that point the waitress arrived and, like flicking a light switch, Reggie instantly became the nerveless man of steel again.

‘Three cream teas, please,’ he said, ‘and a selection of those nice looking cakes.’

When Reggie Suntan had said that he knew of somewhere suitable for conducting (his sort of) business, and that money was no object, my stomach and I had visions of a discreet London restaurant with a menu in French and a top name chef. I had started to recall one or two rare-ish vintages I’d always meant to try and some of the wilder byways of French provincial cuisine yet unsampled.

Less charitably, I thought that, Mr Disvan’s presence notwithstanding, we might end up in some topless joint or ‘revue bar’ owned by one of Reggie’s associates. What didn’t occur to me was that, a mere twenty minutes later, we would be sitting down to eat in the Castle Café in Goldenford—a perfectly acceptable, if modest, concern in the shadow of the old castle keep and the surrounding municipal flower gardens.

‘Yes, indeed…’ said Reggie, expansively, leaning back in his chair and looking slowly around, ‘there’s some real memories for me in here. Real memories.’

‘What about the other lady and gentleman in your party, sir?’ said the young (and rather fanciable) waitress. ‘Will you order for them too?’