Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (59 page)

Accordingly, I skipped looking at the Victorian stained glass (too reassuring), the Ten Commandments painted on the wall (too accusing) and tried to bear in mind that this was just another four walls and a roof. The disconsolate looking Anti-Apartheid and Amnesty International stall helped with that.

In any case, I was in good company. Doctor Bani-Sadr had pointedly kept his trilby on and Mr Disvan was plainly more interested than awed by all about.

‘I know you hate having your values challenged, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘So make your way to the vestry. That’s where you’ll find him.’

I thought it rather rude to read someone’s innermost thoughts from their treacherously open face, but didn’t say anything in retaliation. I knew where the vestry was and went straight to it, concealing my confusion with my back.

A few seconds after arrival, I wished I hadn’t bothered. Either I had a migraine for the first time in my life or else the weather had abruptly turned oppressive. From a very great height someone had dropped a wet mattress on my brain.

The two men seated in the vestry turned to greet me, as I rudely ignored them and shook my head, attempting to shift the weight off my mind, so to speak.

The Reverend Jagger I knew already, but the monk with him was a newcomer. He looked as bad as I presently felt—which was saying something. I wondered briefly if his anguished, burning gaze had something to do with my headache—
à la
‘evil eye’—but got a grip in time to reject the notion with respectable speed.

‘Well, hello, Mr Oakley, Mr Disvan, Doctor Bani-Sadr,’ said Reverend Jagger, beamingly cheerful as ever. ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’

‘Mr Oakley wants to meet Oscar Tug,’ came Disvan’s voice from behind, in fact, surprisingly far behind me, ‘his sporting hero and all that.’

I turned and saw that Disvan and the doctor hadn’t actually entered the vestry. They were hanging back, lolling in the entrance, proud possessors of some knowledge I didn’t share. Then my attention was redirected eyes-front by a loud moan from the monk.

‘Oh, if only you knew,’ he howled, glaring fixedly at me. ‘If only... Yes, I was once prop-forward for the Prince of Darkness, but now I’m a spectator on the terraces of righteousness. Aren’t I, Rev?’

Jagger looked decidedly uncomfortable. He was well known for his distrust of enthusiasm, preferring religion to the religious.

‘Well, I suppose so,’ he said, not wishing to give offence. ‘But I think that’s putting it a little bit—’

‘Bathed in the endless ocean of forgiveness, I am!’ interrupted the monk, now highly agitated. ‘Vindicated! Justified!’

Just at that moment, a wind powered tree branch scrabbled at the vestry window and the monk cowered in his seat, all his passion (and volume) fled away.

‘Ransomed!’ he concluded weakly, looking shiftily at the window.

An uncomfortable silence followed. I’d started to query if this was really the best use I could make of my free time. Not only had my headache failed to go away but I was now painfully conscious that the vestry’s heating was cranked way up high. Ten minutes in that sauna would be enough to flood anyone’s boots.

‘Are you well, Mr Oakley?’ asked Jagger. ‘You look out of sorts.’

‘That’s because I am, vicar,’ I said, all hot and bothered, tearing at my tie. ‘I came to see Oscar Tug but he’s not here—and why should he be, in a church?  Mr Disvan wouldn’t explain that bit as usual. And all of a sudden, I don’t feel very well and... Why do you have this vestry so hot? It’s like Hell’s kitchen in here.’

The monk had been listening to my sullen soliloquy in morose silence, but this last comment was like a poke with a cattle prod to him. He leapt up, in extremities of agitation, and pointed a bony finger at me.

‘Don’t say that!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t say that—or I’ll tear your bloody head off, man!’

This real-ish sort of threat held little appeal and I instinctively backed away from him and out of the room. Disvan and Bani-Sadr made way for me, knowing better than to ever get between me and safety.

Then, like the lifting of a veil, my headache vanished. The heat blanket went with it. For a few seconds the contrast was sheer bliss, a natural high, before, all too soon, my unambitious nerve endings returned to dull normality. The relief must have advertised itself on my face.

‘I was going to suggest you took a few steps back,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘You were getting awfully flushed.’

‘And if you can’t stand the heat,’ quipped Doctor Bani-Sadr, ‘get out of the Hell’s kitchen!’

Meanwhile Reverend Jagger was calming the monk, albeit with difficulty.

‘Anger—surely a minor sin only?’ I heard him say.

‘But I threatened violence!’ the monk countered. ‘And used profanity!
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
... Oh dear, oh dear.’

He slumped back into a chair and buried his head in his hands.

‘Maybe if I...’ he muttered. ‘Double penance, yes, that’s it. Bread... dry bread and water, plus the really ferocious hair shirt...’

Jagger plainly disapproved of all this and tut-tutted his way over to us.

‘Distressing medievalist literalism,’ he said sadly. ‘Quite untouched by the gentle hand of the humanism/faith interface.’

‘Abso-lute-ly,’ agreed Mr Disvan—which was his way of saying ‘balls’ without causing offence.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jagger continued. ‘I’m afraid your meeting with Mr Tug has not gone as you might have wished. I know what it can be like with childhood sporting heroes. Sir Stanley Mathews was dreadfully rude to me when I asked for an autograph.’

I was shocked and looked it.

‘He’s slow—but he does get there eventually,’ Disvan explained to the reverend.

‘You mean...
he’s
Oscar Tug?’ I stuttered. ‘I don’t... he can’t...’

Tug’s last game was, what, six years in the past but how could even that lapse of time turn the brick out-house, rugby godling Tug into the gaunt and haunted spectre before us? It didn’t seem charitable to even consider it possible.

‘Well,’ said Jagger, just slightly offended by my doubt, ‘I can assure you that’s who this is.’

‘Oh, right. Nice to meet you then... Mr Tug.’

Tug the born again monk looked up again, with new hope in his eyes.

‘Is it, Mr Oakley? Is it really? Does that mean you forgive me for threatening you? Will you overlook my grievous outburst? Will you?’

With that sort of ‘grab for the heart’ type sales pitch, I could hardly refuse.

‘Um... of course, of course. Think nothing of it—all forgotten, no offence. I expect it was the heat.’

Tug looked pitifully grateful, yet at the same time intimidated by my mention of the vestry’s temperature. He looked slowly round without seeming to anticipate actually glimpsing anything new.

‘I know what you mean, Mr Oakley,’ said Jagger, entering the uneasy conversational pause. ‘Like an oven in there, isn’t it?  I mean, no, not like an oven at all,’ he hastily corrected himself, noticing Tug’s renewed distress. ‘It’s just very hot. Overheated, that’s all I meant. And we should be thankful it’s dry heat, not humid, shouldn’t we?’

There was something beyond the bounds of permissible oddness in all this I decided. However, rather than think about it, I settled for a shotgun-scatter of questions instead.

‘But why not just turn it down, or off?’ I asked. ‘And why the dramatic change in temperature—and air pressure—at the threshold. And why aren’t you affected?’

I’d just noticed. The Reverend Jagger was standing precisely where I’d stood a few minutes before. But even so, coat and ethnic Arran sweater notwithstanding, he remained as cool as the proverbial cucumber.

His habitual ‘at peace with the world and myself’ smile (or smugness) wavered only a second.

‘I seem to be exempt,’ he said crisply. ‘It must go with the job.’

‘Or the dog-collar,’ laughed Doctor Bani-Sadr. ‘Happen it allows greater air circulation than a normal man’s shirt!’

You could almost hear Jagger’s mind counting to ten before he felt able to turn the other cheek.

‘Quite. So amusing,’ he said insincerely. ‘And how is your young... niece, Doctor Bani-Sadr? Still staying with you is she?’

Mr Disvan caught the sultry undertones of the question and turned to study the doctor with all the silent primness of which he was capable.

‘Yes, she is, thanks,’ said Bani-Sadr, brazening it out.

‘How nice for you,’ said Jagger, his mask now firmly back in place. ‘Such a nice young girl. And so... vivacious, in a colourful sort of way.’

Things were getting as acid as Alien’s blood and looked fit to get more so had not Mr Disvan intervened (whilst obviously filing the ‘niece’ business away for future reference).

‘So,’ he said firmly, ‘all’s well that ends well. Young Oscar here sought Mr Oakley’s forgiveness and it was freely given. However,’ he turned to address the almost forgotten Tug, ‘why not put it beyond doubt and repay his kindness by telling him the story? That’s what he came for, after all.’

‘No, I didn’t!’ I protested, from the heart. Every omen pointed to a story I didn’t want added to my mental inventory; the kind of tale that would disturb my intended, contented old age. As usual, I was ignored.

‘
All
the story?’ said Tug incredulously, getting up and stepping forward.

Suddenly the heat wave expanded its boundary to include us. Like a long-haul coach opening its door at journey’s end, a wave of unsavoury warmth wafted our way.

Mr Disvan waved him back and the Hellsbreath abated.

‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘Cathartic for you and an exemplar for Mr Oakley. All things considered, it’d be a
mitzvah
...’

‘A statutory good deed,’ interpreted the Reverend.

‘And goodness knows, you need some of them on your scorecard,’ Disvan continued.

Tug obviously concurred. He sank back into his seat, cowled head nodding.

‘The sin of pride, Mr Oakley,’ he intoned, ‘and false perspective. Those were my downfall!’

I was still hopeful of aborting the flow and butted in, ‘Actually, I was more hoping to hear about your England captaincy and beating the All Blacks and—’

‘Vanity!’ shouted Tug, his deep set eyes flicking fiery despair vibes across the room at me. ‘ “All is vanity and vexation of spirit”—Ecclesiastes 1:14. And I’ll give you another quote—Mark 8:36, “What profit it a man if he should scale the summit of his chosen career, represent the country he loves  at the sport he loves—and incidentally construct probably the best pack-to-wings interaction system this century, and beat the All Blacks—if he should lose his soul?” Answer me that!’

‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t say that in the Bible.’

‘It’s a paraphrase, Mr Oakley,’ said Tug.

‘Oh, um... well, I know that competitive sport can be very absorbing, to the detriment of...’

‘If that’s the standard of Mr Oakley’s perception,’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr, ‘we’re in for a long one. I’ll get us some chairs.’

‘You misunderstand, Mr Oakley,’ said Tug as the doctor sauntered off. ‘I mean that I was presented with a decision. A single choice about the direction of my life. I was put to the test—and failed.

‘Just a minute,’ I interjected. ‘Yours was the famous undefeated captaincy. You never lost—’

‘I lost everything!’ said Tug, hammering home the words like stakes into a heart.