Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (61 page)

‘I think Mr Tug’s thinking in terms of a very very big mercy,’ said Mr Disvan. Tug whimpered horribly.

‘And why not?’ said Jagger, his bounciness unabated. ‘Perhaps even the Prince of Darkness, however you conceive him, is not beyond redemption. He might just relent, you know.’

Once again I’d been ignored for a while. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen me, open mouthed, track Mr Disvan’s arm as it delineated the area of Tug’s visitation. I’d found that there were no defences against the vile notion that weren’t immediately swept aside (and then maliciously trampled) by it. And, if it were true, then I was standing...

‘Oh. My. God,’ I said slowly, still staring at the ceiling (and what lay beyond), bringing all conversation to a halt.

‘No, Mr Oakley,’ Disvan patiently corrected me. ‘Precisely the opposite.’

*  *  *

‘Have another brandy’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr solicitously. ‘Your face is as white as your socks!’

I felt it had every right to be so. Even back in the safety of the Argyll, the memory of my shock was still exquisitely fresh.

‘We were all very impressed,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘I had no idea you could put on such a burst of speed. Oscar Tug said turning ability and acceleration of that quality belongs in a top class rugby side—and who better to judge!’

‘Here,’ said the landlord, refilling my glass, ‘this one’s on the house.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered and knocked it back.

‘And to think,’ he continued, in his ‘ just musing to myself’ voice, ‘that you refused to turn out for the Binscombe-Goldenford match. There’ll be no excuses next year!’

‘What?’ I protested.

‘Ah, that put some life back in you,’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr. ‘Really, Mr Oakley, you are a dark horse.’

‘I ran fast,’ I said firmly, emboldened by liquor, ‘because I was in the grip of powerful emotions.’

‘Yes,’ said Disvan, ‘we observed that but didn’t understand why. The contract doesn’t involve you.’

‘But the idea alone, man!’ I shouted.

‘What of it?’ asked Doctor Bani-Sadr, his face a model of honest enquiry. ‘The contract was freely entered into, it’s a simple supply and demand thing. There are millions of such deals every day.’

‘What? Like that?’ I trilled.

‘Possibly, Mr Oakley,’ replied the doctor, ‘it makes you wonder when you hear about all these amazing sporting feats. But no, I was referring to ordinary business contracts made amongst mere mortals. When you think about it, there’s no difference in substance between them and Oscar Tug’s arrangement, is there?’

‘Give or take the extra metaphysical element,’ agreed Disvan.

I looked again at my freshly strange friends.

‘But... aren’t you sorry for him?’

Disvan, Bani-Sadr and the landlord looked from one to the other in puzzlement.

‘No, not particularly,’ said Mr Disvan, acting as spokesman.

‘Well, that’s awful,’ I straightaway said.

The landlord disapproved of my judgement.

‘Mr Oakley,’ he rumbled, ‘I, for one, was brought up to believe in paying my debts.’

‘Um, yes, but...’

‘And you’re a man of commerce,’ said Mr Disvan, rejoining the fray. ‘You must accept that principle. Modern business stands or falls by it.’

‘Well yes, but...’

My three tormentors smiled. This bull fight was a poor show, the animal hardly worth the time spent togging up and sharpening your sword.

‘And if that’s so,’ said Disvan, the deputised toreador, ‘I thought you’d go along with the old saying.’

The trap was out in the open, signposted with giant day-glo arrows, all of them clearly labelled ‘TRAP!’ But I was too weakened and tired, too cornered and undermined to do anything but blunder right in.

‘What old saying?’ I asked, calm and resigned at last.

‘Apparently, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, ‘it’s long been held that you should give the Devil his due.’

IT’LL ALL BE OVER BY CHRISTMAS

‘Mercy blow through!’ exclaimed the landlord. ‘That one was close!’

It was indeed. The noise of the plane passing overhead had rattled the roof and drowned out all conversation in the Argyll. I was no expert but it sounded to me like a few yards lower would have meant no Christmas Day for any of us tomorrow.

Mr Disvan was the first to recover his composure (I was on one knee composing faithless prayers) and, with a speed belying his age, he rushed for the door.

‘It’s coming down,’ he reported back through the doorway. ‘The tail and one wing’s on fire but he’s still got it under control. I think he’s going to miss the estate—going to come down near Senlac Farm.’

‘Praise God!’ said Father Wiltshire, with genuine relief.

We all looked at him in surprise, still preoccupied with our own close shave, and then with some guilt as our concern slowly spread further afield, to the estate’s many thousands: sleeping children, hard-working families etc, etc. Father Wiltshire generally popped in on us before his Christmas Eve mass, to bestow his blessing on the pagans. It always resulted in furtive guilt feelings of one sort or another.

I joined the growing throng at the door just in time to see a bolt of flame shoot down into the primeval darkness just beyond Binscombe village. We braced ourselves, breathless, for the ensuing fireball, but none came. After a few implausibly prolonged seconds, there was a communal exhalation of air.

‘He’s brought it down,’ said Disvan, appreciatively. ‘Didn’t bale out to save his-self; he guided it down away from harm. Landed out there in the fields somewhere. He should still be alive, with luck.’

‘I’ll drink to that!’ I said cheerfully, flushed with the temporary joy of a Grim Reaper near-miss.

Mr Disvan (and one or two of the others) turned and looked at me disapprovingly.

‘We’ll do more than that, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and thank him personally.’

It was a tricky situation. I was keenly aware that ditched planes were volatile things, capable of going off in the faces of good Samaritans an unreasonable time after actually landing.

‘But surely,’ I started off, ‘the authorities...’

‘...will stop us if we don’t get a move on. Yes,’ said Disvan, completing my plea (or so he thought). ‘We’ll take my car.’

That was the clincher. All the little disquietners now added up to some proper screaming alarm that I needn’t pretend to ignore. Mr Disvan only offered the use of his Porsche on the rarest occasions. Historically, all of them had been rich and productive nightmare mines for me and my resultant reluctance to revisit the coal-face must have been very apparent.

‘Oh come on, Mr Oakley,’ he said, chiding me gently as I was borne along, like a defeated commuter, by the surge of volunteer rescuers. ‘That pilot has given you a Christmas present. The least you can do is go and express your gratitude.’

‘Present?’ I said. ‘What present?’ It was a meaningless response, a non-question. I wasn’t interested in its answer, only in something—anything—to slow down the flow of events. However, Mr Disvan was implacable.

‘The present of continued existence, Mr Oakley,’ he said patiently, ‘at the risk of his own.’

‘A curious analogy to the spirit of the season,’ concurred Father Wiltshire, following up behind us. ‘Christ’s offer of eternal life at the expense of his own—and all that.’

‘Indeed,’ said Disvan sagely, and then spoilt it, wiping the smile off Wiltshire’s face, by adding, ‘Or so they say. Anyhow, a gift’s a gift, Mr Oakley. It’d be churlish not to express your gratitude.’

Good manners, hard-wired into the circuit diagram of most Englishmen of my class, stronger than duty or faith or even patriotism. Mr Disvan had sounded the one trumpet call that could not be ignored.

‘Right, off we go,’ he said brightly, wringing the very last drop of relish from his little triumph over modern mores.

*  *  *

Our aviator-saviour had ploughed an impressive dead-straight mega-furrow across one of Senlac Farm’s broodingly winter-anonymous fields. His (or maybe, her) plane had come to rest, seemingly intact, at its end, just a few yards short of the vanguard trees of the dense woods climbing Binscombe Ridge.

‘It was clever stuff,’ commented Mr Disvan approvingly, as he swung his car to a no less alarming halt at the field boundary. ‘One fraction of a degree up or down, an ounce more speed, and he’d have been just tiny bits of history.’

The scene before us had been weakly illuminated by faint tongues of flame which flicked into life and then died just as abruptly, from within the plane’s interior. But then Disvan turned the Porsche’s lights on full beam and suddenly he was as transfixed as the plane.

‘Oh!’ he said, with bounteous surprise. We paused, Father Wiltshire, Doctor Bani-Sadr and I, on our way out of the car. I for one was glad of any cause to postpone the proposed encounter with our smoky, fiery friend.

‘What is it, Mr Disvan?’ I asked solicitously.

‘Nothing really,’ he replied, recovering full alignment with the world. ‘It’s just that, in a manner of speaking, I think we’ll find the pilot is history, after all.’

‘Pardon?’

Disvan dismissed my query with a wave as he clambered out.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘He’s still a human being; still needs help. Let’s go.’

By now, the rest of the motor convoy from the Argyll had caught up with us and were starting to unload. Even so, we were first away and, for form’s sake, I had to keep up with my companion’s surprisingly rapid dash over field-fence and then muddy field. As we went along, the notion grew on me that not all the yielding material I trod on was honest mud and that the oily moisture peculiar to old agricultural land was osmosis-ing like mad up the leg of my suit. It was, I thought, a wonderful way to spend Christmas Eve.

However, all that was almost forgotten when we neared the plane. There was something not right about the very sight of it, even to my untutored eyes. I’d not seen its like before, at least, not outside of books.

In my fascination, I even wandered closer than to the great craft than my natural prudence would have approved. Then, a gout of blue-black flame caught my attention and then, disappearing, directed it to the point of origin.

The roundel was charred and flaked but the red, white and blue colours were still discernible. And those neat black holes traversing it, stitching a drunken line along the plane’s length, what else could they be but...

‘Bullet holes,’ confirmed Mr Disvan, noting my trance-like gaze. ‘From a twenty millimetre cannon, by the look of them.’

I nodded, somewhat abstracted. Of course, on the one hand, that’s what they had to be. But on
the other, in this context, in this day and age, time and place, they couldn't be, could they?

Meanwhile, Father Wiltshire had bravely scaled the side of the plane and, with one wrench of his brawny arm, torn back the cockpit cover.

‘He's alive,’ the priest announced from his precarious perch on the wing, ‘at least, I think so. Mind you, dear Jesus, the floor's awash with blood.’

Helping hands assisted Doctor Bani-Sadr up to join Wiltshire and he leaned into the cockpit.

‘On his way out,’ he
concluded eventually. ‘Double “below the knee job”—not much I can do. Shouldn’t think there’s much pain now. Rather a gentle way to slip off, actually.’

So saying, he ‘slipped off’ in another way and rejoined us down on the ground.

‘It’s what I think it is, isn’t it?’ he said to Mr Disvan.

Disvan indicated the affirmative.

‘Looks like it,’ he said. ‘It’s certainly a Spitfire, all right—much developed and modified, I grant you, but the ancestry sticks out a mile. Fifth or sixth generation evolution, I’d say at a guess.’

‘‘They’ve bumped up the size a fair bit,’ commented the doctor, as though this were the most natural conversation in the world, while blithely ignoring my obvious bogglement.

‘Yes. Scale-up of 1 to 2, I reckon. Can’t see the reason for that—more armour, poorer engines maybe. Certainly the workmanship’s shoddy. I mean, look at that cannon mount, it’s just tacked on. And there’s mismatched armament.’

‘Cannibalisation’ judged Doctor Bani-Sadr sadly. ‘Things are going downhill fast for them.’

‘Looks like it,’ said Disvan. ‘There’s a definite air of desperation about putting this thing up.’

There was finally a slight pause in their head nodding session where I could elbow my way in.

‘Hang on,’ I said brusquely. ‘I thought we came to see the pilot?’

‘Dying,’ replied Disvan, matter of factly. ‘Didn’t you catch Doctor Bani-Sadr’s prognosis?’

‘Well, yes. But you’re just standing here with your technical talk. What about getting help?’

The two of them had ‘thanks but no thanks for the suggestion’ expressions on.

‘Help, as you call it,’ said Disvan, ‘will be along in a matter of minutes, that I don’t doubt. There’s little we can do, one way or t’other.’

‘That’s right,’ chipped in Doctor Bani-Sadr, sounding almost aggrieved. ‘If you know of a way of saving a double-trauma amputee with stage four blood loss, medical science would be grateful for the illumination. And as for the “technical talk”, I reckon Mr Disvan’s entitled to that, seeing as he flew Spitfires through the best part of the War. And another thing...’

‘Best?’ interrupted Disvan, obviously embarrassed and anxious to press conversation on. ‘Hardly best.’

Doctor Bani-Sadr remained adamant.

‘It was supposed to be our finest hour, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Anyway, you know what I mean. Best, worst, hottest—it amounts to the same thing.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Disvan firmly, rendered just a little peevish by this unwelcome limelight, ‘perhaps you should go see the pilot after all, Mr Oakley. I think you’ll find the explanation you’re thirsting for up there with him.’

And thus saying, he turned his back on the doctor and me and, hands clasped behind his back, Duke of Edinburgh style, set off on a grumpy tour of inspection round the stricken craft. Eventually I lost sight of him in the surrounding dark and milling crowd.

‘To quote the King of rock n’ roll,’ said Doctor Bani-Sadr, beckoning me towards the plane with mock courtesy, ‘it’s now or never.’

‘Now’ won by a photo-finish and I joined Father Wiltshire up near the cockpit just in time to see the light depart from the pilot’s eyes.

‘Too late,’ said Wiltshire calmly. ‘He’s gone on.’

My life was... well, modern and life-orientated. ‘Going on’ was the great unmentionable, akin to the topic of orgasms at a Victorian dinner party. I had no training or beliefs to enable me to say anything sensible about ‘going on’. So I said ‘oh’ instead.

‘He couldn’t speak,’ said the priest, divesting himself of his stole, ‘but if expression is anything to go by, he made a beautiful peace.’

I stared dully at the dead thing sitting before us. ‘A what?’ I said.

‘Peace,’ repeated Wiltshire. ‘You know, final confession.’

‘Oh. That’s nice.’

Father Wiltshire shook his head as though despairing of me and then jumped agilely down from the wing. The pilot and I were left alone.

He was, or had been, young. Very young—a freckled, strawheaded boy yet to reach (no, of course, never to reach) the prime of life. Pain had twisted his features but the end of struggle, the surrender to... whatever, had restored a degree of carefree calm.