Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series

by John Whitbourn

  ‘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 dan
ger; 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?’

  ‘Sure. Give ‘em the same as us, why not?’

  The bodyguards, sitting at the table opposite us, were duly served with cream teas which they entirely ignored.

  We were otherwise alone in the restaurant. It was a quiet time in the afternoon and Reggie had persuaded the owner, with the eloquent assistance of a wad of banknotes, to shut up shop early. Occasionally some thirsty shoppers would rattle the door and peer in, before moving, unrefreshed, on their way. In what I suppose is the hallmark of a classy establishment the world over, the staff knew when to remain behind the scenes. After our orders were provided, we were left to our own devices.

  ‘Well, Reginald,’ said Mr Disvan, smoothing
cream onto a scone, ‘what’s the problem?’

  Reggie was impressed.

  ‘Quite right,’ he said firmly, ‘cut the crap, get down to business. I quite agree.’

  ‘Well, get on with it then,’ Disvan urged.

  Reggie seemed to be having difficulty in finding the right words but eventually took the plunge.

  ‘It’s a property dispute, Mr Disvan,’ he said, all in a rush. ‘I’m involved in a property dispute.’

  ‘Then you’ve wasted your time, Reginald. Neither Mr Oakley or I know anything about property law.’

  ‘Well, actually...’ I interrupted, ‘now that you mention it, I do...’

  ‘It’s not that kind of a dispute,’ said Reggie interrupting my interruption.

  ‘And again,’ Disvan persisted, ‘if you’ve got yourself into another gang war, we can’t help you there either.’

  ‘No,’ said Reggie, ‘it’s not that. It really is a property dispute; about my property, to be specific—my villa in Spain. The crux of the matter is that someone else wants it—and can you blame them? Here, take a look at these photos.’

  He fetched a wallet of pictures from a pocket in his camel-hair coat and passed them round.

  I found myself looking at a property that was a villa only in the sense that the Roman palace at Fishbourne was a villa or that Notre Dame is a church. ‘Mansion’ would have been a more accurate description. Picture after picture depicted vast rooms, patios, gardens, swimming pools and balconies that looked down on a clear blue sea.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked Mr Disvan, holding aloft a photograph of a brown Venus clad in what looked like two pieces of string, posing beside a huge pool.

  ‘My girlfriend,’ answered Reggie.

  ‘And this?’

  ‘This’ was another photograph of a different girl: just as delectable and similarly clad.

  ‘Another girlfriend.’

  ‘And this?’