The Bretwaldas continued to stare at me in what it would have charitable to call a very cool manner. I was powerfully reminded of the picture And When Did You Last See Your Father? and just as powerfully inclined to beat a retreat.
Then, in a voice worthy of judgement day, Alfred, patriarch of the tribe, simply said, ‘No.’
For a second the atmosphere in the public bar froze and I was at a loss to know what to do. Then, as welcome as the 7th Cavalry, I heard Mr Disvan, standing beside me, quietly say, ‘Yes.’
As if by magic, everything except my nerves returned to normal. Bretwalda looked briefly at Disvan, found confirmation of what he’d heard and then both he and his family were friendliness itself.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘of course you can contribute Mr O—it’s very kind of you. Isn’t it very kind of him, lads?’
His sons instantly concurred.
Impelled by charity and other emotions I placed a number of £1 coins in the collection tin.
‘Thank you,’ said Bretwalda with a smile that lasted no longer than was absolutely necessary. As far as he was concerned our ‘conversation’ was clearly over.
Despite all this, my morale had not entirely collapsed. I had not forgotten the motive behind my giving.
‘Actually...’ I said, ‘what is the collection for... exactly—may I ask?’
Again Bretwalda looked at Disvan, who must have signalled his approval of further indulgence towards me.
‘It’s for the Concrete Fund,’ he announced, as if that were explanation enough.
‘I see, the... Concrete Fund. Right, thanks. Best of luck with it.’
Once more the Bretwaldas nodded in a gesture that could have signified almost anything.
Even when safely back at our table, I was still sufficiently shaken to waste my time seeking a straight answer from Mr Disvan.
‘What fund did they say?’ I asked in a hushed voice.
‘The Concrete Fund.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s to buy concrete, as the name would suggest. Don’t worry yourself, Mr Oakley. It’s all above board and legitimate.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. Some would say that, in local terms at least, it’s the most deserving of any charity.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, have I just contributed to some sort of protection racket? Have I done something wrong?’
Mr Disvan laughed in a good-natured way.
‘Well, it is a protection racket in a manner of speaking, but not in the sense that you mean. As for doing something wrong—on the contrary, Mr Oakley, you’re doing everything just right. Keep on like this and in a couple of generations your descendants will be accepted as one of us.’
* * *
No more was seen, in the weeks that followed, of the ‘Concrete Fund’ collection, but I refused to let the matter rest. It chanced to be the height of the summer at that time, a temperate summer crowded with long evenings well suited to leisurely drinks and idle talk in the Argyll. Time and time again, when conversation flagged, I took the opportunity to broach the subject, and also seized upon many an innocent reference to roads or houses in order to hijack concrete into the discussion. I did not, however, succeed in exasperating Mr Disvan. He seemed proof against being goaded into disclosure.
In the end, the only person bored into submission was myself. When I heard my voice sounding just like the nag whose affections I’d recently dispensed with; when I found myself compulsively looking up the entry for concrete in my home encyclopaedia, I conceded defeat. Let them keep their little secret from me, I thought—much good may it do them.
True to form, Mr Disvan observed my surrender and decided to be magnanimous in victory. We were at ease in the Argyll beer garden, watching the sun slowly descend towards the barrow atop Binscombe ridge. My day’s work had been exceedingly, perhaps even indecently, profitable and, by way of immediate reward, I’d allowed myself an early switching off of the VDU. Then, over a champagne cocktail in a bar near to my office, I’d used the telephone to arrange what promised to be a stimulating, if somewhat basic, weekend of physical pleasure. What better way, I thought, to start off this brief holiday from stress and struggle than to first join Mr Disvan for an uncomplicated drink and chat? This was my first mistake of the day.
Accordingly, I went straight to the Argyll from the station, unbathed and still in my business suit, to find the Sage of Binscombe in the saloon bar, deep in discussion with Doctor Bani-Sadr. Having nothing to offer to their debate about the Late Roman Empire, I feigned polite interest in what was being said while inwardly basking in my present good fortune. Eventually the doctor’s pager went and he departed (entirely sober, I should add) off to some emergency. Mr Disvan then suggested that we adjourn outside.
We talked of inconsequential matters for some while until Disvan brought the easygoing conversation to a dead halt.
‘Is it me, not paying attention,’ he said, ‘or do I detect a distinct lack of references to concrete from you tonight?’
I’ve given up with that,’ I replied. ‘I decided I was flogging a dead horse—and I’d be grateful if you’d take that grin of triumph off your face.’
‘You tire too easily, Mr Oakley.’
‘Do I really?’ I answered, in a voice that I hoped sounded sufficiently weary of Binscombe’s tribal games.
‘Yes. It’s the residual spirit of positivism and rationalism in you that causes it.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Tell me, Mr Oakley, have you ever noticed the electricity sub-station beside the road out to Compton?’
‘Yes, but what’s that got to do...’
‘Humour me for a moment. Have you noticed it?’
‘Only in passing. I’ve tried to not let it dominate my life.’
‘It has lately.’
‘No it hasn’t. I’ve not given it a single thought since I saw it for the first time, and that was years ago.’
‘Describe it to me.’
‘What for?’
‘Go on, just describe it to me.’
‘Well, okay... It’s a biggish, rectangular, one-storey building made out of... concrete.’
‘Precisely,’ said Disvan, as though that fact signified something profound.
‘And it’s just an electricity sub-station,’ I continued swiftly.
For the first time since coming on to this topic of conversation, Mr Disvan’s expression no longer struck me as smug.
‘Oh no it isn’t,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what is it, then?’
‘Concrete.’
‘But I already said that.’
‘Wrong. You said it was a building made out of concrete. I’m saying it’s just concrete and nothing else.’
‘Just a solid lump of concrete?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, what’s the point of that?’
‘None, from the point of view of the Electricity Board—but there again, they don’t even know it exists.’
‘I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me,’ I said, desperately trying to understand this rare flow of information before Disvan’s patience ran out.
‘It’s simple, Mr Oakley. You wanted to know what the “Concrete Fund” was for and I’m telling you where the money is going.’
I was still baffled. ‘And you’re saying that the collection has something to do with an electricity sub-station that isn’t really a sub-station and that the Electricity Board isn’t aware of. Have I got you right?’
‘Broadly, yes. We’re planning on expanding it, you see; adding more concrete and generally making it more sturdy. Hence the fund raising.’
‘But why?’
‘That you’d best see for yourself, rather than me try to explain it. But, before you do, Mr Oakley, think on for a minute. This is one of the high secrets we’re speaking of here. Once it’s known, it places its mark on a person; sets them aside and lays a quietness on t
hem. The path back to what you are now would then be closed. Bear that in mind before asking any more. You might prefer to stay as you are.’
Only a few hours before, I’d been electronically shifting funds from London to Tokyo and back. Now I was being invited to enter an entirely different world, just as real but not as safe. By any logical standard, my upbringing, my education, position and present security, should have made the choice an easy one but I found, to my surprise, it wasn’t. I thereby learnt that I was not as at home in the modern world as I’d thought.
‘Well?’ prompted Disvan.
With a shrug, I gestured for him to proceed.
He smiled broadly.
‘Welcome in, Mr Oakley’ he said. ‘I told them you wouldn’t let me down.’
* * *
We met, by arrangement, at the sub-station early the following morning (a Saturday). I parked my car a little way off the Compton road and occupied myself, while waiting for Mr Disvan, in watching signs of life gradually appear in the houses of the Binscombe estate. The milkman, his float almost empty, had nearly finished his round. Six-day week or overtime workers were presumably starting to contemplate curtailing breakfast and setting off. Occasional early birds, on their way to the paper shop, crossed paths with familiar looking dogs taking a solo morning constitutional. In short, for everyone except myself, it seemed like the start to a perfectly normal day.
As so often happened, there was a light mist lingering above the low-lying fields that surrounded Binscombe, while the sides of the valley were clear. This covering enhanced the air of mystery now attaching itself to the concrete block that had brought me here, and nullified the mundane practicality of the South East Electricity Board plaque (‘Binscombe Sub S no 2323—DANGER 6,600 VOLTS’) on its side.
Sitting isolated in a pool of mist in the field across the road from me, the building exuded an atmosphere of brooding purpose. I was also strongly struck with the notion that this little spot was both anticipating something and yet somehow out of kilter with present time. Since that had never been conveyed to me in the many hundreds of occasions I must have passed by before, I thought it must have more to do with my imagination and Disvan’s powers of suggestion than with anything real.
Remembering the gentleman in question, I turned in my seat to see what had become of him, only to find that he was already beside the car, looking in with an amused expression on his face.
‘I didn’t hear you come up,’ I said, somewhat startled.
Disvan nodded. ‘Possibly not. I can walk quietly if need be. Besides, I didn’t want to disturb you when you seemed so absorbed in the view. Ready to go, are we?’
I left the car and we walked over to the field gate. Disvan gestured me forward.
‘Go and see what you make of it, then,’ he said.
I stepped boldly forth, as bidden. Even if my bridges were, at that very moment, burning behind me, I was grimly determined not to appear daunted.
Events, however, overturned my resolution. Before I’d gone thirty paces on into the mist, my progress was brought to an abrupt halt. Two men had suddenly appeared: one from a small copse in a neighbouring field, the other silhouetted atop the ridge above me. They were still some way off, but I could not fail to notice that they were both carrying shotguns in a manner that was not entirely casual. ‘Early morning rabbit hunters,’ I thought to myself, without reassurance.
I looked at them and they looked at me. The circumstances did not help, but I still felt that their scrutiny held no good intentions in it. All desire to keep walking evaporated like the dew beneath my feet.
Things remained like this for perhaps half a minute before I heard Mr Disvan catch me up. He went a few yards on from where I stood and with two imperious waves of his arm dismissed the threatening figures. They melted away as quickly as they’d appeared.
‘I’m sorry about that, Mr Oakley,’ he said solicitously. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’
‘What exactly did happen?’
‘People just got a bit more jumpy than they should, that’s all.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Guardian eyes never leave this place, Mr Oakley. It’s too important to be left unsupervised.’
‘But those maniacs were carrying weapons!’
‘They see a need for them. There’s been blood shed because of what this place is—more blood than you can imagine. Can’t you sense it?’
I paused before answering, thinking mostly of the implications of assenting. Like it or not, it wasn’t in me to wilfully deny the obvious.
‘Yes, there is that feeling here,’ I said.
‘Are you succumbing to baseless intuition, Mr Oakley?’
‘I suppose so. Do you see that as a victory?’
‘Progress on your part, rather than victory for us, Mr Oakley. We’re not so unkind as to laugh at people’s faltering steps. You ought to consider it as enlightenment rather than submission—a stage in your pilgrimage, if you like. Consider it logically, if it makes you feel better. Why shouldn’t the configuration of forces that we see as rooms or fields or whatever, have the same capacity for memory as us? After all, they’re made of the same stuff as us and by and large they last longer and see more. Therefore, just as we are what our past has made us, so too are our surroundings.’
Disvan paused, and I looked around with renewed interest at the landscape which he’d just imbued with animate spirit and sentience. By this theory, the landscape presumably looked back and registered our transitory presence. Perhaps half a minute of silence elapsed before Disvan spoke again.
‘Of course,’ he said reflectively, ‘places have a longer perspective and therefore a different appreciation than us. They can put things in their proper context—and it’s that accumulated wisdom we can sometimes sense.’
‘Wisdom? But the feeling here is hardly one of...’
Disvan interrupted. ‘Not all memories are pleasant ones, Mr Oakley. And the truths we draw from them are not always comforting.’
Then and there, the notion seemed just about credible, but I filed it away for future, less disturbing, consideration when in a place as self evidently lifeless as, say, the office block in which I worked. The idea of a numinous world, peopled with numberless spirits was too big and too unsafe for the precise moment, and I was resolved to adhere to the matter in hand.
‘What has happened here, Mr Disvan?’ I said.
‘That will shortly become very clear, I think. Walk on, Mr O.’
We reached our destination without any other sentinels revealing themselves. I tried the heavy door (marked ‘DANGER’) but it showed no signs of shifting. Mr Disvan casually observed my efforts.
‘Do you have the key?’ I asked.
He shook his head, staring absently at and through the door.
‘There isn’t one. The door’s fake. There’s only solid concrete behind it’
‘Then why have a door?’
‘For purposes of deception, to complete the illusion, to maintain the image of something other than the truth.’
I looked up at the various power lines which converged and met at the sub-station.
‘They seem genuine enough,’ I said.
‘So they ought. They were set up by real Generating Board engineers.’
‘Who just happened to be Binscombe men, in on the secret?’
‘Precisely. The lines are quite dead of course but, for obvious reasons, no stranger’s likely to put that to the test.’
I started to slowly walk round the squat ‘building’ and Disvan ambled leisurely after me. Aside from the mock door and the false sign plate, I could see no other distinguishing features worth the mention.’
‘Doesn’t the Electricity Board management ever query all this?’ I said, the inspection now completed. ‘Or do you have more Binscombe people in place there—in the right place?’
Disvan nodded in confirmation.
‘We can ensure that it doesn’t ever appear on any
of their maps,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t doubt that one day, one of their high ups will look at an Ordnance Survey map—for we couldn’t get to the Survey organisation last time around— and spot our little deception. Not that it would matter greatly if they did. It’s been other things than an electricity sub-station before now and, if need be, can be so again. We have it in mind to call the place a bomb shelter next time—one of those ones for the golden people in power, that patriotic, lesser mortals are not supposed to be curious about. Either way, concealment is the main thing, Mr Oakley. The precise nature of the camouflage doesn’t really matter.’
He took out his pipe, filled and lit it. A sweet, intoxicating cloud, produced by his particular taste in illicit smoking material, rapidly spread and overcame the neutral, fresh atmosphere of the field. A reflective minute was thus filled.
The only sound that came to our ears was that of birdsong and the occasional passing car. We seemed to be entirely separated from the everyday world only a few hundred yards away. As yet, I had not been apprised of the ‘high’ secret’ which this structure somehow concealed, but a growing sense of tension made me think that moment was not far off—perhaps awaiting some sign from myself. Mr Disvan, however, was minded to speak around the subject further.
‘For instance,’ he said, ‘a few decades back, this was nominally a pill box intended for use against Hitler, and then the Kaiser before him, and then the French invasion scare of 1893 before that. It’s been an out-of-commission Admiralty semaphore station, a Martello Tower, a folly, a strongpoint against the armies of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Charles the First, and goodness knows what beforehand. Each generation of Binscomites has added to it and transformed it in their own way. In our era, it’s an electricity sub-station because ours is a peaceful time, a sort of breathing space. But doubtless the times will change soon enough and this place,’ he tapped one concrete wall with his pipe, ‘will change in tune with them.’
‘But why?’ I said.
‘Why is there change, do you mean? Well, I suppose that...’
‘No, no. Why this lump of concrete?’
Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 22