enigmatic.’
‘But true nevertheless.’
‘Tell me no more. In less than seven hours I have to be up and about again yet I’m needlessly still out in the cold, twenty minutes walk from my house. In fact that thought makes me feel more fractious than I already am and therefore I’ve run out of curiosity for today.’
‘I quite understand. After knowing Bob Springer for all these years and despite understanding his problem, even I find it hard it to be patient with him.’
I fully recognised this to be a fine example of what I called Mr Disvan’s ‘hook lines’, whereby each answer he provided carried not merely the seed but the ripe, ready to drop, fruit of another question. It was a great temptation, despite my professed lack of curiosity, to ask just what Springer’s apparently readily understandable problem was, but by an act of will I managed to break the question-and-answer chain.
‘Doubtless the explanation that I feel entitled to will wait a day or two more after ‘all these years’, Mr Disvan. Goodnight to you.’
‘As you say, it can wait—forever if need be—and anyway it’s best that he tell you himself why he’s so afeared and why you’ve been put out. Goodnight then.’
The shortest paths to our respective homes lay in different directions and so I strode off Binscombe-ward alone. This waste of time, this loss of supper, snooker and sleep I’d already put down to mere local folly of which there was no shortage. But even so, as I walked, I found that of their own volition, my eyes searched intently the dark shadows of that side of the road forbidden by Mr Springer.
* * *
‘Look out, he’s here again!’
‘Avoid his eye and keep talking.’
‘Too late—he’s seen me.’
‘It’s another late night for us then.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
‘Here he is.’
‘Mr Disvan and Mr Oakley, how are you?’
‘Very well thank you, Bob.’
‘Would you like a drink, gentlemen?’
‘Not if it obliges us to chaperon you home again, thank you all the same.’
My pre-conceived, perhaps somewhat harsh response earned me one of Disvan’s rare full-face stares. His expression was, as ever, inscrutable and the meaning of these admonitions or questions or whatever they were had to be guessed from the context of the occasion. In present circumstances I took it to signify some surprise on his part at my uncharacteristic lack of charity.
I’d observed before the surprising power of these visual shots across-the-bow upon the locals but was even more surprised to find an urgent desire to appease evoked in myself by the same means. Did this imply that I, a foreigner in their terms, and an ‘educated’ man to boot, was becoming subject to the tribal mores of Binscombe?.
‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t really called for. It’s just that... well, I don’t want to be late home tonight.’
‘That’s all right, I understand,’ he said in a voice that was indeed full of sad understanding. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘No, please do.’
He sat down and toyed absently with one of the empty beer bottles on the table.
‘Of course,’ he then said abruptly, ‘Mr Disvan says I’m a fool to live in such fear but then again, with all respect, he’s not had to suffer what I’ve suffered.’
‘I think that that’s irrelevant,’ said Disvan.
‘Many things in this world are irrelevant or illogical but are still powerful forces nevertheless.’
An attempt at profundity was the last thing I was expecting from a man of such surpassing anonymity, and I felt a spark of revived interest in what he was obviously bursting to tell.
‘That’s very true,’ I said.
Springer perhaps mistook interest for sympathy and turned to me as if to an ally.
‘Mr Disvan says that, having been caught once, I’m in no further danger, but that’s easy for him to say and besides, how can he be sure?’
‘Now, now, Bob,’ said the man in question, ‘you know me better than that. I don’t say
‘But true nevertheless.’
‘Tell me no more. In less than seven hours I have to be up and about again yet I’m needlessly still out in the cold, twenty minutes walk from my house. In fact that thought makes me feel more fractious than I already am and therefore I’ve run out of curiosity for today.’
‘I quite understand. After knowing Bob Springer for all these years and despite understanding his problem, even I find it hard it to be patient with him.’
I fully recognised this to be a fine example of what I called Mr Disvan’s ‘hook lines’, whereby each answer he provided carried not merely the seed but the ripe, ready to drop, fruit of another question. It was a great temptation, despite my professed lack of curiosity, to ask just what Springer’s apparently readily understandable problem was, but by an act of will I managed to break the question-and-answer chain.
‘Doubtless the explanation that I feel entitled to will wait a day or two more after ‘all these years’, Mr Disvan. Goodnight to you.’
‘As you say, it can wait—forever if need be—and anyway it’s best that he tell you himself why he’s so afeared and why you’ve been put out. Goodnight then.’
The shortest paths to our respective homes lay in different directions and so I strode off Binscombe-ward alone. This waste of time, this loss of supper, snooker and sleep I’d already put down to mere local folly of which there was no shortage. But even so, as I walked, I found that of their own volition, my eyes searched intently the dark shadows of that side of the road forbidden by Mr Springer.
* * *
‘Look out, he’s here again!’
‘Avoid his eye and keep talking.’
‘Too late—he’s seen me.’
‘It’s another late night for us then.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
‘Here he is.’
‘Mr Disvan and Mr Oakley, how are you?’
‘Very well thank you, Bob.’
‘Would you like a drink, gentlemen?’
‘Not if it obliges us to chaperon you home again, thank you all the same.’
My pre-conceived, perhaps somewhat harsh response earned me one of Disvan’s rare full-face stares. His expression was, as ever, inscrutable and the meaning of these admonitions or questions or whatever they were had to be guessed from the context of the occasion. In present circumstances I took it to signify some surprise on his part at my uncharacteristic lack of charity.
I’d observed before the surprising power of these visual shots across-the-bow upon the locals but was even more surprised to find an urgent desire to appease evoked in myself by the same means. Did this imply that I, a foreigner in their terms, and an ‘educated’ man to boot, was becoming subject to the tribal mores of Binscombe?.
‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t really called for. It’s just that... well, I don’t want to be late home tonight.’
‘That’s all right, I understand,’ he said in a voice that was indeed full of sad understanding. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘No, please do.’
He sat down and toyed absently with one of the empty beer bottles on the table.
‘Of course,’ he then said abruptly, ‘Mr Disvan says I’m a fool to live in such fear but then again, with all respect, he’s not had to suffer what I’ve suffered.’
‘I think that that’s irrelevant,’ said Disvan.
‘Many things in this world are irrelevant or illogical but are still powerful forces nevertheless.’
An attempt at profundity was the last thing I was expecting from a man of such surpassing anonymity, and I felt a spark of revived interest in what he was obviously bursting to tell.
‘That’s very true,’ I said.
Springer perhaps mistook interest for sympathy and turned to me as if to an ally.
‘Mr Disvan says that, having been caught once, I’m in no further danger, but that’s easy for him to say and besides, how can he be sure?’
‘Now, now, Bob,’ said the man in question, ‘you know me better than that. I don’t say
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