Read Online Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series by John Whitbourn - Free Book Online

I’d seen very occasionally, although never to speak to. The young man, Trevor, as I now knew him to be, appeared bright and personable even if his taste in clothes ran to the somewhat garish. His ‘young lady’, as Mr Disvan quaintly termed her, was as dark haired and dark complexioned as her boyfriend was fair, and seemed as quietly demure as he, by all tokens so far, was not.
    Jones sauntered up, a broad relaxed smile on his face.
    ‘Hello, everyone. Mr Disvan, how are you?’
    The men of Goldenford were not used to even such a mild manifestation of eccentricity as this and looked to Disvan for guidance. Should the stranger be dealt with, or could the game continue?
    ‘It’s okay,’ Mr Disvan announced, ‘he’s known to us.’
    Jones seemed genuinely amazed that anyone should doubt this. ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘carry on.’
    And, with perhaps the merest tokens of disbelief, this they did.
    Young Trevor shook hands with Disvan and was then introduced to me. As eve,r the seemingly irrelevant point of my family’s ancient links with Binscombe was brought up in the same breath as my name. The young lady turned out to be called Tania, Tania Knott, although the apparent intention was that her name should soon become Jones as well. Whereas Trevor’s greeting to me was amiability itself, it struck me that her words of introduction betokened more human warmth behind them.
    ‘So you’re back from university, are you?’ said Mr Wessner, our ‘man from the Town Hall’, stating the obvious as a conversational gambit.
    ‘Yes,’ Trevor smiled, ‘we’re finished there now. The results will be out in a month or so and then we’ll know whether we’ve wasted the last three years or not.’
    ‘We’ve every confidence in you,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘I’m sure you’ll do well in your exams.’
    Trevor smiled knowingly at Tania. ‘Let’s hope your faith isn’t misplaced,’ he said.
    ‘What subject did you read?’ I asked.
    ‘Electrical engineering; we both did.’
    ‘Oh, that’s interesting because—‘
    Mr Disvan closed off this avenue of inquiry by interrupting. ‘And what are you up to at the moment?’
    ‘Decorating mostly, in between writing job applications. As you know, Tania’s father gave us a place in Quarry Lane as an advance wedding present and it needs quite a bit of work doing on it.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Disvan, ‘I know the place. It used to belong to a couple called Bellingham, Jehovah’s Witnesses as I recall. When the wife died, old man Bellingham lost interest in things, religion included, and let the house and garden go rather.’
    ‘Anyway,’ said Trevor, ‘that’s all getting away from why I came over to see you. I wanted you all to see our car.’
    ‘You’ve bought a car?’ said the landlord who was with us.
    ‘Yep, our first. We got it today.’
    ‘We’ve just driven it back from the car auction,’ added Tania. ‘It seems very nice. Come and have a look.’
    Since the game’s conclusion now seemed forgone, the Binscombe spectators, a dozen or so in all, duly did as they were bidden and we trooped up over the recreation ground and through the children’s swings to the double-yellow-lined roadside.
    ‘Isn’t it a little bit dodgy to buy from motor auctions if you’re not in the trade?’ asked Mr Wessner, whom life and experience had made a pessimist.
    ‘Sometimes,’ replied Trevor, nothing daunted, ‘but Tarn and I are pretty good with machines and we gave it a thorough going over before buying. As far as I can make out it’s as sound as a bell.’
    ‘The dealer said it’d only had one careful owner,’ Tania said.
    A few covertly smiled at this, but no one was impolite enough to voice their cynical views. Mr Patel said that his brother, the one from Winchester, had had one of those cars once and he’d been full of praise for it till he wrote it off on the M25.
    Still consumed with pride at his acquisition, despite this last hint of mortality, Trevor