Bloodthirst

by Alexander, Marc

  She summoned a hostess, ordered a large gin and tonic and settled back to study photostats of cuttings from the newspaper morgue on the Scandinavian sex scene. Already die intro to her story was forming in her lively mind: ‘Once upon a time Copenhagen was a quaint old back-drop for Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. Its most typical postcard showed the statue of his Little Mermaid. Today Copenhagen is the sex-fun centre of the world, and it’s a wonder the Little Mermaid …

  * * *

  The old man raised his eyes from the stainless steel sink for the hundredth time and let them follow the road which wound up the fell between parallel dry-stone walls. Peter had written that he would arrive in time for lunch, and his father was determined to prove to him — and this new girl he was bringing — that he was still able to look after himself. There was coq au vin in the oven at low heat, and leek soup, his Border speciality, filled the kitchen with a delicious smell.

  Ambrose Pilgrim finished cleaning his cooking implements, wiped his hands on a strip of kitchen roll and looked south up the fellside again. A metallic blue Citroen appeared against the skyline, then swooped down towards the cottage. Ambrose opened the door and the cold air burned his nostrils after the warmth of his Aga stove.

  With a scrunch of soft tyres the car halted by the cottage and Peter climbed out and ran towards his father.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Hello, old chap. You’re just in time for lunch. Where did you get such a magnificent car?’

  Peter grinned. ‘I must admit it’s slightly second hand, but she’s a beauty. A Pallas. But I must introduce you to Anne-Marie … ’ But he did not move. And the French girl in the front seat of the Citroen, which was now settling itself like some colossal insect tired after its race from London, did not move either. She had the tact to let father and son make their greeting alone. The young doctor scanned his father’s face with a professional glance, looking for minute signs which would indicate his state of health.

  ‘I’m all right, Peter,’ laughed Ambrose. ‘Pretty fit in fact. It’s the Border air.’

  Peter turned and opened the car door. Ambrose watched the girl climb out, lithe and graceful. Under her white ski sweater her breasts were full for one so slim.

  ‘Father, I want you to meet Anne-Marie Clair,’ said Peter, holding her by the hand. ‘Anne-Marie, this is my old dad, Ambrose Pilgrim, of not unknown literary fame.’ Ambrose felt her hand cool and firm.

  ‘I am happy to meet you, my dear. Do come in out of the cold. There’s coffee glugging away in the Russell Hobbs. You must need some after such a long drive.’

  Anne-Marie surveyed the bright kitchen with approval. It was orderly without being prim, and she was not surprised to learn that in his time Ambrose had done a lot of sailing. He looked after his home as though he were on a boat, apart from his study, which later Anne-Marie discovered to be a confusion of books and papers massed round tape recorders and an IBM typewriter.

  Now she was studying Ambrose as he busied himself with the coffee, while Peter complimented him on the improvements he had made to the cottage. She was happy Peter’s father had turned out to be this kindly, lean man with a finely wrinkled face and mane of white hair. Peter would look like this when he grew old, and she was glad.

  ‘Come into the lounge,’ Ambrose said, leading the way with a tray. ‘How do you like the new furniture? Last time I was in London I went berserk in John Lewis’s, but it seems to work out now it’s assembled.’

  Smiling, he handed them steaming cups.

  ‘Have a good trip up?’

  ‘It was very good,’ said Anne-Marie, lounging in a huge swivel chair. ‘It took five hours coming on the Ml and then the M6. But I slept most of the time.’

  ‘Anne-Marie had to work very late in theatre last night,’ Peter explained. ‘But we won’t talk about that. We have a pact to keep off subjects medical this weekend.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Ambrose with an exaggerated shudder. ‘I dare not think of what horrors are perpetrated in that hospital of yours. Now excuse me, I have a culinary operation to perform on the chicken.’

  ‘He’s lovely, your father,’ whispered Anne-Marie as the old man retired to the kitchen. ‘In that navy sweater he’s just my idea of a writer.’

  ‘This electric cooker is too complicated,’ Ambrose’s voice came through the doorway. ‘So many dials. With all these knobs and dials I sometimes think I’m at a NASA control console with ten seconds to zero … Ah, I think we have lift-off.

  ‘Smells delicious,’ Anne-Marie called encouragingly.

  ‘Dad only came here a couple of years ago,’ Peter explained. ‘It was derelict when he bought it.’

  ‘Do you like Northumberland after London?’ she asked Ambrose when he returned.

  ‘I found the city lost a lot of its attraction for me when Peter’s mother died,’ he answered. ‘And I get more work done here.’

  Anne-Marie looked down at her slender hands. She knew little of the family history. Peter led her to a window while Ambrose bustled about with plates. To the north, under a delicate water colour sky, they saw a distant line of blue hills; nearer at hand the ground sloped to a valley dissected by stone walls. At the bottom a small tarn gleamed like a burnished coin in the cold sunshine.

  ‘I’d forgotten the marvellous views you have,’ Peter exclaimed.

  ‘Before you only saw it in winter. It is very different in spring, but autumn is the golden time for the Borders. We have a “ — note that “we”. I’m becoming a native. Now get your bags in and take Anne-Marie to her room. I think the room nearest the top of the stairs is the nicest for a young lady.’

  Peter thought: It’s the room farthest from his, so if we were to spend the night together there’ll be no embarrassment.

  Soon Anne-Marie returned to her big chair and curled up.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you, not only because you are Peter’s papa, but once I read one of your books — in French. After that I became a fan.’

  Ambrose gave a little nod to accept the compliment but did not dwell on it.

  ‘Which part of France do you come from?’ he asked.

  ‘Paris-St Cloud.’

  ‘Of course, I should have recognized a Parisienne.’

  ‘Not pure Parisienne. My father is an engineer there, but Mama comes from the south, so I spent much of my childhood near Arles.’

  ‘Then you must know the Camargue.’

  ‘I adore it. When my course ends I’m having a holiday there. I want Peter to come with me for the Gypsy festival.’

  Lunch was a great success. Even Anne-Marie, with her French palate, had to admit that Ambrose was a fair cook. The Hockheimer Peter had brought in a crate full of assorted bottles for his father was followed by Hine brandy, putting them at ease and lessening the need to talk.

  ‘Have you heard from Julia?’ Peter asked as he lolled before the log fire. ‘I only get a letter when she wants advice on x-raying some ancient skull.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Ambrose replied. ‘Still in Abu Sabbah. I worry because she’s close to the trouble zone, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She believes she’s on to the tomb of a priest of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Sometimes I wish she’d meet some nice fellow and settle.’

  ‘Not really!’ exclaimed Anne-Marie. ‘To have a daughter who is an archaeologist should make you proud.’

  Ambrose smiled, and said: ‘I suppose if I have given anything to my children it is the gift of curiosity. For Julia it is delving into the remote past, for Peter it is probing into the human mind.’

  ‘Literally,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘I can tell you he wields a deft scalpel.’

  ‘Remember our pact,’ laughed Peter.

  ‘Indeed, even the thought of blood makes me feel faint,’ Ambrose said.

  ‘Yet you have written about some pretty gory happenings,’ said Peter. He turned to Anne-Marie. ‘The Battle of Bosworth made my father’s name and fortune. That, and the later historical books, enabled Julia to become an arch
aeologist and financed my psychiatry studies after I’d got my general qualifications.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to the noble dead whom Ambrose Pilgrim resurrects so successfully and profitably.’

  ‘I just try to bring a bit of life back into history,’ said Ambrose modestly. ‘When I was a schoolmaster I was shocked to find that such a fascinating subject was usually the dullest on the curriculum. It has been a popular trend to dehumanize it, to see it as social movements and statistics. I have merely put the flesh and blood back on the dry bones in my books.’

  After some discussion about the book Ambrose was currently working on, Anne-Marie announced she was still rather tired and went upstairs, partly to sleep and partly to allow father and son to be alone together.

  ‘About Anne-Marie … ’ Peter began as the two men went into the kitchen to do the washing up.

  ‘I think you have chosen right this time,’ Ambrose said. ‘She’s good-hearted, she has humour and she’s very alive. A fine person, and I sincerely hope it works out.’

  ‘Early days yet,’ Peter said quickly. ‘But she has proved to me that I can have feelings again. When Marian left me my world ended. Because of my training I was supposed to have some understanding of human emotions, to know all was to forgive all — but such precepts no longer made sense. Life was empty and desperate, and I felt that my knowledge was futile if I could not apply it to myself. I didn’t want to burden you at the time, because of mother’s illness … If it hadn’t been for starting in a new field at the London I think … Anyway, I never wanted to see a woman again, except as a patient. But now … well, in a way it’s rather frightening how one does get over things. Does it mean that no emotion can last?’

  ‘You are more qualified to answer than I,’ Ambrose replied, wiping a saucepan. ‘But if I have learned anything from my sixty-five years on this planet, it is to be grateful for any mercies, and the passage of time can be one of the greatest.’

  * * *

  The next day they went for a drive to give Anne-Marie an idea of the Border countryside. After some time they found themselves passing through the village of Owl wick, which they noticed was built of reddish stone rather than the pencil grey of the cottages near Ambrose’s home. A few minutes later he asked Peter to pause where a tree-lined avenue led across a field to a distant farmhouse.

  ‘That’s Owlwick Grange,’ he said. ‘It’s the scene of one of the strangest supernatural happenings I have ever heard of.’

  ‘Do tell us,’ said Anne-Marie as the car moved forward again. ‘I love your English ghost melodramas.’

  ‘I got an inkling of the story when I was reading a Victorian writer named Theodore Hall and came across a tale about this place which seemed too dramatic to be true,’ Ambrose said. ‘It concerned the Russells — two Australian brothers and their sister — who took a lease on the house in 1874. One night the following summer Pamela Russell was awakened by the scratching of fingernails on her window. Whatever it was appeared to be unpicking the lead strips which held the small panes of glass together. It managed to get into the room where it attacked Pamela and bit her throat before her brothers arrived in answer to her screams. But the vampire escaped through the window and was last seen running down the drive in the direction of the Owlwick churchyard.

  ‘The girl was so shocked by her experience her brothers took her to Switzerland for a long holiday. When they returned she was fully recovered, and was inclined to believe that she had been attacked by a large monkey which had probably escaped from some circus menagerie.

  ‘Then, one night in March, 1876, she was aroused by the horribly familiar scratch of nails on glass. Her cries brought one brother to her room and the other, Edward, to the yard with a gun. By the light of the moon he saw what he later described as a “tall spindly fellow in a curious cloak” at his sister’s window. The figure leapt away, and once more raced down the tree-lined avenue. Edward fired after it and it stumbled before continuing over the fields towards the churchyard.

  ‘Realizing it was no ordinary prowler, the Russell brothers called in some neighbours and the local gamekeeper and at dawn they began a search of the burial ground. One searcher noticed that a stone slab was out of place and when they investigated they found a “mummified” body in the space below. A great bonfire was lit and when the ancient corpse was taken to it they saw that there was a bullet hole in its thigh.’

  ‘Bravo,’ cried Anne-Marie. ‘A very good story.’

  ‘I was inclined to dismiss it as just that — a piece of fiction,’ said Ambrose. ‘But when I accidentally came across other references to it I got interested. When I came here I though I’d take a look at the Grange out of curiosity. I went up that avenue and met the wife of the farmer who has it now explaining that I was interested in the building. I did not mention the vampire as I did not want her to think I was a crank.

  ‘The lady was very gracious, and when she had finished feeding her chickens she showed me round. But though the building was very old and full of historical interest — there’s a priest-hole, for example — there appeared to be nothing about it to link it with Theodore Hall’s account. I was just coming to the conclusion that the tale was a hoax when the lady pointed to a bricked-up window on the ground floor.

  ‘“That was blocked up after the vampire got in and attacked Miss Russell,” she said in a matter of fact way, And she went on to relate the story which is told locally exactly as I had first read it at the British Museum Reading Room.’

  As he drove back towards the A69, Peter said: ‘When I was doing psychology I got fascinated in trying to trace the origins of mythology in the human moeurs. It seemed to me that many legends were the result of folk memory. Take lycanthropy — that is le loup garouj he explained to Anne-Marie. ‘According to the legends a werewolf bite causes the victim to become one himself. With hydrophobia the infection is passed on by the bite of a rabid animal and the sufferer does begin to behave like a frenzied beast. He slavers, makes animal sounds and tries to bite those about him. It was easy for the superstitious to believe in werewolves once they had seen a man infected by rabies. Silver bullets and protective spells were poetic licence.’

  ‘Then what about vampires?’ asked Ambrose. ‘Accounts of them are to be found in the ancient writings of Babylon and Assyria, but can you suggest what started them off? I agree that we are constantly learning there is a thread of truth in myths. Troy was just a legend until Heinrich Schliemann used Homer’s poetry to locate its ruins. The Labyrinth of the Minotaur was a frightening fairy story until Sir Arthur Evans discovered the maze under the palace of Minos at Knossos.’

  ‘I think I may have an example of a disorder which could have started the vampire cult,’ mused Peter.

  That night Ambrose was tired and went up to his bed early and for a while Peter and Anne-Marie sat in silence before the flickering wood fire. There seemed to be no need to talk. Suddenly she looked him in the face with her eyes mysterious in the warm glow.

  ‘Peter, you can share my bed tonight if you wish.’

  ‘You don’t have to say that … ’

  ‘I know … ’

  He was quiet for a minute, seeking the right words.

  ‘Anne-Marie … I don’t know how to express this without sounding like some sort of weird prude … Somehow I’m afraid you are not ready, and I don’t want to spoil anything which promises to be so good … ’

  She laughed, partly with relief.

  ‘You are very thoughtful. I think you have some idea why I left Paris for London. I want to be sure all that is behind me. But please promise you’ll come running if I hear a scratching at my window.’

  ‘If there’s a scratching at your window it’ll be me,’ Peter joked. Both laughed and began to kiss tenderly, then passionately. They realized with some surprise this was the first time they had truly kissed. And with the increasing warmth of their embrace, their thoughts as to whether they were ready or not for a new phase in their relationship were forgotten in the ti
de of mounting emotional and sexual excitement.

  Time became unimportant They were only conscious of the easy fusion of their bodies, followed by wave after wave of intense pleasure until Anne-Marie gave a long shuddering sigh and Peter had the sensation of dropping away from the world into a void of warmth and darkness, the petite mort which no previous experience had given him.

  Reality returned when Anne-Marie murmured in his ear: ‘My love, I never believed in such an idea before, but we must have been designed for each other.’

  * * *

  Back at the London Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System a nylon-smocked girl from the pathological laboratory carefully carried her tray into the Fleming Ward. She nodded to Sister and entered the narcoleptics’ room where a cheerful Australian nurse kept a bored eye on the slumbering children.

  ‘Dr Pilgrim wants blood samples from all of them,’ the girl explained. ‘He’ll want the results when he comes back on Monday.’

  She placed the tray on the locker by Britt’s bed. Beneath the napkin there were over forty test-tubes held in wooden racks with their rounded bases resting safely on foam plastic. At the neck of each was an adhesive label in which was a ball-pointed name and number. These tubes, each three-quarters full of dark red fluid, represented the hospital’s daily collection of blood samples.

  Britt opened her eyes and smiled up at the girl prettily.

  ‘Does she understand any English?’

  The nurse shook her head.

  ‘I wish I knew Swedish for “this won’t hurt”,’ the girl muttered as she removed the cover from the tray, picked up a long-needled syringe and depressed the plunger. Britt’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the rows of gleaming test-tubes.

  ‘Mind if I shoot through to the loo for a minute?’ the nurse asked, standing up stiffly and yawning. ‘It’s my chance while you’re here because these kids mustn’t be left alone.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ replied the lab assistant as she tightened a tourniquet above the child’s elbow to dilate the veins. The nurse left and with a kindly smile the girl prepared to ease the hypodermic needle into Britt’s arm. But before the point pierced the skin, Britt wrenched herself back and with a strong upward sweep of her free arm struck the specimen tray. Test-tubes cascaded upwards in a fountain of flying glass. They smashed against walls and some even hit the ceiling, causing a shower of bloody droplets to rain on the Swedish girl’s bed.