A La Carte

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘Just come down to shop. We have a house up in the hills, you must come and see it. Darling, look who’s here.’

  A bronzed Jimmy Purchase approached across the square. Like Sylvia he seemed in fine spirits, and endorsed enthusiastically the suggestion that Bertie should come out to their house. It was a few miles from the city on the slopes of Mount Ortobene, a long low white modern house at the end of a rough track. They sat in a courtyard and ate grilled fish, with which they drank a hard dry local white wine. Bertie felt his natural curiosity rising. How could he ask questions without appearing to be – well – nosy? Over coffee he said that he supposed Jimmy was out here on an assignment.

  It was Sylvia who answered. ‘Oh no, he’s given all that up since the book was published.’

  ‘The book?’ ‘Show him, Jimmy.’ Jimmy went into the house. He returned with a book which said on the cover My Tempestuous Life. As told by Anita Sorana to Jimmy Purchase.

  ‘You’ve heard of her?*

  It would have been difficult not to have heard of Anita Sorana. She was a screen actress famous equally for her temperament, her five well-publicised marriages, and the variety of her love affairs.

  ‘It was fantastic luck when she agreed that Jimmy should write her autobiography. It was all very hush hush and we had to pretend that he was off on assignments when he was really with Anita.’

  Jimmy took it up. ‘Then she’d break appointments, say she wasn’t in the mood to talk. A few days afterwards she’d ask to see me at a minute’s notice. Then Sylvia started to play up—’

  ‘I thought he was having an affair with her. She certainly fancied him. He swears he wasn’t, but I don’t know. Anyway, it was worth it.’ She yawned.

  ‘The book was a success?’

  Jimmy grinned, teeth very white in his brown face. ‘I’ll say. Enough for me to shake off the dust of Fleet Street.’

  So the quarrel was explained, and Jimmy’s sudden absences, and his failure to return. After a glass of some fiery local liqueur Bertie felt soporific, conscious that he had drunk a little more than usual. There was some other question he wanted to ask, but he did not remember it until they were driving him down the mountain, back to his hotel in Nuoro.

  ‘How is your cousin?’

  Jimmy was driving. ‘Cousin?’

  ‘Mr Wallington, Sylvia’s cousin from South Africa.’ Sylvia, from the back of the car, said, ‘Alf’s dead.’

  ‘Dead!’

  ‘In a car accident. Soon after he got back to South Africa. Wasn’t it sad?’

  Very few more words were spoken before they reached the hotel and said goodbye. The heat of the hotel room and the wine he had drunk made him fall asleep at once. After a couple of hours he woke, sweating, and wondered if he believed what he had been told. Was it possible to make enough money from ‘ghosting’ (he had heard that was the word) a life story to retire to Sardinia? It seemed unlikely. He lay on his back in the dark room, and it seemed to him that he saw with terrible clarity what had happened.

  Wallington was one of the Small Bank Robbers, and he had come to the Purchases looking for a safe place to stay. He had his money, what Holmes had called the loot, with him, and they had decided to kill him for it. The quarrel had been about when Wallington would be killed, the sound that wakened him in the night had been Wallington’s death cry. Jimmy had merely pretended to go away that night, and had returned to help Sylvia dispose of the body. Jimmy dug the grave and they put Wallington in it. Then the cat had been killed and put into a shallow grave on top of the body.-It was the killing of the cat, those savage blows on its head, that somehow horrified Bertie most.

  He cut short his holiday, took the next plane back. At home he walked round to the place where he had dug up the cat. The Hobsons had put in bedding plants, and the wallflowers were flourishing. He had read somewhere that flowers always flourished over a grave.

  ‘Not thinking of trespassing again, I hope, Mr Mays?’

  It was PC Harris, red-faced and jovial.

  Bertie shook his head. What he had imagined in the hotel room might be true, but then again it might not. Supposing that he went to the police, supposing he was able to convince them that there was something in his story, supposing they dug up the flower bed and found nothing but the cat? He would be the laughing stock of the neighbourhood.

  Bertie Mays knew that he would say nothing.

  ‘I reckon you was feeling a little bit eccentric that night you was doing the digging,’ PC Harris said sagely.

  ‘Yes, I think I must have been.’

  ‘They make a fine show, them wallflowers. Makes you more cheerful, seeing spring flowers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bertie Mays meekly. They make a fine show.’

  VAMPIRE

  Hilary Norman

  Do you believe in vampires? Probably not. Neither did I until I met William and then, along with everything else in my frame of reference, that changed …

  We met ten years ago at a wine and cheese party – the splendid kind where the Bries overflow ripely, the Stiltons crumble, and the wines are never plonk.

  I remember I came manless to the throng: something I greatly loved doing, gregarious and youthful as I was then. There was always someone to talk to I didn’t care if they were male or female, I just enjoyed people. And so it was the second I clapped eyes on William Caulard; I enjoyed him.

  He was at the buffet, a bottle of claret in his hand, and it was his fingers I noticed first. They were beautiful; tapering and white. And then I saw his eyes. They were gazing into the wine; the darkest, blackest eyes I’d ever seen.

  I remember feeling intrusive, but I spoke anyway. ‘Have you tasted it?’

  I recall he drew his eyes from the dark liquid with what seemed like pain; but I remember, too, that when they refocused on me, the pain was dislodged and swam away and clear, frank pleasure took its place.

  ‘Yes.’ His deep, vibrant voice touched a nerve in my spine, making me quiver.

  I saw that the bottle was still corked.

  ‘I tasted it at its birth, before it was captured and imprisoned in this bottle.’

  I read the label. ‘1961 … Was that a good year?’

  He smiled, and his lips stretched generously and linked with his eyes. ‘Quite good, yes,’ he said, ‘but I sampled the first drops of the first vintage.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘I am old older than I look.’

  It was true. He did not look old; he had the posture and leanness of a man of twenty-five. But I watched him and knew he was, as he said, old. Curiously, it did not trouble me at all.

  ‘What is your name?’I asked.

  He told me, and asked mine.

  ‘Miranda.’

  Again he smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  We left together, William Caulard and I, and went to Hampstead Heath, and though it had been cloudy and moist when we left the party, as soon as we set foot on the soft turf of the Heath the clouds parted and the moon, full and cool, guided us to the sweet-smelling copse where we sank to the ground and made love.

  ‘Plighting our troth,’ I remember I whispered, and then blushed. ‘Shakespeare.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I was in Stratford when he wrote the lines.’

  ‘Are you a ghost?’ I asked, wondering.

  ‘No.’ His lips, warm and firm, brushed my neck. ‘But you, my Miranda, like Juliet, were a virgin.’

  It was true. I had been pure and innocent, in spite of many previous boyfriends; but there I lay, stretched out on the damp grass, with my strange first love. ‘If you’re not a ghost, William Caulard, then what are you?’

  ‘A man.’

  I shook my head, and my long hair tangled with the nettles. ‘Not just a man. Tell me, please.’

  ‘A man,’ he insisted. ‘All else must wait.’

  And so he made me his again, and before first light, William Caulard brought me to my door and asked me to become his wife.

  ‘
But I don’t know you,’ I murmured.

  His eyes hypnotised me. ‘You know me, Miranda my love.’ And again he brushed my neck with his mouth. ‘Marry me.’

  And I said yes.

  He told me on our wedding night. ‘I am a vampire,’ he said in his beautiful voice. ‘I have lived for four hundred and sixty-three years, and you are the first woman I have ever loved as a mere man.’

  I believed him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘Fear – that you might refuse me.’

  ‘I couldn’t have refused you.’

  ‘No.’

  We curled together then, and rolled and tumbled and agonised and climaxed. ‘Do you want my blood?’ I gasped, as my body arched.

  He pulled away, his face angry, ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’.

  ‘Because I love you.’

  “But don’t you need blood to live?’

  ‘Quiet, Miranda!’ he commanded. ‘Later – later I will explain. Now let me lie with you quietly, as your husband, and drink your soul.’

  What girl could resist that?

  He did explain later. It was a fallacy, he said, that vampires required blood to live. He told me it was instead an inherited, or sometimes transmitted deep-rooted addiction far harder to break than ordinary mortal addictions to nicotine, alcohol or other drugs.

  I asked how he would survive without blood and he explained that it was more than the blood itself, it was the actual act of sucking at the throat. He said he intended to fight his own addiction with all his might. ‘And if I fail, Miranda, it will not be with you.’

  I remember rising from our marriage bed then naked and resolute. ‘No!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never with anyone else. You have a wife now; you must abide by your vows. If you falter, it must be with me.’

  ‘But it would weaken even endanger you.’

  ‘Better your wife than an innocent stranger.’

  He gave me his hand, and his eyes were full of love. ‘So be it. Vampires never lie.’

  And so began the long, hard period of William’s withdrawal from his addiction of more than four centuries. Only his great love for me, I believe, made it possible; but I was tortured seeing what he endured.

  For a time he grew weak, and once – after he had explained that his blood level was now precariously low I brought him bull’s blood from the butcher; but he grew angry and smashed the jar, and I understood that I was cruel to tempt him.

  But two years later, it was over. William was triumphant. He could endure week after week without thinking of his addiction, without yearning for the salty taste or the sensation of the submitting artery.

  It was time, he said, for us to think of children. ‘But can we?’ I asked in some concern. Will they be …?’

  ‘Human?’ he said. ‘I think so. I, after all, became a vampire by transference, not inheritance.’

  I considered this in silence. ‘And would they be … mortal?’ I asked then, trembling because I contemplated my infants’ death even before their conception.

  ‘I have never impregnated a woman before. I cannot be sure.’

  And so I stopped taking my small white pills and left the fate of my womb to God and William.

  All our three children appear perfectly normal. Michael, the oldest, displays no signs of inheriting more from William than black eyes and a deep temperament. Lucy is golden, a cheeky enchantress who holds her father in her plump palm, and Sam, the baby, is a spiky little soul with a mind of his own.

  It was having Sam that began our crisis – Sam, and William’s work.

  Haven’t I mentioned his work? Yes, of course he works how else could we manage? Ah, you’re worried about daylight. You think all vampires crumble into dust when struck by the sun. Another fallacy.

  In truth, William does not like the sun, because the skin of a vampire is easily burned. If we were to spend long periods in bright sunshine, he might become quite ill. But it’s no worse than that and, in any case, William says he has grown less sensitive because of his blood-free diet.

  Anyway, his work: William is a fashion designer. Haven’t you heard of Caulard? It was he who caused such a stir a few years ago when he designed those outrageously-priced evening dresses with sixteenth-century ruffs.

  Anyway, our crisis: it was mostly my fault. Three lovely children, a comfortable house, an attractive unique husband … a woman risks becoming placid. I became smug. And what inevitably happens when a wife stumbles into complacency? Her husband strays.

  It was also Cassandra’s fault one of the Caulard models. She was five feet eleven inches of high-breasted, velvet-skinned, doe-eyed youth … with lovely veins William’s downfall. And mine.

  I didn’t just get smug, I got round. I didn’t bother as much with exercises after Sam as with the other two.

  I’d also gone off sex. For the first time since Hampstead Heath, I didn’t like William touching me. And it’s one thing for a man like William Caulard to swear off blood, but quite another to abandon his natural human desires too.

  And there was Cassandra, at work with her slender neck and young breasts and perfect veins. ‘I’m working late again tonight,’ he’d telephone from the office.

  ‘Fine,’ I’d say stiffly. ‘I’ll be asleep when you get home.’

  How could he? It wasn’t just the affair I minded – though, of course, I did mind – it was what he might be doing to Cassandra that terrified me.

  But how could I stop it? I dieted, of course, and bought new nightdresses and a pair of skinny jeans with a sexy motif on the behind, which I threw in the dustbin when I got home – mutton dressed as lamb. There was no way I could compete with Cassandra, so why bother to try?

  It was the accident, in the end, that gave me back my husband.

  The phone rang one Tuesday morning at eleven. ‘Mrs Caulard?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was Lucy’s headmistress calling. Her voice sounded soft and anxious. Tm afraid I have to tell you there’s been an accident.’

  ‘Lucy?’ I whispered stupidly.

  She was in the hospital by the time I saw her, lying on a trolley in Casualty, covered with a red blanket. Apart from the slight fluttering of her lashes, she might have been dead.

  ‘She needs a transfusion,’ a doctor said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ready to sign consent.

  The trouble is she’s a very rare blood group … Do you know your blood type, Mrs Caulard?’

  Ice-cold, I nodded. ‘O.’ I was no good to them, it was William’s blood that filled Lucy’s veins.

  Soon, his eyes blacker than ever with fear, he was beside me. ‘What happened?’

  I gulped. ‘She ran out of the playground into the road. No one knows why. They took her away. She needs a transfusion.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  I looked at him. ‘And she has your rare blood group,’ I said. They’re trying to match it now.’

  He jumped up, seeking anyone who would tell him where to go to give his daughter his blood.

  I pulled at his sleeve. ‘William, sit down.’

  He was trembling.

  ‘It would be dangerous for you to give blood, wouldn’t it? Isn’t your level low already?’

  His eyes were angry. ‘Who’s more important, Lucy or me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I think that was the moment when the hole in our marriage was mended the instant when I saw I might lose him for ever, and he saw how much I loved him. He offered me his arm, and I leaned against him. ‘What about Cassandra?’

  He stiffened. I don’t think he realised I knew. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Since when?’ I asked.

  ‘Now.’ At least he was honest.

  He sat forward. Where is everyone, for God’s sake?’

  I squeezed his hand. ‘They said she’s stable. I think they’re contacting other hospitals.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To find the right blood.’
r />   ‘But I have the right blood.’

  ‘Yes, but they’d rather take it from a bottle than your veins.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked sharply. “What did you tell them?’

  ‘I said you’re a haemophiliac,’ I answered quietly. ‘After all, I could hardly tell them the truth about you, could I?’

  ‘What if they don’t find any?’

  ‘Then we’ll say I was lying, and you can give yours.’

  He turned my face to his, and his eyes were tender and savage at the same time.

  They found Lucy’s blood type at the Blood Donor Centre in Hammersmith, and our little girl was right as rain two weeks after.

  So were we.

  I expect you’re still worried about Cassandra. That night, after they told us Lucy would be all right, I asked him: ‘William, did you …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘With Cassandra you know.’

  A look of surprise crossed his face, as if he’d thought me wiser. ‘It isn’t important now, Miranda.’

  ‘Not important?’ I echoed incredulously.

  ‘No. These things happen. She’s not important to me.’

  ‘But what might happen is important, surely. What about the others?’ I lowered my voice. ‘Is Cassandra a vampire now?’

  His eyes creased, and he began to laugh.

  ‘William!’

  ‘Oh, Miranda!’

  ‘I see nothing to laugh at. I told you when we married that I wouldn’t stand for that. I said if you weakened, it must be with me and no one else.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, still rocking with laughter.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded indignantly. ‘I see nothing funny about starting a vampire colony in London!’

  ‘Oh, darling Miranda,’ he chortled, and took me in his arms. ‘I thought you meant had I slept with Cassandra, and of course, you know we had, and I am sorry, but it meant nothing. How could you possibly imagine I would betray you any other way?’

  ‘It was her veins,’ I muttered, blushing darkly.

  He spluttered more wildly than ever, and his behaviour was so uncharacteristic of the William Caulard I had been married to for so long, that for the very first time I found myself wondering if perhaps he’d been less than truthful these past ten years, and if, maybe, he was not four hundred and thirty years older than me, after all.