by Ray Connolly
‘Quite well.’
‘Where do you live … Italy? France? Germany?’
She smiled: ‘Did you know they have vampire bats in Argentina that can suck a horse dry of blood in ten minutes?’
‘What about England?’
‘But if they could fall in love … that would be romance, wouldn’t it … vampires, I mean.’
‘You live in England, don’t you? In London?’
‘Just imagine … they both wake up in the middle of the night … get out of their coffins and meet in the churchyard.’
Questions were useless. He gave in: ‘Too gothic. They should be rock and roll vampires and they should meet in an all-night discotheque. You know how to recognize an Irish vampire? He’s got no teeth.’
This amused her and she drank some more wine. She was easily amused, and he was glad.
‘Would you like to be young forever?’ he asked.
‘Forever young?’
‘Like a vampire.’
She shook her head: ‘I don’t want eternal youth, if that’s what you mean. And it’s a bit late for me to be forever young, righteous and true like Bob Dylan meant it.’
Suddenly she stopped talking, and frowned, almost as though she were reproaching herself for saying too much. He suspected that she was a little drunk. He certainly was.
‘What does Bob Dylan know?’ he said.
She smiled and slipped her hand through Charlie’s arm and pulled him towards her. ‘You know what, Charlie? There should be a band. A band right here. I feel like dancing. The tango. We could be Dracula and Lucy doing a tango while Mount Etna erupts and buries us forever under fifty feet of molten rock. Then in a hundred … maybe a thousand years’ time, some archaeologist will come along and find our bodies perfectly preserved in the rock with your teeth embedded in my neck, and he’ll astonish the world with stories of how vampires existed in Sicily in the second half of the twentieth century.’
After dinner they made for the terrace, but on seeing it already occupied by the old ladies, chattering away like road drills, they retreated into the hotel and headed towards the lifts.
Behind his reception counter the night-porter was engaged in deep conversation with three new arrivals – all men, one enormous. Thank goodness he’d met Kate before any opposition arrived, thought Charlie. Kate didn’t even see the newcomers standing in the half-light of the reception area as she stepped inside the lift.
Together they dropped down to the subterranean bedrooms. It was only when they were outside her door, room 307, did Charlie realize the potential of the situation. Kate took her room key from her purse. Then, before putting the key into the lock, she turned towards him.
‘I want to invite you to come in …’ She stopped. How formal she was, he thought. ‘If I …’ she stopped again.
He smiled inside himself. All this stuttering and stumbling, will-you-won’t-you stuff, made him feel seventeen again. He put a hand out and laid one finger on her lips: ‘Now what kind of man of easy virtue do you take me for?’ he said.
She smiled.
He shook his head: ‘Don’t worry. Whatever you want … that’s all I want.’ He paused: ‘Well … more or less.’
She waited for just long enough to laugh, and then slipping the key into the lock she let them both into the room.
Structurally the room was a replica of his own: the same large, three-quarter size bed, the small mock-mahogany desk which doubled as a dressing-table, the white walls, cream carpet, sliding-doored wardrobe standing by the entrance, and the small facing bathroom. But because it was her room it was different. It smelled differently. His room had stayed as foreign to him and anonymous as the day he had moved in. Hers, adorned with the odd item of femininity, make-up on the dressing-table, perfume alongside, a white cotton and lace nightdress left stretched neatly across the bed by the maid, a beach robe slung across the armchair, made it part of her. And, absurdly, once inside, he felt he knew her better.
She switched on the light. As in his own room there was a complicated array of light switches by the door. She chose the dimmest, a single pale bulb which lit the corner of the room furthest from the bed.
Self-consciously he closed the door behind them. He didn’t know how to behave. Usually an invitation into a woman’s bedroom in a holiday hotel meant a helter-skelter slide into bed. But not this time.
She moved across to the armchair and dropped her shawl on to it. He followed her, and from behind rested his hands on her bare shoulders. She turned and kissed him. Slowly they moved towards the bed and gently lowered themselves on to it, his right hand stroking and caressing the curls that fell around her forehead and ears.
She was wearing a pale pink cotton dress and he realized for a moment just how very young it made her look. He slid off his jacket, and he heard some coins clink together as it dropped on to the floor.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘You’re too perfect … too … I don’t know, too everything.’
She shook her head and pulled him close again, peppering his face with scores of butterfly kisses. He stroked her hair. It was long at the back and hung well down past the nape of her neck before the inevitable curls began again. And then he held her face against his. Not in a sensuous way. But in an act of closeness and contentment. And then as they lay there he became aware of tears, warm and wet, running down her face and on to her lips where he kissed them away, and tasted the salt. And he was more puzzled by her than ever.
‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered at last, and putting his arm around her he slid his hand down towards her waist pulling her towards him as he did.
Slowly her body stiffened in resistance.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘You don’t know. That’s the trouble.,’ she said, ‘you don’t know, Charlie. And I can’t ever tell you.’
Again tears were threatening, but this time Charlie was too quick for them.
‘Hey, come on. The saints are merry, remember?’
After a moment the silent crying stopped and again she turned towards him. He grinned at her, his face spreading in pleasure like warm Plasticine.
‘I’m glad,’ he said.
She looked perplexed.
‘I’m glad. It’s better this way. You know every year I come away by myself and every year I seem to end up having what are euphemistically called holiday affairs. Affairs? That’s got to be a joke. What it means is that every year I end up in bed with someone from Denmark or Germany or Coventry or somewhere, and we make it sound respectable by talking about having an affair. You’re not a bit like that. I am. I’m an easy lay. One drink and a bit of sunshine and I’m anybody’s. You’re different. You know if you were available … I probably wouldn’t want you after tomorrow.’ He paused and thought about that for a moment. She didn’t say anything. Then he had second thoughts. ‘Well, that isn’t strictly true. I know I would want you, because, I know … I know that I’m … you know … in love with you …’ The words came from out of his youth. In embarrassment he pushed quickly on. ‘But to be in love with you doesn’t mean to say that I have to make love to you to express it. It doesn’t mean anything like that. I like you up there on the pedestal that I’ve made for you in my imagination. When I first saw you I almost fell over the dining-room chairs because you were so beautiful. How could I ever approach someone like you? I imagined that any minute you would be joined by some sun-tanned god in a Lamborghini … and that I would be made to feel silly and an outsider. Do you know what I mean?’
She didn’t reply but, reaching upwards, kissed him again.
He stroked the underside of her chin. ‘You know what you are? You’re like Sunday. All dressed up, beautiful and good and not cheap and everyday. You’re a holiday. You’re special. A Sunday kind of woman. That’s you.’
Her face was slowly collapsing, but he hardly noticed: ‘That’s right. You’re a Sunday kind of woman. And I’m just an everyday man.’
She didn’t sp
eak. He was staring at the ceiling now. He didn’t like to tell her he had stolen the description from a song he particularly liked. It didn’t matter: it fitted the relationship precisely.
‘So don’t you think that I’m cross or frustrated or that I feel cheated or anything … I mean … well, we’ve only known each other for a few days … and …’ By now he was stumbling for words. She just lay there. Her eyes were closed now. The intimacy of a few moments before was ebbing away from them both.
At last she spoke: ‘You don’t know what you’re saying … but it doesn’t matter. If you want me to be your Sunday kind of woman … that’s what I’ll be. Because I love you, Charlie. It’s crazy, but it’s true.’
And again she kissed him, as they lay together on her bed and stared out at a yellow sky with lights shining from the terrace above them.
Chapter Four
He left her room shortly after one o’clock. They had said little for some time, being happy to lie in each other’s arms exchanging the occasional murmur of a kiss. At one point he had fallen asleep, so contented was he, and then when pins and needles had forced her to move her arm he had woken, at once apologetic and full of a sense of betrayal. But she had seemed flattered that he had felt such security with her and chided him gently until she kissed away his apologies. Although he had desired her in his imaginings since the moment he first saw her, he was happy now that it was not to be. To have made love to her would have changed things, and he didn’t want to change anything. So when at last he said he must: go back to his room it was not with a sense of frustration that he left. Her unattainability only made her more fascinating.
She went with him to the door, and he made a joke about having to slip out in his stockinged feet so that the neighbours wouldn’t hear him.
In the corridor she laughed, and then she kissed him again.
‘God bless,’ he said. ‘I’ll dream of you tonight.’
‘I’ll race you to breakfast tomorrow,’ she replied, as he hovered by the door, not wishing the night to end.
‘Right. It’s a bet. How much?’
She smiled: ‘I never bet.’
‘Wise lady.’
‘I think so.’
He hesitated a moment longer, noticing that she was still wearing the ring he had bought her. Then he said quickly: ‘Good night.’ And, turning, walked away down the corridor. Behind him he heard the door close softly behind him.
His own room lay to the far side of the hotel. To reach it he had to walk past the lifts in the semi-circular corridor which made up the hotel’s sleeping area. He moved quietly across the carpet. The lights were dim, and there was no sound from the empty rooms which lay to his right. His own room was the fourth past the lifts. As he reached it, he thought he heard a sound behind him, and looked around, hoping that Kate had followed him for some reason. He was disappointed. It was a fair-haired smart man of about his own age standing waiting by the lift. He was one of the new arrivals, Charlie remembered, and, groping in his jacket pocket, he pulled out his key. Then with his mind full of the delights of Kate he turned the lock and opened his door.
He never saw who hit him. He hardly felt it. Suddenly he was in his room, but before he could even turn on the light a knee had come up into his groin that virtually forced his testicles back into his body and a hammer-like blow had smashed straight into his jaw so that the force of it spun his head to one side and pushed his upper teeth clean into his lower lip. And then he lost consciousness.
When he came round it was not the pain that frightened him most. It was the bewilderment of finding himself doubled up on the floor of his room in the dark. His mind could not comprehend it. He tried to rest his weight on to his elbows to lever himself to his feet, but he instantly realized his mistake, as a searing pain shot through both his arms and shoulders and he collapsed face down in the white carpet again. His body was now screaming with pain, and he suddenly cried out, a muffled, perplexing sound of terror and agony as the pain took him back to the brink of unconsciousness. His brain corkscrewed and spun in the confusion of disorientation and blackness. Again he tried to rest himself on his arms to rise. And again he smashed into the floor.
For a few moments he lay there. He could feel something wet around his chin. He pushed his tongue forward and discovered that his bottom lip and top teeth were inseparable. No wonder his cries were muffled. Slowly he became aware of his situation. He remembered coming in through the door. The arms that held him. And then he realized why he couldn’t lift himself. With a shudder of pain and fear he realized that both his arms had been broken. A spasm of pain shot through to his shoulders again and he moaned softly. He realized that he was alone, and he wondered how long he had been unconscious. He raised his head. Outside the moon was shining in the clear sky. He could see a pool of blood where his face had been lying in the cream rug. Still he couldn’t open his mouth. And his cries still came in low and strangled whimpers.
With extreme caution he rolled himself over on to his back. The pain in his arms and face was so intense that he thought he was about to pass out. He rested. Then kicking with his feet he pushed himself against the wall of the room. Carefully he gathered his feet up towards him and very cautiously he began to lever his way into a standing position. It was a slow, desperate duel between determination and pain.
His arms hung in front of him like snapped sails on a windmill. At last he was upright. He turned towards the light. Lowering his forehead he pressed the switch downwards with his head. It was a supreme effort, but the lights came on. He looked around his room. His mind was clearer now. There were signs of the struggle that had taken place but which he scarcely remembered. The chair by the desk had been overturned, and the carpet was stained with blood. He moved towards the bathroom, and pushing open the door with his foot, he again employed his forehead to turn on the light. Then, staggering a little as the pains in his arms and shoulders made him wonder if he was going to throw up, he moved across to the washbasin and stared into the mirror.
The shock of seeing himself almost made him step back in fear. His top teeth had been driven clear through his bottom lip so that he could see them broken and splintered, poking from the underside of the torn swollen flesh that had been his mouth. Crusts of blood were congealed from his nose to his chin, while his jaw was black from the ear to where once he had had a dimple.
‘Oh, God,’ he murmured in shock, his head going dizzy with pain again. And then as he continued to peer into the mirror he recalled his earlier conversations about Dracula and the trickles of blood which were always associated with the mouth of the vampire. Despite the agony he thought almost deliriously of his current resemblance to that creature of the night.
He had to get help. But how? His hands and arms were useless, he couldn’t answer the door, and he couldn’t pick up the telephone. Nor could he shout. Any attempt to open his mouth and separate his grinning distorted lips, brought further agony and fresh rivers of blood. He stumbled back into the bedroom. By the side of his pillow was a button bell for summoning the night-porter. Gently he eased himself down on to the bed, his head towards the foot, and stretching out, he pushed the bell with his toes.
For nearly an hour he lay there. At last his telephone rang as someone in the building became aware of the bell, but he could not answer it. Instead he kept his foot hard down. Sooner or later the night-porter had to come looking for him.
Eventually there was a rapping at the door. Then with a jangling of keys the door opened and a boy of about sixteen pushed his head inside the room. The sight of the blood-stained carpet and the broken-limbed and gruesomely stained guest had its inevitable effect.
‘Mama mia,’ the boy uttered at last, and as though expecting to be attacked himself, he rushed from the room, leaving the door open.
Charlie waited, but now there was something other than his own injuries worrying him. What had been the motive for the attack? His wallet was still in his pocket. He could see it when he leant forward, and fe
el it pressing against him when he lay on his back. He had not been attacked for money. But what about Kate? Intuitively he knew that she was involved. He had to know that she was safe.
Carefully now he swung himself off the bed and lurched to a standing position. Then with legs which felt as though they were trapped in irons he began to walk, out of his room and back down the semi-circular corridor.
By the lift shaft a clock told him it was three o’clock. He had been away from her for over two hours. He tried to hurry his step. He felt an urgency. He had to be sure that she was safe. He staggered and hit the wall as he tried to hurry and his shoulder howled at him. But he carried on. Room 307. He counted down as he got closer to it. 311, 309 … 307. He stopped. The door was slightly ajar. At three in the morning? He listened. Blood was again running from his mouth. He had to know.
Very gently he pushed open the door and stepped inside. The light was on: not the dim light of his visit earlier, but the main lights. The brightness made him blink. But he could see everything he had to see. The room was empty. Everything which had made it Kate’s room had disappeared. Just another naked hotel room with the lights glaring in the middle of the night. And only the bed, unmade, and with the sheets pulled back, gave any indication that there had recently been an occupant.
He stumbled into the room. He tried to call out her name, but the words got caught in his congealed teeth and lips, and the pain bit into him. He reached the bed. The pain was now beyond endurance. He was passing out. Then, as he fell slowly into unconsciousness, he noticed something on the pillow that was familiar. It was the ring. Her ring. The slate-coloured one he had bought for her. She had gone, and had left behind the only thing that would remind her of him. And as he fell he made a supreme effort with his arm and threw his body across the bed so that his hand fell on to the pillow. And with fingers which seemed like lead he enclosed his hand over the ring and crushed it into his flesh, just as unconsciousness spared him from listening to the turmoil of noise which accompanied the return of the young boy, and the arrival of the hotel manager and an assortment of other gabbling, frightened and confused employees.