by Anne Billson
Grauman appeared from nowhere and, no respecter of personal space, started to breathe down the back of my neck. 'I will take those,' he said, easing the cuttings out of my hands so as not to tear them. Reluctantly, I handed him the photograph as well. He said, 'I do not remember giving you permission to examine the goods.'
'And I don't remember you saying I couldn't,' I said, watching him check the contents of the bag. 'Why can't I look? I played my role perfectly, didn't I?'
He flashed me a grin, unable to keep the smugness out of it. 'Maybe later. Maybe after you do for me another small favour.'
'What are you going to do with those?'
Grauman closed the case and patted it. 'She wants to keep Fender a secret, all to herself, because she knows there are others who would not hesitate to have him killed, if they knew who he was and thought he was getting in the way. She would do anything - anything - to protect him.'
'So, what next?'
'I show her these papers. And she will be grateful I was able to stop them falling into the wrong hands. But there will be other envelopes, and other cuttings, and she will be aware of that. She will leave Fender alone, because she fears for his safety.'
'If she's so fond of him, why doesn't she turn him into a vampire? Then she wouldn't have to worry about his life being in danger.'
Grauman stopped being smug. 'It is not so simple,' he snapped.
'I see,' I said, though I didn't. All I knew was that I was going to have to tread very carefully. 'And the favour?'
'Fender's five minutes are up,' Grauman said. 'It is time for him to find out the truth about his lady love. This is where you come in, Dora. You will tell him what she really is.'
I thought it was a bad move, but didn't say so, because Grauman was still in a snappy mood. I had to swallow a lot of pride in order to phone Duncan. I kept telling myself it was worth it; soon I would have him all to myself. But he didn't sound exactly overjoyed to hear me. In fact, he could barely remember who I was - just a vaguely familiar name dredged up from some dim, distant, pre-Violet past.
'Dora,' he echoed.
'Dora. You know, from college.'
'Oh yes.'
I said I had to see him, it was urgent. He didn't seem bowled over with enthusiasm. I was tempted to give up, but the thought of admitting my failure to Grauman was more than I could bear. I gave it one last shot, and he grudgingly agreed to meet for lunch the next day, in the cheapest restaurant I could think of.
When I arrived he was already there - slumped in a corner beneath the poster for the peach-flavoured aperitif called Sex Appeal. As a caption, it hardly applied to him, not as he was then. He looked up as I went over and it was obvious he wasn't in the best of health. His eyes were bloodshot, his stubble hadn't seen the edge of a razor for several days, and there were flaky patches on his face. The ashtray in front of him was brimming. It didn't take long to work out that the only way he could stop his hand from shaking was by moving a cigarette up and down like an automaton. Most of the time he forgot to flick off the ash, and it kept falling on to the table.
I said hello, and sat down and stared, searching again for those telltale signs. He wasn't sitting by the window, it was true, but he wasn't turning away from the light, or anything. I asked how he was, but couldn't help answering the question myself. 'You don't look too good.'
'I don't feel too good,' he admitted, squinting at me through a miasma of cigarette smoke. 'But you look great, Dora. Hey, you look terrific.'
I was pleased he'd noticed, and told him I'd stopped eating the buns. We gave our orders to a surly Italian waiter, and I brought him up to date with news from college until the food arrived. The conversation was one-sided, and the food killed it off. We both started picking at our plates. 'How's Violet?' I asked, trying to make the enquiry sound casual.
He shifted uncomfortably. 'Fine. We're both fine.'
I waited, not saying anything. The pause lengthened and grew awkward. Duncan lit up another cigarette - neither of us had got very far with our food - and sighed. Finally, he said, à propos de nothing in particular. 'We were thinking of going to Paris.'
I was surprised by an almost physical pain which swept through me. Paris. Oh yes. He had promised to take me there. He had promised to show me Pere Lachaise. He had promised me lots of things.
If any of this showed in my face, Duncan gave no sign of having noticed. He had more pressing concerns. 'I booked a hotel,' he said. 'I went out and bought tickets, I had it all set up, but then she suddenly decided she wouldn't be able to come after all.'
'What did you do with the tickets?' I blurted, thinking perhaps, even now, I could persuade him to take me.
'Tickets? Oh, I got a refund. But there's something wrong. I don't know why she backed down. I don't know what it is, but there's something she's not telling me.'
I took a deep breath. 'You're right. There is something she's not telling you. That's why I asked you here today. It's something dreadful, Duncan, something you have to know.'
He fixed his red eyes on me. I could see him trying and failing to work out what I knew, and how I knew it. But the effort was too much; he gave up and stared down at his lasagne, which by now had acquired a light sprinkling of ash. 'Don't tell me. She's married.'
I couldn't help it - I laughed. 'Oh, Duncan. What would you do if I said she was married? Or if you found out she was having an affair with someone else?'
'I'd kill myself,' he said, smiling so I could see he was joking.
'Don't be silly. If you felt that strongly about it, you should kill her.' I smiled so he could see that I too was making a joke. 'But it's academic, because that isn't the problem. It's something much worse.'
He regarded me sceptically. 'What could be worse than that?'
Even though the only other diners in the place were a couple of deadbeats wolfing down plates of cheap spaghetti, I leant over the table towards him, trying to close the gap between us, because I didn't want anyone else to hear what I was going to say. I'd rehearsed it in my head so often, but once it was out in the open it sounded preposterous and lame at the same time. 'Violet is not human. She's a vampire.'
Duncan's reaction was unexpected. I'd been prepared for him to laugh in my face, or blow his top, or just be bewildered. Instead, he dropped his cigarette and clapped his hand over his mouth, scraping his chair back from the table and sitting there with his eyes bulging.
'Are you all right?' I enquired, thinking perhaps he was about to be sick. He responded from deep within his throat; impossible to tell whether it was yes or no. 'Duncan...?'
After what seemed an eternity, he took the hand away from his mouth. Even his lips had turned pale. He picked up the cigarette, extinguished it, and immediately lit another. Then he said, much too late, 'I don't believe you.' His voice was steady, probably too steady. He didn't seem to be having a problem with vampires per se - just with the idea of Violet being one.
'Yes, she is,' I said.
He shook his head. 'You're wrong. Not her.' And he smiled a secret smile to himself. I had never expected persuasion to be an easy task, but in all my rehearsals of this scene I'd concentrated on the brief history of the species, its nocturnal habits, dietary requirements, recorded sightings et cetera. Now all this information was redundant. 'You know what a vampire is, then,' I said.
'Of course.'
'You believe...' I began, but he cut in. 'My father did a series of paintings when I was about five or six. I asked him all about them, and he told me. Kids liked scary things, he said.'
'Then you'll know it's true. About Violet, I mean. She only comes out at night.'
'Don't be absurd. You don't know what you're talking about.'
'But I saw her!' I blurted out. 'I followed her.' Duncan's face went from colourless to flushed in an instant. He took a quick look round the room, but no one was showing the slightest interest in our argument. 'Jesus Christ, I don't believe this. You've been following her? Jesus Christ, Dora, you're sick.'
'Oh, Christ,' said Duncan. He handed me a grubby paper tissue. There was a pause, which I filled with snivelling. 'I'm sorry...' he said haltingly. 'I haven't been fair...' His voice had lost its harsh edge.
But now I was sobbing convulsively, and his change of heart made it worse. All the pent-up emotions of the past few weeks came bubbling to the surface. I thought about the tickets to Paris, and the unfairness of everything, and great spasms of sorrow welled up and forced their way out of my mouth. Wave after wave, until I no longer cared if people stared.
Duncan paid for the lasagne and coaxed me towards the door. 'Come on,' he said. 'What you need is a nice cup of tea.' I found this protectiveness comforting, and rather seductive. As he led me outside and hailed a taxi, I made an effort to calm myself down, but this led only to a fresh outbreak of sobbing. In the cab, though, a part of my brain was congratulating itself. The crying jag had been a brilliant move. Grauman would have been proud.
Chapter 5
Duncan's flat wasn't so very different from the last time I had seen it, except that now everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. I sat on the sofa and took nervous sips of tea, wondering how to steer the conversation back to Violet when there wasn't any conversation to begin with.
Duncan was sitting cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in the contents of the ashtray. I tried to kick-start the dialogue. 'Sorry about earlier - about what I said.'
'S'all right.' He was combing abstract designs into the ash with a spent match.
I tried again. 'She sings, does she?'
'Who?' His ears pricked up a bit. 'Oh, all the time. Non-stop. Didn't I tell you she used to be a singer?'
I nodded. 'You also said she'd had her portrait painted by Fernand Khnopff.'
He grunted, not really paying attention.
'Fernand Khnopff!' I repeated. 'Fernand Khnopff died in 1921.'
That got through to him. He frowned.
'1921,' I said again.
Half a dozen expressions flashed across his face in rapid succession. 'So?' he said at last. 'She's older than me.'
'She'd have to be quite a bit older. Work it out.'
Duncan got to his feet and began to prowl up and down. 'For Heaven's sake, what is this?' he muttered to himself. 'What does it matter how old she is?'
'She frightens me,' I said. 'You don't know what she can do.'
His face was set in a grimace. I wondered how much time I had before he lost his temper again. For a while he went on pacing, before coming to some sort of decision and parking himself firmly in front of me. 'I can't believe you're saying these things,' he growled. 'She's the sweetest, kindest, nicest person. You'll see.'
'I'm sure she is.' I shuddered at the memory of how close I'd come to meeting her. Perhaps now was the time to fill him in on the details. But he was saying something. I could see his lips moving. I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly, so I asked him to say it again.
'I said, she'll be here any minute now, you'll be able to see for yourself.'
'Jesus!' Before I knew it, I was on my feet, slamming my mug down so violently that tea slopped over the rim. 'Here? Now?'
He checked his watch. 'Any minute.'
'But...' I said the first thing that popped into my head. 'But it's too early, only seven o'clock.'
He snorted. 'What did you think? She only comes out after midnight? Grow up.'
I grabbed my bag. 'I'm off.'
'Fine,' he said, but he didn't step aside. For a second or two, we stood there face to face, and he looked genuinely upset to see me go. Under any other circumstances, I would have stayed. But not under these, no way. I went round him.
'Stay if you like,' he said, following me to the door but making no attempt to help as I fumbled with the lock. 'Maybe I should have introduced you before. Then you'd never have worked yourself up into this state.'
'I'm not in a state,' I snapped. 'And there's really no point in me staying, because none of this has anything to do with me, not really.' Finally I managed to pull the door open. I was on the point of stepping out on to the landing, but I didn't, because Violet was standing right there in front of me.
Somebody - probably me - made a small strangled noise.
'Ah,' she said, looking straight at me. 'My little shadow.'
'What?' asked Duncan.
She wafted past. I saw, but didn't feel, her furs brushing against my hand as she swept by. When I looked back, she was standing on tiptoe to kiss Duncan on the cheek. 'How sweet,' she was saying to him. 'You've brought me an audience. Or should we say a billet-doux?'
I turned back to the door. Escape was just a step away. The problem was, I couldn't move, not an inch. I was staring hard at my feet, willing them to walk, when I felt a soft voice at my ear.
'Don't go.'
It wasn't an entreaty. It was a command. She closed the door and double-locked it right in front of me, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. She slipped an arm around my waist, like an old chum, and walked me back into the living room.
And then, quite unexpectedly, I realized everything was going to be all right. Suddenly, she was no longer the ice princess, but warm and inviting, and all the tension between us had melted. It was as though we'd known each other for years. She slipped out of her coat, dropped a fur or two on the floor, and arranged herself on the sofa.
'Come, sit next to me,' she said, patting the seat with her tiny gloved hand. I had expected her to talk with a sinister accent, like Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, but her voice carried not a hint of Eastern Europe.
I sat down next to her. Duncan was left standing awkwardly in front of us. 'Violet,' he said, 'this is Dora.'
'Of course it is,' she purred, and smiled at me as though we were sharing a joke he couldn't possibly understand. Then she stretched out her hand and tapped the teapot. 'Duncan, darling, why don't you run along and brew us some fresh tea?'
Duncan shrugged helplessly as if to say, 'Well, what can you do?', and obediently trotted out to the kitchen with the half-empty pot. Violet adjusted her position so that her arm rested along the back of the sofa. 'Good,' she said. 'Now we can talk.'
'We can?'
'Don't look so serious. Please. I'm not going to eat you.' Her expression was so rueful that I burst out laughing. Being eaten was exactly what I'd been afraid of, but now those fears seemed ridiculous. I had been thinking of her in the abstract, as a mindless thirst that required regular quenching. It had-never occurred to me that she might be someone I could talk to. It had never occurred to me I might actually like her.
'You have many questions to ask,' she said, and there was an intensity in her gaze which made me feel I could have told her anything, anything at all, and she would have understood. I was suddenly convinced we were destined to become the most intimate of friends. I wanted to tell her that, but I couldn't find the right words. Her eyes were bright, brighter than anything else in the room. I could easily have looked away if I'd wanted - it was just that I didn't want to. The past weeks - the blood, the killings, the mausoleum - were a bad dream. And, even if they hadn't been a dream, even if they'd really happened, it was becoming clear to me now that, like everyone else, she had her reasons.
'All a matter of perspective,' she said softly, and for a few tantalizing seconds she allowed me into her mind. The vision there was vast and boundless. I felt certain that, if only I did the right thing, she would allow me to be a part of it. I felt a surge of excitement. If only I played this
right, I could live for ever.
'So,' she said at last. I wondered if I'd been asleep. Something had just happened and I'd missed it. I was conscious that her arm was now draped across my shoulders - I could feel the weight of it there, and I knew instinctively that I didn't have the strength to remove it. I became aware of the almost absent-minded way in which her velvet-gloved fingers were caressing the back of my neck, and I didn't dare move, it was such a soothing sensation, and I didn't want it to stop, I wanted it to go on and on. Just before I closed my eyes, I saw she had leant forward so her face was inches away from my own, and her lips were very red and slightly parted, she was whispering something but I couldn't quite make out the words as she continued to stroke the back of my neck with one of her hands while the other tugged at my collar, and I wanted to help so I tilted my head back, and listened to the sound of my own breathing, in and out, in and out, and there, was no point in resisting, it would have been too much effort, and all for nothing, because it didn't matter, nothing mattered, nothing would ever matter again.
I was just about to drift off into a terminal reverie when there was an ear-splitting crash. I felt a rush of disappointment such as I had never felt before in my life. Everything had been perfect, and now it was spoiled. Reluctantly, I forced my eyes open.
It was Duncan. I'd forgotten all about him. He was yelling. 'What the fuck are you doing?' The carpet was steaming, pieces of teapot fanning out around his feet like petals. His face was paper-white, even whiter than it had been in the cafe. He kept yelling. I didn't like him yelling like that. I'd had enough of it. It really was time for me to go.
I started to get up. Violet, with a casual flick of her wrist, slammed me back down. The impact knocked the breath out of me. I reached out, rather unsteadily, to push myself up again. Perhaps she saw the movement as a threat, or perhaps she was just being playful. My arm was suddenly grabbed, and squeezed, and wrenched so hard I thought it might pop out of its socket.