by Anne Billson
'Of course you don't. And neither do I. So what would you like to know?'
'What's in it for you?'
'Ah,' he said. 'You want to know that? It's a long story.'
'Tell me,' I said. So he did. The way he told it, there were these two women. The first woman was more than three hundred years old. The second woman, by comparison, was a stripling - in her early thirties - but she was very beautiful and very talented. They loved each other very much, these two women - the love that dares not speak its name and so on. The elder had long since grown weary of her endless existence and despaired of ever finding a companion who would rekindle in her breast the fading embers of human feeling. The younger was eager to taste everything that life had to offer. She sensed the elder woman would be able to give her everything, and more. So the elder prepared to initiate her lover into the mysteries of the inhuman condition, but the younger said, 'Wait. First I must have a baby.' And the elder of the women said, 'Where you are going, babies don't matter.' But her protegee was insistent - she had to experience this miraculous act of giving birth, before it was too late.
'This is 1947,' Grauman said, 'and we are in Paris. Now you must imagine this cute little baby with curly blond hair. He has lost his mama and papa in the air-raids on Berlin. And the elder of the women thinks, ah ha, I will adopt the cute little orphan baby with the curly blond hair and present her to my protegee, whose mothering instincts will thus be assuaged and she will think no more about becoming pregnant.
'And so she does this. And for a while the cute little boy with the curly blond hair does the trick, and the two women dote on him, and he in turn adores them both. But alas, the younger woman becomes broody once again, and this time she will not be denied. "I must have a baby," she cries, "a baby of my very own." And so the elder of the two fixes things up once again. This time, she arranges for her protegee to be made pregnant. She had carefully selected the man who will do this; he is feckless, an artist and a notorious womanizer who has already fathered several illegitimate children by different women, and abandoned them all. He is perfect, she thinks. And so, her beautiful, talented young protegee is encouraged to sleep with this man, and so she does, and she even insists on marrying him because she does not wish her child to be illegitimate, and by and by she finds she is indeed pregnant.'
Grauman topped our glasses up with more champagne, lit my cigarette, and continued. 'Unfortunately for Clara, and despite her very great wisdom, she has been too long divorced from the vagaries of human nature, and her plan begins to go wrong. The beautiful Marguerite is now, what? Thirty-six, thirty-seven years old? This is old for a first pregnancy, am I right? And she has a very difficult time - a very difficult time indeed. And the father, who up until now has lived up to his feckless reputation, suddenly becomes very solicitous, for he too has fallen in love with the beautiful, talented Marguerite - as who would not? And now he begins to take an unexpected interest in the welfare of his wife, and in the development of his new-born son, and Marguerite is filled with mother-love, and for the child's sake, she finds herself responding to her husband's overtures.'
'Oh,' I said.
'You can see where this is leading? Oh yes, we have an enormously touching romantic triangle here, with a baby in the middle. The husband gets on well with the elder of the women, though he has not yet found out she is more than just a family friend, and that his wife has at last been initiated, shortly after the birth of their son, into the mysteries of the inhuman condition. When he does find this out, many years later, it will be a disaster, and neither husband nor wife will survive the discovery. These Fenders, you know, they are ugly people, with ugly tempers. And so the elder woman will be left sorrowful and bereaved, and she will have nothing left to live for, even though she knows she must live for ever. And she will naturally turn to the sole surviving child of the union, and in time she will naturally conceive of the idea that the child will one day take his mother's place.'
'Oh,' I said again.
'And what do you suppose has happened in the meantime to the cute little orphan baby with the curly blond hair?'
'I think I can guess.'
'Cheers,' said Grauman, raising his glass once more. He took a mouthful and I heard him sucking the champagne through the gaps in his teeth. He gazed at me with the sort of wide-eyed expression affected by politicians when they are trying to appear sincere. 'He is now the right age. She will shortly be presenting to him everything that has always been due to me. So you understand why I would like him out of the picture.'
'And you can't kill him.'
Grauman breathed in sharply. 'He is the last thing standing between her and eternity, the link to her lost humanity. If I were stupid enough to harm a hair of his head, I would be torn to pieces. At the very least, I would lose everything for which I have been waiting so patiently all these years. However...' He fished in his jacket pocket, and came up with a fat envelope. 'This might solve all our problems.'
I took the envelope and opened it. Inside were two air tickets to Orly, and a thick wad of five-hundred-franc notes.
'I've never been to Paris,' I said.
'Well, this is your chance. You will find there is a room booked in your name. At the Crillon. No payment is necessary.'
I examined the tickets carefully, holding them up to the light. The flight was due to leave at eleven o'clock the following night. 'This isn't Heathrow?'
'Heathrow will not be such a great place to be, tomorrow night. Believe me, you will find the City Airport a lot easier. I shall arrange for a limousine to pick you up and take you there. All you need are passports.'
'What if she comes after us?'
'She won't,' said Grauman. 'There is too much at stake - if you will pardon the pun. Rotnacht is scheduled to begin at midnight tomorrow, and she will be required to co-ordinate the media coverage. It is very important. She cannot leave. The backers saw her through the last crisis because they needed her, but they will not indulge her weakness a second time.'
I studied the air tickets for some time, trying to work out the downside to this offer, then finally decided that perhaps there wasn't one and slipped them into my bag.
Grauman suddenly reached across and grabbed my hand. This time, though, instead of ramming his thumb into my palm, he stroked it tenderly with his forefinger. The gesture seemed so intimate it was obscene. I pulled away in alarm and embarrassment.
'You must get that seen to,' he said. 'It is dangerous for you to be out on the streets like this. The garlic will not be enough.'
'I'll be all right,' I said, sounding more confident than I felt.
Grauman stared into his drink for a bit, biting his lip, then appeared to make up his mind. He dug deep into an inside pocket and this time produced a small gun with a pearl handle.
I gaped. 'Where did you get that?'
'I have many contacts,' he said. 'I want you to take it, for protection. You know how to fire it? Just squeeze the trigger, like so.' The hammer clicked on an empty chamber, which was just as well because the barrel was pointing straight at me. I took it away from him and examined it closely, intrigued. This was the second real gun I'd seen in two days.
'But what's the point?' I said eventually. 'Guns don't make a blind bit of difference to vampires. You can fill them full of lead, and they'll still keep coming at you.'
'Lead, maybe,' said Grauman. 'But silver bullets...' He held his fist out in front of me and opened it, like a magician demonstrating the last stages of a marvellous trick. Nestling in his palm were three acorn-shaped nuggets of silver. He slotted them into a small metal cartridge. 'I have only three,' he said, 'so you must use them carefully.'
I watched him carefully. 'Don't be ridiculous. You've got your monsters mixed up.'
He nudged me playfully on the chin. 'So Dora believes everything she sees in the movies?'
'Silver bullets are for werewolves. Everyone knows that,'
'And Dora believes in... werewolves?' He was trying to suppress
a smile.
I thought about it. If vampires existed, why not werewolves? Why not unicorns, or Martians? 'Probably not,' I said, 'but these days I like to keep an open mind.'
'You will forgive me for saying so, but I know more than you. I have spent a lifetime studying. How can I convince you about this? The werewolf and vampire share the same origins in Eastern Europe. Somewhere along the line, the folk tales split into two. All the things you thought applied to lycanthropes - well, some of them apply to vampires too, and vice versa. Now take this - you may need it. If someone tries to stop you tomorrow...'
'You mean if Violet tries...'
'No!' he said. 'Don't even think about that. If you shoot Violet, it will be a disaster for all of us, and you will never reach the airport. But you will not need to shoot Violet, because she will not be coming after you. But she may send others - I don't know. And there are the loose cannons, these promiscuous types - they don't care who or what they bite.'
A look of revulsion crossed his face. 'There are many changes we must make, once Rotnacht has taken place.'
I watched as he slipped the cartridge into the hollow handle of the gun. 'What if I'm not a very good shot?'
'You don't need to be. These are .22 bullets, very small calibre. From a distance they are useless, but with the gun held so...' He placed the barrel, very carefully, against the side of my head. I froze, not daring to breathe.
'...you will not miss.'
Chapter 4
It was after midnight when we climbed into the back of the Double Image van, and by then we'd polished off the best part of another bottle of champagne. I felt aggressively optimistic; everything was going to be all right. I couldn't see who was driving, but Grauman said they were going to pick someone up in W11 and it made sense to set me down at the same time. I tried to peer out of the small tinted windows, but we were bouncing around so much it wasn't easy, and Grauman kept distracting me by chatting and offering cigarettes. I caught myself thinking that maybe he wasn't so bad after all - but this was going too far, and I gave myself a mental slap on the wrist.
Around Whitechapel, I caught a glimpse of something burning, and crazy people leaping and dancing around the flames like figures from Hieronymus Bosch. 'Did you see that?' I asked Grauman, but he shook his head, and I began to wonder if I'd imagined it, because I was feeling rather woozy. There were other things, though, and I definitely wasn't imagining those. Near Fleet Street, as a policeman with big fluorescent gloves waved us past a heap of mangled cars, I saw a naked leg poking stiff through the middle of a shattered windscreen. And once, while we were stopped at a red light, I heard someone clambering on to the roof of the van. Whoever it was started jumping up and down, making great booming sounds over our heads, but Grauman rapped on the partition, and our driver moved off so abruptly that whoever or whatever was up there was flung into the path of the car behind us. There was a screech of brakes and a grinding of metal, followed by a banshee wailing. I craned my neck as we accelerated away, but all I could see was a heap of rags and a sparkle of glass.
'I thought Rotnacht wasn't until tomorrow,' I said.
'You thought correctly. But try telling those yobs out there.' Grauman sighed and tutted. 'They have no idea, no idea at all.'
'Then why did she bite them?'
'She didn't. She might have bitten someone once, a long time ago. That would have been enough to set the ball rolling. I am not a mathematician, but you could probably work it out. If everyone who has been bitten goes out each night and bites one or two others - well, eventually you will have an epidemic. Some will die from shock. Others may be torn to pieces. But others will develop a taste for blood and darkness, and they will spread it around.'
'I thought it wasn't so easy. Didn't you once tell me it took six or seven days? A long and arduous process, you said.'
'Well,' said Grauman, 'so it is. But what we have here is the difference between hiring a cheap cowboy to erect a flimsy partition, and saving up for a skilled bricklayer who will build a solid wall. The first is only a temporary solution.'
It sounded suspiciously like a final solution to me. It might have worried me more if I'd been sober. 'You mean you're going to get rid of the flimsy partitions, once they've served their purpose? You guys, you're so... democratic.'
Grauman looked scornful. 'There is no need to get rid of them. They will self-destruct soon enough.'
'Leaving the coast clear for solid walls?'
His gaze grew more distant, almost dreamy. 'Think of it as a game of Chinese Whispers. Each time the message is passed on, if it is not passed on properly, it will become weaker, more distorted. Eventually, you will end up with something that bears no resemblance to the original. And maybe at the end of it there won't be any words left at all. Just meaningless noises.'
This was getting too abstract for me. I lapsed into a not unpleasant stupor, watching the play of red and white light reflecting off the windows as the van bounced on its way, over potholes and up on pavements, over big chunks of things that had been left lying on the road.
'You remember our conversation?' asked Grauman, as we veered right off the Bayswater Road. 'The one we had at the top of the tower?'
I nodded and patted my bag. The small automatic was nestling inside. 'I'm not likely to forget it.'
'The limo will pick you up from Fender's place tomorrow night at eight. Make sure you are ready. Any delay may be dangerous.'
I nodded again. I couldn't believe my luck. I tried to imagine Duncan's face when I showed him the tickets.
'I suggest you give it a couple of months,' Grauman said. 'Once things have cooled off, it will be completely safe to come back. Everything will be back to normal, and you will begin your work with Multiglom in a capacity of your choosing. Day or night, it will be up to you. You are privileged; not many get the choice.' He looked me straight in the eye, and said in a voice that was almost affectionate. 'Be very careful, do as I say, and you might just make it through Rotnacht with your blood vessels intact.' I looked straight back at him, for once, and noticed something in his gaze that hadn't been there before.
'I stick my neck out for nobody,' I said.
Grauman grinned. It might have been my imagination, but the grin wasn't quite as wolfish as usual. He said, 'Something tells me this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.'
But as we drew near to where I lived, that old caution was reawakened. I didn't want him knowing my address, even now, even though common sense informed me he could have picked up the information easily enough. Instead, just to be on the safe side, I got him to drop me around the corner from Duncan's, just outside Jack and Alicia's. 'You live here?' he asked, peering out at the high building. 'Looks expensive.'
'It is,' I said, climbing out. Half the streetlights were on the blink, and most of the buildings were shrouded in darkness. The pavements were deserted, but the van sat with its engine running until I had climbed the steps to the front door. I couldn't help giggling - this was new-style Grauman in his New Man incarnation, making sure I got home safely. I fished my keys out of my bag, then realized that, of course, they wouldn't fit Jack and Alicia's lock, so for want of something better to do, I turned and waved goodbye. Only when the van had driven off did I realize I had forgotten to ask if it would be safe for Duncan to come back to London at the same time as me. Now I thought about it, it might be better if he were to stay in Paris for a while longer. Perhaps I could persuade him to stay in Paris for ever, out of harm's way, while I commuted between capitals. There would be plenty of photographic work for him in France.
As soon as the van had disappeared round the corner, I backed down the steps and started off towards Duncan's. I had no wish to drop in on Alicia again, especially if my suspicions about the baby had been correct. Thinking about it put the first big dent in my champagne high. I had quite liked Alicia. It wasn't her fault things had turned out badly.
Duncan took a long time to answer the door. I looked back along the road
while I was waiting, beginning to feel a little nervous. It might have been my imagination working overtime again, but I thought I saw movement in the shadows beneath the trees. Then the lock clicked and I pushed the door open. It clanged shut behind me as I started up the stairs.
'Sorry,' Duncan said, rubbing his eyes as he poked his head out to greet me. 'I was napping.'
'You should be more careful,' I said, going in and stripping off my jacket. 'You didn't know it was me. It could have been anyone.'
'Oh, I knew it was you,' he yawned. 'Who else would it be, this time of night?'
'It could have been Violet,' I said darkly.
That woke him up. He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and shut it, then opened it again. 'So what happened?'
He snapped into focus. 'Christ, Dora, you look awful.'
'Thanks. So do you. How's the neck?'
'Still sore.' He touched the sticking-plaster with his finger, and winced.
'Better put another dressing on it. I'll just wipe some of this slap off my face, if you don't mind.'
'I cleaned up the bathroom.'
'That's OK; I'll go in the bedroom.'
He followed and watched as I spilled some of Lulu's lotion on to a cotton-wool ball and dragged it across my face. There was garlic all over the dressing-table. In the mirror, I saw there was garlic strewn all over the bed. It looked as though he'd been rolling in the stuff. A bit excessive, but I couldn't complain. At least he was taking precautions.
After a while, he asked, 'So did you get to see her?' as though the subject didn't really interest him any more.
'No.'
'A wasted journey.'
'Not quite. I met up with an old acquaintance. Grauman.'
'That bastard. And how is Andreas?'
I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. I finished wiping my face, and turned round. 'Slimy as ever. But have I got a surprise for you?'