I am a man who prides himself on intellect and rational thinking; inconceivable, that there should be such thoughts beyond my consciousness; repressed, they only grow, like mould in a crypt. The part of myself I cannot accept takes on a different identity. I call the entity Rosemary. I imagine that it is she who is responsible for the darkness within myself. I make it into a werewolf fantasy, of murder and feeding by night, of blood, mystic river of the subconscious; Rosemary the vampire, irresistible and lethal … I substitute the kiss she gives me for an act of aggression, a bite (is not every sexual act an act of aggression, and am I not inherently afraid of women?) which makes me into an imitation of herself. Part of me wants it – to be wanted, loved, aggressed – the other part fears it, disassociates itself once more, and distorts my natural desire for a beautiful woman into something perverse, monstrous, even to the point of deluding myself into believing that I was guilty of the most bestial of atrocities.
You see, I tell him, I speak your language. A guilt complex involving my basic fear of women, perhaps a latent homosexual tendency emerging on the event of the tragic death of my best friend … and here we have all the classic elements of a neurosis.
He smiles doubtfully; he has heard me speak in this fashion before. The first time, he was elated; could it be that at last I was showing some proof of recovery? He has heard me speak; he is puzzled at the apparent coherency of my arguments, my apparent sanity in all areas except one.
She is not a neurosis.
She is neither vampire nor werewolf but a real entity. Fragments of her walk the pages of books, but her reality is something more real even than that; she is an infection of the soul, no human being, but something older and more archetypal than the most familiar of Jung’s figures. I call her the Blessed Damozel.
*
They took me home, you know, after that night at the bar; it would never have done to have left me on my own. The police would have found me half an hour later, still screaming as the café burned; as it was, they found nobody, and the others half-dragged me, almost catatonic with the shock of what we had done, to Rosemary’s hideout. It was a disused warehouse, half burnt to the ground in a fire several years previously, and damp, but it was an excellent place to hide. She took me in hand; I remember her hands around my neck, her breath on my cheek as she held the beaker of hot whisky to my lips; I gagged, drank, spluttered, but managed to keep down the drink.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told me, her hair hanging down towards me, almost touching my face. ‘The worst is nearly over. You’ll feel ill for a while, you’ll have a fever, and bright light will hurt your eyes, but it will be over in a week or two. Drink some more.’
I swallowed. I struggled to raise myself to my elbows, and looked round. Rafe and Java were sitting together in a corner, their backs turned to me. I could hear the sibilances of their conversation, light as cobwebs on the still air. Zach was asleep already, hunched beneath a pile of sacking and blankets, his face turned at an odd and somehow touchingly youthful angle into his folded arms.
Elaine was nursing Anton, rocking and singing a little meaningless song.
‘Be still,’ admonished Rosemary. ‘Everything will be all right.’
But I could not be still.
‘What happened? Did I? Did we … What happened?’
‘We are the chosen ones,’ she said. ‘We do what we have to do. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to it; all the others did.’
With a lunge and a wrench, I sat up. I was caught between laughter and mounting hysteria.
‘What do you mean? You’re telling me I’m a vampire? Like Dracula?’ I thrashed at the beaker of whisky and knocked it out of her hand. I made a grab for her, meaning to shake her. I saw Java make a sudden movement in the corner, caught the flick of a glance from his cold eyes, and knew he was ready to intervene if I showed any sign of violence. The laughter welled up in me again.
‘Vampires!’ I hooted.
Rosemary looked at me with a cold, sad calm.
‘No one mentioned that name but yourself,’ she said. ‘There are no vampires. But we are different, as you are different now. We have certain privileges. And we must feed. You know we must.’
I shook my head.
‘No! I don’t want, I mean. I don’t want to be chosen.’
‘Neither did Moses,’ said Rosemary. ‘You’ll get used to it, I told you. The rest of them are like cattle to us.
Do you ask cattle whether they want to be eaten? In the Bible it says that God gave us dominion over all the other beasts of the field; and Danny, they are the beasts of the field. When you get used to this idea, you’ll realize what a chance we’ve given you, no, not to live for ever, but to live more, and experience more, learn more than any other man you know. I’ve given you life.’
‘You’ve made me a monster,’ I said.
Rosemary looked angry. ‘There are no monsters. I have given you power, and with power comes new appetite. I have not changed you into a vampire; your appetites come from you, not me. Your subconscious knows what you need a lot better than you do. And it compensates, allowing you to transfer feelings of guilt on to me.’
She smiled. ‘You’ll adjust soon enough. Soon you will wonder why on earth you had to make such a fuss about it all. But it’s only natural, after all. Later, I will begin to teach you.’
I suppose you have seen her pictures. You know how lovely she was, and maybe you can understand how easily I was subjugated. To me, bloodstained and half-drunk and crushed beneath the dictates of religion and morality, she looked like a thing out of legend, and the cup she offered me was freedom, no less, freedom from everything, from my lonely life, from the law, from my God and my conscience and the consequences of my actions. From then onwards, I would be free to take whatever I wanted from life, and there would be no one to stop me. Suddenly I wanted that freedom so badly that I was overwhelmed with panic that she might withdraw her offer, and I reached out for her like a beggar.
‘Teach me now,’ I said.
What Rosemary taught me that day, on a pile of old sacks and blankets in a dusty, disused warehouse with the sunlight strung out like skeins of silk across the broken rafters, I try not to remember. Enough to say that she was sweet and soft, her hair smelt of lavender and I loved her with a frenzy of which I would never have imagined myself capable. It was true then, that my altered state brought new appetites, and I sated them fully in the endlessness of Rosemary until there was nothing of me left. They had all loved her, that I knew instinctively: Zach and Rafe and Java and Elaine and Anton (seven years old, going on fifty), and that somehow made it all the more liberating and marvellous. Rosemary was the vial of eternal life; we had all drunk deep, and she had given us grace.
Maybe you find me ridiculous, maybe even blasphemous. Try to understand. I am not writing this for my own glory, or even to salvage my conscience, but to warn you. I am inventing nothing; I write only what I felt. This is Rosemary; this she can be again.
It is proof of the enchantment she laid on me that it was only as I was ready to leave that I remembered Robert. I froze, the sensation of epiphany falling from me in an instant of shock.
‘My God!’
Rosemary turned to look at me; she was sitting on a pile of rubbish in the doorway, all fire and ivory in the sunlight.
‘Where does Robert fit into this? ‘The coldness grew; I began to recognize it as guilt. ‘Does he know, is he?’
Rosemary arched her back and stretched.
‘No, he isn’t chosen.’ Her voice was faintly contemptuous.
‘You mean he doesn’t know?’ I said. ‘But he’s going to marry you.’
She laughed. ‘I know it’s hard for you, because you still haven’t outgrown your quaint notions of loyalty, but you must, you know. Someone who is chosen must put aside all loyalties to the cattle; they are misplaced loyalties, unworthy of you. I have my own uses for Robert, but he has no part in our plans.’
‘But—’ I said.
‘When you are truly one of us, I will tell you why I need Robert,’ said Rosemary, with her serene smile. ‘Until then, Danny, know your true loyalties, and be satisfied with them.’ I wanted to say more, but dared not. I had displeased her, I knew, by mentioning my friend, and by then, I was too much hers to risk doing so again. I took my leave of her, without arranging another time to meet. (‘You’ll know when I need you,’ she had told me, and I had to be satisfied with that.) And with my hat pulled hard over my eyes and my coat buttoned to the neck, I began the long walk home over the fields.
Two
JOE WAS WEARING the same clothes he had worn for the concert the previous night, and he looked crumpled and tired, his mouth drawn down and his eyes swollen. As Alice opened the door he was lighting a cigarette, hands cupped round the lighter flame.
‘How’s Ginny?’ Alice felt a sting of irritation that he should make his indifference to her so obvious.
‘She’s fine,’ she said.
‘Where is she?’
‘In the living-room. Look, Joe.’ She caught hold of his arm as he began to open the living-room door. ‘Stop here a minute. We need to talk.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ he said, an edge to his voice. ‘I’ve not slept, and I’m not up to talking much yet. You know what I’m like in the mornings.’
‘I’m worried about Ginny.’
‘Why? I thought you said she was OK.’
‘It depends what you mean,’ said Alice. ‘Do you know she takes drugs? I found some syringes in her cupboard.’
Joe stiffened slightly, then shrugged. ‘She went through a phase,’ he said. ‘So what?’
‘I think it’s more than a phase,’ said Alice. ‘Last night she didn’t come back till five. The night before she—’
‘Don’t try to get me worked up. Just tell me what you’re getting at.’ He took a drag from his cigarette. She forced herself to sound calm.
‘I think Ginny’s in with the wrong crowd. Two friends of hers came by here last night, asking for her, and they were …’ She paused. ‘They frightened me. I went out and followed them to an old house near Grantchester, a kind of squat. They were at the concert, too, and Ginny was with them all the time.’
Joe frowned. ‘You’ve been very active on Ginny’s behalf. I’d better talk to her, hadn’t I?’ He pushed past Alice into the front room. She followed.
Ginny was standing by the window looking out into the street, but she turned when she heard Joe come in. Her face lit up like a child’s, and she ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck.
‘Hey Gin. You’re not too tired?’ His voice had softened for Ginny, Alice noticed, but there was still a hard line between his eyes, as if the sunlight hurt him.
Ginny shook her head. ‘Did they keep you long last night?’
Joe shrugged. ‘Too long. The thing is that the bloke they picked up and took off in the ambulance decided to snuff it on the way to the hospital. They don’t know who he was yet, and no one seems to have seen what happened to him. There was too much confusion, people fighting and trying to get through the door, people thinking there was a fire and freaking out. By the time the police got there most of the people who could have witnessed something were gone, and the guy bled to death before anyone got organized. So what they did was to grab the nearest bass guitarist and say, “Hey man, you were there, you must have seen something.” You didn’t get close enough to spot what happened, did you?’
Once more Ginny shook her head.
Alice, remembering the group of Ginny’s friends at the door, frowned, and in spite of herself, spoke up. ‘Maybe your friends saw something,’ she said.
Ginny looked blank. ‘What friends?’
‘Rafe and Java, and the others who were there last night. You were standing with them at the back of the room.’
Ginny shook her head, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘There was only you and Joe,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any other friends.’
‘But they were with you last night,’ said Alice. ‘Come off it, Ginny, don’t be silly. You have to tell us about it sometime. You went to a house by the river. You can’t have come back before five, at least, because—’
‘I didn’t go anywhere last night,’ said Ginny to Joe. ‘I went to bed.’
‘You didn’t come back from the concert! I waited for you, but you never came. Then your friends turned up looking for you; the same ones I saw you with at the concert. They said they were called Rafe and Java. Don’t lie to us, there isn’t any point. We just want to know …’
But Joe had stepped forward, all the softness gone from his face.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Leave off, will you? I can do without all this right now. What does it matter who she was with?’
Alice tried to keep calm. The last thing she wanted was a row with Joe. ‘It matters that for some reason Ginny won’t tell us where she’s been going at night.’
‘Don’t start that. We’ll talk about it later.’ Joe was wearing his stubborn look. A look that Alice knew of old. For a moment he looked very like Ginny.
‘Later?’ she said.
‘Just leave it, Alice!’
The Northern accent had intensified as he raised his voice.
Alice found she was trembling. ‘Don’t you see you’re being made a fool of?’ she said. ‘Don’t let her lie to you! I tell you, I can prove it. I can take you to the house.’ She turned to Ginny. ‘Tell him the truth!’
Tears had come to Ginny’s eyes, and she turned away, hiding her face. Alice grabbed her by the arm.
‘Stop it!’ Joe’s intervention was as rapid as her own. ‘Let her alone! I said, get your fucking hands off her!’ His hand was lifted, as if to strike; the high frequency of his emotion palpable. He was shaking, his eyes almost closed, then he gave a cry and hit the wall with all his strength, knocking plaster from a patch the size of a beer-mat.
With a sick feeling, Alice realized that only a tremendous effort of will had prevented him from actually hitting her. The thought was so ugly, so uncharacteristic, that she stepped back from Ginny, tears of reaction in her eyes.
‘Oh, that’s very mature,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re feeling better now.’
Joe was cradling his hurt hand. ‘I think I’ve cracked my knuckles.’
‘Good.’
Now his voice was quiet again, the shuttered look back behind his eyes. ‘I thought you might have changed,’ he said. ‘But you’re still the same spiteful bitch. Going on and on, never letting up about anything. I was well rid of you.’ And he took Ginny’s hand and turned towards the door.
‘Joe …’ Alice tried to put her hand on his arm to calm him; he shook it away with a violent gesture.
‘Get the fuck off me!’
Then Ginny stepped in. ‘Please,’ she said, tugging at his sleeve so that he turned back to face her. ‘Please don’t make a fuss,’ she went on. ‘I’m sure all this was a mistake. Maybe someone did call by, from the past that I’m trying to forget. Maybe that’s who Alice saw. Please don’t quarrel over me.’
Now Joe looked shamefaced, the anger submerging once again.
‘Look, Alice …’ He tried to smile. ‘I think we’re all a bit freaked out today. I haven’t slept at all, and we’ve all been through quite a lot, and we both overreacted, right? Perhaps you did see someone last night. Perhaps it was even some friend of Ginny’s. She used to have some pretty weird friends.’
‘Don’t be afraid to say it,’ said Ginny looking into Joe’s eyes. ‘I want Alice to know everything. She has to know all about me before she can trust me and be my friend.’
Her eyes flicked to Alice’s face for an instant; Alice caught the neon flash of a carnival wheel turning.
‘I used to know all kinds of people,’ she said. ‘Pimps, addicts, prostitutes, most of them half-crazy.’ She smiled. ‘Joe changed all that. Joe was my white knight,’ she said.
He tried to speak but she stilled him with a gesture, something which Alice, in all those years, ha
d never managed to do.
‘I’ve really tried to forget those times,’ said Ginny, looking at Alice now. ‘But sometimes I still remember—’
And she looked straight into Alice’s eyes and the word ‘remember’ echoed in the spaces between them, and Alice was seized by the peculiar feeling that she was being given a message, a very important message which she could not understand, and the understanding of which might change the world.
Alice waited for a long time after Ginny and Joe left the house, then she went into her workroom where she had left Daniel Holmes’s manuscript. She put the papers carefully back into the box, hid the box in a cupboard in her workroom, and went back into her living-room to think.
Daniel Holmes was mad, of course.
And yet, some part of her wanted to believe his tale. Maybe the scene with Joe had finally decided her; or maybe the feelings which had assailed her since that first evening with Ginny, the dizziness, the odd scents she had associated with her; sugar, peanuts, candyfloss, the low, hot reek of the animal-house … Daniel had mentioned those too. The suspicion, the hatred Alice had felt for Ginny, the alien sense of dread. Rafe and Java, perfectly described. Ginny’s face on paintings over a hundred years old. Ginny’s face in the Corn Exchange hall. The Reverend Holmes, Daniel’s nephew, in the church. Doctor Pryce, Daniel’s doctor, Ginny’s doctor, dead in Fulbourn. Ginny’s denials in front of Joe. Crazy Daniel might be, she thought, but she was almost beginning to believe him.
*
‘Hello? Fulbourn Hospital. Can I help you?’
‘I’d like to speak to Doctor Menezies, please.’
‘Just hang on a moment, I’ll see if he’s here.’