The Radleys (20 page)

A year’s worth of Saturday afternoons working at the Wil ows Hotel enduring silver service at what seemed like forty-eight versions of the same drunken wedding reception and this is what he’s left with.

He withdraws as much as he can and then pul s out his NatWest card to take money from his

“life after home” account, the one his parents top up once a month and which he isn’t real y al owed to touch until he’s at university. He struggles to remember the PIN but gets there eventual y and withdraws the rest of the money he needs. When he gets home he puts every single one of the twenty-pound notes into an envelope and writes on it “Rent money for 15B Lowfield Close.”

His Wife’s Trembling Hand

At four o’clock in the afternoon, the Radleys are sitting down and eating Sunday dinner. Peter, studying the cooked lamb flesh on his plate, is not surprised by his wife’s determination that everything should go on as normal. He knows that, with Helen, routine is a kind of therapy.

Something that helps her paper over the cracks. But judging from the trembling hands that spoon out the roast potatoes, this therapy isn’t working.

Maybe it’s Wil .

He’s been talking for the last five minutes and shows no sign of stopping, answering more of Clara’s questions.

“. . . you see, I don’t need to blood-mind for myself. I’m protected. There’s nothing the police can do to stop me. There’s this thing based in Manchester cal ed the Sheridan Society. A col ective of practicing vampires that looks after each other. It’s kind of like a trade union but with sexier representatives.”

“Who’s Sheridan?”

“No one. Sheridan Le Fanu. An old vampire writer. Long dead. Anyway, the point is, they send this list over every year to the police, and the police stay away from those people. And I’m always pretty close to the top of the list.”

“The
police
?” asks Rowan. “So the police know about vampires?”

Wil shakes his head. “As a rule, no, they don’t. But there’s some in Manchester that do. It’s al very clandestine.”

Rowan seems perturbed by this information and he visibly pales.

Clara has another question. “So if we get on the list, the police wouldn’t be able to do anything?”

Wil laughs. “You have to be a regularly practicing vampire, with a good few kil s under your belt.

But maybe, yeah. I could introduce you to the right people. Pul some strings . . .”

“I don’t think so, Wil ,” says Helen. “I don’t think we need that kind of help.”

As the voices rise and fal around him, Peter chews away at some rare meat, which is stil ridiculously overcooked. Notices his wife’s trembling hand as she tops up her glass of merlot.

“Helen, are you al right?” he asks.

She smiles weakly. “I’m fine, honestly.”

But she nearly jumps out of herself as the doorbel goes. Peter grabs his wine glass and goes to get it, praying like his wife that it isn’t a return visit from the police. And so for once the sight of Mark Felt is almost a relief. He is holding a large rol of paper.

“The plans,” explains Mark. “You know. What I told you about. For the upstairs extension.”

“Right, yes. We’re actual y—”

“It’s just I’m away with work tomorrow night, so I thought now would be a good time to go through them.”

Peter is less than thril ed. “Okay, sure. Come in.”

And so, a minute later, he is stuck watching Mark unrol the architectural plans onto the counter.

Wishing he’d had more lamb.

Wishing he’d had a whole live flock.

Or just one single drop of Lorna’s blood.

In his glass is a sad little puddle of merlot. Why does he even bother with this stuff? Drinking wine is just another thing designed to make them feel like normal human beings, when real y it only proves the opposite. Helen insists they drink it for the taste, but he’s not even sure he
likes
the taste.

“We’ve got some wine on the go if you fancy any,” he says to Mark dutiful y, as he grabs one of the half-drunk bottles sitting next to the toaster.

“Okay,” says Mark. “Thanks.”

Peter pours the wine, cringing as he hears Wil ’s raucous voice carry through from the living room.

“
. . . drowning in the stuff!
”

Peter realizes Mark has heard this too, and that he seems to have something to say which has nothing to do with house extensions.

“Listen, Peter,” he starts, ominously. “We had the police around earlier. About that boy who went missing at the party. And something came up about Clara.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and tel me if I’m out of place here, but I was just wondering, wel , what did happen to her the other night?”

Peter sees his own distorted image in the toaster. The eyes staring back at him from the curved chrome are large and monstrous. He wants, suddenly, to scream out the truth. To tel his neighbor turned amateur Poirot that the Radleys are bloodsuckers. He checks himself just in time. “She took something she shouldn’t have. Why?”

He turns around holding two ful glasses.

“Look, sorry,” says Mark. “I’m just . . . That man with the camper van. Who is he?”

Peter holds out Mark’s wine. “That’s my brother. He’s not staying long. He’s a bit eccentric but he’s okay. Family, you know.”

Mark nods, takes his glass. He wants to push the conversation further but holds back. “Oh, I thought you used to say you didn’t have a brother.”

He had, of course. He had told everyone that. “Wishful thinking . . . So, let’s have a look at these plans.”

And Mark starts to talk, but Peter only takes in snippets: “. . . want to build . . . of the ground floor area . . . extended back in the nineteen fifties . . . major risk of . . . knock out the existing wal . . .”

As Peter sips his drink, he can’t hear a thing. The taste is nothing like the wine he’s been drinking. It is as exquisite and as rich as life itself.

He looks at his glass in horror.

He realizes Wil has left a bottle half drunk on the counter. He wonders frantical y what to say in order to get the glass off Mark. But it’s already too late. Mark has already taken a sip and appears to love it so much he’s knocked back the rest in one go.

Mark puts down his empty glass. His face is transformed into a vision of wild abandon. “God, that was
delicious
.”

“Yes. Right, let’s see these plans,” says Peter, bending over the rectangles and measurements on the sheets of paper.

Mark ignores him. He goes over to the bottle and reads the label. “Rosel a two thousand seven?

Now, that is good stuff.”

Peter nods the nod of a knowledgeable wine buyer. “It’s Spanish. Type of rioja. Smal vineyard.

Low-key marketing. We order it online.” Peter gestures to the plans. “Shal we?”

Mark flaps his hand in a “forget it” gesture. “Life’s too short. Might take Lorna somewhere special. Been a while since I’ve done that.”

Might take Lorna somewhere special.

“Right,” says Peter, as jealousy burns like garlic inside him.

Mark pats his neighbor on the back and, with a huge grin, strides out of the kitchen. “
Adiós
amigo! Hasta luego!
”

Peter sees the paper on the counter curling itself back into a rol . “Your plans,” he says.

But Mark has already gone.

We’re Monsters

They have finished the lamb, but Helen isn’t clearing away the plates because she doesn’t want to leave the children alone with Wil . So she just sits there, a prisoner in her chair, feeling the power he has over her.

It is a power he’s always had, of course. But now it’s there as a raw and undeniable fact in front of her, made stronger by her actual y asking him to help with the police, and tainting everything. It infects the whole room so that every object—her empty plate, each glass, the Heal’s lamp Peter bought her some Christmases ago, every one of these things—seems suddenly charged with a negative energy. Like secret weapons in some invisible war against her, against al of them.

“We’re monsters,” she hears her son saying now. “It’s not right.”

And then Wil , smiling, as if it is a line he wants to be given. An opportunity to take another swipe at Helen. “Better to be who you are than to be nothing at al . Than to live so buried under a lie you might as wel be dead.”

He leans back in his chair after making this pronouncement, soaking up her scornful gaze as easily as if it were affection.

Then Peter enters, waving a bottle angrily in the air. “What’s
this
?” he asks his brother.

Wil feigns ignorance. “Is this charades? I’m stumped, Pete. Is it a film? A book?” He scratches his chin. “
The Lost Weekend? First Blood? The Bloodsucker Proxy?
”

Helen has never seen Peter stand up to his brother, but as he carries on, she silently prays for him to stop. Each word a foot stamping on a trap door.

“Our next-door neighbor—a very respected solicitor—has just drunk a ful glass of blood.

Vampire
blood.”

Wil releases a huge river of a laugh. He doesn’t seem remotely concerned. “That should loosen a few bolts.”

Clara giggles while Rowan sits quietly, thinking of Eve’s hand in his, of how good it felt.

“Oh God,” says Helen, realizing the significance of what her husband has just said.

Wil ’s humor is souring slightly now. “What’s the big deal? No one’s bitten him. He’s not going to be converted. He’l just go back home and make his wife very happy. He’s an
unpire
now.”

The thought infuriates Peter. “You should go, Wil . He’s getting suspicious. People are getting suspicious. The whole fucking vil age wil be wondering what the fucking hel you and your shitting, piece-of-shit camper van are doing here.”

“Dad,”
says Clara, from the sidelines.

Wil is genuinely surprised by Peter’s animosity. “Oh Petey, you’re getting angry.”

Peter slams the bottle down on the table, as if to prove his brother’s point. “I’m sorry, Wil . It’s no good. We’ve got a different life now. I cal ed you because it was an emergency. And the emergency is over. You’ve got to go. We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”

Wil stares at his brother, wounded.

“Peter, let’s just—,” Helen says.

Wil regards Helen now. Smiles. “Tel him, Hel.”

Helen closes her eyes. It wil be easier in the dark. “He’s staying til tomorrow,” she says. Then she stands up, starts stacking the plates.

“I thought you were the one who—”

“He’l be gone by tomorrow,” she says again, noticing Rowan and Clara’s shared glance.

Peter storms back out of the room, leaving the bottle sitting on the table. “Great. Fucking great.”

“Fathers, eh?” offers Wil .

And Helen stands by the table, trying to act as if she hasn’t seen the wink intended to seal his little victory.

The Night before Paris

They had done it in the van, the night before Paris.

They were both naked and giggling and feeling life’s sweet thril in the touch of each other’s skin.

And he remembers that first bite of her, the intensity of it, the sheer surprise at how good she tasted. It was like a first visit to Rome, walking along an unassuming side street to suddenly find yourself knocked out by the epic splendor of the Pantheon.

Yes, it had been perfect, that night. A whole relationship in microcosm. The lust, the gaining of knowledge, the subtle politics of drinking and being drunk. Draining then replenishing each other’s blood supply.

“Change me,” she had whispered. “Make me better.”

Wil sits out on the patio staring at the starless night. He remembers it al —the words, the tastes, the rapture on her face as blood dripped from the fang-sized hole in her wrist down into the bottle, as he fed her his own blood and recited Coleridge’s “Christabel” with a delirious chuckle.

O weary lady, Geraldine,

I pray you, drink this cordial wine!

It is a wine of virtuous powers;

My mother made it of wild flowers.

He remembers al this as he gazes out at the moonlit garden and the high wooden fence. His eyes fol ow the fence toward the rear of the garden, beyond the pond and the lawn, and the feathered silhouettes of two conifer trees. Between them he sees the soft shine of a shed window, peeping out like an eye.

And he is aware of something, of some living presence behind the shed. He hears the crack of a twig and, a few seconds later, catches the scent of some blood on the air. He sips on his glass of Isobel to sharpen his senses, then inhales the air slowly through his nose. As the scent is fused with greener, grassier smel s it is impossible to tel if it is merely generic mammal blood—a badger, maybe, or a frightened cat—or something larger, human-sized.

A second later he detects blood he knows. Peter’s. He is sliding the glass doors and stepping out onto the patio with his wine.

They swap hi’s and Peter sits down on one of the garden

chairs.

“Just, you know, sorry,” he says tentatively. “I mean about earlier. I overreacted.”

Wil raises his hand. “Hey, no, my fault entirely.”

“It was good of you to come. And you were a real help with the police today.”

“Not a problem,” Wil says. “I was just thinking about that band we used to have.”

Peter smiles.

Wil starts to sing their only song: “ ‘You look so pretty in your scarlet dress, Come on, baby, let’s make a mess . . . ’ ” Peter can’t help but join in, grinning at the absurdity of their lyrics. “ ‘Let’s leave our parents down here drinking their sherries, ’cause when I taste your blood I think of cherries . . . ’ ”

They let the ensuing laughter slowly fade.

“It could have had a great video,” says Peter.

“Wel , we had the T-shirts.”

They talk some more, Wil prompting Peter into remembering their early childhood on the barge.