Whitby Vampyrrhic (26 page)

‘Up this way,' Eleanor nodded at a steep lane that ran from the waterfront. ‘As soon as we've got what we need, we'll get back to the hotel.' The woman appeared uneasy. ‘The people are jittery. When they're like this it can spark of trouble.'

Here, on Whitby's West Side, the streets were a little broader. It also boasted modern stores that sold wireless sets and fashionable clothes (although availability was extremely limited due to the rationing). Through busy streets, squads of soldiers would hurry by. Until yesterday, the troops that guarded the town tended to saunter about in quite a relaxed way. Although they couldn't know exactly the fate of their comrades, they'd know that some tragedy had occurred. Consequently, the soldiers moved briskly with grim expressions on their faces.

Cold currents of air blew from the sea, as the pair climbed the steep incline. A wall poster flapped, inviting people to attend a special screening at the Whitby Picture House:
The Turn of the Tide – a portrayal of local fisher folk by Leo Walmsley.
A freshly pasted strip of paper across the poster screamed:
CANCELLED!
Up ahead, groups of boys hurled taunts at one another. A man swore at a horse that was reluctant to haul coal up the steep gradient. Down in the harbour, boats sounded their horns in short-tempered bursts. This air of fractious nerves and heightened tension added to the sense that a storm was about to break.
But what kind of storm?
Beth asked herself
. The entire neighbourhood is nervy. People are eager to dole out theories of what happened last night, then they get themselves into a flaming temper when they're not taken seriously by their friends. If you ask me, the town's set to blow its top.

Eleanor led the way into a general supplies store to collect a bag full of bottle tops. They resembled hundreds of blank silver coins. She checked them.

‘No, I ordered the plain metal ones,' she told the storekeeper, who clearly didn't like the woman from the way he eyed her with distaste.

‘They are the plain ones,' he insisted.

‘No, these have a cork lining on the inside of the cap.'

‘So?'

‘So that's not what I ordered.'

‘Miss Charnwood. I don't see the difference between the—'

‘There's a world of difference, Mr Filby.'

‘But I don't see—'

‘Mr Filby. Indulge me. I ordered metal caps without cork, just plain metal. That's all I want.'

He clicked his tongue. Obviously, he thought Eleanor Charnwood was being awkward for the hell of it. ‘There's a war on, Miss Charnwood, or hadn't you realized?'

Eleanor scowled. ‘I know perfectly well there's a war. But you supplied me with plain bottle tops, just two weeks ago.'

‘Well, I haven't got any now. Take them or leave them.' Shrugging, he went to arrange brown earthenware bowls on a shelf. Beth noticed he also used his thumb to wipe out prices chalked on the sides. That done, he began chalking higher prices – much higher.

Beth whispered, ‘Won't these do?' she indicated the silver disks in the bag.

Beth, if that stuff I'm bottling comes into contact with the cork . . . well, you'd remember the results for the rest of your life.'

Once more, Beth asked herself what, exactly, was the nature of that witch's brew that was being decanted into the beer bottles.

‘Sorry, I couldn't help you, ladies.' As Mr Filby chalked inflated prices on the crocks, he smirked to himself. ‘But I can order more for you. The special
corkless
ones that is.'

‘You disgust me, Filby.' Eleanor's voice rose. ‘You're a spiv, a cheat, a swindler. You'll sell me the ones I need at an inflated price, won't you?'

‘Consider it a favour I'm trading with you at all, Miss Charnwood. Especially, as most decent folk will have nothing to do with you. Now, I will bid you good day, ladies. Please close the door on . . . wait, you're not allowed behind the counter.'

Eleanor had slammed back the timber flap, then gone to search the shelves.

‘I'm warning you, Charnwood. I'll have the police on you!'

He rushed across, undoubtedly intent on dragging the woman out of the shop. Beth stood in his way.

The man raised his hands to push Beth aside.

‘Mr Filby. Don't you dare touch me.'

‘But that woman isn't allowed behind the counter. It's private.' This time he tried to circle Beth. Smartly, she stood between him and the counter. His face went from red to purple. ‘Get out of my way!'

‘No.'

‘Damn you, I'll call the police.'

‘And I'll tell them that you've just hiked the prices of your old stock.'

‘It's my stock. Now get out of my way.'

‘Aren't there laws against profiteering, sir?' Beth stood her ground. ‘And it'll be the wives and mothers of the policemen who will be paying those new prices for your old pots.'

The man harrumphed, but he appeared unsure what to do next.

Then:

‘Ah-ha!' Eleanor pulled a paper-wrapped package from a shelf. ‘These are mine.'

‘What makes you think that?' The man had the air of a trapped rat; his eyes slid from side to side, as if searching for a hole to hide in.

‘The name “E. Charnwood” pencilled on the side gives it away, Filby.' She tore a hole in the brown paper, then eased out a silver disk. ‘Yes, my bottle tops.
Without
the cork inlay. You planned to sell these to me above their original price, didn't you?'

‘Plain bottle tops! You're a lunatic.' Filby almost choked on his own rage. ‘Everyone knows beer will go flat if you bottle it with those on the neck.'

Eleanor placed coins on the counter. ‘What I owe you for my order.' Her tones were impeccably polite. ‘I only wish I could give you a drink of what I'm bottling tonight.'

‘Pah. Knowing you, it will have been boiled up in a witch's cauldron.'

‘Good day, Mr Filby.'

They were back in the cold air, gusting in from the ocean. People hurried by, heads down, eager to get safely home before sunset. Eleanor carried the hefty package of bottle tops.

‘In truth, I'd have paid a hundred times what he was asking for these.'

‘They really are that vital?'

‘Goodness, yes. Worth their weight in diamonds really. Without them, I couldn't finish bottling that witch's brew of mine.'

‘Witch's brew?'

‘The commercial name is X-Stock. Although it has a long chemical formula to accurately identify it.'

‘What does it do?' Beth asked, intrigued.

‘Better I show you than tell you. Come on. It'll be dark soon.'

They retraced their steps down a street so steep that it made the tops of Beth's feet ache. Another platoon of soldiers bustled by. Their expressions were as grim as before.

Eleanor murmured, ‘I imagine the commanding officer will have called in reinforcements, while they try and figure out what happened to their men last night?'

‘Could you have saved them with those powders of yours?'

‘Even if I could have spirited them from the cave to the hotel, the wounds would have been too severe. Those Vampiric creatures sucked every ounce of blood out of them. Sally was lucky. She was bitten at the hotel and she managed to break away the moment the injury was inflicted.'

‘Is that the same story with your brother?'

Eleanor paused, the breeze carried her hair across her face, as if it were a dark rippling veil. ‘His wounds were more severe. The transformation had already begun by the time I managed to apply the Quick Salts. To be honest, Beth, I didn't really save him. I've trapped him in a kind of limbo – somewhere between being human and Vampiric. I wish I had the courage to destroy him.' She continued on her way.

Not that the return to the hotel would be an easy one.

The mood of the townspeople remained edgy. An electric tension crackled on the air. More than once, Beth recalled that dark sentence, reputedly uttered by Gustav Kirk in his youth:
Tiw strikes again.

As they crossed the bridge over the Esk a voice snapped, ‘There goes Madam Eleanor Charnwood. So high and mighty. So full of her own self-importance!'

Beth immediately recognized who'd hurled those words with the savagery of a thug hurling stones. Mrs Brady, a shawl dragged tightly around her hunched shoulders, glared at the pair of them. It was Mrs Brady that they'd encountered on the first night in Whitby, when she'd collected her strange, spectral daughter from this very bridge. Mrs Brady had uttered caustic comments that first night. Now she seemed eager to resume the feud.

‘Look at Charnwood with the tart. Just look at that red lipstick. God knows what they get up to in that hotel.'

‘Mrs Brady, please don't start this again.' Eleanor spoke calmly, trying to defuse the encounter. ‘All we want to do is go home and cook a meal. We've eaten precious little since yesterday.'

‘Eat well as a rule though, don't ya'?' Mrs Brady advanced on them. ‘You don't need ration books like we do, eh? It's people like you who make sure decent folk have to go without meat and butter.'

‘That's ridiculous, Mrs Brady. We have the same rations as—'

‘And those fancy clothes on your backs? You got some black market men to keep you all sweet and cosy?'

The slur was as outlandish as it was untrue. Beth's long woollen coat had come with her from America before the start of the war. Equally, however, Beth knew that both she and Eleanor did dress differently from the locals. This made them stand out on this crowded bridge. And it attracted the attention of people passing by. Most had stopped to watch – dramatic events were unfolding.

Now that she had an audience, Mrs Brady gloated; she tugged the shawl even tighter. ‘And have you seen this one? The stranger. She's going to be in a film about Whitby. That's right, this tart will pretend she's one of the folk from round here. We'll be a laughing stock or worse.'

A bulky man in a cap rolled his eyes at Beth. ‘Is this true?'

‘We're making a film to show how ordinary people in this town are coping with the war.'

‘Ruddy hell. An American playing one of us.' This came from a large woman with a red-chapped face.

Immediately, a chorus of outrage rose.

‘That shouldn't be allowed!'

‘Some picture people are going to make us look stupid.'

‘Like painted tarts, you mean.'

‘You lot should go back to where you came from.'

‘Tarts! Hussies!'

Instantly, the faces around Beth became masks of fury. Eyes glittered. Saliva sprayed from lips as they shouted.

Eleanor grabbed Beth by the arm. ‘Come on. I told you there'd be trouble if they found out.'

‘But it's part of the war effort,' Beth protested. ‘Listen. We aren't going to make you look ridiculous. This film will be shown around the world. It will encourage neutral countries to – uph!'

The red-faced woman had shoved Beth. She'd have tumbled on to her back, if the bridge's fence hadn't slammed into her. Gulls cried overhead. They seemed to pick up the charge of anger. It provoked the birds into furious screeching.

‘Please, let us pass.' Eleanor tried to calm an increasingly ugly situation. ‘We'll go back to the hotel.'

‘Don't let them through,' Mrs Brady shouted. ‘It's time we stopped people like this making our lives a misery.'

The claim lacked no truth, or even much in the way of logic, yet the crowd responded with roars of anger. Beth flinched as fingers tugged a lock of her hair. More hands pushed at her. Eleanor was jostled, too. All the time, insults flew.

Eleanor shouted, ‘You are good people. This isn't what Whitby folk do. I know you're frightened. It's the war that's making you act like this. We should—'

A fist flew from the crowd. Eleanor reeled back. By the time she straightened, threads of crimson were running down her jaw. Though Beth tried to help Eleanor, she couldn't move forward so much as a yard. Men and women, faces distorted with rage, pushed her back to the lattice-work fence.

Anger boiled in the mob. They shouted wilder accusations. Those at the back became frustrated, because they couldn't deliver their own blows on Eleanor Charnwood – a woman universally mistrusted, if not despised, in Whitby. They surged forward. Beth cried out as she was crushed back against the fence. Mrs Brady had, by this time, a fistful of Eleanor's hair, and did her best to rip it from her scalp. Still, Eleanor clung on to the pack of bottle tops, as if she tried to protect a baby in the melee.

Beth foresaw their fate. The crowd would pound the two women until they were bloody. Then, for good measure, they'd be paraded through the streets like a pair of enemy captives. No doubt having to brave a bruising hail of stones as they did so. After that, who knew their ultimate fate?

‘Let go of me,' panted Beth. ‘Stop it. We've done nothing.'

Her ribs ached from the crush. Dark splotches gathered in her eyes. She realized that unconsciousness wouldn't be far away. Once she was on the ground kicks would follow. The mob had been gripped by bloodlust. In this moment of madness, the two women could be blamed for the war, the shortages of food, the Nazi air raids. These two women were guilty. They had caused all the bad things to happen. In the grip of paranoia, it made perfect sense to the crowd to make everything right again by kicking these women until blood gushed out on to the pavement.

As Beth's knees sagged, a hand covered her face to press her downward. Grunted insults filled her ears. Just as she told herself she couldn't stay on her feet for another second, a huge voice tore through the storm of sound.