Whitby Vampyrrhic (5 page)

‘Thank you,' she said, ‘but isn't all this an overly elaborate way to fire me?'

‘Coffee's as rare as a good night's sleep these days, what with the air-raid sirens screaming fit to burst. Cheers.' He sipped the coffee. The action of swallowing caused a drop of red liquid to emerge from beneath the eyepatch and roll down his cheek. He dabbed it away with a knuckle.

Beth set her cup down on the table. ‘Well?'

‘Well, what?'

‘Fire me.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘Ridiculous?' Her anger rose.

‘Drink your coffee. You won't believe how severely rationed it is now. Ships bringing it across the Atlantic are targeted by submarines. Crews drown by the hundred.'

‘So there's blood in the coffee. Is that what you're trying to say?'

‘Peppery, aren't you?'

‘Why are you treating me like your personal enemy?'

‘You really could smell gin on my breath from, what? Three rows back in the screening room?'

‘Absolutely. Now fire me for making that crack about you being liquored up, and stop playing games. I don't like it. What's more, I won't tolerate it.'

Once more his fingertip rested on the eyepatch, as if still coming to terms with it being attached to his face.

‘Miss Layne. Permit me to confess what happened ten days ago. It may help you make up your mind about me. Then act according to your conscience.'

His manner irritated her, but she nodded. ‘Go on.'

‘Ten days ago I sat in a café in London. There was an informal meeting, you see, with the director and location manager for the film I'd just finished scripting. We sat there with slices of cherry cake, cups of tea, and the director smoked his favourite tobacco. All profoundly normal. A waitress brought sandwiches to a young couple sitting at a table opposite. He wore a blue Royal Air Force uniform. She was a nurse. They were holding hands. I suggested to the director that wherever possible we film on the streets of Whitby and dispense with rickety cardboard sets, then . . .' A stillness crept over him. ‘Then the café didn't exist any more. Everyone was dead. The young sweethearts, my colleagues. The walls had vanished. Tables pulverized to splinters. There I was standing in the rubble, smoke and fire all around, and no sound whatsoever.' He took a mouthful of coffee; as he did so, his eye alighted on the gin bottle. ‘A bomb had struck the building. Everyone died but me.'

Beth said, ‘You must have been saved for a higher purpose.' Then she clenched her fist.
Did I really say that?
The glibness of her own comment shamed her. ‘I'm sorry. That sounded crass.'

‘No . . . I've had plenty of time to consider it. An eighty-kilogram bomb, containing high explosive, fell ten thousand feet from a plane on to the building. Everyone reduced to a smear of bloody red. An awful description, but it's true. Yet all I suffer is a gash in my eyelid.' He gave a grim smile. ‘A nurse needed a long needle and a lot of thread to reconnect that flap of skin. And I have to wear this pirate's eyepatch for another week or so, but they tell me I'll be good as new. I'd just begin to ‘see' the location manager, or date her as you Americans would say.'

‘She was your girlfriend? I'm sorry, Mr Reed.'

‘Alec, please.'He held eye contact with her. ‘Do you think I have been saved for a higher purpose? Did God intervene, so I might achieve great things in order to aid a victory over Hitler? Or have some ancient gods, who are bitter and twisted through neglect, decided to save me for their own evil purposes?'

‘Ancient gods? Why do you say that?'

‘I've been troubled by such strange dreams. Every night, when I close my eyes, I find myself in Whitby. A place I've never been. In the dream, I walk through the streets. It has become a ghost town.' He stared at the coffee cup, as he remembered what must have been disturbing nightmares.

‘Alec, listen to me. In wars, strange things happen. We've all heard tales of soldiers who are shot, but a Bible in their breast pocket stops the bullet. That's the mythology of battle. You hear stories like that all the time. Shells hit a trench, killing every soldier bar one – he escapes without a scratch. Something like that happened to you. Maybe some individuals are spared for a higher purpose. Maybe not. But it does no harm to believe we've been given a second chance, so we can make the most of life. Turn over a new leaf. Be a better person.'

‘A better person? Last night I was tortured by the same old nightmare. My eye stung like fury. Worse, I wallowed in self-pity. My friends were dead. Better people than me gone. So, this morning, I swallowed a heck of a lot of gin before I could bring myself to stand in front of those actors and actresses.'

‘After what you've been through, it's understandable.'

He gave a grim smile. ‘If I had been saved from the explosion in order to perform mighty deeds, all I did this morning was prove to you, and everyone else, that I'm weak as water. A flimsy, paper cut-out of a man. A coward who needs booze before he can bring himself to speak to his fellow man and woman.'

‘Now you are sounding sorry for yourself.'

‘True. And I promise to do better. I want to make this film work; it has a mission to inform other countries about the hell this nation is enduring in order to oppose the Nazi barbarians.' He leaned forward, hands clasped together on the table. ‘Now to business, Miss Layne.'

‘Beth.'

‘Thank you, Beth. I want you to replace my girlfriend.'

‘
You want what!
'

‘Sorry. Bad choice of words. The gin's made me fuzzy around the gills.' Alec took another swallow of coffee. ‘Lorna was the location manager. It's hard to find replacements. Most people who could do this kind of work are now either in the military or munitions factories.'

‘I couldn't. I'm an actress.'

‘Oh, too good for that kind of work, are we?'

‘I meant I'm not qualified.'

‘You have a good head on your shoulders. That's the only qualification you need.'

‘I wouldn't know where to begin.'

‘My director is dead. I'm the writer; I'm having to step into his shoes.' He pulled a file across the table. ‘Here is your résumé. When you had the opportunity to return to America, before it became unsafe to make the Atlantic crossing, you decided to stay here to perform in hospital shows for our wounded troops. You participated in ENSA concerts in France before the British were forced to retreat. It demonstrates you are prepared to do what you can to help the war effort and thwart mad Herr Hitler and his villainous regime. As you Yanks say “you are not a quitter”.' He studied a sheet of paper. ‘You have a great list of screen credits, too, so you understand the mechanics of film-making. Therefore, I am not firing you, Beth Layne. You will act in my film. What's more, I need you to go up to Whitby to scout out locations. We start shooting in twelve days.'

‘Alright. But I insist on my friend, Sally Wainwright, coming with me.'

‘By all means.'

‘And she gets paid, too.'

‘You'll both share the same wage as Lorna would have received for scouting locations. Later, you'll both be paid acting fees as set out in the contracts. Those fees begin the first day of shooting. The government are funding this production most handsomely.'

‘We'll need to go back to our rooms in London to pack. We only brought clothes for an overnight stay.'

‘Beth. This is war. Be it military or civilian work, when we are deployed we must obey instantly.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I want you to leave for Whitby this very minute.' He handed her slips of paper from the file. ‘Here are your rail warrants. They'll get you to Whitby by midnight.'

‘Our clothes are—'

‘I have every confidence you'll use your considerable initiative to find more clothes when you're there. As well as wonderful, atmospheric locations for our film.'

‘I'll find them,' she told him firmly. ‘But if you ever intimidate your actors and actresses, in the misguided belief it gets the best out of them, I'll launch my own personal war on you. Understood?'

‘Understood.'

He held out his hand, which she shook.

‘See you in Whitby, Beth.' He smiled, and just for a moment she wondered if his confession about the near-death experience in the café had been intended to disarm her.

‘I' m sure interesting times lie ahead for both of us,' she told him. ‘Ciao.'

When she'd gone, he picked up his coffee cup and took a hearty swig. ‘Beth Layne sees a phantom Whitby in the studio. I see it in my nightmares.' He toasted the picture of Whitby on the wall. ‘You're getting into our blood, aren't you old girl?'

Four

Flying Officer Benjamin Green knew he'd been born a fortunate man. As a child, he'd beaten death when he'd escaped a burning schoolroom that had claimed the lives of everyone else in there. His terrific parents had encouraged his ambitions to become a musician. When war came they hadn't discouraged him from joining the air force. They were so proud of their son. His death-defying abilities allowed him to escape two bad crashes during training flights. That trick of spitting in the Reaper's eye had happened all over again an hour ago when anti-aircraft shells had struck his aircraft. True, his co-pilot and navigator lay dead in their seats. And one engine burnt so brightly that his aircraft must have resembled a fiery shooting star, streaking through the night sky.

But his charmed life still held true. The engine on the other wing ran well, if not that smoothly. The blood that soaked his flying suit, goggles, oxygen mask and leather helmet wasn't his. The Essex kid, who'd joined him as co-pilot yesterday, had taken a shell fragment the size of a tennis ball in the centre of his face.

Half of the kid's head had landed in Benjamin's lap. Gently, he'd placed it on the slumped body in the seat beside him.

‘I've beaten death,' Benjamin murmured. ‘I'm going home.'

He nursed his reconnaissance aircraft westward. Germany receded behind him. England lay beyond the nose of the plane. He'd cheat that harvester of souls again; the Grim Reaper wouldn't claim Benjamin Green. Not this time. There'd still be enough fuel to get him back to the airfield. Wiping his comrade's blood from the goggle lenses, he peered out through the side window. A mile below, the ocean resembled beaten silver in the moonlight. Those seemingly tiny dimples in the surface were, however, substantial waves. If he had to ditch the plane in that, it would test his knack of giving Mr Death the slip.

He checked the blaze on the port wing. So far, so good. The flames were confined to the engine itself, so sparing damage to the structure of the wing.

‘A wing falling off wouldn't bode well,' he murmured dryly. He checked the radio. That had died, too.

Taking a deep breath, he concentrated on holding the machine steady. The stars above shone with their customary eternal steadfastness. The moon's full disk glowed with a calm radiance. The heavens had witnessed humanity slaughter its own kind too many times to reveal any dismay at the fools doing it all over again. He glanced at the two bodies. Although they were stone dead, they flinched as the lone motor sent shudders through the aircraft. Guy Forester, in the back seat, even patted his fingers against his lap, as if impatient to get home to see his wife and children.

‘Patience, Guy, I'll get us back.' He tightened his grip on the quivering flight stick. ‘Gentlemen, you're going home.'

With growing tension, he peered through the blood-speckled glass in front of him, searching for the coastline. The flight stick's convulsions told him that the remaining engine had begun to misfire. Its violent shaking made the plane jerk like a beast in pain.

‘Come on, my sweet,' he cajoled the aircraft. ‘Get my brave boys home. Courageous British bones deserve to rest in British soil.'

The engine coughed. Sparks began darting from the exhaust manifold. He leaned forward again to search the way ahead. At last. Silver ended at a line of black. That must be the coast. He dipped the nose a little so that the plane would increase in speed. As soon as he was over solid ground he'd cut the engine then glide down. He could land this thing in a cabbage patch if need be.

Even as he sighed with relief at the sight of the cliffs by moonlight, a huge snap of a sound came from his right. He turned his head to see the remaining engine toss out a ball of fire. Simultaneously, the sound of the last motor slowly died away. Soon the air rushing over the fuselage was the only noise that reached his ears. Guy's corpse still tapped his leg as if impatient to see home. The hunched back of Pat Craig juddered in imitation of panting. Benjamin knew these signs of life were fake; a result of the machine's vibration as it bounced along on turbulent air.

Still, he willed the aircraft on. Below him, an opening in the coast resembled a yawning mouth. That must be the River Esk where it flowed into the sea. So the blacked out town of Whitby had to lie beneath him.

‘Told you I'd do it! You're nearly home, boys.'

Benjamin glanced at the port wing. It had begun to flap in such an exaggerated way that it resembled the flight of desperate gull. The fire had spread. Now the timber ribs that normally kept the wing rigid must be burning through.

He undid his harness. ‘Sorry to leave you like this, boys. I'll see you again when we've got different kinds of wings, eh?'

Benjamin didn't want to bail, but he knew the instant that the wing broke away from the plane then he'd be dead, too. Adrenalin powered his limbs. In a blur of movement he scrambled to the back of the aircraft, kicked open the hatch, then tumbled out into the cold night air.